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They have said and shown a couple times that the "missing" combinations are antithesis, and one of the "Godsrain Prophecies" actually show it as causing a hole in reality to try to combine them.
Also, it was mentioned that multiple traditions doing the same "effect" usually use different "angles". Like divine necromancy will focus on manipulating the void energy/soul stuff with life/spirit to animate undead, while arcane necromancy would focus on "matter" to manipulate the "corpse" more directly.
Okay, now that is just incredibly lazy design. They might as well have just ignored the essences, which feel more like a cheap excuse, and gone straight to the four traditions.They have said and shown a couple times that the "missing" combinations are antithesis, and one of the "Godsrain Prophecies" actually show it as causing a hole in reality to try to combine them.
Also, it was mentioned that multiple traditions doing the same "effect" usually use different "angles". Like divine necromancy will focus on manipulating the void energy/soul stuff with life/spirit to animate undead, while arcane necromancy would focus on "matter" to manipulate the "corpse" more directly.
Fortunately I don't think what they said is true. Largely the explanation is that traditions have limited access to the two essences they don't cover. Arcane spellcasters are using vital essence to channel void to make undead, not using, idk, telekinesis or whatever to move bones. It's probably a post-hoc rationalization for why the spell lists have this or that spell because they wanted to give said spell to one of the CRB classes. The wizard being the biggest culprit of this bleeding of traditions into each other
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Maybe the problem is that they mixed up "the wizard list" and "the arcane list" too much.
To me at least, one of the key themes of a wizard is someone who studies the fundamentals and tries to get around the apparent limitations. It's part of the class identity that they're doing things no god intended. Wizard magic should be a bit outside it's appointed lane.
So they could have kept the arcane list a bit more pure, but let wizards color more outside those lines specifically as their class trick.
An arcane sorcerer would be practicing more purely arcane magic, and a wizard through hackery can do things the sorcerer won't have access to. (And an arcane witch gets some lessons from the patron to color outside the lines too..)
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Maybe the problem is that they mixed up "the wizard list" and "the arcane list" too much.
To me at least, one of the key themes of a wizard is someone who studies the fundamentals and tries to get around the apparent limitations. It's part of the class identity that they're doing things no god intended. Wizard magic should be a bit outside it's appointed lane.
So they could have kept the arcane list a bit more pure, but let wizards color more outside those lines specifically as their class trick.
An arcane sorcerer would be practicing more purely arcane magic, and a wizard through hackery can do things the sorcerer won't have access to. (And an arcane witch gets some lessons from the patron to color outside the lines too..)
I believe that across the board the lists should be much smaller, much tighter and less all encompassing. Then we just give classes the ability to add more spells to their list according to theme. Maybe wizards do this more, maybe they don't. Wizards already seem to have a theme in manipulating spell slots and doing better meta magic so I think that's their lane... But I digress. We won't see this resolved until 3e though
What if we do the opposite and make Magic just Magic, make it so Traditions don't exist in the next edition and move away from the conceptt of because you are this class you must use this type of magic. What is stopping Arcane casters from truly using heal lore wise outside of mechanics?
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Well you could - plenty of other RPGs do. You could go further, too; why do different classes have different feat lists? Why can't my fighter take Gang Up as level 6 feat? Other game systems just give you a pile of build points to select all your stats and abilities with.
Ultimately Pathfinder uses limitations on what you can't do, or what only some classes can do, to give them identity. And it works pretty well.
The problem for wizard is that their identity is pretty much "the arcane spell list" except that several other classes also use the same spell list, and wizards don't really get significant tricks with it that sorcerers and witches don't get.
I believe that across the board the lists should be much smaller, much tighter and less all encompassing. Then we just give classes the ability to add more spells to their list according to theme. Maybe wizards do this more, maybe they don't. Wizards already seem to have a theme in manipulating spell slots and doing better meta magic so I think that's their lane... But I digress. We won't see this resolved until 3e thoughMaybe the problem is that they mixed up "the wizard list" and "the arcane list" too much.
To me at least, one of the key themes of a wizard is someone who studies the fundamentals and tries to get around the apparent limitations. It's part of the class identity that they're doing things no god intended. Wizard magic should be a bit outside it's appointed lane.
So they could have kept the arcane list a bit more pure, but let wizards color more outside those lines specifically as their class trick.
An arcane sorcerer would be practicing more purely arcane magic, and a wizard through hackery can do things the sorcerer won't have access to. (And an arcane witch gets some lessons from the patron to color outside the lines too..)
I really thought they should have given the wizard schools gave access to some spells from other list. Like a med student wizard with sooth or a meteorologist with more of the elemental spells from primal. I think it would have had better schools had it been a player core2 class.
