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If Necromancer can exist in this format sdhouldn't all the schoolsa be turned into classes then to some degree? I think this would help bring back the old identity of the magic schools lost by the OGL while also giving a chance for Wizard to be THE Arcane caster over the other schools being too focused on a single element of magicv.
What do you guys think?
I will need to find the exact quote, but there was discussion around this exact topic and the Wizard indeed: effectively, in a system where the Wizard wasn't designed around the OGL eight schools, and the OGL eight schools weren't designed around the Wizard, then you could in fact more easily have a dedicated necromancer, a dedicated mentalist/mesmerist, and so on. The Mesmerist and Shifter are both classes that players want brought back to 2e, so I definitely agree there's room for more of that kind of expansion beyond the Necromancer, as well as room for the Wizard to shine in their own right, rather than just by being the inheritor of a very large and powerful spell list.
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Abjuration: It's not exactly something that shows up in many stories or stands on its own. You could do something with it.
Conjuration: Covered, as "summoner" is what shows up in stories and we have that.
Divination: Diviners would usually be an "oracle" that someone goes to see, or a "psychic". The narrative fortune-tellers of stories are fundamentally at odds with role-playing games and prophecy is broken. I wouldn't expect it to get more of a dedicated class than we have.
Enchantment: We did have Mesmerist before, and it could make a comeback, but I'm not really expecting it. At the same time, it's a rough thing to focus heavily on in PF2, what with the incapacitation trait.
Evocation: Sorcerer has blasting features, and Kineticist fills the elementalist role wey. I don't see us getting something more focused on blasting spells than Sorc.
Illusion: Not really sure what an illusion-focused class brings beyond the already solid and still well-defined spell category. I'd expect it to be rolled in with Enchantment like Mesmerist did if we get something dedicated?
Necromancy: Being covered here, clearly! Definitely the biggest missing one, since "necromancers" are a thing that show up in stories and lore.
Transmutation: Shapeshifting caster is very much Druid business. Alchemist is already a thing, so I dunno what you'd even call a class for non-shapeshifting Transmutation. I'd expect another shapeshifting class, but not a caster.
We have a few that aren't covered, but nothing in the lore is hurting because Abjurers or Transmuters are missing, the way "there's nothing called a 'Necromancer'" hurts. I would be surprised to see Paizo take a checklist approach, but it's not like there's no class inspiration to be had there.
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Abjuration: It's not exactly something that shows up in many stories or stands on its own. You could do something with it.
Abjuration could play into a magebreaker idea. Someone who studies and practices anti-magic options. Break curses and enchantments, render magic items inert, actively reign in direct spellcasting.
something like a champion magus hybrid would probably play nicely with the school.
My 2 cp:
Abjurer- a caster dedicated to defensive magic and anti-magic sounds interesting, but it might be tricky to pull off in a balanced way.
Conjurer- the summoner can cover the "extra-planar minion" shtick; the Unbound Step psychic is probably a better fit for "planar travel/teleportation specialist" than the School of the Boundary wizard.
Diviner- a Lore oracle or Infinite Eye psychic can probably work well.
Enchanter- a bard, Fey sorcerer, or Silent Whisper psychic probably have this covered if you don't like the School of Mentalism.
Evoker- various sorcerers and Oscillating Wave psychics make quite effective blasters; the School of Battle Magic can also work (just not as well).
Illusionist- a Fey sorcerer can probably work, but likely not as well as a Tangible Dream psychic.
Transmutation- the School of Protean Form can work for a non-primal shifter; a Distant Grasp psychic can work for a telekinesis-focused caster.
By this same logic could Summoner not fit for Necromancer then?
By this same logic could Summoner not fit for Necromancer then?
One specific flavor of "necromancer," yes. With the Undead eidolon expansion from Book of the Dead.
However, just as PF1 allowed many different "necromancer" options (e.g., an alchemist with the preservationist and reanimator archetypes that took the Planar Preservationist and Skeletal Summoner feats) the necromancer class is providing the thrall mechanic that is different than an undead companion (which pretty much any character can get with the Undead Master archetype) or using the create undead ritual on a bunch of corpses.
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By this same logic could Summoner not fit for Necromancer then?
The people yearn for the hordes.
But more seriously, it's because "Conjurers" don't usually show up in stories, "Summoners" do. As a category of magic, conjuration was "summoning and".
Paizo isn't going to make a summoning-and-teleporting-and-making-objects class; they have a summoning class with one big customizable summons and the option to spec into summoning minions. That fills a big fantasy that a lot of people want to play.
Necromancer is addressing the other extreme: lots of disposable undead that enemies have to tear their way through to even get to the Necromancer.
All that to say, if you don't think Summoner is addressing Conjuration, then I really don't think Paizo is going to make school classes by your definition. The schools of magic are gone, and one of them happened to be occupying the same space that a class fit.
