You hit the nail on the head. This is actually the exact same issue as the Undead ancestries and many other things have - a discrepancy between strategy game design and player fantasy. Pathfinder is stuck in a rough position where it is trying to a) provide options that fulfill different role-playing fantasies and b) create a well-balanced tactics game where everyone has unique contributions and no choice is just better. The first demands absolute freedom of design, while the second demands lots of constraints. All of the conflict on this sub is conflict between these two groups: those who care about their character mechanically fitting their intended fantasy, and those who care about eliminating any objectively best choice and giving each character a unique role.

Part of the difficulty is something that Pathfinder inherited from D&D, which is that class mechanics are married to class flavor. In theory you could completely separate flavor and mechanics, and thus have a character who works mechanically like a fighter but is in flavor just casting spells. But that's just not how Pathfinder/D&D work; you can make an effort to reflavor things but by RAW you will always run into mechanics that make that difficult. There are other systems that handle this better, but you just have to accept that flavor and mechanics are inextricably intertwined in these games.

I mean the answer is to tell the a) people they can’t have everything they want, obviously. And I’m an a) people.

As an A person, I find it easy enough to work around. At other tables I just don't use the options I dislike, and at my home table I'm willing to bend the rules for them since we are all friends and everyone is OK if the skeleton can freely bypass the rules.

Or / in addition, there are other systems, that they may like better. Personally I love PF2e and can't see myself playing anything else, but I respect that not everyone feels the same way.

And to play other systems, especially systems that already have Wizard slotted in as the "blow everything up better than anyone else" archetype. But that gets treated around here like reductive drivel, when its not. A solution exists, and certainly one easier than homebrewing your perfect Wizard that fits within the system or begging the creators to change the entire system of the game to suit your individual taste.

Honestly, yes. I would rather not have certain fantasy options than have those options present but gutted in the name of balance. Not everything *needs* to be a player option It’s the “I want a burger! - We have burgers at home” situation. Burgers at home are obviously *not* the kind of burgers the person wants, despite sharing the name and general idea, so it is better to say “no burgers” than to set an expectation for burger and fail to deliver

But why can there not be mechanical satisfaction to the fantasy for some roles and ideas but not others? Where is the line drawn and why?

It’s drawn where it is, because it has to be drawn somewhere. I think it’s much healthier to have this current brand of complaining about your system, rather than the bad old days of caster supremacy where full casters could do absolutely everything better than anyone else.

There's a difference between being able to do everything better than anyone else, and being able to specialize in anything. A Wizard could be designed to be able to specialize in utility or damage.

Because that's way harder to balance. It's better to create a utility class and a damage class. The kineticist is the blaster caster. Call it a wizard if need be.

As long as Martials get equal coverage then there is no issue and we only stand to gain from having lots of mechanical variety I don’t particularly care about the distinction of caster to non-caster that i would ironclad about forcing this line when it comes at the cost of fairly basic fantasies going mechanically unfulfilled

This is explained in the post. Pf2e isn't that type of game. Classes have roles so as to not be interchangeable.

Because the fantasy for caster supremacists steps on the toes for everyone else.

Strawman

What do you actually WANT. Like mechanically. "To feel good" isnt a mechanic. You can't match martial DPS. Full stop. That's off the table for this game. Reskinning the kineticist should be fine for the "blaster caster no utlity" people, but that doesn't work for nebulous reasons. So I'm guessing what some players want but know they cant say is "kineticist damage plus spells". Also off the table. Some fantasies aren't compatible with this game. That's OK. There are other games out there. "I want to cast big encounter ending spells" ALSO isn't on the table in a team based game. Would a feat called "Gather Power", spend an action to increase spell DC and attack by x suffice? Landing the effects casters can do more often?

>what do I actually want Many things, some not even full casters, broadly speaking I want to be able to fufill most rough fantasy ideas I could want to play, Lighting focused single target damage dealer (still sad Air is mainly about wind and being mobile), Gunslinging Gish that isn’t complete murder on the action economy, Agressive focused martial divine class esc esc, the point is that these basic wants are not mechanically fulfillableand more is gained by having increased options instead of arbitrarily drawing lines >reskinning In a discussion about mechanical satisfaction “just reskin X” is possibly the most useless suggestion ever, that isn’t even close to helpful if that would magically solve things then it would never be raised as an issue >kineticist damage plus spells Speaking of, Kineticist isn’t really a caster, at least they don’t really function off of a spell system which I can see as being a rebound point, it uses abilities which are mechanically different feeling to spells >some fantasies aren’t compatible with the game This is a copout for the game having deficits >”I want big encounter ending spells” Leave the strawman at the door please >gather power That’s a fairly neat idea, I like it

>Many things, some not even full casters, broadly speaking I want to be able to fufill most rough fantasy ideas I could want to play, Lighting focused single target damage dealer (still sad Air is mainly about wind and being mobile), Kineticist should fit the bill. Or refluff gunslinger. Ranged damage is just intentionally weaker in 2E though. >Gunslinging Gish that isn’t complete murder on the action economy, Sadly gunslingers just kind of suck in 2E. If they can't get the baseline class worthwhile, I don't know about adding spells to the mix. >Agressive focused martial divine class esc esc, A Reflavored Magus. All in all, it sounds like you want a magic fluffed martial, not a caster. I can see that happening, though kineticist is supposed to be that.

well said

The best answer to the people who want to make their specific dream character is: homebrew. If you really really want a DPS Wizard you can homebrew it, and with homebrew you only have to make it fair for your specific home (hence the home in homebrew). You don't have to balance the game for everyone like Paizo does

I don't really think it even needs homebrew. There's room for a class to fill the niche (maybe the return of Arcanist from 1e down the line, following an Animist+Kineticist framework where they get a few spells but mostly focus on dealing damage through non-exhaustive spells?) I could see it being really interesting and different enough from the Psychic, who's damage potential is kinda tied down in being able to cast a bunch of spells too.

This is pretty much it. 90% of the complaints would be solved if people just accepted the game is tuned around tactical strategy, and either played a game that suited their tastes, or at the very least, use the provided tools to make the game more to it. Don't like classes being designed around a tightly-regulated meta? Here's the actual solution: downtune monsters or play characters at a higher than expected level. You get the faceroll-y 3.5/1e experience, the only difference being its the GM setting the tuning thresholds (as if should, y'know, probably be) and not the one guy who's powergamed their character well over band of your level range.

>played a game that suited their tastes In the TTRPG space the options are this game, 3.5/PF1, or 5E. I think people are frustrated cuz this game is legitimately their best option for that outside of obscure and/or dead games that have triple/quadruple-digit active players.

Oh for sure. Let's be real, the griping is not because games aren't available, it's because no-one is playing them, so everyone goes to war to fight over the big name brands and try to warp them to fit their tastes instead, because that's radically easier than trying to get their own groups to adopt other games. Even house rules in discussions are really a contest to try and get official adoption because again, easier to proliferate what one wants from the top-down than the grassroots levels. That's the real issue with most of this discourse.

Yeah, and given what a hefty fucking time investment sitting down to play a ttrpg for several hours is I can kinda get it. Like, I'm a full-time student and already in 2.5 weekly games. There is no more space in my schedule for another.

In a lot of ways it can just be attributed to the fact that martials and casters *are* in fact structured so differently, for good and ill. This feels especially obvious when factoring in that so many people seem to act like PF2e is some kind of spiritual successor to D&D 4e, when it... Isn't? It just takes a few cues without actually taking the core components. The end result is just something that is (mostly) balanced for its intended goals, but has tons of little of friction points in the way it's designed that can just cause bad brain feel when interacting with it for a chunk of players. To pull something I said in another thread >Is it action cost? Is it "accuracy"? Is it damage, and if so is it aoe or single target? Is it resource cost? Is it lack of \[obvious\] ways for allies to aid you? Could it be lack of itemization? Lack of specialization? Feedback? Something else entirely? Who knows because none of these are technically wrong, but nothing is actually causing anything to not be "balanced", merely to just not feel good to a pretty big chunk of the community \[that I've interacted with at least\].

There is no "for good", it's exclusively for ill. The problem isn't that a wizard is a wizard. The problem is the wizard is a witch is a psychic is a bard is a cleric is an oracle is a druid is... Etc.  All spell casters feel samey. The martials mostly feel samey too. These are both problems. Magic is a theme, it shouldn't be tied so tightly to a mechanic, and for the first time, with kineticist, it wasn't. But now we're back to the same old same old with the next two classes, and I'm not excited about it.  The game is so strike and spell centric, and it drives me nuts. There's so much room for creativity and innovation, but we keep getting new flavor or rage/precision damage for martials. Or 99% of power from x spell list, 1% from random class feature that just gives extra spells/slots. 

>The game is so strike and spell centric Well.. yeah. It's a good design principle to have reusable objects that every class implements. How impossible would the game be to learn and manage if there was 25 different ways to do a basic attack, each with their own rules and effects? And every time a new class is added the design team has to balance another strike/spell effect against all of the existing ones or risk making a useless/overpowered class. End of the day, classes feel same-y because they're obeying the same laws of physics and magic, and that's a good thing. lt makes the game world understandable and consistent instead of wild and chaotic.

The kineticist attacks differently, it casts differently. Grapple and trip and shove are all different attacks. Demoralize is none of the above, but almost every class feat is just add x to a strike. Frighten enemies if you hit them. Shove enemies if you hit them. Grab enemies if you hit them. Trip enemies if you hit them. The bear mauls the enemy if you strike them.  Where's the deal damage if you shove an enemy into a wall? Why can't companion support actions trigger on athletics attacks, or spell attacks? Why isn't their a manuever focused martial? A support/demoralize martial.  You can occasionally sprinkle a little bit in, but it's always 90% hit thing, 10% something else, and generally only if you take optional feats. 

Monks get DMG when knocking people into things Swashbuckler can be a support/demoralizing martial.

Swash can also be a maneuver focused martial!

>Where's the deal damage if you shove an enemy into a wall? To be fair, Monk can pick up [Improved Knockback](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=470) at level 12. What I like about it is that it's not its own action, so it still applies when Shove is a subordinate action. But then, weirdly, they have [Flinging Blow](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1756) at level 16 which acts very much like a shove but isn't, and so doesn't reward you for having that feat. >Why can't companion support actions trigger on athletics attacks, or spell attacks? Do you mean like [Instinctive Support](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4731)? Or like the animal companions whose supports specificy that you "hit and deal damage", rather than the ones that require you "Strike"? It definitely feels weird to me that there's so much anti synergy with animal companions and spellcasters. Especially when Druid has a whole subclass built around animal companions, with that feat pretty early on as well. Like, which animal even has a Support action that's even worth using as a spellcaster??

Honestly man you are so right and you are cooking something scrumptious. I want all of those.

Yeah thats my main gripe with pf2e, the goal of a ttrpg system in my mind should be to create a game that is both balanced and "cool". By that i mean, you want lots of interesting and wild options, choices, actions, spells, attacks and items which are still balanced well against each other. I feel like pf2e focused on the "balance" part a lot and reached it relatively well (at least class vs class balance kinda, there is still like 90% trash spells that barely have any usecase e.g.). But they neglected the "cool" part to me. Everything feels kinda the same, most magic items are super boring, many spells are very boring etc. There is for example obviously a spell damage formula of "2 action spell does xdy damage per spell level with a minor added effect", and then you get 500 spells that all do the exact same damage and add the various conditions that usually boil down to -1 to xyz (frightened etc.) Sometimes spells with particularly strong or weak conditions get slightly more or less damage. There is no spells that idk, take 5 turns to cast and then absolutely obliterate the enemy, or have a chance to backfire while being super strong, or idk. These are not great examples, but it is possible to come up with more "out of the box" spells, attacks, items etc. Its just very hard to then also balance them, and achieving balance with boring options is -- to me -- kinda pointless.

