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The magic of the kineticist vs a wizard vs a witch vs a sorcerer vs an oracle vs a cleric vs a druid vs a bard vs a psychic, vs a summoner vs a magus vs the Ki elements of a monk vs the warden abilities of the ranger, vs the supernatural instincts of a barbarian, vs the holy or unholy powers of a champion vs whatever it is a thaumaturge does.
Reading the post referred to here spurred this thought in me but I feel the conversation is bigger than what I focused on below as it is a factor in generating the very fabric of difference that a class generates despite similarities in mechanics or even shared fabric that might exist despite using different mechanics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/16fghlm/michael_sayre_on_cla ss_design_and_balance/
In reading this thread I saw one point at the end that left me with a little static as if i was sitting too close to an electric arc zipping by me. It was the last part here. I will preface that I'm not taking a dig at Michael Sayre i found myself seeing points articulated there that not only make sense to me but give words to some aspects that I felt but didnt really think. I am providing why a statement like the one below does not resonate with me. Please do not read me with a negative tone in mind as thats not what spurred me writing this.
"Of course, the other side of that equation is that a notable number of people like the wizard exactly as the current trope presents it, a fact that's further complicated by people's tendency to want a specific name on the tin for their character. A kineticist isn't a satisfying "elemental wizard" to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard, and that speaks to psychology in a way that you often can't design around. You can create the field of options to give everyone what they want, but it does require drawing lines in places where some people will just never want to see the line, and that's difficult to do anything about without revisiting your core assumptions regarding balance, depth, and customization." from Michael Sayre post.
This gives off the feel that it is a negative thing to not be willing to see kineticists as "elemental wizards", the idea that being unwilling to conceive kineticists as elemental wizards is not right and is something a player needs to overcome. I think the differences are bigger than just names but I also see it as a positive to not look at kineticist as a caster like a wizard.
Why do I care to even bring this up?
I say it because I believe it comes back to the very things that make any character that does things magical in nature different from other characters that do it. Why a cleric casting fear is different from a wizard doing it. Why although the big spell slot casters look almost identical mechanically in more ways than they look different they all feel different to play and especially to RP.
A kineticist shouldnt feel like an elemental wizard. if the conception of wizard is one of a character that spends time learning about magic in an academic sense. Characters that have aptitude towards it (intelligence) learn this kind of magic and make great wizards. The feel is a studious caster that prepares and thinks ahead, makes contingencies for things that go wrong, and the spells they have access to allow all of this.
A kineticist doesnt feel like this. It would feel wrong if the class was made with the same mechanics as a wizard but with restrictive spell lists for specific elemental magics. The feel that I get from the mechanics of this class is one of a character that is in tune with a specific element or two and can call on them whenever. They channel through their bodies (constitution) but direct these energies with skill (dexterity or strength). It feels more about a character that needs to develop control over this connection to shape it in more and more ways and endurance to withstand more energies at a time and the skill or strength to deliver it. It is a much more limited class in tools available than the wizard changing what they prepare each day but its more dynamic in applying the abilities they have picked up.
That's the sense I get of the space in the fabric of the game mechanics and concepts that these two classes occupy. In my opinion that fabric is such an important part of the game itself and without it everything is just numbers and equivalents.
The mechanics of a kineticist are very different from that of what we generally talk about as full casters and it contributes to the class feeling like it occupies a different space conceptually than a wizard. If the class was called elemental wizard it would not have been fitting as that would entail a wizard that is just limited to elements the name on the tin matters and that is evident in all the work that goes into deciding the name a class will end up with (probably even a better conceptual space for a sorcerer with a genie bloodline to have filled, allowing each genie type to actually have a different list of given spells and focus spells that allow all the elements to be expressed though probably too much more demanding for space in a book) Kineticist sounds physical, a dynamic channeler of elemental power that has no expectation of abandoning physical attributes for mental ones. The nature of a kineticist connecting to the elements is magical but how they use it is purely a physical matter mechanically and conceptually. They are not using their minds to control the elements they are using their bodies.
So yeah I don't see a kineticist as an elemental wizard (even if it was named one) or a class that could occupy the same conceptual fabric as one. Those conceptual spaces are important, if they weren't there would be no write up describing a class in its introduction. it would just say this is the mechanics imagine them to have and use their powers however you want. Instead the introductions give you something to conceive in your mind when making the character that makes it different than any other class well before you reach the mechanics the class provides. the fact that kineticist starts out conceptually different, then, when you get to mechanics is mechanically different further divides the class from wizards and casters in general. It is a good thing IMO and so i think of it as odd when ive been told to make a kineticist when I want to play basicall an elemental caster(for me usually a sorcerer). Not just because kineticists dont use spell slots but because spell casters feel different and occupy a different place in the conceptual fabric of the game. If i want to play a kineticist I would equally not want to be told to make a wizard that just slots elemental magic.
Now any game is going to be limited in the concepts it can bring to life. A kineticist does not bring to life the concept of an elemental spell caster and its a good thing that it doesnt because it allows it to occupy its own space apart from wizards and those that use magic in similar ways.
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Linkified: Michael Sayre on class design and balance
I began playing Dungeons & Dragons back when the class now called "wizard" was called "magic-user." Thus, Michael Sayre's sentence, "A kineticist isn't a satisfying 'elemental wizard' to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard, and that speaks to psychology in a way that you often can't design around," falls flat. Furthermore, the PF1 kineticist class was designed to mimic the elemental benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, not mimic wizards.
However, the kineticst characters I have seen in my PF2 games does not feel like a bender from Avatar: The Last Airbender. They feel more connected to the elemental planes around the Golarion universe. I guess that Golarion has no mystic lion turtles to gift humans with hereditary elemental power.
I participated in the 2018 Paizo public playtest of Pathfinder 2nd Edition and watching the developers develop ideas and shape their goals was fascinating. Michael Sayre listed the major goals of depth, customization, and balance, but I also saw the minor goals of rigor and simplicity. Rigor was necessary to set up new rules clearly, and PF1 had a lot of Frequently Asked Questions about ambiguous rules. Simplicity would mean that new players could quickly learn to play PF2, but it was often sacrificed in the name of balance. Nevertheless, PF2 was simplified from PF1. For example, in PF1 every spellcasting class has their own spell list. In PF2 every spellcasting class uses the Arcane, Divine, Occult, or Primal spell list. (And balance worked together with simplicty to insist that the spellcasting classes have the full nine levels of spells.)
A kineticist is straightforward and enjoyable to play. After Collin, our playtest kineticist, two of my players have also created kineticist characters. But kineticist uses an independent magic system that is neither ranked spellcasting like the Bard, Cleric, Druid, or Wizard nor focus spells like the Champion and Monk. That takes independent research and more pages, so kineticist did not make the cut for the 2019 Pathfinder 2nd Edition Core Rulebook.
