There's been a lot of discussions around the Wizard since the remaster, none of them all that positive. There's a consensus that the class has changed for the worse, and that the general landscape has evolved in a manner that's left them behind, which does not bode well for what seems to be an otherwise flavorful expansion themed entirely around wizarding academies across Golarion. For those who aren't familiar with the discussions already, here I think are some common points:
What's Wrong with the Wizard?:
Because the Wizard's arcane school slot got changed to work only with a limited curriculum of spells, rather than an entire OGL school of magic, the Wizard received a substantial nerf to their versatility. In some cases, this also came at a minor yet symbolic loss in power, as schools like Battle Magic force the class to prepare spells into lower-rank slots that become obsolete when not heightened enough.
Meanwhile, the remaster has seen most other casters buffed, sometimes substantially. The Oracle is now a four-slot caster, the Mystic and Witchwarper from the Starfinder playtest are both four-slot casters, and even the Sorcerer received a wave of buffs. Less directly, non-arcane spell lists received significant benefits with the addition of spirit damage and a host of new and improved spells, shortening the gap between traditions. This has left the Wizard's four-slot casting feeling much less unique, and has made players increasingly question the restrictions placed both upon the class's fourth slot, and their spell slots overall due to the limitations of their spellbook.
Although the Wizard did receive some positive changes, including some better feats, many issues remained largely unaddressed. Experimental Spellshaping is still not a very popular arcane thesis, Spell Substitution still competes with Refocusing, many school spells still aren't very useful, and the class still has only fairly few feats to choose from, especially for what is meant to be one of the four iconic spellcasters for their respective traditions (they have around half the amount of feats as the Bard, Cleric, or Druid). Unlike other spellcasters, they still can't get a pool of 3 Focus Points without taking an archetype, nor can they access the features of a different subclass, such as the curriculum or school spell of a different arcane school. This has led many players to feel like the Wizard has been neglected.
A lot of players have started to reexamine the Wizard in a more critical light: specifically, the class's overwhelming focus on casting arcane spells does not come across as truly unique in a game with plenty more arcane spellcasters. Similarly, their identity as a student of magic, and an intellectual class in general, doesn't particularly get to shine given how they lack feats that let them Recall Knowledge better, or more broady allow them to do more things that don't just involve casting spells.
Despite what appears to be fairly common ground for criticism, there doesn't seem to be much consensus over which direction to take the Wizard: some people want the class to remain a four-slot caster, others don't. Some people want the class to specialize in a particular school of magic, others don't. Some players even challenge the Wizard's spell preparation, as they dislike the inflexibility of Vancian spellcasting. It seems there are about as many different identities for the Wizard as there are players with an opinion on the Wizard, which makes it difficult to come up with a solution that satisfies everyone.
In short: the Wizard fell behind at a time where every other caster pulled significantly ahead, and as a result people are questioning their place in a game where their power struggles to stand out, and their flaws have become much more apparent. Lots of players want a new and better Wizard, but nobody can agree upon what that Wizard would look like, and so most threads critiquing the class often devolve into squabbling.
With this in mind, I can't really claim to offer a one-size-fits-all solution, because I don't think one exists for this particular problem: I do, however, think there is an approach to take here that could satisfy a greater number of players, and that is to let the player choose what they want the Wizard's specialty to be. If you're interested in specific details, I wrote a 25-page Wizard homebrew that adopts this approach. Beyond those specifics, here I think are the broad lines of how the Wizard could be improved, in whichever form that takes:
Power Concentrated into Arcane Thesis: On one hand, players can't seem to decide what the Wizard is meant to excel at. On the other, many players also want their arcane thesis to be more impactful. I think the Wizard's arcane thesis is the key to giving players what they want here: by no longer making the class a four-slot caster by default, that I think leaves a lot more room in the power budget for much stronger theses. Do you want to cast spellshapes as free actions from level 1? Do you want to shake off the limitations of prepared casting and gain the benefits of flexible spellcasting, without the drawbacks? Do you want to remain a 4-slot caster, but don't want your fourth slot to be restricted to a curriculum? In all of these cases and more, I think there's ample room to deliver that with a playstyle-defining subclass choice.
