I see no real advantage with the arcane list. To me it is the least interesting spell list even if the longest. You have only so many slots a day to use and only so many actions a round for combat, so you have to use spells that will impact with the actions used.
The Power of the Wizard going back to when it was the Magic User class in AD&D has always been access to spells and the ability to create scrolls.
Every time a wizard finds a scroll, if it is on their list, they can learn the spell adding it to their spell books. This gives the wizard access to a great much more variety of power than any of the sorcerer or the Warlock that can spontaneously cast. Sure they access anything on their list of spells known but their knowledge is limited by level.
A wizard through experience, adventuring, finding scrolls, sharing with other casters, buying spells for other guild mages could have every spell on a list known if they can find it and pay for it.
The wizard would make up for their limited spell slots and the fact that they can create scrolls meaning that if they have preparation they are the strongest caster in the party but once they have used up resources they are the weakest.
Too often DM's overlook this in game because it is book keeping but it has always been why a wizard is powerful.
Know here is where a wizard really shines. They class as wizard but pick up say the sorcerer dedication and then pick a Primal or Divine or Occult list from the choices of patron, type etc. They choose the Basic Spellcasting, Advanced and Master getting spells of first to eighth level in the other list meaning they can create scrolls or cast from those scrolls, etc.
This is what truly makes a wizard powerful, versatility of magic.
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.
Actually, I have to admit I forgot, but do agree that many an aspect of the old Wizard/Magic user concept all came across how they could collect and horde scrolls and learn new spells to put in their spell book.
It makes me wonder how bad it would be if you let a Wizard craft a scroll a day as part of their preparations, with it simply costing half the list GP cost. (not a batch of 4, but just a single) That way, if they wanted to invest in extra spells like that they could, but they shouldn't be getting ahead in GP because they should only be able to sell them at half price, which would be at cost so not an economic advantage.
That isn't specifically buffing the arcane list, but by boosting their ability to Buff their 'number' of spell slots effectively, would boost their spellcasting effectiveness.
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And then also have that now like years later, we have a decent amount of one action and reaction spells that favors the spontaneous casting as they have different times that you want to use that might or not happen during the day (Time Jump my beloved).
Didn't need to use jump to go to a roof and be out of reach? Fine I can use True Strike or Interposing earth instead.
And then the reactions damn, Brine Dragon Bile, Blood Vendetta, Cloud Dragon Cloak, Shadow Projectile, Wooden Double, we have a lot of good options now and most of them low levels as well.
Reaction spells are things that are Niche, which makes them dangerous to potentially take as a spontaneous spellcaster but if you find one you would get to use regularly having it as a spontaneous caster can be useful, when those circumstances hit. But as you mentioned, as a prepared caster, they also are potentially a costly choice and you judge you likely may not be able to use it. If only you could prepare it, but then as the day progresses if you haven't used it and you wanted to swap it out for a spell you prepared but already cast, if you could do that as a 10 minute activity that also got you a focus point back, it would probably help immensely for useability, but not necessary a giant power boost.
As the number of spells widen, it changes to dynamic of what you can do with spells. The more spells that exist, it helps the prepared casters out more, if they automatically have access to the spells, but wizards and other spellbook classes don't get as much of a benefit of this. For spontaneous casters, they get more to choose from at the start, but they have such a limited selection of spells which become very locked it. It creates a situation where you almost have to insure your pick widely useful combat spells and can't invest in downtime or exploration spells, or you shoot yourself in the foot.
Actually, I have to admit I forgot, but do agree that many...
I see no real advantage with the arcane list. To me it is the least interesting spell list even if the longest. You have only so many slots a day to use and only so many actions a round for combat, so you have to use spells that will impact with the actions used.
The Power of the Wizard going back to when it was the Magic User class in AD&D has always been access to spells and the ability to create scrolls.
Every time a wizard finds a scroll, if it is on their list, they can learn the spell adding it to their spell books. This gives the wizard access to a great much more variety of power than any of the sorcerer or the Warlock that can spontaneously cast. Sure they access anything on their list of spells known but their knowledge is limited by level.
A wizard through experience, adventuring, finding scrolls, sharing with other casters, buying spells for other guild mages could have every spell on a list known if they can find it and pay for it.