I really thought they should have given the wizard schools gave access to some spells from other list. Like a med student wizard with sooth or a meteorologist with more of the elemental spells from primal. I think it would have had better schools had it been a player core2 class.
I don't know what elemental spells Primal has that arcane doesn't. I know primal is primarily associated with the elemental planes, but pretty much every single blast spell is shared between these two traditions
I don't know what elemental spells Primal has that arcane doesn't. I know primal is primarily associated with the elemental planes, but pretty much every single blast spell is shared between these two traditions
I really thought there were more in Rage of Elements, but I just looked and there are only like a handful. Those were basically just other heal spells.
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In my opinion, the four essences at the heart of spell traditions are an excellent model that Pathfinder really ought to follow, but in practice they don't actually explain the traditions very well or answer any questions about them accurately. Instead, the question to ask that best answers why tradition spell lists are the way they are is: "which CRB caster was this spell list built around?"
Let's take the primal list, for instance: if we break it down by essences, the spell list doesn't make all that much sense, because despite being a tradition that harnesses vital essence, the primal list has the worst access to void spells out of all traditions. There are also a few mental spells, particularly fear spells, that don't seem all that related to what the tradition is about. However, when you think of it as "the Druid spell list," it all makes sense: the Druid's all about respecting nature, so they don't get to access all the spells that twist life in unnatural ways, and they're meant to also be a bit bestial and able to channel the might and other abilities of wild animals, so they get spells that scare their enemies. Because the primal list is so closely married to the Druid, this I suspect makes it extremely difficult to develop any other primal caster that's not the Druid, which is presumably why we still have only one dedicated primal caster in the game.
As others have mentioned, it's the same deal with the arcane tradition: the spell list is a hodgepodge of different effects that includes tons of void magic (i.e. the OGL school of necromancy), and even a couple of spells that manipulate enemies' spirits. Thematically, it's a mess, but when you look at it through the lens of the Wizard, the class the spell list was designed around, it again makes sense: the Wizard historically was a caster class defined by being able to do everything except heal, and prior to the remaster were the master of the eight OGL schools of magic, which is why the arcane list is so overloaded with effects that just shouldn't normally belong. Again, I think this has made it extremely difficult to develop more arcane casters, which is why the only other dedicated arcane caster in the game besides the Wizard is a class whose theme itself boils down to "Wizard who also studied swordfighting".
All of this is to say that the four essences, while really interesting in theory, have relatively little bearing on defining the four traditions' spell lists in practice, because Paizo took a class-based approach, rather than an essence-based approach, to building them. Had Paizo built those spell lists according to their component essences instead, I think they would look very different, as would caster classes as a whole, and I suspect the Necromancer would likely not be an occult caster either.
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TBH, I think "Faith" belongs in Spirit not in life. Mice have instinct, heart, and vital essence but don't necessarily have faith. A ghost wouldn't have any of those things, but it might have faith.
TBH, I think "Faith" belongs in Spirit not in life. Mice have instinct, heart, and vital essence but don't necessarily have faith. A ghost wouldn't have any of those things, but it might have faith.
I don't entirely disagree with you, but it's worth noting that a mouse very much also has a spirit essence. I don't entirely disagree that a mouse doesn't really embody the 'faith' aspect of vitality (I actually think 'faith' should be taken in looser terms), but if "a mouse doesn't have faith" is our argument for faith not being part of vitality, neither should it be part of spirit--or mind or body, for that matter.
Faith seems like a perfectly reasonable expression of Life to me since it feels like there's a clear 'heart/mind' parallel, which you note in your own post, which extends to the traditions in the form of 'will' being considered a the 'driving force' if you will of an Arcane or Occult caster's spell preparation, where 'faith' is the similar concept from the Divine/Primal end of the spectrum. In those terms, it seems reasonably that faith is described as a non-cerebral, instinctive aspect of the self, like Heart/Life/Vitality rather than Mind
Meanwhile, Spirit and Matter seem mostly to share the thematic role of being a 'substance' essence that make up the physical bulk of various planes, and are the core body/soul components.
I wouldn't really hate it if faith was attached to spirit, but it doesn't really jive all that much with my understanding of hte essences, and would distance Druids from faith while at the same time joining Bards and faith--or perhaps weirder, bringing the current Necromancer closer to the aspect of faith.
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I do think the essences as implemented right now are a bit jumbled, and in particular spiritual essence has had all of what I believe are its essential characteristics shunted to adjacent essences, which has made it difficult to specifically define what the spirit does in spells. In my opinion, essences ought to work as follows:
With this in mind, I think this could lead to some interesting changes to existing traditions:
I also don't put too much stock in the Godsrain Prophecies as canon, especially in an age of broken prophecy, and I do think we have examples of cross-tradition magic to some extent: Starfinder's Mystic combines mental and vital essence through their connection, so you could have this mystical tradition that draws upon shared memory and life force, and I think the Thaumaturge is a good example of the opposite, as they use material objects imbued with such profound symbolism that they affect our very soul, such as by targeting our personal antithesis.
