ADDITIONS/ERRATA: -One other straightforward "thing to try before homebrewing" is to make a conscious effort to find and acknowledge the many moments when another player's action applied the decisive +1 or -2 needed to change the outcome. They are MUCH more frequent in PF2e than in other systems and leads to great moments at the table! Some say +1s sound dry and boring, but it means great moments are SHARED and can be the RESULT of sound decisions. Win-win in my book. And if playing on Foundry, the "PF2E Modifiers Matter" module does this automatically! -A couple commenters suggests being more generous with "spell" items like scrolls, wands, etc. - this is a nice "non house rule" way to get at some of the difficulties identified here! -WEIRD rendering issue 20:57 to 21:47. Sorry! -I like one commenter's suggestion of allowing Aid to assist a spellcaster land their Saving Throw spell. I hesitate to allow it for an entire AOE (maybe for a particularly appropriate action?), but to apply a circumstance penalty to at least 1 enemy's saving throw sounds good to me.

My houserule for prepared casters is to give all of them the "Spell Substitution" wizard thesis baked in. Spell substitution wizards now get the ability to free action swap a spell for a single action 1/2/3/4 times per day (for TEML arcane spellcasting proficiency respectively). I find it saves a ton of in game time and bellyaching when it would be "optimal" to scout one day, come back the next with correct preparation, and doesn't penalize players for not having godlike foresight and planning (which my wizard player certainly does not have)

Favorite house rule is for the Incapacitate trait - instead of always getting one degree of success better, instead they can never crit fail. Makes Incapacitate trait spells no longer completely useless against bosses, while also never letting them effectively take out a difficult enemy. They have higher saves already, so it's already harder to get them to fail in the first place. And 2e shifted the big power of Incapacitate effects to crit fails, so a regular fail is always limited.

While I agree that we don't need more one action spells strictly speaking, I think the lack of variable action spells is a huge missed opportunity. I like the way you put it "the future of casting"

We use the same advancement on Prof for Casters and Martials, and no one even notices it... xD but it leads to more spell crits and happy moments which everyone in the table cheers for

The defense of casters saying that they have increased versatility is, to me, like saying Rangers are the best DnD character because they are both part fighter, part rouge and part druid. Martial can heal with the medicine skill, debuff enemies with intimidation or flanking, use weapons with specific runes to target weaknesses. Casters can do similar things but with lower chance to hit and with limited spell lots. So, they have to waste a action to find lowest save of the monster, and just hope that you both have an appropriate spell and that the spell does actually hit. Certainly does seem to favor Martial and nerfing casters does seem a bit unfair. Edited: Spelling/grammar. Also, best attacks use two actions, of course.

While I am playing as caster often I don't feel like I am playing with 3 action economy it more often feels like I am playing spell action + small action and at the same time martials can do 4 or even more things every turn due to quickened and feats that cheat action economy and thier reactions are far more frequent

So my homebrew solution has been... interesting. It was kind of by accident, but I thought I would share it. Basically, I've ripped the Destiny Point system from the Star Wars FFG games. I put down 3 tokens in the center of the board that have a red and blue side. During any d20 roll, someone can flip one from the blue side to the red side in order to increase their level of success by 1 step. This has allows casters to hit/crit when they really need it, and it has made my sorcerer and magus players very happy. It also helps avoid class pitfalls such as the alchemist's odd scaling. It comes with the downside of players critting much more often, and it shifts the power in their favor a lot, which is where the other half of this rule comes in. The GM can flip any red side over to blue in order to give any creature a number of actions equal to the number of tokens flipped. All 3 are red? Well you guys using the tokens has made it to where my big bad guy now essentially gets another turn. Its similar to legendary actions in that way, but they can be given out to any creature. I've explained it to my players as essentially being the strands of fate being manipulated. They get to manipulate it in their favor, but for each hit/crit they force, I get to do an extra attack, or reposition. Its made our combats a lot more dynamic and fun. (I also flip them to introduce conflict in roleplay moments, such as a group of guards coming at an inopportune time, which lets me give the tokens back to them during non-combat moments) I can totally see this rule not being for every table. Or even any table. But its super fun for ours, and I just thought I'd share it here, as it really has let my casters shine when they WANT to, without changing the overall balance of the game too far in anyone's favor. It just gives a bit of agency to the player's rolls, and we've had a lot of fun with it. This also easily solves a lot of issues with incapacitation, I've noticed. A player knows it has incapacitation? Twist fate a bit and make sure they can get that success they need :) Edit: I should note, this has completely replaced hero points at my table.

My easy three balances for casters: • Add a new “Spellcasting Nexus” Property Rune that lets you add your Weapon Item Bonus to Spell Attacks • All spells you learn are “Signature”. Don’t have to relearn Spells you already know. Instead, you just get one bonus spell slot at highest level to cast a Signature Spell (like how Clerics get four of these to Heal or Harm. Unifying design is easy to work with). • Every enemy has one more vulnerability. Even if this isn’t a Weakness, this can be a -2 to a certain time of saving throw (olfactory effects, charm / diplomacy effects, topple effects, distracted or vulnerable to acoustic or sonic effects, etc). I don’t want to change cantrips too much, overstep martial classes or kineticist, or dramatically change enemy stats. I want to just ease the process of play and provide their gameplay fantasy. Plus 3rd Rank Spells are very very potent when they target saves, again why I don’t buff that flat out (plus, this buffs casters without buffing Magus). I am also definitely in favor in reworking Recall Knowledge. The way we do it is getting basic fundamental knowledge on a miss, also telling a feature and allowing a question on a Hit, and two features and two questions on a Crit. The catch is you only can recall once per hero vs target per encounter unless you have some knowledge toolkit. So you’ll know more even on a miss, and you really feel like a researcher. Also in agreement of changing Aid! My down and dirty rule is that the DC to Aid is a step lower than the DC of what you’re trying to Aid with. So, if an enemy’s AC is 18, DC 13 to Aid. If an ally is tempting a DC 25 Crafting check, the DC to Aid is 20.