The wizard would make up for their limited spell slots and the fact that they can create scrolls meaning that if they have preparation they are the strongest caster in the party but once they have used up resources they are the weakest.
Too often DM's overlook this in game because it is book keeping but it has always been why a wizard is powerful.
Know here is where a wizard really shines. They class as wizard but pick up say the sorcerer dedication and then pick a Primal or Divine or Occult list from the choices of patron, type etc. They choose the Basic Spellcasting, Advanced and Master getting spells of first to eighth level in the other list meaning they can create scrolls or cast from those scrolls, etc.
This is what truly makes a wizard powerful, versatility of magic.
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.
They get a daily scroll feat as a class feat. It's one of their better feats.
One of the big problems is the entire game changed in so many ways, that prepared casting isn't very useful any more.
Martials are stronger. Casters are weaker. Fights are fast and furious. Non-incap modifier spells are king now. Damage is king now.
PF2 is a very different game than PF1. It's faster. More about short-term damage, effects, durations. Weaker magic items with fewer charges.
All this stuff favors on demand versatility, repetition in abilities, and more fast and furious options.
The old days of a wizard prepping a spell loadout to destroy an enemy practically alone are gone.
Scry and fry. Gone.
Save and be done. Gone.
No save debuffs like enervation. Gone.
Powerful summoning. Gone.
Long duration spells. Gone.
Metamagic in prepared slots that made wizards the masters of metamagic. Gone.
Cost efficient crafting of multi-charge magic items and wonderous items the wizard was great at. Gone.
All the stuff that made preparation casting and the wizard ability to have a huge spellbook of spells that solve problems are all gone.
Now if you want to win fast and easy. Do massive damage fast. Apply modifiers. Rinse and repeat. The classes that can rinse and repeat the best do the best. Martials with their attack sequence. Spontaneous casters with their ability to chain cast their best spells.
Yet some are still holding on to the old PF1 idea that preparation casting can solve all these problems with silver bullet spells or convoluted strategies that used to work. But now it's just about having the best hammer all the time because everything has become a nail.
Martials and spontaneous casters have the best hammer to hit the nail over and over again from nail to nail.
Nothing is immune any more. Incorporeal doesn't matter. Damage resistance is fairly low.
It's just hammer as hard as you can and apply some action reducers and modifiers, rinse and repeat. Maybe toss a wall in to divide numbers on occasion if you can't blast them all down.
Very different game. Prepared casting didn't survive the changeover very well.
It makes me wonder how bad it would be if you let a Wizard craft a scroll a day as part of their preparations, with it simply costing half the list GP cost. (not a batch of 4, but just a single) That way, if they wanted to invest in extra spells like that they could, but they shouldn't be getting ahead in GP because they should only be able to sell them at half price, which would be at cost so not an economic advantage.
That isn't specifically buffing the arcane list, but by boosting their ability to Buff their 'number' of spell slots effectively, would boost their spellcasting effectiveness.
Scrolls are great for "this is a spell you tend to only need a few times a campaign and it doesn't matter if its not max rank". Given a campaign with the time to craft, this would let you have more of them.
So it could be useful. Of course, Thaumaturge can just do it for free once the relevant feats come online (as can a level 10 Wizard). Those aren't permanent items, but still.
In the right campaign it could be relevant, but you quickly reach a point where utility spell scrolls aren't that expensive so it probably won't feel like a huge boost. Half of "not that expensive" is less, but still not that expensive.
The thing that doesn't get discussed when scrolls are brought up is how cheap and easy they get to craft at higher levels. I have had no problem making scrolls on sorcs or clerics or buying them during downtime. Lower level scrolls are real cheap for comparative wealth by level. So grabbing an occasional spell needed for a single encounter or two an adventure hasn't been much of a problem.
Sure, wizards are better at crafting in PF2. But since crafting isn't great in PF2, so what. But really, magic items aren't that great in PF2, so who cares if you can make them.
Martials mainly care about their runes for armor and weapons, then an Apex item. That's about it.
Casters get enough spells where they don't need much else. I have characters with wands, scrolls, and staves sitting on them I never use. Just sitting there for levels waiting for some reason to use them. I usually end up selling them to buy something else.
