Greetings to all the Pathfinders here.
As stated in the title, I am looking for advice concerning spell casters. This is not supposed to be another "casters are/feel weak" thread. I have read enough opinions in that regard and I have come to my own conclusions concerning the state of balance between all the classes. My general conclusion still is, that casters are not really fun to play in PF2. But I really like playing casters as much as anything else. So I have been racking my brain trying to find some kind of caster that seems fun to play and I still have found nothing.
My group has switched to PF2 about 2 years ago. So far I have played the pre-rework Bombing Alchemist, the Rogue and currently I am playing a Dragon Instinct Barbarian.
Alchemist was a horrible experience. My first attacks hit maybe a third of times. At level 5 or 6 I got used to barely hitting and just expect the splash damage.
The Rogue was fun. Class fantasy fits and sneak attack feels satisfying.
The Barbarian is just as fun. Every hit deals massive damage. Lots of HP and I get a Dragon Breath basically every fight.
But everytime I look for a caster to play, I find only problem points. The success rates of spells, the limited single target damage, the focus on having to buff/debuff to be effective. None of that looks like fun. Especially after seeing another player trying to play a damage focused sorcerer for a year and seeing his spells do a pittance of damage basically 3 out of 4 times.
The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.
As far as I understand, these are exactly the conditions where casters feel weak. Spell success rates will be ~50% at best. Area spells are less impactful because of few possible targets. So maybe it's just that.
The thing is, this will not change. Our current party (Barbarian, Fighter, Chamption, Kinetist, Heal-focused Cleric) manages these kind of adventuring days quite well, as long as the cleric still has a few heal spells.
So I hope maybe the wiser Pathfinders here can point out some practical advice to play spell casters in these kind of adventuring days, that I am missing.
(Something else than casting Slow or Synesthesia please...)
(And maybe something that works in the earlier levels. Playing a class for a year until it becomes fun, is not what I am looking for.)
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Well, as you said, the real problem here is that your GM designs encounters in a way that it makes casters not shine, so you really can't do much about it.
But besides the obvious "play a heal bot" or "play a buff bot" that would solve those issues to an extent, I would probably recommend you to look at something like Team+'s Magic+ supplement, specifically the essence casting rules, and see if your GM allows you to use them.
Essence casting has a ton of problems, and it arguably makes you weaker as well since your highest rank spells aren't as available, but I tried it a few weeks ago and now I actually want to play a caster again, while before I kinda given up on playing them again since I didn't find them fun either.
Out of curiosity, which Sorcerer did you play, OP? If having enemies succeed against your spells often is a downer, then an Imperial Sorcerer could help with their ancestral memories focus spell. If you're feeling like your spells aren't dealing enough damage even when enemies do fail their saves, then an elemental Sorcerer might be able to help in that respect. Perhaps these are options you've already tried out, though, in which case that may not be enough to help.
I quoted this part in particular because I'm curious how you built your characters to end up feeling this way. At level 5 and 6, your Alchemist's attack bonus should have been exactly the same as your Rogues was if you were maxing out Dexterity on both characters - or even +1 higher on the Alchemist if you were using Quicksilver Mutagens.
How is that supposed to work? Alchemist get their weapon expertise at level 7. The Quicksilver Mutagen helps, but the reduced max hp got me into trouble just as often. Also melee rogue had an easy time getting enemies off guard for -2 AC.
Out of curiosity, which Sorcerer did you play, OP?
I did not play the Sorcerer. It was another player in our group. Dragon Sorcerer with a focus on doing fire damage. Worked as bad as you might imagine. But I have to admit that our GM really had a thing for rolling high on saves. We are playing online on Foundry btw. and we can see the final result of the GM rolls in combat. So no funny business there. Just a lot of bad dice rolls.
But that seems to be a general feature of PF2. If the party rolls below average and the GM rolls well in a severe fight, it feels really like you fail almost everything...
Out of curiosity, which Sorcerer did you play, OP?
I don't think he played the Sorcerer, but someone else:
Especially after seeing another player trying to play a damage focused sorcerer for a year and seeing his spells do a pittance of damage basically 3 out of 4 times.
Yeah, (non-support) casters are really hard, and they have different challenges at different level brackets. At early levels, you barely have any spells or spell-slots to blast with, so you'll end up really weak. It's much different at higher levels, when you have plenty of spells available, as well as plenty of spell-slots.
Since optimizing depends on the level you're playing, ask your GM if he is fine with you retraining some things for free at, say, levels 6 and 10. If so, then it's possible for you to have builds optimized for the level brackets 1-5, 6-10, and 11+.
Depending on your variant rules (Free Archetype, …?) there are different builds I could recommend.
For example, at low levels you want to get some "front-loaded" stuff into your build to pad out the lack of spell-slots, e.g. taking the Psychic archetype dedication for another focus point, as well as trying to get some sustained spells like Floating Flame: you'll get a ton of damage/effect out of 1 spell-slot.
Here's a build idea for those low levels: https://pathbuilder2e.com/launch.html?build=1333038
Arcane Dragon Wellspring Sorcerer, Yaoguai, Aiuvarin, Ancient Elf → Psychic
- Yaoguai gives you a +1 to a useful stat, e.g. Dexterity, at the expense of Intelligence (dump stat).
- Aiuvarin gives you access to Ancient Elf, netting you a multiclass dedication.
- The Psychic dedication gives you a 2nd focus point right at level 1, and you can choose which cantrip to get – the Draconic bloodline has a very good starting focus spell, so the specific Conscious Mind + cantrip choice matters little.
- Wellspring Mage makes you lose a spell-slot of each rank, but you have a good chance of getting one back at the beginning of combat – an excellent choice for using a hero point, as casters are often stuck with remaining hero points from rolling so few attack rolls & skill checks.
- The early focus on Stealth should give you a headstart in initiative – if you use Gradual Ability Boost, you'll have Rogue-like DEX at level 2 to supplement that!
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You are correct.
The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level.
That is the root of the problem.
The GM is making the same mistake that the AP writers made for the first couple of books. Still being in the PF1 mentality that 'hard' fights are what players want.
Players want 'engaging' fights. Yes there should be challenge. But PF2 is a lot better at giving challenge without stats difficulty being the only way of accomplishing that.
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But given that this isn't a problem that you as a player can fix...
I would recommend a gish. A character that has a lot of magical flavor to things, but is a martial at heart so that they can feel effective against higher level enemies.
My top three options are:
Kineticist. You have resource-free magical attacks, so the only thing that is wasted on a miss is time. Meaning you can swing for the fences against level+1 enemies just like the martial classes do.