Honestly, just easier encounters or creatures fixes the problem a lot of new GMs have. They're always tempted to throw creatures equal to or greater than the player, but that's rarely the right decision. Don't be afraid that your players will blow through the lower stakes encounters. That was the standard experience in 5e, 3.x, and PF1e. Just because those encounters and creatures were labeled medium in those and easy in PF2e doesn't mean anything.

When it comes to three action economy, I feel like there’s a trick that could be borrowed from the Magus. Their Spellstrike is essentially three actions for the cost of two, but those actions are pre-specified. If casters had homebrew 2-action activities which did an action appropriate to class and subclass, plus cast a 1 or 2 action spell, that’d allow a lot of the fun of the three action economy, but keeping most of the per-turn balance of 2-action spells.

As someone who first played pathfinder 2e as a druid with an animal companion in a campaign, i was finding myself constantly at low levels just struggling to do anything i wanted. 1 action up command my animal and 2 actions to cast a spell i never found i had an action without feeling like i was missing on being more helpful. Like recalling knowledge to help the party. Since most combats was animal companion command and cast spell. Just my issue i did respec into a monk it is feeling better so far.

Rules Lawyer, here are many of the PF2 caster suggestions I've been making for many years. 1) Spells that as written require 2 or 3 actions to cast gain the Flourish trait and their casting times are reduced by 1 action (to 1 or 2 Actions instead). If the spell as written takes only 1 action to cast, it's unaffected by this rule, and may be cast in the same round as a Flourish spell. 2) The 1st Sustain a Spell Action taken in a round is a Free Action. Any 2nd or later Sustains in a round take 1 action each, s normal. 3) Wizards: If they chose a Universalist, they get the Spell Substitution thesis for free and may also choose 1 other Thesis, in addition to the multiple Drain Bonded Items. If they chose to Specialize in a School, that school always counts as 1 Prof step higher for all purposes and they get 1 additional spell of that school for each spell level they can cast. (So, an Evoker at level 1 is Expert Prof. at casting Evocation spells, and Trained at all other schools. A School Specialist becomes Legendary in their single School at 15th level and Master in all other schools, because at 19th level, when the Universalist finally gets Legendary in all schools, the Specialist instead gets 1 free feat, same as the Universalist got at 1st level.) 4) Sorcerers gain all their "Granted Spells" added to their Spell Pool as soon as they are able to cast spells of that level, and all their spells count as Signature Spells (no need to learn the same spell at multiple levels, learn it once and cast it at any level spell slot available). 5) Druids gain a Primal Font of spells that are automatically learned and prepared, and they may each be cast once per day without spending a slot. The free casting is also Heightened as if the spell were a cantrip. Each font consists of 4 spells (a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th level spell, learned when that level of spells is learned), based on the Druid's initial Order choice. (If a Druid takes the Order Explorer feat to learn additional Orders, only their initial Order provides Primal Font spells) 6) Clerics gain several boosts. Their proficiency in Simple Weapons and Unarmed attacks increases whenever their Deity's weapon Proficiency increases, and they get several feats for free at certain levels (for example, at 3rd level, a Cloistered Cleric gets Cantrip Expansion for free, while a Warpriest gets Emblazon Armaments for free.) 7) Bards count all spells known as Signature Spells, and I also made specific changes to some of their class feats. 8) Amulets of (Arcane/Divine/Occult/Primal) Spell Power: a new item that adds it's bonus to attack rolls and spell DCs for spells of that magical tradition, once the amulet is Invested and worn by the caster. They come in +1, +2, and +3 varieties, same as Potency Runes (gained/learned at roughly the same time you'd give martials the equivalent Potency Runes).

My personal way I have been looking to buff casters is introducing potency runes to casting, but instead of a flat +1 to all attack rolls, its a +1 to specific damage types and spell traits. For example a Fire Spell Potency Rune would give a +1 to the DC and attack rolls for Fire spells specifically. I personally like this idea because it feels similar to weapon progression, since a flat +1 to spell attacks is fine, casters still have the innate advantage of it basically applying to all their spells. So by limiting it to one trait or damage type it mimics the progression of weapons and allows for a more specialist type fantasy.

I think Paizo should reduce saves on monsters by 1 at low level play, and by 2 (total, not cumulative with the previous change) at higher levels. I also think leveled attack roll spells should do damage on a miss (but not a critical miss).

For me the greatest pain point of casters vs martials divide actually goes to the bit where the martials are to large extent closed out of supporting casters for the most part. They could recall knowledge, yes, but unless they are a thaumaturge their ability scores on RK skills usually aren't very high, and I often find martials have a higher value on their third action in comparison to casters. In general I've felt though a lot of the talk around ''PF2e is a teamgame'' has been a bit disingenious because it expects spellcasters to be always supporting the martials, but it feels equally adamant in shoehorning the idea martials don't get to treat this as a team game. Aside from Demoralize of course, but again, charisma based skill that helps martials and casters equally and off guard which helps with spell attacks that have been entirely absent beyond the first few levels in every campaign I've partook in. The not recommended bit of the video addressed this as problematic due to buffing martials aswell. Something my table had considered at a time was making it so prone would include some small penalty to reflex saves (-1, because surprisingly most people are less agile when they are laying on the ground). That way the penalty that is given is redundant to martials by the time it is applied since the target is already tripped. Maybe I looked too much into that point where it was addressed as crux of the problem, but there seems to be so many easy workarounds to the given problem to take it *too* seriously. Good video still though, no doubt some of the tips help some of the people who feel like they are frustrated with abilities not landing.

