Pathfinder 2E Potions, Medicine, Special Materials & more...

[CapnZapp]

I find the design space of Pathfinder 2 strangely underutilized, where mechanics such as special materials (also known as "precious materials") and talismans could have been used for so much more. I also find several subsystems annoyingly complex for little reason. Here is a random bundle of house-rules to fix various issues.

Consumables are weirdly expensive.
The strategy of "treat EVERY consumables as vendor trash" works surprisingly well in PF2, but of course sucks the fun out of a whole section of treasure.

Double the "batch" of consumables, meaning that you craft consumables in batches of 8 instead of 4. This obviously halves their purchase and sell prices. To not have to list new prices, assume all list prices (including the ones of this document) are for a pair.

Healing Potions are basically useless.
The amount of healing given might make sense for an old-school game where Wizards start with 1d4 hp. But Pathfinder 2 heroes have lots of hit points. (And, more to the point, their enemies dish out a lot of damage!)

Then add the atrocious action economy, and you understand why my party has basically not touched potions after level 1, much less purchasing some.

That is because warrior heroes don't have hands free. Keeping a hand free simply isn't supported by the CRB - you lose too much by not creating a character who uses both hands at all times.

To administer a potion to a fallen comrade you might have to spend as many as 6(!) actions, which, for the miserable amount of healing, simply isn't reasonable.

1) move action adjacent to comrade (even if only 5 ft you need to spend an entire action)
2) sheath or change grip action (hold sword with shield hand, hold both knives with left hand). A greatweapon user can skip this step since loosing your grip is free.
3) interact to draw potion (from self or comrade)
4) administer potion (or drink it yourself)
5) draw or change grip action (a greatweapon user must spend an action to again grip her weapon with two hands. You can save an action here with Quick Draw the feat)
6) move up to a new foe

I suggest the addition of a Potion Bandoleer: [Two actions] Administer potion to yourself or adjacent creature that is friendly, restrained or unconscious. You spend two Interact actions. This activity requires no hands free.

As you can see, the Potion Bandoleer reduces the action expenditure to two, regardless of your weapon loadout, since it abstracts away all the hand use malarkey. Note that administering a potion through a Potion Bandoleer still triggers attacks of opportunity (since Interact is a Manipulate action).

I furthermore suggest a complete redesign of Healing Potions (and Elixirs of Life):

Item Level	Name	Healing (hp)	Cost (gp)
1	Minor Elixir of Life	6	3
1	Minor Healing Potion	10	4
3	Lesser Healing Potion	30	12
5	Lesser Elixir of Life	30	30
6	Moderate Healing Potion	60	50
9	Moderate Elixir of Life	60	150
12	Greater Healing Potion	120	400
13	Greater Elixir of Life	80	600
15	Major Elixir of Life	90	1300
18	Major Healing Potion	180	5000
19	True Elixir of Life	120	3000

The changes from RAW are:

• the price now indicates the purchase price of a pair of potions/elixirs. The actual numbers remain unchanged.
• potion use requires no dice rolling to speed up gameplay
• Healing Potions now give 10 hp times the item level - use this as a guideline for any non-standard healing consumable with no significant secondary bonus, such as the Saint's Balm - it would simply heal 70 hp since it is item level 7.
• Elixirs of Life now give 6 hp times the item level (rounded). Use this as your guideline for other healing consumables with benefits too. For instance, a Panacea Fruit is a level 19 item whose healing powers wouldn't be unreasonable to set at 120 hp.

The intended consequences to gameplay include:

• making a dedicated combat healer less obligatory (now that potions work faster and stronger, warriors can help themselves)
• potions are actually used and purchased by players
• potions replace Battle Medicine, which was always an awkward ability (in every sense)

The Medicine Skill is way too complicated and slow (both in the game and for the player)
One huge mismatch is that the game seems predicated on one or a few 10-minute rests being sufficient to recover from one encounter and move to the next one. But when Medicine frequently requires half an hour's worth of downtime, or 60 minutes or 90 minutes, the entire minigame of selecting your 10-minute activities completely break down for everybody else.