Thaumaturge. Magical flavor on a martial core. You are primarily using weapons and have full martial proficiency with them. You will often be 1 point of attack rating lower than other martials because of having a non-synergy between your class core attribute and your weapon attack attribute. But that isn't generally a deal-breaker.
Magus. A proper spellcasting gish. You have limited spell slots, so you have to use them wisely. Your attack bonuses with brute-casting spells is going to be even worse than with a full spellcasting class, so if you don't enjoy doing that against these level+1 enemies with a Wizard, definitely don't do it with a Magus. Spellstrike uses your martial weapon proficiency though, so that has better chances of landing than a full spellcaster does. Especially after getting buffs/debuffs applied to you or the enemy respectively.
I second magus. You should play it more as a martial though, it already has a mediocre spell DC and that’s not going to go very far vs above level enemies so honestly just dump int and don’t use save spells. Spam that spellstrike focus spell, be it IW or fire ray.
Save your slots for spellstrike spells and utility.
Briny bolt, blood feast, and polar ray are your best for level spellstrike spells with good damage and for briny bolt a great control effect.
For utility haste is great if you’re a melee magus and can prebuff, and wall of stone is the GOAT for dividing up enemies, burning actions, and enabling retreats in a dungeon. Can’t go wrong with dimension door either.
Later on you’ll want to pick between the following archetypes, fitting in whichever features you think are most important in addition to your spellstrike focus spell: Sixth pillar (maneuvering spell and touch focus), champion (heavy armor, reaction, can give fire ray at level 4), investigator (devise a stratagem), alchemist (auto scaling prebuffable attack bonus boosting mutagens of choice, likely warblood, fury, or quicksilver), beastmaster (if you want a mount that eventually gives a free action move, don’t take on starlit span or with maneuvering spell).
There are a few decent magus feats you might consider, but generally magus feats suck and you’ll get more out of archetypes. But here’s the shortlist: Familiar, enhanced familiar, Force Fang, Attack of Opportunity, standby spell, overwhelming spellstrike, supreme spellstrike, student of the staff (tax feat if twisting tree), lunging spellstrike
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Yeah if the primary concern is not being able to deal direct damage, and the DM is running hard+ encounters, your best options are magus, for the martial scaling on spellstrikes, or kineticst for just being able to spam the hell out of something without having to worry about burning through your resources for those 4 severe encounters.
I am running a Strength of Thousands campaign in which the PCs started as students at the Magaambya Academy, a school of arcane and primal magic. We have 3 primary spellcasters (2 bards and 1 wizard) in the 7-person party and most of the rest are secondary casters (magus, champion, kineticist, and eldritch-trickster rogue). So I have seen primary spellcasters in action effectively, though as a forever GM I have played only NPC spellcasters.
Primary spellcasters are not main damage dealers. Spells are ranged, so Paizo developers set their damage to match a generic ranged martial character. And they lack perks such as the Hunter's Edge of archer rangers for additional damage. They do have the advantage of spells that deal damage in an area of effect, such as Fireball, so can deal with a mob of minions. Thus, spellcasters can take the ranged attack role in a party. We call these builds "blaster" spellcasters.
Blaster spells that have a save rather than an attack roll almost always use a basic save plan: Critical success means no damage, success means half damage, failure means full damage, and critical failure means double damage. Seisuke described the GM as typically using foes of party level or higher, so this means that most blasters spells would face a successful save for half damage. That is still damage, but the player of the wizard Idris in my game routinely describes Idris as "nibbling away at hit points" rather than dealing serious damage.
This nibbling is handy at 1st level. While the martial characters will often miss against a higher-level opponent, a spellcaster with a save-based damage cantrip, such as Electric Arc, reliably deals half damage over and over again. The damage from cantrips scales upward as the caster levels up, but it does not increase as fast as enemy hit points do, so cantrips become reserved for easy encounters at high levels, saving the serious slotted spells for difficult encounters.
The magus Zandre in our party is a damage-dealer. As a starlit-span magus Zandre delivers her attack-roll Ignition cantrip with arrows, using her martial attack bonus. For playing a spellcaster that deals damage, I recommend playing a magus. She also prepares area-of-effect spells for groups of enemies. Kineticists serve well as blasters, too, but technically they are not spellcasters.
Further action-by-action accounts of my PCs can be found at River Into Darkness Revisited and Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Runesmith.
Summoner is also a possibility for a damage-dealing spellcaster, but they are more complicated to handle. A summoner has an eidolon to deal melee damage while the summoner themself throws spells, too. The two sources of damage in one character add up. Likewise, an Animal-Order druid has an animal companion to deal melee damage. But Pathfinder 2nd Edition does not let animal companions become powerful enough to help in combat past 10th level, so after 10th level the best use of a companion is as a mount.
The divine spell list has some good self-buffing spells, so a cleric or an oracle with battle mystery can self-buff and step up as a useful melee combatant.
Spells lend themselves to other roles, too: buffing, debuffing, battlefield control, healing, and utility. The wizard Idris researched buff spells that last 10 minutes or longer, casts them at beginning of combat, and then uses cantrips for the rest of combat. He also uses divination to spy on enemies for effective ambushes. This is not dramatic, but it is helpful. The bard Stargazer buffs with the Courageous Anthem composition and uses her spells for battlefield control to keep some enemies at a distance while the party takes down the nearby enemies. The bard Jinx buffs with the Triple Time composition cantrip and heals. Since the party intended to arrest their in-town opponents rather than kill them, she cast Stabilize on them.
The best description of battlefield control are the wizard guides by Treantmonk, such as Treantmonk’s Guide to Wizards, Being a god (5th edition). His introduction points out that his party thought his character was weak, despite his actions preventing their previous regular Total Party Kills. All of the non-blaster roles are support in which the martial characters deal the death blows, so the spellcaster does not claim the spotlight. However, by not providing low-level opponents Seisuke's GM is already denying the party the glory of mowing down a horde of minions like a scythe through wheat. The glory against higher-level opponents is the clever teamwork required to take down someone that tough and dangerous. Support is a key part of teamwork glory. This creates the engaging fights that Finoan mentions.
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I did not play the Sorcerer. It was another player in our group. Dragon Sorcerer with a focus on doing fire damage. Worked as bad as you might imagine. But I have to admit that our GM really had a thing for rolling high on saves. We are playing online on Foundry btw. and we can see the final result of the GM rolls in combat. So no funny business there. Just a lot of bad dice rolls.
