snipRank 4 spells means you're 7th level. The WBL for a 7th level character stipulates 1 permanent 6th level item, 2 5th, 1 4th, 2 3rd, and 125 gp in currency. So realistically, the game expects you to have 125 gp to use for consumables at this level. It would not be "tough to have even ten [rank 3 spell scrolls];" it should be impossible at most tables. If you had a GM that let you sac permanent items to buy scrolls, they'd use the lump sum total, and you'd only have 720 gp total in wealth.
Further, your heighten math is misleading without listing the exact spells chosen, as many spells do not heighten every level (like magic missile) or only gain heighten benefits at specific levels (like haste).
It's likewise just odd to ignore arcane evolution in this context, since assuredly this Sorc would take it. This all further ignores a lot of other realities of item selection, feats, and so on.
Then there's just the low value of casting a wide variety of spells in this game. Regardless of how fun it is—and I agree it is fun—there are far fewer spells worth taking and using regularly than those that are not. Even if there were more that were useful, we're talking about learning so many spells that you start getting into functional overlap with the rest of your party members' abilities and even your own spells. Spells are not all equally valuable, and spell knowledge gives heavily diminishing returns.
Overall, the argument glosses over a lot of things and those glosses make the argument look a lot better than it is.
You two are looking at different wealth charts. You are referencing the starting wealth chart, and Unicore I believe is referencing the rewards chart, basically what you get over the course of the level:
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Casting is casting. We don't need these little boxes any more. Spell slots are limited now. Spells are all balanced. Metamagic works the same for everyone now whether prepared or spontaneous.Also I very vehemently disagree with this. Kinds of magic, approaches to magic, should feel very different. Wizards and Bards quite literally interact with and see the world in entirely different ways. Bards tap into some kind of Jungian collective unconscious for their magic, and wizards do like esoteric science nonsense, while sorcerers are like the athletes of spellcasters practicing using the magic inherent within them. When you play one of these the mechanics should reflect these differences, and right now prepared casting reflects a difference that makes wizards feel just that extra but wizardy. My only contention is that prepared casting doesn't add much flavor-wise to clerics and druids, especially clerics. It's great for the witch, magus and wizard though
Thematically, the wizard and bard to interact differently. Mechanically, they don't. They are both legendary progression casters sharing many of the same spells casting them exactly for the same action cost and same effect.
Thematically, the wizard and bard to interact differently. Mechanically, they don't. They are both legendary progression casters sharing many of the same spells casting them exactly for the same action cost and same effect.Casting is casting. We don't need these little boxes any more. Spell slots are limited now. Spells are all balanced. Metamagic works the same for everyone now whether prepared or spontaneous.Also I very vehemently disagree with this. Kinds of magic, approaches to magic, should feel very different. Wizards and Bards quite literally interact with and see the world in entirely different ways. Bards tap into some kind of Jungian collective unconscious for their magic, and wizards do like esoteric science nonsense, while sorcerers are like the athletes of spellcasters practicing using the magic inherent within them. When you play one of these the mechanics should reflect these differences, and right now prepared casting reflects a difference that makes wizards feel just that extra but wizardy. My only contention is that prepared casting doesn't add much flavor-wise to clerics and druids, especially clerics. It's great for the witch, magus and wizard though
Considering one prepares spells and one has spells known, already there is a mechanical divergence which represents their thematic divergence. More over bards get focus cantrips and such, wizards get theses, schools and so on. They have very different feats, bards get all kinds of songs, performances, things dealing with lore and emotion, and wizards get feats which weave protective sigils, alter the function of spell slots, and other much more utilitarian effects. Mechanics reflect thematics, and they should. Where there isn't enough differentiation between casters is precisely a place I see a problem. Different casters should feel different
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Being spontaneous and prepared simultaneously is an extremely large power boost and should eat up a significant portion of the power budget. Spontaneous prepared, aka flexible casting, should probably be limited to 2 slots per rank. It's absurdly powerful. 2 slots and next to no unique class features. Sorcerers would look pathetic in comparison otherwise. Combining this with Spell Substition means you just get access to your whole spell list. You have every silver bullet pretty much exactly as you need it. Absurd
No, it isn't. There are no silver bullet spells, stop pretending they exist any longer.