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This gives off the feel that it is a negative thing to not be willing to see kineticists as "elemental wizards", the idea that being unwilling to conceive kineticists as elemental wizards is not right and is something a player needs to overcome. I think the differences are bigger than just names but I also see it as a positive to not look at kineticist as a caster like a wizard.
I think you are reading negativity into the statement that isn't actually there. The statement:
"a notable number of people like the wizard exactly as the current trope presents it, a fact that's further complicated by people's tendency to want a specific name on the tin for their character. A kineticist isn't a satisfying "elemental wizard" to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard, and that speaks to psychology in a way that you often can't design around."
isn't saying that it is a negative to feel that way or that people need to stop thinking that way. It is simply stating that this concept exists and that its existence becomes a barrier to class design being able to make everyone happy at the same time.
Going to absolutely agree with Michael’s statement that for me personally, the class name matters. Even though in game my character is a waerloghe, calls himself a waerloghe and is written up in all the local rags as “that damm’d waerloghe” I know, in my heart, he’s a witch with a fighter multiclass dedication, and Sentinel archetype. And those mechanical aspects are super important to how I appreciate the character. And the class make-up.
I would absolutely be 50% more likely to play a Magic User than a Wizard. I grew up with ADnD, and when Magic Users became Wizards and Thieves became Rogues it was a sad, sad time.
It doesn’t affect the mechanics one bit, except in the way in which I peculiarly relate to the class name.
So for me, a Kineticist absolutely is a bender rip-off, doesn’t fit most campaigns I’m interested in being a part of, but is still leagues above “wizards”. Don’t insult Kineticists with your dirty wizardy epithets.
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Furthermore, the PF1 kineticist class was designed to mimic the elemental benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, not mimic wizards.
Interestingly, this one isn't quite right! Kineticist originally came out in Occult Adventures, and if you look at the flavour text used it's definitely trying to hit a different angle than Avatar - in fact, I think Carrie was the stated inspiration at the time:
Kineticists are living channels for elemental matter and energy, manipulating the world around them by drawing upon inner reserves from their own bodies. Kineticists often awaken to their kinetic abilities during a violent or traumatic experience, releasing their power involuntarily. As kinetic power is seldom inherited, kineticists are rarely able to find mentors to guide them, so they must delve into these mysteries on their own to learn to control their gifts.
The powers of the class meant they got associated with Avatar pretty quickly, but their PF1 presentation isn't actually super connected to Avatar.
The next edition will have the classes named C1, C2, C3...
Reading Mickael's post, I understand why I can't care less about the Kineticist and why there's no way I'd ever play one.
The question of complexity/difficulty to play a class is problematic to a lot of games (TTRPGs, but also video games). Players have different levels of gaming skills and as such will have different levels of mastery over different classes. The end result being that a class can be simultaneously underpowered and overpowered depending on the player skill.
For example, lots of people praise the Kineticist, and I've read quite often that the Kineticist is "what casters should be". When, on the other hand, players with high tactical acumen hardly see a point in playing a Kineticist as the class is worse in everything to a caster but survivability.
I also agree that the class fantasy, transmitted by its name and its description, is extremely important. From my experience, taking a class for its mechanics but completely ignoring the class fantasy doesn't work. Stating that a Kineticist is an "elemental wizard" will fail completely the second someone will try to use Recognize Spell on your Impulses and other similar things. You are not casting spells and as such are no wizard. Trying to cheat on that will generate issues very quickly.
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I personally play an elemental focused Wild Witch and it works wonder. I haven't taken the Elementalist Archetype as it's just plain bad, it's just that I use a lot of damaging spells and the Primal spell list damaging spells are mostly elemental ones.
I don't think there's any need for an "elemental wizard" in the game.
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I think people have very rose-tinted glasses towards the over specialization of casters in past editions of the game. By-and-large, overspecialized wizards have been terrible in every version of D&D I have ever played, 2nd through today.
3.x gave the illusion of caster overspecialization being a good thing, largely because of Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus, but the real effect of those feats was greatly reducing the number of spells you could cast because spells cast without them were much worse. It didn’t really matter in a pre-written AP, because adventures were tuned way down, but it mattered a ton when you played with someone who knew what they were doing and your fire wizard was total garbage in comparison to a god wizard diviner who never bothered casting damaging spells because they were to busy winning encounters before initiative was rolled.
PF2, very rightly in my opinion, started from the position of making spells as good as they could be within themselves, so that anyone casting a level appropriate spell, with even mild aptitude for casting has useful resources at hand. Damage casting is viable in ways it hasn’t been since 2nd edition D&D, only the amount of times it is completely useless is much less. Control casting is less powerful that 3.x, but only a little bit, and at high levels it still dominates enough encounters to feel awesome without owning every encounter. Buff casting can’t be done in excess before combat, but is still seen as very strong by many players and it is still easy to do. A wizard can even tank with just spells and be about as good at it as most non-specialized martials just with their spell selection. No class in PF2 gets to just pick one thing to do over and over again, without the whole party supporting them, and even then it can lead to some frustrating difficult encounters.
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Furthermore, the PF1 kineticist class was designed to mimic the elemental benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, not mimic wizards.Interestingly, this one isn't quite right! Kineticist originally came out in Occult Adventures, and if you look at the flavour text used it's definitely trying to hit a different angle than Avatar - in fact, I think Carrie was the stated inspiration at the time:
Kineticists are living channels for elemental matter and energy, manipulating the world around them by drawing upon inner reserves from their own bodies. Kineticists often awaken to their kinetic abilities during a violent or traumatic experience, releasing their power involuntarily. As kinetic power is seldom inherited, kineticists are rarely able to find mentors to guide them, so they must delve into these mysteries on their own to learn to control their gifts.The powers of the class meant they got associated with Avatar pretty quickly, but their PF1 presentation isn't actually super connected to Avatar.
The Occult Adventures playtest occurred while my health problems had flared up 10 years ago, so I paid only peripheral attention to it and skimped over many details. Checking over the playtest posts, such as The kineticist= Avatar Element bender, I see that the comparisons to the element benders from Avatar started immediately, but the kineticist was also compared to D&D's warlock class. I also recall some enthusiasm about it being a Constitution-based class, though afterwards I read complaints about the PF1 kineticist's burn mechanic.
I don't recall any hype about it being an element-based wizard. The name "kineticist" is also strange, seemingly borrowed from physics rather than fantasy.
I also agree that the class fantasy, transmitted by its name and its description, is extremely important. From my experience, taking a class for its mechanics but completely ignoring the class fantasy doesn't work. Stating that a Kineticist is an "elemental wizard" will fail completely the second someone will try to use Recognize Spell on your Impulses and other similar things. You are not casting spells and as such are no wizard. Trying to cheat on that will generate issues very quickly.
I guess that is why I so strongly associate the kineticist with the benders. The Avatar television show created a mythology that lets me envision the kineticist as a fantasy character rather than as a collection of mechanics.
