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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.
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That's because these comments show beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a perennial issue.
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Just ignore the threads then. Otherwise, please try to be helpful.
The issue is well know.
Pazio have responded, mostly indirectly. They think the balance is right. They think their sales figures support it. But they aren't going to annoy potential customers by continuing to repeat it.
Most of the people here agree. In our experience the balance is fine. In fact to give into these domains would destroy the essence of the game.
A lot of newbies from D&D5 disagree. So some complain, others stay away. But their old game was always a bit broken. Which is fine for them if it is still fun.
The problem is not going to go away any time soon.
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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 also why I like the wizard; the wizard gets feats to give you those scroll-like resources, but without needing to even buy them. I prefer spontaneous casters over prepared in general, just because noting which slots I've expended in a form that's easy for me to read is a pain, but wizard is my favorite of the prepared casters.
Yeah, I get that there's a player type who learned from video games that you should hoard consumables because, say, there's a finite amount of megalixirs in the universe and you want to save them for the times they really matter. But in a game refereed by an actual person you're more likely to have a GM give you even more consumables when you're using them regularly because that reads to the GM as "this party likes consumables" and at some level your job as the GM is to entertain your players.
And the other negative feedback loop is that when people don't use consumables, they're less likely to show up in loot piles because again you want to give players stuff they care about.
It might be advanced PF2 to realize "yeah, scrolls of low-level spells are incredibly inexpensive, so you should stock up on the low level spells that are fully functional when cast at those levels. But this is a thing worth learning.
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.
I agree I current have a Kineticist player in my main table and he have and uses many different Impulses in many different situations with just 3 elements. It's obvious that Kineticists have less options than casters but they have way more options and playstyles than martials.
In the same way that I see people undevaluing casters and also see some people undevaluing kineticists like they was an elemental martial.
Kineticists have few skills and their utility powers take commitment. I played an air kineticist at level 8 in the playtest. I liked the playtest version better, with the attacks keying off STR or Dex, but that is a common experience for me. I like the playtest magus a ton better as well. I fully recognize that, as a player, I tend towards liking the most complexity that PF2 is willing to put into a character, and thus features I enjoy often get cut back. Ithe commander is the first martial really exciting to me. I don’t mind new classes deviating from the spell slot paradigm, and think things like necromancers and such specialized class can be built much better without slots that with them. Some of those specialized classes (like a frost mage in a game where elemental magic is overwhelmingly the domain of primal magic and just poached by arcane) just feel like third party classes because the lore to support them would take up too much space in a rules centric product line.
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In the interest of providing more than a feeling fix, I think wizards need more stuff on the chassis. Stuff that comes online in a useful way at lower level.
Spells are pretty much the same for all casters now. If a bard or wizard casts vision of death, it doesn't much matter. It doesn't matter if a druid or wizard are casting chain lightning.
So what is separating the wizard from a druid from a sorcerer?
Other class features.
With sorcerers spontaneous casting and all the feats that make spontaneous casting better as well as the bloodline focus spells and feats make the sorc more interesting.
With the druid, it's the circle magic. It's very attractive to be able to blast with lightning and turn into various creatures that the druid fantasy fulfills on top of a good general class chassis.
Wizard:
1. Weak focus spells.
2. Thesis that don't do much but try to put you on par with spontaneous casters for spell variability in combat. You often use Spell Substitution to put spells in the slots a spontaneous caster would have anyway.
3. Feats that don't enhance spells much at all. Expanded number of spell slots only matters if those spells in those slots or on their extra scrolls are actually any good. Which means they just end slotting stuff a spontaneous caster would have anyway for combat.
4. Spell Curriculum spells are too limiting. The focus spells are mostly bad. Feels like not much going on with spell curriculum. Not unique enough to make you feel like they mean much.
5. Intelligence doesn't do enough for the class. No boosted skill ups for intel skills. Hard to play the learned wizard, when the learned investigator and rogue are far better than you.
Wizard feels like you could change the name to generic arcane caster. Someone like Unicore might love that because it does enough to make him feel good playing it. Apparently a bunch of players Paizo queries love it. But for someone like who loved the PF1/3E/5E wizard (basically ever wizard/magic user prior to 2E), it seems like a massively underwhelming class with limited, boring class builds that doesn't feel like the erudite, intelligence wizard of old.
Why? Let's analyze some PF1 mechanics.
1. Skill points were based on intelligence. So having a high intelligence allowed you to gain far more skill increase equivalents across your levels. So you really did seem like a very erudite wizard with a lot of high skills, especially intelligence based skills which were highly useful in figuring out creatures.
The high intelligence in PF1 meant you knew a lot. The high intelligence in PF2 means next to nothing. Doesn't give you skill increases. Makes you slightly better at intel-based skills. Provides an ok amount of skills offset by other skills starting with more base skills, but not more skill increases.
2. Crafting was great in PF1 and the wizard was an amazing crafter with extra feats focused on magic item crafting.
3. Spell Substitution was an innate part of prepared casting classes due to the number of slots and the ability to leave slots open. This made prepared casters not feel so locked in and limited.
4. Arcane list missing the best buffs and debuffs now. Far more focused on pure blasting and out of combat utility.
5. Magic items like wands and staves nerfed no longer using charges which allowed wizards and prepared casters to use wands or staves for self-buffing all day, while allowing them to use their spell slots for high value combat spells.
6. Metamagic/Spellshaping far weaker. This was the bread and butter of wizards for making their spells powered up. Now they do almost nothing. Quicken was a wizard's way of unleashing brutal combinations. One of my favorites being the quickened enervate with some save spell to ruin enemies or empowered blast spells for crazy damage. Now quicken is one time a day and most metamagic is pretty situational and not particularly combat focused.
You take all these systemic nerfs that weren't even necessarily done to hammer the wizard and it adds up to the wizard suffering the biggest smackdown of any class moving from PF1 to PF2 given how these innate system features were massively beneficial to the wizard. Couple that with a more boring class chassis with fairly weak class features and you end up where you are now.
I'm seriously not sure how Paizo is getting positive feedback on the wizard unless they are only querying new players or players that have never much played wizards in previous editions. But I played a lot of wizards and I can see all the ways whether direct class power reductions and systemic feature changes that put the wizard in an absolutely awful place.
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For the record, Unicore has been playing wizards since D&D 2e. It is this unicorn’s favorite class and PF2 is my favorite version of it yet.
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In the interest of providing more than a feeling fix, I think wizards need more stuff on the chassis. Stuff that comes online in a useful way at lower level.
Spells are pretty much the same for all casters now. If a bard or wizard casts vision of death, it doesn't much matter. It doesn't matter if a druid or wizard are casting chain lightning.
So what is separating the wizard from a druid from a sorcerer?
It may not matter whether the Bard or a Wizard is casting Vision of Death or the Druid or Wizard is casting Chain Lightning, but the Wizard is casting both of those.
The Arcane spell list is best at utility, best at blasting, tied for best at debuffing, tied for best at control, and very good at buffing. Its literal only flaw is lacking heals and condition-removal.
The versatility of the Arcane spell list is a part of the Wizard's power budget. You will similarly notice that Arcane Sorcerers and Arcane Witches tend to have weaker focus spells and Hex cantrips, Blood Magic / Familiar Abilities, and poached spells than their Occult and Divine counterparts (though I will admit that I find Primal Sorcerers and Witches quite overtuned given that the spell list is arguably as good as Arcane, if not slightly better).
1. Weak focus spells.
This is generally true though, as I implied earlier, is part of the budget of the Arcane spell list. All Arcane casters tend to have weaker focus spells.
2. Thesis that don't do much but try to put you on par with spontaneous casters for spell variability in combat. You often use Spell Substitution to put spells in the slots a spontaneous caster would have anyway.
