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Didn't think they could make the wizard more limited and worse in the Remaster, but somehow they managed it.
I hope they get rid of the school tied to spell slots mechanic and make curriculums provide unique abilities and focus spells. The spell slots tied to curriculum mechanic doesn't translate well to PF2. I wish the designers would admit this and get rid of it. Make the wizard a four slot caster like the sorc. There's not point in keeping them a 3 slot caster with special rules to become 4 slot. Their innate class abilities just don't warrant the 3 slot limit like the witch hexes do.
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Indeed, the Wizard in my opinion suffered from a really slapdash remaster that seemingly aimed just to ditch the OGL schools rather than meaningfully improve the class or account for the tremendous loss in versatility that ensued. Beyond the limitations of their curriculum, the class also continues to have barely over half as many feats as any other long-standing caster class like the Bard, Druid, or Sorcerer, and their subsequent schools have been a little all over the place. The School of Gates is famously strong, and thankfully there are now some genuinely flavorful schools out there, but even so I don't think they consistently make good use of the curriculum mechanic. I won't necessarily suggest ways to homebrew new schools or make the Wizard's curriculum feel a better right off the bat, as I do think it's worth centering the focus of this thread on how the Wizard doesn't feel in a good place to many and could use some improvements, not just in the form of strong subclasses but with changes to the core class as well.
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I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.
The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."
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I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.
The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."
The martial-caster disparity you refer to has been one of the most heavily-criticized issues with other tabletop games for decades, and is a frequently-cited reason for players switching to PF2e. I don't think this false equivalence you're drawing really says what you want it to say here.
Personally, my issue isn't that there's a class in the bottom rung of the roster, because that's doomed to happen, my issue is that the gap between the Wizard and the top performers or even many mid-range casters is so significant. Again, the fact that the class has 54 feats while every other Player Core caster has at least 90 makes some aspects of this gap very easy to quantify. Paizo certainly had to make the most of a bad situation, but that doesn't stop their solution from having made the Wizard a far less effective and enjoyable class in the long run. Now that they are out of that bad situation, there is room to improve things going forward, which is what this thread is ultimately here to advocate for.
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I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.
Because that’s not actually relevant.
The fact that a conceptual similar issue was present in the past, doesn’t mean its presence elsewhere now is okay. It kind of makes it worse actually, given that Paizo took steps to specifically address the problem you mentioned.
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I love how every complaint about the Wizard ignores half the character build in order to justify their complaint. The wizards school is weak when compared to the sorcerer blood line! Well it should be because it’s only half the equation you also have the arcane thesis to consider both those combined is easily equal to a Sorcerer’s bloodline.
“ I wish the designers would admit this and get rid of it. Make the wizard a four slot caster like the sorc. There's not point in keeping them a 3 slot caster with special rules to become 4 slot. Their innate class abilities just don't warrant the 3 slot limit like the witch hexes do.”. This is just stupid Wizards have 4 slots you just have to choose one of your curriculum spell. In fact a Wizard runs more slots that a Sorcerer generally especially if the take the Staff Thesis.
The truth of the matter if you know how to run a Wizard your generally more powerful than a Sorcerer but a Wizard has a much higher learning curve than a Sorcerer. There’s no real thought behind a Sorcerer no learning needed at all it’s casting on easy mode while a Wizard is far more powerful once you learn how.
This is not true. I'm not sure why people keep claiming this.
I know casters as well as you can know them. I've played the wizard as my primary in every edition of D&D they existed. I play more casters than martials by a good margin.
There is this niche that keeps making the claim the wizard is stronger than the sorcerer and they are not. I have about as good a system mastery as exists in PF2, 5E, PF1, 3E, 3.5E, 2nd edition, and 1st edition. I'm an old school player focused primarily on casters.
If you have system mastery in PF2, then the spontaneous casters are better by a good margin.
In PF1 wizards were king by a mile. Best class in the game. Slow start, but spectacularly powerful at high level. If you have system mastery as I did, then you know why they were so much better in PF1/3E.
Just as if you have system mastery in PF2, you know why spontaneous casters are better in PF2. The main reason being because changing out spells is not longer very valuable. There aren't alpha spells any more. There aren't silver bullet spells any more. There is only the casting of the same most powerful spell over and over and over again. And spontaneous casters do that better than prepared casters.
That's how PF2 works. The class features of the spontaneous casters are generally better.
I don't know why you are holding on on to this old paradigm when wizards could find those perfect spells like PF1/3E when such spells no longer exist. There is no immunity to energy spells castable on a whole group anymore. No mobile individual wind walls that ruin archers. No mass hold monsters. No dominate that ends battles. No enervate or energy drain that automatically adds negative levels with no saves. Very few longer duration party buffs. No cheap wands. No ability enhancing spells. There isn't even a mass fly spell anymore.
The new paradigm is simple, straightforward, and narrow. Very few spell slots. Very few mass buff spells.
And in this new paradigm, the wizard is not that great. The spontaneous casters, specifically the sorcerer and bard are much better than they are. They are even more versatile users of magic.
When I hear a person make the claim wizards are better, it clearly shows they haven't even bothered to learn all that sorcerers and spontaneous casters can do. If they did have system mastery and knew sorcs, they would know that 45 spells known and 1 they can change out every day is more than enough to match anything the wizard can come up with.
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This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.
If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.
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This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.
If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.
The Wizard simply isn’t a knowledge class. It should be, it superficially looks like it is, but it isn’t.
Wizards have zero mechanics which aid or enhance their ability to make RK checks besides just having Int as a key stat. They got their first ability which even mentioned RK in the remaster, and it only functions on a critical success.