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I have reservations about Michael's comments, particularly regarding the concept of a Wizard and its implementation in PF2.
While it's true that generic naming is commonplace and that folklore and cultural zeitgeist don't usually bother with rigidly defining tropes and concepts into discrete entities for RPGs, there is still an underlying structure to these archetypes. Characters often draw inspiration from overlapping sources, so it's understandable that there isn't a universally accepted set of characteristics for a "Wizard," "Witch," or "Psychic."
However, the lack of a 100% defined archetype does not negate the existence of certain expectations. Game designers choose class names because of the conceptual weight these names carry, which evoke specific images and ideas. These images and ideas are crucial for storytelling and character development within the game.
For example, naming a class "The Marine" instead of "The Fighter" would bring different expectations and inspire different types of stories, even if the mechanics were identical. Similarly, naming a class "Wizard" but offering something that diverges significantly from what players typically associate with a wizard can lead to confusion and disappointment.
In essence, the names of classes are not arbitrary; they are laden with meaning and expectations. When these expectations are not met, it can disrupt the player's immersion and enjoyment.
So why do I have an issue specifically with the Wizard?
Firstly, it's generally unrealistic to ask people to change how they think about a concept to cater to a specific game. While it's reasonable to introduce the "Pathfinder 2 Wizard" as a unique take, this approach is problematic because the game initially plays on the general concept of a Wizard to attract players. This creates a situation where the game wants to leverage the traditional fantasy image of a Wizard to draw interest but then shifts away from that expectation, which can feel like a bait-and-switch.
This is not an effective way to address the issue. One game line isn't going to change how people think about Wizards. Even a cultural touchstone like Harry Potter, which had a massive influence on the depiction of wizards, didn't fundamentally alter the general trope of Wizards in popular imagination. Therefore, asking players to reframe their understanding of such a well-established archetype for a single game is an unrealistic expectation.
Class names carry significant conceptual weight and evoke specific expectations. Deviating too far from these expectations can disrupt player immersion and satisfaction.
When people say that a Kineticist doesn't fulfill the fantasy of an "elemental Wizard," they are 100% correct. It may fill an analogous mechanical niche, but it doesn't carry the same weight, tropes, and imagery. The mechanical implementation also moves it pretty far outside of the feel of other casters in the system. It is as divorced from PF2's take on the Wizard as it is from the Fighter. They simply don't feel the same.
To reference the old saying about ducks: the Kineticist doesn't walk like a duck, doesn't talk like a duck, and doesn't act like a duck. So putting a pointy hat on it is not going to make it a Wizard-Duck.
There was conceptual room for the Kineticist to retain its mechanical hallmarks while evoking more of the flavor and tropes of a caster, but that was not the path taken. So a Kineticist doesn't fulfill the role of an "elemental-themed Wizard" because it departs utterly from all the things that make a Wizard a Wizard. As a player, I can still try to evoke that feeling myself, but when attempting to play up to the Wizard concept, the game's mechanical divergence becomes evident. It's a case of constantly grafting a fantasy onto some mechanics, rather than letting these things work together and be explored in tandem. This creates dissonance between the mechanics you would like to have and the story you would like to tell, and in a Role Playing game, that matters.
On a related note, I have always been unhappy with the mechanical side of the Wizard concerning its general theme. Even internally within PF2, the Wizard pays a lot of lip service to academics, knowledge, study, etc.—all cool wizardly things that are part of the theme—but then fails to deliver on them mechanically. Until the remaster, Wizards had no mechanical interaction with the recall knowledge system, had the fewest trained starting skills in the game, and had no access to feats or features that grant or use Lore skills. The new implementation of Schools doesn't even grant a skill or lore representing specific academic or cultural backgrounds. So we end up with a Wizard that doesn't have a mechanical expression of its own theme.
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This creates a situation where the game wants to leverage the traditional fantasy image of a Wizard to draw interest but then shifts away from that expectation, which can feel like a bait-and-switch.
I'm not sure it's that much of one. The PF2 wizard is somewhat generic, and makes for an unfulfilling specialist, with really a really bare mechanical core... but that's also quintessentially what the D&D Wizard has been for most of its existence.
The D&D Wizard is really bad at feeling like a wizard from any other piece of fiction, but that's because the D&D Wizard has become so wrapped up in its own unique and distorted version of the fantasy. So in a sense, there's an untenable conundrum because making the Wizard 'more wizardly' would require fundamentally breaking everything about its central mechanics, which would create the very bait and switch you're worried about for people aligned with the tabletop tradition (ironically, despite your objections the kineticist arguably does a better job emulating those other concepts, which I think is part of the dissonance Michael was talking about).
When, on the other hand, players with high tactical acumen hardly see a point in playing a Kineticist as the class is worse in everything to a caster but survivability.
Eh, maybe not so high then.
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The 2ed version of the kineticist is pretty different in background from the original in pf1. The first edition was more psychic firestarter/carrie oriented the new one is more of pure tie to the elemental planes.
A kineticist they are basically more like a faucet than a wizard. When they are starting out they have one or two handles where if you open them up elemental power flows out and does stuff. They are not casting spells the power is there and rushes out and they just figure out ways to grab onto it and shape it a bit.
As they grow you either get more and more variety of flows of power or you develop 1 or two firehoses of power.
Honestly I think they probably should have renamed the class but probably didn't bother because it was always going to get called the kineticist anyway. Originally in PF1 it was a psychic class pyrokenesis/hydrokenesis/telekenesis and what not. You were not as much manipulating power from the elemental plane but more psychic manipulation of mundane elements.
The new version is very much more in line with the benders of the avatar show. You are not casting spells you are opening yourself where the elements flow through you and out into the world.
Design Manager
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The tendency of people to take a conversation and then move it three steps from its original location and context to construct long arguments by picking out single nuggets to respond to while completely missing the point of the original conversation is one of those reasons I often think about just forswearing the internet entirely. The flipside is that I've met so many wonderful people who have become colleagues and had so many freelancers and 3pp friends who've been improved by these conversations that I feel a bit of a responsibility to keep going even when threads like this make me lose all faith in humanity.
So let's talk about the context of my original post and what I was actually saying.
At the time I made that post, one of the hottest conversations in the community was about wizards not being able to be mono-themed effectively (e.g. blasters suck / why can't I just play a wizard who shoots fire all day / etc.) An incredibly common response to this request from other community members at the time was "You can, just play a kineticist." And, of course, this thread was in the context of designing for the game.
Now, let's go back to what I actually said (note that this was only a portion of the conversation and that the link towards the top of this thread was itself an out of context repost) -
So bringing it back to balance and customization: if a character has the potential to do anything and a goal of your game is balance, it must be assumed that the character will do all those things they're capable of. Since a wizard very much can have a spell for every situation that targets every possible defense, the game has to assume they do, otherwise you cannot meet the goal of balance. Customization, on the other side, demands that the player be allowed to make other choices and not prepare to the degree that the game assumes they must, which creates striations in the player base where classes are interpreted based on a given person's preferences and ability/desire to engage with the meta of the game. It's ultimately not possible to have the same class provide both endless possibilities and a balanced experience without assuming that those possibilities are capitalized on.