The sorcerer has36 spells. 36. They get 45 at level 16. They cast them spontaneously with signature spells. They can even change out a spell with Arcane Evolution and it doesn't break the game.
You're making stuff up to continue this false problem that doesn't exist.
Spontaneous and Prepared was already blended in PF1 with the Arcanist and it still wasn't as strong as the wizard because of the number of spell slots and the power of metamagic and feats like Spell Perfection and Spell Mastery.
I never quite get why people make these claims that are so easy to prove wrong and so utterly unprovable. Just pure conjecture with plenty of already available evidence to the contrary like spontaneous casters in 2E mixing prepared already existing.
I've played multiple casters to level 17 plus before I implemented spontaneous for all. I played a level 17 druid, level 17 bard, level 10 sorcerer, level 5 wizard, level 17 cleric, and a level 12 wizard. I did not make the decision to move everyone to spontaneous like 5E until I saw how PF2 worked.
It doesn't increase power at all. Why? This game is already balanced at the spell level. There are no silver bullet spells. Saves can't be altered from caster to caster. Fights are a short number of rounds with each spell costing the same action cost.
Unless you're doing an enormous number of fights per day, spontaneous versus prepared is mostly irrelevant and prepared is just an inconvenience if you try too hard to find what you call "silver bullet" spells when you're just as likely to get the same result using slow or lightning bolt or magic missile.
You spend this time pretending there are these massive number of scenarios that require preparation and that isn't true. 90 percent plus of combats can be solved by the same spells. You just change it up for your own amusement.
Out of combat the spell changing is a little more useful, but even in those encounters a good rogue or skill monkey can accomplish nearly all the same things without a spell lost.
This Schroedinger's wizard argument is one I've heard so many times over the years and yet if I were walk into your games, I wreck them in far less time without trying to get too clever about my spell loadout.
Changing spells has always been a vastly overrated ability. Even in PF1 I took power spells and wrecked nearly everything. I did not need much change to solve problems or "silver bullets." I took the power spells that worked great on everything with rare exception.
Some of you really like to dress something up that isn't that complicated. I have tons of experience across every edition of this game from the red box DMing and playing. I have tons of experience with other games.
I know with absolute certainty this game would run just as well with spontaneous and prepared blended. It already does. Even the wizard arcane bond and a few feats are basically spontaneous casting so you can grab that one spell from your book if you know it and blast it off. It doesn't break the game at all.
PF2 is built balanced regardless of what you do to it with the most imbalanced possibilities the blending of marital classes, not caster classes. PF2 breaks far worse if you let a dual class fighter and barbarian get made. A dual class fighter and cleric is just fine because of the actions per round limitation and that's one of the very worse caster and martial combinations that exist.
There is zero need to put handcuffs on that aren't necessary. This game doesn't break mixing spontaneous and prepared anymore than 5E broke or the Arcanist broke PF1.
You two are looking at different wealth charts. You are referencing the starting wealth chart, and Unicore I believe is referencing the rewards chart, basically what you get over the course of the level:
If I'm not mistaken, those charts express (close to) the same thing in different ways. It's just that one gives the starting wealth for the level for a single character (which is far easier to use), and the other says how much treasure the GM should give to the party as a whole over a given level (which is not as useful to players evaluating builds, but is helpful for GMs to benchmark loot against). The party currency for a level in the party chart can be divided by four to get the individual currency for that level+1 in the character chart, which is about as clear an indication of this as one could hope for.
It's admittedly somewhat confusing, both because the similarities are obscured by the assumption players will sell items they outgrow, and because there's an additional important clause in the text above the character wealth chart that helps square the differences between the two: "If the PC is joining a party that has already made progress toward the next level, consider giving the new character an additional item of their current level. "
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If I'm not mistaken, those charts express (close to) the same thing in different ways. It's just that one gives the starting wealth for the level for a single character (which is far easier to use), and the other says how much treasure the GM should give to the party as a whole over a given level (which is not as useful to players evaluating builds, but is helpful for GMs to benchmark loot against). The party currency for a level in the party chart can be divided by four to get the individual currency for that level+1 in the character chart, which is about as clear an indication of this as one could hope for.