Alright, in which case either an Imperial or Draconic Sorcerer ought to help significantly. This may be something your party might already be doing, but in encounters like these with smaller numbers of enemies with high defenses, it will be extremely useful to reduce their defenses via skill actions like Bon Mot, Demoralize, and Dirty Trick, which you as a Sorcerer could contribute with your Charisma. In cases like these, it's useful to soften up your opponents a little first before blasting them, which is where another supportive caster with synesthesia would come in really handy.
I will say, there is no cure for unfortunate rolls, but statistically speaking you're not actually cursed to roll low or have enemies roll high all the time. If you're an arcane caster in particular, your party should normally be working to identify the monsters' weakest saves so that you can target those, which can net you a significant advantage even compared to the party martials. There's of course stuff to do as a support, but that's not a role you have to be relegated to as a caster, as everyone can and should contribute utility to combat.
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OP said he wanted help with spellcasters, but half the people in here tell OP to play something else instead.
This is really bad behavior, the kind of obnoxious stuff you see so much on Reddit. No matter how well-meaning the intentions, please don't do that.
If OP asks about non-caster options, then feel free to recommend your Maguses, suggest your Kineticists, and advertise your Thaumaturges.
But as long as OP asks for things like this – "So I hope maybe the wiser Pathfinders here can point out some practical advice to play spell casters in these kind of adventuring days, that I am missing." – it's best to keep it to such advice on spellcasters.
My advice remains:
- Ask the GM for two free retrainings at level 6 and 10/11; not character-rebuilts, just retraining a few feat & spell choices.
- Optimize as much as you can without compromising your core character idea, e.g. pick a STR/INT flaw race (Sprite, Yaoguai, Gnome, …).
- Take the Aiuvarin heritage to get the Elf Atavism ancestry feat for Ancient Elf: a free multiclass dedication (Psychic or Oracle recommended) helps a lot, especially with the Psychic's additional focus point.
- Grab a good background – like Demon Hunted, Amnesiac, Discarded Duplicate, or Shielded Fortune – as they provide some additional defenses over ordinary backgrounds.
- Start level 1 with the Wellspring Mage archetype on a Sorcerer chassis (Flames Oracle is also possible, but more difficult to master). Assuming 5 encounters that day, this would change your number of 1st-rank spell-slots from 3 [normal Sorcerer] to 6 [assuming 1 wellspring surge], improving how you handle long days.
- Retrain out of Wellspring Magic at level 6, which is nothing unusual, unless you like it ofc. At that level you get a 2nd focus spell and focus point from your Sorcerer class (or Oracle class).
- At level 10, feel free to change from Psychic archetype to Oracle: You no longer need that additional focus point so desperately, but Oracle now offers better goodies like Foretell Harm.
- If your table allows rare feats (technically Wellspring Mage is rare too, but so is the Exemplar archetype which is allowed everywhere), and you're looking to fill your 3rd action: invest heavily into Intimidation, get the Reincarnated Ridiculer ancestry feat and the Golden League Xun's Menacing Prowess; now you have a spammable 1-action Fear AoE with an incredibly high success rate (your Intimidation modifier can easily be 5+ higher than your spell modifier).
- If you're fine with other things than blasting, then there are a few great spells out there that can severely debuff enemies without huge investments: Illusory Object, Laughing Fit, Mind Games, Blister Bomb.
- If you're playing a Draconic Sorcerer, make sure to edit your focus spells to work as outlined in this chart from Draconic Codex (tell your GM!). Great choices are those dragons with an unusual save for their tradition (e.g. Reflex saves on divine or occult), rarely resisted damage types (e.g. sonic on Despair/Wailing), or unusual saves for a damage type (e.g. Despair/Time: sonic/force vs Will).
Here's some suggestions for what you can do, given your situation:
Pick up stuff that helps tilt success rates in your favor. Sure Strike is the obvious one if you're using spell attacks. It's 1/fight now, effectively, but on a key spell that still matters (and it bypasses concealmeat/conver). Intimidation or Diplomacy (for Bon Mot) let you debuff enemies, and that really matters. Get your martial players to help out with this if they can, too, as they often have ways to get debuffs up that help you.
Archetype into Sorcerer if possible for Imperial's focus spell. The bonus to attack and penalties to save matter and it scales well. Spam the crap out of it. Intersteller Void on Oracle is also pretty good as Fatigued is a straight debuff to all defenses (that even gets applied on a critical success), but if you're not an Oracle it is significantly more investment to get and requires sustaining (also comes with some damage though).
Actually I'd consider Oracle as a class to play. Some of the abilities really help blasters:
- Whisper of Weakness is guaranteed knowledge about weaknesses, what save to target, and a +2 if you do a spell attack that turn. This is VASTLY superior to standard Recall Knowledge and knowing what to target as a caster puts you well ahead of the game.
- Foretell Harm is just straight extra damage.
- Better defenses than Sorcerer despite being a 4 slot caster.
- Some of the mysteries have nice offense stuff. Flames for example has some nice offensive tricks, and the curse isn't too bad outside very low level. Tempest likewise comes with a bunch of offensive options and a managable curse. Cosmos' has Intersteller Void and its curse is basically irrelevant so you can spam your Cursebound abilities with impunity.
- Being Charisma based, picking up Sorcerer archetype is super easy, barely an inconvenience. Get Imperial, use Ancestral Memories, and land spells more often. -2 or -3 to saves really swing things and there's no roll: it just works.
The Divine List is a bit campaign dependent in that there's some adventurers where it isn't great*, but it's way better than it used to be and Oracle has multiple ways to get access to non-Divine spells to pad it out. If you can get into the mid level range the class really comes online and can deliver good results. But Tempest and Flames have access to spells that are broadly effective even at relatively low level.
* I found it a challenge in Kingmaker because Divine has a lot of good sanctified/holy stuff and Kingmaker doesn't really do much with that. When we switched to Spore War, suddenly I had stuff like Moonlight Ray at full power and it hits like an absolute truck. Landing 100 damage on a hit sure felt good at level 14, and that was against a significant single enemy encounter.
If your GM is open to house rules, ask if they'll house rule in runes applying to spell attacks. Spell attacks feel absolutely awful in the mid levels because they lag WAY behind weapon attacks (-4 a martial at level 13 and a shocking -6 vs Fighter/Gunslinger) and allowing potency runes to apply helps a ton in terms of evening that out. At level 19 it actually lets you pull ahead of the non-Legendary martials, but you mostly need it in the mid levels because at high level there's just relatively few spell attacks anyway.