One buff I would add for spellcasters I would consider would be to change spell attack ranges to range increments. One or two action spells aren't going to make any difference against a fighter with a longbow at 240 feet. Also, I will disagree on one point: versatility is not powerful. It is the /potential/ to do something powerful and a potential unrealized, whatever the cause, isn't helpful.

As a caster going through a pre-made campaign, paizo tends to put a lot of solo encounters. Solo encounters tend to have higher saving throw which in exchange make most of your spell slot that are not buffs to your team fizzle into a faillure or crit faillure (without counting all the spells that have incapacitation and can't be used). When a spell succeed they are great but they so rarely do so, when they fail you lose your spell slot as well making this faillure feel even more bitter . It forces the player to use spells that have effect on faillure because this is all you will ever get. Its just not a fun gameplay. Mass encounter are always easy for any class so I do not count them. Low level were very painful. The 'high' save of a monster is nearly impossible to breach which cuts you from a part of your library.

Spell Attacks and Spell DCs being tied to the same number really hurts the feeling of spell attacks. Shadow Signet helps, and sure strike (which isn't meta-magic, so it can stack with shadow signet) helps deal with attack rolls being more likely to just do nothing and feel bad as a waste of a spell slot. The problem is these kinda feel like band-aids that feel like "you need to learn the meta" in order to succeed. I don't know if you can fix the issue in a non-band-aid way without fundamentally changing the system, but for now, as a GM with newer players, at least you can point these two things out to give them a head start in making these play-styles more viable. Also, just give the wanna-be blaster caster a big ol staff of sure strike can help them out too.

Thoughts on having some monsters have magic weakness overall? Several are magic resistant instead.

I've ran Pathfinder 2e now for 2 years with my group, and my first two adjustments have worked perfectly for this for us for the whole time. I do the "give them more 10 minute Refocus times" and I give every caster a standard buff of +2 to Spell Attacks and DC's right from creation. It works perfectly for us and doesn't break anything or cheapen anyone else in the game at the same time. Just these 2 little tweaks works perfectly! Thnx for the video again, Ronald! 👊

I see this as mostly an encounter design problem that Paizo perpetuated in the APs. Build your severe and extreme encounters but stuff them full of mooks with only a few enemies party level and higher. Casters feel real powerful when they can pull off their area spells consistently. This also matches better with actual fantasy fiction where it's almost always 1 or 2 names enemies and a faceless horde of guards or henchmen. The one mistake players will still make is doing a lot of single targets spells on bosses, that said on a lucky roll they potentially do a lot more than a lucky roll from a martial

In 5e I actually have gotten to the point where I allow my players to see creature hp %, AC, and saving throws on tooltips. We find the game becomes a lot more tactical when that's the case (it feels kinda like playing Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics) and it allows everyone to feel better about decisions even when they fail because they actively opted into the odds. If the game becomes easier because of it (which it actually hasn't for us) then you can compensate just by upping encounter difficulty slightly. I'm hoping the same will hold true in PF, especially because then Recall Knowledge can be more about understanding tactics and abilities rather than just numerical stuff.

The Flexible Spellcasting variant is a great option for players coming over from 5E as it's pretty analogous to that style of casting.

“The typical DC is 20, but the GM might adjust this DC for particularly hard or easy tasks.” How do people read that as “the DC is always and only 20” for Aid? I’ve let low level PCs aid a DC of their level or the enemies level to aid an ally which is often less than 20. RAW the Aid DC is what the GM says it is, 20 is more of what we call a guideline than an actual hard dc for every situation. Great video overall!

Bless having +1 is fine. A 5ft radius that you need to use actions to make bigger is just annoying to me.

Another nice Homebrew for casters is to provide a new Feat: Feat 2 - Enduring Knowledge: General Prerequisite: Cast a Spell ability You cast a 1st-level spell targeting AC and the result is a Failure or Critical Failure. You do not lose the spell and slot used. You cast a 1st-level spell requiring a saving throw and the result is a Critical Success. You do not lose the spell and slot used. Heightened (Caster Level 5): Add 2nd-level spell Heightened (Caster Level 10): Add 3nd-level spell Heightened (Caster Level 15): Add 4th-level spell Heightened (Caster Level 20): Add 5th-level spell

I am playing my first 2e character, an Illusionist Wizard, in Extinction Curse, and 1-5 were pretty rough. However, that is no different than 1e or any other 3.X game that I've played. We are now level 10 and it is a much better play experience. The only change I would like is for the Incapacitation trait to be a bit softer- most of my Illusion spells (which I want to cast, they're the whole reason I am an Illusionist), can actually do something useful and I don't always have to prepare all of them in my highest spell level slot. I think if I were DMing I would change Incapacitation so that enemies that are two times or more levels higher than a spell rank can't critically fail and just fail instead, rather than what the rule is now.