In PF1 I needed more downtime than I had to make items as a wizard. In PF2 crafting barely gets used. In PF2 if no one in your group ever learns crafting or does anything with it, your group won't even notice.
Reaction spells are things that are Niche, which makes them dangerous to potentially take as a spontaneous spellcaster but if you find one you would get to use regularly having it as a spontaneous caster can be useful, when those circumstances hit. But as you mentioned, as a prepared caster, they also are potentially a costly choice and you judge you likely may not be able to use it. If only you could prepare it, but then as the day progresses if you haven't used it and you wanted to swap it out for a spell you prepared but already cast, if you could do that as a 10 minute activity that also got you a focus point back, it would probably help immensely for useability, but not necessary a giant power boost.
As the number of spells widen, it changes to dynamic of what you can do with spells. The more spells that exist, it helps the prepared casters out more, if they automatically have access to the spells, but wizards and other spellbook classes don't get as much of a benefit of this. For spontaneous casters, they get more to choose from at the start, but they have such a limited selection of spells which become very locked it. It creates a situation where you almost have to insure your pick widely useful combat spells and can't invest in downtime or exploration spells, or you shoot yourself in the foot.
The opposite actually,I could have both Brine Dragon Bile, and blood vendetta and have laughing fit as well there, and even if didn't use the reactions I still have the laughing fit, the granted bloodline spell, the lvl 1 signature spell and even spend those slots to cast the other lvl 1 spells without heightening them.
Downtime and exploration spells can be done with lower level scrolls, if they are on the highest level, Wizard will likely not have them as well as they are too expensive at the time
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Then there is the crazy expense to build a spellbook. Magical Shorthand is a feat tax for a wizard and a witch.
Other prepared casters at least get every common spell on their list for free.
Wizard and witch have to pay to learn even the common spells. Wizard has to pay for haste and slow, but druid gets them for free as common spells on the Primal List. And it's this way with every shared spell on both the arcane list and every other list.
Another example of PF2 holding onto a costly and punitive anachronistic rule with spellbooks that worked when wizard and witch spells were very high value and not shared by other lists that didn't translate over to PF2 well at all. It's almost punitive at this point to make the wizard and witch pay all this money for substantially weakened spells with the incap trait and other such limitations like heightening needed to make them useful.
Greater Dispel Magic worked great in a level 6 prepared slot in PF1 across all levels, but now a prepared caster must use a higher level slot for Dispel Magic to work well taking away from using a high level slot for a blast spell. Whereas the spontaneous caster can keep dispel magic in a level 2 slot, pick up Expanded Signature Spell and designate it a sig spell to use it when needed.
The problems are so easy to see. Yet some are resisting that the systemic changes to the game absolutely neutered prepared casting. It hurt the wizard the most because for some reason the PF2 designers gave other prepared casters some decent class features to make up for it, but gave the wizard terrible class features and made them the master or Arcane Prepared casting after neutering nearly everything that made it so good in PF1.
Pretty weird. I'm not sure if they didn't see what it would do while the design team held onto this old idea of the wizard while making these sweeping, massive systemic changes between PF1 and PF2.
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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.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 themUnless 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 spellsIn 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.
Thanks for correcting me. I didn’t notice spell blending says each bonus slot must be of a different rank so you cannot blend up both 2 rank 1s and 2 rank 2s into 2 rank 3s
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 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...
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.
It's genuinely easier for me to parse prepared casting for whatever reason, probably because when I do spontaneous I do have some non-signature spells learned at multiple levels (say, if they only heighten very sporadically) as if they were different spells. For me, it's very intuitive to just go down the list and write a couple of spells for the slots at each level.
As for uncommon, I don't really worry about it, I don't think there's actually all that many tables that are especially restrictive about it and there's always more builds and options in this game to find something for that individual campaign where something you might like to play is restricted. If a player is pushing for something to be available, I think most GMs would want to err on the side of it being available.
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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.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 themUnless 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 spellsIn 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.
I haven't played a wizard in so long, I forget how some of their mechanics work.
That's even worse. One extra high level slot of each. So only more than than the sorc with far less on demand versatility.
I find it very hard to believe that with the Remaster that the sorc isn't greatly outperforming the wizard. Pre-Remaster the wiz could poach Sorcerous Potency and Ancestral Memories and Dragon Claws weren't so great. But post-Remaster it's no longer close.
