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Can your or anyone else taking this position provide real ideas for fixing casters that doesn't include making them overpowered again?
Yes. For the wizard improve their initial skills to (3 + Int) skills and Arcana. Give them an extra skill increase in Arcana, Occultism, Nature, or Relgion at 4nd level, 8th level, 12th level, 16th level, and 28th level. That should restore their reputation for knowledge. Invent some weak but free metamagic/spellshape abilities to give them at 2nd level, 6th level, 10th level, 14th level, and 18th level, such as "Stretch Range Your ranged spells stretch farther. Increase your ranged spells' range by 5 feet. This has no effect on spells with a range of touch." and 'Extra Cantrip You can prepare one additional cantrip each day," and "Access Wand You can activate a wand that you carry in your clothing rather than hold in your hand." This will restore their reputation as masters of spellcasting.
Paizo already fixed the wizard's weapon proficiencies.
This would have no effect on the Wizard Multiclass Archetype, so Paizo won't have to worry about that.
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?
I have played only NPCs in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. However, I have seen my players play several different kinds of spellcasters. They seem effective to me. The one class that seemed to have a flaw was swashbuckler, which had trouble gaining panache against a single high-level opponent. Paizo addressed that in Player Core 2 Preview: The Swashbuckler, Remastered.
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.
My players found reasonable tactics for their characters. However, inventing those tactics required gaming skill. I read that players mistakenly thought that the best way to play a PF2 martial character was to stand still and make three Strikes. Using Demoralize or Raise a Shield is more subtle. Likewise, I suspect that some players think that the best way to play a PF2 arcane or primal spellcaster is to take direct action against the opponents with their most powerful remaining spells. Battlefield control or using cantrips at high level is more subtle.
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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...
I didn't play in the playtest, but I've seen it mentioned a few times that they did take spell slots out, but people complained so they put it back in.
I think this was a terrible idea, I understand they didn't want to scare away a large portion of the player base, but spell slots don't fit in to PF2s encounter design. The reason why encounter design is so fantastic is because you always have the base line of characters at full power, baring a few generally not fantastic daily abilities. Spell slots however fly in the face of this great design.Focus spells try to remedy this some but aren't great because of the way up casting is intentionally weak.
Add in the two action cost and how likely creatures save or crit save your limited resource and you can have a lot of 'feels bad' no matter how effective you might actually be overall.
Also your play experience can very greatly depending on how your GM plays monsters. With the mobility inherent in this edition coupled with monsters having generally better stats then players there's rarely a reason for monsters to not split the group up. Casters should always have an enemy on them, this plays to the monsters strength of superior stats, one monster or more onto each player. Monsters using divide and conquer strategies will be far more effective since casters tend to go down fast.
So as a group you need to figure out how to mitigate these problems, not just to be effective but also to figure out how to have fun.
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but spell slots don't fit in to PF2s encounter design.
Why?
Nothing in PF2 really causes issue with limited resources.I personally love PF2 spellcasters and have much more issues with martials that I find repetitive and uninspiring. Even my Eldritch Archer Rogue (not exactly the most repetitive and uninspiring character) ends up boring as overall I still do pretty much always the same things.
With casters, I have so much more choice (especially Spontaneous casters, I must admit that Prepared casters are much closer to martials in terms of repetition). I'd really hate to see casters being replaced by Kineticist-inspired classes, as I really dislike the Kineticist class.
Can your or anyone else taking this position provide real ideas for fixing casters that doesn't include making them overpowered again?Yes. For the wizard improve their initial skills to (3 + Int) skills and Arcana. Give them an extra skill increase in Arcana, Occultism, Nature, or Relgion at 4nd level, 8th level, 12th level, 16th level, and 28th level. That should restore their reputation for knowledge. Invent some weak but free metamagic/spellshape abilities to give them at 2nd level, 6th level, 10th level, 14th level, and 18th level, such as "Stretch Range Your ranged spells stretch farther. Increase your ranged spells' range by 5 feet. This has no effect on spells with a range of touch." and 'Extra Cantrip You can prepare one additional cantrip each day," and "Access Wand You can activate a wand that you carry in your clothing rather than hold in your hand." This will restore their reputation as masters of spellcasting.
Paizo already fixed the wizard's weapon proficiencies.
This would have no effect on the Wizard Multiclass Archetype, so Paizo won't have to worry about that.
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?I have played only NPCs in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. However, I have seen my players play several different kinds of spellcasters. They seem effective to me. The one class that seemed to have a flaw was swashbuckler, which had trouble gaining panache against a single high-level opponent. Paizo addressed that in Player Core 2 Preview: The Swashbuckler, Remastered.
...These nebulous threads are about as helpful to a designer anyone saying they don't like how something feel is.
Provide actionable
Well, you weren't exactly who I meant as you don't actually complain about the nebulous term "casters."
I would rather see the "casters are weak" crowd prove it with real game examples measured against martial performance like I have done. Damage, overall game effect, and the like for a well built caster.
Weak martials don't play well either. So when folks say, "You're playing wrong", the same applies to martials. If you choose a weak martial build, you'll be weak. Which is another reason why the whole "casters vs. martials" debate is a completely ridiculous, nebulous conversation.
They should provide examples of what they are comparing. What builds are you comparing?
Some generalist wizard versus a two-hander fighter at level 4? Or a level 16 well built druid versus a two-weapon fighter? What are they comparing? How do we even know what they mean if they don't have real game examples, comparative builds, and more information for Paizo to even action this nebulous complaint.
Or are they just trolling all of us because they know what will happen.
Where is Darksol's exmamples? What does he consider a caster? What is he comparing it too? Just saying martial means nothing with what? 8 or so martial classes and 6 or so caster classes? Then you have hybrids and odd classes like the Alchemist.
What are these "casters are weak" players comparing things to? What have they built?
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Honestly, from my experience, the main issue players have with casters is the difficulty to handle slotted spells.
I remember a PFS game with a Witch. At the end of the game, I was unable to say what tradition the Witch had considering they didn't cast a single slotted spell. And the last fight was really tough and definitely advantaging casters (enemies scattered all around with significant terrain advantage, a nightmare for martials) so they had all the time in the world to unload everything (I actually unloaded everything and ended up with no spell slot left in my 2 highest ranks).
I'm not sure I can remember of a single player with even half my efficiency with a caster. And it doesn't come from their builds, it doesn't come from the spell they choose, it just goes down to how to play a caster in the round to round basis.
Once people will understand that hoarding spells doesn't work, that you need to unload your spell list on a daily basis, they will increase their efficiency by easily 100%.
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I am not going to rehash a bunch of stuff in this thread about tactics, but I love the PF2 wizard and think it is plenty powerful from level 1 on.
I played a wizard from level 1 to 6 in outlaws of Alkenstar before he died saving the whole party from a TPK, instead of choosing to leave and save himself because the 3 martial characters all rushed in and got stomped. Burdock Howlerday, Gnoll illusionist, would probably qualify to most eyes on paper as a utility caster, as he solved 50-75% of 75% of the social, investigation, and infiltration encounters with his spell slots, and was still regularly out damaging every other character in the party, because outlaws of Alkenstar is a campaign with a ton of exploitable energy weaknesses, which martials really struggle to do.
My wizard in our our current Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign is one of two party tanks in a party that includes 2 Kineticists and an alchemist, and accomplishes that most effectively by blasting hard in round one and making herself the biggest target in the room, because a caster using 3 actions to do damage with top slots is incredibly powerful, but written off as impossible by a huge part of the folks railing against them.