Oh hey, my post on breaking the game is hard showed up. Thanks, Ronald! I think the most interesting things people tried to bring up in that thread was trying to say that "casters just totally outclassed martials at that point" but even with my homebrewed runes the casters end up -2 for levels 5 and 6, -2 for levels 13 and 14, and they only get to be +2 on their attacks for the final couple of levels. By the point that casters would statistically go past most martials they already have a complete set of feats which can allow them a wide range of utility. I feel that a lot of people do overlook that martials usually have similarly incredible amounts of utility. Especially things like champion or ranger. Champion reaction is amazing along with warden's boon. My party constantly has the flurry ranger giving his boon to the monk for an utterly insane combo of high damage hits. Certain martial feats, like warden's boon, really are a unique form of utility that even casters can't exactly access. As for my personal reasons to buffing DC's alongside the spell attacks, it's because saves are also built with accounting for skill checks. Skill checks can not only get a bonus from items, but they can go all the way up to a +4 item bonus thanks to high level consumables. But I do think rather than the griping about martials it would be good to show a genuine effort to explore just how much better they've grown in utility compared to previous editions with how good archetyping and skill feats can be.

Something I have been considering is allowing hero points to force rerolls on enemy saves to player spells. This gives spellcasters something extra to use them on, but I worry that it might be a little too powerful in the long run. Would that change be too impactful?

why would buffing casters, making spellslots more impactful lead to more frequent resting? Wouldnt it be the opposite? Because there would be less "wasted" spells?

Our table is using the spell potency runes, we also tried applying the bonus to save DCs, up until now it's worked fine, although I have to note that none of our campaigns have went into the higher levels of play. Another think I want to point out though, as a GM, even if I give these spell potency runes to my casters, the moment I feel like my PCs are too strong, I can just increase the encounter difficulty, this way, I also get to have more fun as a GM using stronger, more complex enemies. This thing works for the kind of heroic fantasy I am running, perhaps others won't have such fun.

I aprracite your m passion towards pf2. The most popular opinion I've heard against it, is that pf2 kills fun in the name of balance. Which is exactly what I've experienced when I did try to run it. Lastly, the amount of gatekeepers is absolutely awful.

And here I thought that this would be full of tips for other players at the table to buff casters... So, for example, a high charisma martial could use the bon mot feat to make it easier for his caster buddy to be effective with his will save spells.

I hope they give better rules for Recall Knowledge that aren't linked to the creature's level. It's silly that you can have two of the same creatures with one being higher level and the difficulty to discover their weakness is different.

The two house rules for more HP until reaching level 3, and more spells until reaching level 3, can be solved more easily by starting at level 2. There's no particular advantage by starting at 1 other than appeal to tradition , and the complexity of making a level 2 character isn't bigger than making a level 1, and then add a bunch of house rules.

Love the content .just a thought Playing a caster well requires a lot of meta knowledge. I think for instance how many fights will my gm throw at me before a long rest and will they give not a lot of pl+ level enemies and their weakness/ strengths against prepared spells.

Another interesting thing casters can do is get into the melee since everyone uses shields, and just a feat gives shield block, bastion gives a free hand shield for material components if needed and sentinel or the new dwarf version give you higher class armour, while having touch spells that can trigger reactions, at the downside of nor typically being as thicc as a martial, but it works well Alternatively, battle forms for casters can do them a lot of good, and oozeform is the superior form for foghting enemies that crit a lot of you have access to it

Thanks Ronald! Great tips and ideas 💡

Another good endurance option is giving out more scrolls and wands.

Maybe you mentioned this and I missed it, but another thing you can do to buff casters is to make sure and sprinkle wands that the casters can use into the loot. Each wand acts like a spell slot for casters.

honestly, all your recomendations are good, the way i increase low level endurance is by... starting at level 3. 😅

Slot spells vs Mana pool! I still maintain it is one of the most janky design decisions coming from D&D.

My friend played a lvl 3 war cleric and he felt very powerful slinging spells and making weapon attacks. I'm new to Pathfinder 2e and bringing family and friends into the hobby that are also new. I made a friend a war cleric (dispite my insistence he makes his own character). I based it on one of d4 deep dive's war cleric build.

Give them to-hit runes while banning true strike. Possibly partial spell slots back on refocus. An ideal rework would be to remove spell slots entirely and rebalance spells to be encounter or skill check based. Games like pillars of eternity and divinity as well as trrpgs like Zweihänder or Warhammer fantasy 2e do this just fine without the game exploding.

I've noticed as a new player playing a Storm Druid that the extra focus point they start with is really useful. If the big bad succeeds or critically succeeds their reflex save against Tempest Surge I can still try it again. With the remaster rules I can refocus twice between battles to get both back, though I suspect they'll errata the extra focus point Storm and Leaf druids get. I have an alternative to your suggestion of giving lvl1/2 casters 5 lvl1 spell slots. Instead give your lvl1 & lvl2 casters one extra 1st lvl slot that can only be used in combat but refreshes when they refocus. I think this is better in a few ways: - It inherently scales to the number of encounters. 5 slots could be too many or too few depending on the session. - You always get to do your "main thing" (ie cast a spell) atleast once every encounter. - It also speeds up the learning process of how to caster in pf2e as you're free to experiment without worrying using up all your resources. To give a real example I keep seeing Gust of Wind recommended but I've been too skeptical to risk one of my precious spell slots trying it. With this rule I'd be happy giving it a go. The only caveat is I'm not sure how to handle prepared vs spontaneous casters with this idea. I'm tempted to say you prepared a specific spell each time you refocus regardless as that again encourages trying things and accelerates the learning process.