It's admittedly somewhat confusing, both because the similarities are obscured by the assumption players will sell items they outgrow, and because there's an additional important clause in the text above the character wealth chart that helps square the differences between the two: "If the PC is joining a party that has already made progress toward the next level, consider giving the new character an additional item of their current level. "
I think she was just simplifying by having all the gold go to scrolls rather than getting into staves and wands etc. when creating an example some degree of abstraction and simplification is necessary to illustrate a point
snip
Always being able to target the weakest save with the best kind of spells effect against an enemy is a silver bullet. It's back breaking and even in this game solves an encounter, it's just less obvious. I don't know how you can consistently write the same things to me and everyone else day after day and expect things to go differently. Some spells affect different scenarios more, some spells still invalidate skills. Consider how fly invalidates athletics used to climb. Easy simple example, no skill check. Yes the game is well balanced, but part of that balance is restricting these things. Flexible casting has a cost for a reason, the designers were right to give it a cost of a spell slot per level
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Always being able to target the weakest save with the best kind of spells effect against an enemy is a silver bullet. It's back breaking and even in this game solves an encounter, it's just less obvious. I don't know how you can consistently write the same things to me and everyone else day after day and expect things to go differently. Some spells affect different scenarios more, some spells still invalidate skills. Consider how fly invalidates athletics used to climb. Easy simple example, no skill check. Yes the game is well balanced, but part of that balance is restricting these things. Flexible casting has a cost for a reason, the designers were right to give it a cost of a spell slot per level
"Silver bullet" is typically used to describe a uniquely efficacious spell. The main example still in 2E is something like Revealing Light against a poltergeist; it mitigates the most obnoxious aspect of the fight. Another example would be Roaring Applause against a creature uniquely dependent on its reaction to be threatening. (Roaring Applause is quite good even when this isn't true... but we'll ignore that for the sake of example.) The spell choice should have a uniquely significant detrimental effect on the enemy, or solve some important problem in the encounter, in order to be a silver bullet. It is not typically used to describe what often comes out to the equivalent of targeting the correct save with a shadow signet.
I feel like in some ways, you're agreeing with Deriven without realizing it here; it's just masked by disagreeing with the terminology being used.
Also, Fly hardly invalidates climb in this game; there comes a point where you autosucceed at most typical climb checks if you've been putting skill increases in, and a lot of martials get access to means of flight regardless. Heck, when fly comes online, the martial with Master athletics and a +4 STR is looking pretty good. That's what, level (7)+stat(4)+proficiency(6) for +17? You only fail or crit fail an expert DC 10% of the time, and by level 9, you'll never crit fail. That's resourceless! Fly costs a top rank or next to top rank slot.
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Also, Fly hardly invalidates climb in this game; there comes a point where you autosucceed at most typical climb checks if you've been putting skill increases in, and a lot of martials get access to means of flight regardless. Heck, when fly comes online, the martial with Master athletics and a +4 STR is looking pretty good. That's what, level (7)+stat(4)+proficiency(6) for +17? You only fail or crit fail...
There is something to be said about how spells can just take the spotlight away from others if you just allow casters to swap in the thing they need at that moment. In the example with fly, you really take a moment for the strength character away from them in this moment. There is also something to be said about fly being quicker than climbing since it's just movement and you don't have to move incrementally with each check, and also sheer surfaces. I also think spending a top rank slot when they're all modal and you can even refill one is less of a cost than if you had normal prepared casting. Fly isn't the best example, but it's the one I thought of in the moment. It's probably good things like knock now help your rogue pick locks instead of just opening doors now
My example was taking lump sum and spending all wealth on scrolls for the sorcerer, because that is very close to how I play casters. In reality I spend about 75-80 of my character wealth on scrolls which by level 7 usually amounts to about 1000 gold than 720, but I simplified for this example, because I wanted to demonstrate how much more the spell substitution wizard gets out of scroll usage than a sorcerer.
Again, I only gave the wizard half as much gold for scrolls as the sorcerer, when 65 to 70% would have been more accurate, so probably something more like 650 to 700 gp is what my actual, real Wizard has spent on scrolls, of which I am currently down to only 5 1st rank scrolls left because I use them like candy to cast spells all day long.
snipAlways being able to target the weakest save with the best kind of spells effect against an enemy is a silver bullet. It's back breaking and even in this game solves an encounter, it's just less obvious. I don't know how you can consistently write the same things to me and everyone else day after day and expect things to go differently. Some spells affect different scenarios more, some spells still invalidate skills. Consider how fly invalidates athletics used to climb. Easy simple example, no skill check. Yes the game is well balanced, but part of that balance is restricting these things. Flexible casting has a cost for a reason, the designers were right to give it a cost...