So if you want the fantasy of a wizard, and want a balanced game, but also don't want to have the game force you into having to use particular strategies to succeed, how do you square the circle? I suspect the best answer is "change your idea of what the wizard must be." D20 fantasy TTRPG wizards are heavily influenced by the dominating presence of D&D and, to a significantly lesser degree, the works of Jack Vance. But Vance hasn't been a particularly popular fantasy author for several generations now, and many popular fantasy wizards don't have massively diverse bags of tricks and fire and forget spells. They often have a smaller bag of focused abilities that they get increasingly competent with, with maybe some expansions into specific new themes and abilities as they grow in power. The PF2 kineticist is an example of how limiting the theme and degree of customization of a character can lead to a more overall satisfying and accessible play experience. Modernizing the idea of what a wizard is and can do, and rebuilding to that spec, could make the class more satisfying to those who find it inaccessible.
Of course, the other side of that equation is that a notable number of people like the wizard exactly as the current trope presents it, a fact that's further complicated by people's tendency to want a specific name on the tin for their character. A kineticist isn't a satisfying "elemental wizard" to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard, and that speaks to psychology in a way that you often can't design around. You can create the field of options to give everyone what they want, but it does require drawing lines in places where some people will just never want to see the line, and that's difficult to do anything about without revisiting your core assumptions regarding balance, depth, and customization.
See how what I'm actually doing here is talking about a variety of nuanced factors?
My first assertion (at this point) is that for a game to be balanced, you need to balance it against what a reasonably skilled player can do. So taking a wizard and having them memorize nothing but fire spells is going to be below the ceiling because memorizing some things that aren't fire spells is inherently more powerful in the framework of the game. A wizard who uses the totality of their skillset will be a massively effective blaster as they debuff and annihilate enemies who never make it into range to retaliate. Juicing up the baseline to make the characters who don't use those tools more effective will lead to the characters who do use those tools being too effective, and then we're spiraling right back into problems that limited the reach of other d20 fantasy games.
So, as I said previously, how do you square that circle?
Well, from a design perspective (you know, the context of that entire thread) one way to do it is to change the internal idea of what a wizard is. You know which wizards in media don't match the framework of D&D-lineage wizards? Harry Dresden, Gandalf, John Constantine, Allanon, Richard Cypher, any Malazan wizard, Belgarath, Harry Potter, Jafar, and pretty much any other wizard I could name who isn't directly part of the D&D lineage tracing back to mechanics inspired by Jack Vance's Dying Earth. Most of the characters we cited internally as inspirations for the thaumaturge class were wizards in their own canon.
Working from that point, one possibility to making "specialist" wizards more appealing is to fundamentally change the baseline of wizards being able to do almost anything. When you change that assumption about the breadth of the toolbox, you can make things like the kineticist, who gets gate attenuators, almost no daily resource limitations, and can mono-theme the way people were asking for. This is a pretty obvious conclusion, and why "just play a kineticist if you want an elemental blaster" was such an obvious response to people making that request.
But, as I actually said "the other side of that equation is that a notable number of people like the wizard exactly as the current trope presents it". You can't give the one without taking the other away. This is further complicated by the fact that there are other people who won't be a happy with a concept until they have a class with a name on the tin. You can't give some people who want an elemental blaster wizard something that isn't called "wizard" and have them ever be happy, because they want something that has the prestige and architecture of a class with the name they want tied to the mechanics they want.
This is why we have things like a swashbuckler, gunslinger, ranger, etc. People love those classes and they want to be able to say "I'm a wizard/gunslinger/swashbuckler/etc." without needing to quote a parathetical or the name of a feat.
So changing the wizard to answer group A (I want a wizard who can blast well without having to be tactical or memorize multiple types of spells), inherently conflicts with group B (I like the wizard just the way it is), and making a new class that does exactly what group A wants but has a different label on the tin conflicts with group C (it has to be a wizard, no other name will do).
Making the kineticist solved for part of the Venn Diagram (the folks who fall into group A that don't fall into groups B or C), but it doesn't solve for the whole picture.
It may not be possible to solve for the whole picture (a reality of game design where your goal inevitably must default to "pleasing the widest number of people possible while knowing that the ones we don't please will be the most vocal"), but in many ways, the remaster opens the door to a world where maybe we can get closer.
One of the issues with the D&D-wizard has always been that "specialists" are really folks who give up their rubber mallet and step stool in exchange for adding enough room to their garage for an adjustable extension ladder, a ratchet set, and a backup toolbox. They've pretty much always been able to give up less for more, and, especially in recent iterations, often times they're not really giving up anything at all because dipping into the "forbidden fruit" just sets them back to the same baseline as the non-specialist. So an "evoker" still couldn't have new tools that fundamentally change the math like a kineticist gets, because they already still have all the tools they need to change the math.
With a bunch of highly thematic and overly-broad concepts carved off of the wizard (evoker, necromancer, diviner, abjurer, etc.), it does open up room to explore those concepts as more robust and well-rounded archetypes or even classes, coloring in more of the aforementioned Venn diagram. There will still be people who won't be happy with anything other than a class that says "wizard" on the tin and has the exact combination of mechanics they want, but people who can be happy with "diviner" or "war mage" have more room for the kinds of specialized mechanics that might give them the thing that will allow them to express their character in a way they can be satisfied by.
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(ironically, despite your objections the kineticist arguably does a better job emulating those other concepts, which I think is part of the dissonance Michael was talking about).
Nothing ironic about it.
I'm trying to talk about the interplay of Mechanical Implementation and Thematical implementation, and how there are issues of dissonance when the two are too far apart.
As a mechanical implementation of a way to design a caster, the Kineticist-style approach is perfectly fine. But its thematic approach is too far removed from the caster fantasy to work well.
You get a great class when both mechanics and theme compliment and elevate each other, when the two stray too far apart, you get issues.
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The sheer number of caster fantasies, and the issue of shared spell pools, (and money and player headspace) forces you to prioritize.
Wizardy characters in media generally use a stamina system with the possibility of passing out or taking other harm like damage, sensory loss, or turning into a berserk monster if they overtax themselves. This is only slightly referenced with things like Overflow.
Pretty sure we've had this conversation before. It seems highly unlikely PF2E is going to develop a dedicated caster in the next few years. We know what's coming out in 2024-2025 - animist, exemplar, guardian, and commander. They ain't it. But the good news is, the remaster made the system friendlier to that concept (at least in my opinion). Specifically, the updates to the focus spell and focus point rules makes it a bit easier to create a caster who has a few "go to" better-than-cantrip spells that they use in all regular combats, which doesn't have any daily use maximum because you get uses back with every 10-minute rest. So if dedicated single-element caster is what you crave, I would look to homebrew up maybe an arcane school with the element-of-choice being used to fill all the school slots. Or deeper homebrew, a new sorcerer bloodline or witch patron with the same type of focus.
