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I just finished up my 4th adventure path this week using PF 2 rules. I, and my players, have come to the conclusion that spellcasters in general are weak compared to melee builds and that it is far more disheartening to play a spellcaster then a melee build due to the lack of repeatable actions. For instance, spells and slots don’t last, but a melee can swing away all day long. Melees can miss twice and still get an opportunity to attack a third time. Most casters don’t.
I’ve been playing this and DnD since the 1990’s and have seen how the rules grow and adapt, and I think I can confirm through my experience and time playing in Pathfinder Society that spellcasters are not as good- or fun- to play. Wizards are my favorite class to play and we are system masters of this and previously PF1. So we know what we are doing and talking about and coming at this from a purely balance perspective rather than “we hate casters” or “we hate martials.”
I don’t really want to invite the rehashing of “wizards are nerfed” or “wizards are OP.” There are plenty of posts for that. I just wanted to share my 2 cents after playing PF 2 for 4 years and seeing this play out by my own characters and others’.
There’s got to be away to bring parity to spellcasters in 2E. The melee characters in my campaigns do tons of damage over what any spellcaster can do in a couple of rounds. Meanwhile, the casters, if their spell goes off, are limited to small dice, no DC buffs, and one-time use spell and save. Unless the caster just wants to give out buffs all day to allies and just sit and watch. I’m not talking about the parity of damage, even. I’m referring to the fact that casters use to have spells that could produce a powerful effect. These effects have, indeed, been diminished in PF 2.
Our experience over the 4 years have shown to us (6 of us in total) that there is a problem with balance between casters and martials. I don’t know how to fix it, but I’m hoping the people at Paizo will seriously look at these issues and bring back some parity.
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This is a conversation that has been had many times. The conclusion is that there absolutely are ways to play casters where they function on par with martials or even outperform them. The real issue is that martials are much simpler and more straightforward. Playing martials well is comparatively easy. Playing casters well is not nearly as intuitive, if you don't know the tricks of it already.
Would you like to have these methods explained to you?
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I’ve been playing this and DnD since the 1990’s and have seen how the rules grow and adapt, and I think I can confirm through my experience and time playing in Pathfinder Society that spellcasters are not as good- or fun- to play. Wizards are my favorite class to play and we are system masters of this and previously PF1. So we know what we are doing and talking about and coming at this from a purely balance perspective rather than “we hate casters” or “we hate martials.”
I don’t really want to invite the rehashing of “wizards are nerfed” or “wizards are OP.” There are plenty of posts for that. I just wanted to share my 2 cents after playing PF 2 for 4 years and seeing this play out by my own characters and others’.
I am not certain what the purpose of this post is then. You both want to complain that Wizards - or rather, spellcasters in general - are less powerful than they were in previous editions, but you don't want to rehash the posts saying that spellcasters are less powerful than they were in previous editions.
Have you considered playing a Kineticist?
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I am curious what party compositions your group have settled in to after 4 APs. Have you tried playing a game with no casters for comparison?
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.
Or it's just that players who want their PC be as good as martials in what martials are best should simply play martials.
And same the other way too.
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From what I've seen, if you have a GM who is good about foreshadowing encounters to help you decide what spells to prepare can make a big difference. And also if the GM is very open with recall knowledge information, that helps too.
And also if you can ever get into the mindset of never expecting your enemy to fail a save, and be happy with the 'success' effect, that also helps.
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.
Generalist spellcasters have plenty of build versatility. They do not fill a role better suited to other types of spellcaster. That is not a failing of class design.
If you want a spellcaster that deals damage as constantly as a martial character swings a sword, play a Kineticist.
If you want a spellcaster that has some castings of damage dealing spells available for every battle during a day no matter how many battles there are, play a spellcaster that has damage dealing focus spells such as most Psychics, many Druid orders, and Elemental Sorcerer.
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Also, I just noticed the OP said “6 of us.” We have seen, multiple times, people complaining about casters efficacy, and then learned their GMs were adding elite templates to enemies to make up XP, rather than additional enemies as suggested in the Gamemaster Core. There are many little knobs that a GM can turn in PF2, and they radically effect different parts of the game than players might expect.
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If we're pulling out the experience card, I've been playing D&D/PF and these types of role-playing games for 40 years with many players from the same group for over 30 years.
My experience in PF2 is that wizards are the main boring, weak feeling caster and every other caster is powerful with good build options. I don't see a caster versus martial imbalance at all. I see the usual slow building caster that starts to ramp up after level 10.
Prior to level 10, martials feel stronger. After level 10, casters start to ramp up and feel much, much stronger.
If you stop playing at level 10, casters will likely feel fairly weak compared to martials, especially fighters and rogues. If you play all the way to level 20, casters become very, very powerful in almost all aspects of the game other than certain niche areas like summoning, which are pretty terrible in PF2 and get worse as you level for a variety of reasons like low CR and short-duration fights that don't really allow the summon to do much worthwhile for the spell expenditure.
The biggest problem with wizards is they fill one role, have the same slow start as other casters, don't have much build variability, and low impact low level feats and class abilities that feel pretty boring and useless.
Most of the other caster classes are pretty fun with cool build options and feel good to play.