Combat doesn't have to feature super powerful enemies to be significant or impactful. Add in minions. Toss in terrain hazards or traps. Use enemies with weaknesses the caster can exploit. There's lots of ways to do this besides "everything is PL+1 or bigger."
Making every combat just "few, strong enemies" favors the martials and the support/debuff casters as they're just more effective in that situation. Against a PL+3 creature, no blast spell really competes with Synesthesia and a couple of martials that can take advantage of it.
It's just a known issue with how the game works for blasters, and if your GM is actively going to make it as hard as possible on you, then there's only so much you can do.
Campaign level also matters. Casters feel really lousy at low level and ramp up. If you get into high level play, then the really good spells start coming online and proficiency eventually catches up. If we only ran 1-10 stuff I would get sick of playing casters real fast.
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If OP asks about non-caster options, then feel free to recommend your Maguses, suggest your Kineticists, and advertise your Thaumaturges.
Magus and Kineticist are casters, and if you want single-target blasting those are your two off-the-shelf choices.
Magus is a martial. It can cosplay as a caster but that doesn’t make it one, not any more than war wizard is a martial.
OP said he wanted help with spellcasters, but half the people in here tell OP to play something else instead.
This is really bad behavior, the kind of obnoxious stuff you see so much on Reddit. No matter how well-meaning the intentions, please don't do that.
If OP asks about non-caster options, then feel free to recommend your Maguses, suggest your Kineticists, and advertise your Thaumaturges.
Magus is a spellcaster. They are a wave caster, which means they lost their low-level spell slots as they gain new spell slots past 4th rank; therefore, I call them a secondary spellcaster rather than a primary spellcaster. Summoner is also a wave caster.
Kineticist and thaumaturge do not cast spells, but the kineticist's impulses are similar to spells and the thaumaturge has magic effects that care about similar weaknesses that spellcasters care about. They offer similar game experiences as spellcasters and that might be close enough for Seisuke.
But as long as OP asks for things like this – "So I hope maybe the wiser Pathfinders here can point out some practical advice to play spell casters in these kind of adventuring days, that I am missing." – it's best to keep it to such advice on spellcasters.
Seisuke is right about the weaknesses of spellcasters, especially given the GM's playstyle. Thus, I see four paths.
1. Optimize the spellcaster to be so strong that the weakness areas are merely lackluster rather than disappointing. Other people are giving advice about this, so my only reminder is that each class has many different ways to optimize it.
2. Play a secondary caster whose non-spell abilities make up for the spellcasting weaknesses, such as a martial/spellcaster hybrid Magus or a summoner aided by an eidolon. This would teach Seisuke enough about spellcasters to optimize a primary spellcaser later.
3. Create a primary spellcaster who serves other roles besides taking down foes personally, so that weakness in combat does not hurt as much.
4. Change the nature of the encounters either by persuading the GM to branch out or by adopting new combat tactics. For example, in my current campaign, the rogue with both Sorcerer multiclass archetype and Gelid Shard archetype used her roguish skill increases to also become an expert in tripping enemies. She figured on using that at low levels to make opponents off-guard when she had very few spells. But the -2 to AC was so good for the ranged attackers in the party that the rogue kept doing it for them, even at 9th level. Debuffing the enemy makes teammates, including spellcasters, more effective. this could combine with path 3 in that the spellcaster could do the debuffing themself.
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One thing that may work is to play a very martially focussed caster. A war priest, Druid or animist archetyping into something or other for more martial goodness.
You’ll be casting utility and buff spells but you’ll also be contributing direct damage as a pseudo martial and maybe some blast damage as well.
While you’ll only rarely be fully competitive with a pure martial when you do martial stuff you will also be helping a lot with your spells and likely some best in group skills.
It’s a role that I personally find very enjoyable. You have to pay attention to the situation in order to know what is the best thing to do in your wide selection of choices which I really like. You will NOT (or, at any rate, should not) fall into a rut, most ever combat will feel different.
You get the fun of kicking ass from time to time while knowing that you are a fully contributing member of your group, likely being the MVP who stops a TPK from time to time as you save things with a well placed Wall spell or a fly or whatever.
Lots of options if you go this route. I’m loving my shove based centaur animist/guardian, an eldritch archer war priest can be very powerful and druids completely rock.
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I get your gm not doing much of anything weaker than severe. I've long since found moderate and weaker fights to be a waste of time as they rarely require any thought or resource expenditure. Unfortunate that they don't lean into mass mooks more often, but that's just how it goes sometimes.
My advice changes based on the level range you expect to play in.
1-4? Just don't play a caster. Sad to say, but the early game caster experience in pf2 is the worst I've had in any system I've played that's newer than AD&D.
5+? Well, since you don't want to be a one turn debuff bot, and since AoE nuker isn't particularly valuable for your group, there's not much left for you. AoE buffs with bless or bard. A few good single target damage spells that others have mentioned above. Illusions which have good use both in and out of combat. Maybe pester your gm for access to the good uncommon utility spells.
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Magic is generally not about high single target damage, so it's always going to be a bit difficult even with blaster builds. Control is usually going to be a lot more satisfying, especially if you build for spell combos, like any sort of damaging terrain spell you can sustain + any spell that keeps them in the terrain.
That's undeniable that you're playing in unfavorable conditions. There isn't much around that unless the GM changes the encounter style.
However, things that makes casters strong are their versatility. Another thing that makes them powerful, but underrated at the same time, is battlefield control through spells that do not engage with enemy statistics.
Creating difficult terrain, blocking vision, creating walls, altering terrain (by creating high ground or holes, etc) and summoning creatures are ways you can engage with combat without relying on anything but your cleverness. Buffs are also an easy bread and butter.
You can save your DC-based or Spell Attacks for opportune moments with Sure Strike, enemies with strong debuffs applied (Off-Guard + Status penalties for AC, Bon Mot or Demoralize for other spells).
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I would highly encourage the OP to look into ThrabenU and Mathfinder's videos on this subject. They are very useful and some of the campaigns they play in are similar in nature to the ones the OP described, and they talk about how to deal with these issues.
They also counter a lot of the commonly repeated community advice you'll see here, like, "Casters aren't good at single target damage." (They compare quite well to ranged martials, actually. Melee martials have better sustained damage on paper* due to the increased risks they take)
I will add one thing, though- Your GM is doing the system a disservice by overlooking PL-2 and PL-3 enemies, especially in higher level play. Uses judiciously, large groups of enemies can be incredibly threatening.
*I say on paper because the advantages ranged martials and casters have don't show up in simple white room scenarios.