Wizards have the least amount of trained skills in the game. They have 3+Int, while everyone else is at least 4+Int, including other Int classes.
A ton of classes have mechanics which either aid RK or directly grant information about enemies - even sorcerer now thanks to the effect that allows them to RK on any enemy with Arcana (as awkward as it is) - the wizard has no such features.
Plus, it’s not like Wizard can leverage information they gain in an encounter if they weren’t already prepared to handle it before the encounter began
These are all faults with the Wizards design if they are meant to be a knowledge class.
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I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.
Well there's what everyone else said: PF2 actively tried to fix this and succeeded at it. Fighters are really good. I've literally used "you can play a Fighter and not suck" as a sales pitch for folks to try PF2, and it's the reason one of my Abomination Vaults players is in my game.
But also the main difference is that "Fighters suck" was a fact for so long that people just lived with it. Some players literally had never played the game from a time before that was a truism. It was just the stats quo, and people adapt to the status quo. That doesn't mean it was a good thing, but people just got used to it.
"Wizards suck" has not been the status quo in the "D&D descended TTRPG" family, historically. People are not used to it, and players coming over from 5e or PF1 absolutely do not expect it.
The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."
This is true. Though I don't think they've made the most of the framework they have. Like, why does the School of Rooted Wisdom not have any of the Maaganbaya themed uncommon/rare spells on it? That's the perfect place for them, and "my years of school study gives me access to spells that Sorcerers need the GM to give them" is a thing the class could stand to lean on far more than it does.
They have done it sometimes (Gates has all kinds of interesting spells on it), but a lot of the schools are just "this is stuff you could have taken anyway if we didn't restrict you."
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The Wizard simply isn’t a knowledge class. It should be, it superficially looks like it is, but it isn’t.Wizards have zero mechanics which aid or enhance their ability to make RK checks besides just having Int as a key stat. They got their first ability which even mentioned RK in the remaster, and it only functions on a critical success.
This is one of my personal pet peeves with the Wizard. By all rights, the class should be known for being the most studious in the game -- their entire power comes from study, after all -- but in practice they have literally just one feat in their entire list that ties into Recalling Knowledge, and that's Knowledge is Power. Meanwhile, the caster apparently known for being super-studious is the Bard, who gets feats like Bardic Lore, Loremaster's Etude, Assured Knowledge, Know-It-All, Enigma's Knowledge, and True Hypercognition to RK extremely well if they want. There's this side issue of Charisma classes like the Bard or Thaumaturge being given far better tools to Recall Knowledge than Intelligence classes, for whichever strange reason, but for whichever other strange reason the Wizard has no real feat support for RK despite their theme lending itself so well to it. It also makes it very difficult for the Wizard to consistently identify a creature's resistances and weaknesses, something they need to do more than most casters due to the arcane list working with so many saves and damage types, without dipping into an archetype like the Loremaster that grants a universal Lore skill.
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This is one of my personal pet peeves with the Wizard. By all rights, the class should be known for being the most studious in the game -- their entire power comes from study, after all -- but in practice they have literally just one feat in their entire list that ties into Recalling Knowledge, and that's Knowledge is Power. Meanwhile, the caster apparently known for being super-studious is the Bard, who gets feats like Bardic Lore, Loremaster's Etude, Assured Knowledge, Know-It-All, Enigma's Knowledge, and True Hypercognition to RK extremely well if they want. There's this side issue of Charisma classes like the Bard or Thaumaturge being given far better tools to Recall Knowledge than Intelligence classes, for whichever strange reason, but for whichever other strange reason the Wizard has no real feat support for RK despite their theme lending itself so well to it. It also makes it very difficult for the Wizard to consistently identify a creature's resistances and weaknesses, something they need to do more than most casters due to the arcane list working with so many saves and damage types, without dipping into an archetype like the Loremaster that grants a universal Lore skill.
The Wizard simply isn’t a knowledge class. It should be, it superficially looks like it is, but it isn’t.Wizards have zero mechanics which aid or enhance their ability to make RK checks besides just having Int as a key stat. They got their first ability which even mentioned RK in the remaster, and it only functions on a critical success.
Very true. Oracle can get this info without fail at the cost of a level 1 feat (depending on mystery) and a rank of Cursebound, which might be bad or might not matter at all. Wizard has to invest a LOT into it and will still have a significant failure chance.
And while Wizard could go archetype to pick up Whispers of Weakness, it's going to be a lot easier for a Sorcerer to do it.
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Like most people that complain about the Wizard you choose only half the story to support you argument. I’ve been playing Wizards since 1ed D&D and I have absolutely no problem with the remastered Wizard
Hold on, aren't you the originator of this thread? You know, the thread complaining about the remastered Wizard? Dunno about you, but I'm getting mixed messages here.
But also, speaking of choosing to tell only half the story: you bring up the Wizard's spell output, and indeed they can cast more spells in a day than anyone else, but what you appear to have conveniently decided to ignore is the limitations placed on this spell output. For starters, the Wizard being a prepared spellbook caster limits their flexibility in the day quite seriously, and unlike other prepared casters like the Cleric, Druid, or Witch, who have some decently reliable options to fall back on, the Wizard's focus spells are by default mediocre. This is one of the reasons why the School of Gates made such waves, because it's one of the few Wizard schools with a focus spell that's legitimately quite good. This is a weakness you can cover with the Spell Substitution thesis, but the fact that one of the most desirable arcane theses is valued precisely because it fixes the Wizard's lack of flexibility in the day should itself indicate how inflexible the Wizard is by default in-between daily preparations.
