Baseline buffs that just raise your armor or hit chance should be auras or toggles or last until your next rest or something like that.
I'd like an isometric RPG where you just get a rest at the beginning of each dungeon, no more, and there's 2-4 tough, interesting fights in there. For me personally, an easy way to tell "This is the last fight, blow all your spells here!" would also be nice. Of course 'dungeon' can mean forest glade, bandit camp, sailing ship, whatever.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
You can make mercs for almost free at the start just stay level one till after the olegs fight with bandits.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
First thing I do is get the respec mod to remake all the companions. Really improved the play experience IMO.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
First thing I do is get the respec mod to remake all the companions. Really improved the play experience IMO.
Yeah, this.
And also the Craft Magic Items mod, because if nothing else Wizards need their Scrolls.
Sounds like the beta for Wrath is around the corner.
I'm super curious to see what lessons the devs took from the first game.
I mostly want to see new classes and spells in action as I imagine the game rules will be fairly similar . Betas are usually early areas and a lot of kingmakers nuisances were on the backend. With the main enemy type seemingly going to be demons I can imagine there will be an equivalent enemy type to the wild hunt which will need certain types of buffs and spells.
Beta feb 2. I don’t do kickstart so please let me know what you guys think.
+1
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I only backed at Premium Digital, so I don't have access to the beta. Which is good, because I'm keen to see what changed but as a rule I don't do betas because I burn myself out before the game actually releases.
I loved the game, but I hate the "Every battle is a nail-biter" design (also see Divinity). These kind of RPGs feel better paced when there's a sense of becoming powerful enough to handle random mobs easily and then get your challenge from the bosses.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
First thing I do is get the respec mod to remake all the companions. Really improved the play experience IMO.
Yeah, this.
And also the Craft Magic Items mod, because if nothing else Wizards need their Scrolls.
When I played Pathfinder with pen and paper my first character was a wizard (because magic is awesome). I rapidly came to the conclusion that wizards were worthless.
On paper access to a lot of spells, but the need to prepare them in advance means that you, the player, needs to be pyschic.
Ah, but just use scrolls! The price of scrolls vastly outweighs earnings, and it takes hours to transcribe a scroll. A fighter needs a wee nap to be ready to go, a wizard needs a full workweek in the scriptorium (and the GDP of a small nation in supplies), and then sits there with 10 fireball scrolls when it turns out they'll be fighting creatures that are immune to fire.
Switched to a sorcerer. On paper access to half as many spells, in practice has access to about twice as many.
(I also concluded that PF was made by people who, if tasked with buttering their toast, would immediately start inventing a machine that would make Rube Goldberg think it was too complicated. Why do things in one easy step when 100 convoluted and impossible to memorize steps will suffice?)
Really? That was never my experience in D&D 3.5. A Wizard can typically have a good suite of general use spells the same as a Sorcerer, and even if you never find a scroll in the entire campaign, just with the 2 per level picks, you still have more spells to pick from every morning than the Sorcerer gets in their entire career.
In fact, a thing I noticed is that every sorcerer's list looked about 3/4ths the same across every campaign, because a Sorcerer had so few picks that every spell pick needs to be chosen specifically to maximize return on investment in as many situations as possible, so all they had WAS the "Wizard General Use Spell Package Suite". Wizards could afford to waste the occasional spell pick on silly stuff once they'd picked their general use spells, knowing they could whip them out with a night's nap.
Really? That was never my experience in D&D 3.5. A Wizard can typically have a good suite of general use spells the same as a Sorcerer, and even if you never find a scroll in the entire campaign, just with the 2 per level picks, you still have more spells to pick from every morning than the Sorcerer gets in their entire career.
In fact, a thing I noticed is that every sorcerer's list looked about 3/4ths the same across every campaign, because a Sorcerer had so few picks that every spell pick needs to be chosen specifically to maximize return on investment in as many situations as possible, so all they had WAS the "Wizard General Use Spell Package Suite". Wizards could afford to waste the occasional spell pick on silly stuff once they'd picked their general use spells, knowing they could whip them out with a night's nap.
Sadly, I'm not psycic. Since I didn't know what we would need the following day, I just always picked a standard slate to cover most bases. The other spells I had in my spellbook never saw any use, because how could I possibly forsee I would need waterbreathing or energy resisit when fighting orc barbarians in a desert. (I guess I could take a quick nap while underwater in the middle of a fight with electric eels during the freak flash flood.)