These changes aim to

• keep the promise of downtime nearly always being complete after 1 to 3 ten-minute periods
• completely remove the niggly details of Medicine use
• considerably cut down on time and brain energy spent between encounters. The minigame of choosing/optimizing which DC to aim for is removed. Die rolling and decision points are minimized.

Treat Wounds [Exploration][Healing][Manipulate]
Requirements: you have healing tools (page 290)

You spend 10 minutes treating one injured living creature (targeting yourself, if you so choose). No Medicine check is normally required but the GM is free to ask for one if the attempt is made during difficult curcumstances, such as treating a patient outside in a storm, or treating magically cursed wounds. The result is that the target regains one third of its maximum hit point total, and its wounded condition is removed.

If you have the Ward Medicine feat you can treat 2, 4 or 8 patients simultaneously. If you don't have the Continual Recovery feat, the target(s) is then temporarily immune to Treat Wounds actions for 1 hour, but this interval overlaps with the time you spent treating (so a patient can be treated once per hour, not once per 70 minutes).

Battle Medicine (the feat) is removed from play. Any instantaneous healing requires alchemy or magic. This also solves the Battle Medicine Bandoleer question once and for all.

There are only two main Weapon Special Materials that matter (except at the highest levels)
The game only uses Cold Iron (against Demons and Fey) and Mithral/Silver (against Devils and Werecreatures). Sure, Adamantine helps against constructs, but that's such a weirdly specific niche you can't expect a player to pursue it.

Instead, almost every creature type except regular humanoids should have a weakness to a special material. For example:

Add four special materials that resonate with magical energies:
Darkwood: Primal
Bronze, Elysian Bronze: Arcane
Obsidian: Occult
Bone: Divine

The intent here is to allow the creation of wands and staffs in special materials to give badly needed boosts to spellcasters. But these special materials also apply to select creature types:

Aberration: Obsidian
Animal: Darkwood
Beast: (Elysian Bronze)*
Celestial-
Construct: Adamantine
Dragon: (Elysian Bronze)*
Elemental: Adamantine
Fey: Cold Iron
Fiend: Mithral, Silver (Devils); Cold Iron (Demons)
Fungus: Darkwood
Giant: Elysian Bronze
Ooze: Obsidian
Plant: Darkwood
Undead: Bone

• Animals, Plants and Fungus have a weakness to Darkwood. Only weapons largely constructed out of wood can be manufactured using Darkwood. I would suggest clubs, spears and bows to begin with. Darkwood is the Primal material.
• Aberrations and Oozes have a weakness to Obsidian. Only weapons dealing piercing damage can be manufactured using Obsidian. Obsidian is the Occult material.
• Huge and Gargantuan living creatures (including Beasts, Dragons and Giants) have a weakness to Elysium Bronze. Only melee weapons dealing slashing or piercing damage can be made out of Elysium Bronze. Elysian Bronze is the Arcane material.
• Undead have a weakness to Bone. Only melee weapons dealing blunt damage can be manufactured using Bone. Bone is the Divine material.
• Bronze is a entry-level alternative for Elysium Bronze as the Arcane material, meaning you can get a bronze wand to enjoy the new talismans at low level. Huge monsters are still only weak to Elysium Bronze.
• Elementals are added to Constructs as having a weakness to Adamantine.

As always, the GM is the final arbiter of what items can be made using a material.

For the actual numbers use the following as a rough guide (or consult table 2-8 of the Gamemastery Guide, page 63):
Weakness 3: creature levels -1 to 4
Weakness 5: creature levels 3 to 8
Weakness 10: creature levels 7 to 14
Weakness 15: creature levels 13 to 20
Weakness 20: creature levels 19 and higher

The rules as written for ranged weapons and special materials doesn't make a lick of sense.

The general rule for non-magical ammunition is that it costs 1/10th of the price of a comparable weapon. Meaning an arrow costs 1/10th of the price of a bow. If applied to cold iron weapons, this amounts to each cold iron arrow costing 4 gp.

