NERFED? DEEP DIVE into the REMASTERED WIZARD in Pathfinder 2e!

Ronald the rules lawyer and today I'm going to do a deep dive into the remastered wizard our Classic spellcaster this will be very interesting because one of the key features of a wizard to be able to specialize in an Arcane school is being affected by the removal of the eight magical schools that was something the designers had wanted to do it sounds like but it was also prompted by breaking away from the ogl and remnants of DnD lore that were in the Pathfinder books in this video I also revisit the brewhaha that flared up over the summer when some Pathfinder players on forums were worried that piso was weakening Casters in this new incremental Edition one of the things that occasioned this was specialist Wizards bonus spell slot not being fillable by 1/8 of the entire Arcane spell list and that being replaced by a narrower list of spells in a school curriculum also is prompted by the very positive reception to the at will Caster embodied by the kineticist in The Rage of elements rule book that came out in the summer I put out these videos then and I thought that the idea that the designers wanted to Nerf spellcasters was concluding that was premature and we will revisit that in this video now before the remaster I personally thought Wizards were fine and given that yes there is a narrower selection of spells in a curriculum that maybe we would see some Buffs Elsewhere for the wizard to make up for that just as we've seen Buffs for other options for the other classes so I'll touch on that in addition to my usual remaster deep dive I'm Ronald the rules lawyer I am a lawyer who has been game mastering for 13 years I taught in after school middle school RPG class for most of that time my preferred system is Pathfinder 2 e I've been doing a lot of coverage of the Pathfinder remaster if you want to be notified about the remaining videos and also of course future videos that I'll continue to make like subscribe and ring the bell also support my patreon I don't get paid as a lawyer the kind of work I do and allows me to continue my channel you also get exclusive access to videos including my 3 and 1 half hour recording going through the player core and GM core and me running Pathfinder for D and YouTubers the D and YouTuber series is for tier 2 supporters and above as well as Early Access to many of my videos so as per usual I will go over the basics of the class first since many people are coming to Pathfinder for the first time with the release of the remaster before I go over what has changed compared to the current version it is our quintessential spellcaster our nerd who learns Magic by studying books an intelligence-based class of the four magical traditions in Pathfinder they cast spells on the Arcane list it's the biggest spell list and the most versatile doing a variety of things you will not find healing in here however they don't cast spells from the entire list however they have a musty tone a spell book that they collect spells in their book starts with 10 cantrips and five first rank spells in the morning they prepare their castings of spells and when I say castings if you're used to D and D 5e 5V is kind of an outlier in the history of D and games Pathfinder 2 E's prepared spellcasters they're also spontaneous ones use the traditional vanan spell casting in the morning they prepare cantrips and they can cast these an unlimited number of times however above that this should actually say first rank which is a new term for spell level they prepare individ ual castings and they kind of have to predict not only what spells they'll use that day but how many times they'll need it and when they cast a spell they cross it off their list for that day it is possible to be more flexible in their spell casting to have casting be like d and d5e and that requires taking the flexible spellcaster archetype which gives you fewer spell slots but I will not go into that that's beyond the scope they also completed their Studies by doing a Wizard's thesis and this is one of the two subclasses they get to choose at first level experimental spell shaping gives the wizard bonus Feats that let him modify spells as he casts them improved familiar Attunement gives a magical being usually an animal that provides utility it has more abilities than other Wizards familiars which moreover they have to take a feat to get one in the first place spell blending allows the wizard to combine the power of lower rank spell slots to have more higher rank spell slots at the beginning of the day spell substitution lets the wizard spend 10 minutes to replace any of their prepared spells with another from their spell book staff Nexus gives the wizard a makeshift staff at level one that they can improve that gives it more flexibility in spellcasting in addition to the greater number of daily castings that a staff already gives a spellcaster in addition a wizard has the choice to specialize in an Arcane school and this is the list of the schools in the player core an Arcane School gives you a bonus spell slot per spell rank that is filled by a spell from that school's curriculum you also get additional spells in your spell book you also get a focus spell focus spells are spells that you can cast several times in the day because they draw from your focus Point Pool you start with a focus Point Pool of one and 10 minutes lets you get a focus point back each school has their own unique Focus spell some Wizards may choose not to have a curriculum and be part of the school of unified magical Theory they do not get bonus slots for curriculum spells they get their own Focus spell however Wizards also once per day can drain a bonded item a store of magical power on their person to cast again one of their expended prepared spells they do this once per day and wizards of the