You are seriously underestimating the flexibility of Arcane Theses here. Spell Substitution has one of the highest ceilings of any casters, since it combos super well with scouting and/or any form of prep time. The goal of the Spell Sub Wizard isn't to prepare the spells a Spontaneous caster "would have anyway", it's to prepare the more niche spells the Spontaneous caster wouldn't dream to prepare. Having spells like Blazing Armoury because there's hydras up ahead, or Earthbind only when you know you're about to face fliers, or Rust Cloud only because you know you are coming up on a chokepoint where the enemy can't get out of it, or Lightning Bolt because you know you are coming up on a very narrow corridor. A Spontaneous caster can have maybe one or two of those situational spells, and has to prepare more generic spells otherwise. If you play Spell Sub to just do what Spontaneous casters do anyways, you're not really playing it close to its ceiling and would be better suited with other theses.
Spell Blending and Staff have forgiving floors in exchange, where you get to break the rules of spellcasting that other casters are "bound" to.
Familiar is the other high ceiling option, since scouting ahead can benefit an already well-prepared Wizard a lot, especially if they have a coordinated party.
Metamagical Experimentation exists, that's for sure.
Feats that don't enhance spells much at all. Expanded number of spell slots only matters if those spells in those slots or on their extra scrolls are actually any good. Which means they just end slotting stuff a spontaneous caster would have anyway for combat.
Again, I'm not sure why you would use all this added flexibility to just do what a Spontaneous caster does. Split Slot and Scroll Adept can be used to prepare spells that would otherwise be too situational to prepare (and certainly too situational to have in a Spontaneous caster's Repertoire).
Spell Curriculum spells are too limiting. The focus spells are mostly bad. Feels like not much going on with spell curriculum. Not unique enough to make you feel like they mean much.
Agreed that curriculum spells are meh.
Intelligence doesn't do enough for the class. No boosted skill ups for intel skills. Hard to play the learned wizard, when the learned investigator and rogue are far better than you.
I do wish Wizards had more ways to use their Intelligence built into the class.
Wizard feels like you could change the name to generic arcane caster. Someone like Unicore might love that because it does enough to make him feel good playing it. Apparently a bunch of players Paizo queries love it. But for someone like who loved the PF1/3E/5E wizard (basically ever wizard/magic user prior to 2E), it seems like a massively underwhelming class with limited, boring class builds that doesn't feel like the erudite, intelligence wizard of old.
This is a lot of speculation lol.
Unicore already said that they have been playing since D&D 2E, and I also loved the 5E Wizard. The PF2E Wizard is far better, in large part because I get to feel powerful without ruining the gameplay experience for others at the table.
I also think Arcane Thesis is a masterclass of a class feature, and heavily underrated.
Why? Let's analyze some PF1 mechanics....
You take all these systemic nerfs that weren't even necessarily done to hammer the wizard and it adds up to the wizard suffering the biggest smackdown of any class moving from PF1 to PF2 given how these innate system features were massively beneficial to the wizard. Couple that with a more boring class chassis with fairly weak class features and you end up where you are now.
I can't speak to specifics about PF1E because I have not played a Wizard in it.
However, I think it is inherently not meaningful to view the Wizard has having been nerfed or buffed between PF1E and PF2E, anymore than it would be to say that the D&D 5E Wizard is nerfed compared to a PF1E one.
PF2E is a fundamentally very different game. In the context of PF2E the Wizard is in line with the majority of classes in the game. Whether the Wizard would be considered nerfed relative to PF1E is not as important.
I'm seriously not sure how Paizo is getting positive feedback on the wizard unless they are only querying new players or players that have never much played wizards in previous editions. But I played a lot of wizards and I can see all the ways whether direct class power reductions and systemic feature changes that put the wizard in an absolutely awful place.
Michael Sayre has stated before that while Wizard feedback is generally positive, it is also fairly divisive.
They choose to focus on the positive feedback because they know that the Wizard is relatively balanced with respect to most of the classes in the game. When a class is in a good place numbers wise already and feedback is divisive, there's always the possibility that adjusting it to adjust for the latter will worsen the game experience for a lot of other non-Wizards, even if it makes the Wizard satisfaction go up on average.
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Control casters, support casters, buff & debuff casters work fine. It's the blaster casters that don't.
They absolutely work fine.
Now, if you're expecting to be able to duplicate and exceed a single-target martial with them, then well, no. Because then you have the problem that previous editions had.
IMO it's the opposite. Some players that overestimate Arcane Theses. Let's take a little look:
The other points I agree. In general the focus spells are pretty meh, curriculum spells also are meh.
A good thing that many people forgets about Wizard is Arcane Bond. This thing specially for [s]Universalists[/b] Scholars of Unified Magical Theory is pretty good to give some lower level spell without use spellslots specially with Bond Conservation feat what's helps to make the class more sustainable if you have planned well once that you cast 2 spells per Arcane Bond for "free".
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Improved Familiar Attunement: After the Witch remaster are know a limited version of what you can do if you make a Witch instead.
For Familiar, all I can say is that I have seen familiars be insanely good in practice. Familiars are fundamentally extremely good in this game, because casters function best with extra information and knowledge. Even at a baseline, scouting ahead with a familiar is like starting many combats with an extra Action to use on Recall Knowledge.
Of course anyone can have a familiar but the extra abilities and cheaper access to Enhanced Familiar really matter. More abilities means more access to special speeds, special senses, etc. All of those make for an all-around better scout that still has room to be a spell slot or focus point battery or skill monkey for you at higher levels.
Also it’s odd to dismiss the Wizard as just being a worse Witch in this regard. Yes the Witch’s familiar gets an additional ability but Arcane Witches have really minor abilities. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that Arcane Witches will usually feel like they traded away a whole array of spell slots to have a slightly better familiar compared to a Familiar Universalist Wizard lol.
Spell Substitution: An overrated thesis that many wizards players like to justify that makes the wizards versatile as prepared casters. In practice you still need time and money to improve your spells available in your grimoire. If your GM doesn't give enought resources to you it will be almost useless and even having time and money the learn a lot of spells. Anyway it's hardly better than the flexibility of expontaneous caster that can choose the spell on the fly.
The time issue is practically a non-issue now that Spellbook Prodigy exists. Money is less of an issue in practice than on paper because you will be spending much less money on wands and scrolls than a typical Wizard would.
Also as I said earlier, using Spell Sub to cast the spells that a Spontaneous caster would be casting anyways isn’t playing it anywhere near its ceiling. The goal is to use niche spells that a Spontaneous caster wouldn’t usually bother preparing, because situational spells usually outshine generic ones in the situations they’re appropriate for.
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The goal is to use niche spells that a Spontaneous caster wouldn’t usually bother preparingThis is why scrolls exist.
1. Spell Sub Wizards can use scrolls too. In fact you probably bought at least one scroll of each of those niche spells you added to your spellbook, to learn from.
2. Spell Sub can deal with curveballs using the spells they have in their spellbook, whereas a scroll usually has to commit to a decision ahead of time.3. Investing less of your party’s gold into buying several dozen scrolls of lower rank utility (once you’re at higher levels) is a pretty good upgrade.
4. There are plenty of spells that aren’t worth getting scrolls of that are still worth subbing for.
Also if “just use a scroll for it” was an answer to a class lacking/having flexibility, why would Spontaneous casters being more flexible be an argument in the first place? By that logic there’s literally no difference between Prepared and Spontaneous, but obviously that’s not true.
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I've given wizards Spell Substitution Thesis for free and let them pick a another thesis. Still does next to nothing for the wizard to make it more fun to play.
All the talk of the "power of those thesis" when compared to Signature Spells and a reduced number of thought is all theoretical.
Spontaneous casters, especially at high level, rarely run out of spells to use for the most important areas. I still hear so rarely the use of skills which I have found perform well for a wide variety of scenarios and easily replace spells as you level up.
From a party perspective for experienced players, arcane thesis means next to nothing. It is never a necessary ability and there are always ways to accomplish something than waiting for the wizard to change out their spells.
Which is why within the party dynamic, signature spells and many feats sorcerers get or something like untamed form with druids works just fine.
For the record, Unicore has been playing wizards since D&D 2e. It is this unicorn’s favorite class and PF2 is my favorite version of it yet.
