Pathfinder 1E So what do you think is wrong with Pathfinder? Post your problems and we will fix it.

[Alzrius]

Problem is, for 99% of situations in the game, spellcasters will always shine(the only 1% I can think of is putting an anti-magic ring on the caster then DM Fiating ways he can't ever take it off), whereas noncasters generally only shine in-combat and are fairly terrible outside of it, and even in combat spellcasters still outdo noncasters after level 5 or so.

So there's no percentage of the time when the spellcaster has run out of spells, doesn't have the right spells, etc.?

I'll never understand these "spellcasters are always better" arguments, since they seem to be dependent on the spellcaster always having 1) a full complement of spells, and 2) exactly the right spells for whatever scenario is being discussed. In my experience, it's rare for both of these things to be true in any given encounter, let alone the majority of them.

 

[Wicht]

I won't deny you can fiat ways for characters to be useful(though I find having to fiat a character into usefulness to speak volumes for itself already). The problem is, in your average campaign, pretty much any spellcaster will beat out using anything else 99% of the time.

I am so happy to be running above average campaigns.

If your wizards are outperforming your rogues at thieving, your bards at diplomacy, and your fighters at combat - and doing it all in the same day, then I advise you to, first of all, have more than one encounter a day and secondly, make sure that you are enforcing the spell-rules as written.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

I must admit that I haven't seen that happening.

Sure, sometimes the bard with her wand of detect secret doors is put on that assignment, and sometimes the wizard has the levitate spell at just the right time, but as often as not, the rogue gets to use their skills. For one thing, they are always on, they get more skills as class skills, they get more skills (especially if they intelligently don't make intelligence a dump stat (Wizard with 18 intelligence has 6 skills, 7 if human and two of those are going towards Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana). A rogue with a 14 intelligence has 10 skills, 11 if they are human), and their skills are always on. Sure the knock spell will get the first locked door, but all of them - not likely.

So, again, haven't seen it happen like that.

I typically just stick Knock on a scroll, then a wand later. Knock is useful, but doesn't usually come up often enough to justify wasting a slot on it with how dirt cheap scroll-making is.

And the Wizard starts catching ahead in skill points once he makes his INT boosting gear and he starts getting more "always on" skills than the Rogue.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

So there's no percentage of the time when the spellcaster has run out of spells, doesn't have the right spells, etc.?

With how cheap and easy scroll-making is, Wizards played to their intelligence level should never be running out of spells. The right spells is a little more justifiable, but that's still fixed by preparing a bunch of general use spells, leaving a number of them blank, then filling in the rest as needed later.

I'll never understand these "spellcasters are always better" arguments, since they seem to be dependent on the spellcaster always having 1) a full complement of spells, and 2) exactly the right spells for whatever scenario is being discussed. In my experience, it's rare for both of these things to be true in any given encounter, let alone the majority of them.

In Pathfinder(as a result mostly of being derived from 3.5), spellcasters ARE always better. Full compliment of spells is never an issue, as mentioned earlier, because of scrolls, wands, and the party resting when the Wizard runs out of spells(because why in god's name your party wouldn't want the Wizard to have his spells is beyond me).
Exactly the right spells is trickier, but again mentioned above, general purpose spells plus leaving blank ones open solves this problem. Putting more situationally useful spells, like Knock, on scrolls on wands means never having to waste spell slots on them.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

I am so happy to be running above average campaigns.

If your wizards are outperforming your rogues at thieving, your bards at diplomacy, and your fighters at combat - and doing it all in the same day, then I advise you to, first of all, have more than one encounter a day and secondly, make sure that you are enforcing the spell-rules as written.

1. Bard are spellcasters with CHA focus, so they can beat otu Wizards at diplomacy solely because they're also spellcasters, so they're not really a good point.
2. With invisibility and flight, sneaking is much easier with Wizards than Rogues.
3. They could easily outdo the damage Fighters can, but typically I just summon better Fighters if something really needs to be punched to death and I can't be bothered to waste one of my "remove enemy from the fight" spells on it.
4. I keep seeing "enforce spell rules", but I've never seen anyone present a spell rule as an example that actually hinders spellcasters in any way, shape, or form. The popular one I see is spell components which I always can't help but laugh at.