school of unified magical Theory have the additional benefit of being able to do this once within each spell rank that they attain and you can have up to 10 spell ranks if you get to level 19 in this game Wizards like all Pathfinder characters get class Feats they get one every even numbered level this lets you further customize your class not every wizard is the same if you come from D and D 5e think of warlock invocations that's what class Feats are like and this book has 44 wizard Feats it's actually small compared to what we saw for some of the other classes in this book to help the new player there are a couple of sample builds in the book here is a mind Bender it gives suggestions on attributes skills Arcane School thesis and some Feats to take so on to changes in the remaster first changes to wizard proficiencies everything's the same except they now are proficient with all simple weapons gone are the days where Wizards just are the worst at weapons this is a nice change they no longer have to deal with a feat taxs if they ever want to get a marshall weapon currently they're only proficient with a handful of weapons and they have to take the weapon profic efficiency feat to become trained with all simple weapons first before they can take it again in order to be proficient with Marshall weapons that feat taxes gone and they can start wielding long Spears and frying pans at level one the remaster also gives spellcasters a universal spellcasting proficiency so Wizards are not trained only in Arcane spells so the Wizard's eventual legendary spellcasting ability at level 19 is transferable to spells they gain from archetypes they also get a class DC which is the generic stat that some abilities can refer to so if they ever go far a field from their wizard liness they're now not completely gimped uh in an ability it's also worth noting that spellcasting components are now removed with two exceptions that I found that required having an interplaner Locus in hand every spell in the game you can cast while wielding something in both hands so a wizard wielding a staff and a shield all classes are proficient with shields and Pathfinder can cast the whole gamut of spells that they have now so some of those powerful spells that were had a material component like wall of stone you can cast now without having to spend actions to rearrange what you're holding in your hands so that's a nice streamlining of spellcasting the five Arcane thesis what's changed here nothing has changed except that we see the incorporation of options from the advanced players guide namely the staff Nexus option everything looked the same except there was one little wrinkle I found for the familiar one it says you get the drain familiar free action instead of drain bonded item that's the one that lets you recast the spell that you expended today the wrinkle I found is that it says it works exactly the same as drain bonded item however when you look at that action it says that the bonded item is on your person as a requirement that's a change from the previous language it currently requires you not to have acted on your turn which is an improvement I think by the way sometimes after your first action on a turn you decide you need to use this ability however since this replaces the drain bonded item ability instead of is what it says you technically going by rules as written need the familiar on your person which probably should be house ruled and maybe ER rotted okay next is Arcane schools this is the big change the a traditional D and D magical schools are removed now I in general support this change I'll have a link in the description to the video I did about this I will not go into it here this video will be too long already but yeah what's going this is the eight traditional schools of magic necromancy enchantment abjuration transmutation divination illusion conjuration and evocation every spell in the game even those that Wizards cannot cast because they're not in the Arcane list fall into one and only one of these spells in the current version of Pathfinder but that's going away instead they are being replaced by actual schools of magic like Hogwarts where someone learns to be a wizard and then there's other Wizards we're going to go over the six new schools in a second but first as an exercise I decided to study these six schools and the two Focus spells that each School gives the wizard potentially to see whether any of them are just translations of the previous schools and this is what I found uh first I did this cool color coding and I looked at the Focus spells for these six schools and I found that pretty much every school draws from two of the old traditions while there's one completely new Focus spell so that shows one of the things I argued in my video they're freed up more in the design of schools the school of battle magic may very well went to protect armies or their party through defensive spells that used to be in the school of abjuration now onto the arcane schools themselves first they get more spells in their spell book than they do currently instead of getting a bonus first rank spell from their curriculum added to their spell book at first level they get to add a cantrip and two first rank spells from their curriculum this actually contradicts some text earlier in the Wizard class under Spellbook which does not mention adding a cantrip from your curriculum but I'm probably going to allow the cantrip and also every time you gain a level in addition to the two spells you get with that level up added to your spell book you get to add an additional spell from your school's curriculum that's new by the way it's possible you might already have every spell from your curriculum in that spell rank as a GM I would just let that be a free choice so let's now go through the six schools the school of RS