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I am focused these days on SuperBidi's Caster Summoner and I feel it might be an answer to what the OP looks for : casting Electric Arc and having your eidolon do a zero MAP ranged attack will be your standard damaging routine, spells + energy eidolon attacks should hit many weaknesses and Aid will make skill checks even easier. Not to mention using spells and scrolls for utility or special circumstances.
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Maybe just ask your GM to play the system as intended and to stop screwing over the casters.
Pathfinder 2e's math is well documented and understood; your GM's encounter setup is clearly the problem. If it doesn't change then at best all we're going to be able to do is give advice on mitigating the circumstances rather than a true solution to the actual problem.
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Firstly I'd like to thank everyone for their responses. I have seen some useful advice that could boost the general feeling of spell casters during an adventuring day. Especially things like working in the Psychic archetype or Wellspring Spellcasting.
I also watched some of ThrabenU and Mathfinder's videos on spell casters. But these actually just confirmed my observations. There seem to be a few fall back spells that work at least for a round, change the environment to create some disadvantage for the enemies and some feat combinations to play the system better. But it looks like the class balance is finely tuned to work with a specific encounter design. One where fighting several severe fights one after another against fewer, stronger enemies should not be the norm.
Spellcasters feeling weak or just not fun in these kind of combats, seems to be a mixture of statistical disadvantage and investment of effort. A martial swinging for 3 rounds and hitting nothing is bad luck, but nothing of importance is lost. A caster using his highest spell slots and seeing the enemy save 3 times feels real bad, because now your strongest resources barely did anything and you don’t get them back. The one thing to do in these situations are reliable buffs and heals or spells like Synesthesia or Slow that work at least for a round and be satisfied with that. Or maybe wall off half of the enemies to buy time.
So I very much understand half the advice being to not play a full spell caster in this context. I still find it to be quite a sad situation, but Paizo most probably won’t change any of that in the future. At best my GM might come to realize that his current encounter design will not work well once we play a party that is less optimized for brutal combat.
Also, I’m not really fond of the Magus or Summoner as casters. They have their own way of working spell casting into their mechanics and their class fantasy feels alright if you want something like that. But 4 serious spell slots a day does not make a real caster for me.
Anyways, thanks everyone for the insights and happy pathfinding!
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I also watched some of ThrabenU and Mathfinder's videos on spell casters. But these actually just confirmed my observations. There seem to be a few fall back spells that work at least for a round, change the environment to create some disadvantage for the enemies and some feat combinations to play the system better. But it looks like the class balance is finely tuned to work with a specific encounter design. One where fighting several severe fights one after another against fewer, stronger enemies should not be the norm.
On September 11, 2023, in Michael Sayre on Casters, Balance and Wizards, from Twitter, comment #114 Paizo design manager Michael Sayre explained:
Can I politely suggest putting that information in the revised rulebooks somewhere? It's about half the number of encounters per day recommended in 5e or PF1, and I think groups coming from those systems try to run the number of encounters per day they're used to and end up finding spellcasters aren't able to contribute properly.That's a broad generalization of the guidelines that are already in the rulebook.
Moderate-threat encounters are a serious challenge to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a moderate-threat encounter ready to continue on and face a harder challenge without resting.
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat. These encounters are most appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all-out, for the climactic encounter at the end of an entire campaign, or for a group of veteran players using advanced tactics and teamwork.
Generally that means that your party should be loaded with enough "ammunition" to successfully tackle 3 Moderate encounters. Low and Trivial encounters don't really require any resource expenditure.
There's a lot of possible permutations to the formula and no "one true way" to assemble encounters, which is why we avoid simplifying things to that degree in the rulebook. You can stretch or compress that number based on the type and severity of the encounters that you put in your adventure.
I have seen further explanations that that is why three spell slots per rank is standard for spellcasters. That is enough to cast one top-rank spell per tough encounter, because an adventuring day should have only three tough encounters.
My own players have mastered the art of resource management and can handle ten Moderate-Threat encounters a day. But a Severe-Threat encounter will consume a major part of their daily resources. They could reliably manage only two Severe-Threat encounters per day.
Spellcasters feeling weak or just not fun in these kind of combats, seems to be a mixture of statistical disadvantage and investment of effort. A martial swinging for 3 rounds and hitting nothing is bad luck, but nothing of importance is lost. A caster using his highest spell slots and seeing the enemy save 3 times feels real bad, because now your strongest resources barely did anything and you don’t get them back. The one thing to do in these situations are reliable buffs and heals or spells like Synesthesia or Slow that work at least for a round and be satisfied with that. Or maybe wall off half of the enemies to buy time.
Have you considered a 15-minute workday for your party? This is an old problem in Pathfinder 1st Edition and Dungeons & Dragons in which the party handles just a few encounters at nearly full strength, and then when their resources, especially top-rank spell slots, are depleted, they leave the dungeon and camp in a safe location for the rest of the day. Pathfinder 2nd Edition introduced more renewable resources--Treat Wounds to restore hit points, Refocus to recharge focus spells, and automatically heightening cantrips that never run out--to prevent the 15-minute workday, but it is a solution to the problem of every encounter being Severe. A 15-minute workday means that the spellcasters can cast all their top-rank spells in one or two encounters, retire for the night, and then do that again the next day.
The common Dungeon Master counter-reaction to a 15-minute workday is to attack the campsite. Back in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, parties used to "spike the door." They would go to a dungeon room with only one door and nail the door shut to prevent random encounters from entering the room. In the morning they would pull out the nails and resume exploring the dungeon.
By the way, "A martial swinging for 3 rounds and hitting nothing is bad luck, but nothing of importance is lost," is not just bad luck. It is also bad tactics. Three rounds of attacks with reasonable distribution of dice rolls is enough statistical data to demonstrate that the enemy's AC is too high. And that enemy is probably hitting back with plenty of critical hits. This is a time to run away.
Okay, Seisuke probably meant one of those combats where the unlucky player could not roll above a 10 on a d20 for each first Strike and not above a 15 for each second Strike. That has a chance of (10/20)^3*(15/20)^3 = 0.0527. That will happen one combat out of 20 for a particular martial character. It happens more often for a spellcaster who casts only one spell per round, (10/20)^3 = 0.125, one combat out of 8. But the tactics is that the spellcaster is supposed to need only one top-rank spell per ordinary combat, so why is the spellcaster burning themselves out by casting three top-rank spells in a single combat? At the very least, one of those spells should be the spellcaster's focus spell, which can be Refocused before the next combat. The spellcaster can reasonably say, "Hey, the dice gods are protecting the enemy from my spells, so I am saving my good spells for later and switching to cantrips." Or prepare Force Barrage in the lower-rank spell slots and avoid thosse dice rolls.