I've been experimenting with increasing caster endurance in a different way: by letting them regain a spell slot of each rank after an encounter, similar to pre-remaster focus spells. This means that casters are able to use their main abilities in every fight, so it doesn't feel so bad when you cast a spell and it whiffs. It doesn't make extreme fights any easier, since they were already (meant to be) entered with a full day's complement of resources. The main problem is that easy and moderate fights are virtually guaranteed to not expend any daily spell slots, which is a problem because usually "How many spell slots will the casters have to use during the fight?" seems to be the only stake for those encounters. (This is different to, say, 5e or PF1, where "How many hit points will we lose?" and "How many martial limited-use abilities will be used?" are also important considerations.) But having encounters where the party's main aim is to *stop* their casters from having to use their fun powers is kind of bad design anyway, and I'm not sad to see it go. You just need to replace it with another day-long consequence for combats which go badly, so the easier fights don't become boring. My current rule is that the wounded condition doesn't go away until you sleep, meaning that you can only get knocked out so many times in a single day before you die.

Hi Roland, I am a new GM to pathfinder 2e, I have interacted with you in the quite long video where you watch the puffin forest and Taking20 videos. I just wanted to tell you that I have try a mini campaign (just 6 sessions more or less). I love your videos, thanks for showing me this game. Also, I decided to start at second level and only using trivial, low and moderate encounters so my players could adapt better and it worked. Do you think this is a good advice for new pathfinder 2e GM's?

What would be nice is some appropriate buffs / transmutation spells (not sure if these already exist). Like one caster could tweak reality, and the other benefit of it. Like say the 'Force Barrage' spell doing fire damage instead of energy damage, but only if the spell originates withing a flame induction area or something.

Two minor suggestions for balance if you’re worried about power creep for wizards but they want to feel more accurate on their attack rolls: First, it doesn’t really hurt to homebrew in a relatively weak weapon, say 1d4 elemental, spirit or force damage with 30 foot range and no increments, that relies on spell attack rolls instead of standard attack rolls and can have only fundamental runes applied. It lets the caster hit stuff more accurately but far less effectively than martials and plays into the whole theme of working around resistances. Maybe make it a ring or something. Second, I’m reposting my post from the last video because if I’m honest it’s probably more appropriate here: “ Homebrewed in a specific spell attack rune. +1/+2 at levels 5 and 13. The rune adds a 1 action metamagic activity that allows the caster to add the runs as an item bonus on their attack roll, but also increases the critical hit threshold by the same amount. So if your spell attack is 15 and the target AC is 25, and you use a +1 rune, for one more action you get a spell attack roll of 16 but you also now crit on a 36 instead of a 35. Same die roll gives you a crit but you’re more likely to hit. Metamagic so there’s no Shadow Signet interaction, nor other metamagic weirdness. My player seems to like it and tells me he feels more “wizard-y”, in that he can either fire off a less accurate blast or refocus himself and get a more accurate blast. Crits math doesn’t change at all and the caster feels like he’s more likely to contribute with a relatively minor damage bump in exchange for an extra action. A pretty minor buff option and the caster gets to feel better, because really, how the caster FEELS is the issue. It’s balanced but it feels toothless, and this gives it the feeling of having some choppers without wildly altering all that tight math..” Anyhow, hope that helps people. I don’t know that I’d use both but one or the other at minimum won’t throw things off too much. Enjoy!

The changes I personally made in my groups is that I moved expert and master proficiency one level downwards (so 6th and 14th level respectively), and have casters be able to benefit from weapon potency runes for spell attacks against AC (so no combination with the Shadow Signet) up to a bonus of +2 (same as the gate attenuator) through either an additional weapon property rune or if they use a prepared magical staff with the respective potency rune on it. I made these two adjustments about 1½ years ago and both me and my players are very happy with them.

What about Aid increasing the spell dc of casters alongside attack roll? I have tried multiple times to aid for a cleric, yet the situation then always calls for a save spell. On the subject of aid, one could consider combining the aid action with recall knowledge and seek, meaning if you take the recall knowledge action or seek action, you can use your reaction to aid someone as you took time to survey the battlefield.

Thanks for making this video! As you probably know by my comments, I am an ardent believer that the easiest and cleanest way is to do the math boosts for both spell attack and DCs. My version is this (always both attack and DC): +1 "rune" at level 2, which becomes a +2 "rune" at level 5 and onwards up to level 20. That's all. No need for a +3. This fixes the curves and brings the chances of full effect of spell on enemies (while targeting their lowest save!) up to around 60%, in line with martials attacks. That's what makes the game ejoyable. Also, after testing and crunching some numbers I have realized that Class DCs are just as behind for fundamental stuff like a monk's stunning fist or rangers' traps, so I would also suggest the same buff to Class DCs, same levels, again +2 is the cap.

In my games I simply tell someone what skill they need to roll for Recall Knowledge. I like this idea of unlimited uses in a fight, though. I have a player that I know will use it with his Ranger when he can. The easiest way to make casters feel stronger is use monsters that are 2 levels lower in your fight budget. Now everyone feels strong.

Have a friend who tried something similar as to giving the wizard access to more spellslots at level one. The wizard absolutely hated it as while the other classes actually saw a progression of power early on the wizard basically only got reach spell and a few more lines in their spellbook.

Your house rule on RK has now been confirmed by Paizo as the way it was always meant to have been run (Player asks a specific question, GM rolls RK secret check, on a success they get the answer, on a crit success they get extra or another question). Also, I'll say it forever, I know 2e is an abstraction and realism isn't the priority, but it is absurd that neither immobilized nor grabbed reduce Reflex saves. I know this would help subsequent trip attempts in addition to reflex save spells and be used against the party too... but that just makes sense to me. Can't see any way around it.

