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Give wizards a class ability that lets them cast any spell from their spellbook as a 10 min activity. No slots used to do this. Maybe they can use this ability a number of times per day equal to this formula
Top rank 1/day
-1 is 2/day
-2 is 3/day
4/day for any spell -3 or under
Slots get reserved for combat uses and any spell you want to use for utility.
If the number of uses of the ten min spell activity is too much give them less to start and let feats unlock more uses to spec into a more utility capable wizard build.
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I'm not sure I like that exact implementation, but I think you're on to something.
If you give the wizard a class feature (or feat) that allows them to cast more spells per day, but essentially making them rituals that could be interesting.
Say the wizard has to use their spell book, and they have to find a suitable area (ley lines or some such), and then the ritual takes at least X amount of time (where the amount of time might depend on spell rank and normal spell casting time).
Like imagine if the wizard could cast an unlimited amount of 1st level spells as a ritual, but it took 2 minutes to cast the spell, required them to have book in hand, and find a suitable location to invoke the magic.
And perhaps as you level up and can cast higher rank spells (and are thus better at magic) perhaps the amount of time required for lower ranking spells decreases.
The amount of time has to be long enough that the ritual is never feasible in battle. But this could be an interesting way to make the wizard good.
It gives a strong reason why the wizard would want to collect every spell known around, because with time the wizard could cast it. It makes it not fight viable. But think of all the utility spells the wizard could use throughout the day.
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Give wizards a class ability that lets them cast any spell from their spellbook as a 10 min activity. No slots used to do this. Maybe they can use this ability a number of times per day equal to this formula
Top rank 1/day
-1 is 2/day
-2 is 3/day
4/day for any spell -3 or underSlots get reserved for combat uses and any spell you want to use for utility.
If the number of uses of the ten min spell activity is too much give them less to start and let feats unlock more uses to spec into a more utility capable wizard build.
Without something like comprehensive tags/traits being applied to spells to govern options, I don't see this being workable without something game breaking being open.
Paizo really should have invested the time to add more comprehensive traits to spells overall, as there exists quite a few places where it could have paid off.
But honestly, I think the simplest, best answer is the one thats been circled around on time and time again. Spell Sub should be a default class feature.
Or do that 2nd & 8th level feat tax I suggested, if you need really feel the need to have it cost something else.
I just feel the wizard fantasy that sounds the best to me is the kind where magic is normsl for them.
It could be interesting to delve deeper into wizard magic use specifically and how it differs from sorcery or granted magic. Perhaps some sort of effect lingers from having cast spells, instead if simply depleting them.
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I am not sure how well of an advantage that is in second edition yet. Dynamic has changed but Wizard does have the ability to learn spells.
Learning spells has become a drawback. Clerics, druids, and animists don't need to learn common spells-- they just get them. While this has been the case for decades, previous editions made the wizard's list the most versatile and powerful by a country mile.
That is no longer the case. The wizard list is still the biggest, but many of its best spells are now shared by occult, primal, or even divine. With spell slots being more limited, you can only utilize so many spells, and with casting generally being more limited only so many spells are worth using. You can't even call the spellbook for arcane a balance consideration, not when the witch learns spells the same way regardless of which list they pick.
It's legacy baggage which never quite caught up to the new design.
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I still think both the arcane list and the wizard class are in a fairly strong place.Well I agree with one of those statements. :)
Wizard is just... I mean, I don't see why I'd ever play one? What's the hook? It feels like a Cleric with more work (tracking a spellbook) but not much going on to pay that off. It also feels like there's more interesting focus spells in domains than in schools.
How do you mean? They're an arcane caster who has more castings per spell rank than the cleric does, and those spells don't have to be heal/harm. Clerics can't mill lower end slots for higher end ones with Spell Blending, or swap their preps with Spell Substitution, to name two of them ore unique options. The focus spells are fine, and are more consistently useful than many (but not all) of the domain spells. In my experience the spellbook isn't much of a problem, since gameplay doesn't tend to revolve around radically shifting spell prep day to day, and the number of spells you can easily get in your book via leveling and the occasional scribed spell is plenty.
Is that is why we get so many threads complaining about it? also why did you feel the need to add "fairly" as a caveat?
The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.
In this instance the mitigative term 'fairly' suggests that while I think the class is strong, it isn't the strongest class in the game, I'm not sure why you're latching onto an innocuous qualifier that a single class isn't the single-strongest?
I wouldn't say the wizard is in a strong place. I wouldn't say its unplayable either. It's very overshadowed by how well built every other class is now. It doesn't add much to a party when you have so many other classes taking stuff from the wizard while having all their own very goods tuff...
Overall I think that middle of the pack is a pretty good place to be, otherwise we end up in 'why do most of these classes even exist, there will only be a handful of best classes' territory. I think that in comparison to other class benefits the spell manipulation tools that the wizard gets are heavily underrated. Being able to spend 10 rounds on your top two spell levels is huge, to use spellblending as an example.
There's plenty of other build-specific unique tech, like being able to switch onto/off of utility spells when they look like they might be useful in exploration mode or you need more combat magic to make it through more encounters, moving others with the school of gates focus spell, personal runewell for the runelord giving caster heavy parties possibly-pre-buff access to status bonus to damage (something the Witch can do once per round as a reaction for one person.)
They can generate free scrolls per day with a different feat. They have several other good focus spells like Spiral of Horrors, Force Bolt, and Hand of the Apprentice. War Mage now offers an entire backline tank-and-support option that imo is better than the psychic's version of it.
I don't think a Wizard offers less than other classes actually do, especially in the context of the full build game.
I rather like the idea of the wizard being a master of magic and as such being able to get spells from all traditions.
As such, it would be incredibly powerful, so there would need to be some boundaries.
How about:
1) Instead of a specialist slot, you get ONE slot per level that can contain a spell from any school.
2) This spell is cast with a reduced proficiency (like -2).
I honestly don't know how powerful and/or broken it could be. After all, pre-remaster crossblooded evolution didn't break the game, and neither does mysterious repertoire, nor all kinds of divine access.
But it certainly would make the wizard unique and play into his vaunted flexibility, without giving him more slots or bonuses.
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The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.
It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.
I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.
I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.
I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.
The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.
I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once used, are used up. It's pretty easy to see the problem that the wizard isn't the versatile magic user it's sold to be.
The wizard and psychic are probably the two current worst casters in need of a rework. Psychic will hopefully get one, wizard is stuck being played by those that like the class fantasy even if they underperform other casters.
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The main problem are the classes that uses the Arcane list, both Wizards and arcane witch suck.
But Arcane Sorcerer? That one is good, really good, both Draconic and Imperial, with the first being better at the earlier levels while imperial crushes the higher ones.
But yeah another problem with Wizard... You have to expend hecking gold for more spells that every other prepared gains for free and all the time. I wish they could at least spontaneously cast their schools spells using another prepared spell slot. Like if I was a Civic Wizard I could use the fireball slot to cast Cozy Cabin.
The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.
I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.
I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.
I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.
The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.
I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once used, are used up. It's pretty easy to see the problem that the...
Right but this is what I mean, 27 spells vs. 36 spells vs. 45 spells doesn't matter that much because how many spells are we expecting the player to need?
That's a really abstract difference in actual play where most players find a fairly stable rosters of spells they like and change up what they're prepping for the day around the edges based on what situations they think are likely to come up. When the Sorcerer spontaneously makes 3 of their 4 slots on fireball, and the Wizard prepares 3 of those 4 slots to be fireball, it's kind of academic.
The two classes otherwise have very similar class features, with the sorcerer giving away Thesis to get Sorcerous Potency and Blood Magic. You can certainly prefer the trade, but I wouldn't really characterize it as being better.
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How do you mean? They're an arcane caster who has more castings per spell rank than the cleric does, and those spells don't have to be heal/harm.
Except the extra one is limited to your school spells, and a lot of school spell lists frankly suck (which is not a problem Divine Font has).
At lower level this is actually fewer spell slots than Divine Font gives you. It's more slots at higher level in total, but they're not all scaling up. If you have a good school list this is really a wash, it's not something Wizards are actually ahead on.
Clerics can't mill lower end slots for higher end ones with Spell Blending, or swap their preps with Spell Substitution, to name two of them ore unique options.
Spell Blending is great. Spell Substitution is pretty meh in a lot of very normal adventurers for reasons I've already outlined in this thread. The other arcane thesis options are also fairly meh.
The focus spells are fine, and are more consistently useful than many (but not all) of the domain spells.
Lets just say I disagree. Most of the schools focus spells don't impress me in the slightest. It's a much smaller selection of interesting ones vs domains, especially since a Cleric will have multiple domains (and thus multiple sets of focus spells) to pick from. Finding what you want without just resorting to one of the small number of actually good spell schools (which also lock in your extra slots) is more limiting.
In my experience the spellbook isn't much of a problem, since gameplay doesn't tend to revolve around radically shifting spell prep day to day, and the number of spells you can easily get in your book via leveling and the occasional scribed spell is plenty.
I said it was extra work. And it is. It's a thing I need to track, which can rapidly become a pretty long list if I start knowing a lot of spells (which is kind of the point of the class, so I probably want to). The only purpose tracking this serves is to create the pool of spells I can pick from when preparing spells. So I'm maintain in a list which I then to use to maintain a list.
This is work players of Clerics/Druids/etc simply don't have to do: they just get them, full stop. I'm really not sure what this is adding to the game at this point, especially with how easy getting access to most of the spell list is (all it takes is gold and downtime, though that means a campaign with no downtime will disadvantage a Wizard significantly).
It just feels like an antiquated design at this point that asks the player to do more work than other classes and doesn't make doing that worthwhile.
The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.
Well no, since I wasn't talking about Wizard at all until the remaster.
And this is all just opinions. If you say people haven't established there's a problem, they can simply turn around and say that you haven't established that its actually fine. That's not useful discourse. Just dismissing all the feedback you don't like doesn't make it invalid.
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That's a really abstract difference in actual play where most players find a fairly stable rosters of spells they like and change up what they're prepping for the day around the edges based on what situations they think are likely to come up. When the Sorcerer spontaneously makes 3 of their 4 slots on fireball, and the Wizard prepares 3 of those 4 slots to be fireball, it's kind of academic.