Short answer is that it's just not happening in PF2. There are a few ways of creating a true specialist caster in PF2. Most of these ways are bad. There's one solid, viable way that doesn't cost designer resources like the kineticist cost designer resources and also doesn't impose ongoing costs on every book going forward. It involves accepting spell calcification - the caster gets the spells they have when the class is created, and they never get another one after that. I tried proposing such a thing, and the overwhelming response was that everyone hated the spell calcification. So that's not happening. We'll almost certainly keep getting magic-wielding noncasters, but specialist casters aren't really on offer.
I have come up with a way to make such a thing possible in PF3, if the designers go for it. It would involve a pretty serious rebuild of how spells are organized, though, so there's no realistic way to make it part of PF2. The bit where I carve out a rough draft of how it might be divided up is still waiting for the day when I actually have the mental resources to make that happen, but I'm pretty sure I've got time on that one. Still, it's worth noting that that's the simplest and most elegant method I was able to come up with for making specialist casters a viable thing while maintaining things like balance. So that's maybe a bit of a benchmark.
(ironically, despite your objections the kineticist arguably does a better job emulating those other concepts, which I think is part of the dissonance Michael was talking about).
Nothing ironic about it.
I'm trying to talk about the interplay of Mechanical Implementation and Thematical implementation, and how there are issues of dissonance when the two are too far apart.
A strong Theme attracts the player to play the class, but mechanics that are weak or in conflict with the theme will make them stop playing the class. The theme of "wizard who mastered ice magic" is more exciting than "wizard who studied ancient tomes" or "kineticist who psychically controls ice."
Michael Sayre points out that the PF2 classes must be tightly balanced. An ice-theme wizard would be disadvantaged by restricting them to ice spells, so they would need a counterbalancing advantage. Adding more damage to the ice spells or more top-rank spell slots for ice spells would break the balance of combat. Adding more low-ranked ice spells would let the ice wizard keep a longer adventuring day, but low-level spells are not so exciting. The wizard class's reliance on spells and spell slots does not lend itself to creating a balanced ice wizard.
In my Strength of Thousands game, the unstatted NPC Thema, the conversant-rank caretaker of the Leshy Gardens, became more important to the story than the module planned, because my players like leshies. Therefore, I made a stat block for her as a druid with Elementalist archetype and water focus. I try out unusual features on NPCs out of curiosity. Unfortunately, Thema felt handicapped. Her spells did not have the full range I expect from a druid. On the other hand, with her ability to surf the canals of Nantambu and conjure water, she made an excellent firefighter, so that became part of her job at the Magaambya Academy. I added an exciting service project of the PCs helping her fight a fire at Goana's Woodcarving Shop. In that example, the Elemental Archetype has a good theme but overspecialized mechanics.
That Strength of Thousands campaign also has a kineticist. Cara'sseth had a brief introduction in magic from a learned visitor passing through her village. That was enough for a shady group of travelers to recruit Cara'sseth as she self-trained. Cara'sseth mastered planar fire energies rather than spells, so she became a kineticist. And a more compassionate shady traveler warned Cara'sseth to run away to the Magaambya Academy because she knew that the travelers did not have a good fate in store for Cara'sseth. Thus, the seven PCs ended up with a kineticist as an odd duck among the spellcasters. And her 2nd-level free archetype is Wizard Multiclass.
The planar-gateway theme of the PF2 kineticist is more glamorous than the psychic-elemental-control theme of the PF1 kineticist (thank you, kaid, for the explanation).
But its thematic approach is too far removed from the caster fantasy to work well.
Can you elaborate on what about it rubs you the wrong way? As I said before, some of my players have found it a much better kit for making themed casters than the Wizard, so I'm curious to see why it's not working for some people. Is it the constitution?
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A strong Theme attracts the player to play the class, but mechanics that are weak or in conflict with the theme will make them stop playing the class. The theme of "wizard who mastered ice magic" is more exciting than "wizard who studied ancient tomes" or "kineticist who psychically controls ice."
More exciting to specific players, rather. There are absolutely players out there who think that "wizard who studied ancient tomes" is exciting, and I personally rather like "kineticist who psychically controls ice" as an idea.
That's part of the issues that Michael is talking about. They have to put the slices of somewhere, and someone is going to be unhappy no matter where the slices hit.
oh, and speaking of which... it continues to be the case that the existence of the kineticist and its whole thing makes me very happy and I am thankful to Paizo for having brought it into my life. We're never going to fix the bit where the unhappy voices are the loudest, but we don't need to let them be the only voices out there.
Also, as a side not, a lot of what pushes people to or away from name/theme connections is going to be what went before. Like, Kineticist can't possibly be a form of wizard for PF2, because wizards don't work like that. On the other hand, if this were a brand new RPG, not beholden to any legacy that went before, that had no spell slot classes at all, and you brought out the kineticist mechanics with a bit more of an int focus and a fresh coat of more wizardlike lore and said "This is an Elemental Wizard. We'll have more wizards coming in later books" people wouldn't bat an eye. It's not that it's a terrible match with the label of "wizard" in and of itself, it's that we know what a wizard is supposed to look like (in PF2, and in D&D derivatives more generally) and this isn't it.
Can you elaborate on what about it rubs you the wrong way? As I said before, some of my players have found it a much better kit for making themed casters than the Wizard, so I'm curious to see why it's not working for some people. Is it the constitution?
I can give you my answer:
First, Kineticists don't cast spells. You can reframe it but tons of mechanics around spells don't interact with the Kineticist: no Metamagic, no spellcasting components, you need a feat to use staves and wands, etc... There will be moments where it will be obvious.Then, you don't have the out of combat utility of spellcasters. You can't make someone invisible unless you are specifically an Air Kineticist with the proper Impulse. You can't breath underwater unless you pay a feat. Sure, casters can't do everything, but they all have a breadth of out of combat abilities. And it's defining them somehow, magic is not just about blasting enemies. As Impulses cost feats, it's hard to have even a single utility spell as a Kineticist. Kineticists are just about blasting things.
Also, Constitution. And the class strongly prevents you from raising Intelligence, Charisma and even Wisdom. Lots of caster tropes are having at least one high mental stat.
Kineticist. The players around the table will naturally call you a Kineticist because you are a Kineticist. It'll be even worse if someone else at the table is also playing a Kineticist.
Impulses themselves. For example, there's no Lightning Bolt for the Kineticist. No healing (real one). Even if you can find something that looks like a Fireball, it's still rather different. No Detect Magic. So many spells that are defining magic in the world of Golarion.