I do not see these “blasters are terrible” comments having much to stand on in practice except by players trying to do the same thing every single encounter.
At high level, the arcane list having the power word spells are brutal. I don’t see them coming back the same way in the remaster, but not getting anything like them will really hurt wizards who’s GMs don’t allow them.
At high level, the arcane list having the power word spells are brutal. I don’t see them coming back the same way in the remaster, but not getting anything like them will really hurt wizards who’s GMs don’t allow them.
I found out the power word spells are good playing a magus to high level. Power Word kill is not quite as good as Synesthesia, but it serves a different function.
I hammered this enemy with a bow shot amped imaginary weapon with my magus, then did a one action power word kill and finished it. The damage was insane. I don't even think I crit and it was 250 point hit or more. The bow shot at that level 17 was 30 points on average. The amped imaginary weapon was 81 points on average. Then 50 for the power word skill. I must have rolled well because was easily over 200 points of damage that round. All for one focus spell without a crit. If I had crit, would have been well over 200, up to 300 plus. It was nutters.
Never seen a regular fighter hit near that hard unless they crit every attack or something and never with a single hit from a weapon.
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
... 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.
Try to take easy. One of the problems of the players with casters in PF2e is that's hard to them to identify what exactly is wrong. They can feel that's something wrong but have difficulties to identify and consequently explain what is.
As well pointed by SuperBidi probably the main reason or at last is the main common reason shared by different caster classes is the resource management and decision paralysis/difficult that spell slots give to many players. This difficult is probably what creates most of the bad experiences with players preparing/using wrong spells in the wrong time or trying to saving slots to an emergencial situation that may never come.
I saw players doing this many times. Using high/top spell slots in the first encounters of the day and then when notice that they used too much stoping everything and just sadly staying using EA or playing in a way that they don't like to play due the afraid of becoming without slots in an emergency. Many times I tried to explain that they can more wisely like "try to save your top level slots to use with strong sustainable damage spell like flaming sphere floating flame or even summon creature instead of just use it repeatedly with a just strong instant blasts in same encounter" or "try to not use your AoE blasts vs single target. You probably is just wasting a high level spell slot instead use then when there are 3 or more creatures in the AoE when your blast will be numerically more effective" or "you have some focus spells use them primary when the situation is uncertain to know what's the best spell to use. You can recharge then between most encounters so just use then more freely while you analise the enemies and the situation to see if you need and what you need to do with your spell slots". PF2e spell slots are a big tool box full of useful but limited tools that work way better when used wisely yet many times many players just don't want to use it like this they just want to the spell that they want when they want and get frustrated when they become without resources or their plan fails because the spells sometimes fails and they have to deal that they are resource limited. That's why I recommend kineticists to frustrated players. Maybe have a smaller set of unlimited impulses probably will get a better experience for such players that want to use magic but have problems to deal with casters.
IMO the problem is more likely that they players are getting frustrated by the casters in PF2 because the game doesn't allow them to play as they wanted or imagined that they will play instead of just "the casters are bad".
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).
Would you happen to know where in the forums the answer to the expected adventuring day can be found? I’ve tried to find it, but to little success.
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We just wrapped up Age of Ashes where I took a bard from 1-20 and had a blast. Roaring applause, Synesthesia, Maze, Slow, Calm Emotions, Heroism and a few others were consistently better than doing 1/3-1/2 a monster's HP in damage.
I briefly looked at the remaster wizard when we were discussing new characters for the next AP and I was shocked that the Wizard (still?) felt so flat. I had presumed they would have gotten some added slots or flexibility with scrolls or wand tricks - but saw nothing that made me want to play one.
We're now 2 levels into Alkenstar and I'm having a lot of fun with a Kineticist. I'm sure there's fun approaches to the wizard out there, but I'm happy I don't have the paperwork and stress of a traditional caster to worry about anymore.
I've had a lot of people play Bard and they seem to always enjoy it. It's a well built class that telegraphs up front how it expects to play, and then delivers on that. (The one person who fell into the "Warrior Muse means I can play a frontline melee" trap had some troubles, but he started leaning more on buff spells and Courageous Assault later and was pretty effective, though I think the character fantasy he had in mind initially would have been better fulfilled with a Magus.)
So part of that is probably expectation management: people aren't making a Bard thinking they'll be nuking bosses with Disintegrate and then getting disappointed when that doesn't work.
Comparatively I've absolutely seen people make something like a Wizard, expect to be nuking enemies, and then get disappointed when they hit a boss or something with the elite template and spend a turn & a highest level spell slot to accomplish less than someone making a Strike. For all the paperwork and resource management, using your biggest resource to do damage and being out damaged by a Thaumaturge doesn't feel great.
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The psychology of it is important, I love my kineticist bc I have a small bag of spells that I can ALWAYS use. It's not as strong as a top lvl slot but it can never be "wasted" on an enemy with cracked defensive stats where failure was a forgone conclusion. I can smile safe in the knowledge that the cone of fire is coming again next turn, regardless of the enemy's crit success roll. Kineticist plays like a martial, it can keep swinging despite the spell chance paradigm of PF2e. As I've said before I'm more than excited for pf3e to go full dnd4e and destroy spell slots for more class/ feat based spell like abilities. Have a perfectly balanced game AND nuke the feels bad of wasting precious resources
Caster can be strong. but i agree that they are often at a disadvantage actions vice to martials, but i dont have a clean solution for that.
and most of the time especially at higher levels, the encounters in most the Adventure paths(i have played so far) favors martials and leaves alot of spells feeling underwhelming since there optimal situation almost never happens.
like whats the point of an aoe spells that can hit 10 targets when you never encounter more then 2-3 at the same time?
so i can see where some comes from when they say caster dont feel strong.
Personally im mixed on the topic i would not call them weak, but i feel casters need some love. remove one of the ropes holding its hand behind its back, no need to remove them all.
Maybe tweek proficiency so full casters are not behind martials in hit/save rate at most levels. or do something else.
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I don't remember where, but the answer is about 3* moderate+ encounters per day (so meaningful encounters where using high-rank spells is justifiable). Therefore the 'norm' is to use about 1 highest rank spell per such encounter (and remaining spells of lower rank). It's hard to explain so that's the reason this is not in books. That was more or less the reason given to us.
*4 is not the normal number of spells per rank!! Forgot about that.
I played half of the PFS content, Night of the Grey Death, Sky King's Tomb, Menace on Otari and the Slithering with a caster.
I don't really make a difference between top rank and second top rank spells: It happens a lot that the best spell I can cast in a given situation is a second top rank spell.
Once I get to level 3, I generally stop casting Cantrips. None of my casters has a 2-action Focus Spell, they mostly have utility Focus Spells. Focus Spells are a very small part of my contribution.
I nearly only cast slotted spells (complemented by Scrolls if I empty my spell list) during each and every combat round, until the fight is won (like there's just a few low life enemies remaining) and then I switch to cantrips.
On average, I cast a top rank and a second top rank spell per encounter, which is in general enough to end most encounters (especially all Moderate encounters).
I've been out of spells once, after a 10-round near TPK.
It doesn't really answer the question of "What is the length of an average adventuring day?" because I don't really know the answer. And actually, the average length is not that important as you need also to last during the longest adventuring days. But it gives an idea of a way to play that maximizes slotted spell use while (nearly) never getting out of spells.
Casters are much more durable than people think. Half a dozen spells will last you a bunch of fights even if you use them loosely, enough to finish most adventuring days.