The other bit you appear to be omitting here is that this additional spell output is only worth the extra spells you can cast, and thanks to the limitations of the Wizard's curriculum, those spells are often not good at all. To wit: a Wizard of the School of Battle Magic can only prepare breathe fire, force barrage, or mystic armor into their 1st-rank curriculum slot: these are all spells that need to be heightened in order to stay relevant, so at high level you may as well not have that spell slot. They are not the only school with this problem, and the same can be said for other schools like Civil Wizardry and Magical Technologies: this is a significant downgrade from the premaster Wizard's flexibility in their fourth slot, and is a major reason why the class is referred to as a three-and-a-half slot caster despite their superior spell output on paper.
You could, of course, take the Spell Blending arcane thesis to recycle those useless spell slots into a more useful higher-rank slot, but again, that would be taking a thesis to paper over an existing weakness, and would be impossible to do if you're also trying to solve your class's rigid spell preparation with Spell Substitution. Thus, while the Wizard does have a lot of different features, a lot of them are quite deficient and unhealthily codependent, such that the class in my experience often feels like it's trying to make up for its own limitations rather than excel at what it's meant to do... and what the class is meant to do well is, in my opinion, not all that clear. There are obviously other classes that blast, debuff, and support a lot better, and if the point of the Wizard is that they're meant to be really versatile, that too is made moot by the Animist, a far more flexible caster class with better defenses to boot. As much as I do think there's value in focusing the conversation down to just the Wizard's arcane schools despite their interdependences with the rest of their kit, I don't think that's a conversation that is likely to happen successfully if we insist that everything else about the Wizard is fine.
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Like most people that complain about the Wizard you choose only half the story to support you argument. I’ve been playing Wizards since 1ed D&D and I have absolutely no problem with the remastered WizardHold on, aren't you the originator of this thread? You know, the thread complaining about the remastered Wizard? Dunno about you, but I'm getting mixed messages here.
They aren't complaining about the wizard's design, they are complaining that there aren't more schools.
I feel like a bunch of people saw "wizard complaint thread" and just assumed it was the same old grievances without reading the OP closely enough to realize otherwise.
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Wizards have more slots than any other caster except cleric it’s simple math 3 + 1 curriculum spell plus Drain Bonded item they also have what ever slot games their Arcane Thesis gives them. On top of this there are feats that add to the number of draining you can do in a day. I’m partial to staff mastery since once I can craft magical staff I get the base line charges equal to my highest slot and I choose a slot to give me more charges at 8th level I can expand 2 slots giving me 12 charges for my staff and at 16 level I can expand 3 slots giving me 32 charges. This is on top of drain bond, Bond Conservation, Superior Bond, Scroll Adept, and Reprepare Spell. Lots of slots to play with.
I mean, Oracle has base 4 per rank without restriction, then Gifted Power, then Divine Effusion. Do I want extra 1st rank slots, or extra 9th rank slots? Considering Divine Effusion has no restrictions at all and Gifted Power includes Mysterious Repertoire & Divine Access, its pretty likely you'll have something to use every day from the slots those are giving you. That's not true of low ranking slots from a lot of Wizard schools which at high level basically dead slots.
In terms of high rank slots, Wizard has to take Spell Blending to keep up with Oracle, and Oracle doesn't have the downside of having to prepare spells in advance.
Which with how PF2 plays, is a real downside. This isn't PF1 where you had so many slots that you could take a couple of niche spells that might not come up but might also totally swing a fight because they're silver bullets against a specific thing (and also low level combat spells could scale by caster level and stay relevant longer).
The ability to leave slots empty and fill them later isn't a Wizard specific change, but it hit all the prepared casters in PF2 vs PF1 and was another utility loss. Wizard can get equivalent functionality via Spell Substitution but that's a thing you used to be able to just do that now locks you out of other options.
As for skill yes the only get Arcane +2 + int modifier on a int based class so that 7 skills to start and an additional on at level 10 and 20. On top of that Knowledge is Power.
An Oracle with 0 INT gets 5 skills to start (Religion + Mystery + 3). Adding +4 INT to a Wizard and only getting training in 2 skills out of it is not really a point in favor of Wizard. Hell, my Oracle is actually invested in INT (for narrative reasons) and that means I have more skills than an equivalent level Wizard despite their INT being +1 higher (they'll eventually pull ahead again because Apex item and the level 20 boost, but at that point trained skills don't matter much).
... actually looking at it now, I think Wizard has literally the worst starting skill proficiency in the game. They're reliant on INT making up for being naturally bad at it for some reason, more so than Alchemist/Commander/Inventor/Witch, who all get a total 4+INT despite also being INT classes. (One of Commander's is a lore, but as that lore auto scales and is useful to the class it's fair to include it.)
Knowledge is Power requires a critical success and given that you're not a Thaumaturge and don't have the boosts to keep with every recall knowledge (especially the WIS based ones), that's gonna require a nat 20 a lot of the time. I'm not overwhelmed by that.
That not including the number of feats that pump spell damage and lower defenses for one of the Few class that get legendary spell casting
Every full caster gets legendary spellcasting at the same time, so I don't understand what you're talking about?
Like most people that complain about the Wizard you choose only half the story to support you argument. I’ve been playing Wizards since 1ed D&D and I have absolutely no problem with the remastered Wizard
I mean, you're doing the same thing to support your case, so...
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They aren't complaining about the wizard's design, they are complaining that there aren't more schools.
I feel like a bunch of people saw "wizard complaint thread" and just assumed it was the same old grievances without reading the OP closely enough to realize otherwise.