grammatica the school of runes and letters and numbers for their bonus spell slot per Rank and they also get a bonus cantrip preparation slot must be filled by a spell on these list lists by the way you can fill a second rank bonus spell slot with one of the lower rank ones and they get the initial Focus spell at level one you need to get an eighth level feat to get the advanced School spell in any of these schools these are its focus spells and they're unchanged from the current versions of these Focus spells it's just that they've been remixed they used to be from abjuration and divination this used to be called Vigilant eye next is the school of battle magic a school established to help armies in war these are the spells in their curriculum and they get Force bolt and energy absorption which are unchanged from the current Focus spells just again a remix then there's School of the boundary dealing with other dimensions and planes and creatures from them this is their curriculum and their focus spells these two are unchanged spiral of Horrors used to be dread Ora then there's the school of Civic Wizardry a school to support construction projects civil engineering with magic well here are their curriculum spells and their focus spells include a brand new one which I'll talk about in a sec Earthworks adapts what used to be an illusion school focus spell called warped terrain this does the same thing except it cannot be disbelieved now because it's not an illusion the advanced spell community restoration is a reaction to give temporary hit points to you and your allies when you cast the spell next is the school of mentalism this is their curriculum and their focus spells these are unchanged from their previous version I have an older video where I thought this was just possibly an adaptation of the school of Enchantment however this included illusion spells also and it makes complete logical sense that spells from these two old schools would be in this school to me next is the school of protean form reshaping things including flesh warping this is their curriculum and their focus spells scramble body is a adaptation of Call of the Grave it has the same effects of sickening creatures however call of the Grave required an attack role and this calls for a fortitude saving throw shifting form is the same I noted that it currently has the sematic component requiring gestures and does not have the manipulate trait I wondered if that was deliberate I guess so since you might be in melee if you're doing this and you don't want to provoke a reactive strike next we need to take a moment of silence because we've gone from eight schools of magic to six Arcane schools there are some Focus spells that didn't make the cut namely dimensional steps that lets you teleport divver sight Elemental Tempest life siphon and physical boost um Elemental Tempest I think has a spiritual successor in a feat which I will talk about when that comes up but yeah um Pathfinder society organized play normally allows content from the old books but if you're making a new character a new Wizard in Pathfinder Society you must use the new Wizard chassis and these are made available via the old Wizard or the current wizard you would need to talk to your GM basically to use these and one thing I should have mentioned about these Arcane schools is that there is language specifically saying you may talk to your GM to allow you to swap or add other spells to your curriculum if they strongly fit the theme and I don't see why that might not extend to focus spells mean agrees finally we talk about the school of unified magical Theory just as with current Universalist Wizards you do not get the bonus spell slot per spell rank that is filled by a specialized spell they still retain the ability to use their drain bonded item once for every spell rank that they have they also still get a bonus first level class feet but unlike before they get to add an additional first rank spell of their choice to their spell book book and they get hand of The Apprentice as a focus spell before this required the Universalist to spend that bonus feat on the hand of The Apprentice feet now it's free and they get a focus Point Pool of course along with it so essentially this is the buff they get an initial Focus spell hand of The Apprentice works the same there's a new Focus spell called interdisciplinary incantation if a creature within 30 ft cast an Arcane spell the wizard can cast that same spell before the end of their next turn while expending a prepared spell of the same rank you need to use a reaction to prepare this ability however okay on to the wizard Feats as with the other classes they made an effort to get all of the class Feats from the core rule book and the advanced players guide all here under one heading in one book they put every feat in here I think but they also added a few new ones and there's some Buffs and tweaks that they made to current Feats that I'll go over first Spellbook Prodigy current currently it's kind of a weak feat that lets you learn a spell in half the time and it also prevented a critical failure when you tried to learn a spell also if you fail to learn a spell you get to try to attempt again in one week instead of having to earn a whole new level this Builds on all of those things but gives you the magical shorthand skill feet which furthermore was buffed from its previous version by default learning a spell of sixth rank would take 6 hours and currently magical short hand reduces that substantial there's some multiplication involved but the current version just makes it 10 minutes period so if you find a scroll in your Explorations you might be able to add it to your spell book right away and also with spell substitution prepare it okay next is conceal spell actually I lied a little earlier two Feats from earlier were merged