I like prepared casting for wizard because it makes you feel like you're the smarty mage who strategically measured what the goal is for the day. It's the class fantasy of having all the cooking ingredients you can greedily hog to yourself and then making something good or terrible based on your system mastery.
But also simultaneously I'm glad I've got a Ring of Spell Storing so I can just put 5 level 1 utility spells of value in it and not have it take up a quarter of my allowed preperations at level 17.
Yeah I like this in theory, but I feel like in practice it just ends up being wizards preparing the same damage spells every day (which will always be useful) and then maybe a couple of utility spells that they'll try and find a way to use.
I feel like if you could adjust that balance, or make it so the damage spells feel like they need to be more situational, you could get into a place I like with it. Like, every creature is strong to all but one damage type sort of thing, so you need to either do a little scrying at the beginning of the day to see what spells you should prepare, or instead just rely on utility style spells, make yourself useful in a more subtle way.
TBH this is why I think the D&D "fuck it wizards are basically spontaneous, just with a wider library," is more fun for me than PF2e. Though I've not got to play (just DM) a caster in PF2e.
Way more leeway to just strap fireball and magic missile and go "yeah damage is covered lemme do the sicko shit,"
I'd be down for a monster hunting style "You gotta have researched the target and prep the right damage," stuff but it'd be a very different game framework than D&D adventuring days.
I've played a PF2E Wizard, they're actually very good. The issue really isn't how many castings a day you have, it's quite easy to end up with a ton of them. The issue with PF2E spellcasting in general is that it's very difficult to find low-tier spells that maintain effectiveness throughout the campaign or even have any use at all later on. The primary reason for this is that the incap tag is a pariah for spell selection, but also there is no "caster level" pump-up for any spells, only cantrips get pumped up this way. So pretty quickly your level 1-3 spells are a worse option than just using a cantrip.
That's not quite right. Spells with static dice sizes, typically things that damage or heal, all scale based on spell slot rank, but effects that do saving throw status effect stuff scale purely off your spellcasting DC, which scales naturally with your level, so they don't need upranking bonuses and work pretty well in lower rank spell slots as well. And then utility stuff like illusions or slow fall or fly or whatever sometimes gets some benefits from being cast at a higher rank but mostly they're just as effective when cast at their low ranks. So at high levels, crowd control and utility are good uses for your lower rank slots.
Buff and debuff and utility spells usually get upranking bonuses that just say "at X rank this affects 10 people instead of 1" to save a list entry for "mass haste/charm/confuse" now that I think about it.
Yeah and I think that's really odd because not many of the usual mainstays of the D&D Wizard are very good in PF2e and have been depowered considerably. I assume to try and push people to find new spells to try, I'm not sure.
Grease is merely okay. Web is downright terrible. Haste is "meh". If you have a Ring of Wizardry or you're going Staff Nexus it's very difficult to do more with your Level 1 slots than to just prep True Strike a bunch of times and pair it with a damage cantrip as a 3-action routine. I found that to be pretty frustrating. I really despise using direct damage as an arcane spellcaster in general but that was, very quickly, the box I was in.
The only non-direct-damage spells I found to be useful tended to be summoning spells. Which, again, your top 2 ranks of spells are the only ones worth casting.
I dunno, it's been a little over a year now since I've been able to play, maybe the spell lists have gotten better since then.
Honestly, generally, spellcasters in PF2 just feel kind of not super useful? When I ran an adventure from 1 to 5 I basically spent like half of my prep time very carefully laying pins with a bunch of specific achilles heels to all the spells in my party Sorcerer's repertoire just so he could feel like he was vaguely useful. Like, if he hadn't been the guy with the Medicine he still would have been Least Valuable Player in a party of four people even with that, but with me actively lowering saves and putting in a bunch of enemies weak to his fire and AoE spells and occasionally fudging enemy rolls so they'd fail saves he was at least kind of contributing.
Like I was very distinctly reminded of trying to design encounters so the Barbarian felt like a valuable member of the team instead of an Also-There back in D&D 3.5.
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
I think the most obviously impactful spellcasting I've seen is when a spellcaster is able to either deal lots of total damage all at once by exploding a large group or apply debuffs to them en masse. Buff effects can also be good, but outside of doubling the strength of weapons at 1-3, they're mostly moving the numbers by 10-20%. Which definitely adds up, but not every fight is long enough that you care about a 20% boost to damage/survivability. If everything's going to drop in 2 rounds you have an issue of not feeling threatened enough to break out the big guns, and so you chip away while other classes get to just slam the gas every fight.
There's a significant difference in how good it feels to play casters when you have strong focus spells and such you get to reload every fight. Or something like Magus, who has a few big impactful spells each day but can hit things with a sword for massive damage too without expending resources... before looking at a boss fight and opening with a fireball that's almost as strong (the DC'll be slightly lower, but the damage is the same) as the wizard's.
Basically, using the big spell slots feels good, but a lot of the rest of the time you feel like you're stuck holding back because you don't want to burn your consumable nukes on the wrong fight. Martials and casters operate under fundamentally different resource paradigms in the end.
Although all that said? Glitterdusting an enemy group to make them all have a 20% miss chance is always good and I've had GMs visibly dejected as it starts eating hits and wasting actions for the cost of a single rank 2 spell. It's not as obvious as just blowing up half their total HP with a fireball, but then the GM gets a natural 20 and Dazzled robs them of it and you feel good. Playing a caster is a bit feast or famine, some days I feel ineffective, some days I feel like I'm in total control of everything, with the same character.
Typically every wizard had a fixed list with some slots left open to prepare mid-day, changing spells every day was a pain in the ass.
It's similar to a druid's wildshape (or at least how it used to be). You could choose any beast in the book, but my experience was you only chose the same of a small list anyways.
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
Grease:
1E: If you're in the 10ft square on cast, reflex save vs. falling prone. Walking through at half normal speed can be done with a DC10 acrobatics check; on fail you can't move (and need to save vs. prone), fail by 5+ and you auto-fall. If you don't move, you're fine.