Not quite - for instance, reaction spells.
I'm a big fan of interposing earth, wooden double or unexpected transposition. But they're worthless if you're not getting targeted (and wooden double needs a crit to be used). So a sorcerer can know it and use it whenever it's needed, while the wizard has to make a choice. Either he doesn't invest in his defense (and those spells are CRAZY STRONG), or he does at the risk of having some unused spells at the end of the day.
If you get critted three times in the day as a sorcerer, you'll be happy to know wooden double, and if nobody crits you, you can use those slots for something else. Not so as a wizard.
Same goes with things like blood vendetta, brine dragon bile, warping pull, cloud dragon's cloak and so many more. They're awesome as a sorcerer, and just meh as a wizard.
Meanwhile, the only advantage the wizard could have, preparing some kind of silver bullet spell (that hardly exists in PF2), is reproduced by a single level 4 feat.
Basically, the sorcerer is ten times more flexible than a wizard in an adventuring day, when it should be the other way around.
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How do you mean? They're an arcane caster who has more castings per spell rank than the cleric does, and those spells don't have to be heal/harm. Clerics can't mill lower end slots for higher end ones with Spell Blending, or swap their preps with Spell Substitution, to name two of them ore unique options.I still think both the arcane list and the wizard class are in a fairly strong place.Well I agree with one of those statements. :)
Wizard is just... I mean, I don't see why I'd ever play one? What's the hook? It feels like a Cleric with more work (tracking a spellbook) but not much going on to pay that off. It also feels like there's more interesting focus spells in domains than in schools.
I feel everybody will agree Spell Substitution and Spell Blending are good features. The problem its that's all wizards have pretty much. If the other theses didn't exist it wouldn't be much of a problem because they really aren't options you can think of taking when the Spell Substitution and Spell Blending are not only better and stronger options but more interesting and fun options too. Most of the school focus spells suck too, so do a ton of the class feats. Casters in general have a problem of needing decent system mastery to play because its easy to screw yourself if you don't know / prepare the right spells, but this is worse for wizards because Spell Substitution or Spell Blending feel like must have features if you don't want to play the most plain caster in existence making the other theses trap options.
4 slots free and clear with school spells being free learned spells would've been cool ...
With respect to what you said Tridus, I can understand preferring to play other classes due to the spellbook mechanic, but to me it's on par with tracking a repertoire and signatures-- it's just a list of spells you know, and you just write out what spells you prepped for the day-- you don't have to track what levels you know any given spell at because of how heightening works.
I also don't think the current schools are especially bad-- I listed off a bunch of good focus spells from them, and in the context of the overall build game, there are options to flex focus spells if a school has subclass slotted spells you like. They're pretty similar to your Sorcerer options, with the likes of Elemental Toss and Hand of the Apprentice being pretty comparable, Force Bolt being comparable to either. You can def pick out individual school spells which aren't as good, but that goes for all of the game's subclass selection.
Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, Gates, Kalistrade, Magical Technologies, Protean Form, and Rooted Wisdom all have decent focus spells from the jump, with Mentalism, Civic Wizardry, and Boundary having phenomenal advanced spell.
Finally, I will point out that "The Wizard is worse than the other classes" is a positive claim, but the "the Wizard isn't bad" would be proving a negative, particularly in such a radically balanced game, I'm trying to argue in good faith along the positive line "the wizard is good" but most of that seems self-evident because I'm not being given much of a reason anything is actually bad-- most of effectiveness for a caster is baked into the number of slots and the base proficiency which they all share, even some of the actual arguments being made aren't committing to that and are staying on the side of 'fine but uninspiring' as a more nebulously subjective proxy for what other people are solving as 'bad.'
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With respect to what you said Blue Frog, I don't really see that as a problem mostly because either the adventuring day won't be long enough to push your slots to the extent that it matters (especially since you have so many), or if it is, at least one of those encounters is going to feature enemies who dive the backline, and you can always put yourself in a position to soak damage to make sure it gets used-- our wooden doubles always end up expended simply because creatures like to dive blasters and healers.
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Exequil759, I think the Spellshape option and Familiar Option aren't quite as good (though I have seen the familiar path defended in light of Inscribed One Witch not being all that good), but Staff Nexus is generally considered pretty potent, and it now has what is essentially a major upgrade path through Runelord.
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...The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.
I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.
I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.
I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.
The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.
I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once used, are used up. It's pretty
1. The only thing you need to ask yourself is if the wizard had a thesis that provided the same benefit as Sorcerous Potency, how often would they take it? Spell Substitution would probably still be most popular as it's a feat tax to do what the wizard is supposed to do well. The other thesis don't even compare to Sorcerous Potency.
2. Bloodlines versus Curriculums? There are far better focus spells on the bloodlines starting than the Curriculums and the spells are a wash save they allow the sorc to sometimes poach from other lists whereas the wizard is stuck with arcane no matter what curriculum.
3. Arcane Bond versus Signature Spells. I'll take Sig spells and spontaneous casting every day of the week, every minute of the hour.
4. The number of spells matter. When the sorc was far, far behind the wizard in number of spells known, this was a reasonable trade off for spontaneous casting. When the wizard has 27 base slots they must prepare and 1 very limited preparation slot versus the 36 spontaneous slots the sorc can use interchangeably with whatever they have in the repertoire combined with sig spells, the versatility falls pretty far in favor of the sorc.
Yet you're selling the wizard as this versatile arcane caster that solves problems and giving them one thesis that does this in real time for the trade off of time that you may not even have.
How's that not an obvious problem?
...The Wizard discourse on the forums are the same handful of people it's been since the switchover from first edition. I wouldn't say they've ever successfully established that there's anything wrong with the wizard, and the general trend in paizo forums wizard threads is to gloss over establishing a problem in favor of solutions that suggest there's a consensus about the problems so that the reader inferences it, and that's been going on for years. I think it was only recently that the anti-caster sentiment lost credibility overall.It has been well-established what's wrong with the wizard, which the Remaster made worse.
I'm not sure what your criteria is for proving. A bunch of people proved the problems with the fighter and rogue in PF1, it took years to have the problems addressed in Pf1. Didn't in anyway mean Paizo wasn't aware of the problem.
I think they're well aware the wizard is not holding up to being the wizard in PF2 given all the changes. I think the biggest reason we don't and won't see much change is lack of consensus on the design team for how to fix it.
I truly believe that the design team intentionally made sure the wizard did not do what it did in PF1 where it was broken beyond belief. They do not want that again.
The wizard isn't unplayable. It's just on weak and boring side. All casters follow a template now and if you can cast a spell with up to Legendary proficiency, then you are playable. If you want an interesting class that can do what a wizard does, but with more interesting class features you pick another caster.
I think that has been pretty clearly proven. The wizard has weak class features with weak focus spells. You can't argue they are most versatile when you're handing a sorc a repertoire with 36 to 45 or more spells they can cast dynamically with 4 slots. The wizard can prepare 27, 36 if not a universalist of limited spell slots based on curriculum that are prepared and once
1. They shouldn't, you can get that benefit in a couple of ways if you want it, and then combine it with the other benefits of being a wizard-- and it's like 3 damage per maxed rank at level 5, it's not bad but it's not exactly incredible either, it's a minimal percentage, I wouldn't give up two rounds of spellcasting at top two spell ranks for it, so it certainly doesn't beat out spellblending.
2. Curricula and Bloodlines are really close, it's true some bloodlines can dip other spells lists, but that benefit consumes action economy you could have also just done useful arcane things with-- you have to rate that other spell list's option against the other uses for your action economy.
3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.
4. But like, practically, both casters are going to use a far smaller number of bread and butter spells in nearly every slot, with set consistently useful exploration magic alongside it, the sorcerer isn't really benefitting from that
I wouldn't sell the Wizard the way you're suggesting I might on some kind of versatility argument, I'd sell it on the magical scholar flavor, the arcane list itself, and on the mix of free heightening and spell slot manipulation you get. I've personally never played the wizard as a bat-shark-repellant-character, I played the wizard as a no-compromise blaster and buffer/debuffer who has higher DPR than other casters because I was able to sling more top level spells over the length of our day, and back up my other utility magic with scroll savant. If I wasn't using spell blending I'd be replicating the benefits of spell blending by milling utility magic that doesn't get used into more blasting and buffs/debuffs as the day wears on using spell sub. I'd conduct more research to organize the best way to use it, but nexus is interesting, especially once runelord happened, I like the idea of setting up Personal Runewell as either pre-buff or in a caster heavy team to give multiple people the benefit of sorcerous potency though.
3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.
What are you talking about? How is this hard to see? I'm serious. How is this problem hard to see?
Let me clarify again.
Wizard: 6th level Prepared: Chain Lightning. Slow Heightened, Chain Lightning, with one use of Arcane Bond.
You cast one heightened slow and chain lightning, then maybe use arcane bond for a 3rd.
Sorc: 6th level: Repertoire: Chain Lightning, Phantasmal Orchestra, Truesight, Wall of Force.
I use them in whatever way I wish according to what is needed.
It is this way for all 9 ranks of spells. Then I toss in sig spells with a slow and I can cast slow all day.
Gee, you have two top spell lots. What are you going to put in there? Another group slow? Do you have anything more powerful than a group slow? I can do it all day and keep it in a level 3 slot.
This is another one of those wizard arguments I hear over and over again about Spell Blending and more top slots. You think those top slots mean much? They don't. They won't outperform the spontaneous casting and sig spells.
I blew off my top spell slots doing...I don't know...they're top slots, they must be better. That's a refrain said over and over again which isn't true at all.
Then it just gets worse when the sorc gets Greater Mental Evolution and they're picking five spells a level to use interchangeably.
The extra damage and healing from sorcerous potency has no cost.
Heard this claim a thousand times on these forums and never seen it matter ever because the idea that a higher level slot is better is not at all true. It's still far, far more powerful to use a spell like a slow or great blasting spell than pretend an extra rank 9 slot is better costing you what? All your 3rds is better.
It isn't. Spontaneous casting with sig spells beats prepared all the time with the number of spells you can learn now.