into conceal spell they were conceal spell and silence spell the hiding the fact that your spellcasting part used to require a check now it's just automatic and because it gives it the subtle trait it's no longer necessary to make incantations when casting the spell thus making silent spell superfluous so this is just a straightup buff in combining of Feats next is bpel strikes currently it's called bpel weapon so this can be applied also on unarmed attacks you take the energy of a spell you just cast to add extra damage to your upcoming strike well before the damage depended on what school of magic you just cast the spell from however because the eight schools are removed it's now just a generic Force damage however if your spell that you just cast dealt a specific type of damage that is the type of damage added to your strike this is also probably what we're going to see happen to similar Feats and maybe one of the Magus classes abilities as well this is a case where the removal of the eight schools I think makes it simpler you don't have to refer to a list and cross reference what kind of damage you're doing it's a nice streamlining that I welcome next is call wizardly tools this is currently called call bonded item it lets you teleport your bonded magical item to yourself well they've added the ability to teleport your Spellbook back to you which is welcome for that Niche situation where you are imprisoned and your items are taken from you so they took a very Niche feat and made it a little less Niche next is spell protection array this is a brand new feat B basically you get to protect your allies with an action within 30 ft you create a 5-ft burst so a 10t x 10t square in reality and give them a bonus to saving throws against magic it lasts until the end of your next turn and you can sustain it though I'm not sure why talks about sustaining and durations it's only until the end of your next turn and nothing stopping you from doing it an 11th time next is explosive arrival when you conjure a being it's an explosive arrival there's a 10-ft emanation around the creature that does energy damage and if the creature summoned uh has a energy trait or Spirits trait it does that kind of damage very thematic very cool and of course the way emanations work is that if it's a large huge or gargantuan creature it's 10 ft away from the borders of that creature so this looks fun and it's a free action it's spell shape you have to do it right before casting the spell next is Bond conservation this is the one that lets you reuse your drain bonded item ability to cast another spell two ranks lower before the end of your next turn the change is subtle it's in the timing before you had to make the decision to use this and spend the action to do this before you drained your bonded item you now get to reserve the right to make this decision after you see the result of your spell and decide to do it after so that's a nice quality of life change for that ability next is knowledge's power this is actually currently a Magus feet in secrets of magic it's now been added to the wizard when you critically succeed when recalling knowledge about a creature you basically get bonuses against it and you get to share those with your allies what's changed here is that instead of giving bonuses to you and your allies it imposes penalties on the creature so this can combine with giving circumstance bonuses to your allies however when you compare to the magas feet which gives three different bonus and you get all of them however this one's comparable benefits are slightly different this weakens its defense against not only your attack role but also a spell and when it attacks you or your allies it applies to their next offensive attack as opposed to both their next attack against you and the next effect from them that you save against um very tiny changes and a little annoying when I had to parse next is scroll Adept currently known as scroll Savant this is the one that lets you make two temporary spell Scrolls during your daily preparations this just adds clarifying language that other creatures can use your Scrolls under the usual rules for scroll usage so it must be on their spell list and it uses their statistics next is clever counter spell this is the broad and stronger version of counter spell where you just need to have prepared a spell that shares a trait with a spell you're trying to counter it has removed the default minus 2 penalty to your counteract check to succeed at this and as for sharing a trait it excludes the concentrate manipulate and tradition traits I would also add the Rarity traits to that list too okay next is secondary detonation array that's a new one this is a new spell shape feet spend an action before your spell that deals damage and affects an area and does not have a duration and a glowing magic circle appears and a 5ft burst in that area one round from now at the start of your next turn it detonates and does 1d6 force damage per rank of the spell to All Creatures this is the spiritual successor to Elemental Tempest one of our lost Arcane school focus spells which made that damage happen immediately in an emanation around you well this is nice and that you don't have to be in the middle of the fry in order to have the effect also it's an occasion to do some teamwork and coordinating with your allies to use the new reposition action or grapple to hold them in place so that they can explode okay next is scintilating spell this currently exists but not as a wizard feed it is currently a sorcerer feet and this spell-- shape action dazzles or blinds creatures that are in the area of the effect next is second thoughts when a creature succeeds on its will Saving throw against one of your mental spells you get to go after someone else to prepare it you got to spend a reaction and you got to do it