Yeah, “there are no silver bullet spells” is a wild take lol.
I throw Laughing Fit when facing a Black Dragon and know that we’ll die against its Reaction, Acid Grip when my friend is Restrained, Wall of Stone when facing 4x on-level enemies as a difficult encounter, Freezing Rain when facing 8+ lower level enemies as a difficult encounter, etc.
Not only are situationally good spells a powerful and useful thing in this game, the entire caster experience is balanced around their use.
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So keeping in mind that one is a rank 1 signature spell, and one has to be a bloodline spell, what are the 5 total rank 2 spells that make up the obvious must have spells for a sorcerer? We can just look at a level 7 arcanesorcerer for now.
Mist? Revealing Light? Dispel magic? Invisibility? Laughing fit? Acid grab? Floating flame? Illusory creature? False Vitality? Telekinetic Maneuver?
Because my 7th level wizard casts all of those pretty regularly plus at least 5 more second level spells enough that scrolls would be a lot of wealth down the drain at this point. And none of those are heightened 1st level spells.
So keeping in mind that one is a rank 1 signature spell, and one has to be a bloodline spell, what are the 5 total rank 2 spells that make up the obvious must have spells for a sorcerer? We can just look at a level 7 arcanesorcerer for now.
Mist? Revealing Light? Dispel magic? Invisibility? Laughing fit? Acid grab? Floating flame? Illusory creature? False Vitality? Telekinetic Maneuver?
Because my 7th level wizard casts all of those pretty regularly plus at least 5 more second level spells enough that scrolls would be a lot of wealth down the drain at this point. And none of those are heightened 1st level spells.
More a contribution than an answer, but when checking this, I would assign a lower value to spells like Revealing Light that have their silver bullet aspect well-covered by nonmagical consumables.
Cat's Eye Elixir
Revealing Mist
The primary value adds for Revealing Light over these are inflicting dazzled, which is nice, but ultimately unnecessary to counter invisibility; and using the caster's actions instead of the martials'. The consumables have the upside of never failing, instead.
Ok, so we get rid of revealing light, leaving 9 more.
As a spell substitution wizard, I like having revealing light as one rank 2 spell whenever it sounds like we might be fighting fiends, ghosts, etc where it might be useful, then switching it out as I run down on other important spells, thus only using a consumable to cover it if it is a late encounter in the day, rather than something I have to use a consumable for every time I encounter an invisible creature, but I get that there are many campaigns where its useage is rare enough for it not to be a big deal.
Unrelated, but I felt "glitter dust" fit the aesthetic of wizards and arcane casters in general better than revealing light does, which feels more divine than arcane. Obviously I can just reflavor this, lowest tier of complaint possible
Unrelated, but I felt "glitter dust" fit the aesthetic of wizards and arcane casters in general better than revealing light does, which feels more divine than arcane. Obviously I can just reflavor this, lowest tier of complaint possible
If I'm being honest, every time I see the spell, I just think of the picture on SWORDS OF REVEALING LIGHT from ygo, of all things. So I can't exactly say I'm much better off than you here.
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So keeping in mind that one is a rank 1 signature spell, and one has to be a bloodline spell, what are the 5 total rank 2 spells that make up the obvious must have spells for a sorcerer? We can just look at a level 7 arcanesorcerer for now.
Mist? Revealing Light? Dispel magic? Invisibility? Laughing fit? Acid grab? Floating flame? Illusory creature? False Vitality? Telekinetic Maneuver?
Because my 7th level wizard casts all of those pretty regularly plus at least 5 more second level spells enough that scrolls would be a lot of wealth down the drain at this point. And none of those are heightened 1st level spells.
Exactly. It’s not about whether there are 4 or 5 spells a Wizard switches up between that the Sorcerer can more or less replicate. It’s the 40 or 50 spells which the Wizard switches between that the Sorcerer usually can’t replicate without a lot of good expenditure.