Curricula and Bloodlines are really close, it's true some bloodlines can dip other spells lists, but that benefit consumes action economy you could have also just done useful arcane things with-- you have to rate that other spell list's option against the other uses for your action economy.
What useful arcane things?
You lack the best buff in the game.
You lack the best debuff in the game.
You lack the best summons.
You lack the best focus spell for casting arcane.
What useful arcane things are you doing that other casters can't do with their lists?
Every time these discussions come up, it's these "useful things" that never quite show up in play when compared.
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If you dont want to change up things day to day a wizards abilities will feel useless to you.
Its really that simple.
The whole thing with wizards is manipulating and customizing not only the spells they bring but even the allocation of slots.
So yeah sorcerers need to pick spells they know they will use everyday especially as they first get a new rank of spells while wizards get to try out more the arcane list since they have the ability to learn and the ability to swap daily.
And about the school slot, its identity forming. Why even pick a school that has a list you dont want to use? And if all the schools have lists you dont want to use work with the GM to adust one thats closest. Adding or swapping spells for others that also fit the theme of the schools is RAW. At that point having a list you mostly like is no longer a drawback.
3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.What are you talking about? How is this hard to see? I'm serious. How is this problem hard to see?
Let me clarify again.
Wizard: 6th level Prepared: Chain Lightning. Slow Heightened, Chain Lightning, with one use of Arcane Bond.
You cast one heightened slow and chain lightning, then maybe use arcane bond for a 3rd.
Sorc: 6th level: Repertoire: Chain Lightning, Phantasmal Orchestra, Truesight, Wall of Force.
I use them in whatever way I wish according to what is needed.
It is this way for all 9 ranks of spells. Then I toss in sig spells with a slow and I can cast slow all day.
Gee, you have two top spell lots. What are you going to put in there? Another group slow? Do you have anything more powerful than a group slow? I can do it all day and keep it in a level 3 slot.
This is another one of those wizard arguments I hear over and over again about Spell Blending and more top slots. You think those top slots mean much? They don't. They won't outperform the spontaneous casting and sig spells.
I blew off my top spell slots doing...I don't know...they're top slots, they must be better. That's a refrain said over and over again which isn't true at all.
Then it just gets worse when the sorc gets Greater Mental Evolution and they're picking five spells a level to use interchangeably.
The extra damage and healing from sorcerous potency has no cost.
Heard this claim a thousand times on these forums and never seen it matter ever because the idea that a higher level slot is better is not at all true. It's still far, far more powerful to use a spell like a slow or great blasting spell than pretend an extra rank 9 slot is better costing you what? All your 3rds is better.
It isn't. Spontaneous casting with sig spells beats prepared all the time with the number of spells you can learn now.
Curricula and Bloodlines...
I don't think you managed to clarify anything here, because there wasn't anything to clarify-- both the Sorcerer and the Wizard will cast the same number of times before spell blending because their casting resources are designed to be the same. Prepping the spells at the beginning of that day doesn't cause you to end up with more casting. I think you're trying to assert the inherit of power of being able to use different spells in the same slot when the opportunity to use them comes up, I'm telling you that while that's cool, it's not a significant advantage because the spell you would have had in the slot has to be less useful, which is priced into your spell prep and the length of your adventuring day.
You can blow a spell slot to solve a problem earlier in the day, the prepped spell will be useful in the situation it was intended to be useful in unless it was a really bad pick by me. You casting Wall of Force in encounter 2 doesn't stop me from launching the Lightning Bolt I prepped in the comparable slot in encounter 4, and you don't get that slot back for encounter 4 by spending them in encounter 2-- unless you prep spells that are unusable the adventure day is a shell game where the combination of problems and solutions are weighted both by circumstances (the importance of having a spell solution to a problem) and luck (the enemy's save where that matters.)
In addition to that, it's further priced into your choice of thesis, when you spell blend, you increase each of your top two spell levels by one slot, which, if you're using 2-3 action spells like Force Barrage, Fireball, Slow, whatever, means two additional rounds of casting in your day. You lose castings of lower level spells to do that, but it matters if we're talking damage spells in particular because of scaling. When we're talking damage spells, being more aggressive with your slots in an encounter means a higher DPR, being more aggressive with your slots means running out faster, so more slots at a higher level means more offensive in the same number of encounters, and spells like Fireball and Lightning Bolt have better scaling than 1*rank.
Also, I couldn't actually parse what you were trying to say about 3rd rank spells and 9th rank spells, were you trying to assert that you might as well use low rank spells as high rank ones, or were you trying to say heightening isn't worth it compared to higher level spells in the first place?
Personally, I think the casters are in a really tight pack balance-wise to the point that I think the subclasses compete between the classes more than the classes actually do, but Druid or Psychic is probably the least inspiring to me, they're low slot caster with focus spells, some of which are cool, but eh, anyone can get comparable ones, of the two Psychic has way better flavor packed into the abilities it does have.
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...3. Why? The limited number of signatures is a bigger pain in the butt, I like freely heightening the spells I learn.What are you talking about? How is this hard to see? I'm serious. How is this problem hard to see?
Let me clarify again.
Wizard: 6th level Prepared: Chain Lightning. Slow Heightened, Chain Lightning, with one use of Arcane Bond.
You cast one heightened slow and chain lightning, then maybe use arcane bond for a 3rd.
Sorc: 6th level: Repertoire: Chain Lightning, Phantasmal Orchestra, Truesight, Wall of Force.
I use them in whatever way I wish according to what is needed.
It is this way for all 9 ranks of spells. Then I toss in sig spells with a slow and I can cast slow all day.
Gee, you have two top spell lots. What are you going to put in there? Another group slow? Do you have anything more powerful than a group slow? I can do it all day and keep it in a level 3 slot.
This is another one of those wizard arguments I hear over and over again about Spell Blending and more top slots. You think those top slots mean much? They don't. They won't outperform the spontaneous casting and sig spells.
I blew off my top spell slots doing...I don't know...they're top slots, they must be better. That's a refrain said over and over again which isn't true at all.
Then it just gets worse when the sorc gets Greater Mental Evolution and they're picking five spells a level to use interchangeably.
The extra damage and healing from sorcerous potency has no cost.
Heard this claim a thousand times on these forums and never seen it matter ever because the idea that a higher level slot is better is not at all true. It's still far, far more powerful to use a spell like a slow or great blasting spell than pretend an extra rank 9 slot is better costing you what? All your 3rds is better.
It isn't. Spontaneous casting with sig spells beats prepared all the time with the number of spells you can learn now.
I think it's pretty easy to parse. When you are level 17 and you want to spell blend extra level 9 slots that you seem to think are great...what spell slots are you using? How many?
This idea that lower level slots aren't good is not true. Lower level slots let you do things like See the Unseen, Revealing Light, Haste, Slow, Sure Strike.
If you can't understand how a sorc works with having 4 slots they can use for any of the 4 to 5 or 6 spells with Arcane evolution in their repertoire and how that is far more versatile than what you can do as a wizard, not sure what to tell you. I think it's pretty easy to understand and see it is much, much better than Spell Blending.
I imagine you've never actually built a sorcerer to see how much more powerful and better than they are than the wizard.
Whereas I've built a wizard and ran multiple wizards to high level. I watched them get outperformed by the sorcerer over and over again. The sorcerer is far more versatile than the wizard for on demand casting, especially...especially if you choose anything other than Spell Substitution.
So you have had the differences explained, you're either not able to understand why the sorc is so much better or being willfully obtuse to bait me.
Either way, someone commenting the wizard is fine that doesn't really understand the mechanics of each class doesn't exactly inspire the idea "wizards are fine."
Because they aren't. The scale poorly at high level. In terms of Arcane power, the sorc eats their lunch. About the only thing the wizard has going for it if you can slog it out is they have amazing level 20 feats. Most of their feats prior to level 20 are pretty terrible. But level 20 wizard feats are top tier. The rest of their class features vary from "Meh" to terrible.
I'll leave it there because you're either baiting me or have never built a sorc and just don't understand how powerful the versatility of spontaneous casting is with 45 spells in your repertoire, 2 level 10 spells, 3 often useful focus spells, and Bloodmagic like Explosion of Power all with a nice passive power like Sorcerous potency. It very much outclasses the wizard and it's pretty easy for most to see. I'd bet money the PF2 designers see it.
But that's ok. I fixed the wizard on my own and gave them spontaneous casting, 4 spell slots, and free Spell Substitution thesis. Even with that not many people play them, but they are better. They feel a ton better when my players play them.
And even with the above changes I made to wizards, they aren't overpowered because Paizo took away all the ways you can break the system with spells in PF2. So the wizard reaches a reasonable parity with my changes.
I ran plenty of tests with the wizard versus sorcerer and casters in general. Boy, the wizard is on the bottom caster tier for unless you just love non-combat RP with spells. That's the place where they can shine at least a little bit. Taking some spell no one would ever take in a repertoire and using it for some situation where it fits for non-combat situations that is on the arcane list. Then again a lot of casters can do this with scrolls if they have prep time or skills.
I'll leave it there at least commenting with you. Some of us want a better wizard that is more competitive and the Remaster took them in the opposite direction. I sure hope at some point we get an official better wizard for those wizard players that don't have control over their table like I do.
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While I do agree with a lot of The-Magic-Sword's points, I do want to back up Deriven Firelion on the specific comparison of Wiz prep | Sorc spontaneous.
The ability for the Sorc to remain ambiguous in their slot:spell burn is a very big difference in actual play. A Wiz has to lock each spell to each specific slot @ a specific rank, meaning every spell cast reduces their flexibility for the rest of the day. Every single choice to gain "depth" for repeat castings of one spell reduces your "breadth" to cast various spells, etc.
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I've gone through 1-20 alongside a Sorc who took Dispel Magic as a signature, along with Counterspell.
It has been incredible to witness just how much the ability to remain a little fluid and flexible has helped them. Being able to up *or down* rank a spell in response to the magic they are fighting is how they are able to keep up the crazy performance all day.
If they are getting low, or simply do not feel the need to max blast, then they can cast their damage spell at -1 or -2 R, to keep that last top slot ready for a boss Counterspell, etc.
The primal Sorc even took Heal as a signature, and has Counterspelled Heal probably as many times as they have cast it.