More Schools: One thing I think many of us are waiting for is a larger number of arcane schools, particularly as the Wizard ended up with fewer schools post-remaster, and the only school they got since is a reskin of the School of Mentalism. I suspect this is something Rival Academies will help with, and I think there's a prime opportunity here to take the Elementalist's elemental schools and make them proper schools for the core Wizard, as well as adapt the Runelord schools to a post-remaster 2e as arcane schools of their own.
More Feats: You can't go wrong with more feats, and with the Wizard there's a lot left to explore, in my opinion. In particular, I think there's plenty of room for feats that improve the Wizard's Lore skills and ability to Recall Knowledge, feats that let a Wizard gain some benefits from a different arcane school, and feats that build on the Wizard's arcane thesis.
In short, give the Wizard lots more options, but also make their arcane thesis the main feature that defines what the class excels at. I think there's room for more specific changes, like making Spell Substitution core to the class instead of their arcane bond feature and allowing the Wizard to substitute spells while Refocusing, but otherwise this sort of framework where each arcane thesis gets a lot more power I think would have a much better chance of tailoring the Wizard to the specific desires of different players than their current structure. You could have your spell battery Wizards, your spellshape-centric Wizards, and even your specialist Wizards all in one, and each would get to shine in their own specific way.
The school/curriculum has a lot of flavor potential, but you don't want every wizard from the same school to be the same.
The thesis makes for another big thing to build flavor around, but again you don't want all wizards with the same thesis to feel the same.
But combining school X thesis, you get a lot of different wizards, while keeping the main character building choices of the class quite clear.
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And yeah, making spell substitution a core feature feels right. Wizard is thematically "the" preparation&adaptation class. Clerics and druids get to prepare from their whole list. It'd be a good contrast if wizards got to change their mind more easily.
I think there should be a way to enhance a casters spell attack rolls and save DC’s similar to weapon runes. Martial have runes to improve their chances to hit and damage…it stands to reason casters should have the same.
It is frustrating as a caster to be fighting a BIg Bad boss who is 2 to 3 ECL above you and you need a 18 or 19 just to hit them and they always save or crit save vs your spells….yet the Martial’s only need a 13 or 14 to hit the same AC
A house rule I use for spell attacks is to decouple them from spell DC, give spellcasters expert spell attacks at level 5 and master spell attacks at level 13 (with no legendary attacks), and let them benefit from weapon potency runes on a wielded weapon or staff, with staves getting those runes built-in at the right level milestones (and needing to have those runes to work in order to prevent free gold shenanigans). Because this causes spell attacks to be just as accurate as weapon attacks, my casters have been pretty happy, even if they rarely use spell attacks past a certain level. I also ban Shadow Signet when I use that house rule, but nobody's minded so far either.
I very recently had the classic problem it feels like every PF2e GM has - I have a player whose heart is just aboslutely set on playing an offensive striker Wizard with a theme, who had seen some fantasy artwork and based their entire concept around that image. They wanted to play a Minotaur with lightning magic based on some MTG card art they saw, and that just was not going to happen mechanically - they didn't want to be be a Sorceror, nor a Magus, but specifically a Wizard.
And it just feels like this is always the problem with the class, people go into it with very firm ideas of what they want a Wizard to be and the class is fundamentally incapable of meeting those expectations, in ways that just aren't typically the case for other classes. It would be one thing if we actually did have new classes that are wizard by another name, that do the thematics of a classic Wizard (studying from a book INT caster that ponders their orb) but with mechanics that actually serve whatever fundamentally incompatible vision Paizo's design cannot accomodate, but as it is it's the class that most commonly seems to set players up for disappointment in my experience.
As for spell attacks not improving in accuracy over time, the classic answer is that casters are not reliant on a high bonus to hit in order to bypass AC because they can target saves instead and choose to only target AC when a creature has a low AC. But I think that does come back to that example I gave of someone wanting to play a lighting wizard - aside from electricity not really being an indepedent element you can just pick even with the elmentalist class, there's not enough spells to go around that fit that theme that would make targetting all the different saves viable.
