Why Pathfinder 2e's removing the 8 schools of magic is a good thing (Rules Lawyer)
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- (See my pinned comment for errata/updates!)
Reddit post "Time magic and the loss of spell schools"
/ time_magic_and_the_los...
0:00 Intro
1:09 Removing the 8 schools opens up the design space
2:57 What the Remaster is doing
4:50 The 8 schools suck
8:11 The Remaster leads to more flexibility
12:39 School of Celebrity Survival
14:16 Relax, it's fine
15:38 Detect Magic
17:06 Closing thoughts
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UPDATES/ERRATA from 8/5/2023 (2 days after I first uploaded this):
-The one argument from people opposing the change that I agree with is that some of the spells Paizo has in the curricula do not "scale well" - i.e., for the School of Battle Magic, breathe fire, burning hands and force barrage might be useful for a 1st-level caster, but if that's all they can choose from then that becomes a "dead slot" as you to higher levels since their damage becomes insignificant (and weaker than cantrip damage!).
In that case, I think Paizo made a mistake and should have had a "good scaling" spell at every rank. I THINK PAIZO SHOULD ERRATA a few lists to allow for more good "scaling spells." Battle Magic could have Sure Strike, Gravitational Pull, or Kinetic Ram, for instance.
However, I still think removing the 8 schools is good for the game because (1) it opens up the design space and (2) in the end this means more freedom for players and GMs to tailor schools because they are no longer limited by being in their school's "box." The player of an Battle Magic wizard might want to talk to their GM about getting the Fear and Slow spells, for instance, because when heightened they control crowds - right now, an Evoker cannot choose them.
-The Witch looking so cool does put Wizards in a tough spot. Unless we hear there is a buff to their Arcane Thesis feature or some other feature, we might have a situation where the question of "Why be a Witch when you can be a Wizard?" is now reversed! Hopefully, Paizo's effort to buff non-Fighter classes in some way will extend to the Wizard. But if there is no buff to the Wizard's other class features, then yes I AM open to these schools offering some kind of unique buff to their spells, somewhat akin to the way Sorcerer "Blood Magic" abilities work right now (and the Familiar abilities they're providing to the Witch in this very book!)
-From the GenCon sneak preview, it looks like there is no separate "universalist" that lacks a school. If there IS one, it also will have a bonus school slot and a focus spell to start with.
I think giving wizard legendary will save would be nice buff that also makes sense thematically.
honestly i think universalist will stay exactly the same (Bonded Item use per rank and an extra feat)
and personally, i find spell blending/enhanced staff/etc vs a "bloodline" familiar and hexes to be an interesting choice, wizards are still the best class for arcane slotted spells
Edit: I should lead with this: you _do_ make a really good case for abandoning the original 8 schools since they've gotten really messy over the years, but I think spell schools still benefited the system far more than they harmed it. They needed to be reworked for legal reasons. They should have been reworked to just clean things up. They didn't need to be thrown out entirely, and I think we lost something very valuable along with the mess. A classic "throwing the baby out with the bath water" scenario.
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"Opening the design space" is only good insofar as it creates room to put new things in. If you leave that space unfilled, it's just wasted space, and even if what used to be there had problems, it was still useful (Though I think under-utilized. There is a LOT of cool things they could have done with magic schools that would have made them more interesting and impactful than "Pick a school to be slightly better at, loose access to opposing school" - for example, what if every spell had an in-school effect and you got to select a second school at level 10? Instead of loosing access to the opposing school, maybe restrict it to being 1 spell rank behind in it, or maybe 2 at most. Anyways, I digress.) They could have built on their own schools (Thessalonian magic is unique to pathfinder, and could have been embraced or extended) but instead stripped out something that lent the player to better understand the in-world magic.
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Your example of color spray is the perfect illustration of this: If _could_ be creating light, it _could_ be conjured from another plane, it _could_ be a mental effect, but were given a clear no-arguments around the table answer with a single simple tag: it's an illusion. Does a puzzle revolve around directing a light through a maze of mirrors? You can't fake out the receiving end and bypass the puzzle with color spray, because there is no real light produced - it's an illusion. This is useful, this is concrete, and it further immerses you in the world! There's magic, and it has its own rules, and people have been figuring them out, and... now we just have a spell list, and some places specialize is teaching certain parts of it. The magic and the immersion is gone, it's no longer a new field of study with its own rules and quirks... it's just a list of spell names on a page.
@@velinion1 I found your comment interesting, but you completely lost me at the end. You say that colour spray doesn't create "real" light because it's an illusion. But that kind of begs the question "what the heck is an illusion?". My assumption was always that a visual illusion creates a real image of a fake thing (thus, "real" light). If there's no real light, then isn't that just an enchantment? On the other hand, you could very well say that my assumption has a similar problem. If you're creating "real" light (ie a form of energy), then shouldn't that be an evocation? You could even argue that light has matter-like qualities so it should be a conjuration (although I don't think anyone would really make that argument in good faith).
From a rules perspective, you're totally correct. It's spelled out nice and simple. Whether or not you're creating real light is irrelevant, it isn't an enchantment, and it isn't an evocation. It's an illusion, full stop. The problem isn't really a rules problem or a crunch problem. The problem is that we have certain expectations that a system of mutually exclusive categories will have some kind of consistent logic to them. I don't think it's possible to maintain both exclusivity and consistency. Losing consistency causes confusion and annoyance. It feels like your character build's limitations are determined less by real in-world logic and more by arbitrary nonsense. On the other hand, losing exclusivity is... well honestly it's a good thing. It solves the problem of whether a false image is an illusion or an evocation. And if wizard magic is supposed to be like academia, then there should be overlap. That's how the real world works. The same text may be studied by a historian, a sociologist, an anthropologist, a philosopher, and a literary scholar, though each will approach it in their own way. Why shouldn't some spells be studied/used by both the evoker and the illusionist? If anything, that sounds like a short list.
And once you've eliminated the exclusivity and made the schools more logically consistent as part of a cleanup/rework, what really is the difference between the revised magical schools and the new curricula?
Maybe blaster wizards should add their spell casting ability modifier to their leveled spells if they require a spell attack to hit. Or make some of the damage spells better period.
The problem of spell schools I see is that different schools names explain different parts of a spell
Abjuration, enchantment and divination describe the purpouse of the spell; transmutation, necromancy, evocation and conjuration describe the method the spell acts; illusion describe instead the result of the spell.
They do not actually refer to the same part of the spell making most spell fit multiple schools at once but at the same time each spell is allowed only one.
A school of civil engineering just sounds like a lot of cool battlefield control spells. Lots of walls, pits, and utility things like feather fall and protective spells to keep the crew safe. Seems like it'd be a fun concept to me!
If it's as good as the School of Celebrity Survival, it should be a blast.
Goodbye Magnificent Mansion, hello Formidable Fortress
Craft hard-hat golem.
Rogue: "Oof! What a fight... Hey, uhh... What's that big stone cube over there?"
Civic Wizard: "Technically? It's a tomb. It's far from my finest work, but while the rest of you were wasting time slashing throats, and gutting bellies, I sealed no less than three hobgoblins inside that airtight space. The current occupants will doubtlessly spend the next few hours slowly suffocating within the lightless confines of their final resting place."
Rogue: "..."
Civic Wizard: "Please remember this moment the next time you feel tempted to slip your hand into my coin purse."
When I heard about the school of Civil engineering I immediately wanted to make a wizard who's focus was on sewage and he's adventuring to learn how ancient societies dealt with sewage :D
That is a cool-sounding concept :) It makes total sense, considering how big some of the cities are on Golarian, that there would schools of Civil Engineering. It makes total sense! :)
Funnily the channel "Practical Engineering" started a series about a Sewage pump.
Ars Magica has probably the best spell categories I've ever seen. Ignem, for example, deals not with fire exactly but specifically with light and heat. So a pyromancer could totally cast Magelight and Ray of Frost and it would make sense. Lots of room for creativity without being arbitrary.