So out of the spells I had prepared, I used some of the spells, did not get a use for others, and ran out of useful spells halfway through the first encounter.
Wizard: 50 spells in the spellbook, pick 5, use them each at most once, 3 turn out to be useless for this encounter.
Sorcerer: 5 spells in total, use them in any combination a total of 10 times.
(Or whatever. It's been a long time and I can't be arsed to look up the actual numbers.)
First encounter: 3 combat spells, 2 utility/out-of-combat spells. Only combat, resistant to 1 of the spells.
Second encounter: 4 combat spells, 1 utility. No combat, wrong utility spell.
Etc.
Sorcerer was fun, though. With CHA as primary and as many ranks in dialogue skills as I could, pluss "creative" uses of illusions and prestidigitation, I tried to talk my way out of everything.
And when that inevitably failed, at least I could cast 10 fireballs in a row.
I mostly used prestidigitation to conjure up business cards to support my lie that I had every right to be where I was. (E.g., security consultant coming to inspect the severely lacking security at the evil cultists' lodge.) I printed them in RL up to use as props. Highlights:
- Sofie the Gentle, Midwife. "Delivery while you wait"
- "Honest" Sofie, Used horse dealer. "Only one previous owner"
- Lady Sofie, Ambassador. "Diplomatic immunity, bitches!"
- Sofie the Wise, Scholar. "Book learnin' "
A wizard who spends his money well and has time to prepare is unbeatable. There are spells that solve every situation, metamagic rods are stronger for wizards because they don't extend casting times.
A sorcerer who picks his spells well can be between strong and overpowered in 90% of situations, and sometimes end up totally countered.
A wizard that has to blind adventure (You get called into an emergency, and it turns out to be an Outsider with high spell resistance) has to have a really safe basic setup, and as a rule underperforms to the sorcerer.
A badly built sorcerer is unsaveable, a badly built wizard can still do 80% of the best one.
The arcanist (which is the sorc/wiz mix class) is possibly more powerful than either, mostly because of an extremely access to +2DC and to an unprovoking short range teleport as a move action.
This outside of certain archetypes end up just wrecking. Crossblooded Fireball build sorcerers do damage well beyond CR, possibly one rounding many encounters.
PnP mythic rules insanely favor casters but are unworkable as written. Building a thousand damage fireballs build is quite possible, bypassing most forms of immunity to fire damage even. On top of that you can cast any spell in existence just in case fireball doesn't work.
Owlcat has their work cut out for them in deciding how much of the nonsense they let through.
A wizard who spends his money well and has time to prepare is unbeatable. There are spells that solve every situation, metamagic rods are stronger for wizards because they don't extend casting times.
A sorcerer who picks his spells well can be between strong and overpowered in 90% of situations, and sometimes end up totally countered.
A wizard that has to blind adventure (You get called into an emergency, and it turns out to be an Outsider with high spell resistance) has to have a really safe basic setup, and as a rule underperforms to the sorcerer.
A badly built sorcerer is unsaveable, a badly built wizard can still do 80% of the best one.
The arcanist (which is the sorc/wiz mix class) is possibly more powerful than either, mostly because of an extremely access to +2DC and to an unprovoking short range teleport as a move action.
This outside of certain archetypes end up just wrecking. Crossblooded Fireball build sorcerers do damage well beyond CR, possibly one rounding many encounters.
PnP mythic rules insanely favor casters but are unworkable as written. Building a thousand damage fireballs build is quite possible, bypassing most forms of immunity to fire damage even. On top of that you can cast any spell in existence just in case fireball doesn't work.
Owlcat has their work cut out for them in deciding how much of the nonsense they let through.
So I've been told, but that was not my experience. Although in fairness I don't think my wizard made it past level 3. My sorcerer made it to level 5 before the campaign ended.
In any case, min-maxing for combat effectiveness and doing infinite dungeon crawls is, by far, the least interesting aspect of pnp RP games.
Never, ever, ever* make a scroll of fireball. Fireball, as a spell, depends on your caster level and your ability mod and feats to set the DC (and therefore do damage, it’s only purpose). Scrolls, generally, get made at the lowest caster level possible (to save money) and use by-rule the lowest Int capable of casting the spell (so +1 for fireball). So a scroll of fireball does minimum damage with a low save for half, meaning most things will save, and so you’ll do, on average, like 8 damage to each target, which is basically useless.