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A caster willing to cast 3 spell slot spells a turn is an incredibly powerful character. You have your main shtick 2 action spell, you have your 1 action options for everything from doing moderately more damage (and usually better than martials third attacks, unless the martial is built to have strong third attacks, usually at the cost of first and second attacks), powerfully debuffing slightly less powerful foes, doing some healing, or doing something like jumping to safety, then you can also cast a powerful spell as a reaction, sometimes doing even more damage, or preventing damage now or preventing damage in the future.
Very few players play to this power ceiling ever with their caster players. Most don't because they never pick spells that allow them to in the first place, and you don't really get the number of spell slots and variety of spells to make it possible until around 5th level, so it is not even on many players radar as possible. Some build into having something other to do with the third action than cast spell from spell slots, and many go for archetypes to pick up for reactions, or want to primarily use focus spells in round 1. All of which can be fine ways to play a caster if the player is having fun playing that way, but none of it enables the character to experience blasting at its fullest.
For example, cast electric arc and shield is a very, very common level 1 round, even round 1 for many casters I see in play. Shield can be a really cool spell in the right situation: It doesn't have the manipulate trait, so casting it first when you are in a position to draw a reactive strike can greatly reduce the impact of casting a follow up spell that will draw that strike. But casting it as a third action when an enemy is already going to have to spend an action or 2 to move in order to attack you is throwing actions away, especially at higher levels, once you start having things like False Vitality and Wooden Double you can use to counter the surprising big strike that occasionally will come your way when you were not expecting it. So instead of shield, if you start adding in force barrages, shadow projectiles, blood vendetta, etc...well your ability to keep up with damage output is exceptional, it is just that you can't really keep it up at 100% for very many rounds a day until you are really high level, and even then it is accepting that sometimes you will be relying on focus spells and lower rank spells occasionally, but why do you need to?
This is why the metric of trying to track total damage done in a combat doesn't really feel that valuable to me. Doing 128 points of damage to a foe with 25 is really only doing 25 points of damage, and doing 30 damage to two enemies where 25 kills one of them is more than twice as effective a use of 2 actions than hitting the first one for 128 points of damage and missing the second one. This is where spells, especially AoEs that trigger multiple creatures weaknesses begin to completely blow martial damage out of the water.
Casters often benefit the most from approaching encounters differently than martials. Casters want to get 3 or 4 low to moderate encounters triggered at the same time and then talk of nukes can really come into play. Martials on the other hand want a slow steady stream of enemies that can be singled out and brought down one at a time. This could be a source of many players' frustration with casters, they are not getting enough encounters that suit their strength to shine, because they are the encounters that really wipe the floor of the martials.
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Only... you don't need downtime to learn spells. The learning time is measured in hours. It's a very strange campaign where you don't even have some free hours in adventuring days.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."
... 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.
The entire first book of Fists of the Ruby Phoenix goes from level 11 at the start to level 14 in the last chapter (you're 15 by the end), in 3 days of in game time. You spend those 3 days on the clock, where any time taken aside from 8 hours of rest counts against your exploration time to do all the stuff you want to do in the adventure, and there is a lot of stuff to find.
The second book gives you significant downtime in a city (ideal conditions), but the third book goes back to "you have 7 days to solve this problem", and you're spending most of that in remote places where you can't simply jaunt back to town to learn a spell you suddenly realize you need.
It's not THAT abnormal. Any time the PCs are put on a timer, taking a couple of days off to go to town to find a source of magical knowledge to copy spells from becomes substantially more difficult. It's not like this is something you can do in the field while recovering from a fight unless you already have a scroll or something of the spell, (and even then, Magical Shorthand will help a lot).
This is a major advantage Clerics and Druids have over Wizards in that this problem simply does not exist for them for common spells, and it's one of the things I find that makes them more popular in the circles I'm in: the extra layer of spellbook management doesn't really get you anything except work to get back to a point that other classes start at.
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You really do need to acquire quite some system mastery to make spellcasters shine in PF2e. These recurring 'casters-are-weak' vs 'git-gud' discussions are proof of that, I guess.
It also doesn't help that the role of spellcasters changed drastically between PF1 and PF2.
They aren't the only classes that changed role. My understanding is that Paladin changed from being a high damage dealer to being a defensive role.
But it seems that Wizard changing from being a combat ending powerhouse role to being a combination and resource management role of limited quantity of effectiveness in a wide range of possibilities doesn't sit well with a lot of people.
With the remaster all focus points being able to be refocused for 10 minutes per focus points means in most fights your casters generally will have 3 auto heightened focus spells they can use in an encounter without touching a spell slot. So the overall endurance for casters has gone way up from where it used to be.
Wizards have huge spell repertoires so if you prepare well you have more tools to potentially select from than basically all other spell casters.
One big issue I see causing wizards to not feel strong tends to be how the 4 levels of success works. Some GM like throwing fewer higher level creatures into a fight so their ability to succeed spell saves is a lot higher. Watching a creature succeed a lot of saves feels bad even though even on a save most of your spells are doing half damage unlike melee where it would be no damage or some lesser but still useful effect.
If you are dealing with a one or two creatures that is stronger than your party your melee are going to feel a lot stronger as their higher accuracy tends to mean they will hit and do damage more consistently where spell casters wind up having to just deal with half damage and lesser effects. Still contributing but it sometimes feels like you won the booby prize.
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Would you happen to know where in the forums the answer to the expected adventuring day can be found? I’ve tried to find it, but to little success.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).
One such answer is at Michael Sayre on Casters, Balance and Wizards, from Twitter, comment #114. Mr. Sayre joined that discussion and mentioned that an adventuring day was intended to have 3 Moderate-Threat Encounters, with no limit on Trivial- and Low-Threat encounters. He did not mention Severe-Threat encounters, but I find that the party needs to replenish their day's resources after a Severe Threat, so a single Severe-Threat encounter should end the adventuring day.
magispitt is correct that this information is both important and hard to find. Thus, when Michael Sayre made that comment, I posted a link to it at the end of my thread, Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, where the discussion had ended two months earlier, so that I could find that comment again.
Another developer had said in a Twitch stream or some other similar media that the reason wizards had three top-rank spell slots is because they expected to wizard to use one of those spells in each Moderate-Threat encounter.
The Pathfinder Core Rulebook did not mention the length of the adventuring day. I just word-searched the newer Pathfinder GM Core for the word "day," and found a few statements about the adventuring day, such as page 131, "A 7th-rank fly spell lasts an hour already, so one casting covers a significant portion of the adventuring day," and page 206, "Each hex represents a discreet area 12 miles from corner to corner, which can be traveled across and explored in about 1 day even by slower-moving groups." The GM Core under Dynamic Encounters gives advice about how different encounters will interact, but has no hard limit on the number of encounters per day.
In practice, unless the plot has a lot of time pressure, my players decide when their adventuring day ends. My input as the GM is providing a safe retreat and safe shelter when they want to quit for the day. I remember from early Dungeons & Dragons days when the party would bed down for the night in a dungeon room where they had killed a deadly monster, hoping that the wandering monsters had learned to avoid that room. Then they would spike the door, meaning nailing the door shut, to ensure they would have time to wake up and don armor if a foe did try to break into the room.
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A note on prepared casters. PF2 kept the premise of memory wiping spells after casting, the "fire and forget" type where one needs to prepare multiple copies of a spell if they want to cast it more than once.
There is some mitigation with this, starting with the bonded object, but having to waste resources to get a multiple of a favorite spell is an unforgivable tax and the reason I try to play the spontaneous casters when I can.
The other way to go is the Flexible Caster, but the pairing down of spell castings makes it to where they are almost a half caster and more reliant on their cantrips.
Hopefully, PF3 puts the nail in the coffin of Vancian casting.