This shows a huge disparity in thought as the PF2 wizard is provably inferior to the 3E/5E wizard.
PF2 wizard compared to 2E? Probably better 2E since the wizard was kind of set in stone, though some of the save or die effects of 2E were better. 2E and 3E and above were totally different.
If this is your favorite version of the wizard, that is just sad as I have no idea how you judge that qualitatively. It seems like you are just taking this position to be contrarian without any clear reason why this version of the wizard is even good.
In my group, you would barely register as valuable playing that class chassis.
What metrics do you have for measuring the quality of the wizard from past editions? What quantitative and qualitative measures make this version of the wizard your favorite?
I have listed clearly above what I think severely undermines the wizard. I'm wondering what list you could create to show superiority or even equity in actual play compared to what I could provide for comparative play using other classes.
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Improved Familiar Attunement: After the Witch remaster are know a limited version of what you can do if you make a Witch instead.
For Familiar, all I can say is that I have seen familiars be insanely good in practice. Familiars are fundamentally extremely good in this game, because casters function best with extra information and knowledge. Even at a baseline, scouting ahead with a familiar is like starting many combats with an extra Action to use on Recall Knowledge.
Of course anyone can have a familiar but the extra abilities and cheaper access to Enhanced Familiar really matter. More abilities means more access to special speeds, special senses, etc. All of those make for an all-around better scout that still has room to be a spell slot or focus point battery or skill monkey for you at higher levels.
Also it’s odd to dismiss the Wizard as just being a worse Witch in this regard. Yes the Witch’s familiar gets an additional ability but Arcane Witches have really minor abilities. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that Arcane Witches will usually feel like they traded away a whole array of spell slots to have a slightly better familiar compared to a Familiar Universalist Wizard lol.
Spell Substitution: An overrated thesis that many wizards players like to justify that makes the wizards versatile as prepared casters. In practice you still need time and money to improve your spells available in your grimoire. If your GM doesn't give enought resources to you it will be almost useless and even having time and money the learn a lot of spells. Anyway it's hardly better than the flexibility of expontaneous caster that can choose the spell on the fly.
The time issue is practically a non-issue now that Spellbook Prodigy exists. Money is less of an issue in practice than on paper because you will be spending much less money on wands and scrolls than a typical Wizard would.
Also as I said earlier, using Spell Sub to cast the spells...
Why are we bothering with these niche spells? So the wizard can artificially feel good about his class?
We have run with zero wizards in the entire time I've been playing because no one can stand playing them for very long. They end up using the same spells spontaneous casters use.
Spontaneous casters rarely run of out spells at higher level. The best blasting spells are often level 6 and 7 spells, they can do those all day. Skills work just fine for utility purposes or some focus spell like untamed form which has huge utility in a variety of situations.
Familiars are not better scouting than a Dex character with stealth. Or using something like prying eye which a spontaneous caster can take just fine.
Whenever wizards keep bringing up these spells they can cast like the need for niche spells happens enough for it to matter more than say a arcane sorc having a spellbook or a bard changing a spell from Occult or an occult sorc grabbing a spell with a minute of downtime or the druid using some untamed form to do something.
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I really dislike arguments that revolve around something happening or not that isn't to do with the system as justification as to why something is good/bad
Sure a GM might not give the resources required to buy / learn more spells... but if the party is starved for wealth then the martial will be hurting even more without runes. Now you could say the party will give the martial more money and the wizards will go without, but that again isn't a matter of system but rather a matter of how GM is running and how the players are playing OUTSIDE of system expectations.
It is like saying consumables are trash because a party has a bunch of people who forget they exist or have phoenix down syndrome.
Also, learn a spell is extremely cheap and an exploration activity. If there is more than one caster in the party you won't even have to seek out other spellcasters to learn from to get a massively expanded spell list. Yes there will be niche campaigns where you have no access to other spellcasters at all and are unable to learn new spells, but it is not core to the PF2e experience.
As for casters being weak... I have also run a lot of APs. Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, Abomination Vaults (on my third group atm although they are only level 3) and have just started Gatewalkers to lead into Stolen Fate.
Casters in my games have universally been extremely valued and often been the MVPs. Even with low level play, my second AV group had a champion, rogue, druid and wizard... and the druid and wizard were not only the answer to many issues but frequently out damaged the rogue and champion where a meme was every time the casters were major contributors it was exclaimed "the casters, so bad, so terrible". And both players were the least experienced; it was their first time playing casters.
Then there was Age of Ashes where a player couldn't make it for the last 2 sessions of the campaign and I wasn't willing to delay any further. So his friend who had never played PF2e before but had GMed pf1e and been a player in my 5e group took over his character. Not only did he play the bard exceptionally well, he was by far the most influential force in 6 of the final 8 encounters, which was notable as I ran a chunk of those as a boss rush with no time to rest or recuperate including only two rounds to ready themselves to fight the final boss.
Which shows how much the player themselves matters (he is currently playing a wizard in my third AV group and is consistently very useful, despite the party being a rogue, kineticist and fighter)
Does this mean spellcasters will always be powerful, hell no... does it mean there is one optimal build. Not even close.
One thing I will say though, spell substitution is probably the only wizard thesis I would take. It has more of an impact early game before you can load up on niche scrolls but it is still really useful for whenever the day doesn't proceed as expected.
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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...
So you've played with everyone and know what everyone likes? Maybe don't make broad statements of fact when trying to state your opinion. I've played in several groups who love crushing fight after fight. Large areas to explore with plenty of fights are exactly what some like. The group I did AV with did two floors or more between each rest.
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.
No, if things were balanced then all classes could go all day. The encounter design is based on being at your best, attrition is not part of PF2 encounter design, much for the better.
For your second point look at the context to what I was replying to.
I have yet to meet anyone who knew of Vance's books before finding out that's where D&D casting came from and I've been playing since early 90's. So I wouldn't say popular.
The idea that casters can sit back and do nothing or maybe cast some cantrips for potentially easy fights kind of exemplifies the problem. Plenty of people would prefer to be more active in all fights, cantrips and focus spells only partially help with this.
Asides from the problems we have now, hopefully future editions will enable stories of casters facing off solo against their rival or getting away from the idea of casters being squishy and having to be safe in the back. The idea of squishy mages was when they grew exponentially in power, it would be nice to have druid and war priest be standard caster survivability.
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Question:
In Pathfinder 1e, when people were discussing martial-caster disparity, it was common for knowledgeable players to say things like, "Mundane combat isn't the main issue. Of course martials are great at taking attacks and dealing damage. (Though you often need casters to deal with specialist invisible/flying/arrow-repelling enemies.) It's everything else that's the real problem. Out of combat, a Fighter is no better than a commoner, while casters can solve every problem with flight, scrying, teleportation, divining the future, mind control, protection from energy, neutralising poison, raising the dead, triggering traps with summoned monsters, breathing underwater, dispelling magic, creating walls, turning invisible, turning into animals, etc."
I don't see many people saying things like that any more. Do people find these issues largely go away with PF2 (due to fewer overpowered spells, modern adventure design, etc.), or does PF2's combat balance make combat ability feel more important in comparison?
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So you've played with everyone and know what everyone likes? Maybe don't make broad statements of fact when trying to state your opinion. I've played in several groups who love crushing fight after fight. Large areas to explore with plenty of fights are exactly what some like. The group I did AV with did two floors or more between each rest.
Nothing in AV forces you to go 2 floors at a time.
I've only found very big dungeons with no obvious rest in Extinction Curse. They are overall extremely rare.Now, your group can have its own way of playing that screws spellcasters. But it doesn't make spellcasters bad, it's really your group that is not following the (mostly implied) guidelines when it comes to average number of fights per adventuring days.
Overall, the 10-fight adventuring day is a unicorn. I haven't played a single one in 300 sessions but I've seen it being raised a lot.
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But for someone like who loved the PF1/3E/5E wizard
I don't really get this part of the complaint.
