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Unless I'm missing something, they just aren't. Why, again? It seems strange to me that you have to use on of your free skill proficiencies to become trained in Arcana if you're an Analyst Witchwarper. In Pathfinder 2e every caster gets innate proficiency for their casting skill, even ones with a variable tradition such as Sorcerer and Witch, and for good reason, it makes sense for a class to be good at the thing that drives their spellcasting. I do think it's great that certain skills scale off of the non-tradition skill a subclass gives you (such as getting the Epiphany spell of another Mystic connection) instead of its tradition skill for a change, but your tradition skill still isn't, nor should it be, irrelevant enough to be optional.
Yeah, that's a very weird change. I'm hoping it's just something they overlooked.
Just because you cast magic doesn't mean you understand magic. I always felt that weird that spontaneous casters new about magicv but how would they, some times there be no one to teach you about nature if you were a primal sorcerer and you'd end up not knowing much about your magic and what not. I think it is a feature for roleplay and not a bug. What if a bug though if this is not true is over in Pathfinder 2E Monks getting Qi spells and not beign trained in Occultism or Religion if every spellcaster should b trained in their Tradition.
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Just because you cast magic doesn't mean you understand magic. I always felt that weird that spontaneous casters new about magicv but how would they, some times there be no one to teach you about nature if you were a primal sorcerer and you'd end up not knowing much about your magic and what not. I think it is a feature for roleplay and not a bug. What if a bug though if this is not true is over in Pathfinder 2E Monks getting Qi spells and not beign trained in Occultism or Religion if every spellcaster should b trained in their Tradition.
For a quirky roleplay choice it has some pretty notable mechanical impacts. The monk comparison is a red herring, because monk has focus spells, not a spell list and spell slots. Learning a Spell and Identifying Magic are tied to your tradition, and you are required to be at least trianed in them to do that.
A class not being able to learn an Uncommon/Rare spell (or potentially even add spells to the limited list it can prepare from at all like Witch) unless it actively specs into its own spellcasting skill is downright disruptive to the game. This is why an Oracle, or Summoner, and even Sorcerer start out at least trained in their associated skill. It's easier to hand-wave away that they just sorta Have An Understanding of it than to account for them not having at least trained.
Not only is the choice not to start the SF casters out with it inconsistent (which is alread a problem in itself), but also has negative gameplay implications. Not game ruining, at least in most cases, but obtrusive enough to need smoothing over. Not to mention it doesn't match the outlined flavor of the classes, Mystics are defined by having some deeper understanding, and Witchwarpers are stated to have gone through enough training to get their power under some level of control.
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Several mystics do get their tradition skill for free (not all, but some.) For example the Akashic mystic (occult spellcaster) gains occultism.
As for learn a spell . . . I don't . . . think that applies? Unless you are trying to learn an uncommon spell. Both spellcasters presented in the book are spontaneous, so they just learn spells automatically as they level up. I guess Learn a Spell can be used for retraining or learning uncommon spells, but that's usually not a problem.
I want to bring up one more thing regarding this, which is the new player experience. Someone new to the system (and yes, brand new players to the 'Finder series are bound to play SF2e as their first) shouldn't be taught that their spell tradition skill is arbitrary, optional, or pointless. Without classes directly showing them, they're going to have a harder time building up the right intuitions for what tradition means which skill, which will have all sorts of bad ripple effects, especially if after that they go play Pathfinder. I do honestly believe that in this instance consistency should trump experimentation. Shields too, please make them scale the same as Pathfinder it's driving me mad
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The way I see it Witchwarper warp reality, doing so just happens to resemble spells. That Analyst Witchwarper's have computers as their paradox skill, to me suggests they are trying to figure out their powers with science more than arcana.
A paradox that had arcana as its skill would be cool. That would fit in well in the SF2e equivalent of SF1e's Glatatic Magic book. An ocult paradox would be cool to.
In SF1e I like mysticism because it let you flavor spell casting or skill use how ever you like to fit your character idea.
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I want to bring up one more thing regarding this, which is the new player experience. Someone new to the system (and yes, brand new players to the 'Finder series are bound to play SF2e as their first) shouldn't be taught that their spell tradition skill is arbitrary, optional, or pointless. Without classes directly showing them, they're going to have a harder time building up the right intuitions for what tradition means which skill, which will have all sorts of bad ripple effects, especially if after that they go play Pathfinder. I do honestly believe that in this instance consistency should trump experimentation. Shields too, please make them scale the same as Pathfinder it's driving me mad
I'm actually really glad you brought this up in the forums. I believe it's probably just an oversight, and this thread helps the developers correct it, or, if they meant to do this, explain their thoughts on why this has been done.
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I want to bring up one more thing regarding this, which is the new player experience. Someone new to the system (and yes, brand new players to the 'Finder series are bound to play SF2e as their first) shouldn't be taught that their spell tradition skill is arbitrary, optional, or pointless. Without classes directly showing them, they're going to have a harder time building up the right intuitions for what tradition means which skill, which will have all sorts of bad ripple effects, especially if after that they go play Pathfinder. I do honestly believe that in this instance consistency should trump experimentation. Shields too, please make them scale the same as Pathfinder it's driving me mad
In Starfinder PC spell casters are just as common as they are in Pathfinder, but encountering magic in Starfinder is a lot less common. Also, SF1e uses the mysticism skill for all the magic traditions, now that SF2e will have the 4 Pathfinder skills, the chance of any one of those skills getting used will be even lower.