What they did with the wizard and sorcerer Remastered is a real head scratcher. Then add in how much they powered up the oracle, you don't even need a divine sorcerer any longer.
Foretell Harm is basically a much easier to use Pysche Unleashed with its own resource pool and lesser penalty with the only limit being one use per target.
It's crazy. Witch got some decent upgrades, but sorc and oracle were much improved in the Remaster.
Wizard was made worse which didn't seem possible.
At least wizard can get fortell harm and probably should given the feats in class.
I would be curious to see a level by level comparison of optimal builds including optimal dedications.
At least wizard can get fortell harm and probably should given the feats in class.
I would be curious to see a level by level comparison of optimal builds including optimal dedications.
I'm not sure how you do that. Any caster for a single encounter can do very well.
My analysis is based on adventuring, meaning multiple encounters. A sorc can maintain a higher performance based on using on-demand versatility with quality focus spells over multiple encounters across the most levels.
How many times a day can an imperial sorc used ancestral memories while building a diverse repertoire and popping Ancestral memories multiple times a fight with highly effective spells?
You could build a druid or oracle or wiz or sorc or cleric to do some kind of comparable effect for one battle or encounter and look like the classes are balanced against each other. It's once you go through many adventures seeing how both classes operate with the huge repertoire that you see the wizard fall behind.
To me it is easy to see how spontaneous casting looks like a highly variable matrix of spells available to you at all times with some feats allowing some versatility.
Whereas the wizard is a list of spells that once checked off are done with some spontaneous ability with Arcane Bond.
If a wizard memorized all the different spells in a sorc repertoire, they would have one of each spell with a use of Arcane Bond. Once the spell is checked off with one extra arcane bond, that spell is done and the one use of Arcane Bond is done.
Whereas a sorc has this matrix of spells. 4 slots, 4 different choices per slot as needed. This is across levels with sig spells increasing the choices at 9th level is 4 slots with 12 different spell choices in your 9th level slots.
Whereas the wizard may be able to blend for 4 to 5 9th level slots, maybe 6 with a scroll, those slots are set and offer no real choices. Use one and be done with it. So the wizard has to prepare the same spell or hope the other spells work.
The wizard is sold as this heavily versatile caster, but the sorc is more versatile in real play situations and is much more likely to have a useful spell in their repertoire at all times that can be heightened as needed.
Some are taking Spell Blending for a an extra slot and foregoing Spell Substitution which is really the only way to use wizard versatility during an adventuring day. So you either get an extra high level slot at the cost of valuable lower level slots or take advantage of your versatility during an adventuring day changing one spell per 10 minutes but the same number of slots as the sorc.
Maybe the list is easier for some people to process. But some can very easily manage the sorcerer matrix with signature spells sufficiently to maximize the sorc advantage and power.
...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
Blue_frog I wanted to come back to this point because I think the arcane sorcerer is actually really bad at doing what you suggest. And in my assumptions I wont be charitable to make the point. I am assuming this arcane sorcerer doesnt care to use recall knowledge and left int at 0 to maximize con/dex/wis/cha. They also are focusing in cha akills so they leave arcana at trained and never picked up magical shorthand. At level 5 they have an arcana of level + trained so 7 total. The DC of all those rank 2 spells in my example to learn is 18. That means on an 10 or under they fail to learn the spell and cannot try again till they level up. At this level of investment its not a reliable way to get scrolls and learn unlearned spells with arcane evolution to solve problems. They could have invested more into it and reduce the chance of failure but a wizard is made to do this and already has the int at +4 along with the defensive stats con/dex/wis and is more likely uses arcana for RK so they bumped it to expert and might even have spellbook prodigy making success a 4 or up. Thats not a trivial difference in chances of success or failure.
Making a sorcerer try to keep up in this one regard comes at a cost to them in stats, skills, and nets them very little in return. For the wizard its just a thing they already are made to do.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It’s a fair point but any sorcerer using arcane evolution should get assurance in arcana.
With merely expert arcana, you can learn level 3 spells with no failure chance at character level 6, and level 6 spells at character level 14.
It’s true that after a time, if you don’t invest in arcana, you cannot learn a new top spell but I use them mostly for utility and utility is usually lower level.