I have little experience with the witch, so can't speak too much on them. New one looks better.
This conversation has been had a ton of times. Pathfinder 2 casters are fine. Apparently enough people say good things about the wizard that Paizo doesn't feel the need to change them much. I don't like the wizard, which used to be my favorite class in PF prior to PF2. The reason it is bad is the sheer number of power reductions it received across the board from PF1, which has neutered the class in my opinion.
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I think a basic problem lies in expectation management, in that a caster will never be able to match a good martial character in:
- Single target damage
- Adventuring stamina
Because these are specifically the things that martial characters are the best at. Everything else, casters can (and do) excel at.
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.Or it's just that players who want their PC be as good as martials in what martials are best should simply play martials.
And same the other way too.
Then why are magical martials or combat spellcasters a thing if these are meant to be mutually exclusive paradigms?
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Then why are magical martials or combat spellcasters a thing if these are meant to be mutually exclusive paradigms?Or it's just that players who want their PC be as good as martials in what martials are best should simply play martials.
And same the other way too.
This appears to be an overgeneralization. No one has said that these concepts are mutually exclusive.
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The magus will never match a wizard with spells or a fighter with straight fights.
I think a Starspan magus does pretty well vs a fighter at single target ranged damage...
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I mostly play casters because martials are too unimpactful for me.
and I think I can confirm through my experience and time playing in Pathfinder Society that spellcasters are not as good- or fun- to play.
In PFS, casters are king once you get after the first few levels. Considering the ridiculously short PFS adventuring days, casters are just obliterating everything. They are harder to play in APs (especially the first ones).
Wizards are my favorite class to play and we are system masters of this and previously PF1. So we know what we are doing and talking about and coming at this from a purely balance perspective rather than “we hate casters” or “we hate martials.”
I heard that so many times from people who just don't know how to play a prepared caster in PF2. So no proof here, especially when you bring PF1 considering that Wizard play is in complete opposition between PF1 and PF2, they went from versatile caster to specialized casters. Chances are high you just play your wizard wrong.
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.Generalist spellcasters have plenty of build versatility. They do not fill a role better suited to other types of spellcaster. That is not a failing of class design.
If you want a spellcaster that deals damage as constantly as a martial character swings a sword, play a Kineticist.
If you want a spellcaster that has some castings of damage dealing spells available for every battle during a day no matter how many battles there are, play a spellcaster that has damage dealing focus spells such as most Psychics, many Druid orders, and Elemental Sorcerer.
The issue is that there are so few things in spellcasting that are worth sacrificing versatility for that it's almost not worth doing most of the time. I could probably count on one hand the amount of "specializations" worth doing, and even then some of them can be discounted with proper play and tactics. Plus, given that spellcasters whole schtick is to be able to do everything else that the martials can't, sacrificing versatility is a hard sell most of the time.
Kineticists don't cast spells. They can function in an anti-magic field just fine, and probably even better than martials do most of the time. They're not really an adequate frame of reference for niche balance since this is the class that throws it all out the window and is in its own echelon.
Focus Spells are nice, but are basically class-locked and build-locked. It's quite clear that only certain spellcasters can make good use of Focus Spells, and that their class budget is (or at least should be) designed around the power those Focus Spells give. Heck, even non-spellcasters get access to good Focus Spells, so making that an argument in favor of spellcasters is shenanigans.
This appears to be an overgeneralization. No one has said that these concepts are mutually exclusive.
It's said, just not directly. "You're playing a Spellcaster wrong" is basically saying that you can't treat them like a Martial, ergo it is indeed mutually exclusive, based on the idea that Martials can't do Spellcaster things, and vice-versa.
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TBH, imo the only real problem with spellcasters is that Paizo still keeps trying to use longevity and level scaling both as balance points, when they're horrendous ways to try to bring about parity between classes.
Balancing around stamina is especially bad because you have to dig deep around the forums to even find out what Paizo considers a standard adventuring day (and therefore a good starting point for stamina balance).
Fundamentally I think this all speaks to a broader issue of Paizo tightly balancing their game around certain design expectations and then hiding those expectations from players. A caster, played correctly, in a game that is run correctly by a GM, is an excellent member of a party who can contribute effectively in a variety of encounters.
Neither Player nor GM Core will even hint at what 'correct' actually is though, which creates these problems.
This is less of an issue for martials because there's more fault tolerance, more obvious design directions, and for whatever reason the game is less willing to outright punish martials with encounter design features.
... This is all exacerbated a bit by forum culture, we have a tendency to dogpile on people playing spellcasters incorrectly. Probably a mixture of experience (as to better understand the 'right' way to play) and conversational fatigue (as it's a common topic).
There a thing but they are weaker at what each is on it's own. The magus will never match a wizard with spells or a fighter with straight fights. They can get somewhat close but they won't and aren't supposed to be as good as either. But it gives enough of each to feel satisfying for most.Then why are magical martials or combat spellcasters a thing if these are meant to be mutually exclusive paradigms?Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.Or it's just that players who want their PC be as good as martials in what martials are best should simply play martials.
And same the other way too.