This is an exorbitant price at low level. It is a trivial price at high level. I don't know which is worst.

Also, forcing a player to track ammunition usage, except for highly specific magical ammunition, just isn't cool. But for a large portion of the game, you just can't handwave an expenditure of 144 gp (if you make three dozen arrow attacks during a day of adventuring. Remember errata clarifies all ammunition is destroyed upon use).

Also, the way the rules are written, they break the general rule that you need ever-higher material grades to enjoy stronger fundamental runes. But by the RAW, you can shoot 4 gp low-grade arrows with your +3 major striking bow, and thus gain what other weapon users cannot, namely the benefits of both runes and monster weaknesses at the same time.

Therefore consider the following more like errata than a houserule:

Ranged weapons made out of special materials confer their benefits onto ammunition fired.

This vastly simplifies everything about ranged weapons and special materials. If you're used to not tracking mundane ammunition, you can keep doing that. Special materials are no longer stupidly expensive at low level, and stupidly cheap at high level.

Talismans are basically useless
Despite monsters being very difficult, the idea that one-time bonuses (scrolls for warriors) could make a difference is simply not explored in Pathfinder 2. Instead of the insultingly small and conditional bonuses currently bestowed by Talismans, how about this:

Wolf talisman [Weapon]: When activated, this talisman gives a +1 bonus to attacks made with its weapon for 1 hour.
Bear talisman [Weapon]: When activated, this talisman gives a +2 bonus to attacks made with its weapon for 10 minutes.
Tiger talisman [Weapon]: When activated, this talisman gives a +3 bonus to attacks made with its weapon for 1 minute.

Each exists in Minor, Lesser, Moderate, Greater, Major varieties. Each talisman is restricted to a maximum creature level of its wielder equal to its item level. The item level obviously also suggests its price (again, for a pair).

Talisman	Wolf	Bear	Tiger
Minor	2	3	4
Lesser	6	7	8
Moderate	10	11	12
Greater	14	15	16
Major	18	19	20

For instance, a Moderate Bear Talisman would be item level 11 (and thus cost something like 300 gp for a pair). Any hero of up to level 11 would gain +2 to attacks for ten minutes, when activated. A level 12 hero would have to find or buy a Moderate Tiger Talisman (or any Greater Talisman).

The intent is to make mucking about with Talismans actually worthwhile for players.

 

[CapnZapp]

The new special materials require the following information. There are basically only two price schemes - materials that exist in low-grade form (levels 2, 10, 16) and those that do not (level 11, 17).

Special Material	Low-Grade	Standard-Grade	High-Grade
Usable for attacks	...with +1 weapons and up to 4th levels spells	...with +2 weapons and up to 7th levels spells	...with all weapons and spells
Adamantium	N/A	Level 11; Price 1,400 gp + 140 gp per Bulk	Level 17; Price 13,500 gp + 1,350 gp per Bulk
Cold Iron	Level 2; Price 40 gp + 4 gp per Bulk	Level 10; Price 880 gp + 88 gp per Bulk	Level 16; Price 9,000 gp + 900 gp per Bulk
Darkwood	Level 3; Price 60 gp + 6 gp per Bulk	Level 11; Price 1,400 gp + 140 gp per Bulk	Level 17; Price 13,500 gp + 1,350 gp per Bulk
Elysian Bronze	N/A	Level 11; Price 1,400 gp + 140 gp per Bulk	Level 17; Price 13,500 gp + 1,350 gp per Bulk
Mithral	N/A	Level 11; Price 1,400 gp + 140 gp per Bulk	Level 17; Price 13,500 gp + 1,350 gp per Bulk
Bone, Bronze, Silver, Obsidian	Level 2; Price 40 gp + 4 gp per Bulk	Level 10; Price 880 gp + 88 gp per Bulk	Level 16; Price 9,000 gp + 900 gp per Bulk

The only change of existing special materials is the addition of low-grade Darkwood (italicized in the table above).