Lots of small mechanics. You are trained with armors unlike a lot of casters, you survive easily in the frontline unlike most casters (you should actually tank damage with the other martials), etc...
Overall, besides Impulses having commonalities with spells, the Kineticist is a martial and doesn't take a caster slot in the party because it doesn't do caster things. I expect something very different from an Elemental Wizard, an actual mastery of magic to start with.
The tendency of people to take a conversation and then move it three steps from its original location and context to construct long arguments by picking out single nuggets to respond to while completely missing the point of the original conversation is one of those reasons I often think about just forswearing the internet entirely. The flipside is that I've met so many wonderful people who have become colleagues and had so many freelancers and 3pp friends who've been improved by these conversations that I feel a bit of a responsibility to keep going even when threads like this make me lose all faith in humanity.
So let's talk about the context of my original post and what I was actually saying.
At the time I made that post, one of the hottest conversations in the community was about wizards not being able to be mono-themed effectively (e.g. blasters suck / why can't I just play a wizard who shoots fire all day / etc.) An incredibly common response to this request from other community members at the time was "You can, just play a kineticist." And, of course, this thread was in the context of designing for the game.
Now, let's go back to what I actually said (note that this was only a portion of the conversation and that the link towards the top of this thread was itself an out of context repost) -
So bringing it back to balance and customization: if a character has the potential to do anything and a goal of your game is balance, it must be assumed that the character will do all those things they're capable of. Since a wizard very much can have a spell for every situation that targets every possible defense, the game has to assume they do, otherwise you cannot meet the goal of balance. Customization, on the other side, demands that the player be allowed to make other choices and not prepare to the degree that the game assumes they must, which creates striations in the player base where classes are interpreted based on a given person's preferences and ability/desire to engage...
Ooooooo that last paragraph is VERY interesting to me; I used to beat on that spell school archetype drum a bunch, but ultimately I came to understand that maybe what I really wanted was stacking benefits on a singular playstyle (which as noted, is at odds with having something as diverse and utilitarian as a spell list). Still, caster archetypes like shadow caster, time mage, captivator, and reanimator are some of my favorite choices for the spell slot classes bc of the slightly more focused theming they can provide.
Kineticist always made me think of superheroes, and especially mutants.
I totally get that. I also see a lot less “4e Warlock” in there, I mean they both….”blast”, but the Warlock has way more going on thematically than that.
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For what it's worth, Kinesticist has been one of my favourite class ideas to come out of Payhfinder in general. When I saw it in 1e I immediately had the thought that it was borrowing from Avatar, but also it was obvious it was borrowing from more places than that (and that most people who only saw the Avatar comparison were somehow thinking of that as a negative). A good elemental blasting specialist who can basically do a bunch of things with specific elements was something I felt the game obviously needed to complete the basic fantasy I and a lot of people wanted to see and it was delivered. 2e now where the types of elements you can specialize in are diversified, and where the thematic aspect of wielding a miniature rift to the elemental planes that's attached to your soul is just even that much cooler. I can beat my silly little drum about how Wood isn't really an element to me, but the fact stands that a class like Kineticist will have to have a plant throwing version or there's yet another obvious character fantasy being left on the table, so I can hardly be mad that something I could have wanted anyway is included in a way that just happens to annoy me slightly.
I feel like every time the wizard (and inventor) is brought up people comment on how it doesn't fulfill the fantasy of doing research and deriving new stuff, but at the same time every proposal I've seen for doing that either fairly obviously breaks game balance in half or requires the entire spell/weapon system to be redone to accommodate one class, often at the cost of every other class.
I'm not sure what can be done for people who want to be able to do research outside of the levelling system, without either bringing back the PF1e Craft issues (the ceiling for people who are given unbounded time to research being way, way higher) or else torpedoing the baseline of classes without research.
To some degree, I think the Arcane Thesis does a good job on the "research" front. The idea that you are so well-versed in magic that you get to bend/break the rules in ways others can't even think of doing (Prepared spells not being a full commitment, having more slots of your max rank than anyone else, Staves just flat out working better) really works thematically. Metamagical Experimentation occupies a similar niche but is not quite as strong as the remaining options imo. (And Familiar does not really fit the "so smart I broke the rules" theme).
And then a lot of Feats like Split Slot, Clever Counterspell, Irresistible Magic, Reprepare Spell, Infinite Possibilities, and Spell Combination all reflect the same idea.
Beyond that a lot of the versatility of being "research oriented" should just be coming naturally from your very high Intelligence. You will usually have more skills than anyone in the party that is not a dedicated skill monkey, and thematically the use of things like Additional Lore, Magical Shorthand, Unified Theory, Disturbing Knowledge, etc are all really good fits too.
Just about the only thing I wish they did more of was giving Wizards improvements to Recall Knowledge.
Just about the only thing I wish they did more of was giving Wizards improvements to Recall Knowledge.
They do. It's just that skill feats are not gated behind 'must have the Cast a Spell ability'.
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The tendency of people to take a conversation and then move it three steps from its original location and context to construct long arguments by picking out single nuggets to respond to while completely missing the point of the original conversation is one of those reasons I often think about just forswearing the internet entirely. The flipside is that I've met so many wonderful people who have become colleagues and had so many freelancers and 3pp friends who've been improved by these conversations that I feel a bit of a responsibility to keep going even when threads like this make me lose all faith in humanity.
To be fair, I did an internet, came across the thread I linked, read it, and shared the quote that got me thinking. I provided the link to the full post I saw, along with my thoughts. It happen to be a repost of something you wrote but in this thread I was not addressing the points on balance you made. I found it interesting to read your expert game design perceptive and even appreciate the further explanation here.
I provided the link because thats what I read in case anyone one else wanted to see where I read it. That just seems like the right way to go about things.I didnt have much to say about the full thread but there was one part that spurred this thread. I took a shot at making it clear I didnt post it to bash on you but thought one section of it fed into a larger conversation about class concepts and why magic users that are constructed more alike than not still feel different and comparing that to the kineticist against the wizard observing that the differences there go well beyond showing that it doesnt make sense to look at them as equivalent class fantasies for an elemental wizard concept.
I will point out that your response does seem to give the impression I am doing something wrong in posting that repost that you explained was out of context. Game balance is not in the scope of this thread either, its about magic user concepts and what makes them feel different. Reading the part of the link I quoted spurred a line of thought, I shared it here to discuss and hear others thoughts. I gave my opinion and reasons and now I find myself defending posting at all. I would hope it takes a bit more than that to lose all faith in humanity. (Adding: I'm not actually offended but the language did seem to go there)
This line is mainly what spurred this thread and is why I quoted it. "A kineticist isn't a satisfying "elemental wizard" to some people simply because it isn't called a wizard, and that speaks to psychology in a way that you often can't design around."