2E: Similar to 1E in some respects, except... failing to balance doesn't knock you prone if you don't want to; they get to choose between Reflex and Acrobatics each time; and they can Step through (or crawl!) with no check needed.
Web:
1E: Reflex save or get grappled, with the 20ft spread being difficult terrain that webs you if you fail a combat maneuver or Escape Artist check when moving. It also provides Cover if there's at least 5ft of webs between you, and total cover if it's 20ft.
2E: Area is down to 10ft burst. Squares are still difficult terrain, but can be cleared with slashing damage rather than requiring fire. Duration is 1 min/level rather than 10/level. When you try to use a move action or enter with a move action, you make an Athletics check or Reflex save: on a success the movement clears webs from the squares you move through; on a failure you take a -10 penalty to speeds; and it's only on a critical failure that you're immobilized (and immobilization doesn't penalize attacks like grappled did in 1E).
Of course, these are both nerfed versions compared to the original busted 3.5 ones they were based on.
Grease: They need to make a Reflex save or fall, both when you cast it and if they're still in the area when your turn starts. They can walk through at half speed with a DC 10 Balance check (which most NPCs have, like, +0 to), with a failure meaning that they can't move (and then need to make a Reflex save or fall), and failing by 5 or more means that they just fall.
Web: if you save vs. Reflex, you're entangled and can only move 5ft for every 5 your check exceeded 10; if you fail the save, you can't move at all until you spend an entire round to make a DC 20 Strength or DC 25 Escape Artist check. (For most low-level enemies, that's basically never.)
In both cases, the fun bit is where saving throws just plain don't matter and thus they're excellent spells against creatures with low Dexterity or Strength. A creature with 9 or less Strength, and less than a +4 Escape Artist bonus, is just stuck for at least 30 minutes!
I've been doing some spellcasting in PF2e in a game recently, and yeah, low-level casting isn't great. some of it is adventure/system design that makes spellcasters less useful than they could be. All the spell lists have a bit of a gap in targeting different saves or AC - e.g. primal spell list has trouble targeting wisdom saves, and you need to figure out which save is weak in the first place most of the time, anyway. Casters work best (with offensive spells) against groups of lower level enemies, but martials will, too, with easier crits and being able to hit with multiple attack penalty against them. The hardest fights in the game are almost always going to be against higher level enemies, who will have better saves and be more likely to critically succeed (and thus not even take partial effect). On top of that, spellcasters don't really have ways to boost their spell Difficulty Check or Attack Bonus, and martial characters have limited ability to help spellcasters target saves outside of the occasional Demoralize or Bon Mot (the latter of which requires sharing a language with your target), or a few other scattered feats throughout the classes. Off-guard (renamed flat-footed) is an ubiquitous way to lower AC but spellcasters don't have many AC targeting spells
Has PF2e done anything to cut down on do-nothing spells? I'm playing the second PF game right now, and the spell lists just remind me of what I dislike most about old D&D (and honestly even 5E), there are so many super specific spells that affect like two of your 20 characteristics in some minor way. Oh, did your caster just level? Here's 50 more spells to choose from, they all kind of sound the same, guess which ones will be useful in the future.
I've always been told that Wizards are the OP-est of OP classes, but when I played PF 1e they were inferior to sorcerers in every way that counted. And boring as fuck.
Sure, wizards could learn every spell in the world, but could only cast the ones they had thought to prepare, and only once each (unless they give up another slot), so in practice you the player have to be psychic or you're left out to dry.
Ah, I hear you say, just write spell scrolls! Firstly, I did the math, and I could in no way afford it; loot was not enough. Secondly, it feels dumb; how much time would my character realistically spend frantically searching for the one scroll of feather fall in his 100-scroll pile of assorted useless spells? Thirdly, I did the math, and I did not have the time to scribe scrolls, get the requisite amount of sleep to refresh spells, and actually adventure. (As a corollary, all the other characters would get to have cool side adventures in the tavern or whatever while I was stuck in the room writing scrolls; too real.)
The big thing with wizards vs. sorcerers is that they get access to new spell levels one level sooner, and also (of course) just have way more spells available and thus can afford to know some niche ones that would be awful in a sorcerer's limited repertoire.
Also, important for those niche spells and the question of having to predict when you need them: you don't, actually.
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.
...Also also, when people talk about scribing scrolls it's generally about the lowest levels. 1st-level scrolls are just 25gp a pop (with the treasure per CR1 encounter being 260gp), after all, and you can scribe one every day with just two hours of free time. Note that "Any place suitable for preparing spells is suitable for making items", so your inn room or camp work just fine... and I think you'll generally have at least two hours to spare in the evening? Like, this is just a "the wizard works on scribing scrolls between dinner and bed" thing.
Of course, keep in mind that the big talk about the sorcerer just being worst than the wizard come from D&D 3.5, which is a very different beast from Pathfinder 1E in many ways. The Pathfinder sorcerer is a much better class, and the wizard was... somewhat pulled down in power.
I'd need to scribe a lot more than 1 scroll per day to give any sort of versatility/staying power/usefulness. I'd want 5–10 scrolls per day. That's 10–20 hours of sitting at a desk. And while a CR1 encounter might be 260 gp, I'm not the only member of the party. (Also, we always got items, none of which were helpful to my core problem of having no/wrong spells, and there aren't many friendly merchants in the middle of a goblin camp 3 days' ride from the nearest town.)
Maybe me and/or the GM were idiots/playing it wrong, but it was a miserable experience for me. I love spellcasters because I love versatility and finding cool uses for cool abilities. I picked the wizard as everyone said that was the most versatile spellcaster and could cast so many spells both in number and breadth. Never worked that way. PF1e sorcerer was much more fun.
