So what are the benefits and downsides of each type of caster? Let us discuss this since I routinely sit at the start of a campaign asking. "Caster or Martial?" when designing a character. The issues that I find myself in is not what caster to be but rather Prepared vs Spontaneous? On one had I love the flavor of Cleric, Druid, Witch & Wizard but I find them far more difficult to play effectively then the times I have played a Bard or Sorcerer.
Is there any easier way to play one of these "Prepared" Casters which I am not understanding or if it really just a guessing game at which spells you will find useful during the adventuring day (Within reason)?
One of the better upsides of "Prepared" is you can prepare all levels of a spell you have on your list/in your spell-book. Well Spontaneous can normally only get 10 Signature spells over the course of all 20 levels, which is honestly quite a bit outside of some class feats.
As a GM do you need to make it easier for the Prepared Casters to select the best spells for the current adventure? Should you give more information for the players to use Recall Knowledge on? I do honestly feel like I am missing the main point or rather the advantage of Cleric, Druid, Witch & Wizard without Flexible Caster Archetype added in Secrets of Magic.
For Example, which Wizard Thesis do you find more useful in an adventuring day for practical play. Spell Blending or Spell Substitution thesis? One lets you exchange 2 slots for 1 slot of up to 2 Ranks higher then the original slot's rank. The other lets you take 10 minutes to replace a prepared spell.
Prepared
- Int or Wis as the casting stat so they come good at some RK.
- Knows more spells allowing them to be a different caster every day.
- Witches and Wizards can learn more spells you find or buy.
- Can heighten any spell you know by prepping it in a higher slot.
- Clerics and druids know all common spells from their list.
Spontaneous
- Cha as the casting stat so good at social situations and one action debuffs.
- Can use any spell they know with their available slots
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.
Looking only at prepared vs spontaneous.
If you are happy with the amount of spells known from a spontaneous class then there is little reason to choose a prepared class. If you need more scribbles on pages or crumpled up familiar feed or just want the whole list to fulfill your concept then prepared is the only way to do it.
But classes are more than this feature so there's a lot more to compare.
Right now I’m playing a wizard, figured I’d try leaning into support as opposed to my usual martials. I used to try sorcerers but that was in 3e days. I’m using Spell Substitution and Universalist to make up for having to prepare The Right Spells.
Speaking from experience (started playing AD&D/D&D in the '80s, when all casters prepared, or "memorized," spells outside of house rules), prepared casters should have two or three general sets of spells for what the expected activities will be for that day: adventuring (possibly two sets; one for dungeons and one for outdoors) and "in town" (social encounters, urban environments, etc.). These general sets are then tweaked based on the challenges and enemies that will be faced (to take advantage of weaknesses, avoid resistances, deal with environmental conditions, etc.).
A prepared caster does usually take more effort than a spontaneous one, but this is mostly a play-style issue. The prepared caster is selecting their "spell repertoire" each day (for each spell slot) instead of each level. A PF2 bard with the polymath muse and Esoteric Polymath, Versatile Signature, Eclectic Polymath, Impossible Polymath, and/or Ultimate Polymath can even act as a hybrid prepared/spontaneous caster.
Speaking from experience (started playing AD&D/D&D in the '80s, when all casters prepared, or "memorized," spells outside of house rules), prepared casters should have two or three general sets of spells for what the expected activities will be for that day: adventuring (possibly two sets; one for dungeons and one for outdoors) and "in town" (social encounters, urban environments, etc.). These general sets are then tweaked based on the challenges and enemies that will be faced (to take advantage of weaknesses, avoid resistances, deal with environmental conditions, etc.).
A prepared caster does usually take more effort than a spontaneous one, but this is mostly a play-style issue. The prepared caster is selecting their "spell repertoire" each day (for each spell slot) instead of each level. A PF2 bard with the polymath muse and Esoteric Polymath, Versatile Signature, Eclectic Polymath, Impossible Polymath, and/or Ultimate Polymath can even act as a hybrid prepared/spontaneous caster.
Right. A wizard will probably not load up on five Fireball slots if the agenda is ‘dinner at the nobles’ ball’. Less Ignition, more Daze.