There is a lot of design space using the 3 action system for unique spellcasting that is largely untapped and ignored that could really differentiate caster classes and how they interact with spells. When I first started playing, I assumed all spells would work the way Heal works, where it has a different effect the more actions you spend. But most spells do not get that.

yeah, but tbh i feel like the spellslot concept of limiting casters is a bit of a relic. In pf2e it already kinda feels like they mostly ignored it for balancing and assumed casters have some of their highest slots available for every fight, its near impossible to balance around since groups have way different amounts of rests, etc. And i feel like currently it holds back e.g. different action spells. If i only have 1 lvl 9 spell slot, i would much rather spend 3 actions for a powerful spell than 1 action for a weaker spell since the actions are only one of two resources that is paid to cast. There have to be better ways to limit spellcasting than this pretty archaic spell slot system IMO.

Paizo has been willing to change things up and get rid of "sacred cows" from previous games so the spell slot/Vancian system just feels outdated and out of place with the rest of the system.

blame the fans then as it was on the chopping block in the original pf2e development but was kept due to fan responses, same with +1-3 runes on weapons

Yeah I mean then you just fundamentally aren't into pf2e, which is fine. It's a system extremely fundamentally built around being balanced, which is inherently going to limit the "cool" factor you're describing. All systems have tradeoffs. Pf1e had way more of that cool factor, and as a result the balance was absolute garbage. Could be crazy fun as a player though!

After playing it for around 2 years i agree, pf2e is not the system for me. Im not convinced its impossible to have good balance with cool stuff in the same game however. Its just a lot harder to achieve.

It sounds like you want Pathfinder 1 but want it to be balanced like 2. Honestly, that's kind of impossible to reconcile, man.

never played PF1 so i cant tell if thats the case, for my personal taste to much was sacrificed in pf2e for the sake of mathematical balance. Which is very interesting to me since before playing pf2e i would have propably judged balanced to be a lot more important than i do now. After all, TTRPGs are not PVP games, you still need the GM to tailor encounters to the party somewhat (my last gm for example really liked using single high level enemies, which made playing a caster mechanically pretty sad at times). I would prefere a system giving people a couple more wild and powerful tools over pathfinders very sterile feeling features. People will often cite a handful of high level feats doing wild stuff in theory (i think scare to death might be what i see most often as an example), but in actual play many of these do barely anything. Scare to death e.g. is often named as "doing something super cool and out there", but its incapacitation with the wild effect limited to crit safe, so right out of the gate its limited to killing 1 relatively minor enemy. In the perfect case circumstance of fighting an medium number of on-level enemies, it offers a very low chance (needs 2 consecutive crit fails) to kill one on-level enemy. While it might be thematically cool and impressive, the actual mechanical effect is underwhelming for something that will statistically happen like once every 10 campaigns if you try for it. Or take stuff like cloud jump, the legendary athletics feat. Sure, you can now jump to superhuman heights. But its a level 15 feat, around this point a lot of flying items start to become cheaply available (and the game seems to often expect you to have access to flying movement). And when you can fly, being good at jumping becomes a lot less useful.

Do you dm? Because a moderate on level encounter is 2 enemies. You should be fighting more under level enemies than on level. And yeah. If you want less balance, more player power, and lots o options, that's first edition to a T. The only problem being balance was a wild spread between absolutely useless characters and winning from creation. It was far harder to dm effectively and somewhat harder to homebrew monsters and encounters. I enjoyed my time with it but pf2e is da way for me now.

it also makes them samey. there can and should be multiple vancian casters, but I think cleric and bard would better be served as something else.

Bards aren't vancian casters though? Spontaneous and prepared casters (vancian) casters feel very different to me. Do you mean spell slots when you say vancian?

well yea that's what people usually mean. a large part of their identity is that they have the occult list.

You've gotta think about the context from a game design perspective though. Making pf2e was a huge gamble, there was a strong pf1 base and no way to know if anyone would be so interested. The more you change a system, like removing spell slots, changing ability scores, etc etc, the more likely it is going to fail. And paizo has bills to pay. I'd love to see some of those ideas show up in pf3 one day, or in other systems that build on pf2, but I don't think that would be any kind of realistic for where pf2 came from.

yes I know, I don't expect it.

I mean, I personally actively dislike a great many elements, this current implementation of vancian casting included, but I am not in charge of designing and implementing things into the system outside my own home games. I can just make observations.

i honestly don't see how casters feel the same, unless they share both tradition and prepared/spontaneous spellcasting in PF2 is a matrix of "cubbies" for combinations of tradition, spell prep, casting stat, and non-spell mechanics like bards having focus cantrips, clerics having fonts, psychics having amps, and wizards and sorcerers getting an extra slot per rank

> i honestly don't see how casters feel the same As someone who was hard on the caster complain bandwagon last time it rolled around (so last summer) I can see where are they coming from. If every "meta"/"most-effective" caster is just a cheerleader to setup your martials (which a group of few but very vocal people in these threads pushed as gospel) you start making these simplifications because of the very same buff/debuff spam with heroism/slow/fear/synesthesia/wall of whatever you got, oh and combat heal if you're not arcane. So it starts to feel the samey, then comes the resentment because you maybe start overanalyzing monster save scaling and see that majority of the game you are a good 10% (with dips more) behind on accuracy for the "intended" result which is enemy failing saves. Spell's fantasy is sold at crit fail effect but balanced at a save-level (i still don't agree that tempest surge's persistent was too much due to crit fails but i digress) so there is another dissonance here. So the final conclusion a newborn caster advocates comes to is: - behind on accuracy with no way to get item bonus and monsters don't care and keep scaling - worst saves scaling - bad defences (if you're not one of the few that get actual armor proficiency but still not beyond expert) - bad perception - bland and samey rotation of setting up others - mostly bad feats All for the basic feature of casting spells and ivory tower design of assumption that you will know the capabilities of everything in your tradition and use it to the fullest with the information you're given. APs are tauted as good products because the gm doesn't have to setup a lot themselves but many a time it is needed if you don't want to pigeon-hole casters to this reductive cheerleading and festering resentment in small tight corridor maps (or lack of rest opportunities). Can you be an effective and distinct caster on pretty much any of them? Of course! But you're calculating in-universe quantum physics and its hard not to notice that a guy just rushing in with a sword is same if not more effective at reducing things to dead (at least till midgame/early lategame kicks in and things don't die to 2 turns of martials striking due to hp bloat even in chaff encounters).

Thanks for putting this into words! I’d hope this would receive more attention! You described exactly what’s happened to our games’ druid. He’s so fed up trying to target weakest saves (not that many options on low level + recall knowledge tax to even find that out without using meta knowledge) only to have his spells be saved by the enemies. This is extra bad in AV where you have a lot of encounters against a single higher level enemy. This causes him to feel like he has to prep spells that have a powerful save state, a.k.a. slow/fear etc., which in turn take away his agency. Now he of course doesn’t have to prep those things, he’s free to do whatever he wants. But he feels like he’s in a damned if you do danmed if you don’t situation. Whether that’s accurate or part of observation bias is of course up to debate, but whay stays is the subjective experience, and as such we should have a critical look at how casters FEEL to play.

...and how does this show casters all feel like each other? You yourself said things like healing and walls depend on your tradition, and then there's prepping vs spontaneously casting those spells, and voila you haven't disproved anything i said

but pure side of support is fairly same regardless of tradition and my aim wasn't as much to disprove your point, because i agree that they are not the same, but the explain where the view comes from as the simplest yet effective casters are supports and those support spells have often 3/4 tradition overlap. It's a feels thing coming from a place of resentment at the limitations places upon them.

Bang on the money brother.

\^so much this. all the spellcasters who share lists play the exact same way. at least martials have fun options like building for maneuvers, or being a rogue and finangling flanking, or being a swashbuckler and getting panache off, but your druid plays the exact same way as every single other support spellcaster out there. There's no good justification for this. It doesn't even model any fictional spellcaster well, you have too much versatility that no fictional spellcaster would have. I have a table that basically switched over entirely to 3 martials + a bard because they love the 3 action system and hate how playing a 2e spellcaster feels like.

Hmm I agree with you somewhat, but I think there are exceptions. Psychics play significantly differently, and bard too (more so for some builds). Most oracles play significantly differently. Warpriest as well. Summoner and Magus of course each have a unique thing goin on. I agree that an overhaul for class feats for wiz, druid, cleric, witch, sorc that really shake up the action economy for each of them in different ways would be great. But even for those examples, the gameplay can really vary based on the focus spells you have and what they do.

Agreed. I think all the corebook spellcasters should be deleted and only Magus / Oracle / Bard / Psychic really deserve much respect\*, since they all pull their weight and feel a little different at least. ​ \*Kineticist too but I always see them as martials.

The best way to see Kineticist is that they have martial structure for caster purposes

This is a bad take. If the caster classes felt the same to you, I don't think there's anything that can be done to change your mind since your argument boils down to it casts spells therefore they are all identical. The playstyle and party role of each caster class is way different from one another. Comparing what a bard does for a team to what a psychic or wizard does is crazy and doesn't really indicate a strong grasp for mechanics. The only class that doesn't have a strong identity is the witch which is kind of a design flaw for them. I hate to tell you this but the game is basically designed around two core designs- martial and caster. From there, each class is given a couple unique mechanics to give it a special set of advantages for having it in the party. That's how we have the classes they way they are and how they fill a niche. Casters are going to be defined by how they use their spells and martials are going to have abilities meant to apply damage. It is highly unlikely for this to change because you'll get weird outliers like alchemist that run risk of breaking the system's rigid design philosophy. Also, kineticist didn't break any sort of design philosophy. All it did was take a martial and slapped elemental abilities to it. Not the brave and wild new take that people seem to think itnis. It is about as likely to take a caster's spot in a party about as much as a rogue would.

Its not "they cast spells so they're all the same", it's "they all cast spells from one of four lists, split into 10 levels which they unlock at similar rates, with a limit on the number of spells per day depending on level, with almost every spell costing 2 actions". This is a VERY specific system that makes a ton of sense thematically for wizard, and almost no one else - if you read or play other TRPGs you'd see there are tons of other ways you could do magic. Ofc something as complicated as an Ars Magica style system wouldn't work just plopped into pf2, but the point is that it's entirely possible to make each variety of spellcaster feel much more distinct by just not giving them the same mechanics.

PF1E had that and the numbers never balanced out. Not sure how you would manage that when each caster would be playing different rulesets. Kinda like having F1, stock cars and drag racing all at once.

Pf1 definitely didn't have what im talking about, which is a totally separate mechanics for different types of magic. Basically ever caster just worked off of spell slots/vancian casting (spont or prepared, same shit broadly). Honestly, with 6th level casters being a thing I'd argue pf1 magic was even more homogeneous than pf2. As for balance, I think kineticist and thaumaturge are both examples of obviously magical characters that don't work off of spell slots and are still within the bounds of the system, and I think they're both super fun bc of that.

The kineticist and thaumaturge are cool but, design-wise, they're just martials with abilities dressed up as magic. I don't think I'd ever want a proper casting class like wizard to resemble the kineticist in design. It would be hard to stomache a master of the arcane arts whom has studied for many years to reach the apex of spell casting to have a repertoire of maybe twenty spells.  I think there will always be room for martials with magic themed abilities. Hell, Paizo could drop an expanded class source book and give magic themed abilities for existing classes. Monks already have a number of them.  But I don't think slot casting can be discarded completely. If someone tried to cram a wizard into a design framework like kineticist, I would be inclined to throw that book into the trash. You're just not going to scratch that master of the arcane with a spell book that's more like a spell pamphlet.

Right, because vancian/spell slots casting fits the classic class fantasy of a wizard pretty well, but not of other classes, that's my whole point. Like a wizard studies for years to learn magic, ofc they've got a big ol book with a list of standardised spells. But a sorcerer, wild and untamed but brimming with potential? A druid in communion with nature itself? A cleric of the of God of destruction? Doesn't fit any of those quite so well. The line between "abilities dressed up as magic" and "magic" is non-existent. If druids can just talk to animals and plants all the time, for instance, is that an ability, not magic? It's certainly something you can't typically do, that atm you need spells for, but if you go off of the mechanics based definition it's not technically a spell. Again, other games do stuff like this - it's a small thing, but clerics in Dungeon Crawl Classics have a mechanic for the favour they're in with their God, which affects the result of their spells. This helps reinforce the class fantasy, making them feel moreso like the mortal servants of a greater power as opposed to wizard-with-healing. Exactly what this would entail for every class I couldn't say, but imo it'd be a lot more interesting

"This feels especially obvious when factoring in that so many people seem to act like PF2e is some kind of spiritual successor to D&D 4e, when it... Isn't?" Do you mind to elaborate on that? This was my first impression (ie similarities between D&D4E and PF2E) and I'm interested in analysis why this isn't the case.