Instead, you want scrolls to cover the I Know A Spell For That situations, spells with flexibility that when you need them you really need them but you just don’t need them everyday. (If it’s a spell you need every day, it goes on your memorized list.). And, importantly, the value of the spell should not come primarily from your caster level or your feats or your ability mods. You want scrolls of spells with static effects and no saves. Spells like Mage Armor - in case you need to apply a Force effect AC boost to people against unexpected incorporeal enemies - or Hold Portal - when you need to block of an area to give you time to think. Comprehend Languages. Detect [X]. Disguise spells. Light / Dark spells. A couple extra Resist Energies for when you’ve cast your memorized one for lightning and suddenly a sonic enemy shows up. Wall spells. Attribute buffs for uncommon attributes. Etc.
Work with the other casters in your party. A scroll of cure light wounds is half the price of the same potion, in exchange for losing the “who can use it” flexibility. A healstick (wand of CLW or, if you’re lucky, lesser vigor) is the cheapest healing in the game.**
Scrolls enhance the in-the-moment versatility of the Wizard.
* Caveat: always, actually, make like 1. That way you have it just in case. Maybe in this one corner case you need the Rogue or the Pally to UMD it to kick off The Plan. Maybe you’re totally out of fire spells and need to CDG the unconscious trolls. Whatever. But you’ll never really need more than one. If you’re relying on them routinely, you’re Doing It Wrong.
** Not including other stuff they’ve added since I stopped paying close attention.
If you spend a week making ten scrolls of fireball, your DM should spend that discussion time figuring out how to refigure his encounters so that your work isn't totally wasted.
Wizard never actually transcribed a single scroll, since I barely had any cash, and the rest of the party didn't want to sit around twiddling their thumbs while the one spell caster in the party transcribed War and Peace in the middle of enemy territory. (And I, the player, didn't want to sit out the entire session while the rest of the party went adventurin' while my wizard wore out the quill supply of the nation.)
Did you just not ever have any downtime, [expletive deleted]?
I mean, yeah, in that case, if you never have a time where you’re just spending a week in town, things that take a couple days just aren’t going to happen in your campaign.
But scribing a single scroll of a level 1 spell takes 12.5gp and 2 hours - meaning if you’ve got the materials on-hand, you can do it most evenings before bed.
Per day, 8 hours adventuring/travelling + 8 hours sleep leaves 8 hours for 4 scolls.
Daily consumption of spells is much higher (I know I also get spells per day by sleeping, but still not enough).
Also, that schedule leaves no time for eating, hitting the tavern with your party, or even going to the bathroom.
Not that I would be able to afford any leisure time anyway, having spent it all on scrolls. And about five mules plus feed plus handlers to carry the damn things.
There's a reason the "15 minute adventuring day" is a phrase.
Pathfinder is better than 3.5 D&D, but does still have a lot of the baggage. Design has improved a lot in the last 20 years (and Pathfinder 2 is a big improvement, IMO).
There's a reason the "15 minute adventuring day" is a phrase.
Pathfinder is better than 3.5 D&D, but does still have a lot of the baggage. Design has improved a lot in the last 20 years (and Pathfinder 2 is a big improvement, IMO).
From what I’ve read I really dislike what they did to alchemists.
This, but also, like, you're kinda making up new and interesting ways it just doesn't work, ED. Just based on the vast volume of writing re: 3.XE / PF and wizards and item creation, "They don't work" is absolutely the outlier position.
Really, you don't really need to be psychic, most of the time, I've found. Just have some basic idea of where you're going and some standard useful sets for various common situations, which in most campaigns that aren't just dungeon crawls with random encounters you usually do. I find that while you rarely have detailed information, as a player you often have a general feeling for the rough kind of thing you're going to run into, with of course occasional curveballs (this of course does require your GM to not be an asshole that loves to pull "twists". Isn't that right, Pathfinder "we filled the house of the fey lady in the fey plane with more undead than fey" Kingmaker?)
Like, since you mention fireballs, as an example, if the party has to go into the lair of the Dread Demon Lord Moz'erfuker to retrieve the Rod of Assholishness, you just know almost everything there is going to resist fire. So in the morning the Wizard swaps his Fireball for something else, while the Sorcerer shrugs and crosses out one of his spells known and goes in with one less spell.