A pyromancer casting cold spells makes perfect sense. Cold is caused by the transfer of heat into something else, so pyromancer could definitely suck the heat from someone
I’ve always been a big fan of the 8 schools of magic concept and maybe I’m crazy but I don’t understand where this rigidity people are seeing is supposedly coming from. I never took the 8 schools to be metaphysical facts of the universe but instead a somewhat haphazard classification of magic done by Wizards, who are in fact the class trying to classify and understand magic. The idea that some spells don’t fit cleanly into one school or another is something I imagine Wizards having heated debates about in universe, and it tied really neatly into the lore around them. Whilst mechanically it could mean more work for the dm/player, in terms of deciding whether or not to allow some specialist Wizard to have a spell that wasn’t of there school I never found it any more difficult than what you did in designing your own school with the remastered system. Is there a place where these schools are referenced as the only possible schools of magic? Because my thought was always that those 8 were merely the most common types not the only possible, so room for things like Chronomancy can easily be made.
There’s also something off to me about the schools being physical spaces that exist in the world rather then theoretical concepts of magic, it makes every Wizard a literal student which I feel can limit creativity quite a bit, since if I want my Wizard to be self-taught I’m not sure how that fits into the new system.
Just minor reskin a "school" as your fokus of self thought study. Maybe you never enrolled into a school (for whatever reason) but you happen to come across the books that school uses. Its realy not that hard.(sorry, not wanting to sound like an a hole here)
Yeah, I see the "schools" of magic to be more like schools of thought. They're not named the way they are because there's 8 different specialized Hogwarts somewhere in the world. They're more like schools of thought. It's because they have something in common, either obviously to us as players, or to in universe wizards who understand magic way better than any player. We as players, DMs and game designers have no knowledge of the nuts and blots of casting spells so we literally *can't* have a basis for saying a particular spell does or doesn't fit into a school.
And when we see a spell that doesn't obviously fit we, as DMs and players, should let that fact ignite our imaginations. Let the incongruity speak to how the spell works, even when unexpected. Like chronomancy spells being transmutation: Science tells us that two things that seem fundamentally different - matter and energy - are actually fundamentally the same thing. So why can't time also be a form of energy? Or perhaps even a form of matter? Doesn't this hypothesis ignite the imagination - that that a seemingly impossible thing is true?
Well wizards are people who have studied magic and learned its secrets
A self taught wizard can still a student of mentalism, just like a self taught coder can still be a game designer
Self taught coders often learn by looking at and using a learned person's work, and your wizard can do that too
But if you want your wizard to be the type of person that experimented at a workbench for 15 years, that's really no different
In regards to the first paragraph, I always kind of ignored the schools of magic myself until it was right in front of me and I like the way you've interpreted it
However, it can be frustrating when it's suddenly mechanically limiting and you can't even tell why
If you want to mechanically change something to show that you're self-taught, you could take the dubious knowledge skill feat or convince the DM to give it to you
There's also backgrounds that fill that in well I think
I am already brainstorming the schools of magic that will exist in my world. So much storytelling potential is held in this change.
they're like deities, very customizable
which isnt a real school of magic and is garbage lol...spell schools are supposed to MAKE UP the fundamental of magic and how they are learned...Paizo's original devs would never have gone this route...jfc I hate watching good IP's burn because idiots are in charge.@@lawrl777
What I don't like is the loss in flavour from categorizing magic. Why not define a few subcategories so that Detect Magic and other things more lore related have more use/make more sense? For instance "elemental magic" that has stuff from Primal and Arcane. "Mentalist" or "Illusion" that have spells from Occult, Arcane, Divine. "Life" and "Death" with a lot of Divine and Primal stuff, "Transformation" with mostly ex-transmutation stuff etc. Wouldn't that be cooler than just... nothing?
Personally, I like the concept of keeping both the 8 Schools of magic as the theoretical developing blocks of magic and these new curriculums of what is actually taught and put into practice. The categorization of spells into each school feels alot like scientific theory that people would argue as to what spell belongs where. As a GM, having both just feels good. Letting the former schools remain as flavor and roleplay material but the expanding of choice with new curriculums.
I wish spells had traits mentioning what essence(mentioned in secrets of magic) may be manipulated to create the effect, like fear being mentalism or vitalism. Then the caster chooses the trait it wants to use based on their tradition.
Like, a inteligent construct would be afected by a wizard Fear spell, but not a druid one, while a mindless undead would work the opposite way
Your point around the 14:28 mark about trepidation around speaking with your GM for custom school lists and school spell substitution is on point, but a lot of this may surround Pathfinder Society type play, where it may not be possible for individual GMs to make these types of calls.
You're right, in that it's probably not possible to allow ANY custom curriculums for PFS. We have yet to see the full suite of schools and how many there'll be in the Player Core 1. We'll see whether it leaves players unsatisfied and wanting... (I"ve been saying it's only about one slot and wizards have their other slots) We'll see!
EDIT: I agree with respect to the lists for some ranks that do not have any spells that "scale well." I think this is something that Paizo should errata, in fact.
As a GM I don't wanna have it be my job to evaluate hundreds of spells on demand for my players. To see if they belong to a school. Such 'mother may I' is not what I seek at my table.
@@timon6427that "mother may i" is exactly why I left 5e for pf2e...
@@timon6427 the whole point is you were already doing that with every Uncommon piece of content
@@lawrl777 I say what I allow at the beginning of the game. I know what is right for my game. But to judge which spell belongs to which list and try to be consistent about it between games and players is a whole other can of worms. It is more work and needs more scrutiny which would add to what I am already doing.
9:24 The Elementalist and Runelord Archetypes were attempts at breaking up the Schools a bit.
- What spells need imho is "identifying traits". Traits that are so relevant, they will ping on a higher level Detect Magic or identification spell. We already have this with Illusion. "Mental" could be another one.
I thought this too, but my idea was just to have the GM pick a trait of the spell (other than concentrate, manipulate, cantrip, or incapacitation) to be revealed.
so rather than "the door has an evocation effect on it" or "the door has a 4th-rank magical effect on it," the party might get "the door has an effect with the darkness trait on it"
I guess nobody wants wizards to actually be like cutting edge highly skilled researchesrs of arcane magic anymore, they seem to prefer their wizards more on the "community college dropout general science degree" kind of flavour
My complaint is that it removes the wizard's strongest aspect. The spellbook and specialized schools is a toolbox to flex in and out whatever you need for.the day. Having one forced spell in the slot sucks.
Out of curiosity, Ronald, have you read the Secrets of Magic book? I feel its flavour texts on the schools--which tragically will void with the remaster--offers a lot more to explain the various aspects of the different schools. And to me it sounds like a lot of the critique on the mechanics simply come down to the fact that a spell must be part of one and only one school. Would it not fix most issues, if spells could belong to different schools at the same time?
I for one am very sad to see the schools go. Not only does it nullify a lot of wonderful in-world flavour text from Secrets of Magic; I also like the aspect of categorizing the arcane aspects of the spells. To me the schools seem like a hint at the nature of the arcane studies that must be in focus when learning a spell.
From an In-world perspective it makes sense to me that in order to master the bending of arcane energy to some purpose, you must have a guiding focus on what that purpose targets. The new proposed schools sound more like meta-thematic categories.
An to draw analogies to our real world, people love and in most cases need to categorize the (meta)physical phenomenon. Just look at the extensive categorization in any field of physics. I see no reason it would be more beneficial to vaguely lump all the things together for the arcane scholars in the Pathfinder world.
But maybe that's just me focusing more on the in-world themes than the practicality of the game mechanics.
These aspects you'll be missing, I see potential for them in the new system. The people of Golarion would still be conceptualizing, researching, categorizing the arcane mysteries, but in a different way.
While it's not a terrible idea, spells have been in multiple schools in older editions of D&D. 2nd edition had many that were part of 2 or 3 schools of magic. That system had a more strict specialist system though. You had to ban 2 or 3 opposing schools. If you were forced to ban evocation, you might still be able to cast some blasting spells if they were ALSO in conjuration. The problem is many spells don't fit into the 8 schools, others fit in many (or nearly all of them), and some only fit in one. Depending on how broadly you define the schools, you also run into the problem that Evocation covers almost everything.
Evocation's denoted meaning is to call or bring to mind. Does that mean spells that give knowledge would be evocation? Invoking, which was the classic other half of evocation's school of magic (and often used interchangeably in literature) means to call a spirit to inhabit you or a place. Should summoning/necromantic spells be invocations and in the school of evocation? In the end, many of these terms are nearly interchangeable. Evocation/Conjuration being the most obvious. Enchantment/Transmutation is another. Both refer to enhancing or ensorcelling an object or person. Divination often involves contacting other beings, bringing them before you to answer your questions or fulfill your desires for knowledge. Isn't that also conjuring? Necromancy involves animating the dead. In game, that's done by invoking energy from another plane of existence (Void/negative material) to inhabit the host corpse. Isn't that also conjuration? It also involves manipulating the forces of life and death. Isn't that also transmutation (stopping the heart, speeding up/slowing down healing, etc.)?