Even if what i went on about takes this out of the context of game balance I found this statement to diminish why a person might actually have a problem with seeing a kineticist as an elemental wizard and the full value of class concepts that make magic users of different origins and sources, with different methods of interacting with those sources, attribute needs (which affect concept and skill choices), and breadth of magic use over delving into other aspects a character can develop all make a class feel different. Not only a name.
My main point being that the things that make a kineticist not feel like an elemental wizard are actually very important because it is the same stuff that makes a fantasy ttrpg game a convincing and compelling experience. That stuff is the backdrop that makes the game come to life in our minds, its part of how the GM is going to have NPCs react to the player, and without all the stuff behind it the names are just a bunch of nominal distinctions. At that point aren't we just rolling dice and comparing numbers?
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To reference the old saying about ducks: the Kineticist doesn't walk like a duck, doesn't talk like a duck, and doesn't act like a duck. So putting a pointy hat on it is not going to make it a Wizard-Duck.
But... what if you are a kineticist who is also a duck?
My first awakened animal character is Mallory."The Metal Mallard! The Foiled Fencer! The Suave Swashduckler!"
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Alright, back to the conversation at hand now that I am no longer distracted by ducks.
I agree that wizard and kineticist fulfill different fantasies. People who play wizards like being intelligent, knowing things, and having a ton of spells to choose from. They are for those who plan ahead.
The kineticist on the other hand has a limited number of tricks, but the tricks are ones they can do over and over and many of them are awesome.
Every element has interesting impulses, some of which are damage and others utility and support. Although blasting is the bread and butter of the class, it's more than just blasting.
I cannot play wizards -- prepared spellcasting never works for me because without fail I prepare a lot of wrong stuff. Kineticists, on the other hand, are really easy for me to play, and I generally can always do something in every fight. I wish that they had more skills, but I think that the class works otherwise works really, really well.
Hmm
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I think a real problem with the "wizard" fantasy is that in most things that aren't based directly on this family of games "wizards" are generally more special than everybody else around them and operate at a rarefied level, which is inherently not something that is going to work in a cooperative game where the rogue is supposed to contribute as much to the party as the wizard. Like even in superhero comics, there's often a "magic" annex where you keep your Dr. Strange, Zatanna, John Constantine, etc. for whenever there's a problem that can't be solved by conventional means.
So most of what we're sourcing here for "what is playing a Wizard supposed to be like" is mostly "other games in this family."
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Another part of the issue is that the D&D Wizard doesn't really resemble anything else in fiction. If you're drawing your inspiration from your favorite book, or tv show, or video game, chances are the Wizard class is not going to do it. D&D style prepared spellcasting is weird, so is the pseudo-generalist niche Wizards in D&D fill (mages in other media tend to either be specialists or true generalists, while D&D/PF wizards make poor specialists, but also have hard walls on what they aren't allowed to do well based on spell list demarcation). Spellcasters in other fiction are often defined by the unique rituals or esoterica associated with their magic tradition (magic circles, complex invocations, casting implements, etc.) while D&D wizards are generic and flavorless by design, there's no underlying mechanism defining the class.
I feel like I pretty frequently run into an issue of someone wanting to emulate an idea from fiction in PF, and often there's a way to at least approximate the player's goals, but with wizardly characters it's much harder to do that.
The specific comparison in the OP is relevant to me because not that long ago I had a player approach me wanting to riff on her Frost Mage from Warcraft and it was a bit of a struggle. The wizard was simply a failure at actually delivering on the frost mage fantasy, while the Kineticist was better but abandoned a lot of the arcane trappings that were also desirable.
We ended up kind of homebrewing a middle ground, a kineticist that runs off Int and has access to some generic spell options via feats and items... but there was a lot of homebrewing to reach that point.
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The specific comparison in the OP is relevant to me because not that long ago I had a player approach me wanting to riff on her Frost Mage from Warcraft and it was a bit of a struggle.
Between the Winter Witch, the Cold Dragon Sorcerer, and the Wizard, you struggled to deliver a "cold-based" Wizard?
Just about the only thing I wish they did more of was giving Wizards improvements to Recall Knowledge.They do. It's just that skill feats are not gated behind 'must have the Cast a Spell ability'.
I wasn’t really asking for those to be gated behind the Cast a Spell Activity, I already acknowledged that I like how Skill Feats can help you express that fantasy.
I was suggesting that Wizards get a little something extra to express a Recall Knowledge fantasy. Now I know it can’t be quite as strong as Diverse Lore, Outwit Ranger, or Scholarly Recollection because all of those cases pay a baseline power budget cost that Wizards don’t have to pay, but I’d still like a little bit more than Knowledge is Power.
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I am sympathetic to a point of the argument that players have ideas for characters when they come into a role playing game, and GMs want those players to have fun, but every game world can and should have stories that define how things like magic work in them, and if your character idea is contradictory to that, then you need to be some what flexible.
Elemental magic and building a character centered around one specific element is not arcane magic in Golarion. It is definitely a primal spell caster, and tends to be magic associated more with characters that use their personality or their will power to over power the elements rather than intricately study them. That said, there is are multiple paths for the smart character to gain mastery over the elements still provided in the game, and not liking the mechanical implementation of the elementalist archetype, or whatever reservations you have with a witch sounds a lot more like someone else deciding for a new player that their character idea is unplayable in PF2 because it is not at the top end of power builds than it does like the game not providing alternative paths into the game, even for players that are pulling in very different types of fantasy into Golarion.
The difference between playable and optimized is not very large in PF2 and if you are a GM feeling the need to completely homebrew something on the player side to make a character “viable” in your game, remember that you could very easily just make very minor tweaks to your campaign that will let builds that might seem generically “under powered” really shine.
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I agree with Unicore: Some players come with fantasies from other games/worlds and expect them to be perfectly applicable to PF2 (or whatever other game). Thing is: it never really works. Each game has internal rules (mechanics or lore) around every type of characters and their fantasy rarely apply. I sometimes read these types of discussions on these boards, and it nearly always end up with a disgrunted player.
You just can't take Chewbacca and put it in Star Trek, even if there are spaceships, pilots, weapons and aliens in Star Trek, too.
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The specific comparison in the OP is relevant to me because not that long ago I had a player approach me wanting to riff on her Frost Mage from Warcraft and it was a bit of a struggle.Between the Winter Witch, the Cold Dragon Sorcerer, and the Wizard, you struggled to deliver a "cold-based" Wizard?
Yes, all of those were pretty bad at it. Specialization sucks too much, resource limitations were stifling, and in general they just failed to adequately encapsulate what they were looking for.
Thing is: it never really works.
While generally true. It's just doubly so for spellcasters because D&D wizards are such a weird mess mechanically.
While generally true. It's just doubly so for spellcasters because D&D wizards are such a weird mess mechanically.
Even something as simple as "sword and board" fighter doesn't work the same way in WoW and in PF2. WoW tanking mechanics have nothing in common with PF2 tanking mechanics and someone who expects to have a similar position and gameplay will just end up frustrated.