For sure, some of the grievances being brought up here aren't necessarily directly relevant to the OP, but this still remains a thread critical of the Wizard. Going in criticizing the Wizard's remaster and then trying to shut down everyone else who also has a critical opinion of the Wizard's remaster in other respects is not, in my opinion, a winning move. I also think you could yourself have read the OP a bit more closely, specifically:
We currently have 13 schools and at least half of them are either very campaign style oriented or are more of what you would expect a NPC to have.
I don't know about you, but that to me reads as a criticism of the Wizard's design if the issue here is that there are too many schools that are excessively niche.
So much attention has been given to other caster classes many of which have much more complex specializations while the Wizard who in many ways have both the least impactful but most interesting class mechanic.
Similarly, "the Wizard has received much less attention than other classes" I would say is criticism of Paizo's development work on the Wizard. This is, by the way, an issue I also called out by pointing out how few feats the class has compared to the other CRB caster classes. In my opinion, their OP touches upon how little positive attention the class has received since its remaster, which reflects itself not only in a lack of general-purpose schools, but also in a low number of class feats and broader design issues that have remained long-unaddressed. We could certainly focus a bit more on arcane schools specifically and not just rehash other "Wizard bad" threads, but if you were genuinely expecting this conversation to remain laser-focused on the core topic of discussion and not diverge from it in any way, I'd invite you to first point me to a general discussion thread where that's ever happened.
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My stance on this is the wizard is functional at RK even though not optimal.
They are functional at representing prepared casting at its best in P2E though it requires a game that allows investigation and downtime.
The failing to my mind is in two places.
The first is how tables run RK. Ive said it before but meta knowledge makes it useless and when players only play with character knowledge its allows RK to be meaningful. A wizard has enough skills to be legendary at 3 knowledge based skills, that covers a lot of ground in terms of RK checks, then they have a plethora of trained lores getting their key stat and the important factor is they are lores so when applicable they are going up against a lower than normal dc. GMs should in session 0 give some idea of what lores will matter in a campaign so there is no reason to end up with unless lores.
The next thing is the campaign tempo and design. As far as I have heard here(you can correct me if this is off) APs are design to favor spontaneous casting and make it difficult for prepared casting to matter. This would also be the case in any campaign that doesnt have investigative and research scenes, foreshadowing of events to come, downtime to prepare, and the ability to leave and come back if unprepared. Without these standard elements of traditional ttrpgs a wizard cannot meaningfully prepare to make a difference and a spontaneous caster will always be more advantageous.
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The main argument that had been given against the wizards more known spells has been that knowing more spells in P2E is superfluous (due to a small set of efficient spells in the game) and wasted (since 4 slots per rank is not enough slots to truly showcase the variety in a spefici prep period)
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This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.
If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.
Not really. Intelligence used to give a huge skill advantage in PF1.
Skills are easy to come by at a trained level in PF2. So the focus is on proficiency. Intelligence gives no advantage in proficiency.
At best you can do like some do spending skill feats on additional lore which auto-scales and uses intelligence to give a minor advantage on often unnecessary RK checks that cost an action that use intelligence.
You know how often I used RK in PF1? All the time, nearly every battle. It was a free action, intelligence based, and wizards were the undisputed kings of knowledge skills.
You know how often I use RK in PF2? Almost never. Religion and Nature for some RK skills are wisdom based. Proficiency matters big in this edition. Lore skills are narrow so additional lore might not cover everything. And the more importantly nothing is immune to almost anything anymore, even the immune creatures are obvious like a red dragon immune to fire or devils. So you don't even need to RK any more to figure out how to beat creatures. And it costs 1 action to maybe gain a minor unnecessary advantage while martials just hit it to determine what works against it and 99% of the time hitting it works.
Wizards have more slots than any other caster except cleric it’s simple math 3 + 1 curriculum spell plus Drain Bonded item they also have what ever slot games their Arcane Thesis gives them. On top of this there...I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.Well there's what everyone else said: PF2 actively tried to fix this and succeeded at it. Fighters are really good. I've literally used "you can play a Fighter and not suck" as a sales pitch for folks to try PF2, and it's the reason one of my Abomination Vaults players is in my game.
But also the main difference is that "Fighters suck" was a fact for so long that people just lived with it. Some players literally had never played the game from a time before that was a truism. It was just the stats quo, and people adapt to the status quo. That doesn't mean it was a good thing, but people just got used to it.
"Wizards suck" has not been the status quo in the "D&D descended TTRPG" family, historically. People are not used to it, and players coming over from 5e or PF1 absolutely do not expect it.
The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."This is true. Though I don't think they've made the most of the framework they have. Like, why does the School of Rooted Wisdom not have any of the Maaganbaya themed uncommon/rare spells on it? That's the perfect place for them, and "my years of school study gives me access to spells that Sorcerers need the GM to give them" is a thing the class could stand to lean on far more than it does.
They have done it sometimes (Gates has all kinds of interesting spells on it), but a lot of the schools are just "this is stuff you could have taken anyway if we didn't restrict you."
Did you really just post this? Ever single caster class gets Legendary casting except the magus and summoner.
You gotta be trolling us with this post.
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I think that school mechanic from remaster is perfect combination of crunch and lore... but amount of schools is too small. There are need to be school for EACH magic academy in Golarion, for each flavor. In each new product must be published new thematic school.
This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.
If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.Not really. Intelligence used to give a huge skill advantage in PF1.
Skills are easy to come by at a trained level in PF2. So the focus is on proficiency. Intelligence gives no advantage in proficiency.