I think it's just required to take Pathfinder away from D&D. No matter how they dress it up, they're just taking out all the elements that can't be clearly tagged as generic fantasy and is arguably specific to D&D. That's why the color/metal dragons have to change and why alignments are going. The 8 schools are like that.
@@TacticusPrime I think this is the real point. they are turning pathfinder into their own thing. And that has pros and cons. for people that love golarion, its nothing but a pro. for people that enjoy the system of pathfinder but actually enjoy some of the lore of D&D that existed before 5e was even a thing (hell even before 3.5 was a thing), it has both pros and cons. I can see new schools of magic to wizards to learn in, but i like classifications of magic that are outside of schools. Many fantasy tropes use this (no, Tolkien does not, but that was a point that was somewhat disengenious, because PF is not a tolkien game as has been mentioned many times). To be honest, I dont think they SHOULD be illusion, evocation, necromancy, etc.. That was some specific ideas from the 80s, which I liked in the 80s/90s, but I do think there should be classifications. I think it ads a lot to the game. Spells should be under multiple classifications. This should be seperate from wizard schools. (which, by the way, was the point when they originally came out way back when)
@@TacticusPrimehonestly that's a bunch of horse crap. Coloured dragons are copyrighted by wotc? I guess the Welsh government need to be sued for their flag.
There is an irony in that this was in 1e to an extent too.
The elemental schools had this design mostly
for example fire elementalist was
0th-spark
1st-burning hands, dancing lantern
2nd-burning gaze, elemental speech, elemental touch, fire breath, flaming sphere, pyrotechnics, resist energy, scorching ray, summon monster II
3rd-campfire wall, draconic reservoir, elemental aura, fireball, flame arrow, protection from energy
4th-detonate, dragon’s breath, elemental body I, fire shield, fire trap, firefall, summon monster IV, wall of fire
5th-elemental body II, fire snake, geyser, planar adaptation, planar binding (lesser), summon monster V
6th-contagious flame, elemental body III, planar binding, sirocco, summon monster VI
7th-delayed blast fireball, elemental body IV, firebrand, planar adaptation (mass), summon monster VII
8th-incendiary cloud, planar binding (greater), summon monster VIII, wall of lava
9th-fiery body, gate, meteor swarm
Many but not all are evocation. But it's way more thematic
Originaly, when I went over the rules of PF2, when I found out schools were in traits, I thought that some spell might belong to more than one school. Your examples make a lot of sense in that regard.
15:00 I do wonder what Pathfinder Society will do. My guess is they will pull a Pathfinder Unchained and let OG wizards fight alongside Remaster Wizards (with the non-OGL spell list, which will change spells but not how to cast.)
Yes, there are some issues for higher-level play, since some of the those lower rank lists given do not have any spells that scale well.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG What if the wizard had like cleric's healing font not 1 bonus slot per rank but a flat 3-5 slots that auto-scaled but could only be prepared with the spells given from the curriculum?
@@Praetarius there are so many ways to do it without makeing it feel so restrictive. They could also
- They could open up all all spellslot and just make it bonus spells learned.
- Or Like cleric heal/harm spells in that they can exchange one spell/slot on the fly with these spells.
for easy examples
In general haveing a small spell list that is highly restrictive with to little a compensation for it is a bad idea.
I believe the rationale from first edition of healing being conjuration that you were summoning energy from the positive energy plane.
There's a big difference between homebrewing to fix balance issues or gameflow deficiencies, as is relatively common with dnd5e, and homebrewing to enhance narrative or worldbuilding, such as building a new spell curriculum.
the only compelling reason is the legal situation, apart from that the schools have worked well for decades, and these new skills are straight jackets, way to narrow and far to few spells in them, the better solution would have been, if you to get rid of schools, get rid of them entirely and roll the bonus slot into the universal slot, rather than make people who want Evocation, take a pile of buff/debuff spells they have zero interest in.
I am ... perplexed over the removing of the 8 schools of magic, at least with the schools you can mostly understand where each spell fits. That said.. I would like to name drop other game franchises that "in my humble opinion" did a better job of sorting out the spells into schools. "The Elder Scrolls" franchise had Destruction, Alteration, Restoration, Illusion, Mysticism, Conjuration and Enchanting.. this was actually very good at sorting spells.. but this wasn't my favourite.. my favourite was "Might and Magic"... they had Air, Fire, Water, Earth, Spirit, Mind, Body, Light and Dark.. and I loved the fact that you could train in each school to be better at that school.. you started out at Novice, then Expert, then Master and finally Grandmaster. each time you skilled up in a school.. all your learned spells increased in potency.. from the most basic spell to the most powerful Grandmaster spell!. If Paizo did something like that with the curriculms and colleges (where each spell increases in power as you gain a rank in that college) .. I would be ecstatically happy.
I've never understood Wizard spell schools. Conjuration has summons and teleportation for some reason. Transmutation covers self-buffs and baleful transformations. Ever time I tried to make a wizard, it was hard to specialize because thematically I need magic from 3 different schools.
The new school of mentalism is right up my alley though. It's very clear what the theme is. I know what a Mentalist is trying to do.
A nice way of interpreting Conjuration was to consider it to be the art of moving things instantaneously. Whether it was you (teleportation), a creature from another plane (summoning or calling depending on if the movement was temporary or more durable), and even the former creation and healing spells from 3.5/PF1 (you transfer instantaneously matter - like acid splash or acid arrow - or planar substance - like the Cure spell line which could draw power from the Positive energy Plane)
Basically, whenever you Conjure something, you create a teleportation effect.
The schools of magic were a bolt-on to Second Edition AD&D; Gary wrote up the whole “transmutation, evocation, enchantment” etc. as flavor for detect magic for first edition AD&D, or for his magic-users to sound smarter about the magic they used or encountered.
In second edition, someone came up with the idea to split along schools to make Wizards more interesting and to add a dimension - they did something similar with clerics and “spheres”, an idea that morphed into domains later on. Someone saw the custom “Illusionist” class from first ed AD&D, and said, “hey, we can do this with more than just Illusions.”
But they were in NO WAY meant to be balanced in the game design from the jump - they were something the early D&D players made up that sounded cool.
Summoning is a form of teliportaion if you think about it.
@@queenannsrevenge100and that makes a million times more sense than "I went to wizard public school"
Teleportation being Conjuration I get. What you're doing is "summoning" _yourself_ from one location to another within the plane, same kind of portal technology as any other summoning.
Speaking of the confusion over what spell school Cure Wounds should be… in the current OneD&D playtest it’s an Abjuration spell.
Honestly it's not really a new edition of D&D unless Cure Wounds moves spell school.
The only thing I'm going to miss about spell schools is the flavor, and that's something that can easily be replicated with good role-playing.
@GM_Steelhaven But it is, because spell schools are totally arbitrary and subjective. Different people can think different spells belong in different schools, or even multiple schools, because the definitions of what these schools are is too vague and too flexible. Someone can not be able to treat a spell as a spell of their specialization even if it would make perfect sense for it to be based on their own perception of what that school is or what they had hoped to get out of it. Plus, even the schools themselves almost seem like they shouldn't exist because they are already covered by other schools. Like, Conjuration. Why isn't every Illusion just a Conjuration spell? You're conjuring an illusion aren't you? Removing these vague schools allows them to define more specific specializations of magic that are much more strongly defined. Not just thematically either, but mechanically. How are wizards supposed to specialize into specific roles if they are specialized based on school instead of based on effect? This is severely limiting the wizard's power budget, because every Wizard is a generalist not just because of their access to the entire Arcane spell list, but because every school that they can specialize in is in and of itself a list of spells that caters to multiple roles (because spell schools were not mechanically but wholly thematically based).
Of course, even if all of that wasn't the case, it's not like they could've stayed anyway. The concept of spell schools is bound far too intricately to D&D and the OGL. Moving away from them wasn't exactly optional, and it will make the game better regardless.
@GM_Steelhaven the problem it fixes is being linked to wotc IP
Honestly I think flavor-wise every spell being part of exactly one of eight schools of magic kinda sucked in the first place. Wizards are essentially portrayed as magic scientists, and the idea that all magic can be sorted into 8 fields sounds silly when you compare it to real life science. Good luck doing biology without doing chemistry, good luck doing chemistry without doing physics, good luck doing physics without doing math, and good luck doing one field of math without involving several others.