Ronald’s thumbnail looks like, “Do you even CAST, Bro?” 😄

Strategizing is a nice word for "predicting the future and being unable to react to it in case it is different from what you expected". Thats not strategy that is just luck. Frankly inflexibility just breeds a fill all slots with the max dps and pray that you predict correclty if you kill trash or bosses today. A flexible way for wizards etc to exist while not making the sorcerer obsolete is a never ending ache i feel with pathfinder.

What if I want to be a blaster-caster sourcerer? The blaster-caster character I had in mind is not a kenetisist, and is deffinently not a psychic or wizard. I would use magus, if they didn't require spellbooks.

My biggest recommendation for casters who don't have the right spell prepared is to make a list of spells they don't normally prepare, and buy scrolls for each of them they can afford. Things like Faerie Fire, Glitterdust, See Invisibility. I had a thaumaturge that was focused on casting a bunch of scrolls and this is what I did for them!

I did some pretty bonkers things with spellcasting, i found the system pretty robust when it came to handling what i allowed my players to do, and i didn't feel like they were too strong or broken, even when giving them things like free haste for 3 rounds every combat.

I'm not worried about discrepancies in overall balance, but I still struggle to find decent 2nd or 3rd level spells for my Diabolic sorcerer -- all the spells granted by his bloodline are attack spells, and the only save he can target is Will. Would it be possible to supplement "How to Caster Good" with "How to _Divine_ Caster Good"? Or perhaps this would be a better challenge for SwingRipper, since he's demonstrated a willingness to do spell evaluations...

RaW in every game I run is always just suggestions. I just go with what my players will find as fun. The chosen system is really just the flavor for the story we are trying to tell.

One variant on adjusting encounters is to start the players at level 2 or 3 and keep the encounters the same. This has the advantage that it can be done for one or two new players while experienced players are at level. It is also self-correcting. The rest of the party and encounters will catch up to them as they get more familiar. I'd suggest this for players who know roleplaying but aren't familiar with PF2. It does mean that they make more choices. ----- I suspect that 1-action attack spells that are balanced would be underwhelming for many players. Especially if they use the full spell slot that a most effective spell would use. I know some people that are loathe to use magic missile unless they can do the full three actions because they feel that they have wasted a spell slot to do less damage. I could see some of the "less effective" cantrips being one action if you removed their added effects. Like a daze that only did damage. This would also allow spellcasters to ready an attack, which would be very useful.

I like some of the ideas. I'd just implement them differently. Instead of a buff/nerf of hit points the local alchemist left a supply of +10 hp pots.

my table has decided multiclassing is for us. Therefore we havent changed casting much, we are considering removing shadow signet ring for caster potency runes that's about it. Oh and necromancers have seperate buffs letting them summon decent stuff without spending a 4th of their gold

What my gm has done is let weapons thrown via telekinetic projectile affect damage and their runes and properties count. It would be overkill if we had any martial son the team. But we have a bow ranger. And a rogue who is mostly absent. This also gives me the thematics I want. I’m sure it’s not for everyone. But I get to enjoy my class more.

The guy mentioned at 24:14 sounds smart

Make some cantrip like INVOKE TRUE NAME, but easier and more common, maybe using recall knowledge.

How's this for an alternative to flexible preparation? From the rulebook: "If you specialize in an arcane school, rather than studying each school equally (as universalists do), you gain an extra spell slot at each spell level for which you have wizard spell slots. You can prepare only spells of your chosen arcane school in these extra slots." What if flexible preparation removed the preparation requirement from this extra slot? They can use this spell slot as a wildcard slot, and they can use it to cast any spell of that level from their specialty without having to name that spell in advance. This feels fun to me because now your conjurer can always conjure what they need when they need it, your transmuter can always transmute the thing or person that needs transmuting. They can prepare and cast spells from other schools just as before, but they can really get a lot more out of their chosen school. If that feels too strong, maybe require them to spend an action and/or a focus point to do it.

I have found the difference between martial and casters comes down to how often they roll dice. A martials basic attack is one action and often will have a chance to attempt 2 attacks a round vs the caster with most spells being 2 actions. If a martial misses the first attack they can at least attempt a second and feel like they have an option, a caster misses their spell attack, whelp better luck next round which might be 20 plus minutes later. It just feels bad especially if you get on a low rolling streak. I implemented the basic save degrees of success for spell attack rolls as well. So if a caster spending a limited resource and their only real d20 roll a round they will still feel like they are contributing something.

@ 1:15 : You say "higher skill floor", but I think you mean "higher skill ceiling and lower floor"?

What is the "default difficulty" supposed to be? Is the "standard" encounter intended to be low or moderate threat, and how many of each threat can I realistically throw at the party between each full rest? I'm about to run my first one-shots and one-off adventures in PF with some of my current 5e players, and in a year or so after we finish our 5e campaign we're hoping to switch entirely. I'm guessing there's a table somewhere like "12 encounter points in a day is considered normal difficulty, where moderate threat counts as 5, low is 3, [etc.]" that I have yet to find. I know there's no specific adventuring day mechanic in PF (which I like) since you don't have to wear down your party to give them a challenge; but surely there's some kind of guideline for ideal targets for various difficulties since there are still daily abilities in the game.