I started playing in the mid 90s, was a kid. Back then I never liked playing a wizard. They started off so weak with low hp, no armor, few spells, cant swing a sword. Lol at that time for me the last thing was a sticking point so I had to play fighters, until the paladin became my go to class because I could swing a sword and there was a reason to put one of my good rolls into Cha.
If you got past those low levels Wizards got really fun and so powerful but even waiting to get to level 5 was too much for me as a kid.
Not to mention few of our games actually got to high levels.
The first point IMO that need to be noticed is that there's not only prepared and spontaneous but 6! Between prepared that know all common spells, prepared but that need to learn more spells, flexible, spontaneous, focus focused casters and kineticists.
I pointed this because prepared or spontaneous isn't the only one and probably not even the most important aspect for you to choose a spell caster.
That said inside prepared scope we have a pretty unfair diference IMO that can be a bit complicated to deal that's prepared casters that know all spells and those who need to get the new spells in some other way like learn each level, buy them if possible, to get from allied or enemies NPCs if you adventure allows.
IMO this is already the pretty big difference between wizards and witches vs clerics and druids. The last 2 have a pretty big advantage on daily flexibility because they already know the most available spells for their traditions while the other 2 depends a lot of money and the GM to increase their spell options.
That's in my opinion is whats makes the witches and wizards as prepared casters in a notable disadvantage over the rest. Because to adapt to some predictable condition to that day like "today we know that we will explore and old underground dwarven abandoned city full of undeads so let us prepare some holy spells to face them" both clerics and druids will have an enormous selection of spells to get while witches and wizard will depend to had learned the most optimized spells for the situation or what's more common they will simply prepare most all-rounder spells that they get.
Is that the common example of a universalist wizard when reach lvl 5:
GM: You have 2 spells to learn what do you will learn?
Player: Fireball and Lightning, because I will prepare both if the target is strong vs fire I will use lightning or vice-versa and then cast it again with drain bounded item.
Now puting wizard and witches aside, comparing all know prepared casters like druids and clerics vs spontaneous ones is more a question about where do you want flexibility:
All that said IMO even this the selection about prepared, spontaneous or flexible is secondary in face the other most important thing that your class have, your class unique ability like focus spells or divine font!
Currently Focus Spells, with exception of wizard, are what defines what you caster will do by default. Clerics will get their divine font giving them a lot of top healing/harm options to use and being modified by their feats and also can get some pretty useful or potent focus spells from domains spells, sorcerers will get a great list of templates with 3 pretty potent options of focus spells to get, same for oracles that also will give you some good passives, druid get a more diverse list allowing to select between elemental focus spells, whildshape, animal compation and others, psychic also get a pretty strong list of focus cantrips that can act like strong focus spells too due their AMPs while bards will get more cantrip focused focus spells more focused in buff and little debuff or witches with more debuff cantrips that can be improved by their familiars that now can also "explode" like an extra but killable focus spell.
As I said before IMO these additional abilities above probably weigh more on your choice than about select a spontaneous or prepared caster.
And not less important you always have the option to forget all these choices and simply get a kineticist that will have a small list of options but have unlimited used of resourceless impulses that will get much of the flexibility and options that the spells gives to you to damage, debuff, buff, heal or utility while keep much greater defensive power at same time.
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The loss of one spell per level is painful but I quite like the Flexible Caster archetype, especially with a class like druid that has good focus spells and so can live with the loss of the spell per level (its still painful, mind :-(). Gives you the best of both worlds (Spontaneous and Prepared).
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Ultimately, I agree with YuriP. Prepared and Spontaneous are only two of the various types of caster and Prepared comes in two subtypes - prepared that know all the spells and prepared that have to learn each spell separately.
As I understand it, there's a slight benefit to spontaneous casters because they don't have to play the guessing game.
But looking at just the Prepared and Spontaneous...
Prepared may try to tailor a daily spell loadout for a particular purpose. Which may do better than the general purpose choices of a spontaneous caster, or may be less useful. Depending on how well the player foresees the needs of the day. This is probably the 'guessing game' mentioned.
Spontaneous do still have to play the guessing game. They just tend to do it less often, so it is more forgettable. Spontaneous casters choose spells that are going to be general purpose and useful for the campaign overall. So they are still guessing and trying to foresee what is going to be needed, but they have lower expectations of how well their spell choices are going to handle any particular day's adventuring needs.