@@NateAllard Agree. I don't think thats a failure of shools tho, but rather a failure in spells being limited to only 1 school. Give me an Abjuration Enchantment. Id like an Evocation Conjuration spell where you teleport and deal damage at either the start or end location or both.
I like Spellschools just not how they are used as single tags whrn they should be able to blend into multiple ones.
@@NateAllard And that wizards have the grand unified field theory of magic. Four traditions, Eight Schools.
Real life is waaaayyyyy messier, and has way more room for discovery. The eight schools didn't leave room for "technically all spells with a with a duration that aren't curses are illusions" style breakthrough/thesis, and yet in classic mythology polymorphing is generally an illusion thing.
I know that all this remaster thing is mostly because of OGL and I can feel that Paizo rushes it, there are a lot of good changes, and I'm sure that team were discussing them for some time, but most of them need some extra work
Just like email sorting is better organized by tags rather than folders, spell schools could be too. Speak with Dead can fit into Divination and Necromancy. Fear could be enchantment because it causes an emotion, or necromancy because all fear, at its base, is a fear of death. Conjured elementals, evoked fireballs, transmutation into a hellhound, and even a phantasmal sensation of burning could all have the Fire tag. There’s no need to drop the schools as they are when you can add new perspectives to them with tags.
Generally, I like the versatility of the school lists, but I can't help but feel that the scaling of wizard spells make many useless at higher levels. I just honestly wish that there were more useful and more impactful spells that scale like Focus Spells that could be learned from these Schools. The depth of Focus Spells for Divine is far more interesting than what Wizards get.
I saw an interesting version of this system in a game called rift wizard. Most spells have multiple tags like "ice, nature, conjuration". Instead of categories you would get a discount on spells with a particular tag.
I am going to have to disagree a bit here. I feel the better option was to instead further subdivide the schools into even more specialized classifications and at the same time allow some spells to exist as part of multiple schools. In effect I would have preferred if Paizo made use of the trait system to give each spell 1-3 "School traits" that then wizards and other classes could lean on. Wizard subclasses could then allow you to pick a number of traits for your school spells while giving you some kind of bonus for choosing to specialize and pick less schools.
More classes know magic, the less spell classes get used.
Spell Classifications are for Wizards, a few Archetypes and a few ancestry feats. Nothing else really cared about "spell schools". What class interacts with Evocation spells? Just Wizards. What class interacts with Divination spells? Just Wizards. What class interacts with Transmutation spells? Just Wizards. What class interacts with Conjuration spells? Just Wizards.
I see the removal of spell classification to be net neutral. It really doesn't impact the game _that_ much outside of well, the Wizard.
Magical Academies which specialize in spells is a great world building idea and makes graduating from an Academy an important choice for the Wizard... and these Academies can be spread to other classes without much effort.
@@aralornwolf3140I think that is fittimg that schools only affect wizards as they were the ones that study them in this way, categorize in this way and all, and is easier to search than in this new way in academies
@@xaropevic7918,
*Shrugs*
Have an Academy devoted to Rune Magic/Sin Magic as used by the Rune Lords of Thassilon. "Problem" solved.
What stood out to me from the get-go with the 8 schools is how arbitrary it is. A ton of spells in 5e have a description fitting neatly within a school, only for a different school to be applied because of semantics.
Divination broadly covers spells about the acquisition and sharing of knowledge.
Message, a very basic spell to communicate over a distance, is transmutation. Sending, a more advanced spell with the same purpose, is an evocation spell.
Abjuration is about anti-magic and protection.
Tiny Hut, which creates a dome that keeps out tresspassers, regulates the internal atmosphere, and hides the inside from view to the outside would be a textbook abjuration spell...and it's an evocation one.
Power words Heal and Kill both compel a target to do something using presumably a ancient divine language to compel reality to change. Both deal with the forces of life and death. The former is evocation (the magic all about the channeling of energies, like fire and lightning), the latter is enchantment (the magic of altering the mind).
There seems to be little to no consistency in what spells get listed with what school, and honestly there's no point whatsoever.
Are schools supposed to be short-hands to convey easily what they do? Then the arbitrary selection undercuts this, because highly similar spells can fall under different schools (produce flame and firebolt are both ranged fire cantrips; one is conjuration, the other evocation).
Are they supposed to corral off certain combinations because they threaten game balance, or to limit a wizard's versatility? Wizards don't realistically have a limit on what spells they can add to their book, the only limit is the money and time spent.
Schools only come up for the wizard archetypes, but for all other classes, they're already irrelevant.
And they also stiffle spell design. Matt Mercer had to do a non-significant amount of finagling to fit time and gravity spells into the system, because those can fall under almost any school depending on the details.
There was no need to remove spell schools in order to improve the wizard. They could do exactly what they are doing and still have left spell schools in the game for those who want them. It hurts the spell identify and it hurts anyone who has features they have added or classes that use spell schools as now every time something comes out you have to go figure out what school it belongs to see if it fits in to what you had. Much like how they could have said "Alignment is a guide line" or "Ancestry ability score is a guide line" Include the information for those who would still use it instead of alienating part of your audience. You can bring forth change without doing that. Detect Magic loses part of its luster. Being able to see the spell school of something allowed you to figure out how to interact with certain enchanted things. You detect a strong necromancy school. Probably just leave that alone. The loss of Identity is the biggest thing we keep losing because people want to water things down.
Having to make bespoke spell lists for schools and /cults in Mythras is one of the most fun world building things you can do so I'm excited to see it in some form for pf2e
I love your channel. My group plans on moving to PF 2E after our current 5E campaign.
I think the new implementation of magic schools is okay, but id like if there was a s structured rule supported way to create a custom school. Similar to the current rules for custom staffs (all spells you choose must share a specific trait such as fire or curse)
What I wish they had done with things like illusion and conjuration was instead of making them the 8 schools that everything had to fall into just making them tags, like how Polymorph and Mental are already. Not every spell would have to have one and spells that fell into multiple categories could have more than one. Then when you use detect magic it could possibly tell the player some or all of the categories that the spell falls under.
Granted I could see that possibly creating some confusion and would not give them as much legal protection against Wizards, especially with "abjuration" or "evocation" which tend to be more DnD specific (Illusion and Necromancy on the other hand feel pretty general across fantasy).
Abjuration can be changed to "Defensive/Protective" (probably second option) and Evocation as "Energy"
Conjuration to "Matter/Space" and "Summon" Transmutation probably would also be "Matter/Space", "Body" (a trait inside Matter) and "Time"
A long time ago I also thought that the spell school system was really cool at first glance
At the very least it was interesting
But the more I thought about the more problems I had with it and that it really needed a major change
As a compsci major I realized that one goal can be achieved in a multitude of methods and depending on complexity and other goals, each method has their strengths and weaknesses
So I thought one way to make the spell schools make more sense is if they had duplicate spells based on spell schools
And you had to pick a few spell schools like weapon proficiencies in older dnd versions
Probably not the way pf2e would do it but just a thought
While I don’t have a problem with the new colleges, I think Paizo should have spend more time thinking about the names. It currently feels they just went for the first thing they could think of. College of Civic Engineering? Why not call it College of ingenium? College of Primordial Form? Why not call it College of biomancy? They should have ran a survey and go for babes players like the most.
I strongly disagree with your opinion on this subject, while of course respecting your right to express it.
I will however politely request that you show some more compassion for those of us who are worried about the changes in the remaster.
In the pinned comment you acknowledge some serious problems with the planned changes, and yet the main body of all your videos on the subject has been dismissive of the community's concerns (in my opinion).
I would very much appreciate if, in future videos, you made an earnest attempt to meet those with concerns half-way.
This is an issue for me too. It looks like 'I'm a Pathfinder influencer and Paizo gets a free pass no matter what they do.'
I always felt like Magic Schools were a bit too heavily relied upon for caster abilities and some of them are flat out boring like "it's more difficult to lose your concentration on a spell" which is nice but at the same time I'm not panicking in my head if I don't get that ability at all. I feel like casters deserve abilities to do things outside of just casting spells. We should be able to use magic in more unique, creative, and wonderous ways. For damn sakes casters take the impossible of bending the laws of a universe to create short cuts in getting things.