The problem is that this sounds more like trying to do both leads to you just shooting yourself and your group in the foot. A Magus trying to do Fighter stuff leads to them getting smoked by reactions over time (while having less defenses), and a Magus trying to do Wizard stuff leads to them not having enough slots to do the necessary things (even with Wizard Dedication).
It also doesn't explain why these niches exist if it's apparent that they are meant to be mutually exclusive, as evidenced by the balance points of Battle Forms never exceeding Martial capabilities while also disallowing spellcasting, as well as the limited resources of Spellcasters versus the unlimited performance of Martials. Really, the best argument is "It's a desired fantasy," but that is in direct contradiction of "Martials do X, Spellcasters do Y, that's how the game works."
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Giant Instinct Barbarians also don't hold a front line against incoming enemy damage as well as a Champion does. That doesn't mean that Barbarian is a weak class that needs redesigned.
No, a Wizard isn't going to be throwing top-rank magical damage around all day. That is the Kineticist's role. That doesn't mean that Wizard is a weak class that needs redesigned.
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.
I don't think that argument is arguing that you don't have a variety in builds but more you need inherently need to use tactics to play a spellcaster whereas you can sort of brute force martials.
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I have a player who loves spellcasters but hates PF2e spellcasters and tried to play with different casters many time but he never really like to play with one.
After several conversations I've had with him, we've come to the conclusion that what he really misses is spellcasters being basically glass demigods. Characters with very limited resources (x-day) who can cause damage that no character with unlimited or encounter-limited resources can do, whether this character casts spells much stronger than what the strongest martial artists can do, whether they cast effects without risk of failure or that cause incapacitating effects without the limits of the Incapacitation trait.
Obviously a character like that would break the balance that was achieved by PF2e, and honestly, I don't think even he would like an experience like that given the criticisms he made of D&D and PF1.
But I kind of understand the problem he has here. In practice, he finds that the balance between martials and casters has become so close that he can no longer feel that all the management of limited resources is worth it, even though these resources reward him with versatility and mixed effects, and he still doesn't feel as if he really compensates.
And this is where I put my 2 coppers. The problem with spellcasters that many people who like playing spellcasters but don't like in PF2 is that they are a class of resources that are complicated to manage and that many people don't feel rewarded for this extra work. This is actually one of the reasons why I think the kineticist is so successful. They are simply much less complicated to manage.
I also say this because the same phenomenon occurs with other of my players who avoid x-per-day items as much as possible. The reason is that managing these items is complicated, and they have difficulty finding the right time to do so and to a certain degree this kind of happens to spellcasters too. Players don't feel comfortable casting their TOP spell slots on the first creature they encounter because it's a scarce resource that they want to save for when it's really needed, but they never know when it's really needed and they often end up frustrated either because they've spent the resources sooner than they would like, or they have saved too many resources and have had a subpar experience with their spellcasters.
And honestly this isn't exactly a problem with the game because I know there are players who don't have that much difficulty dealing with this and end up loving PF2e's spellcasters (we have some here on the forum) and I know that a lot of people don't like it when we say this because it It's not a "caster" in the strict sense, but the kineticist is there for those who have problems either dealing with the casters' scarce resources, or because they think that these scarce resources are not well rewarded.
Just one PF3 can change how spellcasters are made, but I don't expect this one anytime soon. And I honestly don't think demi-god spellcasters will ever come back (thankfully), most likely the idea of having limited x-per-day resources will be replaced by x-per-encounter resources (1-10 minutes ) or unlimited with small top-ups in actions/turns.
Kineticists aren't spell casters.Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.Generalist spellcasters have plenty of build versatility. They do not fill a role better suited to other types of spellcaster. That is not a failing of class design.
If you want a spellcaster that deals damage as constantly as a martial character swings a sword, play a Kineticist.
If you want a spellcaster that has some castings of damage dealing spells available for every battle during a day no matter how many battles there are, play a spellcaster that has damage dealing focus spells such as most Psychics, many Druid orders, and Elemental Sorcerer.
By the word, no. But mechanically are very close. Impulses are basically super-cantrips that you get via feats. They compete with spells in many way including some of them are modified versions of spell like Timber Sentinel and Plate in Treasure or are even more powerful/versatile like Cyclonic Ascent and Clear as Air.
For many people Kineticists are pretty good alternative to casters.
Kineticists don't cast spells. They can function in an anti-magic field just fine, and probably even better than martials do most of the time. They're not really an adequate frame of reference for niche balance since this is the class that throws it all out the window and is in its own echelon.
No Impulse are magics and are considered as spells for something bad that affects spells. Antimagic Field disabled kineticists like it disables spellcasters and any magic items. The only one that is completely unaffected by is the alchemist.
Impulses are magical, and though they aren't spells, some things that affect spells also affect impulses. Abilities that restrict you from casting spells (such as being polymorphed into a battle form) or protect against spells (such as a spell that protects against other spells or a creature's bonus to saves against spells) also apply to impulses.
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Like the Kineticist is obviously the class for "I want to throw around balls of fire and lightning bolts all day." You're just a very tough person with a portal to an elemental plane in their soul, and not a person who went to school for this, got it from their god, has special blood, etc.