Even if you come with expectations from PF1, which is having the exact same lore and classes, chances are high you'll end up disappointed. So when you come from another game with another world, you can just forget about it. I personally prefer to tell beginners that they should not play anything close to another fiction as this will never work the way they expect it.
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Another part of the issue is that the D&D Wizard doesn't really resemble anything else in fiction. If you're drawing your inspiration from your favorite book, or tv show, or video game, chances are the Wizard class is not going to do it.
Back when I was young, we had fewer stories about wizards and other fictional spellcasters, so wizards had a stereotype based on fewer characters, such as medieval astrologers, court magicians, and legends of Merlin. The Disney Fantasia sequence about the Sorcerer's Apprentice exemplifies the conventions: a wizard (sometime called magician or sorcerer) wore a robe and pointy hat decorated with stars, had a collection of esoteric artifacts and tomes of spells, and gestured with his hands to conjure creatures or animate objects. The Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder wizards fit this image, except for the pointy hat.
D&D style prepared spellcasting is weird, so is the pseudo-generalist niche Wizards in D&D fill (mages in other media tend to either be specialists or true generalists, while D&D/PF wizards make poor specialists, but also have hard walls on what they aren't allowed to do well based on spell list demarcation). Spellcasters in other fiction are often defined by the unique rituals or esoterica associated with their magic tradition (magic circles, complex invocations, casting implements, etc.) while D&D wizards are generic and flavorless by design, there's no underlying mechanism defining the class.
The prepare-and-forget style of spellcasting is from the story Mazirian the Magician in the 1950 book The Dying Earth by Jack Vance. It was an attempt to make a believeable magic duel between two spellcasters. Hence, we call this system Vancian magic. The article by Michael Sayre mentioned this:
D20 fantasy TTRPG wizards are heavily influenced by the dominating presence of D&D and, to a significantly lesser degree, the works of Jack Vance. But Vance hasn't been a particularly popular fantasy author for several generations now, and many popular fantasy wizards don't have massively diverse bags of tricks and fire and forget spells.
I own a copy of The Dying Earth, but I inherited it from my father. Jack Vance's science fiction is also pretty good, but it is dated.
And sadly, lengthy rituals with magic circles, complex invocations, casting implements, etc. do not fit into the pacing of Dungeons & Dragons/Pathfinder combat. This Rituals fit into Pathfinder only for difficult non-combat casts such as raising the dead or negotiating with planar entities. The thaumaturge uses casting implements, but was given a non-spell theme so that the implements were not simply a decoration on spellcaster. I suppose Paizo could invent a ritual-based class that could cast rituals before entering the dungeon that would grant them powers for combat in the dungeon. That would be like a kineticist whose aura comes from a ritural rather than from an elemental gate.
I agree that the wizard is generic. In the beginning Dungeons & Dragons had few classes, so those classes had to be stretched to fit all the fictional roles that players wanted to roleplay. That stretching was and still is a poor fit, but it was better than nothing. That made the fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue generic. Now we have more classes. The spellcasters from other modern fiction can serving as inspiration for new well-fitting magical classes in Pathfinder rather than as another archetype to partially customize the wizard.
Trying to roleplay a fictional character by limiting their actions to the intersection of their class abilities and the abilities of a fictional character, such as playing Harry Potter as a wand-only Pathfinder wizard, means playing the class weaker than designed. That was one of Michael Sayre's points. The best we can hope for is having some details match up and using non-matching abilities to keep the character at a playable power level. We could reskin a few details to pretend that more features match up.
To drill in specifically for one example:
What is a “frost mage?” Is this about about a narrative: where do they draw power from, how do they study cold energy? Or is this about a mechanical expression of pointing and having cold zap your enemies as the key framework of your character concept?
In Golarion “cold” isn’t intrinsically connected to anything. There is a really cool psychic character build that is about drawing and releasing Thermal Energy. An INT psychic who MCs into wizard sounds like a very blasty, studious caster focused entirely on the narrative of thermal power.
If “never fire ever!!“ is essential, because the source of this energy is not related to thermal energy, but something else, that just happens to be cold, then Baba Yaga and Silence in the snow witch patrons are really good options for smart characters that are figuring out how to harness cold energy.
I just don’t understand how “must be a wizard that specializes in elemental magic” is really a fair expectation for a game that went out of its way to walk the elements away from being an area of specialization for wizards, by making primal magic a different tradition than arcane magic. Like yes they can both cast spells that have various elemental traits, but arcane magic in Golarion is just not about pushing one thing to its extreme limits, it is about carefully and deliberately combining things to accomplish specific and practical effects.
I think a thing is that Pathfinder being a linear progression sort of game doesn't really work well for "characters defined by their limitations" barring things like anathema. Like a single gate fire kineticist who has no ties to the plane of water can pick one up as soon as level 5. A martial who can cast no spells can just pick up some with an archetype at any point in their career. A cleric who doesn't want to use a certain kind of weapon is only enforced through roleplaying since you can pick up proficiency with anything.
So like "Ice mage, can't ever use fire" just isn't a very good thematic match for the way Pathfinder works, where you gain "new options for a thing you can do" every level, and you don't want to limit potential avenues for character growth at Chargen.
It's not hard to attach a conditional penalty, you just need to make sure it's positioned well.
I think the thing is "you're a fire mage, you get a bonus to fire and a penalty to water" is not something that exists anywhere else in the game, and I'm not sure adding this additional complexity really buys us very much depth. Particularly since PF2 is sort of diametrically opposed to "sacrificing generality in order to be extra good at one specific thing."
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I mean we can get into the details of the design choices one way or the other, but the broader point of "Highly focused spellcasters are very common in fiction and yet somewhat anathema to the D&D Wizard design paradigm" and "D&D style spell preparation is very specific to D&D and doesn't really compare well to popular media conceptualizations of magic" (including, imo, actual vancian magic, even though that's the inspiration) are both quirks with the class' design that can create stumbling blocks.
Obviously "Play to pathfinder's strengths" is the key advice here, and it's a reasonable one... but part of this whole discussion is people coming to the game with their own expectations and baggage, and the way that connects to Pathfinder's class design is relevant.
I'm not even saying these decisions are necessarily bad, but "D&D wizards are really janky and self referential" isn't really that outlandish it's just how the class is designed.
I just don’t understand how “must be a wizard that specializes in elemental magic” is really a fair expectation for a game that went out of its way to walk the elements away from being an area of specialization for wizards, by making primal magic a different tradition than arcane magic.
I think it's fairly easy to understand. A player has an idea for a theme and they want to find ways to realize that theme. It's really the simplest reason of all.
The conversation here is interesting, but ultimately if I'm working with a new player, explaining the cultural context of some decision a guy made in 1980 or residual trauma from 3.5 that justifies some of PF2's specific design quirks and reticence to enable certain ideas doesn't really help. To be honest, it'd probably be... really obnoxious and unhelpful.