Speaking as someone in training to become a civil engineer, I would love to see an arcane school of civil engineering.
I don't think removing spell schools is such a bad thing but so far I also don't think their replacement is any better either. All I saw so far is just a here have this random list of spells. Like we haven't seen any new focus spells or feats. Sure we can assume they exist but without those it's taking away more then it adds. It really makes no sense to argue in favor of one or the other without having the full context.
I don't have an argument per-say, because I think the changes they are making must and should happen. Tying wizards to them creates problems in the design space sure, agreed. And keeping them is a problem for OGL reasons, agreed again. I do however, disagree that purely flavorfully the schools are bad in any way.
I think that you can define things quite well in most cases and also that it is good that there is room to debate in some cases where spells lie using the schools, including color spray. Light is an energy and so mostly falls into evocation spells which bring energy and elements into being, with some exceptions in necromancy with stuff like inner radiance torrent that should be evocation by all accounts, that one's fair. Conjuration is bringing non-energy things into being or moving them between spaces, objects, creatures, etc.. Enchantment are things that effect the mind of the target(s) in some way. Illusion is bringing not-real things into reality, which is a weird concept and it is understandable why one might think it could be another school, but that's the idea it is supposed to confuse you.
Not-real things are there when cast, but do not behave fully as real things, again with color spray it is not real light(does not create any light nor does it have the light tag), nor is it a real physical substance(creatures are not marked with any color or residue as a result of being in the 'spray'), and the colors can be observed by creatures other than the targets(so not enchantment). It is simply a pattern of swirling color that does not behave as reality dictates because it isn't real, and thus is an illusion spell.
And you can argue against that too, and say it is a contradictory spell where I say it isn't. That's fine too! Much like science in our world, scholars of magics may have different ideas & findings about how magic is defined, maybe a council has classified color spray under one school for a long time but reclassifies it later on after better understanding it. Or there are opposing teachings and a wizard from A education and B education might both cast detect magic and see a different school for the same effect because it is that wizard interpreting what they are detecting based on what they've learned. Basically the capacity for things to be mislabeled isn't something I see as a problem here in terms of flavor.
I do agree with some of what's said here, and I myself have usually ruled spell schools as being more Wizardly academic constructs than hardline facts of magical reality. That said, that definition does run into problems when you run into game mechanics that seem to imply the opposite (like detect magic revealing spell school). Overall, I think I prefer new schools being based on in-setting academic institutions, because it cuts out so much of the abstraction otherwise necessary (even if I typically really like abstraction in these contexts).
I think that your arguments could be backed up by a measure that would fix a few of other problems such as imbalance between schools, which is to make each spell able to have more than one school if needed, and maybe ig necessary make some a bit more vague and rename to avoid ogl,
I’ll just let my players pick their own Curriculum lists provided they supply a half-decent reason why it works for them and their character. That’s how I handle the Sorcerer bloodline spell lists. Four years of doing it that way for Sorcerers has proven to me it’s not a big deal and it doesn’t have any impact on balance. It challenges my players to be more involved behind the choices they make while still allowing them the pleasure of getting the spells they want. I’ll take that option all day, every day over forcing bad or unwanted spell options on my players due to bad bad game design.
Having said that, I still think it matters with regards to PFS, which I don’t partake in and know little about. My guess is they are subject to official rules.
And my heart goes out to players stuck with any GM that is suck enough to the point they won’t allow personal customization of such things at a non-PFS, house rule table.
This was a solid look at the schools, a lot of things I hadn’t thought of before. Now I gotta make a new curriculum for the magic school in my world haha
this is a great RP option, building your spell list according to a theme. It helps players get a little more in touch with their characters frame of mind imo. I just did something similar in a 3.5 game when making a magus, only picking spells that I could flavor into the idea of a light and shadow / duelist. It's not powerful but it has fun tricks, so it's kind of a trickster duelist with small magics to aid him.
If I'm wanting to begin working on my own homebrewed campaign for PF2E but have never played it before, would you recommend me waiting until the Remaster comes out? My main concern is that, if I start doing a bunch of work now, I'll have to modify the monsters I create or re-learn a bunch of rules for the Remaster. (And the Remaster is the version I want to introduce my group to.)
I would be inclined to go ahead - the scope of changes will not require much rework (the only thing affecting monsters is anything alignment based and the Grab/Shove/Trip ability not being automatic anymore) Post-Remaster, just make anything weak to "good" damage weak to "holy" damage...
The thing i dont like about the spell changes is thats its going to be difficult to unlearn the old stuff.
5:00 the purest illusion spell belongs to the school of illusion, I wonder why?
Ive recently been reading the secrets of magic p2e book, and I think and interesting change for the detect magic, without the 8 schools, would be to tell the player what fundamental energy is in the effect, that being mind matter spirit or life. another Idea would be to have the descriptions be something like, harm - hinder - heal - mislead - empower plus what ever may be needed, having the lingering intent being left by the spell caster.
While I do agree about some of your criticism of the application of spell schools, I think that the "remaster" loses something. To show what that is exactly, I'll look at color spray.
Color Spray being an Illusion spell means that the "core" of the spell is the manipulation of sensory information. Unlike evocation, the wizard doesn't evoke some energy that has a physical effect and unlike enchantment, the wizard does not directly manipulate the mind of the target. Instead, the effect is caused by an overwhelming assault on the visual sense.
From this perspective, your school of celebrety survival does not make any sense. What makes a school of magic is that the spells work similarly, this allows wizards to become specialists at them. The school of celebrety survival is just a toolkit. It's like studying architecture, sociology and public law. There will be people who have skills in all those areas and there are people who can use those skills. It's just that those fields have very little in common and that experts tend to be experts at just one of those fields.
the 8 school were very good for a specific setting before there was a gazillion way of making magic. It made a good setting for a harry potter style adventure in a official school of wizardry of the kingdom. Thay in the forgotten realms made good use of it making competition between the different school of magic. I would probably continue to use it in some case.
By opening it unfortunately it risk creating more work for the dm customizing npc and player's character.
GURPS splits them out in ‘Colleges’. Then again, you can get advantages and disadvantages that will help / hinder specific school types for other points. Say you want a specific talent for Fire spells. Spend a few points and you can have them reduce casting cost / time. But then you can even do crazy things like a limitation where your fire spells do half damage during the day, but double damage during the night. The thing about the schools being bad is actually 100% because they don’t think Healing could be from both the Necromancy college AND Healing… Just like Primal / Arcane magic users can both cast Fireball…
I think the term Necromancer would still be safe to use, since many cultures and fictional worlds have the idea of a magic user who manipulates the dead. Take Lord of the Rings, for instance, which called Sauron The Necromancer within the Hobbit book, but I still understand why moving away from 8 static schools might be a good idea
You mention @8:11 that there would be a link in your video description to the thread that you're referencing. Where link, please? :(
Thanks! Will add. Here is the link meanwhile www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/15c316p/time_magic_and_the_loss_of_spell_schools/
I am sure there is classifications observed by physicist. That measure matter, time, energy, and space. That could be grouped and appointed as the source of spells. Others could be derived from super natural forces that exist outside reality. The thing is spells that are not as effective at basic understanding wouldn't be studied by many well enough. That means the likes of desirable powerful spells may have fewer choices along the way. They may exists, but everyone want to learn only what was necessary for that power. Smaller more defined groups of spells may be unique and not at all useful. Except for those few spells that permits utter domination by its spell caster.
1. Specialization mechanics can be rewritten
2. Spells could be listed under more than one school if they contain elements of more than one school
3. A class can be written with a list of accessible spells that aren't limited to one school
My favorite high fantasy RPG is Pathfinder 1E. I gave 2nd edition a read but it, like 5E, felt to me like a walled garden. D&D 3.5 and P1 felt like open worlds. It seems like P2.5 isn't going to improve P2 in my mind.
Open worlds that have 5 good feats every melee character needs to take or be useless
The best thing about P1 is all the options. The worst thing about P1 is all the options. BUT... it's backwards compatible with 3.5 and Dreamscarred Press created the best psionics system ever written. So I'll take P1, warts and all.
I have seen that thrown around a lot and, though I am not entirely sure what it potentially means outside of a literal sense... I agree.
I haven't tried every system out there but among what I have tried D&D 5e and PF 2e to me just don't do it so PF 1e is my darling.