The new rules that benefit spellcasters are:

• you can craft a wand or a staff in a special material. This makes monsters with a weakness against that material take extra damage from your spells: both spells with spell attacks and spells with saving throws. The spell can be any spell, not just the spell(s) provided by the wand or staff.
• you can apply weapon talismans to wands and staffs made out of the special material attuned to your magic tradition: Bone, Darkwood, Elysian Bronze (or regular bronze) and Obsidian for Divine, Primal, Arcane and Occult respectively. This applies to spell attacks, not spells with saving throws.
• you need Standard-Grade to cast spells using a level 5, 6 or 7 slot; you need High-Grade to cast spells using a level 8, 9 or 10 slot

So, for instance, a Wizard could craft, buy or loot a standard-grade Obsidian Wand and use it to cast Cone of Cold (using a level 5 slot). If the targets have a weakness to Obsidian they would take extra damage.

The Wizard could not use a low-grade Obsidian Wand for this purpose, since it is limited to spells cast using a level 4 slot or lower. The Wizard would simply cast his Cone of Cold spell normally in that case.

The Wizard could not benefit from a Wolf Talisman affixed to this wand, since it is not made out of Bronze or Elysium Bronze. If it were, the talisman would give its bonus to all spell attacks during the specified duration. However, a Bard, being an Occult caster, could.

 

[nevin]

In my opinion Pathfinder is in a wierd place. They want to grow, They want to tap a larger market but they also want a game optimized to play nitty gritty games and Society Games that require locking down everything so that everyone is equal. I think the target market for nitty gritty dark an dirty games is going to be it's limiting factor. What they want is never going to sell as well as Dnd

 

[Philip Benz]

Those are mighty extensive house rules there. IMHO, such extensive rewriting of the PF2 baseline is unnecessary. The Rules as Written are mostly acceptable as is, and at least for my group (that has just passed 3rd level) there is no feeling of a lack or a problem with the standard PF2 rules for healing potions and such. The only houserule I have been enforcing is needing a free hand for Battle Medicine, and 2 free hands for any other application of the Medicine skill, which IMHO should have been specified in PF2 from the beginning, but which has caused a lot of very long-winded arguments on the Paizo forums.

 

[CapnZapp]

I wouldn't call this "extensive". It only affects a tiny slice of the game, after all.

I made the observation my players never purchased healing potions, and nearly never drinks any. Why is that, I asked myself.

I then made the observations:

• Pathfinder 2 heroes get many more hit points than older editions of the D&D game, yet the healing power of potions remain much the same
• Pathfinder 2 uses a three-action system, which makes potion usage much more expensive than in a simpler action-move system

Couple that with very effective combat medics (the two-action Heal spell) and very effective out of combat medics (the Treat Wounds activity) and very expensive consumables (only four consumables to one permanent item), and you should see how Healing Potions have been thoroughly obsoleted.

I suspect that each of these changes were individually made in good faith for the best of intentions. I am not at all convinced the playtest gave enough time to assess the overall impact of all these changes combined.

I have tried to mitigate these issues (and a few others) in as simple and direct way I was able. If we stick to Healing Potions, I gave them a much more attractive price/performance ratio, both measured in gold and especially in actions (which is what the warriors that most often feel the need to replenish hit points care about).

For instance, a Moderate Healing Power previously healed 3d8+10 hit points, or nearly 2 gp per hp healed. Now you gain 60 hp which is less than 1/2 gp per hp gained (you get two potions for your fifty gold). But while gold is important, actions are way more important. 25 hp just isn't a large amount of healing for a level 6 character, and certainly not worth the massive action expenditure. If we generously assume the warrior "only" needs three actions to drink his potion and get back to fighting, that's 8 hp healed per action (23,5/3). Contrast this to my rebalanced potion (coupled with the Potion Bandoleer) which grants 30 hp healed per action (60/2).

This should make it much more feasible to not having a character spending all her spell slots on in-combat heals.