This would never have worked if they were a Wiz, as needing to commit every exact spell @rank_ in slot _ for Counterspelling is completely non-viable.
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I want to be clear that this spontaneous flexibility goes beyond the "niche" of Counterspell & Dispell Magic, and is how the PC maintains the ability to be quite useful at any level of resource depletion.
The way the spell tradition lists include both single R wonders like Slow @ 3, 6, as well as variable R picks like Dispell Magic, Heal, Chain Lightning, makes the "systemic coincidences" of how spontaneous V prepared slots work to seriously favor the spontaneous casters in pf2e.
This is in large part due to low R slots getting to scale the DC, and due to static buffs affecting targets the exact same at all levels.
There is no "granular Heighten" for most spells, which means spontaneous caster can fill their repertoire with evergreen effects in ways that prepared casters cannot. FFS, spontaneous are even allowed to "waste" higher R slots on lower R magics, which is yet another dimension of flexibility that is alien to prep casters.
And this gap in performance is also because spell scrolls + wands exist!
The idea of slotting a genuinely niche spell is a bad idea even for a Wiz, as you can buy it as a scroll for the once or twice you need it per campaign.
Yet for a Sorc, these items help far more, and significantly ameliorate the supposed "downside" of their casting type.
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All that is a long winded way of saying that, yes, in context of pf2 gameplay, Wizard being a prepared caster that needs to lock in every spell in not just a Rank tier, but also an exact single slot, is a very big deal when Sorcerers/etc do not.
Overall I just want to emphasize that this comparison is not even close.
Prepared vs spontaneous is a huuuge gap, at least in pf2e. Just about every systemic coincidence, from scaling DCs to spell items, all align to favor spontaneous over prepared in AP play.
Deriven Firelion the point wasn’t that lower level spells are never good at anything or that they wont have uses. Its that a wizard when they can identify what they will need with spell blending can blend away ranks they know wont matter that day for more higher ranks they know will be used.
Take the example of the party spending a few days tracking a specific set of creatures. The wizard is capable of having a different loadout of spells and decide if they want to spell blend if a higher rank spell is needed more than lower ones. Maybe the first day will be similar to the sorcerer. But after that days encounters the party has a good idea of what they will encounter further into the area, now the wizard starts specializing the daily loadout. The sorcerer isnt able to do this.
Once the party knows they are close to the creature theyve tracked down that last day might just be the one encounter and possibly something unexpected. Thats when the wizard blends up to as many highest slots they can knowing they will not have enough turns in combat or uses outside combat knowing for that day every turn they get to do anything will be filled with a high slot cast.
Lets put it into perspective at different levels. And I am cherrypicking to show sorcerer will not always have a clear advantage all the time. This set of encounters the party either has the wizard or the sorcerer.
Lets set the party to level 5. Lets say they know this day will be between a severe and extreme encounter with a strong boss with several adds.
Sorcerer plans to use 1 cast of fireball to open combat from a distance, 1 rank 3 fear as the enemies come
Into range and 1 slow for on the boss for that last fight where the party has finally caught up to the creatures. They will get an extra 3 damage on that fireball.
The wizard is from the battle school whixh has great spells, gives force barrage fireball and later chain lighting and we went with spell blending. On the day we know we are catching up to the creatures we are trading up to have 5 3rd rank slots going 1 slow, 1 rank 3 fear, and 2 fireballs, plus another rank 3 spell they know! At this level a wizard can set up to have double the 3rd rank spells ready for the day.
The wizard also has their arcane bond up their sleeve for a recast of any of those spells.
If there are 6 rounds of combat the wizard is casting a rank 3 spell every round. The sorcerer is is down to rank 2 and 1 after 3 rounds.
This is a big difference especially if the slow crit failed or the fear didnt take as well as they would have liked on the adds. Wizard has arcane bond to try again and with so many top slots its not a bother, sorcerer trys again but at the cost of using one of the other spells they planned for the fight. They planned to get off a fireball a group fear and a slow, the sorcerer cant afford bad outcomes with only 3 casts. That difference also means if the party engages from 500ft with fireball the wizard will have more turns of casting it probably making the fight much less difficult by the time the enemies can fight back.
In my experience a fight that is closer to the extreme range can easily last 6 rounds and be deadly even in later rounds. I had given an extreme encounter once where the party rushed and took out a caster boss but were left with so few hp and resources that facing down the adds afterwards was still dangerous.
I def don't think lower level spells are like, actively bad, but spells generally get stronger as you go up in level. Using spells with scaling damage frequently enough in your higher ends slots makes you the party's highest DPR, so extra top 2 level slots are very useful for casters who use those kinds of spells. Many utility spells and debuffs also either get stronger or have an effective replacement for their effect at high level, for example, you can always cast rank 1 fear, but agonizing despair is generally better, or even something Mask of Terror, you're always trying to maximize efficacy into as few actions as possible-- and the exponential curve of gold makes spells like See the Unseen or whatever cheap as scrolls once you're more than two ranks above them, or they're decent fodder for scroll savant.
Depending on what your build is designed to do (and presumably, you're building around what you take here) it's two extra rounds of higher damage, which translates to a much higher average over a number of encounters. This is especially nice since Arcane has all of the best damage-scaling spells on one list, like Lightning Bolt, Sudden Bolt, Force Barrage.
@Trip H. I think my thought process is more that spontaneous is neutral, if you don't spend the slot when X happens because you don't have the right spell, you'll just use it in situation Y later. If you're planning on running down your resources by the end of the day either way, the only remaining question is which expenditure buys more value, which may or may not favor spontaneous.
I learned that playing my Invoker, sometimes my flexible slots would give me an opportunity to do something useful, and then later I'd be thinking "hmm, I was so excited to spend the spell slot but that could have been a soothe in this situation, shouldn't have blown the slot" and it was one of the reasons I switched to Seneschal, unless I'm trying to make a lot of use of spells that simply might not come up, it's similarly effective to just have 'good stuffz' spells prepped and go, and running completely out on these high slot castings is rare either way.
I like to put utility spells in scrolls so that I can just carry the scroll until it comes up then replace it. I've played a spellblending wizard to 18, and recently built an alt-universe version of the same character for a different setting as a sorcerer (partially because he's so bombastic charisma felt more apropo) I'm also currently playing a Seneschal that used to be an Invoker.
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Deriven Firelion the point wasn’t that lower level spells are never good at anything or that they wont have uses. Its that a wizard when they can identify what they will need with spell blending can blend away ranks they know wont matter that day for more higher ranks they know will be used.
Take the example of the party spending a few days tracking a specific set of creatures. The wizard is capable of having a different loadout of spells and decide if they want to spell blend if a higher rank spell is needed more than lower ones. Maybe the first day will be similar to the sorcerer. But after that days encounters the party has a good idea of what they will encounter further into the area, now the wizard starts specializing the daily loadout. The sorcerer isnt able to do this.
Once the party knows they are close to the creature theyve tracked down that last day might just be the one encounter and possibly something unexpected. Thats when the wizard blends up to as many highest slots they can knowing they will not have enough turns in combat or uses outside combat knowing for that day every turn they get to do anything will be filled with a high slot cast.
Lets put it into perspective at different levels. And I am cherrypicking to show sorcerer will not always have a clear advantage all the time. This set of encounters the party either has the wizard or the sorcerer.
Lets set the party to level 5. Lets say they know this day will be between a severe and extreme encounter with a strong boss with several adds.
Sorcerer plans to use 1 cast of fireball to open combat from a distance, 1 rank 3 fear as the enemies come
Into range and 1 slow for on the boss for that last fight where the party has finally caught up to the creatures. They will get an extra 3 damage on that fireball.
The wizard is from the battle school whixh has great spells, gives force barrage fireball and later chain lighting and we went with spell blending. On the day we know we are catching up to the creatures we are trading up to have 5...
I really hope they get these server issues worked out at some point. Or am I the only one getting these 504 gate errors?
Heard these arguments over and over again. They aren't true at high level. The sorc has spells for days. 45 spells, 36 slots to cast them with. Feats to add more spell choices. Useful focus spells that add to their power.
Spell Blending doesn't match what the sorc can do.
For example, let's say you spell blend an extra level 8 slot. Are you going to spell blend away a couple of level 4s to get it? A couple of vision's of death or 4th level invisibilities? I use all these slots on my sorc.
And heightened chain lightning adds 2 dice? So you can use chain lightning with 2 more dice compared to a 4th level invis for great defenses a few times. Then it's used up.
I used Spell Blending. I'd rather have the lower level slots with great spells like 4th level invis or a magic missile that can activate explosion of power for Imperial sorc, or more Reveal the Unseen when I need it.
Spell Blending away lower level slots you "may not need" is a complete unknown. For what? A few extra dice of damage? It's not worth it. It lowers your sustain and reduces the number of other spells you'll likely want to cast for the day like level 4 invis or level 2 mirror image.
They made some great spells at lower level you want to use for more than one one battle. It's a bad exchange to get another dice or two with a higher level slot by giving up some great lower level spells.
I've gone over the wizard to make it good. I've specced them out, played a few, looked at their abilities in play. They are not a great class.
They have a few good lower level feats with a universalist playing around with Arcane bond. Spell Substitution is their best thesis, the others are not great save for some trick like using the Staff one to load up a magic staff you can break and blow up. Staff bomb. which is costly but can be mitigated once you pick up that Remake spell.
And the wizard's level 20 feats are great. Spell Blending isn't so great. Spell Combination, now that's a great feat. The wizard has the best level 20 caster feats in the game.
This is all coming from someone that primarily plays in a game focused on optimization and past level 11 often. That colors my views.
The other arguments don't hold up in play. Even if a combat goes on for 6 rounds, the high level sorc with 45 spells in their rep, Arcane Evolution, focus spells, and spontaneous casting is going to chain lightning and group slow all day while working in other spells across their slots as needed. They can heighten what they need with well chosen sig spells.
So while the wizard is spell blending away lower level slots to choose one higher level spells, needs a day in advance to have the right spell ready, the sorc just heightens his level 3 slot hit groups. Heightens his level 2 dispel magic when he needs it while keeping it in a level 2 slot.