One big glaring reason is there are so many mechanics in both systems that, I feel, directly harm the verisimilitude of the world they are trying to create. Things like a lack of parity between monsters (and NPCs) and players is something I like to harp on... Which I notice only matters to me when I am behind the screen, but still.
For D&D 5e there is also a lack of rules and thus a lack of consistency in the world and PF 2e sort of goes the opposite direction which could have been great... But then they inject obtuse terminology which just takes me out of it like "Dying 1"
Basically, I am just saying I also prefer Pathfinder 1st Edition.
wizard of civil engineering: the old literal arch-wizards
Oh, and even more fun with Cure Wounds ... apparently, in 'One D&D', it's an Abjuration.
I don’t mind not having 8 schools of magic…however even if the goal is thematic schools of magic. Surely it’s easier then curating a specific list for each theme. To just tell a Mentalist that they get all spells from the Illusion and Enchantment schools.
Instead of eliminating the schools a reorganization and not being wedded to 8 seems to be an order. School of Mentalism, School of Transformation focused on living creatures, Generalist school that anyone can grab, etx
6:45 or so: and One DnD is switching healing over to abjuration!
Nothing you've said has been very compelling for why the schools actually need to go. You imply D&D is simply wrong for having them since it's the same system when Paizo is clearly only getting rid of them to avoid the OGL. You're inconsistent on your judgement, behaving as if specialist wizards can only do one thing and one thing only but then straight out acknowledging that you can prepare non-specialist spells, and indeed most of your slots are, in fact, not restricted by any means. You're a wizard first and you like a specific school second. That aside, the alternative of these colleges is... fine, I guess, but it's incredibly shallow. All I see when reading the College stuff is 'Make it up yourself and run it by the GM for approval. Pick a theme, that's your specialization'. I really hope they make more traits to compensate for the loss of the 8 schools. My table is liable to just ignore colleges and keep using schools with how thing stand. We've been playing a very long time, even if you don't tell us what school a spell is, we'll figure it out real quick 9 times out of 10.
As for Detect Magic seeing schools... Seeing only the level is completely worthless. Seeing only the school is almost completely worthless. You need to know a rough estimate of the power of the magic aura and you need some specific knowledge of that aura, either a school or a trait. Doesn't matter which, as long as you have enough information to make an educated guess. Surprises are part and parcel of such estimations, but you hedge your bets and approach the aura with care, using the information you DO have to prepare for what you deem most likely. Having only the level doesn't tell you anything that you don't already know. You're a party of level 4s, so you're going to at most encounter a 3rd rank aura. Big surprise, it's CR appropriate. If it's Illusion or Evocation, that's exceedingly valuable information. Is it Fireball or a big phantasm concealing physical, mundane traps that lie ahead?
Did you just compare D&D's magic system to Lord of the Rings and Avatar? Really? That's apples and oranges at best, especially Avatar. Look for Sword and Sorcery stories for a reasonable comparison, where you'll quickly find the specialist casters are all over the place. Enchanters and Necromancers are classic magic-user antagonists. Magic is nothing alike between D&D/Path, LotR, or Avatar. Bear in mind Gandalf is an angel with divine powers and the use of obvious magic is virtually not a thing outside of such individuals and bending is more akin to monks special supernatural abilities than anything resembling spellcasting in D&D. Neither Avatar nor LotR have anything you could actually compare to a D&D wizard beyond surface level sharing of the name. You don't 'learn' magic in LotR, you simply are magical. You don't unravel the secrets of the elements in avatar, you practice your innate power to manipulate them, improving your mastery through training and meditation.
Color Spray is a glamour that flashbangs you by overloading your senses. It's as straightforward as you can get for an illusion that doesn't linger. It's the illusionist's shotgun. Enchantment deals with directly manipulating the mind, including altering thoughts. Illusion is about superficially altering the world. That nightmare isn't real, but it's a reflection of your fears and you make it real by believing the magic. Color Spray's blast of light isn't real either, but if you believe it, it'll smite your senses and blind you. Remember that it didn't merely blind you in older editions. It completely knocked you out depending on how weak you were.
Conjuration is about drawing upon forces and entities 'elsewhere' or more simply transporting something from A to B, conjuring the target to the location. Conjuration as the healing school was a case of using the magic to draw positive energy directly out of the positive energy plane to expose subjects to raw life energy. It's poking a pin hole into the plane of life. As a necromancy spell, the flavor changes, without you ever being told explicitly by the way. As necromancy, cure wounds is about manipulating existing lifeforce within something to bolster and revitalize it, supplementing it with magical (more specifically divine) power, it's surgery and first aid instead of a medibeam.
The idea that healing can be transmutation isn't very compelling, because you're in no way manipulating matter, only the spirit and vital energy. Transmutation deals exclusively in the physical. Trying to use transmutation to heal someone is like trying to 3D print lost tissue, blood, organs, etcs. Theoretically possible, but a lot more difficult than dousing them with life energy and letting their own bodies to the work more accurately than you could ever hope to. I'm not sure you understand what the spell schools are at this point.
Alarm is abjuration because the primary aspect is a ward that reacts to specific stimuli. The other aspects are borrowing power at cantrip level or less from Illusion. "The diviner specialist who never wants to be surprised might be disappointed..." ??? Specialist wizards can take whatever spells they want. I'd have questions and concerns if your wizards have a spell list of 99% one school and only one school. Depending on the specialist choice, you physically can't not have other schools just by the free spells you get every level, let alone the big heap of free spells you get at creation. Your specialization is just playing favorites to a specific school and getting an extra spell slot for those types of spells. You still have regular spell slots. I would be flabbergasted to find that supposed diviner who never wants to be surprised doesn't have Alarm as probably one of their original starting spells from character creation. Abjuration and Divination often go hand in hand as helpful combinations, same as Enchantment and Illusion. Divination is foresight, Abjuration is protection against what you foresaw, whether by revelatory magicks or by good sense and experience.
Air Bubble could in theory be abjuration, or conjuration if you're really weird, but it's simply more direct to use Transmutation.
Chronomancer archetype exists, and time magic is rare. Not having a time-based focus spell isn't exactly a huge problem, or even a problem.
The existence of wizard has never prevented specialist casters from existing and I have no idea what Paizo's folks are talking about. I had an evaluation of each school and a potential (or prior) specialist, but this post is enormous even without it, so I'll just remind you all of...!
Mesmerist, Summoner, Alchemist (so glad that class isn't a heap of janky garbage now), and the many varieties of necromancer builds over the years. Wizard wasn't making Necromancer impossible to make, it was a combination of Antipaladin, Wizard, Cleric, and Oracle making a single, devoted Necromancer class redundant. That isn't the case anymore and wizard is absolutely not in the way.
Removing the spell schools opens nothing, it just covers Paizo against WotC. They were never a binding category and wizards should never think in terms of purely one school. You have more free slots than specialist slots, always. What does that tell you?
Stop *lying* about this. Wizards aren't specialists, they never were. Specialist classes have always bee
Also, going to say it again about the Cantirp nerfs. This achieves nothing but making lower level cantrip use more volatile and unreliable. When your class is nothing but a commoner when you're out of spell slots, cantrips need to be reliable. Not impressive, but reliable. Changing the ability score mod bonus to just another die doesn't nerf their late game power in any meaningful way, merely skewing the damage by a couple points, while, again, making low level characters suffer the 'Oh, snake eyes.' After going through having only one attack in a round, and managing to hit with that one attack. At least it isn't 1st edition pathfinder where you're about as useful doing absolutely nothing on your turn as casting a cantrip or using that pathetic light crossbow with your half-bab, mediocre dexterity, and no damage bonus. Unironically better off moving to a safer position and using Total Defense actions back then. If you're not casting a slotted spell, just hide. It's a better use of your time, you live longer, and you're more impactful alive than dead.
You explained it the best I’ve seen here so far, good job on the comment!
@@CouchDrakeI commend you for reading that wall of nonsense!
It does beg the question... Why have classes and races then? As they have the same issues as fixed schools of magic.
My hot take on this topic is I don't think the spell schools or alignment shackle creativity, as much as guiding creativity. I know everyone is happy to drop alignment and I guess spell schools too, but I personally going to keep using them, because they are a guide that I can either use or ignore if I want. The systems certainly wasn't always working, like healing spells changing schools in each edition, but dropping it all over isn't a solution to the problem, it's just giving up fixing it. Similarly to alignment, if I look at an NPC and I see two letters next to each other, I immediately know what direction that NPC is set before I read anything about it (the system certainly was't a big help for players, but it was for me as a GM for sure).