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I don't think so. The problem with the OGL Wizard is "the eight schools" made the Wizard much bigger than any other class in terms of what it was about. It was often said that because of the Wizard needing to be able to do all of the 8 different things, the arcane spell list was greedy.
I think the sooner we bury the "8 kinds of magic all of which are equal" the better. Like Divination or Enchantment doesn't really need to be part of the story, because "knowing the future" doesn't work great in a game about players making choices and "mind control" makes people uncomfortable a lot. "I defend people with magic" doesn't really need to be a normal thing either.
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Speaking personally, the illusionist/mesmerist trope is also one of the core "specialist mage" archetypes that comes to my mind when I'm asked. Illusionists, necromancers, elementalists, and some form of summoner or conjurer.
From a "classic" game standpoint, a dedicated illusionist goes all the way back to AD&D 1st Ed; when it was the only specialized caster.
However, as I mentioned, a Tangible Dream psychic pretty much has that trope locked up (other than not being a prepared caster). I suppose Paizo could publish a wizard school focused on illusions, but they are trying to get away from the OGL and the "eight schools" paradigm.
Elementalists, we already have as a class archetype. Granted, it's kind of underwhelming.
I am still dreaming of the day we get a Mesmerist as a prepared occult caster.
This, however, is something that I could see in PF2 at some point. Probably as a "wave caster," similar to the magus but without Spellstrike and with "mesmerist tricks" (focus spells?) and a "painful stare" adding precision damage. Maybe the "painful stare" could be like the swashbuckler's panache/Precise Strike/Finisher mechanic; although it might overlap a bit with a Braggart, Fencer, or Wit swashbuckler with a multiclassed caster dedication, it would probably be worth it to add a prepared Cha-based caster (off the top of my head, I can't think of one in PF2).
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This, however, is something that I could see in PF2 at some point. Probably as a "wave caster," similar to the magus but without Spellstrike and with "mesmerist tricks" (focus spells?) and a "painful stare" adding precision damage. Maybe the "painful stare" could be like the swashbuckler's panache/Precise Strike/Finisher mechanic; although it might overlap a bit with a Braggart, Fencer, or Wit swashbuckler with a multiclassed caster dedication, it would probably be worth it to add a prepared Cha-based caster (off the top of my head, I can't think of one in PF2).
In a weird way, the closest thing I've seen in 2e to Mesmerist tricks are the Runes in the playtest Runesmith. You can "implant" them in an ally in advance, and then "trigger" them later.
The Stares look a lot like 2e Hexes + familiar rider effects.
Wave caster would definitely be interesting. But like I said above, 1e Mesmerist wasn't a prepared caster, so I would expect a 2e version to be a spontaneous caster. But I do think you could make an Occult Witch that gets pretty close to the same thing.
I really like the remastered narrative take on the Ars Gramatica school of magic as a combination of divination and abjuration. After all, what better way to protect yourself from a potential threat is there than seeing it coming before it happens.
What is tricky for me, is that I feel like the Rune Smith class is stepping all over this same design space (the magical power of language) and getting a ton of high damage blasting on top of it. The rune smith feels equally pulled into being able to do everything magical (only without any limited resources) as the wizard and feels like a much bigger problem than something more like the necromancer class, that is focused on doing the one thing. If all of the newly remastered wizard schools just end up being better implemented as individual classes, then I really do wonder if the wizard has a place in PF2 at all any more.
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If all of the newly remastered wizard schools just end up being better implemented as individual classes, then I really do wonder if the wizard has a place in PF2 at all any more.
I mean you can look at the Necromancer playtest and the Wizard right now and see they have virtually nothing in common whatsoever other than that they both cast spells.
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If all of the newly remastered wizard schools just end up being better implemented as individual classes, then I really do wonder if the wizard has a place in PF2 at all any more.I mean you can look at the Necromancer playtest and the Wizard right now and see they have virtually nothing in common whatsoever other than that they both cast spells.
Really, the only relevant parallel between the Wizard and the Necromancer we need to maintain is "it is plausible that Geb and Nex were each others' rivals"
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Really, the only relevant parallel between the Wizard and the Necromancer we need to maintain is "it is plausible that Geb and Nex were each others' rivals"If all of the newly remastered wizard schools just end up being better implemented as individual classes, then I really do wonder if the wizard has a place in PF2 at all any more.I mean you can look at the Necromancer playtest and the Wizard right now and see they have virtually nothing in common whatsoever other than that they both cast spells.
Even if Geb is now a necromancer (class) instead of wizard (Necromancy school specialist) and Nex is a wizard (School of the Boundary), there is still a possible rivalry. IIRC, the rivalry between the two was based at least as much on competing national interests as any conflict between magical discipline/practice.
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It just needs to be ambiguous/debatable whether it's Nex or Geb who is truly "better at magic". If you take things out of the Necromancer's "good at magic" spell budget for other stuff, we run the risk of giving Geb the disadvantage here.