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Oh something I completely forgot to bring up is items. While their DC being fixed can be a pain, it's a good way to have an important spell always on hand. They are perhaps more useful for buffs, which you want to shy away from, but something that still does something on a failure will retain value for a while.
The wall spells can be quite good for this, as most creatures are still forced to respect the wall, even if it's not actually going to do that much damage to them.
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The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.
If GM is repeatedly applying Severe Encounters...
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.
...then what you describe is the system working as intended.
Perhaps your best argumentation is asking them: Q) Does avoiding "meaningless combat" mean every fight must be a "final boss"?
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The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.
This looks like the key of the problem yeah. And it's tricky because the GM isn't completely wrong of course. Would you rather have meaningful or meaningless combat? :P
But the trouble is in what makes a combat meaningful. Is it difficulty? Well it can be tricky to make an easy combat meaningful. If a player spends more time figuring out their initiative result than actually taking turns, because all the monsters got killed by other people earlier in round 1, yeah that doesn't feel meaningful.
But you don't have to jump from there straight to having a really powerful solo boss that's hard to land any spells on. There's a lot of other ways to make combats interesting and memorable.
Before I go into those though, you should ask yourself a key question: can you "change" the GM? It's often not really possible, to tell someone "you're running the game wrong, you should do it differently". You might be able to gradually bring them around to doing things a bit differently if they see it in action and realize that other way is fun. A lot of skill for GMs I think is stuff you pick up from seeing other GMs in action and adopting techniques you like.
Now, some people are naturally quite interested in getting feedback, examining their GMing and wondering about how to do things differently. Quite a few of us read blogs to pick up cool tricks. And in a scene like PFS, you can also have post-game discussions about "how did you like scenario X? What about how GM Y ran that? I think I would have done it differently.."
But the most likely thing is that you can't cause big changes in how your GM runs their game, in the short term anyway. And I'm assuming you're friends, you enjoy each others' company, and there have been plenty of game sessions that were fun, so you're interested in keeping up with this campaign.
Then I think the best thing to do is accept that with this GM, you're just better off doing some kinds of characters and not others. And keeping an ear open for anyone else thinking about starting a campaign who has a different style, and trying a caster in one of those campaigns instead.
This isn't saying that your current GM is a bad person or something. It's just natural that every GM has a different style and some characters are going to be more fun to play in some campaigns and with some GMs than with others. Life becomes MUCH easier when you can decide to wait for the right GM to do a particular style of character with, than it having to be this GM per se even if it just doesn't really mesh.
The actual problem might not even be the class balancing, but the encounter design our GM prefers. Our GM does not like meaningless combat. Which means fights need to be dangerous to a certain extend. Also book keeping lots of enemies is not really fun for the GM. It drags the length of combat. So in practice this often means we have 3 to 4 combats per adventuring day. Almost every combat is atleast a severe difficulty encounter with a few enemies of party level or fewer enemies above party level. Enemies of party level -1 we see rarely. Party level -2 enemies I have never seen in any serious encounter.If GM is repeatedly applying Severe Encounters...
Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters have a good chance to defeat. These encounters are appropriate for important moments in your story, such as confronting a final boss. Use severe encounters carefully—there's a good chance a character could die, and a small chance the whole group could. Bad luck, poor tactics, or a lack of resources can easily turn a severe-threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open....then what you describe is the system working as intended.
Perhaps your best argumentation is asking them: Q) Does avoiding "meaningless combat" mean every fight must be a "final boss"?
This. If every combat is a boss encounter, then what makes the fight with the actual boss stand out?
You can throw lots of challenge at the party without every encounter feeling samey, and some of those other options are going to favor other builds, including casters. Adding more enemies, hazards, terrain challenges, and such all help with this.
Its also okay to just have an easy combat now and then so the PCs feel like the badasses that they actually are.
With the initial questions answered, I too feel free to share a recommendation:
Has your group tried the Proficiency without Level variant rule yet?
It's an easy fix to make dangerous encounters without having to rely on PL+X creatures all the time. This variant rule basically "buffs" lower-level creatures and "debuffs" higher-level creatures.
For example, if a 6th-level party of four tries to enter a crypt guarded by 9 Skeletal Champions (CR2), they face an extreme encounter, not just because of the skeletons' resistances and reactions. This might wipe the party or force them to retreat. Thinning their numbers quickly will become a necessity and only casters can really do that – even the Kineticist might be useless here, depending on their elements – as a single cast of Eagle's Cry can absolutely devastate these skeletons: 1-2 skeletons will crit fail = instantly destroyed; and if you roll well on the damage, 4 more will be destroyed even on rolling a failure. Only half of them will remain at all, and in really bad shape + Frightened 1 to boot, turning a formerly extreme encounter into a moderate one.
p.s.: Proficiency without Level also makes summon spells useful in combat!
Something the GM should consider, since they shy away from large numbers of enemies, is to use troops more often than usual. This allows you to have a wider scale of in-story combats without the GM needing to control eight fully separate pieces on the board, allows AOEs to shine, and is less awkward than there always being a swarm enemy.
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The topic of meaningful combat is interesting, but it does not help Seisuke. Therefore, I created a separate thread for that topic: Meaningful Combat.
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I play casters the following way in PF2.
1. I build up a ranged weapon at low level. I fire it while casting a cantrip like frostbite or electric arc. Something with a save so as not to affect MAP.
2. In the mid levels, I just direct damage spells combined with my weapon. Maybe combine it with a good focus spell for sustain.
3. At high level, I nuke the living hell out of stuff while activating magic items like a wand of manifold missiles to get a stream of extra damage going or use a sustain spell like phantom orchestra.
4. I do this while also casting slow or synesthesia. I generally open up with a blast, then layer in a debuff against stronger stuff.
PF2 tends to have rotational top damage. No single class is top all the time. It's going depend on crits which the fighter tends to do most often. But any class can have a brutal round. So top damage can change from fight to fight.
With casters you want to layer damage sources. Your individual cantrips are pretty low damage, but with a weapon they can match a martial some rounds. Given at low level you are generally the same as a martial with a weapon, it is wise to use one.
As your caster proficiency advances and spells do more damage with better focus points or magic items, you can start relying more on those.
Casters are the kings of AOE damage. Martials usually do more single target, but if you really unleash or layer on as a caster you can do a lot of damage.
Once you get quicken spell, you can have at least one big hammer fight a day.