So for spontaneous, they have lower flexibility and can't tailor their spells known for a particular change of pace in the adventure (though consumables can really help with that). And in compensation, they also have a higher baseline usability since if they have a spell chosen that isn't suitable, they don't have to spend a single spell slot on it. Once a prepared caster fills a slot, that slot is spent even though the spell hasn't been cast (aside from Spell Substitution Thesis). So guessing wrong does cost spell slots.
Prepared casters can approximate the higher baseline and lower peak power of a spontaneous caster by learning and preparing general purpose spells - the same spells that the spontaneous caster is probably using as well. Having played a prepared caster for several levels, I used that tactic quite a bit. It works reasonably well.
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So there's really three kinds.
- there's spontaneous casters. If you tend not to have a lot of information at the beginning of your day about the challenges of the day, or if you don't like the idea of carefully arranging different spell lists for different situations, or you just don't have but so many spells that you like, these are a clear win.
- There's Cleric and Druid, who automatically get access to all of their common spells. If you regularly have the opportunity to plan ahead, knowing what you're likely to be facing and being able to prep for it, then having this kind of access to your spell list can be really strong.
- There's Witch and Wizard. They're kind of like Cleric/Druid, but it's incredibly expensive for them to have a spell list for their highest level that's got all that many more spells known on it than the spontaneous casters get already. That... kind of cripples the idea of prepping for combat pretty badly. So for combat they're pretty much inherently weaker, but they do still have the ability to fill out their lower level spells in a fairly affordable way, which can give them real advantages in utility spells and whatnot. This is especially true for the spell substitution wizard. Of course, you could also just play as a spontaneous caster and buy some low-level scrolls for such things. Whether or not this flexibility is actually useful is going to be very campaign-dependent.
Of course, there's also class features to consider, and which spell list you happen to have, and so forth.
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I prefer spontaneous casters myself.
I've found prepared casters too restrictive and less adaptive when you need quick adaptation like in combat. A spontaneous caster would have a far easier time picking up utility spells from an archetype like taking wizard or witch or cleric for utility spells and running a spontaneous chassis for combat. Most utility spells are lower level and you can still gain the advantages of daily load out with an archetype and a Breadth feat.
Spontaneous with signature spells is far more flexible in combat. Sorcs and bards both have feats to expand choices with the sorc even allowing poaching from other lists.
It's also nice to not have to keep and track a spellbook or list with a familiar. Keeps the bookkeeping to a minimum and lets you focus your casting strategies without trying to waste time filling a spellbook or familiar with mostly useless spells you'll never use.
And spontaneous casters often get much better class abilities and feat options. More impactful and enjoyable.
Though the druid and cleric are the standouts of the prepared casters. Druids get very nice feat options. Clerics have that healing and the 2 action heal is almost an "I win" button and the cleric has a lot of them.
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If you're playing a wizard, Spell Substitution seems like a must have feat to take advantage of their versatility in a reasonable amount of time. Most parties don't want to wait even a day when no one else really needs any prep time. Spell Substitution or Staff Nexus is more fun for a lot of players.
I hear the money for scrolls issue here and there but would casters like wizard and witch be all of a sudden balanced with spontaneous casters if they learned more spells on level up? They do get a decent start for their level 1 known spells.
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I hear the money for scrolls issue here and there but would casters like wizard and witch be all of a sudden balanced with spontaneous casters if they learned more spells on level up? They do get a decent start for their level 1 known spells.
Most likely not. Cleric needs four maximum Rank extra castings of Heal and to know all of the spells on the Divine tradition in order to be considered a better choice for in-combat healing and condition removal than Sorcerer or Oracle. And even with that it is a choice that is debated and mostly up to preference.
Knowing more spells automatically while leveling up would reduce the disparity between Witch and Wizard, and Druid and Cleric. It wouldn't do much to address the disparity between Witch and Sorcerer, or Druid and Sorcerer.
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Cleric needs four maximum Rank extra castings of Heal and to know all of the spells on the Divine tradition in order to be considered a better choice for in-combat healing and condition removal than Sorcerer or Oracle.