Like yeah the PF2 wizard is bland and boring with janky spell mechanics and no central theme, but so are the other wizards you mention. The biggest difference between them is that the latter are much stronger, but simply being overpowered isn't the same as being flavorful or interesting.
If anything, class feats, thesis, and school mechanics are a clear way to increase definition, even if I think some of them fall flat.
Obviously everyone has their own take, but it's hard for me to look at the 3.5 wizard, which doesn't even really have class features, and pretend it has a more fleshed out identity.
They absolutely work fine.
Now, if you're expecting to be able to duplicate and exceed a single-target martial with them, then well, no. Because then you have the problem that previous editions had.
Single target blasting was absolutely not the problem previous editions had. Even back then it was generally a bad idea (outside some gimmick options).
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Also as I said earlier, using Spell Sub to cast the spells that a Spontaneous caster would be casting anyways isn’t playing it anywhere near its ceiling. The goal is to use niche spells that a Spontaneous caster wouldn’t usually bother preparing, because situational spells usually outshine generic ones in the situations they’re appropriate for.
I have the opposite experience with spontaneous casters, specially sorcerers.
Due I can get a more generalist spell and use it as signature I have the free space needed to put many interesting circunstancial spells in my repertoire (I can use my spell slot as I want so I don't need to multiple generic spell, just 1 or 2 are enough). Also Arcane Evolution/Esoteric Polymath and Staves allows me to increase my repertoire versatility.For situations where I may need an unexpected spell that's not in my repertoire and I have time to go to shop, I simply buy the needed spell as scroll. If the thing is more unexpected Prescient Consumable do the job instantly (this feat is just OP in casters/thaumaturge hands).
When I play with prepared casters I usually have the opposite situation. Due I'm unable to know what I will need I usually only prepare generalist spells to diminish the risk to end with a spell slot locked by a circunstancial spell.
For example: Fly is a very useful spell but it's circunstancial. If you prepare it but if during all your adventure day you just ends going exploring a dungeon low ceiling it will be useless. OK, Spell Substitution solve this for Wizards. But it's a spell that I always have in my repertoire too allowing me to cast it instantly when needed or I can have it via a staff or a scroll to use when necessary too.
As I pointed before. I'm not saying that Spell Substitution is useless but many people overrate it like "here a super ability that allows me to change my spell slot when with 10 minutes so if I have the opportunit to know the situation before I can prepare a perfect spell for that situation and this is a fantastic thing that no other caster can do!" but in practice that are many ways to get same or better results using other mechanics/resources that are even faster or require less preparation.
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I also think Spell Substitution is a dead end. If you want a versatile caster then play a Sorcerer. Wizards are specialists, it's Spell Blending that better serve their strength. A Spell Blending Wizard really has something that no other class can bring to the table, a Spell Substitution Wizard is just a weak attempt at playing a Wizard like a Sorcerer.
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Question:
In Pathfinder 1e, when people were discussing martial-caster disparity, it was common for knowledgeable players to say things like, "Mundane combat isn't the main issue. Of course martials are great at taking attacks and dealing damage. (Though you often need casters to deal with specialist invisible/flying/arrow-repelling enemies.) It's everything else that's the real problem. Out of combat, a Fighter is no better than a commoner, while casters can solve every problem with flight, scrying, teleportation, divining the future, mind control, protection from energy, neutralising poison, raising the dead, triggering traps with summoned monsters, breathing underwater, dispelling magic, creating walls, turning invisible, turning into animals, etc."
I don't see many people saying things like that any more. Do people find these issues largely go away with PF2 (due to fewer overpowered spells, modern adventure design, etc.), or does PF2's combat balance make combat ability feel more important in comparison?
What really makes casters "overpowered" in PF1 was their ability to basically solve anything with magic in a way that surpassed the non-casters in many ways.
This stops to happen in PF2 specially because the changes in the system helped the martials to not depend or being surpassed by casters any more. For example: You no more need strong buffs long duration buffs to keep relevant in mid to high level fights anymore, fundamental runes had take this job, same for different damage types vs physical resistant but elemental weak creatures, usually you property runes can take advantage from this, the number of skills is way lesser and way more powerful due the skill feats allowing to solve problems in fantastic mundane way where you usually are solved with spells, there's many ways to heal without need magic and so on.
PF1 was a system where as you progress more and more you depends from magic to solve your problems and the casters are usually able to perfectly solve any problem and do any job. That's the real reason why the casters was supervalue in PF1. While PF2 casters are super welcome but they are no more a needed to do the things works. This made they look more weaker because they are no more a super panacea to solve all the problems in the best way just an another way of many to solve the party problems.
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Question:
In Pathfinder 1e, when people were discussing martial-caster disparity, it was common for knowledgeable players to say things like, "Mundane combat isn't the main issue. Of course martials are great at taking attacks and dealing damage. (Though you often need casters to deal with specialist invisible/flying/arrow-repelling enemies.) It's everything else that's the real problem. Out of combat, a Fighter is no better than a commoner, while casters can solve every problem with flight, scrying, teleportation, divining the future, mind control, protection from energy, neutralising poison, raising the dead, triggering traps with summoned monsters, breathing underwater, dispelling magic, creating walls, turning invisible, turning into animals, etc."
I don't see many people saying things like that any more. Do people find these issues largely go away with PF2 (due to fewer overpowered spells, modern adventure design, etc.), or does PF2's combat balance make combat ability feel more important in comparison?
Skills/nonmagical solutions are generally able to solve more problems in PF2 for a few reasons:
1. Some skills were significantly buffed. Medicine is light years ahead of Heal, for example. If you invest in it, it can treat a huge array of conditions, can pump out huge amounts of healing, and can even raise the recently dead.2. Adventure writers almost never create a problem in PF2 that can't be solved with skills. Spells can make these easier, but there's not a lot that a party of zero spellcasters simply can't do.
3. A lot of the spell solutions were nerfed. Like, removing poison with a spell requires Cleanse Affliction, which due to it being a counteract almost always needs to be in one of your higher level slots to work. In PF1 you could leave those spells in their base level slots for the entire campaign and they would work fine.
This actually hurts Spontaneous Casters less IMO, because if you take Cleanse Affliction at all you can make it Signature and thus you'll have it at the level you need it when it comes up. Prepared Casters either have to put it in a slot and then wind up not using it a lot of days, or they have to swap it in when they need it which works okay for longer running afflictions but is useless for Poison. Even then, they have to guess at how many attempts they're going to need. One of my games has someone with a Linnorn Curse and the Druid is faced with deciding how many 9th level slots to devote to attempting to remove it. Last game they guessed 1, failed, and now have to wait another day to try again.
The nerfbat was pretty widely swung when it comes to spells that can simply circumvent or solve challenges. Other such things like Teleport were made uncommon and thus you're often not going to have them at all. This pretty much forces you to do it another way. Some were both nerfed and made uncommon at the same time.
4. Some things that were spells are now rituals, and those work off skills. You don't need to be a Divine Caster to use Resurrection: you need to be good at Religion.
5. There is no such thing as a "you are good at basically nothing outside of combat" character in PF2.
PF1 had 2+INT skill point characters. If you didn't have a good INT, you were never going to be able to invest in most of the skill list. If you wanted to have Perception keep up (which you often do), you had 1 skill point a level. So you could get really good at one skill, meh at two skills, or poor at more skills (the ones without a flat DC just won't keep up at all). And if you actually went 8 INT, you've only got 1 skill point a level. There's classes in PF1 that I flat out won't play unless I'm playing a Human because they are so skill point deficient otherwise that outside of combat there's just so many situations where I can contribute nothing.
The worst character at skills in PF2 is still going to be trained in at least 3 skills (8 INT Fighter) and will be able to advance them at the same rate as most other classes, so they can get okay at more things or get really good at those 3. It's reasonably likely that over a a game night with multiple skill challenges that one of those skills will come up and thus you will get to do something.