Over the course of levels 1-10, the spells that my Wizard found crucial for some or the other reason (at various levels) were:
- 1st rank: Runic Weapon, Befuddle, Fear, Force Barrage, Air Bubble, Mystic Armour, Interposing Earth, Summon Animal
- 2nd rank: Acid Grip, Floating Flame, Entangling Flora, Revealing Light, Blazing Armoury, Tailwind, Laughing Fit, Propulsive Breeze, Water Breathing, Timely Tutor, Blur
- 3rd rank: Floating Flame, Thunderstrike, Fear, Fireball, Force Barrage, Hypnotize, Slow, Dehydrate, Horizon Thunder Sphere, Haste, Wooden Double, Agonizing Despair, Earthbind, Lightning Bolt, Time Jump
- 4th rank: Floating Flame, Fireball, Horizon Thunder Sphere, Vision of Death, Cinder Swarm, Wall of Fire, Fly, Rust Cloud, Dispel Magic, Heightened Invisibility, Confusion
- 5th rank: Floating Flame, Dehydrate, Summon Elemental, Wall of Stone, Wave of Despair, Freezing Rain, Quicken Time
That’s all I can remember, I probably had way more spells that I used as a “one and done” on very short notice that I’m forgetting about. Some of those spells came out of scrolls and wands but the vast majority came out of my own slots.
A Sorcerer across these levels would’ve learned a total of… 20 spells, with access to 9 guaranteed retrains (let’s say 14-15 ish with reasonable amounts of downtime?), and 4 signature spells. They’d have had to spend nearly all their gold to match my flexibility via scrolls and wands here, while I spent a fraction of that on learning spells, and got to spend the rest of my gold on magic items that boosted me. What’s more is, I got plenty of “short notice” flexibility: the flexibility to spec into things on only a day’s notice without time to buy scrolls. Just a constantly swapping repertoire of spells, adjusting day by day to the challenges I expect to see in the coming days, something a Spomtaneous caster can’t really even try to match.
And the best part? I’m not describing a Spell Substitution Wizard… I’m describing an Improved Familiar Attunement one. It should go without saying that a Spell Sub will have exponentially more flexibility than I described.
Whenever we bring up the flexibility of Prepared casters, people always try to make light of it by saying that a Spontaneous caster can learn 4-5 of those spells and have “just as much” flexibility. The fact is, you can’t. Prepared casters have way, way more day to day flexibility than a Spontaneous caster, and Spell Sub Wizards have better hour to hour flexibility too.
It goes without saying that if you try to play a Wizard like a Spontaneous caster (as a mostly-constant pile of wide-ranging, generically useful spells) they’ll feel lacklustre compared to Sorcerers. But Prepared casters are a constantly shifting pile of narrowly-focused spells that catch the challenges you face within a single day, and that’s how you have to play them to make them shine. Another character can make judicious use of consumables and scrolls to approximate a small portion of that flexibility but a well-played Prepared caster will still have significantly more than the former can manage, while also getting to spend their gold on more permanent things (as well as always having the option to get scrolls or consumables whenever they best work).
OK. lets use the text.
GM might allow means exactly that they didnt set the curriculum spell list in stone. It is not homebrew to follow this prompt and work...
Curriculum Spells: You automatically add some of the
spells listed in your school’s curriculum to your spellbook.
At 1st level, you add a cantrip and two 1st-rank spells
of your choice. As soon as you gain the ability to cast
wizard spells of a new rank, choose one of the spells from
your curriculum of that rank to add to your spellbook.
A superscript “U” indicates an uncommon spell. Your
GM might allow you to swap or add other spells to your
curriculum if they strongly fit the theme.
I mean, it is homebrew on the end because they set no guidance on what it means to strongly fit the theme. It sure can't be another PC1 spell, because they would have included it already, right? Compare this the the way they phrase custom staffs and you can see there's a big gulf.
Also, bluntly speaking, if one of the key decision point in building a Wizard is going to vary in power level depending on whether the GM does extra work or not, it's entirely fair to evaluate it in the strictest basis - after all, any GM can boost a flagging class by giving it more stuff, the fact this is text rather than subtext for a wizard only speaks to how badly off it is at baseline.
No, it can absolutely be another pc1 spell. There is nothing saying swapping must come from other books.
Creating a new spell or new school with a new focus spell and advanced focus spell is homebrewing.
I'm not going to quibble what the actual line on honebrewing is but can you see how bad it is that the main defense of the spell choices for schools is "the GM is explicitly allowed to replace any and all spells"?