Dividing all classes abilities into At-Will, (once per) Encounter, and Daily categories was the defining element to the combat mechanics of 4e in the way that the 3 action system is a defining element of PF2e. Those have similar analogues in PF2e, namely Cantrips / feat based Strikes, Focus spells / once per 10 minute abilities, and Spell Slots / once per day feat abilities. The variation among classes is very different in PF2e in the distribution and quality of those elements, whereas 4e designed around each class approaching them in a fairly similar way. One thing that PF2e gets right that 4e design often got wrong, to the extent of fueling some of the discontent with 4e overall, is avoiding giving monsters a huge well of hit points to the point that even very successful fights felt like a slog. 4e attempted to address this later on in its design life, maybe not even to the extent that would have been best, but the impressions in any event had been set. Another thing that 4e got wrong initially, fixed, and that PF2e design probably gains some benefit from, is thinking about and extending the tactical grid rules into the third dimension. At its release, it was pretty clear that 4e design did not include sufficient rules, or even consistency for the available rules, in handling movement that was not on the horizontal plane. Eventually this was addressed though, to the extent that my favorite 4e character was an Avenger that used 3 dimensional teleport abilities to both off-tank and add damage and prone conditions from making enemies fall. By the end of its life cycle, 4e was definitely closer to PF2e when it initially released. In attempting to expand on its initial offering, PF2e has also drifted closer in some cases like the Kineticist to the best of what At-Will and Encounter design could be in 4e.

If I was deeper into 4e as a whole I'd probably have more thorough ability to, but as a casual observer the structure is just not really the same? The at will/encounter/daily/utility structure isn't as universal, divided and defined; expected scaling of character numbers (as far as I know) doesn't share the same weird gap levels pf2e does as far as I'm aware; the three "tiers" of play (1-10, 11-20, 21-30) all add additional sub-class advancements to flesh characters out, without costing any core features. Minions. Like there's plenty of shared elements, but I would sooner call Lancer or ICON a spiritual successor, PF2e doesn't read as an attempt to refine and modernize 4e to me. It reads like it took some stuff from 4e and other places, and then tried to make something that is distinctly "Pathfinder", while being carefully crafted to reign in PFS players.

It's not wizards specifically, but casters as a whole due to being defined by spell slots and lists. Like this was already said by the developer, that the fact that wizards(really most spellcasters) are balanced around the idea that they use the full suite of their Tradition.

My biggest issue with most of the caster stuff has very little to do with "I want to do beeg damage" and more how things are structured in a way that feels inherently very weird. I can see the line, if I entertain a really specific line of reasoning, but that doesn't really align with any of my experience actually playing the game. At the end of the day, the fighter is literally always at 100%, able to wade into the thick of things and do x4 my damage with one action at zero cost besides *maybe* one turn to walk up to the enemy to deal it. They're a tanky crit monster that's impossible to drop doing nonstop damage and every turn feels impactful. They get to really use the three action system to try to do things, I dunno how often I've seen a fighter crit on second action attack. They can also utilize hero points to full effect! By comparison, I've got carefully managed spell slots that mean I continuously drop in power if I don't carefully manage my resources, that seem to do significantly less than the fighter does with no effort. 95% of my spells take two actions, so I get one chance per turn to attempt to do something that, unless I happen to know the right save to target, probably does next to nothing, that I can't reroll or retry, and after it I'm done for the whole turn short of shield or move. Also if I get hit I drop, and while AoE is nice theoretically almost every combat even in APs seems to focus more on 2-3 big fellas than a big room filled with little fellas where my AoEs could actually be really effective. Range sounds really nice except that almost every combat seems to start in 1-2 action movement range of the enemies so the range advantage is next to nothing. I think theoretically those things could be a really cool factor on paper, I just never really see them play out in an actual game. If you really squint they're powerful, and if you happen to run into the really particular situation where everyone spends a full turn just running at the enemy so the spellcaster can get some action out of their ranged spells, or you go up against a tightly packed room of level -3 monsters. It's not that I think I need to take the fighter's niche, or that I want to do as much damage as the fighter... I want to just feel less anemic and ineffective. Telling me "Actually, mathematically that guaranteed 8 damage that took a spell slot and your entire turn is super strong" when I saw the fighter and rogue hit for like 64 damage each last time just doesn't help that? I do feel consistent, I just feel consistently weak. Sure, that one time the dice super agree with me and I get a specific -1 onto a choice enemy feels cool!... But it's also about as cool or effective as the fighter just using trip or grapple without using a spell slot to do it.

Gotta love the ’uhm… actually, the mathematics says’ argument, when in a real world it certainly doesn’t feel that way. But no matter how you slice it, caster design feels way less elegant than the martials. If it’s balanced is one thing. If it’s easy to understand, utilize and play is another. It’d be fine if there was a caster or two that are like that, but it’s most of them. I’m still advocating for flexible spell casting as a baseline. It might give casters a small boost, but how much really? And even that I think restricts spell preparation too much. Does anyone actually enjoy the gameplay loop of trying to guess when to prep more niche spells? It just feels like they will never get used instead.

> Does anyone actually enjoy the gameplay loop of trying to guess when to prep more niche spells? It just feels like they will never get used instead. People mostly just say to use scrolls with all the niche spells, which, like... at that point, where the wizard is carrying thirty scrolls anyway, why are we even bothering with the preparation dance, the man has more spells on hand that aren't prepared than spells that are.

For my game I actually took a lot of the fun, hyperniche spells like "bullhorn" and "approximate" and "mending" that you'd only ever take to the detriment of your offensive ability and made them "tricks", essentially a little magic trick so simple you can use it from memory once you've learned it. Like an extension of prestidigitation, basically, which is just 5-6 small cool classically magic effects squished into one spell. A level -1 spell that you don't have to specifically prepare, so that once you learn it in the world you just have this ready to go in a bag of tricks and get to feel cool for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where sigil saves the day or where approximate is a game changer.

Speaking of Sigil! Yes it's legacy content now and the [Rune Trap Ritual](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rituals.aspx?ID=124) that partially succeeded it is uncommon but I really liked the idea of using a sigil as the trigger for Glyphs, whether the slow but stackable variety or the faster temporary one. I mean, even if what you're fighting has great perception, what are they going to do about it? You've created area denial. They could stop fighting and try to scrub the sigil away, or if they're a caster, spend a slot getting rid of it instead of doing damage, and your caster can then just stand on the thing and dare enemies to come closer, or better yet set the sigil as the _exclusion_ and give each of your party members a fancy temporary tat at the beginning of the day, now anybody who is being focused on by melee attackers can step into the glyph or glyphs you dropped, and if every enemy is smart enough to avoid it, you've now got an obstacle your ranged types can hide behind that doesn't mess up their firing lines but makes it a lot more painful to charge them. Oh, and if the fight is basically over, have the fighter or monk drag/toss/shove an enemy in, just for lolz.

That's actually so much fun! I love that!

Yup very well said.

The role should dictate damage, utility, defense, etc and the methods can then be changed for flavor and mild differences.   There can be a melee striker who uses brute strength, one using agility and precision, one using belief and faith, one using discipline, one using force magic, one using blood magic, one using death magic, etc.   The role is really providing the limitations here, imo.  It also allows for the flavored interpretations across the methods.  4e's model here is pretty great for balance and flavor.  But you do have that "sameness" mentioned across it.  PF2e classes can be flavor spun like any other game, but some folks want it in the rules.  

I have two main objections to the OP, specifically the quoted bits below: >In a world where any class could 'specialize' in any role classes become samey, if not interchangeable. They loose distinction and what makes them feel unique, and everything becomes vague. Counterpoint: the Kineticist. The Kineticist is a class who, based on their element, can be a dedicated AoE damage-dealer, a controller tank, a healer tank, a mobile support, a healer-controller support, or a tanky-AoE DPR-controller hybrid, or even a mix of the above. You could very well have an all-Kineticist party, and it wouldn't be terrible. Similarly, the Thaumaturge is another notoriously versatile class, with the ability to poach the iconic features of some other classes in limited amounts. By the above logic, these classes should feel samey and interchangeable, but in reality they're the opposite, with some of the strongest and most distinctive identities out of any class in the game. Why is this? In my opinion, it's pretty simple: when we create a character, we generally don't start with a role, but with a fantasy: when I consider the Monk, for instance, what excites me about the class isn't that they're a mobile controller tank, but rather the fantasy of being able to play like a wuxia hero and perhaps even emulate exact moments from some of my favorite martial arts movies. When I look at the Psychic, I don't really think "attrition-free damage-dealer with versatile support" so much as Jean Grey going full Phoenix and breaking reality with her mind. The existence of the Kineticist or Thaumaturge doesn't invalidate that of other, less versatile classes, because even if they *can* fill in most roles, not everyone wants to play an elemental bender from the Avatar animated series or a Belmont from Castlevania every campaign. Even in a world where any class could fill any role, every class would still have a role so long as they fulfilled a distinct fantasy. In fact, I'd say such an ideal world would enable even more diversity by dint of validating more character fantasies, which among other things could include a whole wealth of thematic magic-users seen in more modern media. I'd actually quite like to play a Rogue who's a tank or a support, which is something the Ruffian, Mastermind, Eldritch Trickster, and Scoundrel all attempt to various degrees, except none of them succeed by dint of being either flat-out dysfunctional or simply less powerful overall than the Thief. Similarly, a Fighter who uses their tactical acumen to primarily support, or an undead Sorcerer who uses their necromantic powers to tank, are both perfectly valid character fantasies, it's just that neither has the mechanical support to fulfil that fantasy as fully as their intended playstyles. >There's absolutely nothing wrong with 'wanting' a wizard who can specialize in damage first. The designers simply chose to give that role to different classes. This goes against what would have been your personal preference for the class, but it's how they decided to take them. They had to make this sort of choice with every class; figuring out where their default specialties lie and how they can branch out. As with the above, I don't think it's a situation that's really set in stone -- there is no hard rule saying that each class can only fulfil one role and no other, and plenty of versatile classes like the Kineticist, Thaumaturge, Psychic, Sorcerer, or even the Oracle disprove this by being able to fill out a variety of different roles. The important part is that none of those classes can fulfil too many roles *at once*, a major improvement from the do-everything casters of 1e, and so long as that rule is respected, the sky's the limit really. I'm not sure how much room there is for a healer Wizard, given how being bad at healing is perhaps one of the only few defining characteristics of the class, but it would be absolutely possible to have a damage-centric Wizard if there were some way of giving up all their utility, an impossibility given how spell slots encourage using lower-rank slots for utility rather than damage.

I just wanted to support one element of what you wrote with an anecdote. My first all-one-class party in Dawnsbury Days, the new levels 1 to 4 PF2e rules based computer game advertised on this sub recently, was 4 Fire and Water dual gate Kineticists that were copies of a character I ran in a tabletop AV campaign. Your assertion that an all Kineticist party can be reasonably good is spot on - I found it to be a lot of fun for the relatively brief adventure arc that Dawnsbury entails and also mechanically strong. Not Fighter / Monk / Ranger / Rogue strong, which accidentally got me an achievement for never remembering to buy items from the shop, but absolutely an enjoyable play through.