They outperform the wizard as you reach the high levels with enough slots to match anything the wizard does with spell blending. Their versatility is on-demand because their spells are a matrix 4 slots with 5 choices versus the wizard's spell list which is like a grocery list where you check off each item once used.
They're not even in the same ballpark as they hit those end game levels.
The only thing similar between them is the spell proficiency and if they cast the same spell, they will have the same save. Other than that the, sorc is choosing from a vast array of useful spell options while the wizard is hoping he has a good spell prepared and enough of them to last the battle.
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While I do agree with a lot of The-Magic-Sword's points, I do want to back up Deriven Firelion on the specific comparison of Wiz prep | Sorc spontaneous.
** spoiler omitted **...
Trip, most just don't get how powerful the sorc is as a spontaneous caster in this edition.
Back in PF1 when the sorc had far fewer spells than the wizard, the argument I'm hearing on this thread made total sense. It was very true and the spell choice a wizard brought to the table was amazing. It way exceeded the sorc. The PF1 sorc truly was a very focused caster with far fewer spell options. The spontaneous tradeoff made sense: know far fewer spells but cast them spontaneously.
They made the PF2 sorc have 36 spells known as a base now with the wizard having 36 prepare spells unless a universalist (then 27). Then the Arcane evolution gives them a flexible spell known that can place at max level. Then you have Greater Mental Evolution for 9 more spells up to 45 in the repertoire.
Then you toss in sig spells so your higher level slots increase the number of times you can use a lower level spell with heightening.
A sorc casting is a big old matrix of spells allowing multiple choice for each rank now combined with often useful focus spells.
Now they added explosion of power and Anoint Ally with Sorcerous Potency and you can do some absolutely crazy blasting.
It's a sorcs world and the wizard is living in it wondering what happened between PF1 and PF2. The sorc's probably looking at the wizard going, "Wow, things have changed. And now I'm king caster Mr. Wizard. I like it."
My experience in actual play is that the Spellblender Wizard is especially powerful and that the added flexibility of the spontaneous casting isn't as important unless I focus on spells that may or may not be useful over spells that certainly will be. Giving up some lower level slots just fundamentally isn't that painful compared to the performance delivered via the extra castings on the top two spell ranks.
For me to feel like Spontaneous casting is meaningfully better as described, I would have to be ending up in situations where I'm not casting all my prepareds because they aren't filled with useful spells, or where I'm feeling the sting of needing to spend them in a different way.
Our prepared casters don't underperform the spontaneous casters, and the Wizard specifically hasn't fallen behind any of our optimized Sorcerers.
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My experience in actual play is that the Spellblender Wizard is especially powerful and that the added flexibility of the spontaneous casting isn't as important unless I focus on spells that may or may not be useful over spells that certainly will be. Giving up some lower level slots just fundamentally isn't that painful compared to the performance delivered via the extra castings on the top two spell ranks.
I wrote a guide about the spellblending wizard, so I'm really aware of how powerful it can be as a blaster.
But that was pre-remaster, when he could poach dangerous sorcery. Now that it's become the sorcerer purview AND said sorcerer got buffed, it's not a contest anymore. Actually, at higher levels, a level 8 spell cast by a sorcerer might outdps a level 9 spell cast by a wizard. How's that for a discrepancy ?
And that's without factoring any bloodline power. You can either easily add your spell level to damage AGAIN against a single target, or use explosion of power shenanigans to win the DPS race before it even started.
I've already said my piece earlier about how spontaneous is leagues better than prepared. 90% of the time, spontaneous is better. 10% of the time it's about the same. And there's no scenario where prepared is better as arcane - or if there is, I would love to hear it. Because between arcane evolution and scrolls, the sorcerer can basically cover everything the wizard could, while the wizard struggles to get the same versatility in combat.
That's one of the problem about arcane, by the way, hence the title of the thread. Divine and Primal have a lot of condition removal spells that work on a counteract check, so prepared is at least good for that: if you need to cure a disease or a curse, you can wait till the morrow and have it prepared at max level. It's also compounded by the fact that divine evolution and primal evolution give an extra slot but no flexibility. Occult suffers from the same problem with bard being able to get a spellbook. So you won't feel as bad as a druid or a cleric as you would as a wizard or occult witch (except the occult witch can go resentment).
Arcane evolution really ate the wizard's lunch, there.
With the right scouting (which doesn't happen in every group), you MIGHT get a slight advantage with spell substitution, slotting in 10mn this one incredible spell that you would need. Except that there are no more silver bullets in PF2e, to the extend that it would actually be useful. And if you're a spell substitution wizard, you're not a spell blender, so your combat abilities are even worse.
Dispel magic, shadow siphon and basically all counteract spells are way more useful as a signature spontaneous spell than a slotted spell. So are most reaction spells, as I said. And so are blasts, by the way.
For me to feel like Spontaneous casting is meaningfully better as described, I would have to be ending up in situations where I'm not casting all my prepareds because they aren't filled with useful spells, or where I'm feeling the sting of needing to spend them in a different way.
In actual play, it happens a lot. Not that they're totally useless, but that they underperform - especially those top level slots that the spell blender is so proud of.
What happens when your last top spells are two falling stars and you lost initiative, and the opponents are now on top of you ?
What happens if you instead didn't prepare falling stars because your friends are too charge-happy, but then you suddenly win initiative and you could wreak havoc through the ranks ?
You slotted a phantasmagoria - hope you don't meet mindless opponents.
Of course, in all those scenarii, you will probably have another spell to cast instead, so it's not a complete bust - but it's never optimal.
And without even going into specific monsters, what happens when you meet opponents with very high dex and will but low fort ? How many fort-targeting blasts did you take in your 9th level slots ? Because the sorcerer can use all four of them. Same goes with low-ref and low-will opponents.
One of the few advantages of the arcane list is that you can easily target all three saves with great spells. But it works way better when you can actually juggle between them.
the Wizard specifically hasn't fallen behind any of our optimized Sorcerers.
I honestly don't see how that could be possible.
We've both written relevant guides ; )
You might be able to eke out higher performance as a Sorcerer via Explosion of Power optimization (if you're standing right in front of them, you know I was so excited about that feat until I noticed that when I was creating the sorcerer version of my blaster Wizard, it still takes it because there will be times it works out, but damn) or another bleeding edge trick, like I'm certainly not here to tell you Sorcerers are bad.
I'd also note that a lot of people would argue you can still get ahold of multiclass Dangerous Sorcery for the same reason you can largely still pick spells that weren't reprinted, and there are other means of getting status bonus to spell damage (like Runelord's Personal Runewell, although that specific example really badly wants to be supporting other characters as well to be worth the action economy; and Coven Spell which comes from another character.)
But first to understand why it works, we have to talk about spell scaling, if you take a simple example like fireball, which is worth 2d6 per rank of heightening. Take for granted that I'm using the numbers I'm using because the accuracy is identical:
A rank 5 Fireball is 35 damage, in other words, and the same fireball coming from a Sorcerer is 40 damage, if the sorcerer cast fireball in all four 5th rank slots, you gain 20 damage out of that, we'll call this 160 damage over 4 spell slots.
If you have an extra slot from spell blending, that's worth 35 damage by itself, which means the Wizard has the potential to do 175 damage with the same level's worth of resources without a status bonus to spell damage of their own, note that as the damage of the spell increases, this number scales up but the status bonus doesn't-- e.g. Sudden Bolt/Lightning Bolt are both more favorable because they have an even steeper ratio of raw damage relative to 1/level when you add the extra casting.
The Wizard does require more actions to do that damage, but generally, I don't consider being able to spend more rounds flinging top level fireballs to be a flaw, because you don't want cantrip rounds if you can avoid them. The Sorcerer can even things back out by double dipping the status bonus onto their third action spell, like Elemental Toss, if they use it, assuming the Wizard doesn't have that benefit or one like it, but the Wizard has another extra slot for a rank 4 fireball.
As for the logistics of switching spells situationally, the real answer is broadly that the character has enough resources overall that I always have something I want to do, or a way to coordinate to make my plan the right answer, and then use the Falling Stars slot later-- this I think is where lower level spell slots come back in, or simply the mixed array of prepared spells that I have. On my Wizard I was prepping about half AOE and half single target across my top two spell levels, so we're talking about a situation in which I not only prepped falling stars, but don't have my upcast lightning bolt or whatever is scaling-relevant by that point ready to go in another slot for a different AOE arrangement, and also don't want to single target anything, but the creatures are also still strong enough for me to not want to use a lower level slot on them and rely on the level difference with my dc and their lower HP. We also have to assume my staff can't help me, that I'm out of Drain Bonded Item, that I didn't price this into feats.
Some people think good spell prep is about lock and key design, in reality good spell prep is about powerful splashable spells that cover a variety of fairly common situations.
It gets very frictionless vacuum very quickly.
My experience in actual play is that the Spellblender Wizard is especially powerful and that the added flexibility of the spontaneous casting isn't as important unless I focus on spells that may or may not be useful over spells that certainly will be. Giving up some lower level slots just fundamentally isn't that painful compared to the performance delivered via the extra castings on the top two spell ranks.I wrote a guide about the spellblending wizard, so I'm really aware of how powerful it can be as a blaster.
But that was pre-remaster, when he could poach dangerous sorcery. Now that it's become the sorcerer purview AND said sorcerer got buffed, it's not a contest anymore. Actually, at higher levels, a level 8 spell cast by a sorcerer might outdps a level 9 spell cast by a wizard. How's that for a discrepancy ?
And that's without factoring any bloodline power. You can either easily add your spell level to damage AGAIN against a single target, or use explosion of power shenanigans to win the DPS race before it even started.
I've already said my piece earlier about how spontaneous is leagues better than prepared. 90% of the time, spontaneous is better. 10% of the time it's about the same. And there's no scenario where prepared is better as arcane - or if there is, I would love to hear it. Because between arcane evolution and scrolls, the sorcerer can basically cover everything the wizard could, while the wizard struggles to get the same versatility in combat.
That's one of the problem about arcane, by the way, hence the title of the thread. Divine and Primal have a lot of condition removal spells that work on a counteract check, so prepared is at least good for that: if you need to cure a disease or a curse, you can wait till the morrow and have it prepared at max level. It's also compounded by the fact that divine evolution and primal evolution give an extra slot but no flexibility. Occult suffers from the same problem with bard being able to get a spellbook....
