Looking At The Pathfinder 2 Wizard Class

Yesterday's Pathfinder 2 playtest update at the Paizo website talked about the Wizard class for the game.

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It looks like the wizard is going to start out with plenty of options for players. "[FONT=&amp]At 1st level, you begin play with a spellbook containing 10 cantrips and eight 1st-level spells, giving you a wide variety of spells to draw upon when you prepare your magic each morning. Starting out, you can prepare four cantrips and two 1st-level spells each day. In addition, you also select your arcane school at 1st level, which grants you one extra spell slot of each level that you can use only to prepare a spell from your chosen school.[/FONT][FONT=&amp]" They also talk about one of the special abilities of the wizard, "[/FONT][FONT=&amp]Speaking of which, all wizards gain the ability to place some of their power into a designated item called an arcane focus. You can drain the power from that focus once per day to cast any one spell that you have already cast without spending another spell slot. Universalists get to use this ability once for each level of spell that they can cast![/FONT][FONT=&amp]"[/FONT]
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They also give us a look at some magic, including the ever popular Magic Missile.

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It looks like they're going to play with the options that are available to the class as well, making the wizard a bit more flexible. This is one of those classes that attracts a lot of controversy, so I am sure that someone​ will be unhappy with the decisions that they're going to make for the class.

 

[zztong]

I feel I need to show my own inconsistency.

For many years I played and wrote for Hero Games, and the Champions game. "Special Effect" is king in that system. A "magic" superhero might call his 12d6 Energy Blast and "Arcane Bolt" while a energy user might call his 12d6 Energy Blast his "Magnum Electric Distruption Ray." That worked for Champions. I guess folks playing that game could embrace the differences entirely on special effect. Maybe it was because they had a gazillion options for building their character.

Yet, for a D&D (or D&D-like) game, I have not always been able to embrace a "special effect" difference. Maybe it relates to how much it happens. Maybe just because there's a grognard/curmudgeon bias in me related to what makes D&D, D&D.

Whatever the difference, I must admit its not rational. Yet it colors my feelings, my choices, my opinions.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Anyone here play the DDCRPG? The magic user class is totally different! Every time you cast a spell, you roll on a chart to see what the spell does!

 

[pemerton]

Many classes seemed to have some power that led us to put a little ring around a target for a round, such that the mini's often had 2-3 color rings on them.

If the claim is that the classes are all the same because fighters can daze with a hard blow, rogues blind by throwing mud in a foe's eyes, etc, well I guess all I can say is that I don't get it.

Back in 1990 I started playing RM rather than AD&D in part because warriors in that system could inflict effects (stuns, debuffs, and the like) with successful attacks. The idea that you need to use magic to burden an opponent's actions strikes me as quite strange. In the real world there is no magic, and yet many people find themselves dazed, slowed, blinded etc in combat.

 

[zztong]

If the claim is that the classes are all the same because fighters can daze with a hard blow, rogues blind by throwing mud in a foe's eyes, etc, well I guess all I can say is that I don't get it.

Well that isn't what I'm struggling to convey with my admittedly vague notions and memories. I probably shouldn't have even commented given my inadequacy at being able to make a strong reference. Alas, another try.

If the Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue all have a class mechanic that does 2d8 damage and moves the opponent back two squares, why have four classes? Is the different special effect enough of a reason?

 

[pemerton]

If the Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Rogue all have a class mechanic that does 2d8 damage and moves the opponent back two squares, why have four classes? Is the different special effect enough of a reason?

But the fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue don't all have that ability. Which is why I asked what class builds and powers you had in mind.

In all versions of D&D, every class has the ability to declare an action in combat (typically either a weapon attack, a device use, or a spell cast) which then typically (not always) requires a d20 throw to determine if it takes effect (either a to hit roll by one party, or a saving throw by another) and which, it it takes effect, inflicts damage and/or a condition.

I've never heard anyone suggest that this makes the difference between fighters, clerics, MUs, etc pointless.

4e puts those abilities into a common suit for recovery purposes. That's a change. And it allows non-spell users to impose conditions. That's also a change (although some D&D variants anticipated it, eg OA martial arts). But the basic idea that the typical combat action is a d20 roll to impose damage and/or conditions is not a change.

EDIT: To try and swing back a bit closer to the thread topic, one could ask what is necessary for a class to "feel like" a D&D/PF wizard:

* Should trigger saving throws rather than use attack rolls;

* Should have superior access to condition infliction compared to "martial" types;

* Should have a mechanically distinctive resource suite.​

5e D&D seem to hit at least the first two, and tends towards the third. Obviously 4e departed from the first and third, and had less of the second as well.

 

[zztong]

But the fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue don't all have that ability. Which is why I asked what class builds and powers you had in mind.

Yeh, I'm going to have to just withdraw my point. It was based on vague memories of a game system played too long ago. Sorry for wasting folks time.