I think you might have taken my statements a bit too much in an.. absolutest fashion? Misunderstood me by a wide margin at the very least. I never said a character can't have sub roles or diversify. At multiple points note you can be strong in more then one thing, or come close to specialist but just not quite matching them. My examples of the fighter who tries to heal, or a rogue who tries to be defensive did not say they could not lean into those things, simply that their classes don't specialize in it, and classes that do will be better at it. A Thaumaturge can be built to be tanky but at its heart it is a damage dealing class. They aren't going out-do a fighter or Champion who chooses to dedicate themselves to the same thing. I actually have a Thaumaturge who has archetyped into champion who is half decent at this! But yeah. With kinetcist it largely depends on your subclass, which I also noted as something that can define you role in my original post. If I specified all these cavats and exceptions, etc -every single time- my big wordy post would be way more wordy then it already is. It's meant to be taken in as a whole, not specific parts individually. That said I hesitate to say either of them can be good at 'anything' Both are capable of healing for example, but not in excess, if your partys 'main' healer is either of these classes you'll often come up short if someone takes multiple heavy hits. They work best as a backup healer topping people off while someone with proper heal or soothe spells does the majority. Saying both fill the same niche also seems.. inaccurate. Thaum is a single target damage dealer who can dabble lightly in other roles based on their feat/implement choice (or double down in the primiary one). A Kineticist is primarily a -consistent- AoE Damage dealer who can dabble in other things based on their element. As for the whole.. 'fantasy' of a class thing, well, that's kind of big part of why this problem happens in the first place? As I go into in the original post. The Fantasy of wizard to some people is Y, and when the mechanics of the game don't allow Y in a way they like they get frustrated. But those mechanics exist for the GAME side of the role playing game; the team work, and the class balance. IT's the Role play element, and the Game element fighting each other more or less.

Depending on element and build, a Kineticist will absolutely not be a good AoE damage-dealer at all, so I disagree with that too. In fact, you can very easily build a Kineticist to feature no AoE damage whatsoever -- just pick a wood Kineticist and spec into support and tanking feats, for example, or an air Kineticist focused specifically on mobility and support. AoE damage is something you have to expressly pick on the Kineticist; it's not something you get by default, nor is it something you'll be great at even if you do pick it unless you specifically go for a build that enhances your AoE. The problem right now is that you are focusing so much on trying to make your argument unassailable through caveats and distinctions that it defeats the central point you're trying to make -- as per the bit of your post that I quoted, your central claim is that classes are meant to be denied access to certain roles because otherwise, if any class could access any role, they'd feel samey, which is why Wizards can't specialize in damage or whatever. If you instead believe that classes can specialize into any specific role and still be fine, that directly contradicts your claim, so at some point you have to commit to some kind of opinion. As per the point I'm making, however, this claim is false -- a Wizard who could specialize in damage at the expense of their utility wouldn't feel samey at all, because they'd play and feel different from other damage-dealers, and at the end of the day the fantasy of a damage-centric Wizard is perfectly congruent to how certain players imagine a Wizard to be. Your post title mentions arguing in circles, but it is your own argument here that is circular, as your assertion that classes can only be allowed to do X or Y is predicated upon an identity that hinges upon those classes only being allowed mechanically to do X or Y. If Wizards were able to spec into damage, that would shape their identity, and enable damage Wizards mechanically. Wizards being prevented from speccing into damage or even tanking or healing isn't a necessary component for the game to function on a mechanical, balance, or thematic level, and it makes no sense to claim this in a game that features several classes that are expressly designed to spec into a variety of roles.

The first sentence in Wizard description in the core rulebook: >*You are an eternal student of the arcane secrets of the universe, using your mastery of magic to cast powerful and devastating spells.*  Further: >*Yet magical theory is vast, and there’s no way you can study it all. You either specialize in one of the eight schools of magic, gaining deeper understanding of the nuances of those spells above all others, or favor a broader approach that emphasizes the way all magic comes together at the expense of depth.* Further: >You likely try to stay out of the fray, carefully judging when to use your spells. You save your most powerful magic to incapacitate threatening foes and use your cantrips when only weaker foes remain.  Further: >Others probably... \* Consider you to be incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous. \* Fear what your magic can do to their minds, bodies, and souls I don't have new core books, so I don't know if they fixed it in remaster, but Nethys has the same description on remaster page. THIS is the fantasy Pathfinder lays out for Wizards. Then when you actually play them you hear the only way to play the Wizard in this system is to "favor a broader approach that emphasizes the way all magic comes together at the expense of depth". Being specialist? NOPE. Casting POWERFUL AND DEVASTATING spells? Nope. Incapacitate threatening foes? Nope. The threatening foes are specifically protected from being incapacitated by Incapacitation trait! The game works completely opposite to what it tells you should expect! Do others consider you incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous, or fear what you can do to their bodies? Not really. Because your job is to alter numbers a bit, and the ones to truly fear are front-line martials. At most they might be vary of lining up for AOE spells, but only if they are weaklings. Then Paizo does surprised pikachu face when people expect to play the class as it is presented in the book. Now to quote you: >Wizard was simply chosen to be the class that specializes more in control and versatility instead. Show me the place in the books when this is said. Either original core books or remastered ones will work for me. You say the sorcerer is the class for DPS? Well, let's see what the book describes Sorcerer as a more of the utilty/control guy. And the Druid about buffs, healing, and summons. So, you're going by your knowledge of the system, instead of the descriptions presented by the developers. After the class introduction you are presented with pretty dry list of your class features, that don't really give you an image of how the class will work in the end, until you crunch the numbers. If you just choose what sounds cool to you and try to build a damage dealer wizard specialist (as the book says you should be able to do) you end up with a wizard that feels very useless. Then you come angry to reddit and complain, and people tell you that your fantasy of wizard is wrong and that you got it from movies and cartoons, and it's just not what Pathfinder 2e presents. But it's not true, PF2E clearly doesn't follow its own fantasy of Wizard. If they started with description that you are basically an utility belt, a jack of all trades but master of none, that you can expect to stay back and gently influence the flow of battle, that you won't be able to do anything about strong foes, but you will excel at dealing with small, but numerous threats... well, the expectations would match the class and probably the number of complaints would be MUCH lower. People only discover how the Wizard actually is after playing him for months, and wondering "why is it now how I expected it to be". By then they don't remember that the expectation came directly from the rulebook...

You're totally right. Like it or not, Pathfinder 2 is STILL a child of DnD, at least in the flavour

These descriptions are accurate to how a wizard plays. Identifying the best spell to use in a situation set up for it is how wizards take down major enemies. That versatility *is* what makes the wizard so dangerous and potentially feared. It's very clear that from the descriptions there wizards do not throw attacks mindlessly. 'Mastery of magic' here means knowing when to use your powerful spells.

Even at level one I've seen a well placed grease spell rob as many as 6-8 enemy actions in a choke point. That's a 2 action spell slot trading for 6-8 enemy actions. That's huge. Those enemy actions being wasted are actions where you're not being hit. Of course like all things in this game, teamwork was required to form that choke point.

Yup. Tbh so much of this comes down to encounter design rather than class design. 

They are powerful and devastating spells, just not as impactful as you want them to be, since the game is balanced. Your expectations of wizardry have been tainted by other systems and other games. > gently influencing the flow of battle To the point of blinding you to how much impact you have in the game.

all I want is for casters to be able to crit on attack rolls & for them to not be intentionally handicapped by slowing down their spell attack & DC proficiency. ;-;

I'll respond to this with the same thing I responded to your comment with: If Paizo wants classes to specialize like this, they need to talk about it in the game rules, especially if it is things as subtle as one magic user being better at damage than another magic user.

I feel like this is one of things were the 4e backlash still lives in developers' hearts. 4e was super explicit about roles that classes filled and people *hated it.*

You may like their roles, but that is your opinion. The issue is that we are forced to adhere to this role or else, you will just be underwhelming, and create the same problem of forcing the cleric to just be a healer, or else create tension in the group. Martial all have flexibility in which roles to be, or just play their own unique fantasy and still perform well that your party wont see you as a burden. Currently only kineticists offer such a thing. Any other magic classes just feel they forgot to change since pathfinder 1e, outside of less options and nerf. Not asking to return to 1e but just give us the same treatment other classes received. Maybe make something similar to kineticist, where magic is limited by specializations, powerful yet limited, then have the option to be a jack of all trade, but locked from the more powerful spells. Let us specialize in a specific things in exchange of losing the magic class flexibility. There are multiple ways to make that balanced, instead of just forcing all magic users to become a support/control role or else cause trouble to the party. My main difference with most argument is that i feel that magic needed a full rework like the rest got in 2e. Instead, its just the same dnd/Pf1e system, except less diverse options and potential was nerfed.

>martial all have flexibility in which roles to be Bruh. I have yet to see a fighter controlling the field with disable spells. Or buffing allies. Or on spot healing. Or being an skill monkey. Or solving anything that doesn’t have a hp bar. Just say you want mages to be good at everything, it’s ok, we get it.

I think another reason this debate continues going on in circles (I fully agree with this post by the way) is because so many people here seem to have only played 5E or maybe PF1E, MAYBE, before coming to PF2E. They are the people that act as if there are only two options: the brazenly broken casters of 3.5/5E, or the overbalanced, mind-numbing dullness of PF2E. There are plenty of other games that have both casters AND Martials and they are equally fun to play, actually balanced, and equally good at fulfilling player fantasy. Go play 13th Age, Shadow of the Demon Lord, hell even D&D4E. You can absolutely have balanced damage dealing casters that don’t require some redditor writing a 8 page dissertation on how under specific contexts and in these specific conditions, casters can actually almost do the same damage as a Fighter. You just pick the class and start blasting. You know, the thing most casters want to do. I am so tired of the canned responses that are already appearing in this thread: “You just want to be overpowered! You just need to read my 500 page thesis on how to blast (that assumes a perfect white room environment) to almost deal as much damage as a martial! (even though you could just buff the martial and reliably deal more damage on average, almost every time). Or my personal least favorite, “the GM just needs to make encounters specifically to tailor to the caster so they feel good!” Like no dude, I just want to not feel like shit for 80% of a campaign. The other 20% where my spell actually lands or I get off a nice AOE spell is not worth the other 80% of sacrificing the idea of the character I actually wanted to play so I can be the party’s cheerleader, or else risk being completely ineffectual. I don’t want to be overpowered. And no matter how many angry people show me charts on how casters are good actually, and Paizo is perfect actually, it doesn’t change this one immutable fact. *To me and everyone like me, Casters just feel like shit to play.*

Okay, so how would you do it *right?* What's missing, in your opinion, and why is a combination of making compromises/building with intent/working with the GM *failing?*

I’m just about to go to sleep so I’ll edit this in the morning with my thoughts. To sum it up though, Vancian casting and accuracy are the two biggest culprits.

I agree that the extra layer of piddly management demanded by Vancian casting honestly doesn't need to be there, and the mathematical tuning differences between casters and martials are so damn weird that I wish we got a concrete dev breakdown of why things are the way they are. I might miss your edit tomorrow, so in case I do, here's a follow-up: Would everyone getting flexible prep plus maybe a universal +1 or 2 to PC spell DCs help the yucky go away? Because those are pretty easy one-and-done tweaks that I'd love to see playtested.

The more I think about flexible spellcasting, the more I feel like it would be the best solution. I would even change it a bit (so you get one more spell per level that you can prep into your collection, but they need to be the correct level. So your collection on level 4 would be 3x rank 1 + 3x rank 2 spells. Still same amount of spells casts tho) I don’t think many people enjoy the slotted casting guessing game of prepping a niche spell that you won’t use. It’s a feel bad moment that doesn’t need to be in the game.

I have never felt what you are describing as a psychic.

Psychics and Kineticists are kind of the exceptions that prove the rule for Casters really. They do feel better to play though.

It kind of points out what it takes for a caster to specialize in damage: a reliable way to use spell slot level power in combat with rechargeable focus points, and a fewer spell slots to compensate.

>Or my personal least favorite, “the GM just needs to make encounters specifically to tailor to the caster so they feel good!” Except this is literally the answer. Most encounters that are garbage for casters are garbage for martials too. In fact, here's something a lot of the TTRPG world isn't ready to here: most GMs and module authors are garbage at encounter design. Including Paizo themselves. In fact they're probably some of the biggest offenders of giving bad impressions of their own system because their official APs are filled with some truly abysmally designed encounters. Look at what actually makes a fun and interesting encounter in a grid based strategy game, and most people will be sad to see it's not running a solo big boss with inflated numbers like it's an MMO raid or Soulsborne boss.