You'll have fewer chances than someone with a broad array of skills, but the system sets the minimum skills you're going to be good at floor massively higher. Also with more ability boosts and such, if you want to improve at a wider array of options, it's a lot easier to do that vs "you need to put your ability increases into your attack/casting stat".
"Out of combat a Fighter is no better than a commoner" simply isn't a problem in PF2 because every PC in PF2 gets to be good at some skills.
So IMO, the discussion tends to tilt more toward combat balance because in terms of skill proficiency balance and ability for any character to solve problems with skills, PF2 is in a pretty good place. You do see it occasionally like with many Swashbuckler players wanting auto-scaling in their style skill just so they have some free skill boosts without hurting their combat ability so much, of course, but for the most part PF2 nailed this area and thus there isn't a lot to talk about.
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As a side note, I was just looking at what a Spell Blending Flexible Specialist Wizard would be, and that's truly cool. You are a Spontaneous casters with 9 top rank spells (compared to the 7-8 the Sorcerer has). You have a smaller Repertoire but you don't have to take any spell unlike the Sorcerer which is forced to grab Bloodline spells (not all are good) and spells at each and every level (low level ones are rather bad). Also, you keep the flexibility of preparation. And all your spells are Signature spells, which is awesome for Counterspell.
I don't think you can find such a combination of versatility and power with any other caster class. In my opinion, one of the top casters in the game.
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Question:
In Pathfinder 1e, when people were discussing martial-caster disparity, it was common for knowledgeable players to say things like, "Mundane combat isn't the main issue. Of course martials are great at taking attacks and dealing damage. (Though you often need casters to deal with specialist invisible/flying/arrow-repelling enemies.) It's everything else that's the real problem. Out of combat, a Fighter is no better than a commoner, while casters can solve every problem with flight, scrying, teleportation, divining the future, mind control, protection from energy, neutralising poison, raising the dead, triggering traps with summoned monsters, breathing underwater, dispelling magic, creating walls, turning invisible, turning into animals, etc."
I don't see many people saying things like that any more. Do people find these issues largely go away with PF2 (due to fewer overpowered spells, modern adventure design, etc.), or does PF2's combat balance make combat ability feel more important in comparison?
It's a combination of many different factors, though the crux of it is that they combine to eliminate that disparity.
The first is that access to these features is possible in a way that simply did not exist in PF1e. There's a Human Ancestry feat that grants access to Fly. Any martial can sacrifice 4 class feats and dip their toes into a caster archetype to gain essential utility if they need to. Imagine the implications if a PF1e Fighter could have done this, how much it would have closed the buff and utility gap! Half-Elves can take an Ancestry feat for Haste...if you decide it's even worth taking — and that's the second part of this.
Many of the things previously valued are simply not available or not available in a meaningfully powerful or reliable form to anyone. Flight is still extremely important, but for most of a character's career, long-term versions of it simply don't exist whether you're a caster or not, which goes a long way toward closing the gap between the benefit of gaining it from, say, a consumable/magic item, or being able to cast it yourself. Across the board, the utility of relying on consumables is comparatively higher, since caster level scaling isn't a factor, either. If a PF1e character did make use of a consumable to replicate utility, it would still be inferior to what the caster could produce — that's generally not so here. Effects that are still powerful often have harsher limits placed upon them, and are in effect simply "not allowed" to break the game in ways they used to. Invisibility is great, but it will never work against a major opponent it isn't "supposed" to work against, because they will always have access to the appropriate level of See the Unseen to counter it. This is obviously also true of every single Incapacitate effect (which also includes most forms of mind control).
Teleport is Uncommon by default. I don't really see it getting banned/prohibited, but it still can't be assumed available in any game by default. In games where it is allowed, it is still absurdly powerful; incomparably so. And yet, Teleport is a spell level higher than it previously was, takes 100x as long to cast (making it impossible to use as a "get out of jail free" card), and travels 11% of its previous maximum distance at the time you gained access to it in PF1e two levels earlier.
Not all traps can be dealt with via summoned monsters due to an altered approach to trap design. Even if they can, the decreased value of summon spells across the board makes them undesirable to use for that purpose since they're immensely less flexible.
Read Omens, the PF2e counterpart to the spell Divination, is Uncommon just like Teleport. Commune is an Uncommon ritual that replaces both Commune and Contact Other Plane. If permitted, it is now capable of failure (in contrast to PF1e Commune) and allows fewer questions.
It isn't that anything/everything in utility is bad, but the truly noteworthy outliers have been hammered down almost universally. For those that have not, access is now immensely easier. The entire landscape is different.
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This shows a huge disparity in thought as the PF2 wizard is provably inferior to the 3E/5E wizard.
Again, “PF2E Wizard is weaker than two games in which it is well known for being wildly, game breakingly overpowered,” isn’t quite the point you think it is.
What metrics do you have for measuring the quality of the wizard from past editions? What quantitative and qualitative measures make this version of the wizard your favorite?I have listed clearly above what I think severely undermines the wizard. I'm wondering what list you could create to show superiority or even equity in actual play compared to what I could provide for comparative play using other classes.
I mean the simple fact of the matter is that a Prepared spellcaster with more spells than any other Prepared spellcaster and the most diverse spell list in the game is going to perform excellently when played well.
It’s just like how a Fighter doesn’t need extra damage gimmicks to keep up with other martials, their baseline Proficiency scaling is so good that other martials get extra damage gimmick to keep up with the Fighter. You outlined a whole list of things that are designed to allow most 3-slot casters to keep up with the Wizard, and ignored that Wizards are just fundamentally coming into the day with more numerous and more varied spells than anyone other than the Sorcerer.
Why are we bothering with these niche spells? So the wizard can artificially feel good about his class?
There’s nothing artificial about it.
- Fireball is a generically good spell. Lightning Bolt is the better spell if you’re fighting in a 5-10 foot wide, very long corridor. Rust Cloud is the better spell if you’re fighting in a smaller than 20-foot radius with an easy chokepoint for your allies to trap the enemy with.
- Blazing Armoury is a niche spell that it’s very unlikely that your Spontaneous caster has learned. If you scout ahead and see that there’s a hydra coming up, Blazing Armoury is also one of the best spells to have.
- Plenty of spells are in the “relatively niche, but really good to have prepared in case they really make a huge difference between life or death” category like Gentle Landing, Air Bubble, Acid Grip, Wooden Double, Time Jump, etc. A Spell Sub user can prepare a handful of these and then, in the middle of the day, reevaluate if you wanna get rid of some of these because it looks like you need your slots for something else more urgently.
The benefit of using situational spells over generically good ones is that situational spells work better in the situations they’re designed for. It’s not “artificial” it’s literally a fundamental of game design in every single game I’ve played: the more situational a thing is, the more uniquely powerful it should be in that situation.
We have run with zero wizards in the entire time I've been playing because no one can stand playing them for very long. They end up using the same spells spontaneous casters use.
It is definitely comical to comment on how bad Wizards are while mostly not even have played a Wizard or played alongside a Wizard?
Like you made a big deal about how Unicore isn’t presenting you with any actual reason the Wizard is good but both Unicore and I have said we’ve played and played with Wizards in this system and found them good (and I’ve provided specifics too) while you’re mostly… arguing based on hypotheticals about how Wizards compare to entirely fundamentally different games?
Whenever wizards keep bringing up these spells they can cast like the need for niche spells happens enough for it to matter more than say a arcane sorc having a spellbook or a bard changing a spell from Occult or an occult sorc grabbing a spell with a minute of downtime or the druid using some untamed form to do something.
Why does my niche need to be relevant more than others’ niche though?
Like no, when I play a Wizard my unique niche doesn’t pop up more than others it happens about as often as others. Isn’t the goal for the game to make it so in a party of 4, everyone’s MVP close to 25% of the time? That means that for every single character, not just the Wizard, 50-75% of the time you’ll feel like you’re shining less than your party members.
Why is that a bad thing?
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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.