End result being that in all my years of D&D 3.5 I've seen all of one sorcerer pick Fireball. Fireball is just too narrow to be worth it for a sorcerer, who gets two to three level 3 spells known total. It's bad if things resist fire, if there's only one target, if you have multiple melee people (because your melee dudes are going to be worse at resisting your fireballs than most enemies), etcetera. Fireball is much more a Wizard spell, because it's a spell that can be very useful in narrow circumstances but also has a lot of circumstances where you don't want to cast it. Sorcerer level 3 spells known in D&D 3.5 tend to look a lot more like Dispel Magic/Fly/Major Image/etc. Things you know are never going to be bad and which you will want to have a metric shit ton of casts of because you can use them to solve a ton of different problems.
Really, you don't really need to be psychic, most of the time, I've found. Just have some basic idea of where you're going and some standard useful sets for various common situations, which in most campaigns that aren't just dungeon crawls with random encounters you usually do. I find that while you rarely have detailed information, as a player you often have a general feeling for the rough kind of thing you're going to run into, with of course occasional curveballs (this of course does require your GM to not be an asshole that loves to pull "twists". Isn't that right, Pathfinder "we filled the house of the fey lady in the fey plane with more undead than fey" Kingmaker?)
Like, since you mention fireballs, as an example, if the party has to go into the lair of the Dread Demon Lord Moz'erfuker to retrieve the Rod of Assholishness, you just know almost everything there is going to resist fire. So in the morning the Wizard swaps his Fireball for something else, while the Sorcerer shrugs and crosses out one of his spells known and goes in with one less spell.
End result being that in all my years of D&D 3.5 I've seen all of one sorcerer pick Fireball. Fireball is just too narrow to be worth it for a sorcerer, who gets two to three level 3 spells known total. It's bad if things resist fire, if there's only one target, if you have multiple melee people (because your melee dudes are going to be worse at resisting your fireballs than most enemies), etcetera. Fireball is much more a Wizard spell, because it's a spell that can be very useful in narrow circumstances but also has a lot of circumstances where you don't want to cast it. Sorcerer level 3 spells known in D&D 3.5 tend to look a lot more like Dispel Magic/Fly/Major Image/etc. Things you know are never going to be bad and which you will want to have a metric shit ton of casts of because you can use them to solve a ton of different problems.
Did it have more undead then fey ? Wow you are right , The basement and first floor are fucking full of ghost guards that do stat damage ( from crippling strike so death ward does nothing) / have dispelling attack( cause fuck you that’s why) lotsof sneak attack damage and also have mages that instantly cast that plague cloud spell that does a lot of str damage and then spam cloud kill . Which since the melee ghosts dispel is kind of a concern. Not to mention spamming aoe fear. The bosses are so much easier then the normal enemies it’s ludicrous.
A wizard who spends his money well and has time to prepare is unbeatable. There are spells that solve every situation, metamagic rods are stronger for wizards because they don't extend casting times.
A sorcerer who picks his spells well can be between strong and overpowered in 90% of situations, and sometimes end up totally countered.
A wizard that has to blind adventure (You get called into an emergency, and it turns out to be an Outsider with high spell resistance) has to have a really safe basic setup, and as a rule underperforms to the sorcerer.
A badly built sorcerer is unsaveable, a badly built wizard can still do 80% of the best one.
The arcanist (which is the sorc/wiz mix class) is possibly more powerful than either, mostly because of an extremely access to +2DC and to an unprovoking short range teleport as a move action.
This outside of certain archetypes end up just wrecking. Crossblooded Fireball build sorcerers do damage well beyond CR, possibly one rounding many encounters.
PnP mythic rules insanely favor casters but are unworkable as written. Building a thousand damage fireballs build is quite possible, bypassing most forms of immunity to fire damage even. On top of that you can cast any spell in existence just in case fireball doesn't work.
Owlcat has their work cut out for them in deciding how much of the nonsense they let through.
So I've been told, but that was not my experience. Although in fairness I don't think my wizard made it past level 3. My sorcerer made it to level 5 before the campaign ended.
In any case, min-maxing for combat effectiveness and doing infinite dungeon crawls is, by far, the least interesting aspect of pnp RP games.
Wizards are the most open spellcasting class with the most systems to juggle. Realistically, every class needs 40-50 hours of play time to really figure out, and Wizards have multiple systems to work with. The problem most people have is that they take a bunch of cool-but-useless spells that end up largely doing nothing, and then you're stuck casting Acid or shooting a crossbow. Wizards really feel awful until level 3 or 4 unless you're very familiar with the class and know how to make up for the weaknesses.