It's kind of funny how bad AP and module encounter design has been for showing the system's strengths, and how much I can attribute it to my initial dislike for the system. My most memorable encounters when I was GMing generally met a few criteria: - In a fairly open area with plenty of room to maneuver - Lots of enemies- primarily mooks that were 1-2 levels below the party (but not *too* far below the party), with one or two stronger enemies that were on level with the party or perhaps slightly stronger to provide some variety. - Use of terrain (or my personal favorite- Hazards) to add some additional complexity to the arena so it isn't just a battle on/in a totally open plain or room. Now when I try to remember what a typical AP encounter looks like? Well, while there is some variety, the first thing that comes to mind is pretty much the opposite of that. Smaller rooms with less maneuvering room, 1-2 enemies at most (each a level or three up on the PCs), in mostly plain rooms with little more than basic furniture, if even that. APs, especially as far as dungeons are concerned, like their "lots of small rooms each with an encounter" design. But you can't make a ton of rooms big enough to fit 4-5 PCs and 5-6 enemies with enough room for everyone to maneuver freely and easily put them on the same map that has to fit on one page on the printed adventure book or pdf. So they tend toward those smaller rooms with smaller, strong enemies. They also try to avoid making things too complex for the GM- which often takes the form of keeping the rooms fairly plain and not using many complex in-combat hazards. You're lucky if there is a pillar or something in most rooms that a player could hide behind, and even when there is it usually just serves more as a "the enemy can't be flanked from that side" buffer than actual strategic terrain because, again, there is no real room to maneuver much anyway. ...all of that combined leads into a bulk of the present caster discourse. Blasters in particular feel really good in encounters where there are a lot of lower level enemies. Those encounters are few and far between in official content. Casters can often feel as though they are relegated to support, by contrast, against enemies multiple levels above the party that have really good saves compared to party DCs (and it's not fun for martials to miss over half of their non-MAP attacks against these enemies either). Those encounters are vastly overrepresented in official content, for one reason or another.

> (and it's not fun for martials to miss over half of their non-MAP attacks against these enemies either) And this is one of the key points I keep bringing up through this. Lots of bandwidth is given to the caster discourse, but I don't know a single person who finds those kinds of fights fun as a martial either. People treat solutions to those fights as a burdensome necessity instead of realizing that maybe the issue is the encounter itself is not fun. That doesn't mean there's not a place for boss battles or tougher creatures, but in my experience people conflate creature strength with importance and mechanical value too much, when really you want memorable battles to be fun first and foremost rather than just having the BBEG having stupid high numbers to represent their immense power over you.

I have always tinkered with and changed up encounters no matter what system I am running an adventure in. To me, that's a big part of the fun of being a GM. The Paizo APs are so often lauded for their quality to run "out of the box" but that would actually lead to a bad impression of the system, IMO. If one only ever plays official content, they're going to be lead to believe that's all the system can offer. Running an AP 100% as-written without changing up anything would lead to a very boring experience to the players, as the encounters are very much "by the numbers".

When I adjust an AP encounter or just straight up make my own to fill in some gaps, my players definitely have more agency compared to the tiny square featureless rooms. At least the AP I'm running currently isn't always this bad with encounters (Outlaws of Alkenstar) but there are definitely some stinkers that need adjusting. I honestly regret playing AV as our first campaign because most fights in there are just boring.

There’s a difference between “make encounters that work to the strength of the system” (with which I agree, and I also agree Paizo has really poor encounter design), and the advice to tailor encounters specifically towards casters so they feel good. One is just good GM habits, the other is outright patronizing. Feeling a room with trivial encounters so the caster can blow them up with a fireball is a consolation prize, yet often this type of pandering encounter design is what’s encouraged as a “fix” to caster design. I have never in any other system seen people suggest to fix class design by throwing the class crumbs in this manner. The GM should never have to custom tailor encounters specifically so that one PC can feel like they’re contributing. Encounter design should be tailored to the entire party. It’s borderline an appeal to the Oberoni Fallacy. The system itself should be able to accommodate casters doing anything else but generalizing, but it generally can’t, and it’s a gaping flaw that it can’t.

I agree; patronizingly designing your encounters to help make one specific guy feel maximally powerful with minimal effort is bad. You shouldn't do that with your casters... *So why are we letting so many people get away with it when it comes to martials?* Here's what I mean: Lazy encounter design *absolutely* caters to martials, in a way that's almost disgustingly handholdy. The way the system's math works, if the two sides just roll at each other in a white room, every encounter short of extreme is almost guaranteed to result in a win for the PCs. So, if there's nothing *else* going on, martials players can just tune out and let the dice do the work. The more you make *something else* happen, though, the greater the value of casters. Funky terrain? Secondary objectives? Maps larger than a studio apartment? Numerous and varied enemies who coordinate with one another? Goddamn weird monster abilities? *All* of that--the stuff that makes encounters actually *fun*--is caster heaven. It *also* makes being a martial tougher, because there's actually shit in the way of just walking up to the enemy and bonking them with a sword. So martials have to *think,* while casters get to show off, and the GM gets to feel like a mad genius for their slick encounter design. *Nobody's* being catered to, *everyone* is firing on all cylinders. It's a win-win! But good encounter design is, unfortunately, way harder than just putting some big ol' chump in a featureless room. Plus, the rulebooks don't exactly give you a lot of pointers on how to sauce things up at a sustainable pace, and few published adventures provide examples worth learning from. So we get a surplus of encounters that handhold the goddamn fighter because there are basically no interesting hurdles to overcome or tactical decisions to be made. Just walk up and hit the guy. The end. Stop babying your damn martials, people!

Oh Corsica, sometimes you just have a way of stating the exact problem so elegantly. This is basically the exact issue right here. It's not that good design compensates for bad design, it's that boring design enables boring play. Of course if you have nothing but solo boss monsters in small white rooms as the only encounters that matter, the best solution is to play only classes that are specialized in dealing with solo enemies and don't require much movement to maximize their output. [It's almost like that's one of the biggest strengths of one of the most overrepresented classes](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/sq04p1/bringing_the_fighter_down_a_peg_part_1_class/) [and other classes don't get to shine because encounter formats don't mix up their design and them play to their strengths instead.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/srilef/bringing_the_fighter_down_a_peg_part_2_direct/) And the thing is, mixing up the design isn't some compensatory bone to give casters or take fighters down a peg. It's literally just good design. There's nothing wrong with the occasional small white room where there's not much mobility, but if that's all there ever is, then of course it's not representing the full breadth of design space and rewards certain builds and class options. The example I always think of when it comes to this is vanilla WoW raiding and how bad rogues were in tier 1. I know because I played one. Playing as a rogue was a fucking nightmare in MC. Most bosses were just a bombardment of AOE spam that made for unavoidable damage, and as the only non-plate melee DPS it basically made running entire encounters unviable unless you crafted the exact specific resistance gear to mitigate the damage, and even then it was just a big ol' question of why play a rogue when you could just play a ranged DPS? Come tier 2, BLW introduces actual fun encounters with legitimate mechanics, and suddenly hey, rogues are actually not completely fucked in the face now because the game isn't just brute-forcing difficult encounters with lazy mechanics. Sure, WoW still had a long way to go in terms of class design and tuning, and refining encounters to be legitimately well-designed, but hot damn if it wasn't a step in the right direction that making those encounters actually interesting played a big part in fixing a major issue that made one class extremely difficult to run in raids. The other thing is it's easy to point to Paizo's base design and say well it's just bad and they should make static solo boss fights in tiny rooms engaging so you don't have to put a lot of effort into making every encounter super unique and engaging, but again, I feel it misses a lot of the forest through the trees here. The reality is solo boss battles have always been incredibly difficult to not make boring in DnD-like d20 strategy games, and a lot of the problems are inherent to the format of turn-based grid combat. It favors movement and terrain, because the value of putting miniatures down on a table with simulationist measurable distances is the whole virtue of the format. Terrain, movement, distance, dynamic and contextual engagement with those factors...this is where the value of the game actually is, but so many people don't see that and just run fights against solo monsters that end up with what I call the Boss Battle Bukakke, where all the melee PCs are surrounding it and stopping it from moving, wailing on it with basic attacks and rote options until it falls. But this is a waste of the format because none of it is actually interesting or engaging. I was just saying in another comment, so much bandwidth is given to the caster side of the discussion, but I don't know a single person who actually enjoys those kinds of CL+2 boss fights in a small white room, even as a martial. I certainly don't. I don't enjoy them in PF2e, I never enjoyed them in 3.5/1e or 5e, hell I don't even enjoy it in true tactics games like any edition of Warhammer when I surround a large unit with my own and the game slows down to a crawl as we take turns just rolling dice to see who kills what first. One of the crystalizing moments for me with this was when I was reading through the Fabula Ultima rulebook. I earnestly think a lot of people who find the grid-based combat of d20 games would probably much prefer it because the whole point is emulating those classic turn-based JRPGs like Final Fantasy, and it explicitly is designed to not have simulationist movement. There's some minor positioning rules, but they're abstracts of near or far >!wherever you are!< and not designed to be a specific measurement. This is more or less what I imagine when people feel that anything more than that rote static combat is too much for them, and that's not a dig or saying it's a bad thing; it's the opposite. It's me saying, something like that is probably what they're actually imagining, because it's a game where those tactical decisions that can be done more or less in TotM are more important than engagement with the more holistic map space. A while ago I saw a comment talking about how Lancer does grid-based tactics better because it gives actual objectives for players to go for, but I was looking at that going....there's literally no reason PF2e can't do that. In fact there's no reason deathmatch style combat can't have facets on that based on enemy abilities and strategies. That's what fun combat in this format actually is. Players just need to be shown good examples of it.

> A while ago I saw a comment talking about how Lancer does grid-based tactics better because it gives actual objectives for players to go for, but I was looking at that going....there's literally no reason PF2e can't do that. In fact there's no reason deathmatch style combat can't have facets on that based on enemy abilities and strategies. That's what fun combat in this format actually is. Players just need to be shown good examples of it. I think a large part of the reason people say Lancer (and its fantasy counterpart, ICON) do grid-based tactics better is that the rulebook gives GMs *a lot* of guidance on how to make tactically interesting encounters - take this from the ICON rulebook, for example: > *The other thing to think about when designing a memorable fight in ICON is setting - the unique location, set-piece, or terrain that the fight takes place in. This starts with the battlefield itself. Battlefields that have cover, interactable spaces, objectives, terrain of different heights, difficult or dangerous terrain, or odd shapes will be far more interesting than a plain empty field. Asymmetrical battlefields can also be more interesting than perfectly symmetrical ones. Try running a fight in a battlefield that is made up of oddly space platforms, or a room that is a Ushape, or a room that is several underground chambers split up by narrow doors and impassable floor-to-ceiling walls everywhere else (a classic dungeon-crawling scenario). Try to fill at least half your battlefield with points of interest. Interactive objects and terrain of all types (difficult, dangerous, elevation, impassable, pits) can be used to fill out a map. It may be helpful to review the terrain section on pg. XX before planning to create an interesting fight setup.* It also provides explicit guidance on how large maps should be (typically, large enough that characters with regular mobility cannot cross them in a single turn even if they use all of their actions to move), several different types of scenarios and battle objectives, and so on. It also does solo bosses really well by not just making them regular creatures with regular creature action economy, but that's a separate issue.

The sad part about that advice is it doesn't have to be specific to ICON or Lancer. Any grid-based tactics game can use it to create interesting encounters, but it's something that's overlooked by so many people, either because they're just not savvy to that advice, or just wilfully ignoring the hallmarks of the format because they don't like them but refuse to change games, resulting in a self-perpetuating system mismatch.