So you get players who go into striking with a caster, who don't know that the intention is to have a variety of spells targetting different saves (I don't think any of the character creation rules even make this suggestion, so we can't be surprised players don't organically discover this for themselves), and so effectively are every bit as inflexible as martials are in trying to work around a high AC or Reflex save but without that scaling bonus.
I do like your appraoch to schools in addressing this. I don't think making schools a great big list of spells of highly variable quality is good enough nor do I think it's really sufficient to deal with the reality that Wizards are a bit like the magical equivalent of Fighters, a blank slate onto which people project extremely varied ideas about what they want to do with magic, and instead focusing them on spellshaping I think addresses the problem with the current appraoch to theming of there just very often not being enough spells to cover all the necessary bases while fitting with a theme.
I could very much imagine my player being much more satisfied if they could have picked a lightning school that coverted spells of other damage types to electricity (or whatever damage type) chosen at creation and then gotten thematic spellshaping to make even their non-damaging spells fit with their theme. It's a lot easier to convince a player in love with an idea to take a variety of spells that can deal with a variety of situations (the default assumption Paizo has with Wizards) if the spells that would normally not fit with their theme could get bonuses to *make* them fit with the theme.
Much appreciated, thank you! And yeah, I fully agree with the observations: the Wizard has just as much demand for varied builds as the Fighter, and because many different players have different ideas for what a Wizard should look like, the major power boosts beyond "prepared Int caster" probably ought to be choices left up to the player, rather than fixed features, such as the class's current extra spell slots and curriculum.
I also agree that not everyone wants their caster to be a generalist, not even the Wizard, and that I think is one of the key sources of expectation clashes in PF2e: because casters were designed with the intent of emulating old-school spell selection in 1e, there was this assumption that players would come in expecting casters to be generalists, and would automatically play the game of varying their spell selection as much as possible to cover all bases. In practice, there's been increasingly high demand for specialization, and while players certainly will diversify their spell list as they gain experience with the system, it's more a thing done out of mechanical necessity than an organic roleplaying development. Because so many popular magic systems nowadays feature specialist magic-users that players want to emulate, I think there should at least be the option to focus on a specific subset of magic.
Also haven't play tested these but I like the idea of the Wizard alone being better at the same spells as others and tying it to knowledge.
I'm thinking about some house rules to make Knowledge is Power a feat chain for Wizards only:
Level 2 Feat -- Wizard's Insight-- same as Knowledge is Power but only need Success for -1 and can't share with allies yet
Level 4 Feat -- Master Wizard's Insight-- pre rec: Wizard Insight. success gives -1 AND count spell as 1 rank higher when determining incapacitate. Critical Success gives you -2
Level 4 Feat -- Share the Knowledge. pre rec: Wizard Insight. can share knowledge with allies but max -1 for allies and no incapacitate effect (even on critical success)
Level 2 Feat -- Easy Knowledge -- pick a skill, no other requirement. Can roll Recall Knowledge as a free action once per round for that skill. (basically a better version of Automatic Knowledge for the Wizard only)
Level 8 feat -- Arcane Knowledge Master -- pre rec: Easy knowledge with Arcane. You can treat Arcane as the appropriate skill for any Recall Knowledge check against an enemy. If you do so, the benefits from Wizard Insight and Master Wizard's Insight only apply to Arcane spells you cast or Arcane spells cast on you.
Could make the Feats higher level but seems like the Recall Knowledge check DC already limits getting the higher bonuses for bosses and such.
Also thinking about a better Counterspell feat chain to give Wizard's distinction in that area as well.
Agree that better Focus Spells would do a lot of good as well.
A few options for making them potentially better at counterspelling.
Potentially, make a Wizard counterspelling as a reaction, with a prepared Wizard Spell, to counter a spell being cast. Have them counter spell as if their counter spelling rank is one rank higher than it is. It doesn't boost the counteract rank of spells and effects which have already occurred, or are caused by something other than a spell being cast by a person or item.
Another option to improve counterspell ability for a wizard would be to allow them to counterspell any spell which they 'Know' which is one of their school spells. They expend their school prepared spell slot, losing that prepared spell if this choice is utilized. They treat the counteract as if they had expended the school spell with that slot instead.
I believe this option would need to modify the Automatic recognition of spells being cast, to include any school curriculum spells which they know, whether prepared or not.