What actual casters get over the Kineticist is "your very best blasts will do more damage than anything the Kineticist can do" and "you can do a lot of things that the Kineticist can't do" which is a reasonable tradeoff.
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Or it's just that players who want their PC be as good as martials in what martials are best should simply play martials.
And same the other way too.
It's not that. Reading the original post, It's that they don't know how to excel as casters, and so "compare to martials in what martials are best at" is all they have left.
Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.
It's also not that. It's not that they're lacking in versatility of viable builds. It's that it's too easy to get yourself dialed into bad strategies and bad builds and have a hard time getting yourself back out again. If you know how to build and play casters, there are plenty of options that work fine. The issue is that if you sit down with a martial class, knowing absolutely nothing about the game, and you put together the three to five most obvious builds/strategies with that class, all of them will *basically* work. That's just not the case with casters in the same way, and if you get dialed in on a caster strategy that isn't successful, ti can be hard to climb up out of that and find one that is.
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Part of the problem on this forum is the people making these claims are grouping all casters together. I'm sorry, you are playing wrong if you can't figure out how to make a bard, druid, cleric, or sorcerer feel strong.
The bard is discussed all the time as an overpowered class. It's a 10 level caster like every other caster with amazing class abilities. It is immensely powerful from level 1 up.
So are the cleric and druid.
Even the sorcerer becomes quite good. They are easy to build. Lots of desirable feats and abilities.
Any caster discussion needs to focus on the casters with issues and not try to lump them all together like every caster plays the same. They don't. Lumping them together just creates a situation where Paizo has no actionable fix, no reason to really listen.
Paizo knows for certain all casters are not equal. Not even close. Some casters are very, very strong, stronger than martials and more impactful in a group.
I've tracked my druid's damage and abilities a few times, the druid is definitely not playing second fiddle to the martial unless you are playing them badly.
The only caster I've played that feels pretty underwhelming is the wizard. It doesn't get anything that feels great at early levels. It has a natural casting progression in power because the spells are good, but every caster gets that. Their best feats are higher level feats. Their best thesis is being able to change out spells to obtain ones that would be useful, which used to be an innate part of that class that I have no idea why they eliminated from prepared casters.
They dealt with this complaint about prepared casters in PF1/3E, made a fix allowing prepared casters to leave slots open for some flexibility, then just ignored that fix in PF2 and made it so you lock in each day to your prepared slots with no change. It's like the designers learned a lesson and then completely forgot the original lesson they learned with prepared casting that having some flexibility for prepared casters is necessary or they don't work very well in the even more short duration, dynamic combat of PF2.
But this discussion needs to be way more focused because saying martials are better than casters is provably wrong. Easily provably wrong. Casters absolutely wreck stuff at high level. Many of the lower level casters like bards, clerics, druids, and sorcerers have a fairly smooth power progression.
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The magus will never match a wizard with spells or a fighter with straight fights.I think a Starspan magus does pretty well vs a fighter at single target ranged damage...
A Starlit Span magus with Imaginary Weapon does sickening damage.
Maybe a two-hander fighter could keep up if the Starlit Span magus went cold.
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I was going to write a point-by-point dissection of the OP and how it reads as wanting to go back to the days of caster supremacy in 1e, but I think what Squiggit has to say is a lot more interesting:
TBH, imo the only real problem with spellcasters is that Paizo still keeps trying to use longevity and level scaling both as balance points, when they're horrendous ways to try to bring about parity between classes.
Balancing around stamina is especially bad because you have to dig deep around the forums to even find out what Paizo considers a standard adventuring day (and therefore a good starting point for stamina balance).
Fundamentally I think this all speaks to a broader issue of Paizo tightly balancing their game around certain design expectations and then hiding those expectations from players. A caster, played correctly, in a game that is run correctly by a GM, is an excellent member of a party who can contribute effectively in a variety of encounters.
Neither Player nor GM Core will even hint at what 'correct' actually is though, which creates these problems.
I agree with this, and I think this is one of the long-term consequences in 2e of Paizo compromising by keeping a bit of legacy design around casters. The developers could have done away with spell slots entirely and balanced casters around casting spells at-will, but chose not to, likely to ensure casters would still feel close enough to their 1e counterparts to avoid putting off the early adopters they needed to get their game afloat. That decision and others like it are likely what gave 2e the early push it needed to become the success it is now, and allowed us to continue enjoying it at all, but it came with its own tradeoffs.
With this in mind, while I don't at all agree with the OP's desire to give casters the flexible action economy and single-target damage output or martial classes, much less their broken 1e spells, I do agree that it would be to the great benefit of players and GMs alike if Paizo gave us in-depth guides for how to build a viable caster, and how to balance sessions around casters and their spell slots. In particular, I would like developer input on how to handle very short adventuring days: often, I run smaller sessions that last an hour and a half at a time, and while I don't always include a period of rest and daily preparations in-between, I often do to reduce book-keeping and match the in-game pacing to that of the session. In those situations, I've found casters to be extremely powerful, especially when the players know how short the adventuring day will be, because at that point casters get to fire on all cylinders and spam high-rank spells like they're going out of style. I'd rather not make the one encounter I'll sometimes have in a session severe each time, so in the end it feels like my choices are to either obey a very specific adventure pacing that assumes much longer sessions, or deal with a specific subset of the party becoming much more powerful than they ought to be.