At best you can do like some do spending skill feats on additional lore which auto-scales and uses intelligence to give a minor advantage on often unnecessary RK checks that cost an action that use intelligence.
You know how often I used RK in PF1? All the time, nearly every battle. It was a free action, intelligence based, and wizards were the undisputed kings of knowledge skills.
You know how often I use RK in PF2? Almost never. Religion and Nature for some RK skills are wisdom based. Proficiency matters big in this edition. Lore skills are narrow so additional lore might not cover everything. And the more importantly nothing is immune to almost anything anymore, even the immune creatures are obvious like a red dragon immune to fire or devils. So you don't even need to RK any more to figure out how to beat creatures. And it costs 1 action to maybe gain a minor unnecessary advantage while martials just hit it to determine what works against it and 99% of the time hitting it works.
The games expectation as far as I can tell is that if you do not RK you should be hitting higher saves 2/3s of the time on spells you cast.
If sorcerers are hitting a higher save 2/3s of the time because they guessing which spell will hit low save instead of knowing which spell will hit lowest save then it would explain why sorcererous potency is on sorcerer and after the remaster locked away from other classes by making it a class feature.There is a problem for experienced players to meet the expectation. you know too much, you can just figure out saves without using RK even if you don't actually know which is weakest save.
But its is a baseline expectation of the game that without RK a spellcaster will have increased odds of hitting a higher save.
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This argument comes down to the value of RK. I think the reason sorcerers have sorcererous potency is because they are bad at RK checks. The game expects wizards to more consistently be hitting the weakest save and sorcerers to be guessing most of the time.
If this is not the result playing out in game its not the wizards design at fault.Not really. Intelligence used to give a huge skill advantage in PF1.
Skills are easy to come by at a trained level in PF2. So the focus is on proficiency. Intelligence gives no advantage in proficiency.
At best you can do like some do spending skill feats on additional lore which auto-scales and uses intelligence to give a minor advantage on often unnecessary RK checks that cost an action that use intelligence.
You know how often I used RK in PF1? All the time, nearly every battle. It was a free action, intelligence based, and wizards were the undisputed kings of knowledge skills.
You know how often I use RK in PF2? Almost never. Religion and Nature for some RK skills are wisdom based. Proficiency matters big in this edition. Lore skills are narrow so additional lore might not cover everything. And the more importantly nothing is immune to almost anything anymore, even the immune creatures are obvious like a red dragon immune to fire or devils. So you don't even need to RK any more to figure out how to beat creatures. And it costs 1 action to maybe gain a minor unnecessary advantage while martials just hit it to determine what works against it and 99% of the time hitting it works.
The games expectation as far as I can tell is that if you do not RK you should be hitting higher saves 2/3s of the time on spells you cast.
If sorcerers are hitting a higher save 2/3s of the time because they guessing which spell will hit low save instead of knowing which spell will hit lowest save then it would explain why sorcererous potency is on sorcerer and after the remaster locked away from other classes...
That's not how it works any more. I don't know why some are having a hard time adapting to the changes.
Spell power is no longer determined by just the save. In fact, save is not the even best determinant of spell power:
1. Spell effect as determined by the four saves is the most important way to look at a spell. What happens at each save level. A lower save may not be best if on a success there is no effect against a spell that even if you succeed you take half-damage or some other effect.
2. Power of the spell itself including tags, amount of damage, riders, incap, and such.
3. Number of targets. What is best for multiple targets or single targets.
4. Commonality of high save. In my experience, Fort is usually the highest save on most creatures. Will and Reflex are relatively equal. You're almost always good using a reflex save spell. Not only because it is often the weakest or at least equivalent save, but the spells do half damage on a success which can still be quite substantial for a lot of spells.
5. Weaknesses, resistance, immunities. These are not as important since they add moderate damage that can't be doubled or halved. So as long as you land some damage, you'll activate a weakness. But the weakness is only worth adding if the base spell does enough damage to justify its use over another spell.
Martials are much better at activating weakness damage since they do it every hit.
6. How does spell interact with the group? Even if you RK and determine a weak save, does it matter if you want to use synesthesia or vision of death to give a rider so all your party members will get a bonus to hit?
Synesthesia is still likely to last for one round. It may not take more than one round to do the job.
This idea of attacking weakest save isn't as relevant as with PF1/3E where success or failure was the only consideration.
That's why I said I used RK in nearly every fight in PF1. Lots of creatures had immunity, strong resistances, spell resistance, and the like. You needed to know how to bypass them. Weakest save mattered as there was success or failure. That's it.
In PF2 that is not the case. Success or failure is one of many factors and not the most important one.
Even if you learn a creature has a weak reflex save and strong fort save, it may still be more effective to chain cast slow to defeat it rather than try a reflex or will save against. It depends on the effectiveness of the spell available.
All I know for certain is I rarely use RK. I rarely have a problem not doing so. Most spells work on most things. Very few things are immune to anything. The most common immunities I've run into are fire and mental. If they're immune to mental, most of your mental spells are useless even if that is the weakest save.
So it is often best to rely on Reflex saves or spells lacking the mental tag or doing mental damage unless you know for certain they will do something make them worth using.
PF2 is a very different game than PF1/3E where RK and missing the save was very important and very effective meaning if the save was failed, you pretty much won the encounter. There aren't spells like that any longer.
Deriven Firelion I agree with all the factors you brought up being important to the analysis.
Synthesia might not be the best spell to use for comparing a Wizard to a spontaneous caster because its not available to wizards.
But I know you like slow.
and in many instances youre argument will work for this spell too.