I feel this is another instance of fuzzy design where, in theory, it could go really hard into either extreme, and I think that's becoming apparent is that casters have the fuzziest balance out of all classes in Pathfinder: whereas martial classes are extremely consistent in what they can do, and how often they can do it, casters will vary wildly in effectiveness based on the spells they equip, the length and intensity of the adventuring day, and in the case of spellbook-type casters the amount of spells they get to learn.
A Wizard who knows every single arcane spell on the list is going to be far more versatile, and thus far more powerful than a Wizard who only knows the bare minimum they get from levelling, but whereas casters are generally balanced around making full use of the spells available to them, Wizards I don't think are balanced around knowing every arcane spell, so much as knowing enough diverse arcane spells to cover all of their bases. Whereas getting spells from levelling is guaranteed, however, learning spells during exploration or downtime is not, and puts pressure on the GM to cater to the Wizard (or Witch, or Magus).
Pathfinder 2e is generally a game that shines by having very clear-cut rules that make it easy to gauge how a gameplay scenario will pan out, and it's fuzzy cases like these that I feel go against its basic ethos. I suspect several caster mechanics like the Wizard's spellbook are more compromises to keep bits of legacy design than anything else (that, and I suspect the arcane and occult lists are too bloated to prepare from freely like the primal and divine lists), and in the future it'd be interesting to see how the theme of a spellbook or the like could be preserved in a way that doesn't have to account for the exact same Wizard preparing from anything between 54 and 685 spells.
casters have the fuzziest balance out of all classes in Pathfinder
What an intro...
casters will vary wildly in effectiveness based on the spells they equip
I've never ever seen a non-beginner stating: I don't know what spells are good in this game!
The only grievance players have is that some (types of) spells are bad when others are working fine. But otherwise, most players know the good spells and choose accordingly (depending on what they want to achieve).the length and intensity of the adventuring day
Sure. Because martials never get cursed/diseased/drained/doomed and other long duration debilitating conditions. In my experience, martials are as often as casters the main reason why the party made an unexpected stop (casters are rarely hit by these conditions as they are not on the frontline).
in the case of spellbook-type casters the amount of spells they get to learn
I've never learned a single spell with my Witch and in the case you ask I'm doing fine.
Overall, you are yelling at small issues. Martials also have issues casters don't have (like their over reliance on weapon/armor runes, for example).
Casters are not fuzzy (at least not all of them).
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RIP the sorcerer who brought fireball as their only AoE to the 7th floor.
But there's no need of a Spell Substitution Wizard to know that someone who only brings Fire-based spells will meet issues. So it's not because the Wizard was awesome but because the Sorcerer was having issues with its spell selection.
Or run out of revealing light/flight because they didn't heighten it.
Because a Wizard who's out of spells does not run out of Revealing Light/Fly? The Wizard is actually the one getting to the end of its spell list faster as every spell cast removes a spell to choose from.
They basically have infinite scrolls of level 1 utility spells.
Like everyone. Level 1 utility spells are very quickly as good as free.
My feeling is that you had at your table a well played Substitution Wizard and a less well played Sorcerer.
Now I agree that Prepared casters have easier time reviewing their spell list, and as such are in a better position to try new spells. It's definitely an asset, especially when you are beginning (even if I expect most GMs to give beginners easy retraining of disappointing options, but not all GMs will do it). But when it comes to combat versatility, the Spell Substitution Wizard is in the dust compared to a Sorcerer. For out of combat, if it's a central piece of your campaign, then a Spell Substitution Wizard becomes much more interesting, but I'm not sure PF2 is the best game for an out of combat focused campaign.
My first Pathfinder 2e character is a Wizard. He started at 12th level when our forever GM wanted to try out the system and we moved from D&D 3.5. We eventually hit 15th level before going on hiatus.
In 3.5 my guy was a Rogue 1/Diviner 4/Unseen Seer 7. In Pathfinder he became a Wizard who took Divination as his Arcane School and bought into Rogue Archetype using some Class Feats.
I went Metamagical Experimentation as his Thesis, and it's been great. Being able to go sneaky on days where it's required has been really valuable.
I think the main thing that's added to my enjoyment is that my GM allows us to research and prepare. Wizard is great at both.
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There are systems out there that do this; in them, 'magic' becomes just another way to do a very similarly powered attack. I'm not any sort of expert in all of them, but as far as I know none of the 'd20 class and level' systems have used that model.
D&D 4th edition followed that model. And the reception was bad. All classes being samey is really not what people want.
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RIP the sorcerer who brought fireball as their only AoE to the 7th floor.But there's no need of a Spell Substitution Wizard to know that someone who only brings Fire-based spells will meet issues. So it's not because the Wizard was awesome but because the Sorcerer was having issues with its spell selection.
…
My feeling is that you are comparing a well played Substitution Wizard to a badly played Sorcerer.
I think you’re looking at the situation in too extreme a way. It’s not that the Sorcerer made “bad” decisions or is useless, it’s just that the Wizard has a slight edge.
Let’s say you go to the floor that Ryangwy is talking about. As a 7th level Arcane Sorcerer the spells available to you for casting out of your top rank could look something like: Thunderstrike (Signature), Dispel Magic (Signature), Fireball (Signature), Force Barrage (Heightened), Cinder Swarm, Rust Cloud, Confusion.
This is pretty objectively a good list of spells to have. You have fire spells, yes, but you also have coverage for when fire doesn’t work. You won’t be useless without them, and thus this isn’t bad spell selection by any measure. However those fire spells still serve a role: if the best approach to one of the combats on that floor of AV is to use Fireball for burst damage or Cinder Swarm for some Blinded or forced movement, you won’t be doing that because your enemies are immune to it. You won’t be useless but you won’t be functioning at your peak.
Meanwhile a Wizard who had a similarly prepared list will just go home for that night and swap out the spells that aren’t good for spells that fulfill the same roles. For example they may rejig their spell list to have Lightning Bolt to take the role of Fireball, and then fit Acid Grip and/or Briny Bolt to fill in some of the roles that Cinder Swarm was filling. And a Spell Sub Wizard will do it right then and there, right after realizing they’re on the devil floor.
Also a lot of Spell Sub’s value comes from the things other casters can’t do, not just doing what they can do but at a different time. For example a Spell Sub can always have a free Gentle Landing ready in their pocket. The 1% of the time it comes up, someone will thank you for saving them from dying. The 99% of time it doesn’t matter, it’ll stay in your preparations right up until you feel like you wanna remove it cause you’re running low on useful slots. Now permute that with every single spell that a typical caster would find too situational to prepare.
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I've never ever seen a non-beginner stating: I don't know what spells are good in this game!
Yes, let's start by completely dismissing the experience of the players we most need to stay in the game and add to the playerbase. What an intro, as you put it.
The only grievance players have is that some (types of) spells are bad when others are working fine. But otherwise, most players know the good spells and choose accordingly (depending on what they want to achieve).
I suppose that when one spends most of their spare time on an internet forum debating the effectiveness of a specific game's mechanics, one might assume everyone else is equally clued into said game's more-than-a-thousand spells, but something tells me not everyone is equally savvy on how to build their caster optimally. A player doesn't need to know every spell perfectly to play a caster effectively, but it's not very difficult to create an underperforming caster, especially since many players will want to try out a narrower, more thematic build and hit a wall.
Sure. Because martials never get cursed/diseased/drained/doomed and other long duration debilitating conditions. In my experience, martials are as often as casters the main reason why the party made an unexpected stop (casters are rarely hit by these conditions as they are not on the frontline).
ITT stupefied isn't a thing, apparently, and casters are somehow unaffected by all of these persistent conditions because monsters famously only have abilities that will exclusively affect frontline martials, and nobody else. /s
But in all seriousness: casters can receive nasty persistent conditions just as much as martial classes, are affected just as much by them, and despite their positioning advantage are often more vulnerable to such conditions because of their lower defenses. Many enemies have abilities that are far-reaching, large areas of effect, or both, often have mobility that lets them cross to the back line, and in many cases have abilities that are particularly nasty against casters. You're right that sometimes the party will have to stop and rest for the day because a party member caught a nasty affliction, except that party member can be anyone, martial or caster. However, martials don't have to contend with spell slots, whereas casters do, so even if you never encounter afflictions and long-term conditions in your session, you can be sure that the party casters will eventually want to call an end to the day when their spell slots run low.