before the end of your next turn however it does not expend a new spell slot what's different here is it used to be them succeeding against an enchantment spell of yours so this is now a broader group of spells spells that used to be from the illusion School anything that affects the mind so the new version of fantasmal killer vision of death now is incorporated under this feet and there's some clarifying language also that I won't go into in my coverage of the previous remaster spellcasting classes I covered the magical Traditions they represented and this is the last one we're now going over the Arcane spells I've gone through a lot of these spells already in my coverage of the previous classes so this thankfully was not as long a list this is the Arcane list so of course it is the biggest list of all they're incorporating spells from the core rule book and the advanced players Guide to the extent possible they had to trim some things to prevent this book being even more massive so for funsies I compared the Arcane spells from the combined core rule book and advanced players guide to what we see in the player core we go from 279 to 229 I also saw that my observation that they try to preserve more of the lower rank spells is true when you look at only the spells from the cantrip list and rank 1 and two they go from 106 to 100 and for everything above that they go from 173 to 129 that should give you a sense of what we're not getting here in this book and I assume we're going to see them in player Core 2 next I want to point out that there's a lot of spells that currently are not Arcane that now are Arcane it's not a small list and I remember what mark cyer one of the co-designers of Pathfinder said in a stream discussing the removal of the eight traditional D and D magical schools that one of the problems that those posed was that it made the wizard kind of he called it a greeneyed monster that seemed to gobble up everything um every spell was something that they could specialize in and so that to be be jealous and protective about some spells not belonging in the Arcane tradition that Druids could say were theirs this actually went back to first edition Pathfinder was a problem that he talked about and the removal of the eight schools now seems like it has the effect of removing that problem and allowing spell some spells that seem like it would be logical for them to be on the Arcane list to be on the Arcane list and there's a lot of nature ones here as well things like bark skin now called Oak and resilience and we also see soundburst traditionally associated with clerics and the Divine list included in this list also as noise blast so they're letting the greenee Monster eat a little more and worried less about Wizards swallowing everything now let's go through some spells starting with cantrips again I'm mentioning gouging claw because cuz that's from secrets of magic and it's a significant damaging spell it does 2d6 damage and does two persistent bleed damage on a regular hit it's been buffed in that regard next is light um well this combines the old light and dancing lights current light lets you illuminate a specific object that you touch and dancing lights gives you these mobile lights that you had to sustain uh and could move around this now gives you the function of both without having to sustain like you currently do with Dancing Lights it creates an orb of light that you can make circle a member of your party you can then voluntarily sustain it in order to move it 60 ft but you don't have to constantly and you can have four light spells active currently are limited to one and it's the number four which was the number of lights that could be part of dancing lights so this is a buff you can have a plum Bob floating above every well four members of your party next is fantasmal minion this is a renamed unseen servant you conjure something that can manipulate the environment and it has statistics what's different is that it's no longer unseen it is not invisible everything else is the same unseen servant is still a legal spell in Pathfinder Society since this does not have an identical name however I might only allow this it seems like a more balanced first level spell to me because there is a final sacrifice combo I talked about in a recent video next is acid grip this is the spiritual successor of acid Arrow currently currently acid arrow is an attack you make and if it hits it does persistent damage as well as instant damage well this is now a saving throw spell they make a reflex saving throw and they take half damage on a regular success this seems to be a trend in the remaster a lot of spells that were attack spells have turned into saving throw spells that have a partial effect when they succeed it changed most people probably welcome also when you strike the creature you can move the creature as well it has some utility they thought this needed to be souped up basically and additionally so long as they're taking persistent damage which will be true if they were hit by it they get a minus 10t status bonus should say penalty to uh their speeds okay next is blazing bolt uh this is scorching Ray renamed it's actually not changed at all it's just that it's included in one of the core books now it currently comes from secrets of magic next is embed message this is Magic mouth however it's not a mouth anymore it is a visual message of text that circles the Target and accompanied by disembodied voice it just adds words that people can read also like a stock ticker but you can tighten it now and give it other effects like odor visual effect or physical sensation and you can make it repeat itself a lot next is everite this is currently continual flame what's interesting here is that they've removed the greater cost when you heighten it so you can make a higher rank version of everite