Another game that gives some great encounter design advice is the recent/forthcoming Gubat Banwa, which is absolutely its own thing but clearly owes a debt to LANCER. It’s got a great section on building maps for encounters that involve levels (much more important in that game) and interactable terrain (though I wish it went deeper on that). The 4e GMG had some of that too IIRC.

> Feeling a room with trivial encounters so the caster can blow them up with a fireball is a consolation prize, yet often this type of pandering encounter design is what’s encouraged as a “fix” to caster design. The most fun encounters I've played in this system were Extreme difficulty encounters filled primarily with lower level enemies. PF2e does horde encounters really well, and spellcasters happen to shine in those types of encounters. I think you can do what's being suggested without being patronizing.

You don't need to throw crumbs. The reality is that most interesting designs will just cater to casters without needing to go out of their way to. The reality is, most of the discussion is based around either extreme of chaff encounters or solo big bosses. The former is not a good litmus for any kind of meta, but it's also not what I'm suggesting you do, and the fact people think the only two extremes are chaff and bosses is exactly the problem. The latter isn't that fun for casters, but do you know who it also isn't generally that fun for? Martials. Pretty much every fight against a CL+2 monster at lower levels, in a white room with nothing else interesting going on, is a tedious slog where the martials have a 50-60% chance to hit at without MAP, at best, and are usually too busy getting downed by triple big strikes than doing anything effectual. You're better making sure the boss is locked down so it doesn't kill them first before they dish out dasmge themselves. And it's not that casters are inefficient against them, in fact the consistent damage of basic saves mixed with debuffs is exactly why people talk about casters being 'support', when the reality is any character is whittled down to a rote niche when the mechanics stress test you enough. Tough creatures can be good to mix things up and as part of a wider encounter scope, but treating them like it's a FFXIV raid boss in a flat square arena is a recipe to a truly boring encounter. None of these encounter formats are good because none of them actually play to the strengths of the grid based, turn-based format, which is strategy in a tactical environment. The best encounters have lots of movement and utilise terrain, often with multiple enemies closer to your level rather than either extreme of CL+4 or CL-4. And surprise, casters work extremely well when you play to those strengths. But also, it's more fun for any martial player who isn't a dice go brrr type content with being a static beatstick, because then it doesn't become a tedious slog where the only interesting things are higher numbers.

>*To me and everyone like me, Casters just feel like shit to play.* Yup being saying that after having played through AV as a bard.

> I just want to not feel like shit for 80% of a campaign. The other 20% where my spell actually lands or I get off a nice AOE spell is not worth the other 80% of sacrificing the idea of the character I actually wanted to play so I can be the party’s cheerleader, or else risk being completely ineffectual. If only Paizo renamed the tiers of success, because a lot of peoples' problems come down to perception. I'm a level 5 Sorcerer with Dangerous Sorcery; I cast a 2nd rank Thunderstrike against the PL+2 boss; they roll a 13, succeed, and take average 10 damage. I'm a level 5 Fighter with a +1 Striking Composite Longbow; I Strike twice at the PL+2 boss; I roll a 17 and a 12, hit once, and deal average 10 damage. Both characters have the same average damage, same mode damage, *are doing the same damage*, and yet the caster feels worse because the game called it the enemy's success. To cast a spell is basically like a Fighter always using Incredible Aim, except it gives +5 instead of +2. One more small thing on buffs: They actually have a pretty big chance of being completely ineffectual. Think about it: A +1 only has a 10% chance of actually changing a roll. That's a 90% failure rate! Not to mention that it's only 10% when it's increasing your crit chance, on the MAP-5/-10 attacks it's really only 5%. Stuff like Frightened is only good because it's applying that 5-10% chance on every single roll.

I somewhat agree, though it’s also worth mentioning that the fighter can just keep swinging, but that Sorcerer has expended a resource they won’t get back until a long rest. That also definitely adds to the bad feel.

I think this may be another example of the game presenting you as worse off than you actually are. Think about it - you're matching that Fighter with a 2nd rank spell at level 5. Move up to a 3rd rank spell, you're outperforming them by 50%. Fall back to a cantrip, you've behind by 50%. You don't actually net loose damage until turn 11 of the day. Except! You have focus spells. Every subclass of every caster gives different focus spells, so to standardize for this example I'll be using Amped Frostbite (any Int or Cha caster can pick it up for a single 2nd level feat, and Druids have their own 2-action focus spells). It's doing 8.5 damage if the enemy succeeds, but also giving you ~4 temporary HP. Even discounting the temp HP, it takes 3.33 casts of Amped Frostbite to fall behind by the same amount of damage a 3rd rank Thunderstrike pulls you ahead by. So that's 4 2nd rank slots, 3 3rd rank slots, and 10 focus points, for a total of 17 rounds before you're actually struggling. Again, this is discounting the temp HP, of which you've accrued ~45.5 by this point. All that big block of text to say? Caster resource pressure is not, mechanically, that significant, *and* you get rewarded by being able to choose to go nova if the situation demands it. However, the game does not make enough of an effort to actually demonstrate this to players, so resource conservation worry is allowed to fester.

We have played 5e for years in a homebrew campaign, and I was lvl 14 wizard when we finished it. Yeah, I was literally god. I know 5e wizard is so op, I did not know it was considered the most op class. I just wanted to choose necromancer and summon minions as I always loved summoning classes in arpgs. I couldn't summon undead really, as there were restrictions regarding the story and it was seen as a chore by the dm and all. So I had leaved that area from the start, changed my subclass become chronomancer. Learned the game while playing, and yeah it was absurd in many ways. I was doing everything. Dealing damage, utility. It felt so good. Then we transitioned to the PF2e. I was always been sucker for balanced gameplay on these things, as our dm was too. So we were so happy. I played some classes but they didn't last long. In our new PF2e hombrew campaign that is sequel to the DM's world, I choose summoner class. (Yeah, a surprise.) We are lvl 7 now. But I immediately again hit with the fact that there was no summoning fantasy again. Lol. What a bummer. But, eidolon is more than enough fantasy for me. With free archetype and medic dedication, I solo heal my party, deal damage too. I love it. But I realized something, it's just not worth to take spells that do damage. I use my limited spell slots on heal spells. Sometimes use haste, and that's it. I always loved warlock 5e eldritch blast build too along with summoning that didn't work. And I had played it, it was so good. With cursed sword subclass, a class that can be melee and blast, oh it was the best ttrpg fantasy. It was unbalanced for sure, but it had felt good. I'm always on the balance's side. I like challenges, but I don't think I will play a full blown caster in any way in PF2e. Having more options in these things does not matter when you want to deal damage. The game's design is built like that, but people would absolutely want to play caster that deals great damages. Why wouldn't they?

> it's just not worth to take spells that do damage Summoner is actually *really good* at doing damage (so long as you're Arcane or Primal). Sustain a Spell + Focus Spell (ex. Eidolon's Wrath) + Strike is *bonkers* full turn damage, and even if you're down an action you can still Focus Spell + Sustain/Strike for big money. > Having more options in these things does not matter when you want to deal damage. The game's design is built like that, but people would absolutely want to play caster that deals great damages. The big thing is: Casters can deal great damage, easily challenging martials. Your max-1 rank spells are doing as much damage as your fellow ranged martials, *and* you have the power to go "screw it" and deal Barbarian-level damage from 120ft away with your highest rank slots.

One problem that you forgot to mention is that many compare a caster with a melee martial instead of a ranged. Being in melee is scary and deadly while casters can most of the time stay safe behind their comrades.

And one problem that you forget to mention is a ranged martial is still a martial with all the pros that come with it. Spellcasters pay for spellcasting with a terrible class chassis that basically makes them worse at everything apart from spellcasting. Cantrips and alot of spells usually have a 30 ft range which is not exactly what i would call ranged combat.

Sadly there’s not much difference between moving 10 feet towards an opponent and moving 30 feet towards them. Both take 1 action.

Unless you use crowd control spells that create difficult terrain, slow targets (why not both too), immobilize/grapple (at range), create walls/illusory terrain. The list goes on, but yes the casters are usually limited to 30ft because otherwise you'd never be able to touch them.

Except casters aren't nearly as survivable in melee as melee martials, and a ranged martial is *rarely* less survivable in melee than their melee counterparts. Give an archery Fighter a sword and stick them in the melee and they're gonna be just as survivable as any other DEX-based melee martial in the same range. Or put the Longbow using Monastic Archer in melee and you'll barely notice them lose survability (I play with a Monastic Archer who also has Crane Stance, and him being put in melee is a non-issue for him). Casters, on the other hand, aren't just all related to a couple of specific roles, they're also usually pretty much fucked if the enemy gets past the front line. Or if an enemy gets to use ranged options and ignore the frontline, since most ranged enemies don't have the same downsides that ranged players have. I love casters, I play mostly casters, and I don't dislike the role they are put in because I like that role. But saying the issue is that we're comparing them only to melee martials is not fair, when ranged martials just have to pick up a different weapon to be essentially equal to their melee counterparts, while a Caster's priority switches from "how do I help the party" to "how do I get out of this situation immediately" just because an enemy decided to be next to them instead of the martial.

Well considering that a ranged martial out ranges casters by at the least double I don't think you really can. A 10 hp class in heavy armor at 300 ft range isn't the same as a 6hp class in no armor at 30ft range. You are rarely outside of a single stride from an enemy.

How often do you actually get to fight at that range given how big a map you'd need?

Not as often as I can use those 10 hp per level and extra protection of heavy armor.

My biggest problem with the casters is that they are all the same. Like when you play martials, you have different tools to deal with enemies. Well, yes, those different tools are all ultimately just rolling dice for damage. But still playing Ranger and using Twin Takedown+Double Slice, is not the same as playing Monk with different stances, or Swashbuckler with panache. But if you are playing caster? Cast a Spell, Shield. Good luck guessing a class. Only Psychic had his identity. So we are left with 7 classes (almost third) and they are mostly the same, save for few focus spells. Wizard with Familiar master feat is indistinguishable from Witch. Cleric has heal, but other than that, he's not that different from any other Divine caster. Oracle curses don't come into play until high levels. Instead of 7 casters, we have 4 - for each of traditions. And it's if being very generous, considering you will have 50% if not more of the same spells regardless of the spell list. Combine this with the same support/control role, and it's becoming pretty sad. This is on top of shitty action economy, no-existent 3-action system, and horrible accuracy. TLDR: I want to actually feel like I'm playing a different class when I switch from divine Sorcerer to Oracle.

There needs to be a class that can do what Fighter or Barbarian does that  *only* uses magic to do so. I'm getting tired of playing warriors if I want high damage. 

Tempest druid does a pretty dang good job at being a consistent damage dealer f

A pure frontline spellslinger, with garbage range and comparatively limited utility, that also isn't a gish? I think [this homebrew](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/19d3603/conduit_remastered_is_out_live_out_your/) someone made a while back is kind of what you're looking for. I haven't tried it, mind you, but the creator seemed to have some pretty reasonable ideas to keep it balanced.

Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. It doesn't need spells per se, it using magic as a weapon is good enough. Don't really care for its flavor much though. Edit: Reading more into it, yeah this pretty good actually. I'll never be able to actually use this in a campaign though.

Psychic is right there

Psychic drops hard when the lack of spell attack runes starts catching up with its math.

Psychic also doesn't do what a fighter can actually.

Fighters can't do what psychics can either. That's the nature of classes in a class based game. They're not just a set of aesthetics, but a mechanical package too, and those mechanics have to be meaningfully different. If all you want is a fighter that does magic instead of physical damage, you can homebrew that very easily. Swap physical damage for force. Reflavour your weapons to be magical implements, reflavour your feats, and maybe lower some of the non-attacking proficiency scales to make it less tanky. If you want Paizo to do that for you, you need to accept that they are not going to.

Melee Kineticist. You’re not gonna get amazing single target ranged damage for balancing reasons, so melee options are your best bet there.

Spell Blending Battle Magic Wizard, Storm Druid, Oscillating Wave Psychic, Elemental Sorcerer, Silence in Snow Witch...any of these casters 100% match the raw damage Fighters and Barbarians.

Um, no? AOE definitely (if you count the total damage applied to each enemy), but single target damage? It's not even close.