I've never learned a single spell with my Witch and in the case you ask I'm doing fine.
Please read this part of the post again:
A Wizard who knows every single arcane spell on the list is going to be far more versatile, and thus far more powerful than a Wizard who only knows the bare minimum they get from levelling, but whereas casters are generally balanced around making full use of the spells available to them, Wizards I don't think are balanced around knowing every arcane spell, so much as knowing enough diverse arcane spells to cover all of their bases.
It's great that you feel you're doing fine, if only in the anecdote you've conjured for the sake of winning an argument you also invented, and that suggests that Paizo has made sure spellbook casters remain more or less viable even if they learn no additional spells. That does not, however, detract from the fact that your Witch would be far more powerful if they knew every spell in their list, and this potential power differential is what adds to the fuzziness of caster balance.
Overall, you are yelling at small issues. Martials also have issues casters don't have (like their over reliance on weapon/armor runes, for example).
Interesting how in your eyes, calmly outlining a minor design problem in a supportive response to another comment constitutes "yelling", but going out of your way to downplay said design problem and repeatedly profess how your opinion allows you to invalidate everyone else's is a-okay. It is equally strange that you would insist that martials have a problem of dependence on runes, when fundamental runes are factored into the game's balance and are explicitly marked as mandatory. One could talk about how this can make it a headache for the GM to organically drop appropriately-levelled loot throughout their adventure, but that's also a problem Paizo have themselves offered a solution to in the form of ABP (which neglects to give casters the items they need and subtly underpowers them if used to replace magic items entirely). My concern here is not with the issues of martial classes, because that is not the topic of this thread's discussion, and I don't see how that kind of whataboutism helps with intelligent conversation either.
Casters are not fuzzy (at least not all of them).
Notice how none of the arguments you've made support your conclusion here. For all the downplaying and dismissal you've attempted, the best you've managed to come up with is "martial classes sometimes vary a bit as well", which was never in dispute. No matter how you try to spin it, the fact remains that casters are easier to build poorly than a martial class, vary more in effectiveness than a resourceless class based on the amount of challenges in a single adventuring day, and sometimes have spellbooks or equivalents whose volume can vary by an entire order of magnitude. All of this undoubtedly makes casters fuzzy, and certainly fuzzier than martial classes, which is why some players continue to have poor experiences of caster classes that they wouldn't have with martial classes, and why players from different tables don't always agree on how powerful casters are. Overall, I would say casters are balanced, but the ideal range of conditions that allow that are harder to describe than for martial classes, who are altogether much more consistent.
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I think the only problem with casters is the perception people have of them, both when compared to their equivalents in other systems and when compared to martials and their equipment. Let me explain; since forever casters have been the kings of D&D which is something that's been embraced by WoTC at this point, so anything that isn't an auto-win buttom looks worse in comparison. In the case of martials and their equipment, casters see martials have nice bonuses to their attack rolls from runes but they on top of having delayed proficiency don't have those bonuses either. Kineticists probably made it even worse for those people, because they see something that kinda plays like a caster but it does has those bonuses from gate attenuators like a martial would with weapons.
I personally think casters are fine. I seen a ton of casters winning encounters by themselves because the enemy failed one save which imposed a nasty condition in them, though I also think its really easy to make a bad caster because building one requires way more system mastery than playing even the most "complex" martials. I think a gate attenuator equivalent for casters wouldn't hurt the system, and would likely allow for slightly less experienced casters to function too.
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A post just about spell substitution:
Spell substitution requires 10 minutes between encounters to be useful. It is better than PF1 leaving slots open because you have a useful spell in that a lot the whole time, you just can change it on the fly.
My wizard can learn a spell in 10 minutes, critically succeeds every learn a spell check he doesn’t fail, and can’t critically fail. Because of this, I spend a ton of my character wealth on scrolls. Scrolls are great! Buy a scroll, learn the spell, use the scroll. I only ever have to do this once. That means I get a lot more different scrolls than any sorcerer, and thus my spell book gets very big, with every spell in it a potentially signature spell. This varies somewhat by table, but nothing in arcane thesis says “wizard spells only”, (and some like experimental spell shaping would be really weird if they were limited only working on spell from your wizard list), so all my character’s MCd cleric spells can be switched out too, but I’ll leave that benefit out for now, cause some won’t play that way.
What level scroll do you keep illusory disguise at? What about mending? Or summon construct? Or dispel magic? Or lock? “But I never cast those spells!” Exactly! If the ability to potentially cast a spell eats up limited resources, you never think about the ways that a lock spell cast on an already locked back door, might very well prevent an enemy caster you are trying to catch from being able to leave, because they won’t be trained in athletics or thievery. Or heightening an illusory disguise to rank 3 will allow your very deceptive rogue to impersonate just about anyone, as they get a +4 status bonus, and if you really need to, you can heighten it instead to 4th level to let you disguise the whole party. The DCs for things like impersonation, get a lot more reasonable with a +4 bonus. There are a ton of utility spells that heighten at different levels. Spell substitution lets you utilize all of that much better than scrolls.
It also lets me prepare one of a bunch of different spells at the start of the day, and slowly change those spells as my party rests and heals, as we start learning more about the dungeon and what will be coming next. That is where it really shines and provides a unique play experience that white room theory crafting won’t experience. It lets you learn about a dungeon and get more prepared to face it as you go, which feels very erudite and scholarly.
I think you’re looking at the situation in too extreme a way.
The sentence I answered to said: "RIP the sorcerer who brought fireball as their only AoE to the 7th floor."
I understood from the way it was phrased that the Sorcerer was heavily leaning into Fire spells, not that they would lose only a small part of their effectiveness. But it looks like I've hard time telling between hyperboles and small issues :)It’s not that the Sorcerer made “bad” decisions or is useless, it’s just that the Wizard has a slight edge.
In your example, your Sorcerer has the choice between 7 spells. As both Fireball and Cinder Swarm are useless against Fire Immune enemies, he is down to 5 spells.
The Spell Sub Wizard has the choice between 3 spells (slightly more fitting ones) going down to 2 and then 1 everytime they cast a spell. Does the Spell Sub Wizard really have an edge? Because for me, the Sorcerer still wins in (combat) versatility.Also a lot of Spell Sub’s value comes from the things other casters can’t do, not just doing what they can do but at a different time. For example a Spell Sub can always have a free Gentle Landing ready in their pocket. The 1% of the time it comes up, someone will thank you for saving them from dying. The 99% of time it doesn’t matter, it’ll stay in your preparations right up until you feel like you wanna remove it cause you’re running low on useful slots. Now permute that with every single spell that a typical caster would find too situational to prepare.
That's a Sorcerer asset to always have Gentle Landing because having it in your Repertoire doesn't force you to use it. The Spell Sub Wizard on the other hand is wasting an entire spell slot. And that's much more impactful to the Wizard because its spell list is reduced everytime it casts a spell.
For example, if you have cast half of your first rank spells, the Sorcerer still has 2 spell slots with a choice between 3 spells and Gentle Landing when the Wizard has 1 spell and Gentle Landing and that's all. So the Spell Sub Wizard will often reprep Gentle Landing when the Sorcerer will always have it at the ready.The Spell Sub Wizard doesn't have the combat versatility of the Sorcerer. We can find contrived situations where it gets an edge but in most basic situations the Sorcerer is significantly more versatile.
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I am guessing who ever brought up Abomination Vaults as an example of an AP that doesn’t allow for down time is a player in a party that is imposing these time restrictions on themselves, or has a GM who is dialing up the time pressure way too much because downtime activities are assumed in the AP as written. Like spending a week retraining at almost any time should be fine, and is expected, in the book.