And to be clear, if just looking at the in-combat Healing, only the Divine Font is needed. Adding all of the extra spells known from the entire Divine list only makes them slightly better at the condition removal since it is certain that the Cleric will have the spell for the job the next day. Sorcerer or Oracle would need to have or get the correct scroll and a Cleric could get the scroll just as well.
So from what I am gathering is Witches and Wizards are some of the most disliked classes in actual play. Simply because they don't have their entire list to work off of unlike Clerics which need bonus slots to be considered "Good" before we even tackle Druids which gets no bonus slots. Am I missing anything?
I'm not sure I'd really list Witches and Wizards as different.
Spontaneous vs Prepared is generally a game of trade offs (even if I think that trade favors spontaneous a bit), but the Wizard/Witch/Magus mechanic is just entirely worse.
So from what I am gathering is Witches and Wizards are some of the most disliked classes in actual play. Simply because they don't have their entire list to work off of unlike Clerics which need bonus slots to be considered "Good" before we even tackle Druids which gets no bonus slots. Am I missing anything?
I don't think much of that is correct. Wizard and Witches have an inferior casting mechanic, but opinions about Witches are pretty mixed post-remaster, they get some neat tricks. Clerics probably suffer the least from the spontaneous/prepared dichotomy, because Divine has the most legitimately compelling niche spells, and Font makes them clearly top tier when access to slotted healing is a concern.
I don't think I've seen many people call Druid bad like you're implying either. The class is generally pretty well liked and effective.
Standard remark: now you don't need Signature spells just for what you stated. All spontaneous casters now can use higher rank slots to cast lower rank spells without any additional effects compared to the rank of the known spell. But you do need the spell to be Signature to get heightened effects from higher rank slot.Spontaneous
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.
Wait, what, they changed that in the Remaster? Because (as I understood the rules so far) the lack of ability to freely downcast your spells was a huge nerf to Sorcerers in the jump from 1E to 2E. Are you sure?
So from what I am gathering is Witches and Wizards are some of the most disliked classes in actual play. Simply because they don't have their entire list to work off of unlike Clerics which need bonus slots to be considered "Good" before we even tackle Druids which gets no bonus slots. Am I missing anything?
Not only. But Wizards also have a pretty weak feat and focus spell list. Currently is considered the weakest option IMO and for many other players too.
Witches for other side now are in a better position due their tradition flexibility, better feat list, better focus spells list and the new remastered familiar powers. So even still depending from the adventure to provide them access to more spells like wizards their chassis and feats makes them don't depend from slot spells so much like wizard depends.
Yet I still think that Clerics and Druids are in a better design position.
Wait, what, they changed that in the Remaster? Because (as I understood the rules so far) the lack of ability to freely downcast your spells was a huge nerf to Sorcerers in the jump from 1E to 2E. Are you sure?Standard remark: now you don't need Signature spells just for what you stated. All spontaneous casters now can use higher rank slots to cast lower rank spells without any additional effects compared to the rank of the known spell. But you do need the spell to be Signature to get heightened effects from higher rank slot.Spontaneous
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.
Yes heard from other players that they changed this too (but I still need the update in AoN to confirm by myself). The remaster put in magic rules that you can cast any spell in a higher slot even for spontaneous casters but you only get heightened effects if it's a signature spell.
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Wait, what, they changed that in the Remaster? Because (as I understood the rules so far) the lack of ability to freely downcast your spells was a huge nerf to Sorcerers in the jump from 1E to 2E. Are you sure?Standard remark: now you don't need Signature spells just for what you stated. All spontaneous casters now can use higher rank slots to cast lower rank spells without any additional effects compared to the rank of the known spell. But you do need the spell to be Signature to get heightened effects from higher rank slot.Spontaneous
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.Absolutely. It's a remaster change:
"As a spontaneous caster, you can also choose to cast a lower-rank spell using a higher-rank spell slot without heightening it or knowing it at a higher rank. This casts the spell at the rank you know the spell, not the rank of the higher slot. The spell doesn’t have any heightened effects, so it’s usually not a very efficient use of your magic outside of highly specific circumstances. For instance, if your party was having trouble with an invisible enemy, and you had revealing light in your repertoire but had already spent all of your 2nd-rank spell slots, it might be worth it to use a 3rd-rank spell slot to cast the spell, even though it’d have no heightened benefit."Though I'm not sure why are you calling that 'downcasting'. It doesn't feel like a suitable word.