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Can your or anyone else taking this position provide real ideas for fixing casters that doesn't include making them overpowered again?Yes. For the wizard improve their initial skills to (3 + Int) skills and Arcana. Give them ...Well, you weren't exactly who I meant as you don't actually complain about the nebulous term "casters."
I would rather see the "casters are weak" crowd prove it with real game examples measured against martial performance like I have done. Damage, overall game effect, and the like for a well built caster.
True, I am not in the "caster are weak" group. I do think that the wizard is the weakest caster, probably as a side effect of the spells being split into four traditions and the arcane list losing a lot of its exclusivity.
I had hoped that me giving actual suggestions for improving the wizard would inspire other people to point out what they percieve as the weaknesses of wizards. My suggestions are likely too minor for most complainers.
You really do need to acquire quite some system mastery to make spellcasters shine in PF2e. These recurring 'casters-are-weak' vs 'git-gud' discussions are proof of that, I guess.It also doesn't help that the role of spellcasters changed drastically between PF1 and PF2.
They aren't the only classes that changed role. My understanding is that Paladin changed from being a high damage dealer to being a defensive role.
But it seems that Wizard changing from being a combat ending powerhouse role to being a combination and resource management role of limited quantity of effectiveness in a wide range of possibilities doesn't sit well with a lot of people.
Over twenty years ago when playing a cleric in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition I realized that summoning creatures to protect the party would use fewer spells than healing them up afterwards. Resource management among spellcasters is nothing new. Of course, I was a 40-year-old mathematician, so analyzing the numbers was habit for me. Years later I read Treantmonk's Guide to the Wizard about battlefield control. Treantmonk updated the guide to PF1, but he switched over to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Treantmonk’s Guide to Wizards, Being a god (5th edition), and as far as I know never wrote a guide to the PF2 wizard. Nevertheless, the 5th Edition guide is worth reading for players of PF2 wizards.
I had an idea how I could help the group without dominating the action, and I came back with a Wizard character. In the first combat, I was encouraged to use my fireball, and the group was quite confused when I told them that I didn’t have Fireball, lightning bolt or even magic missile. I still remember the DM asking me, “So what DO you do then?” When I explained I would be putting up walls, fogs, buffing, debuffing, etc. My character was declared “useless.”
A couple months of playing and my character did not directly cause a single HP of damage to an enemy, nor did he use a single “save or die”. The campaign completed, and since my wizard was introduced, not a single character had died.
What I found really surprising is that everyone in the group still considered my character “useless”. Not a single player seemed to notice that my character had been introduced at the same time that the party death-toll had stopped. They had thought the campaign had become “easier” during the second half.
In my weekly game session this Tuesday, my players encountered a pair of Giant Mining Bees coming out of an underground tunnel into their basement room where they were preparing their expedition into the tunnels. That was a Trivial-Threat encounter, two 2nd-level creatures versus seven 3rd-level PCs, but the party sprang into action with battlefield control tactics. The champion moved to block the tunnel so that the bees could not enter the room and raised his shield instead of attacking. A bard had a critical success on her Recall Knowledge (Nature) check and learned about the bees' Smoke Susceptibility, The other bard used the Produce Flame cantrip on the magus so that she could Eat Fire and belch smoke onto the bees.
By the end of the battle, the spellcasters had used only cantrips to win. The only resources lost where 4 hit points of the champion, corrected with his own Lay on Hands focus spell, because the player had forgotten to Shield Block. And that focus point had time to recharge, because the wizard Idris wanted to cast two spells with one-minute casting time and one-hour duration, Breadcrumbs and Thermal Remedy, before entering the tunnels.
My players know resource-management tactics for spellcasters. The elf magus Zandre wants to become a hunter of evil fire-breathing dragons, so the Eat Fire cantrip fit her theme and she loved an opportunity to test it out.
This rambles into a side topic for a bit then circles back to the point. :)
I'm not a fan of PF2E's spell slot casters all that much either, but that's not because of them but because of me. They don't capture my 'fantasy' of what a magical spell user should be like.
Kineticist does the job for me a lot more. Though I would like some expansion of that.
Side tangent: in my late teens - 20s I was deep into occultism, like a lot of 'disaffected youth'. So I want a summoner that actually summons things. Built on a kineticist like chassis, which a huge stack of rituals as well. Not a Pokemon trainer like the summoner we got. But one that draws ritual circles and summons up creatures that are then plotting the summoner's demise while forced to do it's bidding, alongside 'kineticist like casts' of powers obtained by binding demons to oneself, and for 'quick and dirty summons' of demons only present in the material plane for a few rounds before being sucked back into the void. Unless you crit fail and they get loose... ;)
When I was a teen I had a friend who was convinced he could do this in reality... and of course since we were kids we believed him, and he had a weird smell and bad luck so it "made sense" in a way that as soon as I got a little older sounded absurd. Still - it's a great fantasy concept and it DOES feature in a lot of 60s-70s era fantasy, as well as the 'Conan' era of fantasy. Which is probably where he got the idea back when we were 15 and those novels were only a decade old.
So... I like Kineticist because it represents powers you have on hand all the time. I'm not into the 'researcher magic user' that D&D popularized.
THAT NOTED...
For it's concept, the PF2E ones work. It's just that they have one concept, one style of magic, and almost all of their casters are just variations on it.
And this style is NOT a blaster. It's about being able to find all kinds of solutions to a problem given time.
I want something 'quick, dirty, and dangerous' - like my idea above of a demon-summoner based on a mix of rituals and the kineticist chassis.
I think in the early 80s there was an Elric tRPG that had this style of magic in it.
For a lot of current tRPGers, they're coming from D&D. PF2E and D&D exist in each other's Uncanny Valley spaces - way too similar and yet completely different. If you come from one to the other you can't stop seeing and being jarred by the differences.
For casters - and this is based on what I see in conversations because I AM NOT a former 5E player - for casters... D&D also uses the 'magical researcher which can solve any problem given time' idea. But it also packs in a heavy damage blaster. PF2E took away the blaster and didn't give anything in return because, I am told, it's a major balance problem in D&D 5E that magic characters get to be both at the same time.
Kineticist by contrast took away the 'magical researcher' and kept the blaster. So this can again bother D&D players because you again don't get to be both at the same time.
And again, PF2E did that to maintain balance.
If like me you're not coming from D&D, this isn't a problem. You might have style problems like I mentioned above. But you're not having "this is underpowered" problems.
My experience with Wizards and Casting is that they're powerful, but that there's an affective component at work, you have to actually start thinking about average damage on a blaster for the play style to make sense, it revolves around having your damage potential be very sticky rather than just spiking.
Force Barrage, Basic Saves on spells like Fireball, Sudden Bolt, now spirit damage (which is why my guide hasn't been updated for the remaster yet, I need to see PC2 to fully grok the impact of spirit damage) are all consistency tools.
When you spend a few rounds popping off three action force barrages on targets your martials are reasonably likely to miss, you end up objectively high on the damage dealt chart, and ditto for basic saves which gain damage for what they lose in swinginess, and so forth.
In encounters where you don't do that, like multitarget ones, you can just drop fireballs, and you gain on martials on like 2 targets.
Neither Player nor GM Core will even hint at what 'correct' actually is thoughAnd neither APs btw, which is even more important.
The thing about "average encounters per day" is that it is in, fact, an average. Just because of the shape of the story, there are going to be some days where you have one encounter per day (e.g. you're on an oversea voyage and you might get attacked by pirates, but you won't be attacked by pirates three times in a day). There are likely going to be some days where you have to get through the entire stronghold since what you're looking for is going to be gone after you go home to sleep.