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
See Neveron's breakdown above. Grease is still moderately useful but pretty quickly there's no reason to have it on your list, there are better spells at higher levels if you need an AoE control effect. What you need out of your Level 1's is some utility, and outside of True Strike, there isn't much there (and boy do I really hate True Strike + Cantrip being A Thing). Maybe a Pet Cache for your familiar or AC. A lot of spells that seem like they have some good utility require upcasting to be useful, as well.
And Web is just plain bad. Web used to be an encounter stopper, and I'm fully on board with nerfing it down from that, but it's just plain useless now. At best I'll prevent one monster from getting one extra swing in. That's not a good use of my turn if I'm trying to control the battlefield at all.
Also monsters have ridiculous saves in PF2E in general so for proper control you really need spells that will fuck them up a little bit on anything but a critical success. Web isn't good enough. Grease is decent. Mud Pit is okay. Fear is great but you more than likely have one or two people with some Cha in the party going down the Intimidation skill tree, which costs less actions, zero resources, and doesn't stack with Fear. (Heightened Fear is very good but so is Heightened everything).
Later on you get the really good control spells that literally reshape the battlefield, but then you have just no use at all for the lower level slots. You usually have enough high level slots to throw out a couple of high level spells per encounter, and then cantrip the shit out of everything else, and you'll end the day with a whole bunch of L1-3 slots that never got used.
I've always been told that Wizards are the OP-est of OP classes, but when I played PF 1e they were inferior to sorcerers in every way that counted. And boring as fuck.
Sure, wizards could learn every spell in the world, but could only cast the ones they had thought to prepare, and only once each (unless they give up another slot), so in practice you the player have to be psychic or you're left out to dry.
Ah, I hear you say, just write spell scrolls! Firstly, I did the math, and I could in no way afford it; loot was not enough. Secondly, it feels dumb; how much time would my character realistically spend frantically searching for the one scroll of feather fall in his 100-scroll pile of assorted useless spells? Thirdly, I did the math, and I did not have the time to scribe scrolls, get the requisite amount of sleep to refresh spells, and actually adventure. (As a corollary, all the other characters would get to have cool side adventures in the tavern or whatever while I was stuck in the room writing scrolls; too real.)
The big thing with wizards vs. sorcerers is that they get access to new spell levels one level sooner, and also (of course) just have way more spells available and thus can afford to know some niche ones that would be awful in a sorcerer's limited repertoire.
Also, important for those niche spells and the question of having to predict when you need them: you don't, actually.
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, he can repeat the preparation process as often as he likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. He cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because he has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of his spells.
...Also also, when people talk about scribing scrolls it's generally about the lowest levels. 1st-level scrolls are just 25gp a pop (with the treasure per CR1 encounter being 260gp), after all, and you can scribe one every day with just two hours of free time. Note that "Any place suitable for preparing spells is suitable for making items", so your inn room or camp work just fine... and I think you'll generally have at least two hours to spare in the evening? Like, this is just a "the wizard works on scribing scrolls between dinner and bed" thing.
Of course, keep in mind that the big talk about the sorcerer just being worst than the wizard come from D&D 3.5, which is a very different beast from Pathfinder 1E in many ways. The Pathfinder sorcerer is a much better class, and the wizard was... somewhat pulled down in power.
I'd need to scribe a lot more than 1 scroll per day to give any sort of versatility/staying power/usefulness. I'd want 5–10 scrolls per day. That's 10–20 hours of sitting at a desk. And while a CR1 encounter might be 260 gp, I'm not the only member of the party. (Also, we always got items, none of which were helpful to my core problem of having no/wrong spells, and there aren't many friendly merchants in the middle of a goblin camp 3 days' ride from the nearest town.)
Maybe me and/or the GM were idiots/playing it wrong, but it was a miserable experience for me. I love spellcasters because I love versatility and finding cool uses for cool abilities. I picked the wizard as everyone said that was the most versatile spellcaster and could cast so many spells both in number and breadth. Never worked that way. PF1e sorcerer was much more fun.
You can only scribe one scroll per day, sorry - there's hard limits on that in the magic item crafting rules. The rule exists so you can't spend 24 hours crafting the stuff that usually needs 8 hours, but it still applies to stuff that only takes 2 hours (like scrolls cheaper than 250gp).
On the other hand, IIRC the general suggestion for both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E was four encounters per day, and with PF1E's magic being what it is you only really need one or two crowd-control spells per encounter (e.g. the aforementioned Grease, which lets the rest of your party get free shots at the enemies) so, y'know. You pretty quickly get more slots than you need.
Scrolls are better saved for situational spells you can't be bothered to prepare. (Also, of course, you can just buy them with cash for twice the price.)
(Also, keep in mind that any argument about Wizards being OP or better than Sorcerers is going to be based on an entire campaign spanning probably level 1-12+. At level 1 every caster suffers from a lack of resources, but that quickly gets less relevant as you get to level 7+.)
Our final question for Lanzillo brought us back to the new Core Rulebooks and what she hoped fans would take away from it. "I'll use filthy Magic terminology first, but when you have a Magic card, and it's great, and you love it in your deck, and then a new one comes out, and it's strictly better, you're going to want to use it," Lanzillo said. "And I think that's what we want to see with the Core rulebooks. We want folks to look at the Warlock and think it's sick and say 'Of course we're going to use this Warlock.' The Blob of Annihilation has a skull of a god inside of it. That's pretty amazing."
What she is saying isn't wrong, but man it's a shitty way to say it. She could have highlighted things like making classes that had major issues better - why wouldn't you want to try out playing a good version of this bad class for once? But just saying "We took something good but now the new thing is better so buy the book like a good little consumer" is pretty insulting!
What she is saying isn't wrong, but man it's a shitty way to say it. She could have highlighted things like making classes that had major issues better - why wouldn't you want to try out playing a good version of this bad class for once? But just saying "We took something good but now the new thing is better so buy the book like a good little consumer" is pretty insulting!