It also offers nice little way-of-life improvements such as no longer having to remember which potion heals what (it's always 10 times the item level), no longer have to roll dice to heal up (it's always a static value; one that is evenly divisible by 10 for simple counting), and no longer having to switch to an alternate attack routine after having drunk your potion. (No need to change what hand holds what)

 

[Celtavian]

I'll add my opinion on a couple of things and more later.

1. Healing potions: Never used them much in PF1 past low level, don't use them much past low level in PF2. No interest in making in combat healing potion use any better. Healing potions are an emergency option or a non-combat healing option.

Elixirs are used fine by alchemists. They draw and use them to heal themselves when the healer is busy healing martials. I see no reason to improve them. They now have a healing bomb in the APG that the alchemist can use to quickly heal another target. I''m going to leave them as is.

If you feel this change will make things more fun for your players, then you should do it.

2. Medicine: I run medicine very quickly if I need to run it. I don't find the rolls difficult. I handwave it if time is unlimited. I imagine most DMs to speed up play handwave medicine if the party has unlimited downtime, otherwise it's just a guy rolling over and over and over again unlimited.

Often the best way to use the skill is to roll one level down from the highest you can treat. I roll Expert for the +10 as I just got master. Less chance of failure and if time is not limited, no use getting them up quick. I don't see it much as an issue unless maybe playing PFS who won't use house rules anyway or OCD DMs who feel some compulsion not to handwave certain rules to speed up play.

3. Talismans: Not sure why higher hit rolls are needed. ACs can already be substantially shifted. Those Talismans will further shift hit opportunities so martials are getting all 3 attacks hitting. If that doesn't make the game feel trivial to you, then have at it.

Monsters get less difficult to parties as you level. The party has the means to shift AC so much at higher level that fights can in fact be fairly trivial.

 

[Celtavian]

3. Spellcasters do not need boosts. They need to be patient and not sit on spells to nova on BBEGs. They need to use spells more liberally. They need to take their AoE opportunities when they come. They need to unload focus spells early and often and build up focus points. They should invest in a weapon of some kind for extra attacks.

I'm finally seeing what all these pro-caster folks are talking about. My druid using AoE and single target spells, focus spells, a bow, and an animal companion is now ahead of or roughly equal to the martials. Last night she was a 100 points of ahead of all the martials.

I was being way too conservative using spells as a caster as I did in PF1. Casters should be more focused on blowing off spells, understand at lower level shooting off spells will be rough out of the gate, and wait until they get more powerful.

I am on the fifth module of Age of Ashes. The worm has finally turned quite a bit. Now martials are fairly easy to deal with and caster monsters are a nightmare for groups, especially casters with martials. A champion deals quite easily with martials and the damage goes back and forth, but martials hammering for damage with huge AoE damage raining down on them is super dangerous and hard to keep up with. I had to cut back on one mage in an encounter to prevent a TPK.

My bard is now dropping AoE hits on groups in the 300 plus damage range. And shifting combats to make them trivial with synesthesia, group haste, and bard cantrips.

Much like PF1 casters are slow build and reach a level of power that martials can't match. Martials are on a linear path of doing continuous nice single target damage. Casters reach a level where they are shifting combats by immense numbers both the AC and saves on a target and the amount of pain they bring.

Casters should also not overlook wands, scrolls, and staves. These all expand the caster endurance and use their DCs. Those hits can be quite potent. I use a wand of vampiric exsanguination quite often for good damage hits and extra temp hit points usually once a fight on my bard.

Incapacitation Spells: Incap spells are sometimes dangerous even on a success like blindness. Incap spells are often useful against powerful minions supporting the BBEG like banishing demons or summoned outsiders.

Scrolls or wands: These are good expenditure of cash to extend spellcasting between adventures. Whereas a martial might buy a weapon upgrade, a caster can buy a wand or a few scrolls that expand his higher level slot options. This will allow him to cast a few heavy hitting spells more often.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sounds like you're at such a high level Celtavian you're starting to forget the low levels...