Crafting scrolls in PF is pretty easy. You get Scribe Scroll for free at first level. Scrolls cost 25*spell level*caster level, so a 1st level scroll costs 25gp (and crafting halves this to 12.5). On any given day, even if you're literally sleeping 8 hours and fighting demons for 16 hours, the rules of the game let you spend four hours of 'off-screen downtime' to craft 2 hours of magical items. Basically, even if you don't have downtime, you get two hours of downtime, so long as you aren't doing something else with that off-screen downtime.
Even a 3rd level is only 187gp, so you can craft that in 2 hours. You can only create one magical item a day anyway, so no matter what, you can create one 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level scroll a day with no downtime.
Generally the optimal thing to do is to craft scrolls of all the edge-case narrow spells like Identify, Alarm, Comprehend Languages, etc. and use your prepared spells for combat stuff like Grease, Burning Hands and the like.
Oh, the other cool thing you can do with wizards is not prepare all your spells at the beginning of the day, leaving some spell slots open. You can then spend an hour to prepare a spell in that slot (eg Water Breathing or Energy Resistance). Your Bonded Object also lets you cast any spell you have in your spell book without needing to prepare it, once per day.
I don't doubt that other people, who are not me, enjoy wizards.
I found them to be not fun.
And this incredibly detailed discussion highlights the things I dislike about PF.
I don't want to spend untold RL hours poring over books to min-max my character, and the failure to do so to result in a useless character.
I want to cast a disguise spell, stroll up to the evil cultists' lair, claim to be there to check up on their lax security, prestidigitate up a relevant business card, and spend the rest of the session coming up with increasingly implausible lies to the cultists to explain away all the stuff we're doing that we're clearly not supposed to do.
And if there's combat I want it to be over quickly so I can get back to doing the fun stuff.
I don't doubt that other people, who are not me, enjoy wizards.
I found them to be not fun.
And this incredibly detailed discussion highlights the things I dislike about PF.
I don't want to spend untold RL hours poring over books to min-max my character, and the failure to do so to result in a useless character.
I want to cast a disguise spell, stroll up to the evil cultists' lair, claim to be there to check up on their lax security, prestidigitate up a relevant business card, and spend the rest of the session coming up with increasingly implausible lies to the cultists to explain away all the stuff we're doing that we're clearly not supposed to do.
And if there's combat I want it to be over quickly so I can get back to doing the fun stuff.
PF is not for me, is what I'm saying.
Pathfinder can 100% do that...with a DM. Its not Pathfinder you're not liking, its the inflexibility of a video game. A good DM would 100% allow you to try that. I mean, a good DM would also have it probably fail because bad guys should not be that dumb, but you should absolutely be allowed to try it.
Pathfinder books are 90% combat rules. A game that has, idk, 6000 pages of spells, feats, classes, alternative subclass options is ultimately going to result in a combat heavy experience.
The only other two things they publish is adventures, which are about 40/60 story and encounters, and a few lore books.
After 15 ish years of publishing monthly and making money on volume (Thats paizos strat) it is without a doubt a convoluted mess that is not wholly salvageable unless gms and players agree to limit themselves.
It is also not fast at all. Low level fights tend to be hp trades (and about setting up favorable trades), and high end is extremely volatile counter based where it ends when either some melee gets full attacks in or a caster successfully gets a crippling spell past defensive layers. Both take a lot of time to arbitrate.
Tabletop, having 1 hour rounds (so every player and enemy gets 1 turn) above level 10 is not crazy at all. Especially on large final fight scenarios. I played a level 17 fight yesterday, where 6 rounds took 3.5 hours online (which is faster if done correctly)
It's also extremely simulationist and as a consequence has endless rules for what you can and cannot do.
For instance, rules as written making a character good at disguising and bluffing is fairly trivial (a Mesmerist immediately comes to mind) but conjuring a fake business card is probably impossible, since casting a spell is by rules extremely noisy and noticeable, and afaik no spell does exactly what you want. Though my knowledge is not exhaustive.....
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I'd like an isometric RPG where you just get a rest at the beginning of each dungeon, no more, and there's 2-4 tough, interesting fights in there. For me personally, an easy way to tell "This is the last fight, blow all your spells here!" would also be nice. Of course 'dungeon' can mean forest glade, bandit camp, sailing ship, whatever.
I kind of feel like 90% of the difficulty is from your team members having really bad stats.
You can make mercs for almost free at the start just stay level one till after the olegs fight with bandits.