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It just needs to be ambiguous/debatable whether it's Nex or Geb who is truly "better at magic". If you take things out of the Necromancer's "good at magic" spell budget for other stuff, we run the risk of giving Geb the disadvantage here.
Both the necromancer and wizard classes have 10th level spells.
It might be that Geb took the multiclassed wizard archetype to expand his spell selection and number of spell slots.
The "better at magic" debate gets pretty silly when a bard with the Esoteric Polymath, Multifarious Muse, Versatile Signature, Eclectic Polymath, Studious Capacity, Impossible Polymath, and Ultimate Polymath can cast spells from any spell list, they are all signature spells, and can even cast a spell once per day after expending the spell slots for that spell level!
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I think that's the opposite of the direction I want to see. One of the fun things about the PF1 Mesmerist was that it was slightly more martially inclined, it even had some archetypes that really leaned into letting you wield a sword along with your magic, good stuff.
And spontaneous is basically always better than prepared.
That said I don't think a class archetype would make sense. While the two share a lot of thematic similarities, bard feats and bard class features just don't really line up with the mesmerist fantasy very well.
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I like the idea of the abjurer/Warder.
Like limit the spell casting but give them a number of special wards they can cast per day. a Caster tank that helps tank up everyone else. The form of Abjuration/Ward they focus on is their subclass.
The Negationist: specalizes in counterspell, and don't have to have the same spell prepared to use it. they would automatically gain a few wards that let them counterspell, and weaken magical effects that aren't spells, like a dragon's breath attack.
The Warder: specalizes in actively protecting from phsyical attacks, or the result of spells, without affecting the spell itself. Soemthing like the 5e aburationist ability to simply have and maintiain a in invisible sack of hit points that can soak a certain amount of damage each turn. and with a reaction can be used for others.
the Cursebreaker: You specialize in lifting and ending spells, curses, and other lasting magical effects. I would imagine you gain a bonus to the checks to do this, and at certain level some (like your level -4) are just auto succeeded.
Abjuration: It's not exactly something that shows up in many stories or stands on its own. You could do something with it.
Honestly a little surprised to see this come up so often. Apotropaic casters seem like an obvious and well used character trope to me, albeit one more typically associated with hybrid casters or hedge mages, rather than all-up casters.
Most of that well has been dipped into by one or more classes in pathfinder, but nearly all on martials. A caster class that focuses on action denial, zone control, AC/save bonus, and flexible resistance with its cantrips and focus spells seems pretty reasonable, though I don't have a narrative hook in mind that isn't used by one of the current classes.
Maybe using primal magic and feather tokens might be a way to go with this.
Divination: Diviners would usually be an "oracle" that someone goes to see, or a "psychic". The narrative fortune-tellers of stories are fundamentally at odds with role-playing games and prophecy is broken. I wouldn't expect it to get more of a dedicated class than we have.
I always found the precog from starfinder to be a quite brilliant way of going about this character trope. Pre-rolling is considered a fortune effect, so more broadly using fortune and misfortune effects seems like it would create a broad enough pile of effects to base a class on, with maybe the harrow deck as a narrative theme.
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Fair reason. I am partially in agreement. I'm not a fan of how Paizo does prepared casting. It never gelled with me back in 1E. It never gelled with the people I played with. I even scrapped it in the games I run in favor of a buffed version of the flexible spellcasting archetype where I made it the default casting method to work more like 5E casting.
But, while I do dislike prepared casting. when I imagine a mesmerist, I don't want them to be someone with a limited bag of tricks like a bard. The same way a necromancer is a prepared caster, due to its versatility in their field, I'd want Mesmerist to be one. It quite frankly does not make sense to me for a mesmerist to have such a small learned spell list. It simply does not feel thematic to me.
Granted, my home rule system makes prepared casting very playable. So I have a form of bias where a prepared caster is not seen as a detriment at my table.
Though that raises the question: If Spontaneous is always better than prepared, then what's the point of Paizo making prepared casters? I feel like I find more people who espouse their intentions to refuse to play a prepared caster than those who actually defend it.
I feel like classic prepared casting is a bit of a passé concept. It happened to be the thing people came up with decades ago, and then just stuck with. And I mean, I like the vibe of wizards. I like the greedy idea of someone who wants to learn ALL the secrets.
But since then, spontaneous casting has evolved:
- first bursting onto the scene in D&D 3.0
- PF2 being much more liberal with retraining spells as you level up
- Some classes having mechanics to swap out one spell per day from your repertoire with a spellbook
I think that last one is the way forward. Not that many prepared casters really swap out their whole spell selection every day. Swapping out one or two spells would be plenty. Maybe some should be a bit better at it than others, or have a wider repertoire of alternatives to choose from.
I feel spontaneous casting is a better play experience, if you just have that bit of wiggle room to adapt.
I don't think they all need to be classes, per se, but I would absolutely take a Barrier Mage Archetype for dedicated abjuration.