To try and swing back a bit closer to the thread topic, one could ask what is necessary for a class to "feel like" a D&D/PF wizard:

I might add:

* Mechanical Areas of Effect.
* Walls or Barriers with larger areas of effect.
* Management of a spell book and management of limited casting ability.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I regret I cannot be specific. Its been too long. Everyone had healing surges. Many classes seemed to have some power that led us to put a little ring around a target for a round, such that the mini's often had 2-3 color rings on them.

Generally speaking, powers in 4E deal damage and either move someone around or apply a condition. Almost every character should have a way of applying a condition of one sort or another, unless you specifically went out of your way to avoid it.

One of the issues with 4E is that they completely divorced the mechanics from the underlying reality which those mechanics were intended to reflect, so if you applied the Blinded condition to someone, it didn't necessarily mean that you actually blinded them within the narrative. Literally, one of the selling points of the edition was that you could describe anything in any way you felt like, as long as the mechanics didn't change.

The up-shot to that was your characters weren't actually doing different things. They were all just dealing damage and applying conditions, most of which would be removed after a saving throw or at the end of combat. There's no underlying reality which grants significance to those distinctions; the true shape of that reality is just damage and conditions, and everything else is superficial. If the difference between the Wizard class and the Rogue class is that Wizards are better at applying Slow effects and Rogues are better at applying Bleed effects, then that doesn't actually mean anything within the world, because Slow and Bleed are just status conditions rather than representative of any particular reality.

 

[zztong]

One of the issues with 4E is that they completely divorced the mechanics from the underlying reality which those mechanics were intended to reflect, so if you applied the Blinded condition to someone, it didn't necessarily mean that you actually blinded them within the narrative. Literally, one of the selling points of the edition was that you could describe anything in any way you felt like, as long as the mechanics didn't change.

For some reason that I cannot figure out, the separation of "special effect" and mechanic was pleasing to me with Champions, but not with 4e. Maybe because Champions (aka the Hero System) was classless, so the players got to build their powers. Maybe because it was super heroes and pretty much any special effect fit in, where as D&D is some degree of medieval fantasy where no two people ever quite manage to share the same vision.

I dunno.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

For some reason that I cannot figure out, the separation of "special effect" and mechanic was pleasing to me with Champions, but not with 4e. Maybe because Champions (aka the Hero System) was classless, so the players got to build their powers. Maybe because it was super heroes and pretty much any special effect fit in, where as D&D is some degree of medieval fantasy where no two people ever quite manage to share the same vision.

I dunno.

When you played Champions, did you design powers by going from cause to effect? Or did you do as in 4E, where effect precedes (and supersedes) cause?

I've never played Champions, but I have played a lot of GURPS, and I always designed things by starting out with the in-game reality I was trying to model and then moving on to figure what the correct and most-accurate way of modeling it would be. If I wanted to build a lightning power, I would start with imagining what it looks like in order to determine its area, and then I would apply the additional effects which seemed appropriate for lightning. It's the same way I would have invented a new spell in AD&D. I definitely didn't start by thinking about how much damage I wanted it to deal, and with which effects, and then work backwards to try and justify what sort of ability would do that.

 

[zztong]

When you played Champions, did you design powers by going from cause to effect? Or did you do as in 4E, where effect precedes (and supersedes) cause?

I've never played Champions, but I have played a lot of GURPS, and I always designed things by starting out with the in-game reality I was trying to model and then moving on to figure what the correct and most-accurate way of modeling it would be. If I wanted to build a lightning power, I would start with imagining what it looks like in order to determine its area, and then I would apply the additional effects which seemed appropriate for lightning. It's the same way I would have invented a new spell in AD&D. I definitely didn't start by thinking about how much damage I wanted it to deal, and with which effects, and then work backwards to try and justify what sort of ability would do that.

Ideally, you think of the effect and then model it using the various powers, advantages, and limitations. Practically, a veteran player knew they needed certain investments of points to make a power that was likely to hurt an opponent, so you took the ideal and scaled it.

So, building a lightning power you might select "Energy Blast" as the base power. You might say that it isn't as effective against opponents that are underwater. You would likely say it needed to be a total of 12d6 of damage to be a mainline power. So, you'd probably buy 6d6 Energy Blast and an additional 6d6 of Energy Blast that didn't work against opponents that are underwater. Finally, you'd declare the special effect to be Lightning. Thus, you have a 12d6 Lightning Energy Blast that only does 6d6 against opponents that are underwater. Then you'd move on to whatever other powers you needed for your character conception.

Another guy might buy a Force Field and say it doesn't stop Lightning. He's going to have a bad day if he meets the first guy. Alternatively, he could buy extra Force Field that ONLY stops Lightning. It would be really inexpensive since it would rarely apply.

In Champs (and Gurps) you would build the complete character conception. In all D&D, you pick classes off the rack and try to make them fit your conception, or limit your conception to them.