On the OP subject of casters and magic moments:
In our game last night, we faced a wave encounter situation that really spiraled hard as an entire cult of Urgathoa came out to fight us at once. Like 10 level -3 clerics, 4 level -3 skeletons, 5or 6 level -4 zombies, 4 level - 4 “doctors” and then a level +2 wizard we had been chasing for 3 levels already, all triggering within 2 rounds. There was little more satisfying than seeing the wizard in person, recognizing he looked frail and sickly and hitting him with a slow spell after he managed to get one powerful spell off, see him crit fail rolling a natural 4, and then mopping the floor with all of the minions while the wizard had to move one round, then open a door the next, then move again, trying to run away.
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especially since many players will want to try out a narrower, more thematic build and hit a wall.
The wall they hit is that they will search for options for thematic casters and won't find any. Forcing them to rethink their caster. Not that they will somehow make up a Fire based caster by artificially limiting themselves to Fire spells and never think it'd be a bad idea.
But in all seriousness: casters can receive nasty persistent conditions just as much as martial classes, are affected just as much by them, and despite their positioning advantage are often more vulnerable to such conditions because of their lower defenses.
You are the one not being serious. Yes, casters can be affected by these conditions as I've actually stated. It's just that martials are the ones affected most of the time. Casters are taking less attacks than martials, luckily, so martials are in general the ones with awful long duration debuffs.
That does not, however, detract from the fact that your Witch would be far more powerful if they knew every spell in their list
I think you misunderstood me: My Witch hasn't learned a single spell, not because the GM has somehow said so but because I never needed it. Having all the spells in the database in my spellbook won't change the fact that the only spells I can cast are the ones I've prepared. Outside Spell Sub Wizard, the number of spells in your spellbook are rather irrelevant to your efficiency once you have covered the spells you prepare every day (and they are not that many).
calmly outlining a minor design problem
casters have the fuzziest balance out of all classes in Pathfinder
Well, it looks like you have a tendency to hyperbole then.
how your opinion allows you to invalidate everyone else's is a-okay.
You're not everyone. I agree with most people here. But your take on casters is extreme (or at least your hyperboles make it look like it).
the fact remains
All of this undoubtedly
Well, you have a weird way to state your opinion. If, instead of bringing truth from beyond you were just saying "I think", or "in my opinion", I would not react so negatively to your contribution.
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A post just about spell substitution:
Spell substitution requires 10 minutes between encounters to be useful. It is better than PF1 leaving slots open because you have a useful spell in that a lot the whole time, you just can change it on the fly.My wizard can learn a spell in 10 minutes, critically succeeds every learn a spell check he doesn’t fail, and can’t critically fail. Because of this, I spend a ton of my character wealth on scrolls. Scrolls are great! Buy a scroll, learn the spell, use the scroll. I only ever have to do this once. That means I get a lot more different scrolls than any sorcerer, and thus my spell book gets very big, with every spell in it a potentially signature spell. This varies somewhat by table, but nothing in arcane thesis says “wizard spells only”, (and some like experimental spell shaping would be really weird if they were limited only working on spell from your wizard list), so all my character’s MCd cleric spells can be switched out too, but I’ll leave that benefit out for now, cause some won’t play that way.
What level scroll do you keep illusory disguise at? What about mending? Or summon construct? Or dispel magic? Or lock? “But I never cast those spells!” Exactly! If the ability to potentially cast a spell eats up limited resources, you never think about the ways that a lock spell cast on an already locked back door, might very well prevent an enemy caster you are trying to catch from being able to leave, because they won’t be trained in athletics or thievery. Or heightening an illusory disguise to rank 3 will allow your very deceptive rogue to impersonate just about anyone, as they get a +4 status bonus, and if you really need to, you can heighten it instead to 4th level to let you disguise the whole party. The DCs for things like impersonation, get a lot more reasonable with a +4 bonus. There are a ton of utility spells that heighten at different levels. Spell substitution lets you utilize all of that much better than scrolls.
It also lets me prepare one of...
Just went back to read the wording on the thesis...and it really doesn't make any restriction on what slots you can sub. That is STRONG with some witch slots. Going into witch was always my plan with wizard but now I can't imagine anything other than the substitution thesis. Good stuff, thx for the elucidation
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In your example, your Sorcerer has the choice between 7 spells. As both Fireball and Cinder Swarm are useless against Fire Immune enemies, he is down to 5 spells.
The Spell Sub Wizard has the choice between 3 spells (slightly more fitting ones) going down to 2 and then 1 everytime they cast a spell. Does the Spell Sub Wizard really have an edge? Because for me, the Sorcerer still wins in (combat) versatility.
I believe what you’re discussing here is more about a larger discussion between Prepared and Spontaneous casters. I do believe Prepared casters are a tad bit more over-punished for their versatility, but my point is that irrespective of Spell Sub a Sorcerer will have more flexibility within a single day.
I think that in the larger comparison a Spontaneous caster has way more flexibility within a single day but it’s offset by the fact that Prepared casters have better flexibility day to day. In my experience playing through AV, the Bard had Soothe (Signature), Slow, Vision of Death, Synesthesia, etc always ready to go, but I (Wizard) had Fireball and Slow one day and Wall of Water and Heightened Thunderstrike the next day. The daily fine tuning of spells is where Prepared casters shine.
Spell Sub’s goal is to take a caster that typically only has day-to-day flexibility and give them a huge amount of in-day flexibility too.
That's a Sorcerer asset to always have Gentle Landing because having it in your Repertoire doesn't force you to use it. The Spell Sub Wizard on the other hand is wasting an entire spell slot. And that's much more impactful to the Wizard because its spell list is reduced everytime it casts a spell.For example, if you have cast half of your first rank spells, the Sorcerer still has 2 spell slots with a choice between 3 spells and Gentle Landing when the Wizard has 1 spell and Gentle Landing and that's all. So the Spell Sub Wizard will often reprep Gentle Landing when the Sorcerer will always have it at the ready.
The Spell Sub Wizard doesn't have the combat versatility of the Sorcerer. We can find contrived situations where it gets an edge but in most basic situations the Sorcerer is significantly more versatile.
And then having that Gentle Landing in the Repertoire means not having something else there. You might want, say, a Befuddle or a Fear or an Interposing Earth in that spot.
A Spell Sub Wizard is gonna prepare situational spells and then swap them out when needed.
And we can circle back to what I said earlier too: Spell Sub’s goal is to remove some of the downsides of being a Prepared caster while retaining all of the upsides.
What level scroll do you keep illusory disguise at? What about mending? Or summon construct? Or dispel magic? Or lock? “But I never cast those spells!” Exactly!
100% this.
People are talking about trying to use Spell Sub to emulate a Spontaneous caster but that makes little sense. You’re not a Spontaneous caster, you have your own upsides to offset theirs. You just get to also have a lot of flexibility in a unique way that most other casters can only emulate via scrolls and/or paying a hefty opportunity cost.
In the case of martials and their equipment, casters see martials have nice bonuses to their attack rolls from runes but they on top of having delayed proficiency don't have those bonuses either. Kineticists probably made it even worse for those people, because they see something that kinda plays like a caster but it does has those bonuses from gate attenuators like a martial would with weapons.
Sayre went into some detail on this in a Discord server recently but the gist of his answer was that it’s so easy to look at proficiencies out of context in the white room and forget all the other factors that go into being a spellcaster.
If you take a rough look at spells that accomplish the same goals across the ranks, you’ll notice that every odd rank tends to give spells more “permissions”. Rank 3 spells can accomplish things that were fundamentally not okay for rank 1-2 spells to accomplish. Same for rank 5 vs ranks 1-4. There’s also the fact that as you gain new ranks of spells, your old ones don’t disappear they just start accomplishing different (but equally useful things): like when I’m level 9 my rank 2-3 slots start spamming out Hidebound and Wooden Double. In real gameplay those upgrades are largely smoothing out the lag in Proficiency and lack of runes that casters usually suffer from, but they’re very hard to see when you just look at the numbers on a page.