Honestly, I confess some people might want to offer this second counterspelling to potentially other classes, except instead including the 'Domain' spells, or 'Bloodline' spells(although sorcerer's always have their bloodline spells in their repertoire unless they are Archetype Sorcerers, so probably not likely a clamor for this one), etc. But that might lose some of the 'advantage' you were potentially considering granting the wizard. However, wizard curriculum may include more than one spell per rank, so it might be a slight advantage to them.
Another option, allow a wizard to recognize any spells available, in an Invested staff, and allow them to counterspell using the staff and a charge if the staff is in hand.
Perhaps allow counterspelling from an invested wand as well, but recognition and counterspelling would likely only be available if the wand was already in hand when the spell started being cast.
This might make such magic items more seen as Tools of the Wizard, and making the wizard the expert of magical tools.
Honestly, given that they're called schools and not 'innate mental understanding', I think Wizards thematically can get their own version of multifarious muse/order explorer - a second level feat to add the school spells of another school to theirs, and a fourth level feat to get their basic focus spell. If one school can't cover what theme you're looking for, maybe two or three can! You'd need some kind of cutout for class archetype schools and school refusers but it should be doable, I think.
This would also mean wizards could genuinely get really narrow schools like school of lightning - right now I think because whatever school you are commits 1/4th of your spell slots and all your focus spells to the theme, they end up picking broad, unsuited themes which I've complained about already. If every wizard can just go to school again (and really, why shouldn't they?) then 'staff of fire but a school' is now perfectly printable.
As a boomer there is one thing from the days of first and second edition that made the magic user i.e. the wizard of today powerful that I rarely see done now adays where everyone argues incessantly over game balance and that is the old art of the wizard in his studies inventing his own spell.
There were two benefits:
1) it did not cost you one of the spells you went up in as you level so it was an extra. The downside was you hade to research the spell and usually the DM would give you quests to find certain rare herbs, crystals, or obtain copies of rare volumes of magic which other wizards might guard. It would cost you time and money in game.
2) You got to add to your power level in ways that were unique to your character. Other wizards might seek you out to teach them your spell. Only you could make that spell. The way we played it the spell was unique to a sort of akashic memory and once you invented it, it became mired into the realm of the universe and no one else could research exactly that spell.
This was for me one of the best parts of playing a wizard. You played a class that could invent spells.
I would improve the wizard class in the game by having rules set up for players to reinvent magic. What things made a spell more or less powerful, etc. Encourage creativity while being fair on the level test. No if you make the spell that powerful Xador it will have to be a tenth level spell.
Another way I would improve the wizard is giving them more with magic items somehow. Maybe they can invest more items. Maybe when they make a wand or staff they can add four runes instead of three. Maybe an additional craft feat that is specific for wizards allowing them to craft wands and staves with spells they know or to be able to use magic aura reading and research to learn spells from magic items they study.
Lastly, make it easier for wizards to write scrolls in their downtime than other classes. Maybe to the point the cleric will work with the wizard to make clerical scrolls because of the added efficiency.
One of the benefits of being a wizard was when you ran out of spells in a day you could result to casting from scrolls. Especially utility spells, etc.
It would probably not be that difficult to work up rules in place that allowed wizards to capitalize on their downtime to make spells and items they can then use on adventure and to give the wizard a benefit to do so.
I would improve the wizard class in the game by having rules set up for players to reinvent magic. What things made a spell more or less powerful, etc. Encourage creativity while being fair on the level test. No if you make the spell that powerful Xador it will have to be a tenth level spell.
I wonder what a reasonable set of 'magic effects worth one rank' could be given to spells that make sense as a long-term modification to your spells rather than a spellshape. Or, well, actually just permanently adding a spellshape (for no action cost) is already pretty cool, isn't it?
I would improve the wizard class in the game by having rules set up for players to reinvent magic. What things made a spell more or less powerful, etc. Encourage creativity while being fair on the level test. No if you make the spell that powerful Xador it will have to be a tenth level spell.
I wonder what a reasonable set of 'magic effects worth one rank' could be given to spells that make sense as a long-term modification to your spells rather than a spellshape. Or, well, actually just permanently adding a spellshape (for no action cost) is already pretty cool, isn't it?