The school of celebrity survival sounds really cool, and I might have to use it for an npc when/if I ever dm a pathfinder 2e campaign.
sure strike you can "reflavor" as being using some superficial thought reading to know where the foe will move... or making the foe see an illucion attack so he move onto the actual attack. I know is a strech but it can work
A thought came to mind. What if instead of picking a school of spells, you pick a specific spell at each level to specialize in? Too limiting? Maybe. I'm curious how specialization will work without the schools. I do agree it's a net positive change. I just wonder about what will replace school specialization and how will it work. I'm, of course, thinking in terms of a video game where you don't have rules being modified as you go.
Kineticist is not a caster, they are a martial class in disguise and do nothing to fill the blaster caster fantasy.
Now that we have seen the actual spell curriculum lists for battle mage and ars grammatica do you still feel that the remaster has provided better options than the whole school system? Feels like they should have provided a general requirement that a spell can fall under that would fit each new school. For example, battle mage can prepare any damaging spell in the curriculum list. This would actually create a more open and variable list of options for the wizard. As is, they are now tied to 2-3 spells per rank RAW.
I think doing damage as a requirement would actually be more limiting, as damage spells do not scale well (when your 9th level those Rank 1 spells will be "dead slots" that do less damage than cantrips, for example). It would also have the counterintuitive effect I think of giving the player more choices which might make a GM less willing to allow follow for something outside the much-larger list, since there'd already be so many spells they could choose from.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPGI think he only said one example of requisite of spell to be on battle mage's list, it probably would have other few, because it wouldn't make sense to have only damage and a defensive focus spell, as is battle mage is blending between abjuration and evocation, and this version would be evocation only
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG The point being that the new system doesn't allow for future-proofing *except* via GM fiat, which we all know from Recall Knowledge does not feel good.
Imagine: a new spell comes out that creates a floating sword around you to parry attacks? That surely would fit in the school of Battle Magic!
...Except they never mention in the book anywhere that the School of Battle Magic was updated to include it. Okay, well, I'll just ask both GMs that I'm playing with to allow it on the list, since it fits the character I'm playing to a T.
...Oh. One said yes but the other said no. Uhh... aren't I now playing two different wizards? One who feels way closer to the concept I wanted than the other?
Not to mention there's the arguable issue of "newer curricula will inevitably include both old and new spells and will thusly actually have access to new stuff while old stuff languishes
IMO it would have been WAY better if Paizo had realized that they aren't allergic to the tag system that's so integral to 2e, and leaned harder into Wizard being the "knowledgeable scholar". The fixed lists should have included a small, curated list of set spells from outside the arcane tradition that fit the theme, and THEN also included spells that have one of a couple tags.
For example, Battle Magic could allow you to prepare Magic Stone (usu. Divine and Primal only) or Harm, among other battle-focused things that aren't on Arcane's list. *THEN* it should have included, say "all Arcane spells with the Attack tag" or something similar.
That still fits the bill for "having a focused education" while still fulfilling Wizard as the "class that feels like a book learner". By studying and cross-referencing with other spellcasters, they're able to cast spells that someone like a Magus can't, or a Witch would have to take lessons from their patron for!
And notice how the GM never has to yes "no, but" or "yes, but" unless they personally feel like they don't want a player to use a whole curricula.
Cure Wounds is Abjuration as pr. 2024 guideline.
Collage of Enginerring sounds like an Artificer school (not sure if Inventor uses magic)
The more discussion, the more my mind settles on both sides being right and wrong.
The eight spell schools continue to do a fantastic job and there's little wrong with each of them. They give people a very simple and concise idea of what to expect and what powers are in play.
Making entirely new spell schools is cool, but I find that Paizo has given themselves a headache now, for they must categorize hundreds of spells into a dozen or more colleges that WILL need constant updates and balancing for the foreseeable future, just because of Pathfinder Society play.
The side wanting to keep spell schools is going to have little to no trouble categorizing every new spell that comes out. Private table play isn't really going to be hampered. They aren't really being nerfed since they can still just ignore their school slots and prepare fireball and haste from third slot upwards.
The defenders of the change are... overdoing it honestly. There's no need to point out and defend this one nothingburger. Or to call the previous system so bad it sucked.
My only concerns are "the new spells are going to bring serious power creep issues eventually, but that's just natural" and "will I have to make big adjustments to my game come November".
14:58 Can't this be said as well for the eight schools? This is why this is a big nothing issue.
16:05 Okay three concerns.
I consider the classic 8 schools as categories, much like you have to categorize everything. It stands to reason that every spell should be included in a particular category/school.
I argue - and this is based on the data - that the magic system is already an illusion of choice, as it is and always has been. Nobody ever truly had access to all the spells before because daily memorization slots are limited, and people are always going to memorize those spells that are the most useful. This means that you will always end up in situations where you go, "damn, I had that in my spellbook, but I didn't choose to memorize it today!" So, despite having that spell, because you didn't choose to memorize it not thinking it'd be useful in that day's adventure, you are now SOL. Despite some people's counterargument, citing the fact that you 'have to make choices', those choices were already made when you chose the limited spells you did out of the whole spell list, so why are you then further having to choose an even smaller list instead of having access to your full (and limited) list you already chose to write in your spellbook? And, most importantly, because of these arbitrary limitations, which spells are the most likely to be chosen for memorization on a daily basis? That list is probably far more limited than most realize, and thus very few spells from the whole list end up actually being used on a regular basis.
Thus, the illusion of choice.
Excellent videos. Excellent coverage. But please consider changing your assertion that the revision is a "2.1" and not a 2.5, or even a 3.0. When ONLY the math remains, you have a significant change in the game.
my sprite sloth runelord wizard who lounges on a corgi and summons monsters to fight on his behalf is crying in the background 😢
I think that there is a very interesting and fun way to categorize spells by school that enhance the game, and I think it’s a shame we couldn’t find it
currently summoners are stand users/persona users
My only real criticism is the name of the actual schools for mentalism. Tower of Far-seeing and Stone of Seers sounds like divination or future sight schools not mentalism, at least to me.
I'm not sure but maybe the concept that there are different schools of magic and how they work is too complicated or complex for some younger players to understand and that's why it has annoyed the players if some desired spell could not be used because of the school or that the school of necromancy is mostly forbidden by in-game laws. But this is just my own speculation of what it could be about on a more general level, so that it has led to the decision to remove the magic schools entirely to make the game more fun and flexible for everyone.
I never liked D&D's original spell schools anyway. Aside from Necromancy it was never crystal clear what anything was.
- Is this protective effect Transumtation because it changes something or Abjuration because it's protective?
- Is this direct damage effect Evocation because it produces energy or Conjuration because it opens a tiny fingertip-sized portal into an elemental plane and lets a burst of energy out?
- Is this particular deception effect Enchantment or Illusion?
- Is _this_ mind poison Enchantment or Necromancy?
Heck, I've seen healing spells bounced around between Necromancy and Conjuration between editions.
Not so enthousiastic with that changes. Celibrity survival is also a specialist illusionnist. Mentalist is also an illusionist. Previous school allow more choice of interpretation. No need to change that in my opinion. It is only helping players to find inspiration
However, i agree that there are issues of school attribution...
Ehh, detect magic will always detect schools at my table, and besides I have them memorized after 30 years. Players need hints, so I will keep it. I NEVER change my gameworld for rules, instead house rules change the main rules, and my lore stays intact. No casting in armor. Schools of magic. Dying not removed with Medicine skill or feats. No half-races like half-elves, no Medicne healing but once a day. Crafting takes a long time, sometimes months for a medium item, no items for sale in stores save a few potions.... my gameworld has made it since 2013, PF1, D&D 5E, Cypher System, PF2... love PF2, but in my view, EVERY campaign setting should have certain rules that are different, due to lore.
Making specialty wizards in Paizo is really easy. Instead of of wizards being limited to the arcane spell list, they can now pick from any list of their chosen school, but can only pick spells from their chosen school. There, done, super simple. If you want specialists to feel even more unique you can also add in feats and spells that are exclusive to them.
So this problem isn't a limitation of the current system, this is a limitation of the game designers. There's no need to overhaul things like they're envisioning, and it only makes the game needlessly more complicated. We don't need 8 more classes when we can do the same job with an already existing one. This is just Paizo piecemealing the game so that they can sell the pieces back to you.