I play caster in both SF1e and PF2e since I have no idea what the ripple effect is, I'm sure by most people's standards I'm building characters wrong, my PF2e sorcerer doesn't cast spells during combat...
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In Starfinder PC spell casters are just as common as they are in Pathfinder, but encountering magic in Starfinder is a lot less common.
That is the opposite of how the SF1e setting worked. Magic is everywhere and incorporated with technology frequently enough that it's mentioned as practically being involved in the manufacture of nearly every object. The mage specifically talks about how magic is more accessible than it has ever been in SF.
That is the opposite of how the SF1e setting worked. Magic is everywhere and incorporated with technology frequently enough that it's mentioned as practically being involved in the manufacture of nearly every object. The mage specifically talks about how magic is more accessible than it has ever been in SF.In Starfinder PC spell casters are just as common as they are in Pathfinder, but encountering magic in Starfinder is a lot less common.
Thank you, I was about to call and report my stroke symptoms.
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That is the opposite of how the SF1e setting worked. Magic is everywhere and incorporated with technology frequently enough that it's mentioned as practically being involved in the manufacture of nearly every object. The mage specifically talks about how magic is more accessible than it has ever been in SF.In Starfinder PC spell casters are just as common as they are in Pathfinder, but encountering magic in Starfinder is a lot less common.
Sure it's easy to buy magic and hybrid items, and there's a star system where the star is a magical or divine manifestation, and many other examples of magic, but out of the scenarios, my mystic has played only in one was it critical to have mysticism. I played in one more that having mysticism was very useful, the rest I could have just picked another skill and been fine. Most of the skill challenges I've seen that used mysticism usually have other skills you could use instead, often my mystics skill ranks in the other skills was higher.
My mystic is a combat medic heavy on the combat medic part very lite on the mystic part. I'd hate to see Starfinder classes lose that kind of flexibility because it's hard to teach new PF2e players how to build characters the right way.
It seems strange to me that you have to use on of your free skill proficiencies to become trained in Arcana if you're an Analyst Witchwarper. In Pathfinder 2e every caster gets innate proficiency for their casting skill, even ones with a variable tradition such as Sorcerer and Witch, and for good reason, it makes sense for a class to be good at the thing that drives their spellcasting.
Does it only feel strange? Or does it feel bad?
As mentioned upthread, these are all spontaneous casters that don't need to use Learn a Spell unless they are doing so for Uncommon or Rare spells (that the GM hasn't just decided to remove the rarity from entirely and have them become Common spells for that campaign).
Having the Paradox not be forced to give the magical tradition skill means that the skill is giving a different skill. In the case of Analyst, you are getting Computers skill. That is a bit of a build flexibility bonus if you are wanting the Computers skill. It means that you have another freely chosen skill boost at first level. You could spend that skill boost on Arcana. But you could also spend it on something else.
I think this is likely an oversight because it doesn't make much sense for Starfinder casters to not be knowldegeable about their magica tradition, if anything, one would assume it should be the opposite since infospheres and such should make that kind of knowldge readily available for everyone.
If the idea is to have casters not being shoehorned into a skill, I think the easiest solution is copy the sorcerer's homework and grant casters two trained skills instead of one; one based on tradition and one based on flavor. Akashic could be Occultism plus a skill with the Recall Knowledge action, elemental Nature and Survival, healing Religion and Medicine, rythm Nature and Performance, shadow Religion and Stealth, analyst Arcana and Computers, anomaly Arcana and Deception, gap influenced Occultism and Society, and precog Piloting and Occultism. If the extra skill would be too much, reduce the amount of free trained skills by 1.
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I want to bring up one more thing regarding this, which is the new player experience. Someone new to the system (and yes, brand new players to the 'Finder series are bound to play SF2e as their first) shouldn't be taught that their spell tradition skill is arbitrary, optional, or pointless. Without classes directly showing them, they're going to have a harder time building up the right intuitions for what tradition means which skill, which will have all sorts of bad ripple effects, especially if after that they go play Pathfinder. I do honestly believe that in this instance consistency should trump experimentation. Shields too, please make them scale the same as Pathfinder it's driving me madI'm actually really glad you brought this up in the forums. I believe it's probably just an oversight, and this thread helps the developers correct it, or, if they meant to do this, explain their thoughts on why this has been done.
Witchwarper is trained in spell attack modifier and trained in spell DC.
That's the new Remaster language which drops the proficiency distinction between the different spell casting traditions (arcane, divine, etc).
It's by design. If you look at the Player Core, it'll say the same thing for the Bard, Cleric, etc. Just trained in (general) spellcasting.
It's a slight buff for spellcasters who take an archetype into a different spellcasting tradition. Like a druid who takes the cleric class archetype now has the same proficiency in divine spells as they do in their main primal spells. The only difference coming from a potentially different ability modifier.