Yeah it feels like it's an attempt to softball the updates and have it be like, "You don't need to buy these books, all of your existing stuff will still work." But phrased in that way it ends up imparting kind of the exact opposite message.
I guess it's nice to know for sure executives at wizards want to do power creep on purpose to sell more product and it's not an accident if you see it!
What she is saying isn't wrong, but man it's a shitty way to say it. She could have highlighted things like making classes that had major issues better - why wouldn't you want to try out playing a good version of this bad class for once? But just saying "We took something good but now the new thing is better so buy the book like a good little consumer" is pretty insulting!
I don't think it can be read as charitably as this because of the MTG card comparison
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
Grease:
1E: If you're in the 10ft square on cast, reflex save vs. falling prone. Walking through at half normal speed can be done with a DC10 acrobatics check; on fail you can't move (and need to save vs. prone), fail by 5+ and you auto-fall. If you don't move, you're fine.
2E: Similar to 1E in some respects, except... failing to balance doesn't knock you prone if you don't want to; they get to choose between Reflex and Acrobatics each time; and they can Step through (or crawl!) with no check needed.
Web:
1E: Reflex save or get grappled, with the 20ft spread being difficult terrain that webs you if you fail a combat maneuver or Escape Artist check when moving. It also provides Cover if there's at least 5ft of webs between you, and total cover if it's 20ft.
2E: Area is down to 10ft burst. Squares are still difficult terrain, but can be cleared with slashing damage rather than requiring fire. Duration is 1 min/level rather than 10/level. When you try to use a move action or enter with a move action, you make an Athletics check or Reflex save: on a success the movement clears webs from the squares you move through; on a failure you take a -10 penalty to speeds; and it's only on a critical failure that you're immobilized (and immobilization doesn't penalize attacks like grappled did in 1E).
Of course, these are both nerfed versions compared to the original busted 3.5 ones they were based on.
Grease: They need to make a Reflex save or fall, both when you cast it and if they're still in the area when your turn starts. They can walk through at half speed with a DC 10 Balance check (which most NPCs have, like, +0 to), with a failure meaning that they can't move (and then need to make a Reflex save or fall), and failing by 5 or more means that they just fall.
Web: if you save vs. Reflex, you're entangled and can only move 5ft for every 5 your check exceeded 10; if you fail the save, you can't move at all until you spend an entire round to make a DC 20 Strength or DC 25 Escape Artist check. (For most low-level enemies, that's basically never.)
In both cases, the fun bit is where saving throws just plain don't matter and thus they're excellent spells against creatures with low Dexterity or Strength. A creature with 9 or less Strength, and less than a +4 Escape Artist bonus, is just stuck for at least 30 minutes!
Remaster changed pf2e web to be entangling flora
range 120 feet
area all squares in 20foot burst
duration 1 minute
all squares are difficult terrain. each round creature starts its turn in the area it must attempt a reflex save. On a failure it takes -10 foot to speed until it leaves the area on a crit it is immobilized. Creatures can attempt the escape action to remove these effects.
So pretty useful to slow down enemies in a choke point area or to deny area. a 20 foot burst is pretty good sized foot print of difficult terrain. So anybody crossing into it immediately has movement halved unless they have some difficult terrain mobility advantage and you cannot step into/in/out of difficult terrain generally although some feats/abilities may change that. The Saves only kick in when you start in the area of effect so basically things you cast it directly on or people who tried to cross it and ran out of move. If they fail their save you have -10 foot to move speed and it is STILL difficult terrain so getting out of it after you fail your save is going to take either you escaping to clear that penalty or use all your actions and still may not clear the aoe. Also escape action clears the -10 foot speed or immobilize on crit failure it does NOT stop it from being difficult terrain. Also there is no wording for negating the effect using fire or slashing weapons any more.
Grease got remastered a bit but not as much as web. Grease is no longer a 10 foot square it is 4 contiguous squares. So you can potentially go for a wider or longer deployment to make things hit more squares of grease. Failing the save does knock you prone there does not look like an opt out any more. If you are already in the area of effect when it was cast good chance you wind up prone. If you are outside the range and are willing to move 5 feet per action you don't have to save/balance but if you are forced to cross through a thin hall and have 4 patches of grease in a line you ain't getting out of it that turn even if you burn all actions.
What she is saying isn't wrong, but man it's a shitty way to say it. She could have highlighted things like making classes that had major issues better - why wouldn't you want to try out playing a good version of this bad class for once? But just saying "We took something good but now the new thing is better so buy the book like a good little consumer" is pretty insulting!
I don't think it can be read as charitably as this because of the MTG card comparison
Oh I'm not reading it charitably at all, I think she said exactly what she means. I'm just aware that there's a better, less patronizing way to try and sell rules updates.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
"You can totally play the old versions of classes, just like how it's legal to play Craw Wurm in your Commander deck!"
(Craw Wurm is an ancient card that used to be a scary example of a big creature but is now way too mana hungry for it's size and more importantly, doesn't do anything. You'd be an idiot to play it these days).
Anyone here try out Shadowdark yet? Seems like it got a lot of love at the Ennies, and I can see the appeal of a hack and slash system with modern polish.
"You can totally play the old versions of classes, just like how it's legal to play Craw Wurm in your Commander deck!"
(Craw Wurm is an ancient card that used to be a scary example of a big creature but is now way too mana hungry for it's size and more importantly, doesn't do anything. You'd be an idiot to play it these days).
Hey! Craw Wurm is okay in my wife's Ruxa Commander deck.
I'm just kidding even with Ruxa it doesn't make the cut, it's too fucking expensive.
"You can totally play the old versions of classes, just like how it's legal to play Craw Wurm in your Commander deck!"
(Craw Wurm is an ancient card that used to be a scary example of a big creature but is now way too mana hungry for it's size and more importantly, doesn't do anything. You'd be an idiot to play it these days).
tbf you would’ve been an idiot to play Craw Wurm when it was new. We were just all idiots.