Spontaneous Casters are even better now. That's pretty nice. I allowed this is in my home games, but nice to know it will be a standard rule. Who cares if someone wants to cast faerie fire in a level 5 slot.
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Spontaneous is better. I say that as someone who (subjectively) prefers prepared.
Witch and Wizard need more spells for free. If they are supposed to be flexible in their preparation, they should have access to more spells than a sorcerer has in his repertoire (Yes, I'm ignoring the handful of extra spells they get at level 1.). Giving both at least 3 spells per level up would go a long way to make them more attractive in my book.
The flexible spellcaster archetype has a similar problem. I can live with having fewer spell slots, but having fewer spells prepared feels terrible.
I'm not sure I'd really list Witches and Wizards as different.
Witches get fewer slots per day and don't have any worthwhile spontaneous spell swap options like a wizard does, making them far less versatile with their base spells.
Wait, what, they changed that in the Remaster? Because (as I understood the rules so far) the lack of ability to freely downcast your spells was a huge nerf to Sorcerers in the jump from 1E to 2E. Are you sure?Standard remark: now you don't need Signature spells just for what you stated. All spontaneous casters now can use higher rank slots to cast lower rank spells without any additional effects compared to the rank of the known spell. But you do need the spell to be Signature to get heightened effects from higher rank slot.Spontaneous
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.
I hear the money for scrolls issue here and there but would casters like wizard and witch be all of a sudden balanced with spontaneous casters if they learned more spells on level up? They do get a decent start for their level 1 known spells.
It would depend on the campaign.
In a campaign where you go into the day with almost no knowledge of what you'll be facing, the size of your spellbook barely matters. For a player who doesn't like the idea of customizing their list of memorized spells every day, you get the same thing. In a campaign where you wake up in the morning with a lot of information on the threats you'll face that day, then the cleric and druid get to play the "prepared caster" game. Giving the witch and wizard access to a bunch more spells would let them play that game too.
I make no assertions one way or the other about how various classes are balanced against one another or woudl be with whatever changes. At least with the remaster, hexes and hex cantrips are apparently pretty nice, and the wizard has a few tricks of their own.
So from what I am gathering is Witches and Wizards are some of the most disliked classes in actual play. Simply because they don't have their entire list to work off of unlike Clerics which need bonus slots to be considered "Good" before we even tackle Druids which gets no bonus slots. Am I missing anything?
I wouldn't go that far. In this thread I am only commenting regarding the spell slot usage and design. This is stripping everything else that the class and resulting characters have - the characters being compared are nothing more than a walking bag of spell slots.
There are plenty of other differences between the various classes that would make one be preferred for a particular character concept. Also, I don't think that any of these classes are so bad that they are unplayable or even considered a bad choice. There are certainly people who dislike certain classes or feel that they are weak because the playstyle that the class leans into doesn't match the playstyle that the player wants. But when a player's playstyle does match the playstyle of the class, even Witch and Wizard make good and playable characters.
Wait, what, they changed that in the Remaster? Because (as I understood the rules so far) the lack of ability to freely downcast your spells was a huge nerf to Sorcerers in the jump from 1E to 2E. Are you sure?Standard remark: now you don't need Signature spells just for what you stated. All spontaneous casters now can use higher rank slots to cast lower rank spells without any additional effects compared to the rank of the known spell. But you do need the spell to be Signature to get heightened effects from higher rank slot.Spontaneous
- Signature spell allows the spells you pick to be cast in higher slots that the one you learned it in.Absolutely. It's a remaster change:
"As a spontaneous caster, you can also choose to cast a lower-rank spell using a higher-rank spell slot without heightening it or knowing it at a higher rank. This casts the spell at the rank you know the spell, not the rank of the higher slot. The spell doesn’t have any heightened effects, so it’s usually not a very efficient use of your magic outside of highly specific circumstances. For instance, if your party was having trouble with an invisible enemy, and you had revealing light in your repertoire but had already spent all of your 2nd-rank spell slots, it might be worth it to use a 3rd-rank spell slot to cast the spell, even though it’d have no heightened benefit."Though I'm not sure why are you calling that 'downcasting'. It doesn't feel like a suitable word.