You get slow 1 for 1 round and that is all you need.
But you could do better with a different spell if fort is the highest save.
In your groups I would probably use command instead of slow against a creature with high fort and low will. Tell it to drop and watch your teams martials reactive strike it. and it will have around the same odds of landing a failure as slow would have for success, will also deny at least 1 action but maybe two if the creature gets up and increase damage through party synergy.
Like a troll or troll warleader for example.
Why i make this argument? Mainly to just point out other spells besides the mainstay high quality spells have moments they can be a better option only because of high and low save differences.
Deriven Firelion I agree with all the factors you brought up being important to the analysis.
Synthesia might not be the best spell to use for comparing a Wizard to a spontaneous caster because its not available to wizards.
But I know you like slow.
and in many instances youre argument will work for this spell too.
You get slow 1 for 1 round and that is all you need.But you could do better with a different spell if fort is the highest save.
In your groups I would probably use command instead of slow against a creature with high fort and low will. Tell it to drop and watch your teams martials reactive strike it. and it will have around the same odds of landing a failure as slow would have for success, will also deny at least 1 action but maybe two if the creature gets up and increase damage through party synergy.
Like a troll or troll warleader for example.Why i make this argument? Mainly to just point out other spells besides the mainstay high quality spells have moments they can be a better option only because of high and low save differences.
Sure, they have moments. I find those moments occur more with utility spells to solve odd problems. That's where the wizard can shine, but really any prepared caster with a spell list with some utility. Or focus utility spells like the druid wild shape.
For combat, most of the time a good chain lightning to open the fight softens a lot of targets in multi-target fight.
Some debuff to lower AC, slow, and some magic missiles or vision of death is nice for a single target creature.
Even the change to golems makes reflex save spells that do high damage often more effective against golems. Though it is nice slow works against golems now. Most mental and fort spells useless against golems if doing negative damage or applying a rider.
PF2 is a very different game that past editions. Very fast and furious with debuffs and damage most useful as ending fights as a solo class doesn't do much anymore.
I remember in PF1/3E I would win alone as a wizard. This wasn't very fun to the other PCs, but it was fun for me to be that powerful.
PF2 is very much built for the group to win and not individual casters. A crit save on a slow is the most common "I win" button that ruins encounters.
I will say the arcane list Power Word Kill for an easy 1 action 50 points of damage is pretty nice for a killing blow at high level. I've used that more than a few times and it works real well as long as not immune to death effects.
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I'm not sure why "the Wizard is a weaker choice for a magic focused character" is an intolerable situation when "the Fighter is a weaker choice for a sword focused character" has been a fact of life a lot of times in the history of this family of games.
The Remaster was less "let's fix all the classes" and more "let's make the best of a bad situation."
How good or bad is or was a class in another game or version of the game should have no bearance here. This comment is as relevant to any pf2e discussion as, "Warrior classes have been historically more powerful and optimal in most video-game franchises, while Wizards have been weak in most of them", and it shouldn't be a greenlight to make either of these two archetypical characters weaker or stronger in pf2e.
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There are also other problems with remaster wizards but if you want to narrow it down to schools I have to say they're the most incoherent thing that's been printed as a subclass feature in a PF2e book
I agree with this. Clearly, it's possible to have satisfying schools, or at least schools that are more impactful than others as with Gates, but even in the expansion that featured that school, the School of Kalistrade is a lot less strong, if still flavorful. There is no unified standard of balance, and I also think the curriculum as currently implemented is a headache for both the player as implemented: the fact that many schools include uncommon spells in their curriculum means the GM has to either give the Wizard uncommon options that aren't necessarily a good fit for their adventure, or restrict their curriculum down to an even smaller number of options.
We can talk about how Paizo invites GMs to add spells to a school's curriculum, but in my opinion that still fundamentally goes against one of the basic principles of PF2e, which is that its content is meant to work right out of the box and not require the GM to work overtime to fill in any gaps left in the rules. Your mileage may vary on this, but from my experience the curriculum on most schools is small enough to feel like a gap, especially compared to the Wizard's premaster options for their fourth slot. Flavorful as schools are, the curriculum mechanic I think is flawed design that gets in the way of letting Wizards prepare appropriate spells in their fourth slot. A broader description of which spells qualify, such as in the form of edicts, could have likely worked better.
As for some of the schools OP mentions, the Elementalist class archetype is meant to have some of those covered. I wouldn't recommend it, as it's a downgrade to an already weak class, but you do technically get to play a fire Wizard with it. I'd find it even better, though, if there was a school for each element, and each school offered elemental spells from outside the arcane list as appropriate.
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The Wizard schools fundamentally don't even have a unified thesis of operation. They don't have the same number of spells per rank. They don't have the same breadth of concept. There are common schools with uncommon spells on them and nobody can tell me what that's supposed to mean for spell access.
That's actually a good point. Based on how things like focus spells work, I'd assume you're intended to get them because a common thing can grant access to an uncommon thing... though focus spells being uncommon was always a weird choice since the access feats are mostly common.
But that raises a problem if a GM doesn't want say Teleport in their game, because do they just remove that from School of the Boundary (which is common), or do they remove the whole school?
And why is the School of Thassilonian Rune Magic common despite a pile of uncommon spells, while the School of Rooted Wisdom is uncommon despite having only common spells (and far fewer of them)? The only answer I can come up with there is "because one is from the Mwangi Expanse", but now we're mixing the meaning of rarity in different ways in the same class (the spells are largely uncommon because how they can impact the narrative, not because they're regional).