Most of these folks posting don't even know what other classes can do as they gain levels. They're posting without knowing. That's why I trust only a few posters on this forum to speak on casting and builds. You, Superbidi, Gortle, gesalt, Unicore, Mathmuse, and a few others I've forgotten that analyze based on performance, not theory or perfect setups.
We don't all play the same or work with the same groups or at the same levels, but we all try to engage in opportunity cost analysis and optimization analysis to make things work well. I'm not very interested in the "enjoyment" factor or theorycrafting in a white room others enjoy. I don't fault them for it as that is the point of the game. It's not my personal interest. If I don't see performance based analysis based on optimal builds on competing classes in the most common encounter types, I'm not very interested in the analysis.
I'm glad you pointed out that Explosion of Power feat. That's a crazy game changer for the imperial sorc.
I put Anoint Ally on a rogue. Rogue went in. I launched chain lightning with an ancestral memories, boom, the damage was crazy.
The fact ancestral memories activates explosion of power while lowering the saves against the spell is a brutal combination for a blaster. Automatic Heightening on focus spells with Explosion of Power is great.
You can even dip into Oracle and grab Foretell Harm to add even more damage if you have the feats to fit.
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Paizo forums try not to make every thread about the wizard challenge... Lolits a thread about the arcane spel llist, it was never not going to be about wizards
Well, Arcane sorcerer is great and contrary to posters resistant to wizard improvements, scales and performs better than the wizard with better feats and class features with spontaneous casting becoming a far more versatile form of casting that scales better than prepared.
I haven't seen anyone play an arcane witch. The witch is ok because it's not stuck playing arcane. The occult and divine witch are pretty good. Divine witch makes a good healer and support class. Occult witch with that messed up hex is pretty harsh from what I hear.
Magus has a strong niche as the best user of spell attack spells and cantrips. And it hits real, real hard when it works well with at least a few high quality builds like the Starlight Span and Inexorable Iron magus.
Wizard is the only class stuck with the arcane list with feats and class features that don't perform as well as the other classes it completes against for a role...unless you get to level 20. Then you really get some nice caster feats.
The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them then has to use lower slots for the last 3 rounds or more if it takes longer because they have to use 2nd or lower spells after round 3.
Not to mention if the situations and encounters the party faces while spending those days tracking the creatures through some set terrain are ones the wizards extra spells known can be leveraged the wizard can alter their slots to maximize the amount of casts of them.
A thick forested area might yield special passages to a wizard prepared with 4 or more shape wood. Or maybe the party can better evade enemies by using humanoid form on each member then keeping enough distance to look like just another raid group. Or attempt it with invisibility on everyone. Or marvelous mounts for everyone when that kind of travel is expected. Or maybe shrink everyone to move through unexpected spaces. Or mabey tou used create food for a small village to eat for the day in exchange for guidance through a dangerous or hard to navigate area. Or you used cleanse air to create safe spaces to move through a poison clouded marsh zone for everyone taking several casts to clear through.
These are some off the top of my head examples of things a single scroll will not do and is very low commitment for a level 5 wizard to set uo to handle. A sorcerer could do any of these things too but at a huge cost. A single wizard might even have several of those rank 2 spells they can change between on days where the party wants to avoid conflict and them back to the fireballs/slow and fear on the days they expect to engage.
And if the party does encounter a fight anyway the wizards top slots were not being used for any of this stuff so those are still ready to fight. They just didnt blend up that day for more top slots. Thats still 4 top slot casts on a day set up to give up 2 rank 1s for an extra rank 2 and having those rank 2s dedicated for spells a sorcerer might not ever consider putting in repertoire.
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There is no eking out higher performance. It's straight up obvious superior performance unless you're doing one fight a day, then it's a wash.
So what if the wizard blends away slots for that top rank fireball and the sorc is tossing those fireballs with their level 3 and 4 slots? Gee, you get 2d6 extra damage for a few extra spells at higher level while the sorc is still throwing fireballs or slows or putting haste on someone with those level 3 and 4 slots.
That's the part that isn't lining up up while you're spell blending away thinking top slots are the best.
Doesn't work that way in play. No one cares if you did an extra 7 points a spell when the sorc is doing 7 less points while being able to pick from a much wider array of spells because they still have those lower level slots that are filled with useful spells.
How do you not in your head see the matrix that a sorcerer is choosing from not even including their useful focus spells against the list you're checking off as a wizard when the spell is done?
I tested these things against each other across levels for the wizard and the sorc.
Level 2 to 4 slots are very valuable, Very valuable. Level 2 is essential for dealing with invisibility. Essential. See the Unseen is a go to for invisibility which can come up often.
Level 3 is haste and slow. Landing slow on a boss is a game changer. You want to do it as often as possible.
Level 4 invis is one of the best defensive spells you get.
Mirror Image is also a great defensive spell if you need it, though level 4 invis is better.
Why would you want to blend these spells away for 7 to 14 extra points of damage on a fireball 1 or 2 times more? It's not a good exchange. I can't believe you really calculate this as a better option when it so obviously not.
I've heard this spell blending argument for years now. It's not the case in play. Losing a few extra points of damage is just fine and made up for with access to the lower slots for useful spells that get used throughout the day.
Then the focus spells like ancestral memories or dragon breath or elemental blast that work just fine to sustain for mook battles where you don't want or need to blow off your highest level slots for slightly less damage.
It's easy opportunity cost analysis to see the sorc eating the wizard's lunch if you take spell blending in nearly every situation.
1. Doing Hex crawls with one hex a day. Not even going to use all those extra high level slots.
2. Doing AOE battles, better to unleash the same spell over and over again. Hope you have every slot loaded with the same spell.
3. Boss battles. Why use a top level slot? Just level 3 slow it, hit it one blast, let the martials hit it a bunch while you keep it slowed so it can barely do anything. Hope you have enough slow slots since I'm using slow in 3rd, 4th, and up slots since I signature spell this spell.
There are so few instances where Spell Blending shows any superior performance to a sorc and at the cost of lower level useful slots. This just gets worse at higher level.
You using fireball as the example just shows you must be playing in the 5 to 9 range to believe that Spell Blending is better.
In the 11 to 15 range, Spell Blending isn't even noticeable to a sorcerer. And it continues to be nothing to the sorc even notices the wizard doing at higher level or the group for that matter. The sorc is blowing off what they need when they need from their huge matrix of spells with signature spells.
While Mr. Wizard is checking of his prepared list. Dang. I blended away my 3rd level slots and can't cast slow anymore. I used up my last chain lightning.
Sorc just keeps on going. It's just amazing to do this performance analysis and not see the problem.
It was so easy to see when I specced out a sorc and wizard and played them up testing their capabilities. Spontaneous was far more powerful in PF2 on every class that had it. I tested performance against each other and found that conclusion easy to see. That's why I made everyone spontaneous so they are competing on class features, not this anachronistic casting that was kept in because someone at Paizo likes prepared Vancian casting.
I'm glad some are starting to see the problem like Blue Frog. It's a problem that was made worse by the Remaster.
Not sure what would make Paizo actually make the wizard better, but it hasn't happened yet. For optimizers like me, I prefer a class I can make shine, not a class like the wizard hamstrung with weak class features that are outshone by the classes they compete against.
The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them then has to use lower slots for the last 3 rounds or more if it takes longer because they have to use 2nd or lower spells after round 3.
Not to mention if the situations and encounters the party faces while spending those days tracking the creatures through some set terrain are ones the wizards extra spells known can be leveraged the wizard can alter their slots to maximize the amount of casts of them.
A thick forested area might yield special passages to a wizard prepared with 4 or more shape wood. Or maybe the party can better evade enemies by using humanoid form on each member then keeping enough distance to look like just another raid group. Or attempt it with invisibility on everyone. Or marvelous mounts for everyone when that kind of travel is expected. Or maybe shrink everyone to move through unexpected spaces. Or mabey tou used create food for a small village to eat for the day in exchange for guidance through a dangerous or hard to navigate area. Or you used cleanse air to create safe spaces to move through a poison clouded marsh zone for everyone taking several casts to clear through.
These are some off the top of my head examples of things a single scroll will not do and is very low commitment for a level 5 wizard to set uo to handle. A sorcerer could do any of these things too but at a huge cost. A single wizard might even have several of those rank 2 spells they can change between on days where the party wants to avoid conflict and them back to the fireballs/slow and fear on the days they expect to engage.
And if the party does encounter a fight anyway the wizards top slots were not being used for any of this stuff so those are still ready to fight. They just didnt blend up that day for more top slots. Thats still 4 top slot casts on a day set up to give up 2 rank 1s for an extra rank 2 and having those rank 2s dedicated...
I'm not playing this game at level 5. I could care less what a class does at level 5. I want to know what they do at level 11 to 20. That's where I play the game the most.
This is why it is so hard to get consensus. Some people are judging classes at low level, some of us are playing these classes all the way up to 20 to see the problems as they scale up to the highest levels.
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I think you're overrelying on vague notions of the possible variety of the slots to try and make your point and managed to read text that said the damage is higher as being lower-- I used fireball as a flush case and pointed out higher damage spells and their relationship to the status bonus as a ratio.
Even if you blend away a bunch of spell slots, you still have lower level spells to cast throughout the day and all of your other build resources. It's not practical to consider it that kind of tradeoff. We're not talking about a scenario where you can't cast See the Unseen, we're discussing a scenario where you have fewer castings of it-- we're not discussing the value of the first casting of it, but rather the latter castings.
I think that's part of where your argument is derailing-- you're severely overestimating the cost in overall versatility to a wizard from both blended slots and using prep in the first place.
I think a big part of it, looking at your discussion of first edition wizards upthread, is that lock and key thinking, where there are problems and spells match to the problems, so spontaneous slots become skeleton keys that take on a gandful of configurations to fit specific problems.
I would say that the dynamic is different, the name of the game is consistent throughput and you have way more ways across your party to solve lock and key problems, and a greater incentive to shift resources to core activities because fights don't need gimmicks and attrition to be hard.
...The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them then has to use lower slots for the last 3 rounds or more if it takes longer because they have to use 2nd or lower spells after round 3.