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Maybe a two-hander fighter could keep up if the Starlit Span magus went cold.
One of the things that I think that "casters are too weak" discourse usually misses is that PF2 wants "you are right in the face of danger" is something that should let you do more damage compared to "you do your thing away from what can hurt you."
Like the 2-handed melee character should be doing more damage than that same character with a ranged weapon, and casters are generally assumed to be working at range. It's the same defense vs offense trade-off that makes 2-handed weapons do more damage because the 1-hander lets you use a shield.
The Starlit Span magus with the imaginary weapon just breaks this because the assumption is that the Magus is not supposed to be Spellstriking every single round forever.
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Good. Wizards have been riding high for too long.
That way of thinking is BAD for the long term health of the game.
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Maybe a two-hander fighter could keep up if the Starlit Span magus went cold.One of the things that I think that "casters are too weak" discourse usually misses is that PF2 wants "you are right in the face of danger" is something that should let you do more damage compared to "you do your thing away from what can hurt you."
Like the 2-handed melee character should be doing more damage than that same character with a ranged weapon, and casters are generally assumed to be working at range. It's the same defense vs offense trade-off that makes 2-handed weapons do more damage because the 1-hander lets you use a shield.
The Starlit Span magus with the imaginary weapon just breaks this because the assumption is that the Magus is not supposed to be Spellstriking every single round forever.
This is true as Imaginary Weapon was designed for use in melee range, which is why it does such good damage for a cantrip. Starlit Span breaks this by using melee cantrips at range in combination with a bow.
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But I kind of understand the problem he has here. In practice, he finds that the balance between martials and casters has become so close that he can no longer feel that all the management of limited resources is worth it, even though these resources reward him with versatility and mixed effects, and he still doesn't feel as if he really compensates.
And this is where I put my 2 coppers. The problem with spellcasters that many people who like playing spellcasters but don't like in PF2 is that they are a class of resources that are complicated to manage and that many people don't feel rewarded for this extra work. This is actually one of the reasons why I think the kineticist is so successful. They are simply much less complicated to manage.
There's definitely merit to this. Over time GMing and playing PF2 (multiple APs and PFS), I've seen a shift away from prepared casters in general, but especially Wizard. Spontaneous casters haven't suffered the same drop off, but that's not because Oracle is better than Cleric (or even really that Sorcerer is better than Wizard).
Sorcerer is a LOT easier than Wizard to play. You don't have to prep slots in advance. You don't have to track a spellbook. You don't have to go out of your way to find stuff to put into your spellbook so that you can have access to it when the one time in the campaign where it's relevant comes up. You don't run into a campaign that says "there's no real downtime in this so you can't do anything to get more spells to take advantage of the spellbook that you have to carry around."
You just pick what spells you have, then you show up and play. Either you have a spell that works or you don't, but you're never going to be left flipping around frantically trying to find something in a spellbook that you could use if you had a break to study it, only to realize that you don't have it because you had no way to know you'd need this spell and thus spent your downtime on some other spell. Even Cleric doesn't have that problem since they have access to the entire Divine list every morning, so if you need something you can say "I can get that tomorrow".
I get why they don't want a class complexity to necessarily equal power because all classes should be viable, but it's definitely a hard sell when you say "this class is way harder to play than that other class for the same outcome", unless you just REALLY want to play a Wizard specifically rather than "an arcane spellcaster".
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OP mentioned that it can be disheartening to play a caster. That when a caster spends their entire turn casting a spell, and the spell doesn't accomplish much because the target(s) make their save(s), it can make the caster feel like they aren't contributing.
An easy fix is to rebalance challenges so that you're generally facing larger numbers of lower-CR foes, rather than mostly foes who are higher CR than the PCs. More recent APs have made this change compared to the first few that were published for PF2. This makes a HUGE difference in how successful spellcasters feel, because they're more likely to succeed vs enemy save DCs.
Take it one step further, and adjust so the PCs are one level ahead of the normal encounter expectations. That is, if you're running Adventure Paths, have the PCs always be one level higher than the adventure expects - and if you have a larger group and/or the extra level makes things feel too easy, just add a few extra foes, especially lower-level foes. This lets everyone feel more heroic, they're ALL succeeding more often, but it's particularly effective to casters who rely so heavily on save DCs.
And the GM can also hand out more info to address this. Give the PCs ways to learn what is coming, and do their Recall Knowledge checks ahead of time so they know what tactics will work best. Or if they don't get advance intel, I routinely tell them highest-to-lowest saving throws on a single successful Recall Knowledge, and I often throw in one useful vulnerability or resistance as well, rather than feeding info too slowly.
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Good. Wizards have been riding high for too long.That way of thinking is BAD for the long term health of the game.
I mean a reasonable thing to do when designing a new version of a game like this is to look at which classes were perceived as the weakest in the previous edition, and do the most work on those classes to make them work well. Which is why the Fighter, the Rogue, and the Monk are really good in PF2.
But when you do this the classes that gets the least attention are the ones that were considered the most powerful in the previous edition.