 

[Ahnehnois]

With how cheap and easy scroll-making is, Wizards played to their intelligence level should never be running out of spells.

With how infinite their resources are, DMs DMing to their intelligence level should not have to worry about a few situational tricks.

Also, that statement isn't true in and of itself. Scrolls border on prohibitively expensive in terms of the overall investment required to create them; they don't really affect the game much. One thing that PF ought to be better at is giving wizards more options for trading in Scribe Scroll for something more useful; only a couple of the archetypes do that, and the immensely useful Collegiate Wizard trade-in could not be carried forward from 3.5.

 

[Wicht]

I typically just stick Knock on a scroll, then a wand later. Knock is useful, but doesn't usually come up often enough to justify wasting a slot on it with how dirt cheap scroll-making is.

And the Wizard starts catching ahead in skill points once he makes his INT boosting gear and he starts getting more "always on" skills than the Rogue.

Again, never seen it happen in my games.

If a dungeon has say twelve locks in it - the wizard with the knock scroll is probably not taking the knock spell ("I have it on a scroll") so that's still only one out of twelve locks. Sure, he gets that lock, but is she really going to have twelve such scrolls? Where does she get the time and money to make them? And does she want to, or would she rather spend her time and money elsewhere.

With how cheap and easy scroll-making is, Wizards played to their intelligence level should never be running out of spells. The right spells is a little more justifiable, but that's still fixed by preparing a bunch of general use spells, leaving a number of them blank, then filling in the rest as needed later.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean here. How do you leave a spell blank? Your DM allows you to prepare spells without picking which spells are prepared? That's broken right there and shouldn't be allowed. Or do you mean something else?

Full compliment of spells is never an issue, as mentioned earlier, because of scrolls, wands, and the party resting when the Wizard runs out of spells(because why in god's name your party wouldn't want the Wizard to have his spells is beyond me).

I have yet to see a game where the wizard always has all the spells they want at exactly the right time. Typically they have enough spells to deal with about 25% or so of the situation, which seems about right to me in a party of 4.

And the party resting at will is very much a DM problem.

Don't get me wrong, I don't normally prevent resting (I'm a nice guy) but the characters know that anything can attack in the night at any time unless you are in a very safe space.

1. Bard are spellcasters with CHA focus, so they can beat otu Wizards at diplomacy solely because they're also spellcasters, so they're not really a good point.
2. With invisibility and flight, sneaking is much easier with Wizards than Rogues.
3. They could easily outdo the damage Fighters can, but typically I just summon better Fighters if something really needs to be punched to death and I can't be bothered to waste one of my "remove enemy from the fight" spells on it.
4. I keep seeing "enforce spell rules", but I've never seen anyone present a spell rule as an example that actually hinders spellcasters in any way, shape, or form. The popular one I see is spell components which I always can't help but laugh at.

1. Your bards have to use magic for diplomacy? Why? And how is magic more effective than non-magic for diplomacy. This is a game-world/GM problem. Charm is the worst way to make friends and influence people because it eventually wears off.
2. Invisibility and flight is better than non-magical sneaking (mostly; of course the DM should still be having the character make Fly checks with the result modifying the subsequent stealth check). Until the spell wears off. But rogues can also play this game and turn invisible. But after the spell wears off, they still have the edge.
3. The wizard can outdo the fighter in damage for one or two rounds, but not for much more than that. But seeing as how they used some of their best slots for outsneaking the rogue, that's not going to happen today.
4. Fair enough. But I have seen some people try to make magic be too good by making it always work as desired, which, by the RAW, it does not.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

At level 1, making scrolls costs 12 gold each. That's enough to make 2-3 scrolls, which is typically enough to last for a bit(usually long enough to have enough gold to easily replace the used scrolls, or even make a wand).