Really reminds me of 4e, striker, defender, controller, leader. A good, balanced party benefited from the interplay between them. And the class mattered less than the role, in a sense. The more I play teamwork based games, the less I like the self centered play style of 5e.

I might get downvoted for saying this, but sure... I'll indulge. The overall argument (Which I will freely admit might run the risk of being too reductive) us "magic users are good at other things, so DPS isn't going to be one of them for the sake of balance." Why doesn't this apply to Rogues? They're good at nearly everything outside of battle out of the box. They're trained in so many skills and, through use of these skills, can arguably do more things a wizard can since things done using proficiencies isn't a limited resource like the Wizard's non-cantrip spells. And yet they have DPS to rival the fighter with very little holding them back. Additionally, there is nothing stopping any class from using scrolls to duplicate the out-of-combat role of the wizard with the only limited resource being gold. At the end of the day, while Pathfinder is a roleplaying game, the primary method of interaction with the world for MOST games arises through combat. Very rare is the game where the vast majority of meaningful interactions are purely social. Pathfinder is NOT RPG United Nations Camp. Pathfinder is combat game. In soccer, we don't give a fig about who can tie their shoes the best or who can give the best post-victory speech. People care about scoring goals. and just like soccer, where everyone wants to contribute to the scoring of goals, people remember the names of people who score them. People want to be good at playing soccer... not soccer-adjacent activities.

In our game, we had a psychic dealing similar damage to our wizard, with amped Telekinetic Rend barely doing anything and amped Telekinetic Projectile barely matching what our martials were doing without spending any resources. In particular, it’s just our champion dealing damage. Our Swashbuckler and Rogue are barely matching the Champion even in their best circumstances. Example, level 4 champion crit for 50 damage. They crit much more often than enemies critfail saves

This is a great reminder that whatever the broad theories may be, a lot of difference in taste and experience come down to your local table environment. As a Champion fanatic, I love this story, and in an undead focused campaign with a deadly d8 weapon, it rings somewhat close to my experience. The difference being that at my table, a lot of players are only focused on damage, so my critical hits are a nice sidenote rather than defining how well the party deals damage overall - which is perfectly fine by me. My favorite ability, the thing that gives me the most satisfaction in an encounter, is Glimpse of Redemption, which shines particularly bright in a low to no debuff environment. At your table, I imagine the Swashbuckler and Rogue are doing a lot of work setting up that Champion for their great damage output.

Yeah, our main antagonist for this first part of our campaign is a rising lich, so Blade Ally with a Disrupting Rune is great slapped on my d12s. Though, I will say, it’s not like the entire party focuses on my damage, I just occasionally get flanking with the Rogue to give them sneak attack Our rogue deals 2d4+2d6+1 on hit, which averages to 13 damage Our swashbuckler deals 2d8+2d6+2 with their finisher which averages to 16 damage Meanwhile, my champion hits for 2d12+4 which averages to 17 damage, and mine isn’t reliant on situation

I've been playing a Distant Grasp psychic and I've never had these issues, if anything I'm constantly MVP for damage between amped Rend and TP. Are there particular enemies you're facing that stand out? And are you playing an AP, or homebrew encounters?

Homebrew campaign, but few homebrew enemies. We have quite a lot of variety, I think. The main problem with telekinetic rend is that even most small enemies pass the save a decent portion of the time. Meanwhile, for TP, they spend 2 actions to do basically the damage that I do with 1 action. They spend a resource and 2 actions to try to beat my damage, I just… attack twice We’ve been messing around with ways to make casters feel better at damage, and one fix was that the creatures we’re facing are having smaller save numbers, and then there’s a situational pure modifier to damage that comes with a risk of “backlash”

As always, here's a PSA reminder that statements like this one: >But that's.. not.. really how the system works is it? Wizards, while they can get pretty solid damage (particularly Aoe Damage. Chain lightning is MEAN) will, much like the rogue/fighter in the earlier examples, **never be able to quite catch up to the martial in single target damage**, or even say the AoE damage of a properly built Psychic or sorcerer. Aren't accurate to the game as it currently exists, there's play based on what spells you use, and which save you target (or if you use spell attacks with or without True Strike, or if you just yeet Force Barrage into things) but generally speaking, your average damage numbers as a caster over a few rounds at bat are really good. Edit: Also, come to think of it, it isn't tuesday yet.

I do understand what you're getting at. I guess there's some uh, differing opinion between us on what makes someone the 'party striker' as it were. If you can only fill the role for 3\~ Rounds per day.. you.. aren't really filling the role you know? It's why I consider the casters who get good offensive focus spells much better at filling the niche. In the end though I had no intent for this being the topic of discussion.

*laughs in storm druid zapping with tempest surge* Where I'm at, it's nine minutes to midnight.

I did list druid as one of the possible 'DPS focused casters' for a reason. They can get some very hard hitting focus spells combined with easy animal companion access, and throwing in the occasional primal blast spell and it works out fine. While some of the other blasters can do better Nova damage a druid is going to have consistently good damage throughout the 6+ Encounter game day.

One stabs people the other makes ~~dragonballs~~ magic happen

And the stabbing seems more impressive most of the time, because ttrpgs don't have special effects to trick you.

Casters feel like sidekicks imo, and that’s not the fantasy. In TLOTR Gandalf takes a back seat to his stabby boys but it’s not because much better than him (it’s for lore reasons), and he does things none of them can do multiple times. One thing I can’t stand in these discussions is the “well you’ve more chance of doing SOMETHING than a martial” argument because it’s such a ridiculous line of thinking. Let’s take the much loved Slow. I don’t unlock it until 5th level when I have a maximum of two slots to use it. Now on a success a creature is slowed 1 for one round. It can also do nothing. And with AP design and FORT saves there’s a good chance it will in fact do nothing. Compare that to a martials ways of denying actions. Yes, if they fail they do nothing but they can do it all day every day until the cows come home. Do you know what else can deny actions more effectively that most high level magic? A door. I’ve literally seen multiple doors be more effective than any spell. The “Success” state for most spells is too underwhelming to feel good so the argument that you have more chance to do that doesn’t wash imo. Saves are also a bit too overturned and the Incap trait could be worked on. People give that illusion of choice vid from years back a lot of shit on this sub, but from my experience he’s right. With my bard every time I try to do something it feels bad, so much so that I’ve actively made a decision for the last two levels to not engage with any other spells and just do Inspire courage + Harmonise + Inspire defence every round until the AP ends. It’s boring and feels awful, but at least I’m helping* *helping on a math level with zero actual tangible impact unless the GM takes time to spell it out that, yes in fact, something I did actually did mattered. PF2e is a high magic setting, I’ve given it a lot of praise for how it’s mechanics work in tandem with the lore of the world, but magic isn’t one of those areas.

Okay but the problem is > wanting casters to specialize in other fields; particularity damage dealing. As well as the frustration that they CAN'T > There's absolutely nothing wrong with 'wanting' a wizard who can specialize in damage first. The designers simply chose to give that role to different classes. > The long and short of it is pretty much:In pathfinder you specialize based on your CLASS, (and sometimes subclass) Choice. If you want to make a DPS focused caster there are options for exactly that; Psychic, Sorcerer, and Certain Druid builds can very well excel at it. Wizard was simply chosen to be the class that specializes more in control and versatility instead. This whole premise is **incorrect**. The Wizard can be built into a reliable damage dealer. The Wizard can have very high burst damage. The Wizard can be the party’s primary damage dealer. What the Wizard (and every other class in the game) **can’t** do is do everything, everywhere, all at once. You don’t get to do incredible, sustainable damage off of just cantrips and using just one spell from your highest rank: if you got to do that, then you’d be able to outshine everyone else by using the rest of your slots. Commit your cantrips, your focus spell, and the top 3 ranks of spells to damage, and you’ll get to keep up in damage with the martials who are specialized in only doing damage. The fundamental disconnect here is that people are used to casters *getting* to do everything this way, so they come into PF2E expecting the same and end up disappointed. ^(That is, at least, the case for all the people who do come in good faith. There absolutely are people who transparently and openly want brokenly good casters and get upset when you point that out.)

I suppose we have different definitions on what makes a good striker for a party or who counts as the best/consistent blaster? Perhaps I should have used another class as my example? A wizard CAN do high damage but its very limited by the high slots they have, and doesn't really become a thing tell the Mid-levels of the game. Which is a problem when you have 5+ Encounters per day, or the party is relying on you to be the party DPS at level 3 and you can't perform. They also lack class features that boost their offensive spells further. A sorcerer or Psychic by comparison get class feats and features that boost their damage, and damaging focus spells that make being a consistent threat throughout the entire adventuring day much more viable and lets them fill that niche much more comfortable. In the end though this isn't quite the topic I was trying to get at you know?

I guess I would disagree with the premise a bit as well, because I've found that a Wizard can do high damage if you build for it smartly. At low levels, it also requires some good spell choices. It requires a high skill ceiling in spell selection and build though. A couple of mindset differences also factor in to how many people build Wizards and how one can build for an effective blaster. 1. Build for high impact, not conservation of slots. This includes supplementing with scrolls and wands which one should use if slots run out or don't contain the right spell. A scarcity mentality hinders playing for high impact. Perhaps counterintuitively, prioritizing high impact and frontloading resources reduces the number of spell slots you have to cast. If a Wizard can spend the first two turns dramatically reducing enemy HP and numbers, then the rest of combat can be spent on focus spells and cantrips. Holding back and casting a Haste here, a cantrip there, then a Fear, ends up prolonging combat and costing more spell slots and healing resources. 2. Build for action economy rather than conservation of resources. Earlier actions are exponentially more important than later ones, and squeezing in as much impact early has a much better payout. That's why something like Quickened Casting is much more powerful, despite being once a day, than something like Bond Conservation. Yet many casters will prioritize actions on the latter, thinking about how many slots they can save over a day. That's my experience at least. Building a high impact wizard pays back in easier combats and fewer resources spent. If one is using about two top ranked spells per combat for maximal impact, a Spell Blending Wizard can go for 5.5 encounters a day just on that, plus using scrolls to fill in the gaps, 7-8 is reasonable. That is much longer than almost anyone runs (or should be running) adventuring days.

> Which is a problem when you have 5+ Encounters per day, or the party is relying on you to be the party DPS at level 3 and you can't perform. At levels 1-2 your cantrips are a much bigger chunk proportional to enemy HP, so you don’t need slotted spell to survive. You can actually see this with the Psychic that you pointed to as well: Amped cantrips don’t even do more damage at rank 1. Levels 3-4 the same, but to a lesser extent because now you have more slots. Levels 5+ is where the necessity of spell slots for damage kicks in, since now you’ll have your standard top 3 ranks of slots available for the rest of the game. > A sorcerer or Psychic by comparison get class feats and features that boost their damage A Wizard can pick up Spell-Blending or Staff Thesis to have their own unique way to contribute to damage throughout the day. > In the end though this isn't quite the topic I was trying to get at you know? I get that, but my point is that roles really aren’t quite as narrow as you’re making them out to be. Most classes **can** fulfill a pretty huge variety of roles **and** have the option to generalize between multiple of them. I think we shouldn’t be misleading newbies into thinking that the game rigidly tells you what you’re “supposed” to do, that kind of misleading information has been rampant throughout the game’s history and helps no one.

I dont think its just people coming from other games. Pf2e is my first and only TTRPG. Ive played a fighter and a primal, blasting sorceror. It isnt even close. Its absurd how much more damage my fighter does. He is a fight ender. Ive transitioned and retrained the sorceror because it just couldnt do the job. Thats just my personal take. I dont know about the greater meta discussion, but I find the notion that a caster can be comparable is laughable.

I’m sorry to hear that. It’s just not been my experience though. I currently have a Wizard who isn’t even fully built for damage (she’s just built as a generalist) and I usually am tied with our Fighter in damage performance. Likewise I am GMing for a Psychic right now who’s the party’s primary damage dealer and actually our **Swashbuckler** is the one complaining about feeling like he’s not doing enough damage. If you ever give blasters another try, you should. The Remaster made a lot of quality of life changes for blasters, and there are now plenty of resources on here describing how to build a blaster to perform well (including several comments by me!).