Here are the ways I buff casters in my games, because I do think casters can be weak and too unreliable at low levels even for experienced players. So these techniques make casters more powerful at low level while having a minimal impact at higher ones. - Using a ten minute activity, any spellcaster can recover a spell slot of their lowest level which does not have an expended spell. - I have a skill feat that allows casters to move as a reaction after casting a spell that takes two or three actions to cast. - I have it so that Incapacitation cannot increase something to a Critical Success. - I have added several skill feats that increase the capacity for martials to decrease enemy saves, such as a Taunt ability that reduces a creatures Reflex Saves. - I added spellcasting potency runes that allow you to increase your spell attack rolls but not your DC. I'm also considering other little tweaks, like allowing holding a spellcasting focus letting you deal extra damage with your spells equal to your spellcasting ability mod.

Nice!

RL says - we have a toxic gatekeeping issue. Also RL says - casting is hard because you’re just too dumb. I know you don’t mean this, but gods damn it feels a bit like that.

ive literally had the exact opposite experience with pathfinder casters. IDGI. I have always felt more magical as a pathfinder wizard at each level than a dnd one, my partner's the same

The only thing you didn't cover that I have tried is allowing many of the non-combat spells be able to be cast as rituals and not use it up for the day. So basically just expanding the ritual rules that already exist.

My suggestions would simply be something like: - Dissociate Spell Attack from spell DC and scale it at 5 and 13 like everyone else and let runes apply to it, ban Shadow Signet, change True Strike to touch, once per character per 10 mins or remove it. - Let players use hero points to force a reroll on an enemy saving throw. This should be enough for a better action and slot economy on spell attacks and a much better feel on saving throws, which casters have to deal with much more but have no way to mitigate like other attacks when luck isn't on their side. Casters arent weak by any means; they just don't play as well in the system.

Quite intresting that in most combats the powerful enemy can ignore me as a caster. Most of the time it feels like it is more important for the enemy to bring down martials becuse they are the one doing the real impact and getting the stuff done. I have no one to buff anyway if they bring them down fast. Better to crit down a fighter fast, than to take away that fighters +1/+2 buffer.

1) Make recall knowledge better. 2) Buff counter spell by giving clever counter spell as part of counter spell.

In PF2 caster are more weak because they cause minor dmg. A barbarian have 2d8+13 of dmg every single turn. and a mage have a 2d6 in minor area... My solution its simples, raise every single spell that is not a Cantrip dmg in PF2 by +2d6. that is . This equilibrate at all with not complicated changes.

I had a barbarian at level one do 40 damage in one crit. Would not have happened without level 1 magic weapon front sorcerer.

I have played a Bard and am currently playing a Wizard. Casters don't need buffing. Some players just need to change their expectations.

I would personally give Flexible Casting as a totally free Option. Not a feat/archetype, not even a free feat or archetype. I mean give them the option during preparation to prepare as a traditional Vancian caster, or as the more Flexible spellcaster instead. This, at least to me, would help ease players used to the 5e flexible caster in to the pathfinder/3e vancian casting allowing them to switch freely between them as they become more comfortable with prepared spellcasting, especially if you allow the players to get enough information on a particular day's encounter that the spellcaster is confident they could prepare the perfect list of spells. The other more extreme option I may use for one or two of my players who tend to be a little more absent during the preparation phase of playing, is simply to buff flexible casting to the same number of spells per day as the class would normally have. "But that's unbalanced" I don't care how unbalanced an extra spell per level is if it will help get a player in to playing a new class. "Why don't they just play sorcerer?" because maybe they like the roleplay of being a wizard instead.

Personally I just think we need a few better spells at 1st and 2nd rank. That's when being a caster is most painful, because there are like 4 spells that actually do anything worthwhile in combat. 3 dice on the 1st rank cones, d12 not d10 on the 2nd rank area hits,. Until fireball that playstyle has nothing really worthwhile over cantrips.

I just want my spells to WORK, not get saved/crit saved every time it actually matters. I want spell to hit and saves to scale with magic items like martials get. It is the fact that I have very limited spells, and they DO NOTHING.

I enjoy playing casters in every system, except pathfinder 2. I feel like pathfinder 2 makes them WAY inferior early on with the promise of "Just wait till later" ie your not going to make a video about 5 first level wizards taking on a PF2 encounter like you did fighters. I feel like when you get to "later" your met with "well we can't make you better than martials you should just play your role" but now it's too late, you've invested many sessions into a table and now your stuck playing the caster. If the caster could do what it does infinitely like a martial character it would be one thing, but they can't, not only do they have finite resources in spell slots but they have to guess what they will need before hand. Which I'm ok with when those spell slots mean something, when they work exceptionally well, but in PF2 they don't. Seems like prior to 5th level they just aren't balanced and after 5th level they are balanced against "Well what could a martial do this turn, we can't have them do anything more significant than that because they have UTILITY!" A martial can just reduce hit points but you can apply debuffs, you better be so happy you can give debuffs! I was so ready to like this video till you opened it up by basically saying "This is a crutch, I prefer it the other way but here's a bone for you whiners" I'm just not in the mood to watch it anymore after about 2 minutes in, but I like your content so I'll give you a like and a comment and maybe come back and actually watch the rest later.

Just give them a couple of staves. Each one gives a substantial power boost.

One of the big problem with casters, IMHO, is that we tend to only focus on combat, while one of the major advantages of casters are outside of that, where their "reality bending" stuff really kicks in! I think one big step toward casters being recognised is to give the group challenges the spellcaster actually do have the best tool at hand to resolve: Massive cliff where fly or air walk is great, conditions like curses or afflictions for the divine, animal or nature related situations where a speak with animal or some nature bending utility tool a primal caster have, etc... And actually describing it and giving the spotlight to those moments is important, not just handwaving it either.