Spellshape is 20th level, back in our day campaigns ended at 12th level.
I think there was an article is the Dragon Magazine the went through various sizes of cones, areas, etc. as well as damage type and dice and gave rules of thumb for creating spells. There were also other abilities as well.
The idea was you make up a new effect for your spell. Back then we added a lot of stuff to our characters and the game. The control was with the DM. This article gave the DM pointers on the power levels for spells that players brought to him to create.
Today that does not work because everything has to balance as if this were a video game.
Still there could be some abilities regarding creating new magic that happen in game. Depending on what was being tried inventing a spell could involve several quests and a lot of game time.
Then however spell casters powers were limited by time. You did not just get all your spell slots back with a long rest. Essentially memorizing a spell was one hour of study per level of the spell. You could only do so if you were well rested. Uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep the next day. That meant going into an adventure whatever spells you had available was all you will get until you left a dungeon. Made planning much more difficult.
However, parties would take weeks of downtime preparing for adventures in order to create scrolls, charge wands, etc. so that they had as much firepower as they could.
It therefore probably cannot be as open now as it was back then but perhaps feats and/or abilities that allow the creation of a set number of permanent items and scrolls that are consumed. Charges, potions or scrolls, etc. would make the wizard while less powerful more utilitarian always having something for every adversity.
I wonder what a reasonable set of 'magic effects worth one rank' could be given to spells that make sense as a long-term modification to your spells rather than a spellshape. Or, well, actually just permanently adding a spellshape (for no action cost) is already pretty cool, isn't it?
Spellshape is 20th level, back in our day campaigns ended at 12th level.
I meant what PF2eR calls spellshape, that is to say metamagic. Since all one action spellshapes are already 'balanced' to be added to a spell for an action cost, it shouldn't be too out of line to bake them into the spell without the action cost. Reach and Widen strike me in particular as stuff that's probably worth a rank up in lieu of an action.
Honestly, given that they're called schools and not 'innate mental understanding', I think Wizards thematically can get their own version of multifarious muse/order explorer - a second level feat to add the school spells of another school to theirs, and a fourth level feat to get their basic focus spell. If one school can't cover what theme you're looking for, maybe two or three can! You'd need some kind of cutout for class archetype schools and school refusers but it should be doable, I think.
This would also mean wizards could genuinely get really narrow schools like school of lightning - right now I think because whatever school you are commits 1/4th of your spell slots and all your focus spells to the theme, they end up picking broad, unsuited themes which I've complained about already. If every wizard can just go to school again (and really, why shouldn't they?) then 'staff of fire but a school' is now perfectly printable.
I quite like this idea, especially since it allows Wizards to get 3 Focus Spells/Points without archetyping. I think Wizards would also benefit from universal Focus Spells that aren't tied to a subclass. Perhaps they'd be things like particularly strong Spellshapes or weaker Spellshapes that are free actions, like with the Bard(although obviously different in nature).
as far as other feats, non-spell actions like Spell Protection Array could be useful to add. I could see something like a Spell Magnification Array that adds damage and/or a DC/attack roll bonus for creatures in the area, which could facilitate the blaster playstyle a lot of people want at the cost of mobility.
Also related to the blaster/themed Wizard issue, I think there could be more spells in various themes(especially cantrips) that target different defenses, even if they have to be a little contrived. For example, there's just Ignition for fire cantrips right now, but if there were Flame Orb or something that targets Reflex and sets a square on fire, and Scorch or something, which targets Fortitude and has Caustic Blast-style scaling, but also inflicts persistent fire damage, a fire-themed caster would be much easier to make even at lower levels. That said, that notion is harder to apply to Will saves, and isn't entirely a Wizard-exclusive concept.
Regarding inventing spells, I'd really hate for any such subsystem to be unique to Wizards, since it'd presumably be quite an expansive amount of rules and roleplay concepts restricted to a small sector of characters, and it also just doesn't seem like it makes sense for only Wizards to be inventing spells, either, at least to me.
Lastly, I think that if the curriculum spells stay in their current form, another handy tool would be a feat or feature that lets you add to that list with no regard to theme beyond the spell being in your book, to represent spells that you know from field practice.