Casters are inherently going to be much stronger on the "one fight days" than on the "six fight days" but the mitigating factor here is that generally you don't have especially long adventuring days at low levels since that's deadly for everybody. By the time that you get to 11th level or whatever, you're going to have scrolls, etc. to help carry you when you have peaks in daily adventuring length. After all, an 11th level of character has like 5-6,000 GP worth of stuff and the caster isn't spendling like 1/3 of it on their weapon.
Only... you don't need downtime to learn spells. The learning time is measured in hours. It's a very strange campaign where you don't even have some free hours in adventuring days.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."
... 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.The entire first book of Fists of the Ruby Phoenix goes from level 11 at the start to level 14 in the last chapter (you're 15 by the end), in 3 days of in game time. You spend those 3 days on the clock, where any time taken aside from 8 hours of rest counts against your exploration time to do all the stuff you want to do in the adventure, and there is a lot of stuff to find.
The second book gives you significant downtime in a city (ideal conditions), but the third book goes back to "you have 7 days to solve this problem", and you're spending most of that in remote places where you can't simply jaunt back to town to learn a spell you suddenly realize you need.
It's not THAT abnormal. Any time the PCs are put on a timer, taking a couple of days off to go to town to find a source of magical knowledge to copy spells from becomes substantially more difficult. It's not like this is something you can do in the field while recovering from a fight unless you already have a scroll or something of the spell, (and even then, Magical Shorthand will help a lot).
This is a major advantage Clerics and Druids have over Wizards in that this problem simply does not exist for them for common spells, and it's one of the things I find that makes them more popular in the circles I'm in: the extra layer of spellbook management doesn't really get you anything except work to get back to a...
I have a player playing a wizard in a Fists campaign I am running. She had a bit of trouble with book one, but has absolutely dominated book 2, nearly to the level of old PF1 wizards. The tournament fights are almost never against solo, higher level monsters and spells like power word blind, power word stun, and wall of stone combined with the counter spell feats means that these other adventuring teams the party faces just get shut down, with the rest of the party just cleaning up. She is easily 2 + characters worth of party members in the amount of actions she swallows from the other team. I have not fallen in love with the third book, so I am thinking about condensing it down and throwing the more powerful enemies from it at the party earlier to keep it more of a tournament wrap up than a whole separate thing, in large part because the wizard is doing what wizards do to pathfinder APs.
From a GMing perspective it's fine to have individual fights that favor some members of the party and disfavor others, and it's fine to have entire sequences where one party member is better positioned than others, provided you change it up often enough that every player gets their time in the spotlight.
Now I know that some people unhappy with the state of casters in PF2 are used to a game where a Wizard can singlehandedly solve every problem the party faces after a certain point in their career, but under "expectation management" it's worth keeping track of "when a situation favors casters" and "when a situation favors martials" and compare the relative frequency thereof.
So, your strategy for making casters better balanced is to let a L5 wizard have the same HP and armor they have now, but give them 9 more spells per day (that's 5 fireballs instead of 2) all at +16 to hit? Making monster saves essentially impossible and double damage crits more common than hits are today?
How does a bonus to spell attack rolls affect Fireball???
But yes, why not give them more spell-slots? Kineticists can cast infinite Fireballs every day. What's wrong with wanting to play a blaster Wizard?
I do not see these “blasters are terrible” comments having much to stand on in practice except by players trying to do the same thing every single encounter.
And what's wrong with that? Martial players try to do the same thing every single encounter too.
I have a player playing a wizard in a Fists campaign I am running. She had a bit of trouble with book one, but has absolutely dominated book 2, nearly to the level of old PF1 wizards. The tournament fights are almost never against solo, higher level monsters and spells like power word blind, power word stun, and wall of stone combined with the counter spell feats means that these other adventuring teams the party faces just get shut down, with the rest of the party just cleaning up. She is easily 2 + characters worth of party members in the amount of actions she swallows from the other team.
Control casters, support casters, buff & debuff casters work fine. It's the blaster casters that don't.
Especially the Tempest Oracle sucks hard, despite its mystery waving a giant sign "USE ME TO BLAST ENEMIES LIKE STORM FROM X-MEN!".
I think it's kinda telling that everyone agrees that the Wizard is the weakest caster, but that is only possible because everyone is ignoring the giant Elephant Oracle in the room. Universally, there's no disagreement on the Oracle being too weak / hard to play atm.
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but spell slots don't fit in to PF2s encounter design.Why?
Nothing in PF2 really causes issue with limited resources.
I personally love PF2 spellcasters and have much more issues with martials that I find repetitive and uninspiring. Even my Eldritch Archer Rogue (not exactly the most repetitive and uninspiring character) ends up boring as overall I still do pretty much always the same things.With casters, I have so much more choice (especially Spontaneous casters, I must admit that Prepared casters are much closer to martials in terms of repetition). I'd really hate to see casters being replaced by Kineticist-inspired classes, as I really dislike the Kineticist class.
The fact people are looking for recommended encounters per day says otherwise.
Imagine tracking the BBEG of a story arc down to their lair. You could have 3-5 trap encounters, 6-10 combat encounters and then a climactic final battle. Slot casters are the only ones who might find that challenging just because of their core casting mechanics.It doesn't matter if you like them or if they are powerful, they can fail at any story that doesn't cater to them having to rest.
It's far easier to imagine people taking a 10 or 20 minute break and being able to continue but having to take 8 hours can easily not be an option.
Why should some classes work all day and others not?
You can't tell horror stories that involve sleep deprivation, no story where you might be interrupted and lose your rest say a battle field or deep in hostile territory, limited story's where you have to survive waves of enemies.
I've made a couple solutions to this problem, they need more testing to really get the numbers right. As much as I dislike spell slots as they are, there's fairly simple ways to fix the issue of running out of power.
On a side note, I'm going to say that the thing a notable amount of people like about standard casters, the ability to do anything so long as you have the time to get the right spells, is generally a really bad story focused mechanic. How often in a story does a caster have the wrong spells for what they are doing? It doesn't happen because that is bad story telling.
One of my fixes works to alleviate this issue as well, mixing spontaneous and standard casting some.
At the end of the day, there's just dozens of small things that can rub people the wrong way with casters and leave them with the feels bad. As such there's no easy fix, you need to figure out what things each player is having trouble with and work with them. Either finding another class that can do what they are looking for, having the group work together to get more out of what the caster brings to the table or home brewing something to aid them.
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Neither Player nor GM Core will even hint at what 'correct' actually is thoughAnd neither APs btw, which is even more important.The thing about "average encounters per day" is that it is in, fact, an average. Just because of the shape of the story, there are going to be some days where you have one encounter per day (e.g. you're on an oversea voyage and you might get attacked by pirates, but you won't be attacked by pirates three times in a day). There are likely going to be some days where you have to get through the entire stronghold since what you're looking for is going to be gone after you go home to sleep.
Casters are inherently going to be much stronger on the "one fight days" than on the "six fight days" but the mitigating factor here is that generally you don't have especially long adventuring days at low levels since that's deadly for everybody. By the time that you get to 11th level or whatever, you're going to have scrolls, etc. to help carry you when you have peaks in daily adventuring length. After all, an 11th level of character has like 5-6,000 GP worth of stuff and the caster isn't spendling like 1/3 of it on their weapon.