There's also really no need to try and distance the game from the d&d OGL since there's still so much about that game that's similar. That's just an excuse as far as I can tell. We should only be removing it if it's needed, and it's removal really isn't.
4:34 Traditionally illusions were real, non physical manifestations that could interact with anyone potentially, while enchantment only dealt with what individuals perceived. What made enchantment and illusion related is that they both had the same save that occupied the majority of spells, that being Will save. So the original inception already had them related yet still making them distinct. The difference with pathfinder is that the designers understood very little if any of this, so instead of making corrections to already existing errors they added to the problem, making things more arbitrary. So it was never the schools fault, it was the understanding of it. And instead of Paizo wanting to figure it out, solve, and fix things, they're just throwing it in the trash and replacing it when they don't need to.
6:40 No, spells along the lines of Regeneration would be transmutation. Cure wounds isn't really "modifying" things so much as it's just shooting positive energy. Putting it in conjuration didn't make sense because you're not conjuring anything physical, perhaps energy, but that's called evocation. The reason why it was removed from necromancy is because necromancy deals with the dead and negative energy, of which cure wounds is not.
6:56 abjuration makes much more sense here. If you were just summoning air that spell should run out wicked fast. So it's not really air taken with you that you're breathing, rather, just magic sustaining your need to breath to protect you.
8:00 alarm is abjuration. It establishes a barrier, and anything that crosses it alerts those inside. It protects with a barrier. It's very abjuration; if you think it conflicts with the text, consider the fact that the people who wrote the text, perhaps didn't allow the full breadth of the idea proper with the definition they wrote. Also, if you're sad that diviner's can't take this, make a feat that allows a specialist to pick a single non school spells. Problem solved.
8:25 That's why the concept of subschools existed in olden days. The different forms of healing fit pretty well in their respective places; Regenerate in Transumation, Goodberry in Conjuration, Resurrection in Necromancy.
Telekinesis is already accommodated in psionics.
Teleportation is conjuring yourself or others in a sense, so it makes sense in conjuration.
So no these examples all have solutions to them.
9:06 What's wrong with this? I can imagine someone who can speed up or slow time could enhance their ability to do these things. When time is slowed around you it's a lot easier to catch yourself on a climb or swim upstream.
Also notice that these given examples aren't large and expansive, nor indisputable. So because some people think a handful of spells don't make sense, we should throw out the entire system for everyone? That's ridiculous.
12:06 Why not just make a mentalism specialization that allows from both and only enchantment and illusion? Throwing out the entire system seems a tad extreme when this option is available.
14:01 And from everything I outlined here today, I was able to make improvements to the existing system such that you could make this list happen. So throwing the schools out is not necessary to achieve what you're asking. The schools are not intrinsically the thing that is stopping you here.
Well, I feel attacked.
😅
Einstein - “yah, it’s transmutation “
I like sin magic, but i changed it for the nine cardinal sins:
Pride(abjuration) greed(divination) wrath(evocation) envy(illusion) lust(transmutation) gluttony-sloth(conjuration) vanity(enchantement) melancholy(necromancy).
Do you have an reasoning for your links between the sins and the schools? Why gluttony is paired with conjuration rather than melancholy, for example ?
@@Scarycrow89 Pride is easy, to be untouchable and counterspell is the most haughty spell ever conjured.
Greed of knowledge so divination.
Wrath is obvious.
Envi want everything, but hold onto nothing.
Lust is luxury, beuty and glory.
Glutony and sloth? Just look at the conjuration spells.
Vanity is just a holow pride.
Melacholy tere any magic more depressing than necromacy?
@@jonathanrobinson319 I agree with Wrath and Sloth, those are obvious to me, Pride and Envy being swapped with this justification is really cool.
I would say than necromancy still fit better with Gluttony, the parrarel with the classic undead wanting to eat the living: zombies/gouls wants brains and flesh, vampires wants blood, lich even wants souls to feed upon if I recall correctly.
So Melancholy, I don't understand quite "how" it's a sin, but to me Divination is more depressing, the ability to know the future sounds soul-crushing to me. Divination could also be more linked to Lust/Vanity, as those spells tends to improve our senses, as "Detect _____".
While Greed with Divination is nice, I still feels that Transmutation fits better. (But it's also the fact that i don't see Lust being with Transmutation)
Lust could still have Enchantment, but Illusion and Divination works too I think.
As for Vanity, i don't really see how it's his own kind of sin, it feels more like just Pride+Lust to me, so I don't get how to make a school works with it.
Magic being split into categorical denominations is pretty common in the fiction of game worlds. The Elder Scrolls does it, Warhammer does it, Shadowrun, Runequest and plenty more I'm sure.
I get that we like dunking on D&D, but the statement feels disingenuous.
The removal of the schools has turned me off from the game completely. All of that beautiful flavor text from secrets of magic will now be lost. It was the different schools that gave magic a deep flavor for me. Ive liked casters for as long as ive played dnd/pathfinder. If this is their direction for it? Im out.
I think the idea of no longer categorizing the spells was a genius idea
It makes sense as well. In school, we learn math, physics and chemistry separately, but as you advance in academics, you realize how intertwined they really are.
The same is true for many more areas of knowledge nowadays. It would make sense that researched spells would blend elements from several fields of study to produce their effects.
Not categorizing, by categorizing.
@@cidlunius1076 via curriculums of how groups of people within a certain context value the spells instead of some categories of spells supposedly metaphysically belong exclusively
@@LightningRaven42and yet people who specialise in those areas still exist, and those terms are used every day.
@@johnmoone8013it's almost like scientists irl sometimes have to change a thing's definition when new information becomes available. If wizards are supposed to be magic scientists, this is the least scientific they could be.
True magic comes from the Hermetic Arts, combing Techniques and Forms to create spells and enchantments - if you want the feeling of playing wizards etc, Ars Magica does the job better than anything else ;)
idk why spell schools were a thing in pf2e in the first place since they went crazy with spell tags. could have easily rolled the schools into those (where relevant). but saying that it's to "expand the design space" so they can add more classes that specialize in a particular kind of magic feels backwards. if necromancer wizards restrict player expression by requiring them to play wizards, creating a necromancer class would restrict the design space and the opportunity for player expression further. if the 8 schools just become classes, congratulations, you've brought back the 8 schools.
Totally agree, Ron. Even the idea of 'curriculum' seems dumb to me and a bad vibe for many setting types.
They could have just kept the schools as is and add tags to spells if they really wanted specific "practical" schools.
Agree on all this. In my game (Bashed & Borrowed) I have siloed all spells into their own tight themse, such as Fire, Acid, Spirit, Time, etc. Each Talent Tree has both talents and spells.
I don't see a problem with schools per say. I do agree that isolating spells into a singular school is childish, short sighted and limiting. I do believe that in the pre-Pathfinder days it was possible spells were able to belong in differing schools, they were similar but accomplished differently.
Using the Color Spray example, it would belong to Illusion, Enchantment, and Evocation. However, it differs in execution by the version(School) you learned it from. So lower level(potency) spells existed more easily across differing schools but as you get higher in potency(levels) there is less blending because effects are very specific and knowledge outside of primary school/s is more limited. Some spells, like alarm, work as a universal school spell because it is overly general in teachings it is simply about initial learning.
Engineers in general are very smart, but I look for specific engineers for specific knowledge for certain usages. Wizards I see the same. Some are universalist, but that number is most likely not as large as specializations. Necromancers, any flavor could be healers, killers, medics, or torturers, just the same as other wizard. However, I would not think to ask a Necromancer about altering an inorganic objects structure before consulting a practitioner of Alteration magic, biological or imbuing the spark of life yes.
Just a thought and hope that I explained it well. Probably cause a fight because I didn't express my thought well enough. My bad.
Something that is sad is that most focus wizard spells would be straight up removed indirectly, instead of available/revamped in a different way unfortunately
Mage the Ascension and Awakening have 10 schools so you should consider yourself lucky you only had to deal with 8!
I hope you reach 30K subscribers soon!
Aside from Necromancer. Has anyone played as an specialized mage for the last couple 20 years of d20 games? Honest question.
I love abjuration wizards focused on strenghtening their defense, or a mind controller wizard focused on enchantments, and I think that illusion focused ones have certain popularity, and the flavor of the evoker is being a blaster
Yes
I've had two evokers in my recent games and even a diviner.
@@simonfernandes6809 how different were the evokers?