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
Grease:
1E: If you're in the 10ft square on cast, reflex save vs. falling prone. Walking through at half normal speed can be done with a DC10 acrobatics check; on fail you can't move (and need to save vs. prone), fail by 5+ and you auto-fall. If you don't move, you're fine.
2E: Similar to 1E in some respects, except... failing to balance doesn't knock you prone if you don't want to; they get to choose between Reflex and Acrobatics each time; and they can Step through (or crawl!) with no check needed.
Web:
1E: Reflex save or get grappled, with the 20ft spread being difficult terrain that webs you if you fail a combat maneuver or Escape Artist check when moving. It also provides Cover if there's at least 5ft of webs between you, and total cover if it's 20ft.
2E: Area is down to 10ft burst. Squares are still difficult terrain, but can be cleared with slashing damage rather than requiring fire. Duration is 1 min/level rather than 10/level. When you try to use a move action or enter with a move action, you make an Athletics check or Reflex save: on a success the movement clears webs from the squares you move through; on a failure you take a -10 penalty to speeds; and it's only on a critical failure that you're immobilized (and immobilization doesn't penalize attacks like grappled did in 1E).
Of course, these are both nerfed versions compared to the original busted 3.5 ones they were based on.
Grease: They need to make a Reflex save or fall, both when you cast it and if they're still in the area when your turn starts. They can walk through at half speed with a DC 10 Balance check (which most NPCs have, like, +0 to), with a failure meaning that they can't move (and then need to make a Reflex save or fall), and failing by 5 or more means that they just fall.
Web: if you save vs. Reflex, you're entangled and can only move 5ft for every 5 your check exceeded 10; if you fail the save, you can't move at all until you spend an entire round to make a DC 20 Strength or DC 25 Escape Artist check. (For most low-level enemies, that's basically never.)
In both cases, the fun bit is where saving throws just plain don't matter and thus they're excellent spells against creatures with low Dexterity or Strength. A creature with 9 or less Strength, and less than a +4 Escape Artist bonus, is just stuck for at least 30 minutes!
Remaster changed pf2e web to be entangling flora
range 120 feet
area all squares in 20foot burst
duration 1 minute
all squares are difficult terrain. each round creature starts its turn in the area it must attempt a reflex save. On a failure it takes -10 foot to speed until it leaves the area on a crit it is immobilized. Creatures can attempt the escape action to remove these effects.
So pretty useful to slow down enemies in a choke point area or to deny area. a 20 foot burst is pretty good sized foot print of difficult terrain. So anybody crossing into it immediately has movement halved unless they have some difficult terrain mobility advantage and you cannot step into/in/out of difficult terrain generally although some feats/abilities may change that. The Saves only kick in when you start in the area of effect so basically things you cast it directly on or people who tried to cross it and ran out of move. If they fail their save you have -10 foot to move speed and it is STILL difficult terrain so getting out of it after you fail your save is going to take either you escaping to clear that penalty or use all your actions and still may not clear the aoe. Also escape action clears the -10 foot speed or immobilize on crit failure it does NOT stop it from being difficult terrain. Also there is no wording for negating the effect using fire or slashing weapons any more.
Grease got remastered a bit but not as much as web. Grease is no longer a 10 foot square it is 4 contiguous squares. So you can potentially go for a wider or longer deployment to make things hit more squares of grease. Failing the save does knock you prone there does not look like an opt out any more. If you are already in the area of effect when it was cast good chance you wind up prone. If you are outside the range and are willing to move 5 feet per action you don't have to save/balance but if you are forced to cross through a thin hall and have 4 patches of grease in a line you ain't getting out of it that turn even if you burn all actions.
Those do sound like good upgrades to those spells, that makes me very happy to hear.
It does look like Entangling Flora is actually a remaster of both Entangle and Web, though, and they just threw them together to be one spell. Which cuts down on the spell glut and that makes me happy to see, too.
I think I might have to have a discussion with my players about cutting down on legacy content and see if that just helps them in general, I had no idea they were editing how these spells were working to this degree.
I think you D&Ders should wait for the foil core rule book.
What I love about tabletop RPGs is their similarity to collectable card games. Which is why I won’t go back to D&D until they have collectable, sealed, and randomized splat books. If you’re lucky you can open “Strictly better wizard” but most of the packs will feature “Strictly worse rogue”. Looking forward to starting up the D&D finance Reddit where I pretend to make money reselling rare and collectable character options.
+2
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I think you D&Ders should wait for the foil core rule book.
What I love about tabletop RPGs is their similarity to collectable card games. Which is why I won’t go back to D&D until they have collectable, sealed, and randomized splat books. If you’re lucky you can open “Strictly better wizard” but most of the packs will feature “Strictly worse rogue”. Looking forward to starting up the D&D finance Reddit where I pretend to make money reselling rare and collectable character options.
"Another 5E Beastmaster Ranger?! This game fuckin' sucks. I hate this!!"
The math has not changed significantly on spells in the remaster, no, Grease et al are as they were. PF2E grease and web don't seem particularly bad to me though? What's wrong with them compared to the D&D version? I'm unfamiliar.
Grease:
1E: If you're in the 10ft square on cast, reflex save vs. falling prone. Walking through at half normal speed can be done with a DC10 acrobatics check; on fail you can't move (and need to save vs. prone), fail by 5+ and you auto-fall. If you don't move, you're fine.
2E: Similar to 1E in some respects, except... failing to balance doesn't knock you prone if you don't want to; they get to choose between Reflex and Acrobatics each time; and they can Step through (or crawl!) with no check needed.
Web:
1E: Reflex save or get grappled, with the 20ft spread being difficult terrain that webs you if you fail a combat maneuver or Escape Artist check when moving. It also provides Cover if there's at least 5ft of webs between you, and total cover if it's 20ft.