I also think faith is a fairly complex thing that I don't think can necessarily be assimilated to just one essence, particularly as it takes a very different form depending on which faith you practice: clerical faith is based on very specific choices and actions, for instance, whereas druidic faith is much more experiential. In both cases faith can spur people to greater heights and let them do more than those who have no faith at all, which is probably where vital essence comes in, but whereas Clerics don't necessarily care as much about the material trappings of the Universe so much as the afterlives of the Outer Sphere, Druids instead don't necessarily care about the afterlife at all, and ground their faith in the world they live in.
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I see alot of mentions of the void being part of the vital essence but I don't think this neccesarily holds true.
This is explicitly stated with no ambiguity in Secrets of Magic. Void and Vitality make up the two halves of the vital essence, described as positive and negative energy in the book as it was pre-ogl crisis
So if we want to quote things why not quote the Player Core when it comes to the four essences?
Life
Also called heart, faith, instinct, or vital essence, life represents the animating universal force within all things. Whereas matter provides the base materials for a body, life keeps it alive and well. This essence is responsible for unconscious responses and belief, such as ancestral instincts and divine guidance. The divine and primal traditions hold power over life.I know void and vitality was part of the same coin at a point atleast from a worldbuilding aspect. Not so sure considering how little Void/Negative access Primal has had during all these years in comparison with Arcane, Occult and especially Divine.
So it kinda makes sense when you consider that the new equivalent sidebar makes no mention of void when speaking about life or vital essence.
The sidebar makes no mention of void at all, under any of the four essences, but of course you're not proposing that void simply does not exist, correct? This is probably not something we should use to draw too many conclusions about void energy, as it is not even indirectly mentioned or described anywhere in that sidebar.
Except, perhaps, if you consider that void energy *also*, like vitality, is an animating force that guides unconscious responses (in creatures with void healing at least).
Sorry, kept revising sentences and I think I ended up sounding more sarcastic and critical than I intended.
What I meant was that void isn't mentioned in that sidebar at all, so it's not actually giving us any clues on what essence they think commands void energy. Your point about the lack of void in the primal tradition is a much stronger indication, but like Teridax I feels that's more to do with what should be on the druid's spell list rather than what should be (in my opinion) primal.
Which, side note:
Wielding void magic could certainly be anathema to Druids, or at least most druidic orders that don't focus on rot and decay/QUOTE]This is such an obviously good solution to this dilemma that I feel silly for never thinking of it myself. I would really like to see that happen officially.
I do agree to a certain point in void being anathema to druids, but there are also non-druid primal casters. Like how the witch has the Devourer of Decay.
Yes, that's the point Terridax and I have been making. It only makes sense to us for Druids to be limited from casting void magic, we both think primal casters in general should be great at using void energy because they tap into the vital essence, not despite it.
We will just have to wait and see if Paizo releases a book around the subject of the void and its relation to magic.
Book of the Dead and Secrets of Magic both go into this topic. My comment about void being an animating force comparable to vitality comes right out of Book of the Dead, page 32.
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Sure, when they publish new lore, we’ll all take that as the new baseline. I won’t speak for others, but while new lore might not change my mind about what I think should be, but I will cheerfully accept whatever retroactive continuity Paizo feels they need.
So sure, next month that line I cited (which was an in world opinion, not ruled text) may get retconned or otherwise shown to be wrong, but next month that might also happen to stuff that got published last month. Or even stuff from the remastered guns and gears getting published in the next couple weeks. It’s all made up anyways, nothing is safe. But until they do either say something is not valid or publish something contradictory, I see no reason to assume it’s wrong.
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Based on the lore we have so far, void is a part of vital essence. The reason why everybody accesses void magic except for primal casters is the same reason why traditions in general don't conform well to their component essences: tradition spell lists weren't designed around the four essences, they were assembled around a specific class that was designated as iconic for the tradition, i.e. the Wizard for arcane, the Cleric for divine, the Bard for occult, and the Druid for primal. In theory, the four essences should inform these traditions' lists, but in practice they don't; the essences are treated more as a side bit of lore than a defining mechanical principle. Thus, we can't effectively rationalize the current essences around the current traditions in my opinion or vice versa, because those two bits don't actually communicate well with one another. Perhaps in a future edition the two will be closer together, and we'll have void-wielding primal casters, but that's unlikely to happen in 2e.