I agree with you that if you suddenly need MANY INSTANCES of a TOP LEVEL SLOT from a NICHE SPELL and you need it TOMORROW then wizard is better. But it never happened so far in my games - especially since on-level scrolls are costly.
...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
Why do so many of you keep bringing up skills? You do realize how easy it is to acquire skills and how every class regardless of intelligence has 3 legendary skills except a rogue and investigator, with maybe another class getting a specialized skill here and there.
How do you guys keep bringing this up when skill acquisition is cake? A sorc gets 2 with bloodline. They 2 from the base class. So they start with 4. Background usually provides 2 more. So you start off with 6 skills doing nothing.
Then you can add more with ancestry feats and archetype feats. When you take the rogue archetype, you're up to 2 more so 8 skills. Do you really need more than 8 skills when you only get three up to Legendary?
Extra trained skills from intelligence aren't very useful any more. Often the players wanting a better wizard get accused of hanging on to to PF1 ideas, but PF2 players still talking about the wizard's intelligence and extra skills are stuck in PF1 idea of skills. More trained skills doesn't mean much any more.
The idea of silver bullet spells is nearly non-existent. Nothing is immune anymore.
Everyone can fly if you allow versatile heritages or from an item or Cloud Jump with skill feats.
Why do some players still talk like wizards are great with skills when the only classes great with skills now are the rogue and investigator.
It’s a fair point but any sorcerer using arcane evolution should get assurance in arcana.
With merely expert arcana, you can learn level 3 spells with no failure chance at character level 6, and level 6 spells at character level 14.
It’s true that after a time, if you don’t invest in arcana, you cannot learn a new top spell but I use them mostly for utility and utility is usually lower level.
I agree with you that if you suddenly need MANY INSTANCES of a TOP LEVEL SLOT from a NICHE SPELL and you need it TOMORROW then wizard is better. But it never happened so far in my games - especially since on-level scrolls are costly.
Needed hasn't happened, taking some spells for fun has happened. Why not let a wizard shine coming up with some spell strategy.
The reality is even if you don't have a wizard or prepared caster to change out some spells, who cares. Rogue with skills can do mostly everything. Sorc with social skills like I usually get is far better than the wizard at social interactions. Rogue is better at stealth and scouting. Strength based guy is better at athletics.
With nothing immune anymore and now even golems resistant to spells, the need to recall knowledge is very low. That's why I don't get the talk of Recall Knowledge in PF2. In PF1 recall knowledge was useful because some stuff was just straight up immune to your attacks or spells. You really needed to know what you can cast. Now nothing is immune. Resistances can be blasted through with excessive damage. Weaknesses are a little extra damage, but not enough to care. Martials with property runes on their weapons can often activate weaknesses more often than a caster. A monk with good property runes and cold iron, silver, and adamantine starts to clown stuff with weaknesses every attack. That's why I stopped calling monks weak after I saw a few at high level. They get real brutal.
Even my druid with Untamed Form was great at helping the party bypass hazards and obstacle by changing form and flying them over which they could do all day without expending a spell slot. That's why I think druids are under-rated because being able to use Untamed Form all day can solve a lot of problems parties face.
I find it funny that the people saying Wizard is fine are not even using the best example of shenanigans that Wizards can do:
Note: this is a hypothetical that is extremely unlikely to happen in real play
Universalist for up to 9 uses of Drain Bonded Item (which I just refer to as bond from here on) per day but only 3 spells/rank per day
Experimental spellshape (a surprise tool that will help us later!)
Level 8 take bond conservation now you have up to 16 (3/rank per day + 4 uses of Bond ) + 2 (additional rank 1&2 spell from bond conservation)=18 slots per day (assuming the spells you cast can generally be cast at 2 actions or less (63.7% of Arcane falls under this))
Level 9 is where things start to get interesting… you now have 19 (3/rank per day for 1-4 and 2/rank per day for 5 + 5 uses of Bond) + 4 ( 2 rank 1 spells + 1 rank 2 spell + 1 rank 3 spell all from bond conservation)=23 slots per day because we use bond conservation to get an additional use of Bond at 3rd rank which we then use bond conservation with again to get an additional use of Bond at 1st rank for 2 additional rank 1 spells per day from bond conservation.