Not to mention if the situations and encounters the party faces while spending those days tracking the creatures through some set terrain are ones the wizards extra spells known can be leveraged the wizard can alter their slots to maximize the amount of casts of them.
A thick forested area might yield special passages to a wizard prepared with 4 or more shape wood. Or maybe the party can better evade enemies by using humanoid form on each member then keeping enough distance to look like just another raid group. Or attempt it with invisibility on everyone. Or marvelous mounts for everyone when that kind of travel is expected. Or maybe shrink everyone to move through unexpected spaces. Or mabey tou used create food for a small village to eat for the day in exchange for guidance through a dangerous or hard to navigate area. Or you used cleanse air to create safe spaces to move through a poison clouded marsh zone for everyone taking several casts to clear through.
These are some off the top of my head examples of things a single scroll will not do and is very low commitment for a level 5 wizard to set uo to handle. A sorcerer could do any of these things too but at a huge cost. A single wizard might even have several of those rank 2 spells they can change between on days where the party wants to avoid conflict and them back to the fireballs/slow and fear on the days they expect to engage.
And if the party does encounter a fight anyway the wizards top slots were not being used for any of this stuff so those are still ready to fight. They just didnt blend up that day for more top slots. Thats still 4 top slot casts on a day set up to give up 2 rank 1s for an extra rank 2 and
i posed that scenario to show sorcerer is not always better than a wizard at all levels and in all situations.
So what spell ranks would you consider ones where what you gain at that rank is game changing? If having double the casts at that rank at the level you gain it isnt a worthy and equalizing class feature then those spells are not actually gamechanging in the first place.I used rank 3 spells as an example and its a good one. But what about rank 6 for chain lighting, or rank 7 for group haste? With 6 casts at the level the new rank is gained the wizard can reasonably open every encounter every day they want with that new rank gamechanging spell while the sorcerer might hold back and open with lower rank spells in the days first encounters so the 3 top slots can be saved for possible harder fights later. When to use top slots can also be a possibility point for misjudgment and a wizard with 6 of them isnt worried about it.
The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them then has to use lower slots for the last 3 rounds or more if it takes longer because they have to use 2nd or lower spells after round 3.
Not to mention if the situations and encounters the party faces while spending those days tracking the creatures through some set terrain are ones the wizards extra spells known can be leveraged the wizard can alter their slots to maximize the amount of casts of them.
A thick forested area might yield special passages to a wizard prepared with 4 or more shape wood. Or maybe the party can better evade enemies by using humanoid form on each member then keeping enough distance to look like just another raid group. Or attempt it with invisibility on everyone. Or marvelous mounts for everyone when that kind of travel is expected. Or maybe shrink everyone to move through unexpected spaces. Or mabey tou used create food for a small village to eat for the day in exchange for guidance through a dangerous or hard to navigate area. Or you used cleanse air to create safe spaces to move through a poison clouded marsh zone for everyone taking several casts to clear through.
These are some off the top of my head examples of things a single scroll will not do and is very low commitment for a level 5 wizard to set uo to handle. A sorcerer could do any of these things too but at a huge cost. A single wizard might even have several of those rank 2 spells they can change between on days where the party wants to avoid conflict and them back to the fireballs/slow and fear on the days they expect to engage.
And if the party does encounter a fight anyway the wizards top slots were not being used for any of this stuff so those are still ready to fight. They just didnt blend up that day for more top slots. Thats still 4 top slot casts on a day set up to give up 2 rank 1s for an extra rank 2 and having those rank 2s dedicated...
Arcane évolution, learn shape Wood, done.
Arcane évolution, learn humanoïd form, done.Arcane évolution, learn invisibility (if you don’t already have it as a staple), done.
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...The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them then has to use lower slots for the last 3 rounds or more if it takes longer because they have to use 2nd or lower spells after round 3.
Not to mention if the situations and encounters the party faces while spending those days tracking the creatures through some set terrain are ones the wizards extra spells known can be leveraged the wizard can alter their slots to maximize the amount of casts of them.
A thick forested area might yield special passages to a wizard prepared with 4 or more shape wood. Or maybe the party can better evade enemies by using humanoid form on each member then keeping enough distance to look like just another raid group. Or attempt it with invisibility on everyone. Or marvelous mounts for everyone when that kind of travel is expected. Or maybe shrink everyone to move through unexpected spaces. Or mabey tou used create food for a small village to eat for the day in exchange for guidance through a dangerous or hard to navigate area. Or you used cleanse air to create safe spaces to move through a poison clouded marsh zone for everyone taking several casts to clear through.
These are some off the top of my head examples of things a single scroll will not do and is very low commitment for a level 5 wizard to set uo to handle. A sorcerer could do any of these things too but at a huge cost. A single wizard might even have several of those rank 2 spells they can change between on days where the party wants to avoid conflict and them back to the fireballs/slow and fear on the days they expect to engage.
And if the party does encounter a fight anyway the wizards top slots were not being used for any of this stuff so those are still ready to fight. They just didnt blend up that day for more top slots. Thats still 4 top slot casts on a day set up to give up 2
What do you mean? It's not really about being the best at everything all the time. It's about being best the majority of the time and especially in those times when things get difficult.
The ability to chain off slows as an example is often more powerful than any other option against bosses. Same as blasting is often best to chain off your best blasting spell. Who does this better as the levels progress? The sorc.
Even banish which I take as a sig spell to use banish across levels. The wizard has to fill their high level slots with banish to be able to banish level equivalent creatures. Whereas a sorc has banish sitting there in the level 5 slot with a sig spell designation and they can banish as needed with an appropriate rank spell keeping all their high level slots usable with high level blasting spells.
If the wizard wants to cast a multitarget slow, they have to load level 6 or higher slots with the level 6 or higher slow. The sorc just has slow sitting there in a level 3 slot with a sig spell designation, then they can pick and choose what slot they'll use of 6 or higher to cast a multitarget slow.
This is what I refer to as on demand versatility. The sorc has it in abundance.
Then add in spells like ancestral memories to add to some key spell cast to reduce the save for one action up to 3 times per battle and you're really getting a lot of bang for the buck.
I wonder sometimes how people run ancestral memories with a spell. It says 60 foot range against an enemy, but it doesn't have an actual target. So if you use ancestral memory spell against multiple targets, dot they all get the save minus if within 60 feet or one enemy within 60 feet? If it is all, then ancestral memory is even better.
It's these combinations the wizard doesn't have on their character.
The pro-wizard players are still using the same arguments about spell blending and spell substitution to get a few more max slots they may or may not use while the sorcerer received upgrades they didn't even ask for that made them even better after the Remaster.
It's very strange.
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As someone who kinda jumped in to the deep end of ttrpgs with pf2, it really looks like someone didn't do enough testing with prepared caster repertories, and got that number of spells known wrong.
Honestly, I think a big pillar of the issue is simply that spontaneous casters just have waaay too big a repertoire at baseline.
Given how many actual slots casters get at each rank, if the goal was for the "limited" repertoire to feel like a real limitation and tradeoff compared to prep casters, I think they really missed that target. Gaining a known spell for each and every new slot means that you can cast a different unique spell until your slots are empty, is blatantly silly if being known-limited is supposed to be the downside.
Being able to upcast if you need to, plus swapping out the one type of spell that falls off, blasts, as you level up, means that repertoire casters are never feeling stuck with a "limited list" of spells and unable to handle a specific scenario.
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From the opposite direction:
prep casters feel like, and are, mechanically constrained every day as they prep and use their slots. It is intended friction, a "puzzle," to think about which slotted spell you should burn now, knowing you might want it later.
"Do I really want to pop my 1/2 R6 Slow in this first room? There's 2 foes, but..."
Spontaneous casters seem like they were *supposed* to have their own kind of built-in friction, of "I wish I could cast ___, but I guess I can make do with ___ spell instead," but in practice spontaneously casters really, really do not suffer that issue.
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Yet another dagger is the archetype system. If you want to archetype and gain the opposite style casting, this is yet another systemic bundle of straw on the camel's back.
Archetype prepared means you can add to your book the exact same way as a proper prep caster, and gain a large amount of downtime utility. It's great.
But archetype spontaneous? A single slot and spell per R is genuinely restrictive as hell. To the point that it's an outright downgrade compared to arch prep casting.
Prep type has the same one new spell learned, but can add to their book and swap per day. While arch spontaneous picks their one new spell the exact same, but is locked in instead of being able to swap at daily prep. Straight downgrade.
And any time campaign obstacles stretch beyond an adventuring day, an arch prep caster can outright handwaive them in the exact same way a full prep caster can. "No worries, I have Teleport in my book." etc.
What's even more "fun" is how archetype prep casting is perfect for "limited shopping" campaigns. You're a spontaneous caster who has found an off-repertoire spell you want to cast daily from scrolls? Thanks to your prep caster archetype, your "intended downside" is no problem.
Every day, put the spell in your single prep slot. If the day was all travel, instead of letting the slot poof at day's end, you can now "buy a scroll" of it via Craft and bank that prep slot.
Or, if you think you *really* want that non-repertoire spell for repeated use, you can ya know, use the prep slot to make a wand of it instead. Now you've got a pseduo-slot with it every single day.
(and this of course works not just for a Spontaneous/Prep caster PC, but for [any class]/Prep caster PC. Being able to poach so much of prep casting's utility as a martial is nuts.)
And now that I've played all the way up to L20 with Alchemist / prep caster, I can say that yeah, the gold economy does allow for a heck of a lotta spell wands. Arch casting and wands could outright fill my daily combat actions, and it kinda does. I have to burn VVials in crazy bursts to make alchemy a better choice over arch casting in combat (though half of that blame is on alchemy actions being seriously below-par).
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Pf2 is a system where the supposed upside of picking a prepared caster as your class can be largely poached by the archetype system, but the reverse is not true for spontaneous casting archetypes.
If you like the idea of collecting and cataloguing spells, then it's just 3 feats on any PC to add that feature and escape the lockout on any character. But to sling spells like a Sorc? You really want to be an *actual* sorcerer.
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It can seem backwards to say that because archetype prep casting is so nice, that it makes the real deal is worse, but we have to keep the core player decision in mind.