 

[Wicht]

At level 1, making scrolls costs 12 gold each. That's enough to make 2-3 scrolls, which is typically enough to last for a bit(usually long enough to have enough gold to easily replace the used scrolls, or even make a wand).

But which scrolls do they make at level 1 that makes them the most useful of all characters?

And scrolls are one-shots, so it will last for exactly 2-3 uses. Essentially a scroll merely increases the wizards ability to cast spells by a small amount per day, and then only until the scroll gets used. I have never seen scrolls as gamebreaking or overpowered. They make a given wizard only marginally more useful, and then only if they have the right scroll.

Add to this, the wizard has to have access to the spell to make the scroll. At lower levels, those spells are much harder to come by.

 

[EnglishLanguage]

Again, never seen it happen in my games.

And that doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. 3.P is called "caster edition" for a very good reason, which I think is relevant to bring up in a topic about Pathfinder problems.

If a dungeon has say twelve locks in it - the wizard with the knock scroll is probably not taking the knock spell ("I have it on a scroll") so that's still only one out of twelve locks. Sure, he gets that lock, but is she really going to have twelve such scrolls? Where does she get the time and money to make them? And does she want to, or would she rather spend her time and money elsewhere.

Knock is a level 2 spell, which is still really cheap to make, and you can throw one in a wand and never need to prepare it again.

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean here. How do you leave a spell blank? Your DM allows you to prepare spells without picking which spells are prepared? That's broken right there and shouldn't be allowed. Or do you mean something else?

http://paizo.com/prd/magic.html

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.

This takes about 15 minutes(reduced to 1 minute with the Fast Study Arcane Discovery).

I have yet to see a game where the wizard always has all the spells they want at exactly the right time. Typically they have enough spells to deal with about 25% or so of the situation, which seems about right to me in a party of 4.

This is why I said they prepare general purpose spells that are useful in a wide variety of situations(like Fly, Color Spray, Sleep, etc), then putting the more situational spells, like Knock, on scrolls and wands.

And the party resting at will is very much a DM problem.

Don't get me wrong, I don't normally prevent resting (I'm a nice guy) but the characters know that anything can attack in the night at any time unless you are in a very safe space.

The party can have other reasons for resting though, like hit points being low, the other spellcasters being out, maybe the Barbarian is out of rages, etc. If the caster rations his spells out, then he would only need to rest during times when anyone else would, which during a night attack is essentially a TPK waiting to happen(though I always try to keep one or 2 spell slots left anyways so I can slap an Alarm spell or something around so we don't get night attacked)

Plus the Wizard is still the last at threat from ambushes since Pathfinder though giving the Wizard an option to be immune to surprise attacks at level 1.

1. Your bards have to use magic for diplomacy? Why? And how is magic more effective than non-magic for diplomacy. This is a game-world/GM problem. Charm is the worst way to make friends and influence people because it eventually wears off.

I never said they do? I said the Bard beating the Wizard out at diplomacy is a bad example because they're both spellcasters.
That said, Bard gets Glibness so they can make friends without charm spells.

2. Invisibility and flight is better than non-magical sneaking (mostly; of course the DM should still be having the character make Fly checks with the result modifying the subsequent stealth check). Until the spell wears off. But rogues can also play this game and turn invisible. But after the spell wears off, they still have the edge.

Unless I really need to egt into somewhere stealthy, the fight should be over by the time invisibility and flight wear off. Even then, I can just stealth in, get what I need to, then teleport/Dimension Door away.

3. The wizard can outdo the fighter in damage for one or two rounds, but not for much more than that. But seeing as how they used some of their best slots for outsneaking the rogue, that's not going to happen today.

2 spell slots was all that was needed to otudo the Rogue. That's hardly crimping my ability to fight for the day, especially when I can just summon a monster to help end the fight with one spell used.

4. Fair enough. But I have seen some people try to make magic be too good by making it always work as desired, which, by the RAW, it does not.

Again, I see people claiming all the time magic doesn't always work if you follow the spellcasting rules, then they never mention what rules they're referring to.