I wonder if the expectation of using consumables isn't another reason people perceive the wizard, and sometimes casters in general, as being lackluster. Issues with hoarding top-level slots for a hypothetical emergency also go for consumables, with the double issue of them typically being seen as more liquid coin in another form. Spending a scroll to win an encounter isn't just removing a tool for a "real" combat later on, but also taking hypothetical gold off the table to buy a more "important" tool for said encounter, as well.
As a note, this doesn't bug me personally. I used to hoard stuff, but now I try to heed the commandment, "Thou shalt use thy consumables at thy earliest opportunity," instead, and I've found it makes for more fun at the table. I think that's...
I know that we have some people that defend the usage of scrolls as backups to spells for casters but I have problems with them too. The top level ones are pretty expensive and the scrolls usage hurts the action economy of the casters (you need an action to draw) making them an alternative but not exactly a good alternative if you want to use your acation economy effectivelly or if you are sustaining a spell.
And honestly if I will play planning to use scrolls activelly I probably was playing as thaumaturge not as caster because at last thaumaturges can treat scrolls as esoterica and use them in the same hand of implements.
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IMO the problem is more likely that they players are getting frustrated by the casters in PF2 because the game doesn't allow them to play as they wanted or imagined that they will play instead of just "the casters are bad".
No, then this is exactly the reason why "the casters are bad". Game rules don't exist to show off your glorious rule-building skills, but to allow people to have fun and enjoy playing it. If the rules are in the way of fun, then the rules are bad.
Balanced rules are not a worthy rule design goal in itself. The only reason why things should be balanced is because unbalanced things diminish the fun.
Fun is the penultimate rule design goal, nothing else.
If people constantly complain that they don't enjoy casters/wizards/squirrels/whatever, then it's not a good idea to tell them "just learn how to caster, duh!" That's what you say if only a few people have voiced that issue.
But if a lot of people say the same thing over and over and over and over again, then what they say is important. It might not be a valid point, it might be born from ignorance or lack of skills, it might be asinine or annoying, but it's still important to address.
That's why the two most important comments in this entire thread are these two:
Waiting until the 4 day weekend to drop a grenade thread....pretty sneaky, Sis!
Oh a wizards are bad thread, it must be a thursday
That's because these comments show beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a perennial issue. And therefore an important issue to address! The comments are in and of themselves absolutely worthless, there's absolutely no content in there. But they show that this has been going on for a long time without being resolved.
Now, people might not know what exactly is troubling them, which is why asking things like the following is the worst thing you can do:
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.
I mean, imagine going to your car dealer, complaining that your new car doesn't work half the time, and the car dealer responds to you like that? "Can you provide real ideas for fixing your car?" "Have you measured the car's metrics against other cars, and know what you're talking about?"
You'd probably kick that car salesman in the nuts face.
It's not your job to fix the damn car. You are the customer. You paid for the car/game, and you want it fixed. It's the dealers/company's job to fix it.
You shouldn't dismiss all these complaints, even if they're nebulous, vague, whiny, or otherwise annoying. These are people who want to love playing Pathfinder 2e!
You should worry about all the people who don't complain, don't whine, don't post annoying threads, and instead simply leave PF 2e behind to look for greener pastures (e.g. D&D 5.5). These are lost customers, and there's virtually no way of getting them back.
The complainers are some of your most valuable customers, because they provide you feedback on your product, even if they can't tell what exactly it is they don't like.
Feedback is absolutely vital for any company. I bet all of you have hundreds of emails in your spam folder from companies asking for a review of a product you purchased, or some other mail where you're asked your opinion, rate their service, or so forth.
Companies are desperate for that kinda stuff. And here you have people providing feedback for free, without offering them a raffle or discount or whatever, and they're met with dismissal.
It doesn't matter whether you feel their complaints are valid. Just ignore the threads then. Otherwise, please try to be helpful.
We all want Pathfinder 2e to succeed, grow, and have a huge player base to enjoy adventures in Golarion with.
/rant
Happy Independence Day!
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It's the blaster casters that don't.
Tell me about it. Nearly always top damage dealer of the party I play in, having to do all the heavy lifting for these lazy martials.
Blaster casters are fine. I personally find them much better than other types of casters. As a side note, here's the guide I've written from my experience: Guide to blasting.
Especially the Tempest Oracle sucks hard, despite its mystery waving a giant sign "USE ME TO BLAST ENEMIES LIKE STORM FROM X-MEN!".
Mine took a bit of time to take off (but low level casters are not really the thing) but I recently got to this moment where I just blast the hell out of everything. Last fight I did with my level 6 Tempest Oracle: An awful encounter that would have last forever... if I was expecting martials to deal with it. I dealt 75% of the party damage during the first 3 rounds (2 Tempest Touch, 2 1-action Harm and a Lightning Bolt), killed 3 out of 5 guys nearly single-handedly before being focused by the remaining 2 that the martials finally managed to kill.
Well, obviously, it was it's most shiny moment, but I've never had any such moment with my martials.
Universally, there's no disagreement on the Oracle being too weak / hard to play atm.
There are worse casters than the Oracle (depending on their Mysteries, I look at you Ancestors). Bad saves but excellent defenses otherwise, spontaneous casting, lots of ways to grab spells from other spell lists, nice focus spells.
They just suffered from the change to Refocus, but it's close to be solved.You could have 3-5 trap encounters, 6-10 combat encounters and then a climactic final battle.
You forgot a few zeros here and there. Dungeons with that many encounters (and no way to bypass some) are an absolute rarity and a massive slog as no one likes to chain sessions after sessions on the same uninspiring fights (as most are certainly fillers).
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The fact people are looking for recommended encounters per day says otherwise.
Imagine tracking the BBEG of a story arc down to their lair. You could have 3-5 trap encounters, 6-10 combat encounters and then a climactic final battle. Slot casters are the only ones who might find that challenging just because of their core casting mechanics.It doesn't matter if you like them or if they are powerful, they can fail at any story that doesn't cater to them having to rest.
It's far easier to imagine people taking a 10 or 20 minute break and being able to continue but having to take 8 hours can easily not be an option.
Why should some classes work all day and others not?
This I think is one of the big issues with any sort of per-day resource. Any kind of limited resource tends to assume a certain pacing at which those resources are expended, which means that deviating from that pacing can have an impact on balance that doesn't happen to abilities with unlimited uses.
In the case of a resource like Focus Points, this is usually fine because the pace of encounters is extremely well-defined, but when it comes to the pacing of a session, or even an entire adventure, the game sets no rules or even guidelines to follow, so resources that matter across an entire session, like spell slots, can vary in availability tremendously. A two-hour session with at most one encounter is going to play very differently for a caster than a twelve hour marathon session with tons of encounters and exploration challenges and no rests in-between, and that caster can find themselves either outperforming everyone else or struggling to stay relevant as their resources are stretched too thin.
All of this creates additional complications and considerations for a GM that just don't happen with resourceless classes: in a hypothetical system where every class had no resource constraints outside of encounters, it wouldn't matter how long a session lasts, because you could always stop in-between encounters and pick things up with minimal bookkeeping, and wouldn't have to declare rests just so that half the party can play their class fully again. In the past, it was perhaps okay to assume that a session would last about 8 hours with usually 2-3 encounters, but now more and more people are playing online and after hours on work days, and so more and more tables are running shorter sessions. It would help for a future edition to reflect this change with fewer constraints and expectations on what a typical session is meant to look like, and a more flexible system would be able to better accommodate a greater variety of players. To bring it back to casters, if there were a model in which they could operate at a consistent level of power across any session length, without extreme peaks or valleys based on daily attrition, those classes would likely feel a lot better to play to some of the players who currently aren't happy with them.