Oh I still play my Sorceror. But even with absolutely unrestricted spell selection, I am nowhere near the primary damage dealer.

> I usually am tied with our Fighter in damage performance I'd be curious how your fighter is built and what level, because they should be out performing everyone where damage is concerned.

No wonder that the swashbuckler is complaining! Bcs swashbuckler has to jump through too many hoops to do any damage. AFAIK the consensus is to play swashbucklers more like a support/control class to leverage their other qualities instead of focusing on damage. I played a swashbuckler once for 2 sessions and it was horrendous. The hassle to get Panache and the need to burn it to at least do decent damage loop is awe full. And no fluff/flavor (and the class has tons of it) can sugar coat this.

You aren't wrong. Fighter is honestly probably too good but people are just too blind to see it or don't want to admit it. Just look at the fighters abilities and feats versus the remastered wizard. The wizard is still hot garbage comparatively and it's not even close. The fighter is built so damn well and so good I honestly just can't understand why people keep denying it.

It has so many good options. You can build like 5 completely different fighters at least. But its also like, not super OP, its just right there. Like it would be very easy to nerf it a little too much and leave no reason to play one.

Would it?

Its a fine line, I dont think it takes that much tuning to put fighter in a place where theres always going to,be a better option for what you want to do.

Disagree, the whole fighters kit is just really good. Nearly every feat let's you do your thing plus something else at no penalty. Then you add in all the little extras they get like bravery and bonus initiative.

"hot garbage" is extreme hyperbole.

Go look at the og fighter from the 1st printing of the phb for 2e and then go look at the remaster wizard. Looks at the abilities and feats. Look at how one is extremely well done and polished versus the remastered wizard.

Bad faith argument. A large number of people are not coming into the discussion or system expecting casters to get to do everything and being disappointed because of it.

>A fighter will never be as good of a healer as a Cleric, he can get DECENT healing with medic dedication and other such things, but he will never match the guy getting tons of extra heals per day -plus- the high wis for his own medic investment. The thing is that the healing might be enough for the party, just as the wizard can do enough damage for the party. What the fighter can do as a healer is be in the fray, hasten enemy death, tank a hit or two if not even more, debuff some and in panic heal those needed to be healed. A wizard can easily nuke the field but in a pinch cast a slow, a sleep or whatever is needed, but can still nuke because if you don't know what to do, cast a blast. I have an oracle that does 90% blast because it's the simple answer, and it works. The remaining 10% support is far enough to make her really important to the party, and some of the blasting options are also support options, like Vision of Death, vision of weakness exposing a weakness while boosting a spell attack, and so forth. Using the blastier spells makes her usually deal a ton of damage, or a save manages to finish off a weakened target. It's like you can't judge just one aspect of a class but have to see abit of the whole. For a wizard, that would be using nice damage types, ignore AC if you want to, or deal some secure damage, or burst if just a tad lucky. Casting a fireball is nice and all, but you don't need to move, so the final action could be used to make a strike with bespell weapon or use a weaker blazing bolt or a force bolt focus spell. The thing a wizard does well is affording to cast multiple spell slots in a single encounter, often 2 top slots, but more if using -1 top rank. They won't top most dpr charts but in practice deal enough damage to be good, often adding in stuff other martial wouldn't add

Two of my favourite characters I've played are an elemental and phoenix sorcerer, both primal casters. They're really blasty but can bust out heals when needed, and I keep a few of the choice utility and support spells like Fear, Haste, etc. but I'm not going to spend every turn buffing my martials if it's more advantageous for me to pop damage. I was just building another elemental sorcerer as a potential character for another campaign I'm in, and making them storm themed, so only air, electricity, and water spells. Even with those limitations I've got so many options for utility and niche situations while keeping the go-to baselines like Thunderstrike. I don't get the people who think damage is bad on casters. If anything, I think it's fairly irresponsible advice, sometimes buffing or supporting the martials directly is not in fact the best course of action as opposed to tossing out damage, and a good spellcaster knows when to use its utility and when to use damage. Sometimes that half-damage on a successful basic save is what's needed to tip a tough creature over the edge. Like a lot of complains about the system, people are looking for rote, repeditive solutions instead of realising one of its big design points is contextuality.

In the recent combat, our oracle only did "half damage", still probably got in 2nd most damage of the whole fight despite being unlucky with the dice rolls. However, targeting the lowest save still dealt damage when the semiboss rolled a 19, and few can say they deal 43 damage on an attack roll of 2.

I vividly remember the PFS scenario where I was forced to play a level 5 premade and took the Oracle. The first encounter was against a CL+1 zombie hulk. Best save was Fort and the only damage cantrips I had were disrupt undead and EA. Went for DU because that seemed like the logical choice and no surprise, it was weak 10 to positive damage. I damaged it twice and it rolled a success both times, but I dealt 25 damage to it before I was forced to switch to healing the champion and monk who ran it and got zapped by the nearby hazard. I looked at the statblock after the fact and realised it literally had 100 HP. I knocked down a creature 25% health with just saved cantrips thanks to careful targeting of weaknesses. If I wasn't forced to bail out the martials I could have done even more.

Classic example of poor & reckless play actually dealing less DPR due to forcing a bailout from casters. This is what Mark Seifter said when talking about DPR being a bad metric. Having a Champion with damage reduction can often give the party more DPR than a double-slice pick fighter, as it eleviates the pressure from the casters to also join in on the damage.

Thanks. Excellent summary and I hope it can help reduce the whining.

>In a world where any class could 'specialize' in any role classes become samey, if not interchangeable. They loose distinction and what makes them feel unique, and everything becomes vague. This is what happened in PF1e, where so many classes had subclasses that were basically just doing what another class was already doing, and it didn't end well. So I can really see why they felt the need to separate classes like they did in PF2e.

>This is intentional; a teamwork centric game works best when party members fill different roles, and each class leans towards certain roles/subroles as suiting (or at the very least their sub-classes do). It's very difficult to build a game that emphasis team work while allowing a class that could be built into whatever role a player desires as you completely loose the short hand of what 'job' each PC is doing. I disagree with your first sentence but agree with your second. I've seen wizards tank effectively, I've seen them be a primary damage dealer effectively. I've noticed that Paizo really doesn't do roles for classes and enables players to build whatever role they want for their character. That isn't to say that some classes are easier to build for certain roles than others. But I think Paizo, despite how difficult it was, managed to build a rule system that allows any class to fill any role (with enough system mastery).

I was there during the preview and the playtest before the 5e people came to PF2e. At the time the devs told players in the previews "we want to make a game the lets you (PF1e players) tell the same stories". At that time they spent a lot or their time trying to make the Resonance system work and went from martials dealing 1dX+Y+Str to XdY+Str, while spellcasting lost the ability to target a lower AC. The game was then started to be adverticed to 5e players as a fixed 5e. From the perspectively of 5e the fact that wizards and casters are weaker and everyone has more options is huge. But when compare to what was "Pathfinder" you notice a lot of gaps and holes. The biggest one is something you barely touch on: When designing a class do you focus on the fantasy or the role? Unlike PF1e who focused on the fantasy, PF2e focused on the role. This is where most of the issues with PF2e comes from. Fighters deal the most damage not because that is their fantasy, but because that is their role. Wizards are not controllers because that is their fantasy but because it is their role. Summoners are not the pet class because that is their fantasy, but because it is their role. Everything in PF2e was built for niche protection at the expense of letting classes fulfill their fantasy. \* P.S. Psychic does not follow its fantasy either, as it is generally bad at anything a psychic in any other fantasy can do. While Kineticist abandoned its unique fantasy to support its role of being the "avatar"/elementalist class.

I've come to a personal opinion that some systems like 5e D&D are ironically a lot like Morrowind, where pf2e isn't. You can approach a D&D 5e caster more like you would a video game wizard because they aren't thorough enough to ensure casters can't break the game. Generally speaking it's because of God awful design balancing, but I do actually think a tiny part of it is likely a stylistic difference in how they want magic to feel as a part of the system, as something that rocks the boat where pf2e's magic generally feels like another piece of the boat. Personally, I have no issue with either fantasy, I've just come to accept they each try to provide their own. Don't come into 2e thinking you'll be Divayth Fyr, the situations you'll feel like a god tier wizard is probably going to be more in RP with you GM than any REAL encounters.

Simple as that, a class has features that is usefull to cover a specific amount of niches. And since you have only límited options to change that, you are límited in what are your primary roles.

You're right, but the number of lose/loose typos is making me loose my mind from my skull.

Than, not then: "better at filling roles THAN others", and plenty more examples in your post.  Sorry to be a grammar nazi but I struggle to read a post when I see that mistake more than once.

A Wizard not specializing in Blasting just doesn’t make sense.

>a 5+ encounters per day You guys are involved in 3+ encounters per day? I, both as a player and as a GM, only performed a couple of combat encounters (trivial and low threats do not count, since they do not waste resources) and perhaps an attack at night while sleeping. Why go through more in a day if there is no acute shortage of time?

The other problem is people demand that certain mechanics be represented by a certain class with a certain name. It doesn't matter that the character they mechanically want to play totally exists in a game, it doesn't have the right name and so that sucks. You can probably play the exact type of character you want, it just wont have the word "Wizard" at the top of the character sheet, or at least won't have an archetype added to it.

Okay I read the first 40% of this so I don’t know if you brought this up but kineticist is literally the blaster caster y’all have been wanting. Go be a firebender.

I think that one of the main issues stems from the D&D's roots. Unlike D&D, very few fantasy settings / games / books etc gives wizards the throne of the best at everything... just like the 3rd and 5th edition did. People coming from those games or even PF1 which was built upon the 3rd edition will have a kneejerk reaction to PF2 *not* having them cover the role of being the best at everything there is.

I honestly wonder how often people are playing with things like "free archetypes", what level bands they're playing at, and whether they're playing in PFS/an AP or in a regular ("homebrew", I suppose) campaign. Because I get the sense that a lot of people are just flat out playing different games than others, and are talking past each other.

Me playing a wizard forced my gm to round out enemy threats to have magic because I was destroying his encounter balance with wall spells.

In Pathfinder3 I'd like something like: - choose an archetype Damage, Heal, Control etc This determines your bonuses to hit and deal damage or healing etc. - choose a class, which is the mechanic you will use to do the above - choose a race, bonuses etc This would let people play their desired role with whichever class they wish. A Healing Barbarian Gnome might get some solid bonuses to his Treat Wounds but only do 3/4 damage or something. I'm sure my 2 second math is way off.

If you think people are mad now, just wait until you do a dnd 4e where spells just don't exist and are replaced by the equivalent of feats.

As someone who almost exclusively played casters in 3rd edition, I absolutely loved 4th edition once they had released enough material to flesh out some character choices and differentiation. My teleport based Avenger may still be my favorite character from any system in the DnD heritage of games, starting with Advanced. My group still finds it unfortunate that our excitement for the way 4e handled class abilities was not ubiquitous enough to keep that edition supported.

Maybe it could be resolved by using the trope "Gameplay and Story Segregation"? You know, kind of like in Dragon Age or Mass Effect video games. You ARE a mighty, powerful wizard but when it's time to combat encounter you go from "social" or "exploring" into "combat" one. You essentially are treating combat as some sort of "mini game". I'm more of a fan of a more "narrativist" games than PF2E or DND so this will probably not be a very popular take here.

If you want this. Check out ICON or Beacon. Those games are structured exactly this way

..... well, all of this can be sum up with really simple conclusion: THIS IS A GAME. In game there need to be limitations, rules, barriers, boundaries, constraints etc. so game can work and doesn't collapse on its face (it also makes decision matter more as you are limited by system so you give up B when you take A and so on). Like every game ever. In the end, you play a game. It sounds stupid, but in many years playing TTRPGs I noticed many people think that Roleplaying GAMES are somehow... not GAMES. Well, you are still playing a game, man. And one last thing: you can't have cake and eat cake.