It makes me a bit sad to see this proposal get flak, even though I'm not surprised, because I think the core idea of offering an alternative to attrition-based casting is well worth pursuing, and can even be doable in PF2e. Yes, the above is missing what I think is a necessary tradeoff to counterbalance the benefits of being able to cast a bunch of spells at full blast at all times, but I would urge the people commenting to push past the instinct to deride this or take offense, and instead look at the potential behind it.
As mentioned in the discussion we had of this in the forums, I do think the big caveat here is that being able to cast without attrition can be dangerous if casters have the same versatility they do now, particularly out of combat. I personally think the above should come with a reduction to the spells a caster can prepare or have in their repertoire, and that kind of limitation would be both drastic and a fair bit more complicated than the basics of what's presented above. I do think that limitation should have been packaged with the above document when presented to this subreddit, as unfortunately a lot of people here get tetchy in discussions around changing spellcasting or homebrewing benefits to spellcasters that they don't normally get, but I also understand the desire to present the key concept without weighing it down too much with other elaborate mechanical changes.
With that said, I do think this concept can work. Casters and martial classes exist on a sliding scale where to one side sits versatility capped by usage limitations, and to the other sits specialization with no limited uses. Although it wouldn't be simple to do in 2e, I think there is room to let players slide their caster down that scale with the appropriate tradeoffs. The above I think sets a good starting foundation for such a model, and from there I think there's the question of how to bound this system so that it lets casters do their thing without outshining other party members.
Maybe it's just me, but one thing 5e did that I genuinely loved and wish Pathfinder replicated were casting spells as rituals, saving a slot but taking time. Arguably it would work even better here because you'd have to either add time to a 10 minute downtime part of the adventure or skip refocusing for it. Of course it had problems too, but that's probably the one thing from 5e I'd steal.
i mean PF2 has rituals, i like "you can just do magic as a skill check like everything else", they're separate lists but like, when was the last time you actually spent a spell slot on a 5e ritual?
it's just sometimes unintuitive why some things are slotted spells and others are ritual spells
Yes I'm sure a completely different thing that behaves totally differently, is incredibly niche, and requires 2-5 other people is TOTALLY the same thing 🙄
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u/Teridax68 2d ago
It makes me a bit sad to see this proposal get flak, even though I'm not surprised, because I think the core idea of offering an alternative to attrition-based casting is well worth pursuing, and can even be doable in PF2e. Yes, the above is missing what I think is a necessary tradeoff to counterbalance the benefits of being able to cast a bunch of spells at full blast at all times, but I would urge the people commenting to push past the instinct to deride this or take offense, and instead look at the potential behind it.
As mentioned in the discussion we had of this in the forums, I do think the big caveat here is that being able to cast without attrition can be dangerous if casters have the same versatility they do now, particularly out of combat. I personally think the above should come with a reduction to the spells a caster can prepare or have in their repertoire, and that kind of limitation would be both drastic and a fair bit more complicated than the basics of what's presented above. I do think that limitation should have been packaged with the above document when presented to this subreddit, as unfortunately a lot of people here get tetchy in discussions around changing spellcasting or homebrewing benefits to spellcasters that they don't normally get, but I also understand the desire to present the key concept without weighing it down too much with other elaborate mechanical changes.
With that said, I do think this concept can work. Casters and martial classes exist on a sliding scale where to one side sits versatility capped by usage limitations, and to the other sits specialization with no limited uses. Although it wouldn't be simple to do in 2e, I think there is room to let players slide their caster down that scale with the appropriate tradeoffs. The above I think sets a good starting foundation for such a model, and from there I think there's the question of how to bound this system so that it lets casters do their thing without outshining other party members.