First thing I do is get the respec mod to remake all the companions. Really improved the play experience IMO.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Yeah, this.
And also the Craft Magic Items mod, because if nothing else Wizards need their Scrolls.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm super curious to see what lessons the devs took from the first game.
I mostly want to see new classes and spells in action as I imagine the game rules will be fairly similar . Betas are usually early areas and a lot of kingmakers nuisances were on the backend. With the main enemy type seemingly going to be demons I can imagine there will be an equivalent enemy type to the wild hunt which will need certain types of buffs and spells.
Beta feb 2. I don’t do kickstart so please let me know what you guys think.
Ps- prismatic spray is super fucking strong as a spell holy hell .
The FAQ says the planned platforms are Steam and GoG, so you should get a choice of those two when they release the preorder/backer keys.
However, the publisher is Deep Silver, so I’m expecting some late announcement of timed Epic exclusivity fuckery at some point.
When I played Pathfinder with pen and paper my first character was a wizard (because magic is awesome). I rapidly came to the conclusion that wizards were worthless.
On paper access to a lot of spells, but the need to prepare them in advance means that you, the player, needs to be pyschic.
Ah, but just use scrolls! The price of scrolls vastly outweighs earnings, and it takes hours to transcribe a scroll. A fighter needs a wee nap to be ready to go, a wizard needs a full workweek in the scriptorium (and the GDP of a small nation in supplies), and then sits there with 10 fireball scrolls when it turns out they'll be fighting creatures that are immune to fire.
Switched to a sorcerer. On paper access to half as many spells, in practice has access to about twice as many.
(I also concluded that PF was made by people who, if tasked with buttering their toast, would immediately start inventing a machine that would make Rube Goldberg think it was too complicated. Why do things in one easy step when 100 convoluted and impossible to memorize steps will suffice?)
In fact, a thing I noticed is that every sorcerer's list looked about 3/4ths the same across every campaign, because a Sorcerer had so few picks that every spell pick needs to be chosen specifically to maximize return on investment in as many situations as possible, so all they had WAS the "Wizard General Use Spell Package Suite". Wizards could afford to waste the occasional spell pick on silly stuff once they'd picked their general use spells, knowing they could whip them out with a night's nap.
Sadly, I'm not psycic. Since I didn't know what we would need the following day, I just always picked a standard slate to cover most bases. The other spells I had in my spellbook never saw any use, because how could I possibly forsee I would need waterbreathing or energy resisit when fighting orc barbarians in a desert. (I guess I could take a quick nap while underwater in the middle of a fight with electric eels during the freak flash flood.)
So out of the spells I had prepared, I used some of the spells, did not get a use for others, and ran out of useful spells halfway through the first encounter.
Wizard: 50 spells in the spellbook, pick 5, use them each at most once, 3 turn out to be useless for this encounter.
Sorcerer: 5 spells in total, use them in any combination a total of 10 times.
(Or whatever. It's been a long time and I can't be arsed to look up the actual numbers.)
First encounter: 3 combat spells, 2 utility/out-of-combat spells. Only combat, resistant to 1 of the spells.
Second encounter: 4 combat spells, 1 utility. No combat, wrong utility spell.
Etc.
And when that inevitably failed, at least I could cast 10 fireballs in a row.
I mostly used prestidigitation to conjure up business cards to support my lie that I had every right to be where I was. (E.g., security consultant coming to inspect the severely lacking security at the evil cultists' lodge.) I printed them in RL up to use as props. Highlights:
- Sofie the Gentle, Midwife. "Delivery while you wait"
- "Honest" Sofie, Used horse dealer. "Only one previous owner"
- Lady Sofie, Ambassador. "Diplomatic immunity, bitches!"
- Sofie the Wise, Scholar. "Book learnin' "
A wizard who spends his money well and has time to prepare is unbeatable. There are spells that solve every situation, metamagic rods are stronger for wizards because they don't extend casting times.
A sorcerer who picks his spells well can be between strong and overpowered in 90% of situations, and sometimes end up totally countered.
A wizard that has to blind adventure (You get called into an emergency, and it turns out to be an Outsider with high spell resistance) has to have a really safe basic setup, and as a rule underperforms to the sorcerer.
A badly built sorcerer is unsaveable, a badly built wizard can still do 80% of the best one.
The arcanist (which is the sorc/wiz mix class) is possibly more powerful than either, mostly because of an extremely access to +2DC and to an unprovoking short range teleport as a move action.