2E: Area is down to 10ft burst. Squares are still difficult terrain, but can be cleared with slashing damage rather than requiring fire. Duration is 1 min/level rather than 10/level. When you try to use a move action or enter with a move action, you make an Athletics check or Reflex save: on a success the movement clears webs from the squares you move through; on a failure you take a -10 penalty to speeds; and it's only on a critical failure that you're immobilized (and immobilization doesn't penalize attacks like grappled did in 1E).
Of course, these are both nerfed versions compared to the original busted 3.5 ones they were based on.
Grease: They need to make a Reflex save or fall, both when you cast it and if they're still in the area when your turn starts. They can walk through at half speed with a DC 10 Balance check (which most NPCs have, like, +0 to), with a failure meaning that they can't move (and then need to make a Reflex save or fall), and failing by 5 or more means that they just fall.
Web: if you save vs. Reflex, you're entangled and can only move 5ft for every 5 your check exceeded 10; if you fail the save, you can't move at all until you spend an entire round to make a DC 20 Strength or DC 25 Escape Artist check. (For most low-level enemies, that's basically never.)
In both cases, the fun bit is where saving throws just plain don't matter and thus they're excellent spells against creatures with low Dexterity or Strength. A creature with 9 or less Strength, and less than a +4 Escape Artist bonus, is just stuck for at least 30 minutes!
Remaster changed pf2e web to be entangling flora
range 120 feet
area all squares in 20foot burst
duration 1 minute
all squares are difficult terrain. each round creature starts its turn in the area it must attempt a reflex save. On a failure it takes -10 foot to speed until it leaves the area on a crit it is immobilized. Creatures can attempt the escape action to remove these effects.
So pretty useful to slow down enemies in a choke point area or to deny area. a 20 foot burst is pretty good sized foot print of difficult terrain. So anybody crossing into it immediately has movement halved unless they have some difficult terrain mobility advantage and you cannot step into/in/out of difficult terrain generally although some feats/abilities may change that. The Saves only kick in when you start in the area of effect so basically things you cast it directly on or people who tried to cross it and ran out of move. If they fail their save you have -10 foot to move speed and it is STILL difficult terrain so getting out of it after you fail your save is going to take either you escaping to clear that penalty or use all your actions and still may not clear the aoe. Also escape action clears the -10 foot speed or immobilize on crit failure it does NOT stop it from being difficult terrain. Also there is no wording for negating the effect using fire or slashing weapons any more.
Grease got remastered a bit but not as much as web. Grease is no longer a 10 foot square it is 4 contiguous squares. So you can potentially go for a wider or longer deployment to make things hit more squares of grease. Failing the save does knock you prone there does not look like an opt out any more. If you are already in the area of effect when it was cast good chance you wind up prone. If you are outside the range and are willing to move 5 feet per action you don't have to save/balance but if you are forced to cross through a thin hall and have 4 patches of grease in a line you ain't getting out of it that turn even if you burn all actions.
Those do sound like good upgrades to those spells, that makes me very happy to hear.
It does look like Entangling Flora is actually a remaster of both Entangle and Web, though, and they just threw them together to be one spell. Which cuts down on the spell glut and that makes me happy to see, too.
I think I might have to have a discussion with my players about cutting down on legacy content and see if that just helps them in general, I had no idea they were editing how these spells were working to this degree.
Yup a bunch of things were changed merged to get rid of OGL stuff. Any real OGL spell got some level of rework some are just name changes some are much deeper. Also one note on the duration of 1 minute basically in PF2e it seems like their once per fight stuff is 1 minute duration and most fights typically are expected to last one minute/equivalent game time. So a spell with a one minute duration is basically one that they expect once it is cast will not require recasting to last for the fight.
Yeah 1 minute is same as d&d, 10 approximately-6-seconds rounds, it'd have to be an extremely long encounter to take longer than that. They could just write "until end of emcounter" I suppose when they write 1 minute durations.
Yeah 1 minute is same as d&d, 10 approximately-6-seconds rounds, it'd have to be an extremely long encounter to take longer than that. They could just write "until end of emcounter" I suppose when they write 1 minute durations.
I think they do it that way to just prevent out of combat cheesing so you can do it out of combat but it lasts a minute so /shrug. Also you could get some epic boss fight that takes longer but in general things that last 1 minute generally are your last until the end of battle thing.
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
The six second round might be one of the silliest things about Dungeons & Dragons
Anyone here try out Shadowdark yet? Seems like it got a lot of love at the Ennies, and I can see the appeal of a hack and slash system with modern polish.
I skimmed it awhile back, but only in pdf so it wasn’t final.
It seems by the book for the most part, with the standout rule being that you set a 60 minute timer in real life for your torches, and they go out regardless of in-game time. This stresses speed when delving in a dark place, which is what the game wants.
Other than that it’s 60+ pages of house rules for very old school roleplaying. Stuff like getting experience not just from looting gold, but by spending it on getting drunk at the tavern… then you roll on a table with bonuses per how much coin you put down, which can lead to every player getting different amounts of experience, which is interesting.
If you look at this cheat sheet you’ll know if you’ve heard this one before:
As with a lot of old school games, it might be worth looking into how active its community is. If it’s got a lot of zines being published right now and you like this particular take on a well trodden fantasy, go for it.
The six second round might be one of the silliest things about Dungeons & Dragons
Yeah it is a super arbitrary construct that I think mostly exists to prevent out of combat cheese use of combat spells. The bulk of combat spells just don't last long enough to be very problematic out of combat.
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Yeah and I think that's really odd because not many of the usual mainstays of the D&D Wizard are very good in PF2e and have been depowered considerably. I assume to try and push people to find new spells to try, I'm not sure.
Grease is merely okay. Web is downright terrible. Haste is "meh". If you have a Ring of Wizardry or you're going Staff Nexus it's very difficult to do more with your Level 1 slots than to just prep True Strike a bunch of times and pair it with a damage cantrip as a 3-action routine. I found that to be pretty frustrating. I really despise using direct damage as an arcane spellcaster in general but that was, very quickly, the box I was in.