At Level 11 you have 23 (3 rank 1-5 + 2 rank 6 + 6 uses of Bond) + 6 (2 rank 1 + 2 rank 2 + 1 rank 3 + 1 rank 4)=29 slots per day since we use bond conservation 6 times in all
Level 13 you have 27 (3 rank 1-6 + 2 rank 7 + 7 uses of Bond) + 9 ( 3 rank 1 + 2 rank 2 + 2 rank 3 + 1 rank 4 + 1 rank 5)=36 spells per day (as many as a level 18 sorcerer can cast before feats) since we use bond conservation 9 times
Level 14 you take Superior Bond and have 28 (3 rank 1-7 + 7 uses of Bond) + 12 (4 rank 1 + 2 rank 2 +3 rank 3 + 1 rank 4 + 2 rank 5) (9 from bond conservation + 3 from the combo of bond conservation and superior bond) for 40 spells per day
Level 16 you can use Experimental Spellshape to retrain bond conservation and get a different level 8 feat; also you now have 32 (3 rank 1-8 + 8 uses of bond) + 15 (3 rank 1 + 4 rank 2 + 2 rank 3 + 3 rank 4 + 1 rank 5 + 2 rank 6) = 47 spells...
Glad to see this finally brought up. This is one of their most exploitable feats. Universalist/Unified Theory is the most powerful School/Curriculum.
As you pointed out, it's super complicated to use. The method you used to show this doesn't even show the additional complication that Arcane Bond only works for spells you already cast. It would be even more complicated to keep track of the specific spells you cast, then which one you will use again with Arcane Bond and Bond Conservation.
I built a wizard focused on Arcane Bond. It was the best build the wizard has and pretty potent. But it was intensive tracking, annoyingly intensive tracking.
If you are up to the detailed tracking for Arcane Bond with the associated Arcane Bond feats, you can get a lot of spells out of Arcane Bond. It really requires a very focused strategy to use.
Nobody mentioned bond conservation because it sucks big time except out of combat.
It’s good if you want to be all about utility but you have to be an universalist (thus losing a top level slot) and thus makes you even worse in a battle.
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For the record, here’s what I wrote six years ago:
Well, no, it’s not an incredible feat, it’s more of a trap feat (notwithstanding the fact that it costs you your level 8 option, and feats are pretty valuable in PF2).
First of all, it takes an action to activate and you have to cast a spell on the same turn. This means that it burns all your actions for the turn. You can’t move, you can’t interact and you can’t use metamagic on the spell you’ll be casting – which is a shame. It doesn’t look so bad on paper but in a fight, it might mess you up tactically.
Second, you can only use it to regain a spell two levels lower than the one you just casted. So, once per day, you’ll get back a spell of your max level – 2. The other times, It’ll be max level – 3 or worse. These are NOT encounter-wrecking spells.
Third, you HAVE to cast the spell you got back on the next round. So not only will you be casting a weaker spell than what you could do, but you also won’t be able to change your plan if something goes wrong.
People read Bond Conservation and go “oh wow, the universalist can chain that for some awesome shenanigans”. In reality, it’s downright awful in a combat perspective.
The only time it IS useful, actually, is out of combat, where you can actually plan for this and use utility spells. It’s not that bad, it just doesn’t compensate what you lose for going Universalist.
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For the record, here’s what I wrote six years ago:
Well, no, it’s not an incredible feat, it’s more of a trap feat (notwithstanding the fact that it costs you your level 8 option, and feats are pretty valuable in PF2).
First of all, it takes an action to activate and you have to cast a spell on the same turn. This means that it burns all your actions for the turn. You can’t move, you can’t interact and you can’t use metamagic on the spell you’ll be casting – which is a shame. It doesn’t look so bad on paper but in a fight, it might mess you up tactically.
Second, you can only use it to regain a spell two levels lower than the one you just casted. So, once per day, you’ll get back a spell of your max level – 2. The other times, It’ll be max level – 3 or worse. These are NOT encounter-wrecking spells.
Third, you HAVE to cast the spell you got back on the next round. So not only will you be casting a weaker spell than what you could do, but you also won’t be able to change your plan if something goes wrong.
People read Bond Conservation and go “oh wow, the universalist can chain that for some awesome shenanigans”. In reality, it’s downright awful in a combat perspective.