that is harder to dispel or counter with no extra cost this is a buff against main GMS who try to dispel continual light uh I plead guilty next is ghostly carrier this is the renamed spectral hand you get to deliver touch spells with your ghostly carrier what's changed here is that when it's destroyed from taking damage it no longer does 1d6 damage to the Caster a little annoyance that is now gone away next is Revealing Light which is the new version of glitter dust it is similar to glitter Dust In addition to making them more visible they are dazzled they've removed the possibility of being blinded but the Dazzle effect operates on a regular success on their saving throw now so it has gotten a balance pass next is a spell that used to only be on the Primal list entangling Flora also called entangle I mention this again here because we don't have the web spell in this book and this seems to be the comparable spell to cast in its stead however it doesn't immobilize them on a regular failure on their saving throw like web does web is still a legal spell though for tables you want to use it next is Elemental form it is unchanged except for the fact that we now have metal and wood as elements in the Pathfinder system and these forms are awesome metal lets you fly and do decent damage with a blade and wood does 2 d10 budging damage next we jump to the 10th rank spell manifestation this used to be called The Wish spell every spell tradition has their own version of wish and in the remaster they've all been given this instead which let them cast any spell of ninth rank or lower in their tradition and lower rank spells from other traditions and additionally it let you wish something subject to GM Fiat that second function is now its own ritual but what's left is the manifestation spell so this gives unlimited flexibility to cast nearly every spell in the game now on that wish ritual let's look at that whereas the current wish spell said that you could come up with something it also made clear that it can't be too powerful or world changing it said the GM might allow you to try using wish to produce greater effects than these but doing so might be dangerous or the spell might have only a partial effect well greater effects than these has now become the wish ritual a rare ritual and things that could change the world destruction of an entire Kingdom Ascension to Divinity if this is awesome it's going this is awesome this is the wish spell from the original additions of the game however gated behind a ritual that is rare also it gives guidance too instead of having a kind of confrontational uh GM versus player um interaction uh this um has four degrees of success which give clear Guidance with examples of how to judicate that result which is appreciated I like this version better than all previous iterations so that exists all right closing statement where are we at with the wizard well their proficiency with all simple weapons definitely is a buff and a quality of life Improvement the changes to spellcasting in general Universal proficiency not needing a free hand are all Buffs to the wizard also I generally support moving away away from the eight traditional D and D magical schools because what you can come up with is infinite more thematic flavorful grounded in the setting and flexible also nearly all of the changes tweaks to spells that I've seen in this tour I think have been improvements however I do have a couple of issues with the implementation of the new schools and I'll go over them here uh this summer there was a mini uproar uh over the state of Casters in Pathfinder 2E there was concern that they were nerfing cant trips and also the replacement of the eight magical schools with these more limited curricula of the new Arcane schools made some people say that piso was nerfing spellcasters which I thought was a hasty conclusion at the time as you can see I did a series of videos addressing the brewhaha and we needed to see more it was kind of doesn't make sense it's hard to believe that Paisa would have this scheme to weaken spellcasters in the game and I think what we've seen so far has shown that they have not had this grand scheme we've seen that they've had the explicit goal of buffing the witch class the cleric War priest was something they also said that they would improve and in my video on that there was a lot of improvements in that department we saw a key buff to bards of the warrior Muse and piso is promising a significant redesign of the Oracle that comes out in player Core 2 next summer also the changes to the Spells and defeats in general for the spellcasting classes have generally been nudges upward in power and here we saw similar tweaks to the Wizard's abilities the ability of specialized casters to get more spells in their spell book was probably a concession to the more limited spell lists that the curricula provide but there's a couple of issues first the obvious one we've gone from eight magical schools to six that's a smaller number and that means saying farewell to to a few uh Focus spells that teleportation one looked cool that are not in this version of The Wizard also and I pointed this out in some of my earlier coverage uh we have a scaling issue with some of these curriculum spells here's the school of battle magic and their specialized slot for first rank must take either breathe fire force barrage Mystic armor these are the current burning hands magic Missile and Mage Armor however these are spells that numerically improve when you cast them at higher spell ranks and once you leave those early levels of play they are not useful at their original first rank of spell power so when you become a 10th level character being able to do breathe fire with 2d6 fire damage is kind of a waste of your time you have canant trips and focus spells maybe that will perform