I rag a lot on remastered Oracle but at least all the curses are unified (which makes some of them really good and others really bad, but w.e., at least you can tell what they're getting at) Wizards can't even figure out what portion of their power budget is from schools. Admittedly, they can't figure out which portion are from thesis either; the thesis remains as unbalanced and wildly differing in purpose as premaster.
To be fair, remaster Oracle deserves it. :P
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Oh, boy. Its the weekly "wizard sucks" thread!
(Not like I disagree with that statement btw).
But more on topic; I feel the whole idea of "the advantage of wizards (and prepared casters as a whole) is that they can adapt themselves" in earlier editions led to the idea of wizards (and just wizards, not other prepared casters) being a "knowledge class" when that concept never has been supported mechanically by the class itself other than the class being Int-based (which used to be a stronger stat in earlier editions as well).
It really wasn't that the wizard was more knowledgeable and that said knowledge made them the perfect class to adapt to dangers, it was that the class was so broken that the player only had to pick the "best in slot" spells that existed in earlier editions and bulldoze the game without much thought. The one that had the actual knowledge was the player which knew which were the best spells to prepare that day, the character or class themselves really didn't have any mechanics to represent that concept since they couldn't even re-prepare spells again on the fly like some wizards can in PF2e.
There's "best in slot" spells in PF2e as well, but they are arguably a lot closer to the "bad spells" in terms of power so features like spell substitution shouldn't be a neat optional feature but something that the wizard should always have if they really wanted to represent that "knowledge" and "adaptability the class supposedly has.
I really hoped they leaned towards that "I adapt in the spot" playstyle for wizards, with feats and subclasses to support the knowledgeable aspect as well.
I proposed a RK boost in the homebrew section as a way to bridge the low level caster weakness issue and do it in a way that rewards RK. So wizards would benefit from their int key stat a bit more with the change.
It really wasn't that the wizard was more knowledgeable and that said knowledge made them the perfect class to adapt to dangers, it was that the class was so broken that the player only had to pick the "best in slot" spells that existed in earlier editions and bulldoze the game without much thought. The one that had the actual knowledge was the player which knew which were the best spells to prepare that day, the character or class themselves really didn't have any mechanics to represent that concept since they couldn't even re-prepare spells again on the fly like some wizards can in PF2e.
I agree with this: historically, the Wizard was never given much mechanical tie-in to knowledge so much as spells, and that has remained the same on the class so far. I think back when the Wizard was monstrously overpowered, that might've been fine because the class didn't need yet another thing to be top-tier at, and it was probably still not a huge issue when PF2e's Wizard was considered in a decent spot. Now that the Wizard really isn't the most powerful caster around by any stretch, though, players are looking for things other than spellcasting to help flesh the class out, and there really isn't much there in the mechanics. This makes the gap between the Wizard's studious theme and their near-total lack of RK feats all the more glaring, in my opinion. Even the current school of letters, Ars Grammatica, has no focus spells to assist with RK checks, so if nothing else there's at minimum room for a new arcane school that has a RK school spell.
What would you guys think if PF3e went with a system similar to that of Team+'s essence casting? Do you think it would make it better or worse for casters?
PF3, before any wizard tweaks, needs to have a major balance pass to ensure that spells of each level are roughly on par with each other. The imbalance between schools shouldn't be there to be a factor, and wizards become more attractive the harder the decision between spells is.
What would you guys think if PF3e went with a system similar to that of Team+'s essence casting? Do you think it would make it better or worse for casters?
I think PF3e could afford to go with a multiplicity of magic systems, not just one. Essence casting is great, but in my opinion is an extremely specific way to cast spells that I think fits certain classes thematically and not others. The same could be said, in my opinion, for casting spells at-will like a Kineticist, or Vancian spellcasting, which I think still ought to exist as an option. The system doesn't need to create each of these from scratch, necessarily, so long as there's a common foundation for all of them to develop on, e.g. feats or the like.
With respect to the Wizard in particular, I don't think essence casting is necessarily the best fit, and I do actually think some mode of spell preparation would be more appropriate for the class. This doesn't have to automatically mean the Wizard should be restricted to daily spell slots in an environment where others can cast spells at-will, but it does mean that the Wizard's spellcasting in my opinion should aim to make them really versatile and able to find the right spell for the right occasion. Perhaps in a game where Vancian spell preparation is no longer one of the two defaults, that kind of versatility would also have more of a chance to shine.
I'm fine with multiple forms of casting. The only issue that would come up would be either expansion books would only offer very *very* small additions to each of those systems bc there are so many, or you'd get a kineticist situation where the mechanic is one and done, rarely to be touched on again, while the favored system (spell slots) gets more and more content bc it applies to a wider range of characters.
Whatever system they choose, I hope most classes saddle up to the same one so more classes can be expanded upon with future content. As many bugbears as I have with spell slots, their use along with the 4 traditions of magic mean that a lot of boats get lifted when the new spell content tide rises.
I'm fine with multiple forms of casting. The only issue that would come up would be either expansion books would only offer very *very* small additions to each of those systems bc there are so many, or you'd get a kineticist situation where the mechanic is one and done, rarely to be touched on again, while the favored system (spell slots) gets more and more content bc it applies to a wider range of characters.
Whatever system they choose, I hope most classes saddle up to the same one so more classes can be expanded upon with future content. As many bugbears as I have with spell slots, their use along with the 4 traditions of magic mean that a lot of boats get lifted when the new spell content tide rises.