The only non-direct-damage spells I found to be useful tended to be summoning spells. Which, again, your top 2 ranks of spells are the only ones worth casting.
I dunno, it's been a little over a year now since I've been able to play, maybe the spell lists have gotten better since then.
Like I was very distinctly reminded of trying to design encounters so the Barbarian felt like a valuable member of the team instead of an Also-There back in D&D 3.5.
There's a significant difference in how good it feels to play casters when you have strong focus spells and such you get to reload every fight. Or something like Magus, who has a few big impactful spells each day but can hit things with a sword for massive damage too without expending resources... before looking at a boss fight and opening with a fireball that's almost as strong (the DC'll be slightly lower, but the damage is the same) as the wizard's.
Basically, using the big spell slots feels good, but a lot of the rest of the time you feel like you're stuck holding back because you don't want to burn your consumable nukes on the wrong fight. Martials and casters operate under fundamentally different resource paradigms in the end.
Although all that said? Glitterdusting an enemy group to make them all have a 20% miss chance is always good and I've had GMs visibly dejected as it starts eating hits and wasting actions for the cost of a single rank 2 spell. It's not as obvious as just blowing up half their total HP with a fireball, but then the GM gets a natural 20 and Dazzled robs them of it and you feel good. Playing a caster is a bit feast or famine, some days I feel ineffective, some days I feel like I'm in total control of everything, with the same character.
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It's similar to a druid's wildshape (or at least how it used to be). You could choose any beast in the book, but my experience was you only chose the same of a small list anyways.
Grease:
1E: If you're in the 10ft square on cast, reflex save vs. falling prone. Walking through at half normal speed can be done with a DC10 acrobatics check; on fail you can't move (and need to save vs. prone), fail by 5+ and you auto-fall. If you don't move, you're fine.
2E: Similar to 1E in some respects, except... failing to balance doesn't knock you prone if you don't want to; they get to choose between Reflex and Acrobatics each time; and they can Step through (or crawl!) with no check needed.
Web:
1E: Reflex save or get grappled, with the 20ft spread being difficult terrain that webs you if you fail a combat maneuver or Escape Artist check when moving. It also provides Cover if there's at least 5ft of webs between you, and total cover if it's 20ft.
2E: Area is down to 10ft burst. Squares are still difficult terrain, but can be cleared with slashing damage rather than requiring fire. Duration is 1 min/level rather than 10/level. When you try to use a move action or enter with a move action, you make an Athletics check or Reflex save: on a success the movement clears webs from the squares you move through; on a failure you take a -10 penalty to speeds; and it's only on a critical failure that you're immobilized (and immobilization doesn't penalize attacks like grappled did in 1E).
Of course, these are both nerfed versions compared to the original busted 3.5 ones they were based on.
Grease: They need to make a Reflex save or fall, both when you cast it and if they're still in the area when your turn starts. They can walk through at half speed with a DC 10 Balance check (which most NPCs have, like, +0 to), with a failure meaning that they can't move (and then need to make a Reflex save or fall), and failing by 5 or more means that they just fall.
Web: if you save vs. Reflex, you're entangled and can only move 5ft for every 5 your check exceeded 10; if you fail the save, you can't move at all until you spend an entire round to make a DC 20 Strength or DC 25 Escape Artist check. (For most low-level enemies, that's basically never.)
In both cases, the fun bit is where saving throws just plain don't matter and thus they're excellent spells against creatures with low Dexterity or Strength. A creature with 9 or less Strength, and less than a +4 Escape Artist bonus, is just stuck for at least 30 minutes!
Well why not deploy Nick Cave’s Soundsuits (2010)? There you go.
I'd need to scribe a lot more than 1 scroll per day to give any sort of versatility/staying power/usefulness. I'd want 5–10 scrolls per day. That's 10–20 hours of sitting at a desk. And while a CR1 encounter might be 260 gp, I'm not the only member of the party. (Also, we always got items, none of which were helpful to my core problem of having no/wrong spells, and there aren't many friendly merchants in the middle of a goblin camp 3 days' ride from the nearest town.)
Maybe me and/or the GM were idiots/playing it wrong, but it was a miserable experience for me. I love spellcasters because I love versatility and finding cool uses for cool abilities. I picked the wizard as everyone said that was the most versatile spellcaster and could cast so many spells both in number and breadth. Never worked that way. PF1e sorcerer was much more fun.
See Neveron's breakdown above. Grease is still moderately useful but pretty quickly there's no reason to have it on your list, there are better spells at higher levels if you need an AoE control effect. What you need out of your Level 1's is some utility, and outside of True Strike, there isn't much there (and boy do I really hate True Strike + Cantrip being A Thing). Maybe a Pet Cache for your familiar or AC. A lot of spells that seem like they have some good utility require upcasting to be useful, as well.
And Web is just plain bad. Web used to be an encounter stopper, and I'm fully on board with nerfing it down from that, but it's just plain useless now. At best I'll prevent one monster from getting one extra swing in. That's not a good use of my turn if I'm trying to control the battlefield at all.
Also monsters have ridiculous saves in PF2E in general so for proper control you really need spells that will fuck them up a little bit on anything but a critical success. Web isn't good enough. Grease is decent. Mud Pit is okay. Fear is great but you more than likely have one or two people with some Cha in the party going down the Intimidation skill tree, which costs less actions, zero resources, and doesn't stack with Fear. (Heightened Fear is very good but so is Heightened everything).
Later on you get the really good control spells that literally reshape the battlefield, but then you have just no use at all for the lower level slots. You usually have enough high level slots to throw out a couple of high level spells per encounter, and then cantrip the shit out of everything else, and you'll end the day with a whole bunch of L1-3 slots that never got used.
You can only scribe one scroll per day, sorry - there's hard limits on that in the magic item crafting rules. The rule exists so you can't spend 24 hours crafting the stuff that usually needs 8 hours, but it still applies to stuff that only takes 2 hours (like scrolls cheaper than 250gp).