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The idea that casters deal with a different set of constraints than martials is what makes magic feel different in the first place. PF2 probably would never have gotten off the ground abandoning spell slots in its initial development.
I am thrilled so many players enjoy playing the Kineticist, but for me it is repetitive and underwhelming in play. The wizard’s spell substitution thesis is absolutely amazing for players that like to observe and then execute a plan. Spell blending is great at higher levels for players that want to just blast with top slots. My experience with an Oracle was brief but highly enjoyable. But I disagree that the class is a designed blaster (beyond all casters with full prof. Progression being fine at also blasting). Blasting is just too easy of a tool for casters to access to build a whole character identity around.
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IMO the problem is more likely that they players are getting frustrated by the casters in PF2 because the game doesn't allow them to play as they wanted or imagined that they will play instead of just "the casters are bad".No, then this is exactly the reason why "the casters are bad". Game rules don't exist to show off your glorious rule-building skills, but to allow people to have fun and enjoy playing it. If the rules are in the way of fun, then the rules are bad.
Balanced rules are not a worthy rule design goal in itself. The only reason why things should be balanced is because unbalanced things diminish the fun.
Fun is the penultimate rule design goal, nothing else.
If people constantly complain that they don't enjoy casters/wizards/squirrels/whatever, then it's not a good idea to tell them "just learn how to caster, duh!" That's what you say if only a few people have voiced that issue.
But if a lot of people say the same thing over and over and over and over again, then what they say is important. It might not be a valid point, it might be born from ignorance or lack of skills, it might be asinine or annoying, but it's still important to address.
That's why the two most important comments in this entire thread are these two:
Waiting until the 4 day weekend to drop a grenade thread....pretty sneaky, Sis!Oh a wizards are bad thread, it must be a thursdayThat's because these comments show beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a perennial issue. And therefore an important issue to address! The comments are in and of themselves absolutely worthless, there's absolutely no content in there. But they show that this has been going on for a long time without being resolved.
Now, people might not know what exactly is troubling them, which is why asking things like the following is the worst thing you can do:
Cam your or anyone else taking this position...
I understood you felling but I strongly disagree from you!
Rules does not exists to make a game fun. Rules exists to make a game fair! And usually the people have fun because the game is fair.
Most soccer players don't have fun when they are penalized with a fault or when offside. These rules will break their moves but without them the game will end chaotic, dangerous, unfair and ultimately unfun for all!
Same happen to TTRPGs the rules exists to limit and order what the players can do in the game and the players try to have fun inside these limits. The rules doesn't need adapt to each players desires but the players desires that need to find a way to work inside the rules or this player will have to try a different thing.
This doesn't means that you cannot complain about the rules and to suggest improvements but ultimately you need to keep in mind that the rules exists to keep the game fair and running smoothly and be adjusted to your desires is secondary.
So if the casters doesn't works well for you and looks bad for you, but this doesn't mean that these same casters will look bad for everyone. Many people will like then as they are while others may agree with you and many others may think that they only need some adjustments and based in all these points the designers can make something. Maybe adjust some class, some casting mechanic, create a new class to meet more what players desire or just do nothing about it depending with what they agree or not and on the demand.
So no. Casters are not bad. They may not meet your expectations and be unfun for you but it will be for you (and maybe some other people) but not for everyone.
...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
First, if they want something changed, feeling doesn't help at all.
Second, casters is a nebulous term and means next to nothing. Are you saying the bard feels bad? The bard is a level 10 Legendary caster. So is the wizard. So is the sorcerer and the druid and the cleric. Those classes are all very, very powerful. If you feel bad playing one, not sure what Paizo can do about that as are all very, very powerful. To increase their power is problematic.
Third, what are they comparing it too? PF1 power isn't coming back. Why are they feeling weak unleashing a chain lightning and seeing massive damage numbers? I've seen two casters murder large groups of mooks that would murder a bunch of martials if they had to go toe to toe with them for an entire fight. The casters decimated them before they even closed for battle.
I've seen casters neuter bosses with slow and synesthesia and then set them up to get wasted by true target. Or drop a focus spell or regular spell doing some crazy damage.
So I'm seeing this and have real game examples of this occurring, why is their nebulous feeling more real than my actual play experience? They provide no examples of what they are doing or what they are comparing things too, so how do they expect Paizo to fix anything if they have nothing for Paizo to work off than some unfocused, nebulous feeling without any real experience or exmaples?
Do they expect Paizo to what? Put them back to PF1 level of power? To let spells like chain lightning or eclipse burst do more than they already do which is devastating the enemies?
How does Paizo action something like this with no information than a "feeling"?
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Now I know that some people unhappy with the state of casters in PF2 are used to a game where a Wizard can singlehandedly solve every problem the party faces after a certain point in their career
I wonder if we'll get get past this tired talking point.
Like, at this point PF2 is almost five years old. Most of the people pining after PF1 aren't even here anymore.
You really do need to acquire quite some system mastery to make spellcasters shine in PF2e. These recurring 'casters-are-weak' vs 'git-gud' discussions are proof of that, I guess.
First off, you need to learn which spells are good and which ones plain suck, and under what circumstances.
Your spells available should ideally be able to deal with higher level opponents who will save as well as regular encounters, have some minimum spread in targeted saves, ranges and areas and if you are blasting some variance in damage types.
You need to learn when it's ok to rely on your cantrips/weapon and focus spells and when to cut loose. You have managed to get focus spells worth casting, yes? A decent reaction and some potential 3th actions too?
It really is a lot to internalize and even if you have, at lower levels you won't have as much impact as decent martials. Around lvl 7-9 imho you start have a good enough spread of spells to feel on par. Lvl 11+ is when it starts getting wild and casters can easily have more impact than martials.
This is the lowest level of system mastery I've seen. Spell selection is the primary determinant of power for casters and the most powerful spells are pretty easy to see. I'm sure it will become tougher as more spells release, but right now the top quality spells are pretty easy to pick.
Every caster progresses casting progression at the same rate. Feats don't have a massive effect on spells like they did in PF1 with metamagic. Items all work off your spell DC making scrolls, wands, and staves are all equally useful items to acquire for additional casting.
It doesn't require much system mastery compared to PF1. It requires a willingness to use your spells. In PF2 casters are made to cast mixing slotted spells with cantrips or consumables or magic items or focus spells to extend your day.
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IMO the problem is more likely that they players are getting frustrated by the casters in PF2 because the game doesn't allow them to play as they wanted or imagined that they will play instead of just "the casters are bad".No, then this is exactly the reason why "the casters are bad". Game rules don't exist to show off your glorious rule-building skills, but to allow people to have fun and enjoy playing it. If the rules are in the way of fun, then the rules are bad.
Balanced rules are not a worthy rule design goal in itself. The only reason why things should be balanced is because unbalanced things diminish the fun.
Fun is the penultimate rule design goal, nothing else.
If people constantly complain that they don't enjoy casters/wizards/squirrels/whatever, then it's not a good idea to tell them "just learn how to caster, duh!" That's what you say if only a few people have voiced that issue.
But if a lot of people say the same thing over and over and over and over again, then what they say is important. It might not be a valid point, it might be born from ignorance or lack of skills, it might be asinine or annoying, but it's still important to address.
That's why the two most important comments in this entire thread are these two:
Waiting until the 4 day weekend to drop a grenade thread....pretty sneaky, Sis!Oh a wizards are bad thread, it must be a thursdayThat's because these comments show beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a perennial issue. And therefore an important issue to address! The comments are in and of themselves absolutely worthless, there's absolutely no content in there. But they show that this has been going on for a long time without being resolved.