This outside of certain archetypes end up just wrecking. Crossblooded Fireball build sorcerers do damage well beyond CR, possibly one rounding many encounters.
PnP mythic rules insanely favor casters but are unworkable as written. Building a thousand damage fireballs build is quite possible, bypassing most forms of immunity to fire damage even. On top of that you can cast any spell in existence just in case fireball doesn't work.
Owlcat has their work cut out for them in deciding how much of the nonsense they let through.
So I've been told, but that was not my experience. Although in fairness I don't think my wizard made it past level 3. My sorcerer made it to level 5 before the campaign ended.
In any case, min-maxing for combat effectiveness and doing infinite dungeon crawls is, by far, the least interesting aspect of pnp RP games.
Never, ever, ever* make a scroll of fireball. Fireball, as a spell, depends on your caster level and your ability mod and feats to set the DC (and therefore do damage, it’s only purpose). Scrolls, generally, get made at the lowest caster level possible (to save money) and use by-rule the lowest Int capable of casting the spell (so +1 for fireball). So a scroll of fireball does minimum damage with a low save for half, meaning most things will save, and so you’ll do, on average, like 8 damage to each target, which is basically useless.
Instead, you want scrolls to cover the I Know A Spell For That situations, spells with flexibility that when you need them you really need them but you just don’t need them everyday. (If it’s a spell you need every day, it goes on your memorized list.). And, importantly, the value of the spell should not come primarily from your caster level or your feats or your ability mods. You want scrolls of spells with static effects and no saves. Spells like Mage Armor - in case you need to apply a Force effect AC boost to people against unexpected incorporeal enemies - or Hold Portal - when you need to block of an area to give you time to think. Comprehend Languages. Detect [X]. Disguise spells. Light / Dark spells. A couple extra Resist Energies for when you’ve cast your memorized one for lightning and suddenly a sonic enemy shows up. Wall spells. Attribute buffs for uncommon attributes. Etc.
Work with the other casters in your party. A scroll of cure light wounds is half the price of the same potion, in exchange for losing the “who can use it” flexibility. A healstick (wand of CLW or, if you’re lucky, lesser vigor) is the cheapest healing in the game.**
Scrolls enhance the in-the-moment versatility of the Wizard.
* Caveat: always, actually, make like 1. That way you have it just in case. Maybe in this one corner case you need the Rogue or the Pally to UMD it to kick off The Plan. Maybe you’re totally out of fire spells and need to CDG the unconscious trolls. Whatever. But you’ll never really need more than one. If you’re relying on them routinely, you’re Doing It Wrong.
** Not including other stuff they’ve added since I stopped paying close attention.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Batman doesn’t keep “punch bad guy” in his belt, he keeps Bat Library-Paste Remover.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I also think the system is too convoluted.
I mean, yeah, in that case, if you never have a time where you’re just spending a week in town, things that take a couple days just aren’t going to happen in your campaign.
But scribing a single scroll of a level 1 spell takes 12.5gp and 2 hours - meaning if you’ve got the materials on-hand, you can do it most evenings before bed.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Per day, 8 hours adventuring/travelling + 8 hours sleep leaves 8 hours for 4 scolls.
Daily consumption of spells is much higher (I know I also get spells per day by sleeping, but still not enough).
Also, that schedule leaves no time for eating, hitting the tavern with your party, or even going to the bathroom.
Not that I would be able to afford any leisure time anyway, having spent it all on scrolls. And about five mules plus feed plus handlers to carry the damn things.
It's a poorly thought out system.
Pathfinder is better than 3.5 D&D, but does still have a lot of the baggage. Design has improved a lot in the last 20 years (and Pathfinder 2 is a big improvement, IMO).
From what I’ve read I really dislike what they did to alchemists.
This, but also, like, you're kinda making up new and interesting ways it just doesn't work, ED. Just based on the vast volume of writing re: 3.XE / PF and wizards and item creation, "They don't work" is absolutely the outlier position.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Like, since you mention fireballs, as an example, if the party has to go into the lair of the Dread Demon Lord Moz'erfuker to retrieve the Rod of Assholishness, you just know almost everything there is going to resist fire. So in the morning the Wizard swaps his Fireball for something else, while the Sorcerer shrugs and crosses out one of his spells known and goes in with one less spell.