Can I assume you don't actually believe the low level caster experience doesn't need to be fixed since the experience is better at high level, even though it's possible to interpret your posts on the subject that way...?

 

[CapnZapp]

1. Healing potions: Never used them much in PF1 past low level, don't use them much past low level in PF2. No interest in making in combat healing potion use any better.

Okay.

2. Medicine: I run medicine very quickly if I need to run it. I don't find the rolls difficult. I handwave it if time is unlimited. I imagine most DMs to speed up play handwave medicine if the party has unlimited downtime, otherwise it's just a guy rolling over and over and over again unlimited.

I don't run Medicine - I'm the GM!

My players get annoyed if I handwave it "an hour passes, you're all fully healed". Makes them feel their skill and feat investments are wasted. Why take them if you still heal up fully, like?

I want to remove skills and feats that encourage (my) players to spend time on the wrong things, such as finding out if the party can proceed after 40 minutes, or if it takes them 50 minutes to heal up. I think you and I agree the difference is largely pointless.

But more to the point - the rules to me strongly indicate the design intent was for downtime between encounters to take between 10 and 30 minutes, making the choice which 10-minute activities you select important. Do you prioritize getting your focus point(s) back, and if so, how many? ...is just one question I get the impression the "downtime minigame" was created to encourage.

So when I started out GMing PF2 I set out to always allow ten minutes of risk-free rest, but to associate the choice to rest longer than that with an increasingly large risk of wandering monsters (or other consequences).

But Medicine just isn't up to snuff. Monsters hit so hard that we immediately found that a mere one or three ten-minute downtime activities weren't enough to heal up fully. I found my players just couldn't stick to that baseline. First they rested for 20 or 30 minutes. Then they just gave up, and rested for as long as it took, wandering monsters be damned.

And that makes my implied threat toothless.
Wandering Monsters that you actually use only slows down gameplay (since it adds combat encounters that doesn't contribute towards the story). The real value of Wandering Monsters is when you don't use them, only threaten to use them. (Remember, I'm running an Adventure Path here. I'm not speaking about open-ended sandboxes)
What should I do? Kill off any group that insists on healing up to full before moving further (by a constant stream of wandering monsters that slowly deplete hit points faster than resting recuperates them?) No, that's clearly unworkable.

Which is to get to the real elephant in the room: if encounters are balanced on the assumption adventurers go into them fully healed, why not simply have a rule that says "you heal up fully after each fight"? Why have all the cluttery details, if players are still supposed to rest for the 20, or 50, or 80 minutes it takes to heal up fully (without expending resources)?!

And the answer, of course, is to enable the adventure to string multiple encounters together as one. Three encounters' worth of enemies that strike in succession without giving time for resource-less healing should obviously be possible. (It will be much easier than fighting all monsters at once, but still noticeably harder than when the fights are spaced one hour apart)

But this can be accomplished so much easier than the current Medicine implementation, where you at every point is asked to make decisions: which patient to treat first? At which DC? Who's treated by the healer with Continual Recovery and who got her healing from someone else (making you immune to further treatment). Who's got Battle Medicine already and from whom? With the Godless Healing Feat, you als need to remember if the Cleric has cast magic on you. It's an insane level of clutter, for very very little benefit. To be honest, whenever I hear people say things like "I don't find the rolls difficult" I assume they're simply skipping the rules (whether because they can't be bothered, because they don't understand them, or because they handwave them isn't important). But it means the argument "I don't have a need to simplify Medicine" feels hollow to me.

So I'm just cutting out the clutter. Now a player can take Medicine and feel he's getting his money's worth even though no dice are rolled because the rule says no dice needs to be rolled. (My rules simply says "every ten minutes your patient heals 1/3rd of his max hp") In turn this enables me to handwave "you're all rested and ready to go" without depriving the player of any rolls.