All this evaluation is orbiting the one player decision of what to select for their option of "Class."
In comparison to other archetypes, the arch prep caster granting more of the supposed exclusive benefits is stacking more weight upon this problem from the opposite end.
The end result is that, as a player, I have absolutely no reason to ever pick Wizard. None of the unique mechanics have near enough weight to offset the known downsides. Even the flavor-fun is lacking when others literally have the exact same spellbook mechanic.
When I was a ttrpg newbie reading the classes for the very first time (and wanting to pick an INT class), Wiz stuck out as an option to avoid. It really is that noticeable, and I worry how much "this is fine" type defenses affected the devs, especially when the Remaster could have helped the class.
Wizard aside, Witch has enough unique flavor and familiar mechanics to make it a maybe pick. But even then, I'd rather take a Witch dedication on something like Summoner and poach that flavor. I would need to want the hex cantrip + f.ability badly enough to saddle myself with 6 hp/L & prep casting to ever pick Witch.
i posed that scenario to show sorcerer is not always better than a wizard at all levels and in all situations.
So what spell ranks would you consider ones where what you gain at that rank is game changing? If having double the casts at that rank at the level you gain it isnt a worthy and equalizing class feature then those spells are not actually gamechanging in the first place.
I used rank 3 spells as an example and its a good one. But what about rank 6 for chain lighting, or rank 7 for group haste? With 6 casts at the level the new rank is gained the wizard can reasonably open every encounter every day they want with that new rank gamechanging spell while the sorcerer might hold back and open with lower rank spells in the days first encounters so the 3 top slots can be saved for possible harder fights later. When to use top slots can also be a possibility point for misjudgment and a wizard with 6 of them isnt worried about it.Look, when we are starting to talk about being to cast rank 7 spells like for group haste the wizard will be behind if we compare to sorceror. I did not pick that lvl 13 cut-off point I mentioned earlier out of the blue. We might try to imagine some contrived scenarios for adventuring days where that might not be the case, but I certainly have not ever seen those actually happen.
That potential Sorceror our Spellblending wizard is competing against will have anoint ally and explosion of power if we want to call them optimized. Let's try to get a bit more concrete:
Their rank 4 spells will be on average 6d6 behind your rank 7 spells if we compare +2d6/rank spells. It's easy to trigger blood magic twice for our optimized sorceror with 1 action focus spells. That's an extra 11d6 damage thrown in the mix, for 3 rounds at least. Granted, at level 13 it's probably just Primals who can trigger twice while going R-3. Arcane Sorcerors will be better of with triggering once, like with Ancestral Memories, but that's still +7d6.
Yes, yes, just on...
consider the wizard at level 13 can casting group haste and eclipse burst in 3 encounters straight, a sorcerer is making choices with the 3 rank 7 casts they have the wizard is choosing to do both every encounter.
consider the wizard at level 13 can casting group haste and eclipse burst in 3 encounters straight, a sorcerer is making choices with the 3 rank 7 casts they have the wizard is choosing to do both every encounter.
It's not the first time you said something like this, you also mentioned it earlier:
The level 5 example I gave looks to me to clearly be better as a wizard with 6 level 3 spells to cast in that extreme encounter than the sorcerer that only has 3 of them
Unless I missed something, at level 5, a spell blending specialist wizard has 2 regular spells + 1 specialist spell + 1 blended spell + 1 arcane bond spell.
That's 5 slots, not 6, to the sorcerer 3.
At level 6, he'll indeed get 6 slots but then the sorcerer has 4.
Likewise for your level 13 example.
And since you're a specialist, you only have one arcane bond per day so at level 13 your list looks like this:
1 - 2 spells
2 - 2 spells
3 - 3 spells
4 - 3 spells
5 - 3 spells
6 - 5 spells
7 - 5 spells
In comparison to a sorcerer having 4 spells everywhere and 3 level 7. So the difference is not as big as you make it out to be. I did tout that in my guide, but the remaster changed everything.
And even 6 top level slots aren't what they used to be.
- A divine or primal sorcerer can get 5 slots as early as level 4 and 6 slots at level 16 (+1 n-1 slot).
- An oracle can get 5 slots at level 6 and 6 slots at level 18 (+1 n-1 slot).
Sure, one of them is fixed, but the other ones have 13 or 14 distinct choices per slot, giving them flexibility the wizard can only dream of. And they also have a dozen more lower level slots which, while not as impactful, are nothing to sneeze at.
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consider the wizard at level 13 can casting group haste and eclipse burst in 3 encounters straight, a sorcerer is making choices with the 3 rank 7 casts they have the wizard is choosing to do both every encounter.
I want to know where these fights are where it's so easy to fling around 60' blasts and never hit your allies that it's actually happening 3 seperate times a day and nothing else is going on. Seriously I find Eclipse Burst a very overrated spell around here: there's a ton of situations where it's not safely usable and I'm almost never going to want to prepare this many of them because they're useless as soon as we get put into a confined space and I need another tool.
But a Sorc is pretty easy firing off 3 Haste's and 3 Chain Lightnings (so they're not hurting damage wise), and has a whole pile of juice left... whereas the Wizard blew a ton of slots that could have been otherwise useful spells to blend into that and had to prepare multiple copies of those spells to do it.
This just doesn't feel that impressive to me. If you really want to spam Eclipse Burst, Wizard isn't particularly better at it than Sorcerer is and Sorc isn't giving up having the option to switch gears to other stuff to do it.
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With respect to what you said Tridus, I can understand preferring to play other classes due to the spellbook mechanic, but to me it's on par with tracking a repertoire and signatures-- it's just a list of spells you know, and you just write out what spells you prepped for the day-- you don't have to track what levels you know any given spell at because of how heightening works.
Well the key difference is a repertoire and signatures is one list: it's the list of what I have right now. It's really just a list with an asterisk on some spells.
Wizard has two lists:
1. The list of spells I have prepared right now, which is basically the same as the repertoire.
2. The spellbook list, which is a totally seperate list that at high level gets to be very long.
It's definitely more complex, especially in high level play where it can have 100+ entries, and I'm just not seeing value out of that when we have other classes in the system that work the same way but don't have to do it because the system goes "oh you have all of them, pick what you want for the day."
I also don't think the current schools are especially bad-- I listed off a bunch of good focus spells from them, and in the context of the overall build game, there are options to flex focus spells if a school has subclass slotted spells you like. They're pretty similar to your Sorcerer options, with the likes of Elemental Toss and Hand of the Apprentice being pretty comparable, Force Bolt being comparable to either. You can def pick out individual school spells which aren't as good, but that goes for all of the game's subclass selection.Ars Grammatica, Battle Magic, Gates, Kalistrade, Magical Technologies, Protean Form, and Rooted Wisdom all have decent focus spells from the jump, with Mentalism, Civic Wizardry, and Boundary having phenomenal advanced spell.
I think we just don't agree on how good the schools are, and thats fine. :) There are some good ones for sure, but I also found a lot of meh on that list and given how it locks you into a specific set of focus spells and a specific set of spells for the 4th slot, I find what I'd actually want to take pretty restrictive. But that's just a personal feel of it.
That said - Gates and Kalistrade are both uncommon and Magical Technologies is PFS limited, so if those are unavailable it shrinks this list substantially.
...i posed that scenario to show sorcerer is not always better than a wizard at all levels and in all situations.
So what spell ranks would you consider ones where what you gain at that rank is game changing? If having double the casts at that rank at the level you gain it isnt a worthy and equalizing class feature then those spells are not actually gamechanging in the first place.
I used rank 3 spells as an example and its a good one. But what about rank 6 for chain lighting, or rank 7 for group haste? With 6 casts at the level the new rank is gained the wizard can reasonably open every encounter every day they want with that new rank gamechanging spell while the sorcerer might hold back and open with lower rank spells in the days first encounters so the 3 top slots can be saved for possible harder fights later. When to use top slots can also be a possibility point for misjudgment and a wizard with 6 of them isnt worried about it.Look, when we are starting to talk about being to cast rank 7 spells like for group haste the wizard will be behind if we compare to sorceror. I did not pick that lvl 13 cut-off point I mentioned earlier out of the blue. We might try to imagine some contrived scenarios for adventuring days where that might not be the case, but I certainly have not ever seen those actually happen.
That potential Sorceror our Spellblending wizard is competing against will have anoint ally and explosion of power if we want to call them optimized. Let's try to get a bit more concrete:
Their rank 4 spells will be on average 6d6 behind your rank 7 spells if we compare +2d6/rank spells. It's easy to trigger blood magic twice for our optimized sorceror with 1 action focus spells. That's an extra 11d6 damage thrown in the mix, for 3 rounds at least. Granted, at level 13 it's probably just Primals who can trigger twice while going R-3. Arcane Sorcerors will be better of with triggering once, like with Ancestral Memories, but that's still +7d6.
And at level 18 the sorc can cast any combination of group slow, eclipse burst, banishment, or whatever is needed without preparing those slots in advance.
They can group slow with all their 4 level 6 slots, level 7 slots, level 8 slots, and level 9 slots, their option. Whatever they have available and choose to use.
Finding a key level where you can go, "At level 13, the wizard can do this a few extra times a day" doesn't change the problem.
Oh Mr. Wizard, you chose Spell Blending. You needed a banish, not a group slow. Looks like you're stuck. I'm still ok using either one as needed when I need it.
So you blended these slots and find out you don't need them or another spell would be better. You're stuck with them, while the sorc is picking which spell to use in real time with no slot stuck with a spell they may not need.
This just keeps getting worse as they gain more levels and you still want to use group slow, banish, eclipse burst, teleport multiple times a day, dominate, and other spells that you don't want to have to slot in multiple slots that you have on your list.
Basically, the wizard has to prepare multiple copies of the same spell to use it again and they have to heighten it. This limits their spell variation which they are touted for.
The sorc has 36 to 45 different spells. They have sig spells where they can pick key spells that need it to heighten when they need to not filling any higher level slots up with those spells. They have more on demand versatility to solve problems in real time.
It's not even comparable at high levels. Sorc is chain casting what they need, wizard is stuck hoping what they prepared will be good enough for the day.
It gets worse and worse and worse as you get higher level.