I find my casters keep up quite well with damage while having far more utility abilities during a campaign. The main martial that has strong utility and strong combat is the rogue. No other martials top casters for utility and damage combined. Martials are mainly focused on damage and some combat control with maybe athletics or acrobatics being their most useful skill.
You have to play a caster to learn to master how they work. I definitely recommend using a weapon for the early levels combined with a save spell. That's the best way to do good damage while waiting for the stronger spells as you level up. And it is more fun to build up a weapon when the interesting magic items are scarce at low level.
I find casters to the strongest, most interesting classes in the game. I get real bored playing martials because they are very limited.
My personal favorite casters are the druid, sorc, magus (a hybrid), and oracle. I think the cleric is top notch now too that they get general blasting and much better feats.
Worst caster is the wizard. I personally don't enjoy the bard because the party expects you to buff all the time which I get real bored of, but the buffs are so good it's hard to justify not using them.
Casters are real fun as you level. They get more interesting at high level than most martials with the exception of the rogue.
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I just came across this great video explaining the issues of low-level play in Pathfinder 2e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNaUD53ZXsM.
Absolutely worth a watch!
I just came across this great video explaining the issues of low-level play in Pathfinder 2e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNaUD53ZXsM.
Absolutely worth a watch!
As an old-time wizard player, I finally got the courage to build another one after gaining plenty of 2e experience through other classes. I look forward to watching this video at home. Between that and Deriven’s breakdown by level, I should have plenty of food for thought in building my newest spellcaster.
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A level one caster should have a spell DC of 17.
A level -1 creature has a general saving throw range of High: +8, Medium +5, Low +2.
A level 3 creature has a general saving throw range of High: +12, Medium +9, Low +6.
Let’s pretend like Thunderstrike can be extrapolated out into generic information about “maximum spell damage” (even though it can’t really, because that is tied to damage type and save targeted), and assume 1d12+1d4 per rank is right around maximum damage for a single target spell. Average damage then is 9 per rank.
With a DC of 17, a caster’s damage against a level-2 enemy is about:
High save: 5% crit fail, 35% fail, 50% success, 10% crit success. = 6.3 average
Med save: 10% crit fail, 45% fail, 40% success, 5% crit success. = 7.65
Low save: 25% crit fail, 45% fail, 25% success, 5% crit success. = 9.675
Against a level +2 enemy the numbers are:
High save: 5% crit fail, 15% fail, 50% success, 30 % crit success. = 4.5
Med save: 5% crit fail, 30% fail, 50% success, 15% crit success. = 5.85
Low save: 5% crit fail, 45% fail, 45% success, 5% crit success. = 6.975
What does this mean for a caster? It means that casters facing level +2 creatures is much much worse than a caster targeting level-2 creatures when it comes to trying to do damage to defeat them. That may seem pretty obvious, but the numbers here are worse than they look, because even though the caster might be able to do about the same damage against a level +2 creature vs a Level -2 creature if they target the -2 Creature’s high save and the +2 Creature’s low save, when you account for the fact that the average HP of a level -1 Creature is 9 HP and the average HP of a level 3 creature is 55. So, on average, it takes 1.4 spell castings to defeat that lower level creature when you target their best save, vs 7.8 castings of best damage spell against the higher level creature’s worst save. The only time spell casting is going to be efficient or even effective for doing direct damage against higher level creatures is when you can target a weakness or your martial are meeting resistances that are greatly reducing their damage per turn. That is why the best “player choice” recommendation above is to learn as much as you can about your enemies so that you can target them with the right spells.
HP levels stabilize at higher levels so the value of doing damage with spells vs higher level creatures gets better at higher levels, but stays heavily skewed in the direction of damage spells being most effective against lower level targets, especially when factoring in the potential for AoE damage.
The thing is, combats against a lot of lower level creatures are still very dangerous in PF2, it just takes a lot more of them to be the same level of difficulty, 4 level -2 creatures to every 1 level+2 creature. Your GM may or may not be aware of this, but has decided that running combats with many enemies is not fun for them and has thus cut out the part of the game where casters ability to damage is most valuable, and, as Derivin points out, greatly exceeds the damage potential of martial characters. Your GM is making the decision to make casting damage spells a waste of your party’s time and resources and there is really very little on the player side you can do as far as “making better choices” to change that math. If your GM wants to run the game without lower level creatures being regular fixtures of encounters, then they should probably consider letting all “damage only” spells count as one rank higher than they are in the game normally.
Although, to counter some of my doom and gloom with a bit of an unfair comparison (because it is 3 actions instead of 2), force barrage for the caster stuck fighting higher level enemies will do 10.5 average damage, and will generally out damage all of your other direct damage spell options unless you are hitting weaknesses, so maybe that one shouldn't be ranked up, or it doesn't really matter since it only increases every other rank anyway.
As an old-time wizard player, I finally got the courage to build another one after gaining plenty of 2e experience through other classes. I look forward to watching this video at home. Between that and Deriven’s breakdown by level, I should have plenty of food for thought in building my newest spellcaster.I just came across this great video explaining the issues of low-level play in Pathfinder 2e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNaUD53ZXsM.
Absolutely worth a watch!
I don't want to paint a complete bad view of the wizard. It's a very playable class. If you make it to 20, the wizard has the best level 20 caster feats. No other caster class can match the power of the level 20 wizard caster feats.
It's the getting to 20 that is rough because they have pretty weak focus spells and feats leading up to level 20. Spell Substitution is their best thesis to take advantage of wizard spell versatility. Though there are certain other tactical options with the other theses.
As a wizard loving player myself across editions, I've found the Imperial Sorcerer is closer to older edition wizards than the wizard class. Imperial sorc feels more powerful than a wizard. It still uses the arcane list. It has some ability to change spells. It ends up with 45 plus spells known you can use in far more versatile ways than a wizard in real time. It does all this while providing useful focus spells that interact well with some great feats the sorc has access to.
I would prefer Paizo at some point make a more fun wizard. But doesn't seem to be in the cards in PF2. If you want more of an old wizard feel, try the imperial sorcerer.
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If you want more of an old wizard feel, try the imperial sorcerer.
You're mostly right, of course.
But one thing that I used to enjoy pre PF2 was the wizards niche as the Know it All character. The Hemione Granger of spell casters.
Of course, Int no longer fully scratches that itch anyway with Religion and Nature being based off of Wisdom (which is a SUPERB change in general but does hurt this particular fantasy). And Legendary Arcana (depending on how the GM runs things) is a thing much more likely to be taken by the wizard than the sorcerer.
If a wizard player can pick 4 campaign relevant lores you can expect their contribution to be more consequential than if they have to pick more trained skills or lores at random.