better also a couple of these schools I noticed had uh lack luster at least to many players lackluster cantrips um RS grammatica gives use message and sigil and Civic Wizardry gives you press the digitation and read AA these are all utility Focus spells and by the way read AA was buffed I covered that in my B video on occult spells um but uh yeah it does say that you can talk to your GM about swapping or adding other spells to your curriculum that strongly fit the theme and I think for many GMS that language strongly fit is pretty easy to implement and re in any players who just want to get their favorite spell without regard to the theme of the school the GM can stand on that language however there was no reason um when making these spells to have if anything they should have included some spells that were broadly applicable and useful as cantrips and not have ranked spells that became weak in higher levels of play that was a problem they could have avoided and you know this can be easily corrected so this is kind of a small criticism really but it does pose an issue I mean it would have been another thing if they had explicitly said you can design schools yourself work talk to your GM but this does not seem to countenance that and I don't know if we've heard from piso maybe they said in his stream I hope that we will see more schools Arcane schools in future books but the way this is presented these six schools are what you're stuck with anyway Nothing is Stopping anyone in the end from home brewing their own curricula now and in one of my videos I made one that was a lot of fun it seems like it would be an occasion of fun so this is not a really big complaint in the end another issue I have is the change to focus spells right now one has an incentive to get as many Focus spells as they can because you can now refocus and get all three of your points back if you have enough time between encounters and the number of focus points you have depends on how many Focus spells you have um the problem is though that the wizard can only get two Focus spells the way the wizard is currently set out if they don't venture outside of Wizardry every school has two Focus spells the one you get for free at first level and then the advanced one that you can get with an eighth level feat and it's not clear to me why uh the wizard is the exception here of being the one spellcaster that doesn't have a low-l feet that lets them dabble into another discipline here's the multifarious Muse for The Bard the order Explorer for the Druid cleric's going to take up other domains that their deity allows and get the focus spells from those and heck even the ranger is which is a marshall class can get all of these Focus spells can get 10 of of them in fact actually can get 11 of them in fact um and The Wizard can't get more than two it seems strange and I don't think it's something that should remain anyway I think it would be all right for GM to Homebrew a feet the study abroad feat the foreign exchange program feat that allows them to get a focus spell from another school and maybe one of those Focus spells that we lost in this version maybe one of the focus spells from the Court rule book I don't think that that would be broken unless there's something I haven't thought of and maybe they could also switch out some of the curriculum spells so that they can avoid the issue I talked about earlier and I'm going to cover this more in my coverage of the witch class but the witch the designers explicitly said they wanted to buff and improve the flavor of and when we compare it to the witch we see that they have a number of abilities that are outside side their spell slots their limited daily resource that let them do a whole bunch of things they're familiar does an effect for free whenever they cast a hex spell or cantrip there are hex cantrips they can take Feats to get what are called lessons to get more Focus spells and they're also Feats that give their familiar a once per 10 minutes ability or once per hour ability that are kind of like extra encounter Powers if we're using D and for E talk that don't use a focus point so they have all of these additional things that they can do outside of their daily limited resource of spell slots whereas the wizard kind of doesn't what they have is their focus spells which they unlike every other class are limited to two points in casting and it's kind of an interesting situation I think I know how I looked at the witch before the remaster and I think others looked at it this way that it was kind of like the wizard but with a stronger familiar but it wasn't very different from the Wizard and the fact that the witch did not have some abilities of the wizard meant that people asked well why not just be a wizard it feels like the designers knew about that perception so buffed the witch but we now may have a little of a reverse problem maybe I'll uh go back to this question in the witch video in the meantime let's have some perspective the wizard has advantages that are unique to it it has an AR thesis that lets them do a number of things that no other class can and they have at least compared to the witch more spell slots now for comparing to the witch I I think the point of comparison might be the wizard who takes the improved familiar Attunement Arcane thesis and I will make that comparison during my witch coverage so that's my coverage of the wizard I have been Ronald the rules lawyer I'm almost done with the series covering the remaster if you want to be notified about the next videos like subscribe and ring the 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Channel: The Rules Lawyer

Views: 22,393

Keywords: rules lawyer, rpg, dnd, d&d, pathfinder, pathfinder 2e, pf2, pf2e

Id: AZVAIpq4mE4

Length: 43min 55sec (2635 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 13 2023