No, it can absolutely be another pc1 spell. There is nothing saying swapping must come from other books.
Creating a new spell or new school with a new focus spell and advanced focus spell is homebrewing.
Yeah I can see that since some GMs might not want to deal with allowing a swap at all.
That kind of hard line thinking though isnt what the design expects though. They knew the problems associated with strict once time printed lists of spells. I think this was an attempt at keeping it open for groups at each table to expand or swap out spells into the existing lists as that table sees is appropriate with the guiding principle of spells allowed being on theme.
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I'm not going to quibble what the actual line on honebrewing is but can you see how bad it is that the main defense of the spell choices for schools is "the GM is explicitly allowed to replace any and all spells"?
No, it can absolutely be another pc1 spell. There is nothing saying swapping must come from other books.
Creating a new spell or new school with a new focus spell and advanced focus spell is homebrewing.
Yeah I can see that since some GMs might not want to deal with allowing a swap at all.
That kind of hard line thinking though isnt what the design expects though. They knew the problems associated with strict once time printed lists of spells. I think this was an attempt at keeping it open for groups at each table to expand or swap out spells into the existing lists as that table sees is appropriate with the guiding principle of spells allowed being on theme.
This is part of the high table variance problem.
There can be such a wild swing in what is allowed from table to table due to this type of implementation that it creates this gulf of experiences.
Some tables will have a basically unrestricted 4th slot. Others will be mostly locked down to the printed with maybe a rare addition.
I'm not going to quibble what the actual line on honebrewing is but can you see how bad it is that the main defense of the spell choices for schools is "the GM is explicitly allowed to replace any and all spells"?
No, it can absolutely be another pc1 spell. There is nothing saying swapping must come from other books.
Creating a new spell or new school with a new focus spell and advanced focus spell is homebrewing.
Yeah I can see that since some GMs might not want to deal with allowing a swap at all.
That kind of hard line thinking though isnt what the design expects though. They knew the problems associated with strict once time printed lists of spells. I think this was an attempt at keeping it open for groups at each table to expand or swap out spells into the existing lists as that table sees is appropriate with the guiding principle of spells allowed being on theme.This is part of the high table variance problem.
There can be such a wild swing in what is allowed from table to table due to this type of implementation that it creates this gulf of experiences.
Some tables will have a basically unrestricted 4th slot. Others will be mostly locked down to the printed with maybe a rare addition.
I would say if im casting judgment that the tables not allowing any swaps are as far from the expectations for the wizard as the ones allowing it to be unrestricted. But we are all unerringly subjective in what we do in any specific proposed swap so i get it.
it might be nice to start an advice thread on this topic where we weigh in on suggested spells and if they meet the theme strongly enough to be considered a respectable swap.
I hear what people are saying about the table variance with curriculum spells, but it also doesn't really matter all that much in actual play. The way your options balloon up with heightening, there is no school that has nothing to cast with their curriculum spells except maybe the rank 1 spell at higher levels, where that one spell slot is about the most insignificant fraction of the wizards power or character definition.
Spell Blending can easily erase even that limitation, so even the most strict tables are really not all that limiting on making the curriculum at worst a non-factor in your character's identity and with focus spells it should be able to easily be more than that. And again, that is the absolute worst case scenario for the player. With any GM support or interest in letting the wizard player have fun and play their character well, it goes a lot better.
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Curriculum spells make up a very small percentage of the spells a wizard knows. I don’t know why anyone would play a boundary wizard and not learn at least summon construct as well as summon undead, and then learn final sacrifice as well. As a GM, I would probably let a player sub those in if they wanted, but even if I didn’t, it’s not like they can’t learn them on their own and then memorize summon undead at rank 1 and rank 2 to use as creatures to flank, draw attacks, control positioning, and then blow up after using.
The same is really true with civic wizardry as well. If creatures attack a summons to keep you from blowing it up, then your rank 1 spell did more than a slow spell. Congratulations.
The focus spells are more important than the curriculum spells, so if you hate both of those, it is a bad school for your character, but getting different focus spells is trivially easy in PF2, and generally a good idea for a class that only has 2 or less.
Also, my preferred thesis is substitution. I don’t have issues with the curriculum spells. I don’t live every option in Ars Grammatica, but command and dispel magic have been plenty good enough, and enthrall has had some non-combat utility to it too. I really like dispelling globe for some of the very caster heavy dungeons in our campaign, but almost always find a way to use a top rank dispel magic every day.