Its not special either for wizards, this is true for any character that is going to pick a lore for a given campaign. its just wizards are maxing int so its more of their stat budget than most characters.
But one thing that I used to enjoy pre PF2 was the wizards niche as the Know it All character. The Hemione Granger of spell casters.
You can do that with the Imperial Sorcerer as well nowadays: Tap into Blood allows the Sorcerer to use Arcana instead of the specific lore skill you want to Recall Knowledge about; the reduced DC from a specific lore evens out the difference in INT.
You can also combine Arcana with your best RK skill via Cognitive Crossover, if you want to make that investment.
But one thing that I used to enjoy pre PF2 was the wizards niche as the Know it All character. The Hemione Granger of spell casters.You can do that with the Imperial Sorcerer as well nowadays: Tap into Blood allows the Sorcerer to use Arcana instead of the specific lore skill you want to Recall Knowledge about; the reduced DC from a specific lore evens out the difference in INT.
You can also combine Arcana with your best RK skill via Cognitive Crossover, if you want to make that investment.
I don't allow tap into blood to substitute for a specific subcategory of a skill, they can sub for any skill but not a lore.
Allowing lores would mean tap into blood would guarantee the -5 RK very easy dc adjustment every time because the sorcerer could sub arcana for the most specific lore subcategory possible.Besides the skill normally needed is not a lore its things like occultism, crafting, society, religion, nature, or medicine.
I just wouldn't want to eat the lunch of players of the only benefit that choosing a lore is supposed to give by giving the most extreme version of that benefit to a sorcerer that picked a level 1 feat.
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If you want more of an old wizard feel, try the imperial sorcerer.You're mostly right, of course.
But one thing that I used to enjoy pre PF2 was the wizards niche as the Know it All character. The Hemione Granger of spell casters.
Of course, Int no longer fully scratches that itch anyway with Religion and Nature being based off of Wisdom (which is a SUPERB change in general but does hurt this particular fantasy). And Legendary Arcana (depending on how the GM runs things) is a thing much more likely to be taken by the wizard than the sorcerer.
It would be cool if the new wizard class had a class ability that allowed them to substitute Intelligence for those skills.
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You can do that with the Imperial Sorcerer as well nowadays: Tap into Blood
I'd forgotten about that ability. Yup, sorcerers now pretty much blow wizards out of the water :-(
If you want more of an old wizard feel, try the imperial sorcerer.You're mostly right, of course.
But one thing that I used to enjoy pre PF2 was the wizards niche as the Know it All character. The Hemione Granger of spell casters.
Of course, Int no longer fully scratches that itch anyway with Religion and Nature being based off of Wisdom (which is a SUPERB change in general but does hurt this particular fantasy). And Legendary Arcana (depending on how the GM runs things) is a thing much more likely to be taken by the wizard than the sorcerer.
Personally, I'm a bit disappointed that the loremaster archetype hasn't been Remastered (yet, maybe?). A wizard (or witch, or Int-base psychic, for that matter) taking the loremaster archetype can be the "know it all" caster; possibly even better than the bard or thaumaturge.
Using the elf ancestry feats of Ancestral Longevity, Expert Longevity, and Universal Longevity in conjunction with an Int-based class and the loremaster archetype Quick Study feat allows the character to essentially "prepare" additional fields of knowledge they want to make RL checks about at the start of each day (and even switch one of them at a moment's notice).
Using the elf ancestry feats of Ancestral Longevity, Expert Longevity, and Universal Longevity in conjunction with an Int-based class and the loremaster archetype Quick Study feat allows the character to essentially "prepare" additional fields of knowledge they want to make RL checks about at the start of each day (and even switch one of them at a moment's notice).
There are a few other methods as well:
A Human can use the Recall Legacy spell every day to take Multitalented and get the multiclass dedication for a Rogue that comes with a skill feat of your choice, e.g. Additional Lore.A Ghost's Haunting Memories, raising one of your (Ancestral Longevity?) Lores to master and getting a skill feat (e.g. Additional Lore).
Lore Oracles (including via archetype) can get the Access Lore focus spell and give themselves any lore they want at a moment's notice (up to legendary for casters!); they also have access to the Knowledge domain & its powerful RK focus spells.
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I have found wizards who just drop skill feats into campaign relevant additional lores to be pretty effective at having the wizard who can know everything feel. I guess it might feel to others like that is an option available to any character, but I find myself feeling pretty comfortable spending 3 or 4 skill feats on additional lore as a wizard, where most of my other characters end up with other "essential" skill feats instead.
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I have found wizards who just drop skill feats into campaign relevant additional lores to be pretty effective at having the wizard who can know everything feel. I guess it might feel to others like that is an option available to any character, but I find myself feeling pretty comfortable spending 3 or 4 skill feats on additional lore as a wizard, where most of my other characters end up with other "essential" skill feats instead.
This is really easy in some APs. The Investigator in my Extinction Curse game took Xulgath Lore and Aroden Lore (which gets to use INT, unlike Religion) and those did a LOT of heavy lifting. She had both of them for more than half of the AP, as those being things that are going to keep coming up is established relatively early.
Any AP with a strong theme that reveals itself early enough makes Additional Lore a top shelf feat.
Using the elf ancestry feats of Ancestral Longevity, Expert Longevity, and Universal Longevity in conjunction with an Int-based class and the loremaster archetype Quick Study feat allows the character to essentially "prepare" additional fields of knowledge they want to make RL checks about at the start of each day (and even switch one of them at a moment's notice).There are a few other methods as well:
A Human can use the Recall Legacy spell every day to take Multitalented and get the multiclass dedication for a Rogue that comes with a skill feat of your choice, e.g. Additional Lore.
A Ghost's Haunting Memories, raising one of your (Ancestral Longevity?) Lores to master and getting a skill feat (e.g. Additional Lore).
Lore Oracles (including via archetype) can get the Access Lore focus spell and give themselves any lore they want at a moment's notice (up to legendary for casters!); they also have access to the Knowledge domain & its powerful RK focus spells.
Don't forget Gnomes! Gnome Obsession gives you Additional Lore (and Assurance if it matters) that only needs one day of downtime to retrain, so you can change it comparatively easily. If your GM doesn't insist on instructors for that retraining, Dreaming Potential lets you do that overnight and now you can wake up every morning with Additional Lore in whatever you plan to do that day.
It requires more work to change than the Elven version, but it scales to Legendary so it's pretty nice. I absolutely love it in Influence situations as there's almost always a good lore if you can guess it (or figure it out before an influence round via Discover).