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There’s got to be away to bring parity to spellcasters in 2E. The melee characters in my campaigns do tons of damage over what any spellcaster can do in a couple of rounds. Meanwhile, the casters, if their spell goes off, are limited to small dice, no DC buffs, and one-time use spell and save. Unless the caster just wants to give out buffs all day to allies and just sit and watch. I’m not talking about the parity of damage, even. I’m referring to the fact that casters use to have spells that could produce a powerful effect. These effects have, indeed, been diminished in PF 2.
The problem with this conversation at the end of the day is that it's really a subset problem. From my experience as a GM:
- People playing high level casters are generally more satisfied with their effectiveness than people playing low level casters. Even if you can't spam it, stuff like Weird, Telekinetic Bombardment, Roaring Applause, and Synthesisia feel good to use. They're majorly impactful and can swing a fight instantly. Low level casters just don't have the same impact. Compare to a Fighter, whose thing is "I hit really hard" and is good at that at every level of play.- People that want to play support/healer/debuff/control/etc casters are generally more satisfied than people that want to play blasters. PF2 casters do all this other stuff really well, and some of them are good at it right at level 1 (Bards and Clerics come to mind). Caster damage meanwhile starts off poor (with a couple of exceptions), spell attack rolls have absolutely awful accuracy that gets worse for most of the game and only catches back up late, and the heavy impact stuff is all limited use. If your goal is doing lots of damage, martials just do it better and can do it with far less resource management.
- People who played 3.5/PF1 and liked how insane casters got miss that. And yeah, I definitely enjoyed being able to simply go "we need to get back to down to get this curse removed, so I cast Teleport", not to mention the utterly insane stuff you could do to end fights, sometimes before an enemy even knows they are in one. Some of that stuff got nerfed hard, and I feel it. Frankly some of it needed to be because it was just broken and not good for the game, especially when casters scaled up to high level. I don't think you can fix this, because its a conscious design decision to move away from that.
- Casters are generally more complex without an added benefit to that. Resource management is a thing casters are always doing and martials comparatively rarely do. You need to plan in advance way more often. You just have more stuff you have to know to play well, and huge spell lists to navigate to find what you need... and then you run into something like a Golem that is effectively a "sit this fight out, its immune to you" situation. That happens WAY more often than you'll ever encounter something that is simply immune to weapons. Some people enjoy the complexity and some people enjoy the fantasy of it, but if you just want to make a simple but effective character, you're usually not going to end up with a caster.
I don't really know what the answer is, but I've been running and playing this system long enough to recognize that the caster design here is simply not satisfying to a subset of players compared to previous editions. It seems pretty clear Paizo doesn't think this is a problem that needs fixing, so it is what it is.
The thing that irks me is when people say that there isn't really a problem and you're playing it wrong. Too many people have run into it for it to not be a real problem, and if you need to use a very specific build to make casters work, something is wrong, considering build diversity is a thing the game wants and delivers much more reliably on martials.
Good. Wizards have been riding high for too long.That way of thinking is BAD for the long term health of the game.I mean a reasonable thing to do when designing a new version of a game like this is to look at which classes were perceived as the weakest in the previous edition, and do the most work on those classes to make them work well. Which is why the Fighter, the Rogue, and the Monk are really good in PF2.
But when you do this the classes that gets the least attention are the ones that were considered the most powerful in the previous edition.
Alternatively, the super-reasonable thing to do when designing a new version of a game is to look at which classes wear stupid hats or lean in on incredibly tired tropes or are even nominally related to massively derivative somewhat popular books involving sticks and then…remove them from the game. And that is why the Fighter, the Rogue and the Monk are really good.
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spells and slots don’t last, but a melee can swing away all day long. Melees can miss twice and still get an opportunity to attack a third time. Most casters don’t.
The best answer we have to this is the game is balance with a resource use expectation of 3 significant encounters per day. If you have more encounters that will hurt for spell slots, if you have less encounters then casters seem stronger.
I don’t know how to fix it, but I’m hoping the people at Paizo will seriously look at these...
Good luck on that. The rules are where they are because Paizo think it is at the right balance. Their sales are good and doing better so they aren't motivated to rethink their approach. With some justification they believe they have found a reasonable spot.
How to fix it in the current game? Well the best answer is get yourself a useful offensive focus spell and a couple of focus points. Wizards in particular have been terrible in this regards. But there are a number of good archetypes and the remaster has improved focus spell use (maybe Paizo is listening a bit after all). So this is a problem ever caster should have solved. Currently the Sorcercer in my game is getting good use out of Elemental Blast and Elemental Toss plus the Demoralise action so he can easily stretch into more encounters and do good damage. That is a simple option but please see the general case.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.I don't think that argument is arguing that you don't have a variety in builds but more you need inherently need to use tactics to play a spellcaster whereas you can sort of brute force martials.
This isn't a sensible argument because martials likewise require tactics to play them. They just aren't the same tactics that spellcasters likewise need to worry about, and don't require anywhere near as much homework to acknowledge which tactics are good/bad to use on enemies.