Now, people might not know what exactly is troubling them, which is why asking things like the following is the worst thing you can do:
Cam your or anyone else taking this position...
You can stop with the terrible analogies. When you take your car in, you definitely tell the mechanic what's wrong. The tire is flat. The starter isn't working. The engine has a noise in it. You don't take your car and in say, "It feels broken" without providing some information to the mechanic to make the fix and the mechanics tests it and it runs perfectly fine.
Once again define what you mean by caster, state what you're comparing it too, and provide actionable examples in the game so Paizo has something to work off of than you taking your car in and telling them it "feels" broken when it appears to be running fine.
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The idea that casters deal with a different set of constraints than martials is what makes magic feel different in the first place. PF2 probably would never have gotten off the ground abandoning spell slots in its initial development.
While I agree that spell slots were likely a necessary compromise to get 1e players to adopt 2e and form the critical mass it needed to succeed, the landscape has shifted enough that this same compromise need not be made for a prospective future edition, nor should it prevent looking into different kinds of casters even now. I also disagree that spell slots are necessary for magic to feel different, since a) the Kineticist is distinctly a magic-user (though not a caster) despite not using spells, b) the Psychic shines as a caster despite relying heavily on a per-encounter resource that isn't spell slots, and c) PF2e classes in general manage to distinguish themselves significantly already through core class features and feats, with martials differentiating themselves even more than casters.
I am thrilled so many players enjoy playing the Kineticist, but for me it is repetitive and underwhelming in play. The wizard’s spell substitution thesis is absolutely amazing for players that like to observe and then execute a plan.
Out of curiosity, how did you build your Kineticist? What level were they? They certainly don't have as many tools as a Wizard, but they're also designed to let you branch out into more versatility if you want, and Reflow Elements plus its feat line normally ought to avoid repetition by letting you pick new impulses each time. The class isn't for everyone, and doesn't play like a caster, but I'm surprised to see them labelled as repetitive when they're expressly made to be more versatile and flexible than many of the game's other classes.
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Now I know that some people unhappy with the state of casters in PF2 are used to a game where a Wizard can singlehandedly solve every problem the party faces after a certain point in their careerI wonder if we'll get get past this tired talking point.
Like, at this point PF2 is almost five years old. Most of the people pining after PF1 aren't even here anymore.
Or they continually change their handles and start a troll thread just to start the same discussion again.
A few definitely are still here, still using the term casters to try to get all the other players of bards, druids, sorcerers, and the like who never have any threads complaining about them to join their "wizards are terrible" crusades which is what they really mean.
Not sure why they keep using the term "caster", when they really mean wizard. Because a lot of folks playing the many caster classes feel fine and enjoy their classes, but there is that one group of players that can't stand seeing the wizard in the state they are and are hoping the rest of the "casters" get behind them.
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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.
I agree. I don't know what "one true build" syndrome they're talking about. There are several distinctly different, powerful ways to build every single caster in the game. You can even build several different powerful blaster casters (and I don't just mean Kineticists or Psychics).
Imagine tracking the BBEG of a story arc down to their lair. You could have 3-5 trap encounters, 6-10 combat encounters and then a climactic final battle. Slot casters are the only ones who might find that challenging just because of their core casting mechanics.It doesn't matter if you like them or if they are powerful, they can fail at any story that doesn't cater to them having to rest.
It's far easier to imagine people taking a 10 or 20 minute break and being able to continue but having to take 8 hours can easily not be an option.
No class in the game will shine in a story that is not catered for them. If the story is a long distance Hexploration campaign where you primarily throw Severe/Extreme one-encounter days at the party, the casters will feel stronger than the rest. The assumption that the average party has someone getting to "go nova" with all their most valuable resources for Severe/Extreme encounters is literally embedded into the design assumptions of the game.
Besides that, I do feel the need to point out that once you're in the level 9+ range, the casters in an average party can usually handle a very long adventuring day like the one you described, with the expectation being that martials carry the load for the presumably numerous Trivial/Low encounters while casters set the pace for Severe/Extreme encounters.
Finally "it doesn't matter if you like them" is an extremely odd position to take. At that point anyone can dismiss your complaint as "it doesn't matter if you don't like them" too? The whole point of game design is to try to cater to as many of our many, many subjective opinions as they can. And there are many players for whom the removal of resources to go nova with would fundamentally ruin spellcasters' flavour and thematics. You look at spellcasters and want Gandalf, but I look at spellcasters and want Moiraine Sedai, and it isn't exactly reasonable to say the second half of that analogy doesn't matter.
On a side note, I'm going to say that the thing a notable amount of people like about standard casters, the ability to do anything so long as you have the time to get the right spells, is generally a really bad story focused mechanic. How often in a story does a caster have the wrong spells for what they are doing? It doesn't happen because that is bad story telling.
Did it not come from a well-liked series of novels in the first place?
No, then this is exactly the reason why "the casters are bad". Game rules don't exist to show off your glorious rule-building skills, but to allow people to have fun and enjoy playing it. If the rules are in the way of fun, then the rules are bad.Balanced rules are not a worthy rule design goal in itself. The only reason why things should be balanced is because unbalanced things diminish the fun.
Fun is the penultimate rule design goal, nothing else.
It's impossible to quantify fun from a game design perspective, so it is kind of a moot point here.
Besides that though, it's often a bit of a deflection to point to fun as being mutually exclusive with balance. When someone says "buffing spellcasters in X way would be imbalanced" they are implicitly saying that that buff to spellcasters would reduce their fun as a not-spellcaster. As a very pertinent example, I commonly see people suggest that you can "fix" Summon spells by letting them summon a caster level-2 summon, and I will die on the hill that it is imbalanced. What my argument is really saying under the hood is that I have experience with summons being roughly that close to martials in power level (with the Tasha's Summons over in D&D 5E) and it was actively unfun for the martials. Do then dismiss it saying "no balance, only fun" is to effectively say that only one player's fun matters over another's.
If people constantly complain that they don't enjoy casters/wizards/squirrels/whatever, then it's not a good idea to tell them "just learn how to caster, duh!" That's what you say if only a few people have voiced that issue.But if a lot of people say the same thing over and over and over and over again, then what they say is important. It might not be a valid point, it might be born from ignorance or lack of skills, it might be asinine or annoying, but it's still important to address.
And they have been (and are being) addressed via advice on how to build casters well, Paizo designing casters with a lower skill floor, and Michael Sayre making suggestions on how to tighten the adventuring day to help your caster players.
But just because a lot of people repeat something does not make it fundamentally true. Casters as a whole are functional and powerful within this game and plenty of people (subjectively) think they're fun.
So I'm seeing this and have real game examples of this occurring, why is their nebulous feeling more real than my actual play experience? They provide no examples of what they are doing or what they are comparing things too, so how do they expect Paizo to fix anything if they have nothing for Paizo to work off than some unfocused, nebulous feeling without any real experience or exmaples?
Truth. It's so easy for people to dismiss other people's experience of feeling effective and being fun, and then pretend that since that aligns with the game's balance it somehow does not count.
I have sympathy for anyone struggling with casters but starting by dismissing anyone who is having fun with their design (and Paizo has told us many times that it is most of the playerbase) makes it impossible to meet in the middle.
Treantmonk updated the guide to PF1, but he switched over to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Treantmonk’s Guide to Wizards, Being a god (5th edition), and as far as I know never wrote a guide to the PF2 wizard. Nevertheless, the 5th Edition guide is worth reading for players of PF2 wizards.
This is perhaps for the best. Treantmonk doesn't exactly have the best takes regarding spellcasters in PF2E...