Yes, it does mean the benefits of going higher than Expertise in Medicine appears to be less compelling. One character with Legendary Medicine can of course treat everyone, but so can a party where every member is Trained in Medicine. Froma group optimization perspective, maybe agreeing to set aside a "Trained slot" for Medicine to enable everybody to use their three Master/Legendary slots elsewhere, will be what players choose? Or maybe the GM will insist on enforcing rolls against non-trivial DCs whenever the party rests in hostile weather conditions (adding back value into putting skill increases into Medicine)... my rules leave that up to each group.

3. Talismans: Not sure why higher hit rolls are needed. ACs can already be substantially shifted. Those Talismans will further shift hit opportunities so martials are getting all 3 attacks hitting. If that doesn't make the game feel trivial to you, then have at it.

Not sure why you're asking why higher hit rolls are needed? I though I made it clear the main benefit is to transform talismans from vendor trash to items a player might actually consider using. That is, making it so the Talisman mechanism sees actual usage at my table.

As for the numerical bonuses, my observation is that (at least at the levels we play) monsters are so difficult that a small bonus (~+2) will only make gameplay faster, more fun, less frustrating.

As for "ACs can already be substantially shifted" I assume you mean something else than flanking and frightened? Things I assume come online during the double-digit levels? And that doesn't require Bards or Druids (remember our party consists of Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Cleric, Wizard)?

Monsters get less difficult to parties as you level. The party has the means to shift AC so much at higher level that fights can in fact be fairly trivial.

At level 10, we aren't feeling that yet. But thank for the feedback - I'll be sure to only design for the single-digit levels at this time.

 

[Celtavian]

Sounds like you're at such a high level Celtavian you're starting to forget the low levels...

Can I assume you don't actually believe the low level caster experience doesn't need to be fixed since the experience is better at high level, even though it's possible to interpret your posts on the subject that way...?

I can only give you my experience as an example. I would recommend the following for low level casters:
1. Use an ancestry feat to get a weapon. Go a little Gandalf or some other weapon and use it to boost your damage at low level. Every ancestry has weapons as an option so a caster can add some variety to his actions. A weapon attack with a save spell can be quite a nice little damage boost. This should help you get through low level as your slots are low.

2. If you find consumable scrolls with decent spells, blow them off after you add them to your book.

3. The worm seems to turn around 5th level when you get fireball. Don't use your fireball on single target fights. Blow it off on AoE fights against rooms.

4. Try to get a useful focus spell or ability.

5. Remember how things work. Sickened is good because it takes an action to attempt a save to get rid of it. Frightened can be applied multiple ways. Summons creatures can flank and attack. This is adds a little damage while also boosting martial damage. Sickness and frightened lower saves and ACs improving your chance to hit and affect a target. You want to find ways to add a little damage, while shifting ACs and modifiers with spell slots. Those are the spells and abilities you should seek.

The only casters I find wanting at low level are wizards and sorcerers. If I were to build one now, I would build them differently than I did when I first started. I would get a weapon. I would not devalue abilities that applied sickened and frightened. I would cast more often when good opportunities presented themselves. I would better understand how affects synergize like haste with casters. Haste allows a caster to move, cast a 2 action spell, and make a 1 action weapon attack, which in aggregate can add up.

I think PF2 casters should be more open to playing a more Gandalf or warrior-wizard type of way than in PF1. They should be looking to add as many action options as possible through feats that give weapons, quality focus choices, or adding options like animal companions or multiclassing, and should look to pick up wands or staffs that expand their daily casting at the earliest possible opportunities. Casters should have a more active and engaged style of play than hanging back and waiting for that perfect time to cast.

I made those changes to my style of play at low level, the biggest one being adding a weapon option. I can usually hit with one attack a round quite often. That one weapon attack adds to my damage. I suggest a bow, but a reach halberd or spear can be nice too. I think a wizard should pick either strength or dexterity to focus on depending on if they want to melee or shoot a bow. The weapon damage is super-helpful for those first 5 levels or so.

For example, my druid uses tempest surge and a bow shot to hit harder for each battle with a spell mixed in for the first 5 levels. She also had an animal companion. This seems to help her keep up with the martials other than a good martial round of crits unless she got crits of course.

That's my advice at this point. Hope it helps some.