I have a problem with the idea that "casters are more versatile." Martials can also attack from the safety of range, and do better than the caster at it. The Martial can also target saves with Athletics or Intimidate. Martials have versatility from the feats they pick, and still have higher chance to hit. I took a look at the GM book for monster creation, and saves tend to be higher than the respective AC, until level 20. And, a caster has theoretically more versatility. But you can't change your spells mid combat.

My main problem is wizards feeling terrible for battlefield control prior to level 5.

Personally I would love more reaction, 1 action and 3 action spells in the game. Even if there are already good 1 action activities casters can do, the irritation i have about them is that everyone can do most of them. I'd rather do what i made the character to do, cast spells.

So weird - levels 1 through 6 don’t really give me much grief as a caster; it’s level 7 and higher where the monsters (especially the boss monsters) absolutely WRECK me, and I’m back to casting spells that don’t have saves or attack rolls. For levels 1 through 5, I’m keeping up , and only at most +1 behind the martials.

Another option is to give casters Staves early, and buff Staves if that's not enough.

I personally don't much care for the caster debate just because I hate vancian casting. what I'm really curious about, rules lawyer, is your take on the changes made to ability scores and chiefly dexterity from PF1. My personal opinion is that I think they went with the wrong direction in balancing it in particular. Instead of making strength more useful, all it did was make dexterity worse. I would have vastly preferred if they had just made the lacking ability scores better. Strength is bad because it has one skill and only does one thing: hit better, hit harder. This is only useful for martials. And granted athletics is strong, it should have either been split or complimented with a host of other strength and con-based skills. By comparison, int might be a dump stat for one or two classes when they only care about combat, but it has a lot of useful skills behind it. Dexterity on the other hand does what strength does (in pf1 and D&D5), has a similar skill list bulk to the casting stats, and increases AC. And all of these *make sense*. The AC bonus isn't that big, either. Most of your AC is coming from equipment. And this is all good. Stats should be USEFUL and IMPACTFUL. Int, Wis, and Cha all have very useful skill lists, give hit and damage bonus for spells, set your spell save DC, and Wis also adds to your Will saves. That's 3 or 4 things each stat does, 5 for Wis. Less if you're a martial. Dex in 2e gives AC, hit bonus sometimes, reflex saves, and has a good skill list. That's 4 things. The odd ones out are con and strength. Strength only does two and a half things (one good skill, damage and hit). And no, carry weight doesn't count --- I don't know anyone who plays with encumbrance. Con gives hit points and fortitude saves. That's two things. Granted they're very good, but it's still a limited utility. Dexterity is in line with how strong the plurality of the stats are. Strength and Con are not. They need to be buffed, dex didn't need to be nerfed. Give them a larger skill list (or any at all), let them do something new and good. Make new strength-focused weapons, maybe oversized ones that require a minimum strength to wield. Make strength options like grappling more appealing. Add a new universal ability that one of them uses. Fucking anything, because right now playing a strength build is easily the most boring thing I can think of.

Preface: I don't care about blasting. I don't care about damage. People LOVE to remind others that casters are a support role, and that's it. They also love to let us know that caster strength comes from their versatility and the fact that they have over a thousand spells to choose from... only around, what, 300 of which are actually useful and not uselessly thematic or incredibly niche? What if you're a spontaneous occult caster, and you didn't pick the one Fortitude save spell that is useful, and now you find yourself up against (however unlikely) a Fortitude-weak enemy? Welp, you're SOL, 'cause now you get the miss all of your attack rolls and get critically saved upon with all of your debuffs. Time to inspire courage, winning streak/haste, and Aid, good ol' 20 second turns. Honestly, if "spellstrike runes" were a thing, we could get rid of awful crutches like True Strike and Shadow Signet. As far as save DCs go, people *love* to say how tight the math is and that everything is perfect and working as intended... until you go a full year without landing a single failed save spell while targeting the lowest DC, even after debuffing it. Math is tight, experience is hell. That said, if people are intent on not giving items to buff class DCs, then I think it's time that support roles become a two way street. Right now, it's casters support martials and martials support themselves - outside of a couple feats, there is no way for a martial to support a caster (why would they, anyway? they get all of their bonuses from just positioning either themselves or the enemy). But, what if casters could benefit from that positioning, as well? Simple things like conditions like Grabbed, Prone, Immobilized, etc. reducing reflex saves by 2, or a martial being able to use a non-lethal attack to ring an enemy's bell and inflict Stupefied. Simple things like that could go a very, very long way, and also give martials more third-action options and allow them to support casters like casters try to support them, but often fail to because welp, they saved again!

It's actually the reason I dropped trying playing as a caster and just moved to the Kineticist. I don't like them lore wise, story wise, but they do what I want - do damage. They don't pay half of their brute power for doing sometimes useful things. I don't want to pay for them. It's cool that twice or trice I can do something cool nobody else can. But if there is a choice between being strong in the fight VS make that 3 times though the whole campaign something extraordinary? No thanks. Additionally - when you're role-playing a mighty wizard and DM is like - sorry, we have to focus on survival, so no food spells and so on. I do understand it - but that makes the whole idea of the casting magician obsolete. Thank God now you can have 3 focus points and choose undead, devil, dragon or any other bloodline with rather useful combat spells so basically can just emit the real wraith at the enemies. At least as long as their level doesn't go overseas and those 8d6 are obsolete.

Very insightful video! This is EXACTLY why I abandoned PF2e. It's great that you've finally 🙂acknowledged it, but until these ideas are baked-into the core rules I cannot stick with this system as a player.

Just play a ranger or Barbarian and re flavor it as a spell caster. Lol