The only time it IS useful, actually, is out of combat, where you can actually plan for this and use utility spells. It’s not that bad, it just doesn’t compensate what you lose for going Universalist.
It is powerful. But it takes so much strategy and detail work to make it so, that only those with incredible system mastery would know how to take advantage of it.
It also requires pre-buff time, blasting/casting strategies built in advance, and a careful crafting of your spell list to take advantage of it.
You have to set up stuff like casting 4th level invis with bond, then see the unseen with the bond conservation.
Or blasting with an 8th level chain lightning then a group slow.
Then you have to make sure to prepare them, then cast them, then set them up for Arcane Bond.
Way too much work to take advantage of it. I doubt many would want to put in the detail work. I hope the wizard wasn't built around the idea that players would put that much work in to take advantage of Bond Conservation.
I did take the time to build a strategy and spell list around Bond Conservation and it was powerful, but it wasn't worth the time and effort. It was a tiresome level of detail. Not much fun at all for poor man's spontaneous casting.
I do think a lot of this negative comparison focuses on higher levels though. The Sorc's focus spells really stand out at all levels, but in terms of slot flexibility a R1+R2 signature spell may not be as flexible as 7 daily swappable 1st rank spells vs. a repertoire of 4. As level increases and number of Sorc. signature spells increase, then yep the repertoire spells/rank starts being competitive or exceeding known spells/rank.This may by why the community outside the boards doesn't complain as much; they play L1-5 and 1-10 mostly, where the differences are smaller and having a bunch of spells in your spellbook that you can switch out matters more.
That's true.
At earlier levels, it's harder for the sorcerer to cover all his fighting bases (Ref/Will/Fort/AC, Single/AOE/Friendly AOE) and have some utility to boot.But then, so it is for the wizard.
For instance, at level 1, we could have this kind of setup. I'm not saying those are the best spells, but it gives us an idea if they're trying to do the same thing.
Imperial sorcerer lvl 1
1 - Force Barrage (bloodline), Runic weapon, Shockwave
Wizard (battle specialist) lvl 1
1 - Force barrage (school), Runic Weapon, Shockwave (+1 arcane bond).
Here the wizard is the clear winner: unless you REALLY need 3 casting of one spell, he has the same flexibility, 1 more casting per day, and a couple utility spells he can keep in his spellbook.
Now let's see at level 5, assuming again they're trying to do about the same thing.
Imperial sorcerer lvl 5
1 - Force Barrage (B)*, Goblin pox, Shockwave, Interposing earth
2 - Dispel magic* (B), Blazing bolt*, Tailwind, Invisibility
3 - Haste (B), Fireball, Fear*
Our sorcerer took arcane evolution at level 4 and, since he doesn't need to switch spells yet, got another free signature spell (blazing bolt). has a nice defensive spell he can use up to 4 times if needed. He's got a few utilities now that he can share with his party if needed (Tailwind, invisibility). He has Fireball for mass blasting, Blazing bolt for mass friendly blasting, and still force barrage for single target. Even against fire-resistant opponents, he can cast fear both single and multitarget, make them prone, or haste a friend. He also can freely heighten dispel magic.
Wizard (battle specialist) lvl 5
1 - Force barrage (S), Goblin pox, Interposing earth x 2
2 - Mist (S), Blazing bolt x 2, Invisibility
3 - Fireball (S), Fear, Force Barrage (+1 arcane bond)
We already see the wizard sputtering. His first level force barrage is useless apart from a single-action filler. He only has 2 interposing earth and that stopped him from taking shockwave (sure, no big deal, but it's an example) as well as making him more vulnerable. He still gets his 1 slot advantage but didn't have room to put dispel magic, can only cast blazing bolt at level 2 and has only two of them, doesn't have tailwind, cannot cast invisibility on more than one target, and so on and so forth.
It's true that he can still tailor his spell list to cater to a specific need, but what I wrote was a pretty standard "regular all-around battle caster" list and in all those days when you don't expect anything incredibly special (like underwater adventuring or knowing you'll fight a dragon), it will underperform.
And in those days where there IS an incredibly specific challenge to accomplish:
1 - Maybe a scroll can do it
2 - If not, arcane evolution can do it