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At a glance the wizard does appear shortchanged. It gains only 6 + CON hit points per level, the bottom level reserved for primary casters and not all of them. For example, the bard and cleric get 8 + CON. For initial skills the wizard gets (2 + INT) and Arcana. Everyone else except magus is initially trained in at least one more skill. The wizard starts trained in Fortitude, trained in Reflex, and expert in Will, which is also at the lowest scale for proficiency in saving throws. The wizard used to have the very worst weapon training, they could not wield all simple weapons, but the Remaster corrected that deficiency.
The low number of initial skills especially bothers me. I heard the argument that the wizard spends so much time studying spells that they have no time to study skills, but that is an excuse rather than a balancing justification. In early edition of D&D the wizard was penalized in class skills because the high intelligence made up for it, but under PF2 rules high intelligence does not make up for it. It would be like penalizing a rogue for their high Dexterity by giving the class no armor proficiency.
In PF1 wizard had the reputation of having the most spells in their spell list, of being very skilled in knowledge checks, and having the right spells for battlefield control. In PF2 their spell list is one of four lists of roughly equal length, they have the fewest initial skills and high intelligence only lets them catch up rather than pull ahead, and many other classes can manage battlefield control as well as the wizard.
However, number crunching is not as informative as seeing the wizard in play. Since I began running PF2 campaigns in 2019 and up to 2024, my players have chosen barbarian, champion, druid, kineticist, monk, psychic, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, swashbuckler, and several playtest classes. No wizards. In my current Strength of Thousands campaign, set at the Magaambya Academy of Arcane and Primal Magic, my players chose two bards, a champion, a kineticist, a magus, a rogue, and finally at long last a wizard. Now at 3rd level the anadi wizard Idris earned the distinction of being the most fragile character in a party mostly of spellcasters. He has been knocked out in combat and caught Purple Pox from a Myceloid. His first move in combat typically is to move behind the other characters. Only the magus hangs further back, because she is a Starlit-Span archer with a longbow.
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Giant Instinct Barbarians also don't hold a front line against incoming enemy damage as well as a Champion does. That doesn't mean that Barbarian is a weak class that needs redesigned.
No, a Wizard isn't going to be throwing top-rank magical damage around all day. That is the Kineticist's role. That doesn't mean that Wizard is a weak class that needs redesigned.
Depends on the damage. If it's based in Fortitude and Will Saves, Barbarians will hold that line even better than Champions do. If it's against Reflex Saves, a Barbarian will probably hold it just as well, because let's be honest, Champion Reflex Saves are terrible.
The only part that Champions have that is better than a Barbarian is Shield Specializations and higher AC, the former of which isn't always taken, and the latter of which is only really helpful at preventing critical hits, but the Barbarian makes up for that with the added HP and Temp HP from Rage.
You would be correct, the Wizard is a weak class for many other reasons besides "It doesn't do massive amounts of damage," but again, if Spellcasters aren't the "damage" character archetype, giving them options to do damage is basically introducing trap options into the game.
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It's also not that. It's not that they're lacking in versatility of viable builds. It's that it's too easy to get yourself dialed into bad strategies and bad builds and have a hard time getting yourself back out again. If you know how to build and play casters, there are plenty of options that work fine. The issue is that if you sit down with a martial class, knowing absolutely nothing about the game, and you put together the three to five most obvious builds/strategies with that class, all of them will *basically* work. That's just not the case with casters in the same way, and if you get dialed in on a caster strategy that isn't successful, ti can be hard to climb up out of that and find one that is.
The bolded part is literally what "One True Build"ism demonstrates. That there is only one real way to play the class, because playing it any other way is a bad strategy/build, or isn't nearly as effective as the "One True Build." And really, having certain classes possess way more trap options than other classes is indicative of bad design for said class. Incidentally, most spellcasting classes have this problem.
As for the whole "brute force martials" thing, explain that to all the newer players who just charge into a group of monsters or a big boss and expect to wipe the floor with them, only to get rekt and left to die by the party because they completely threw tactics out the window. The amount of threads of people saying the game is "too hard" is a great indicator of failures in brute force martial gameplay.
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One of the things that I think that "casters are too weak" discourse usually misses is that PF2 wants "you are right in the face of danger" is something that should let you do more damage compared to "you do your thing away from what can hurt you."
That makes sense when you compare apples to apples: A melee Fighter faces a higher threat to his hit points than a ranged Fighter, but in exchange he gets to do much more damage.
However, casters are oranges: They have far fewer hit points & defenses than ranged Fighters (Champions, Barbarians, ...), which means they face a higher threat to their hit points than ranged Fighters. So while they are in a similar position to melee Fighters, they don't get the damage bonus that melee Fighters get. And with the many movement options of a 3-action-economy, staying at range isn't as feasible as it used to be in a standard+move-action-economy either. A ranged Fighter isn't in as much of mortal danger when an enemy moves up to him in melee as a Wizard is.
Instead of giving casters more spell/blasting power, you could simply give them the same armor proficiency & hit point progression as a Fighter or Monk. There would be parity with ranged Fighters without making casters overpowered again.
After all, if the rules don't allow casters to be cannons, then the rules shouldn't make them out of glass either.