The counterpoint I'd make to this is that if spellcasting systems are treated more like bespoke class features, that would allow spellcasters to feel much more different from one another, and thus answer the criticism of casters of the same tradition sometimes feeling like they play largely the same with a smaller bespoke mechanic on top. Personally, although I like traditions very much, I do also think we get similar benefits with certain feats: when a class releases with new feats, some of those can often apply just as well to other classes, and capitalizing on that more could allow older classes to receive new content even without dedicated expansions (and not just spellcasters, either!).
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I really don't like having multiple, drastically different magic systems. It starts becoming too many things to understand as a GM for me. That's why I banned Psionics in every edition of D&D I ran where they added it. It was a striaghtforward case of "I do not have the spoons to understand a second magic system when the first one is already so complicated."
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I really don't like having multiple, drastically different magic systems. It starts becoming too many things to understand as a GM for me. That's why I banned Psionics in every edition of D&D I ran where they added it. It was a striaghtforward case of "I do not have the spoons to understand a second magic system when the first one is already so complicated."
I would like to second this. As nice as it sounds on paper, having to understand every seperate magic system to play each different caster would be a complete nightmare for the GM and it likely would result in one or two classes getting the vast majority of content - I'd probably bet on Sorcerer being drastically overrepresented in this theoretical because of their customisation and popularity.
I do think that if I were to design a magic system for a PF3e, I'd expand the idea of focus spells so that casters would still have a limited amount of spells in combat, but could recharge them outside of it to ensure they never feel "worse" than martial.
There are drawbacks to this I'm nearly certain, but I'm also sure such a thing would feel better for caster players.
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I still run legacy wizard in a home game and never remade my legacy wizard to remaster in PFS. I don't care if the new schools are fun to read they aren't fun to play. Any player could have written about their school in a backstory. Paizo didn't actually add anything but ideas.
Wizards needed feats, not schools. Some new thesis ideas would be interesting, but at this point I just want all the thesises (thesi?) as part of the wizard chassis. I want them to have more skills with extra improvements (less than rogue/investigator, bet more than everyone else), I want a lot of things I am not going to get. What I never wanted was a restrictive like of school spells with a theme.
At this point I just want the magical schools back with the freedom to take anything from a big list. At least I can still have that in my home games, and the next time a level 7-10 or 9-12 PFS scenario is being run.
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I think the amount of new content published for Kineticist says something about whether it's a good strategy to write classes that need you to explicitly assign new content to them.
It's a bit better for class feats; there's been a reasonable amount of feats that just for a "champion" or "fighter" trait slapped onto them so one feat can be assigned easily to three classes.
As long as we don't invent a fifth tradition, it's pretty reliable that caster classes get new juice from new spells because some of those spells will be for their tradition. (A fifth-tradition class would probably slowly fall behind as other books ignore it.)
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All that to say, curriculums really need to be published with a good starting set of spells in order to get off the ground, because they probably don't get a lot of extras later on.
I think the curriculum class feature had a lot of potential. You could write a bunch of generic, fairly setting-independent curriculums and then also make some really specific ones for specific guilds in your setting. All you had to do was make sure you put a good selection of spells in it...
What makes for a good selection of spells?
* They need to be broadly useful during an adventuring day. If you aren't regularly using your curriculum bonus slots because all the spells are terribly niche, then they're dud bonus slots.
* You need spells that age well in low-rank slots. A damaging spell doesn't age well in a low-rank slot because they need to be heightened to do enough damage to justify the action economy. Nor does a counteract spell from a low-rank slot. So you need some of those spells that stay relevant, like Sure Strike or Laughing Fit.
* You need the curriculum to be special. Other wizards from different schools, and even other spellcasters, should be curious about the secrets of your school. So "uncommon because it's exotic" spells (not "uncommon because it pulls the rug out from under your plot", please). Or maybe spells that aren't normally on the arcane list. I mean, sorcerers get out-of-tradition blood magic, clerics get odd spells from their deity, oracles have a way to dip into other lists, and so forth. It's an easy way to make the other wizards envious of your school's curriculum.
I feel like this has largely not happened. Some vaguely thematic spells got shoved into a curriculum with little attention paid to usefulness or excitement value.
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I would like to second this. As nice as it sounds on paper, having to understand every seperate magic system to play each different caster would be a complete nightmare for the GM and it likely would result in one or two classes getting the vast majority of content - I'd probably bet on Sorcerer being drastically overrepresented in this theoretical because of their customisation and popularity.
Although I could understand the apprehension if the systems proposed were massively complicated, mutually incompatible, and siloed away from each other's content, I feel this fear is also overblown when it's raised at the mere proposal of different ways of casting spells in absence of details. Martial classes in PF2e have no trouble featuring bespoke mechanics that make them play differently from one another, and they tend to be a lot simpler to understand than casters, so I fail to see why something similar can't be done with spellcasting. For instance:
I do think that if I were to design a magic system for a PF3e, I'd expand the idea of focus spells so that casters would still have a limited amount of spells in combat, but could recharge them outside of it to ensure they never feel "worse" than martial.
This is a magic system. If a separate class could cast a smaller number of those spells at-will, that too would be a different magic system, and if another class could cast a larger number of spells with some additional restriction, once again that would be another magic system. Each of those classes would use spells and draw from a common core, but would also use those spells in a manner that would play drastically differently from one another. So long as the baseline is well-chosen enough that it can be easily built upon, I don't think it would take all that much work for different classes to feel meaningfully different one another. It would also make it easier to include future classes without having to create as much bespoke content, so if a Kineticist could draw from existing magic and simply have that work into an internal feature of channeling the elements, they'd be easier to integrate and most of their impulses would be easier for primal casters to use as well.