My point about spell blending is that the game gives multiple ways to deal with the limitations of spell school curriculums that can very easily minimize the problems that people keep having with it. Blend the spells away, choose a school that works for you, choose universalist, or talk to your GM about subbing out one or two low rank spells and your actual play experience will be fine.
I hear what people are saying about the table variance with curriculum spells, but it also doesn't really matter all that much in actual play. The way your options balloon up with heightening, there is no school that has nothing to cast with their curriculum spells except maybe the rank 1 spell at higher levels, where that one spell slot is about the most insignificant fraction of the wizards power or character definition.
Spell Blending can easily erase even that limitation, so even the most strict tables are really not all that limiting on making the curriculum at worst a non-factor in your character's identity and with focus spells it should be able to easily be more than that. And again, that is the absolute worst case scenario for the player. With any GM support or interest in letting the wizard player have fun and play their character well, it goes a lot better.
I feel like every time people mention their issues with the wizard you insist they're not really a problem or that it's the GM's fault.
Like, the dead 1st rank slot is very relevant from 3rd to 6th level! And it's not like the other ranks have evergreen spells, either, so even at 7th level you need to concern yourself with what's on your 2nd and 3rd rank slots and yeah those have issues too. Sure hope you are going to come up against an invisible enemy 1/day as Civic or Boundary, because that's what's stuck in your 2nd and 3rd rank slots once they aren't your highest.
And if the answer to all that is spell blending, Paizo sure made a mistake publishing any other thesis at all.
(Focus spells once again shit on poor boundary, who has technically 2 spells it applies to but practically 1 because nobody uses phantasm minion in combat)
To be fair why pick a school if overall you dont want to cast spells in the curriculum?
I think part of the problem with curriculums is that they only cover a small subset of the spells that would actually fit them. If you want to prepare fear into your Mentalism slot or summon construct into your Boundary slot, either your GM has to make a special allowance or you just can't, irrespective of how thematically appropriate it would be. It's not just that that fourth slot is mechanically restricted, it's fairly thematically restricted as well, since you're expected to make use of your fairly broad arcane school only in a very specific, prescribed way, when there are a vast number of different ways to approach that same flavor using other arcane spells.
I think part of the problem with curriculums is that they only cover a small subset of the spells that would actually fit them. If you want to prepare fear into your Mentalism slot or summon construct into your Boundary slot, either your GM has to make a special allowance or you just can't, irrespective of how thematically appropriate it would be. It's not just that that fourth slot is mechanically restricted, it's fairly thematically restricted as well, since you're expected to make use of your fairly broad arcane school only in a very specific, prescribed way, when there are a vast number of different ways to approach that same flavor using other arcane spells.
Theme is the appropriate measure there. The cool thing about theme is how the designers backed of from overly describing magic spells in this edition. Fear is a great example. It can theme appropriately to mentalism of course as it affects emotions and the mind but it can theme on boundry or battle or even protean as well.
Imagine your fear spell gives a glimpse of unknown horrors from other planes to your victim (Boundary). OR your fear spell is in the form of a magically terrifying battle cry (Battle). Or your fear spell taps into the innate physiological flight response of living creatures (Protean)I remember reading the designers talking about moving away from overly describing the themeing of spells somewhere to allow those playing the game to think of spells in their own way. This is all theming not just tags.
This is not to say any spell fits into any school and that is what the GM is there to do. Keep players from just picking for power reasons and not even trying to fit the theme.
Yes but all these things you mentioned requires the GM to be a designer. If you don't, you get a mediocre ciruculum. That's survivable if the class slathers enough incentives to use them anyway (sorcerer, mostly, and i suppose remaster oracle) but the wizard isn't really in a place to afford someone picking 1/4th of their spells with a roulette.
Designer implies the GM is creating content. Its a characterization that I disagree with.
That's not what swapping is at all.Also players are going to make the argument for something fitting their school theme. the GM is just acting as the gate to keep it within reason.
On the matter of having enough incentives I actually agree there. i think wizard would be a more interesting class to play if they got a free additional lore that fits the school theme and if theses had some feet progression on top of what they are including some kind of order explorer equivalent tree to get some of the benefits of a thesis you didnt start with.