That's the term which was used in 1E by a lot of people, so it makes sense to me to still use it here. In any case, thank you for the information!
Downcasting was more useful in 1E due to many damage spells autoranking until a certain point (i.e. Fireballs got to 10d6 in a third level spot, if your caster level was 10 or higher) and more spell slots in general, but it still is tremendously useful in some situations to get to use your lower level spells when you've run out of the appropiate spell slot as a spontaneous caster.
Yeah, I think the term 'downcasting' gets a bit muddy in PF2 because of its history in PF1. And the spell level's effects on accuracy/effect power of casting did get reversed in PF2 in comparison, so the term doesn't quite match up any more.
In PF2 I have seen 'downcasting' used when talking about casting spells that auto-heighten - cantrips and focus spells. Sometimes you want to cast a lower Rank version of that spell because the higher Rank version has some downsides. Wild Shape being the typical example because the higher Rank versions of Animal Form require enough space to hold your larger form. When fighting in narrow corridors, a lower Rank Wild Shape would be able to be cast, but the higher Rank version is not - you don't have enough space.
Regarding witches/wizards and learning spells:
This was also a concern in PF1, for campaigns with limited downtime and lack of found/treasure scrolls/spellbooks. For prepared casters that need to learn spells, instead of automatically "knowing" all spells of a given rank, they could be just as hamstrung in PF1 if they had to rely solely on their "+2 spells per level."
Regarding PF1 to PF2:
IMO, the biggest change was the move from class spell lists to the Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal lists. It wasn't so much that the mechanics of prepared or spontaneous changed, but the spells available for a given list was (significantly, in the case of the wizard or Arcane sorcerer) reduced. Essentially, the wizard (or Arcane sorcerer) no longer had the "best" spell list for almost every situation (outside of healing and a few other circumstances).
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IMO, the biggest change was the move from class spell lists to the Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal lists.
Perhaps in the limited scope of the debate between prepared and spontaneous casters. But even with that...
IMO the biggest change was the swap of accuracy and power.
In PF1 a level 12 Wizard could have a 20 INT and have five level 3 spells, four level 4 spells, four level 5 spells, and two level 6 spells. All of which are cast with a caster level of 12, so that Fireball in the 3rd level spell slot is still throwing out 10d6 damage (the maximum). The difference between casting Fireball in a level 3 spell slot and preparing Fireball in a level 6 spell slot is a +3 increase in the save DC.
So this means that the Wizard in PF1 has a lot more spell slots to work with when preparing spells for an adventuring day. Both more total spell slots, and more spell slots that can be used for combat rather than utility. In PF2 if you are level 12 and still throwing out Fireball with a Rank 3 spell power, I'm not sure that it is worth the action cost. You would be doing better with a cantrip.
So that minigame of 'pick the right spells for today' becomes more difficult with fewer practical spell slots available to fill.
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t wasn't so much that the mechanics of prepared or spontaneous changed
But the mechanics did change, pretty significantly. Prepared casters no longer spend half the game with outright better spells, that's a huge improvement for spontaneous casters. Prepared casters can no longer delay preparing some of their spells to adjust on the fly (instead there's just Spell Substitution, a wizard only option that has an opportunity cost).
Spell design philosophy also changed significantly: rarity tags mean there is now a GM approval component to the total spell access prepared casters used to enjoy and PF2 has intentionally shifted spellcasting philosophy to put an emphasis on counterplay, which further exacerbates the potential downside to prepared casters picking the wrong spells (whereas in PF1 it was much easier to bulldoze encounters with always useful spells and inflated DCs).
Those are huge changes to the underlying rules of the game that all tremendously shift the way we compare these different spellcasting types.
So this means that the Wizard in PF1 has a lot more spell slots to work with when preparing spells for an adventuring day. Both more total spell slots, and more spell slots that can be used for combat rather than utility.
If you're looking at blasting. If you're debuffing the opposite is true, having all your DCs automatically scale dramatically improves the range at which spell levels remain combat relevant (though obviously the PF1 caster had more total slots regardless). Swapping accuracy and damage is more of a wash than you're giving it credit for.