End result being that in all my years of D&D 3.5 I've seen all of one sorcerer pick Fireball. Fireball is just too narrow to be worth it for a sorcerer, who gets two to three level 3 spells known total. It's bad if things resist fire, if there's only one target, if you have multiple melee people (because your melee dudes are going to be worse at resisting your fireballs than most enemies), etcetera. Fireball is much more a Wizard spell, because it's a spell that can be very useful in narrow circumstances but also has a lot of circumstances where you don't want to cast it. Sorcerer level 3 spells known in D&D 3.5 tend to look a lot more like Dispel Magic/Fly/Major Image/etc. Things you know are never going to be bad and which you will want to have a metric shit ton of casts of because you can use them to solve a ton of different problems.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Did it have more undead then fey ? Wow you are right , The basement and first floor are fucking full of ghost guards that do stat damage ( from crippling strike so death ward does nothing) / have dispelling attack( cause fuck you that’s why) lotsof sneak attack damage and also have mages that instantly cast that plague cloud spell that does a lot of str damage and then spam cloud kill . Which since the melee ghosts dispel is kind of a concern. Not to mention spamming aoe fear. The bosses are so much easier then the normal enemies it’s ludicrous.
Wizards are the most open spellcasting class with the most systems to juggle. Realistically, every class needs 40-50 hours of play time to really figure out, and Wizards have multiple systems to work with. The problem most people have is that they take a bunch of cool-but-useless spells that end up largely doing nothing, and then you're stuck casting Acid or shooting a crossbow. Wizards really feel awful until level 3 or 4 unless you're very familiar with the class and know how to make up for the weaknesses.
Crafting scrolls in PF is pretty easy. You get Scribe Scroll for free at first level. Scrolls cost 25*spell level*caster level, so a 1st level scroll costs 25gp (and crafting halves this to 12.5). On any given day, even if you're literally sleeping 8 hours and fighting demons for 16 hours, the rules of the game let you spend four hours of 'off-screen downtime' to craft 2 hours of magical items. Basically, even if you don't have downtime, you get two hours of downtime, so long as you aren't doing something else with that off-screen downtime.
Even a 3rd level is only 187gp, so you can craft that in 2 hours. You can only create one magical item a day anyway, so no matter what, you can create one 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level scroll a day with no downtime.
Generally the optimal thing to do is to craft scrolls of all the edge-case narrow spells like Identify, Alarm, Comprehend Languages, etc. and use your prepared spells for combat stuff like Grease, Burning Hands and the like.
I found them to be not fun.
And this incredibly detailed discussion highlights the things I dislike about PF.
I don't want to spend untold RL hours poring over books to min-max my character, and the failure to do so to result in a useless character.
I want to cast a disguise spell, stroll up to the evil cultists' lair, claim to be there to check up on their lax security, prestidigitate up a relevant business card, and spend the rest of the session coming up with increasingly implausible lies to the cultists to explain away all the stuff we're doing that we're clearly not supposed to do.
And if there's combat I want it to be over quickly so I can get back to doing the fun stuff.
PF is not for me, is what I'm saying.
Pathfinder can 100% do that...with a DM. Its not Pathfinder you're not liking, its the inflexibility of a video game. A good DM would 100% allow you to try that. I mean, a good DM would also have it probably fail because bad guys should not be that dumb, but you should absolutely be allowed to try it.
The only other two things they publish is adventures, which are about 40/60 story and encounters, and a few lore books.
After 15 ish years of publishing monthly and making money on volume (Thats paizos strat) it is without a doubt a convoluted mess that is not wholly salvageable unless gms and players agree to limit themselves.
It is also not fast at all. Low level fights tend to be hp trades (and about setting up favorable trades), and high end is extremely volatile counter based where it ends when either some melee gets full attacks in or a caster successfully gets a crippling spell past defensive layers. Both take a lot of time to arbitrate.
Tabletop, having 1 hour rounds (so every player and enemy gets 1 turn) above level 10 is not crazy at all. Especially on large final fight scenarios. I played a level 17 fight yesterday, where 6 rounds took 3.5 hours online (which is faster if done correctly)
It's also extremely simulationist and as a consequence has endless rules for what you can and cannot do.
For instance, rules as written making a character good at disguising and bluffing is fairly trivial (a Mesmerist immediately comes to mind) but conjuring a fake business card is probably impossible, since casting a spell is by rules extremely noisy and noticeable, and afaik no spell does exactly what you want. Though my knowledge is not exhaustive.....
How good of one it’ll make is up to interpretation.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]