And while this would be a fair & balanced solution, it's probably not what many caster players want. They are fine with facing the higher threats, if they get the benefit of doing more damage in return. Many caster players love the "glass cannon" build, so add the option of doing that:
For example, give Wizards/Sorcerers/Witches/... the same hit points per level as Fighters, but for every hit point per level they voluntarily forego, they get to add +1 to every spell damage die and +1 to their spell attack rolls. Give them the same armor proficiency & progression as Fighters, but for every armor proficiency traded away (heavy -> medium -> light -> unarmored) they get an additional spell-slot per rank.
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Another issue in the difficulty of playing a caster is having to do Recall Knowledge to find out which save to target. After all, if you target the wrong save, then your spell is extremely likely to be completely wasted. Imagine a Fighter making many Strikes in an encounter only to find out your enemy was immune to your damage (e.g. slashing) all along.
To put this system of strong/medium/weak save into martial terms: Imagine every creature had 1 immunity (from bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing) and 1 resistance (one other from b/s/p), so that there's only 1 damage type you can reliable damage an enemy with. And then you have to do Recall Knowledge every time to find out which damage type that is. This also requires you to raise knowledge skills just so you're able to do your main thing.
Oh, and you need 3 different weapons, one for each damage type, so you can target the correct "save" (though no additional rune costs). But, to make it more diverse, your "combat tradition" allows you only 2 types of damage: the "primal" Fighters don't get to use piercing weapons ("Will save spells"), the "occult" Fighters are prohibited from using slashing weapons, ...
Now that's a lot of hoops to jump through, just so you get to swing your sword and do damage, i.e. your thing. And if you are unlucky with one of those hoops you don't get to do your thing at all.
This makes it really difficult to play a caster, unless you're playing a support caster. Personally, I love support casters and thus enjoy it. But I equally enjoy blaster casters, yet I'm hard-pressed to say they're as enjoyable: Elemental Fire Sorcerer (+ Geomancer) is really the only blaster caster that works, which is sad. [ignoring Kineticists]
I wouldn't mind giving up versatility in terms of blasting power, e.g. restricting spell access to certain elements or just attack spells or something like that, but getting a buff to blasting power in return. And I think other players would be willing to make sacrifices as well, if they get the option of the glass cannon back. Maybe it's possible to make some class archetypes that do just that.
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Waiting until the 4 day weekend to drop a grenade thread....pretty sneaky, Sis!
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Honestly, the argument of "Casters are good, you're just playing them wrong," only really highlights that Casters aren't a class that gives you much build versatility, and supports the "One True Build" idealism that PF2 has tried to go out of its way to demolish by enabling a lot of ways to build a character.Generalist spellcasters have plenty of build versatility. They do not fill a role better suited to other types of spellcaster. That is not a failing of class design.
If you want a spellcaster that deals damage as constantly as a martial character swings a sword, play a Kineticist.
If you want a spellcaster that has some castings of damage dealing spells available for every battle during a day no matter how many battles there are, play a spellcaster that has damage dealing focus spells such as most Psychics, many Druid orders, and Elemental Sorcerer.
The issue is that there are so few things in spellcasting that are worth sacrificing versatility for that it's almost not worth doing most of the time. I could probably count on one hand the amount of "specializations" worth doing, and even then some of them can be discounted with proper play and tactics. Plus, given that spellcasters whole schtick is to be able to do everything else that the martials can't, sacrificing versatility is a hard sell most of the time.
Kineticists don't cast spells. They can function in an anti-magic field just fine, and probably even better than martials do most of the time. They're not really an adequate frame of reference for niche balance since this is the class that throws it all out the window and is in its own echelon.
Focus Spells are nice, but are basically class-locked and build-locked. It's quite clear that only certain spellcasters can make good use of Focus Spells, and that their class budget is (or at least should be) designed around the power those Focus Spells give. Heck, even non-spellcasters get access to good Focus...
Cam your or anyone else taking this position provide real ideas for fixing casters that doesn't include making them overpowered again?
Do you even know what each caster does? Can you even discuss how they interact with the game and provide Paizo real reasons than just "feeling" from some nameless minority discussing actual casters in play?
These nebulous threads are about as helpful to a designer anyone saying they don't like how something feel is.
Provide actionable criticism for each caster based on what they they can do using real game experience to show you have seen them played, measured their metrics against martials, and know what you're talking about.
Every time I see these threads, almost no one but me provides any real evidence either because they haven't actually played "casters" in this game and mean "their favorite caster that didn't work, usually the wizard" with a complete absence of actionable criticism.
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The bolded part is literally what "One True Build"ism demonstrates. That there is only one real way to play the class, because playing it any other way is a bad strategy/build, or isn't nearly as effective as the "One True Build."
I'm a great proponent for blasters that nearly everyone disregards in PF2, whatever tradition I play with (outside Occult, I can't play Occult casters they are too weak to me). I also consider Cleric to be one of the worst caster in the game.
So, it looks like there are multiple "one true builds", multiple visions on casters.
Also, casters are not really "hard to play". The issue is our bias: People tend to hoard limited resources because they think there will always be a "better moment to use them". The end result being that they don't really cast slotted spells with their casters. And slotted spells are the main source of power for casters.
I also agree that Paizo design around sustainability is really bad. There are too many trap options that are supposed to increase your stamina.