On the other hand, IIRC the general suggestion for both D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E was four encounters per day, and with PF1E's magic being what it is you only really need one or two crowd-control spells per encounter (e.g. the aforementioned Grease, which lets the rest of your party get free shots at the enemies) so, y'know. You pretty quickly get more slots than you need.
Scrolls are better saved for situational spells you can't be bothered to prepare. (Also, of course, you can just buy them with cash for twice the price.)
(Also, keep in mind that any argument about Wizards being OP or better than Sorcerers is going to be based on an entire campaign spanning probably level 1-12+. At level 1 every caster suffers from a lack of resources, but that quickly gets less relevant as you get to level 7+.)
https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-jess-lanzillo-interview-2025-plans-core-rulebooks-crossover/
They did it, they figured it out. They solved fun.
If only we had decades of evidence that power creep was a fucking terrible idea.
Oh wait, 3.0-3.5-PF1 exists.
Yeah it feels like it's an attempt to softball the updates and have it be like, "You don't need to buy these books, all of your existing stuff will still work." But phrased in that way it ends up imparting kind of the exact opposite message.
I guess it's nice to know for sure executives at wizards want to do power creep on purpose to sell more product and it's not an accident if you see it!
I don't think it can be read as charitably as this because of the MTG card comparison
Remaster changed pf2e web to be entangling flora
range 120 feet
area all squares in 20foot burst
duration 1 minute
all squares are difficult terrain. each round creature starts its turn in the area it must attempt a reflex save. On a failure it takes -10 foot to speed until it leaves the area on a crit it is immobilized. Creatures can attempt the escape action to remove these effects.
So pretty useful to slow down enemies in a choke point area or to deny area. a 20 foot burst is pretty good sized foot print of difficult terrain. So anybody crossing into it immediately has movement halved unless they have some difficult terrain mobility advantage and you cannot step into/in/out of difficult terrain generally although some feats/abilities may change that. The Saves only kick in when you start in the area of effect so basically things you cast it directly on or people who tried to cross it and ran out of move. If they fail their save you have -10 foot to move speed and it is STILL difficult terrain so getting out of it after you fail your save is going to take either you escaping to clear that penalty or use all your actions and still may not clear the aoe. Also escape action clears the -10 foot speed or immobilize on crit failure it does NOT stop it from being difficult terrain. Also there is no wording for negating the effect using fire or slashing weapons any more.
Grease got remastered a bit but not as much as web. Grease is no longer a 10 foot square it is 4 contiguous squares. So you can potentially go for a wider or longer deployment to make things hit more squares of grease. Failing the save does knock you prone there does not look like an opt out any more. If you are already in the area of effect when it was cast good chance you wind up prone. If you are outside the range and are willing to move 5 feet per action you don't have to save/balance but if you are forced to cross through a thin hall and have 4 patches of grease in a line you ain't getting out of it that turn even if you burn all actions.
Oh I'm not reading it charitably at all, I think she said exactly what she means. I'm just aware that there's a better, less patronizing way to try and sell rules updates.
(Craw Wurm is an ancient card that used to be a scary example of a big creature but is now way too mana hungry for it's size and more importantly, doesn't do anything. You'd be an idiot to play it these days).
Hey! Craw Wurm is okay in my wife's Ruxa Commander deck.
I'm just kidding even with Ruxa it doesn't make the cut, it's too fucking expensive.
tbf you would’ve been an idiot to play Craw Wurm when it was new. We were just all idiots.
Those do sound like good upgrades to those spells, that makes me very happy to hear.
It does look like Entangling Flora is actually a remaster of both Entangle and Web, though, and they just threw them together to be one spell. Which cuts down on the spell glut and that makes me happy to see, too.
I think I might have to have a discussion with my players about cutting down on legacy content and see if that just helps them in general, I had no idea they were editing how these spells were working to this degree.
Great art, big fat power/toughness, what's not to love
What I love about tabletop RPGs is their similarity to collectable card games. Which is why I won’t go back to D&D until they have collectable, sealed, and randomized splat books. If you’re lucky you can open “Strictly better wizard” but most of the packs will feature “Strictly worse rogue”. Looking forward to starting up the D&D finance Reddit where I pretend to make money reselling rare and collectable character options.
"Another 5E Beastmaster Ranger?! This game fuckin' sucks. I hate this!!"
Yup a bunch of things were changed merged to get rid of OGL stuff. Any real OGL spell got some level of rework some are just name changes some are much deeper. Also one note on the duration of 1 minute basically in PF2e it seems like their once per fight stuff is 1 minute duration and most fights typically are expected to last one minute/equivalent game time. So a spell with a one minute duration is basically one that they expect once it is cast will not require recasting to last for the fight.
I think they do it that way to just prevent out of combat cheesing so you can do it out of combat but it lasts a minute so /shrug. Also you could get some epic boss fight that takes longer but in general things that last 1 minute generally are your last until the end of battle thing.
I skimmed it awhile back, but only in pdf so it wasn’t final.
It seems by the book for the most part, with the standout rule being that you set a 60 minute timer in real life for your torches, and they go out regardless of in-game time. This stresses speed when delving in a dark place, which is what the game wants.
Other than that it’s 60+ pages of house rules for very old school roleplaying. Stuff like getting experience not just from looting gold, but by spending it on getting drunk at the tavern… then you roll on a table with bonuses per how much coin you put down, which can lead to every player getting different amounts of experience, which is interesting.
If you look at this cheat sheet you’ll know if you’ve heard this one before:
As with a lot of old school games, it might be worth looking into how active its community is. If it’s got a lot of zines being published right now and you like this particular take on a well trodden fantasy, go for it.
Yeah it is a super arbitrary construct that I think mostly exists to prevent out of combat cheese use of combat spells. The bulk of combat spells just don't last long enough to be very problematic out of combat.