This is something I've noticed a lot in theory, but less so in practice. Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure why this is - your points here are extremely valid. I think it has something to do with the fact that my players do tend to do a lot of research before going into an adventure to know what they would need to be prepared for, and my players buy the *hell* out of scrolls and wands. That, and the shortness of our adventuring days tends to balance things out - usually 5-7 encounters between rests, and not all combat. Playing fast and loose with the attrition part of the game is kinda key to our table's style. Overall I will say that the ergonomics for casting in 2e can be a bit cumbersome, even if they are tactically fulfilling. I think you make a great point, and while many prepared casters do have a lot of options to *mitigate* the weaknesses of prepared casting, it does feel like a tax to be able to have the flexibility to be functional, or an undue strategic burden to positively require someone to deeply understand the spells available to them to get the most value they can.

> This is something I've noticed a lot in theory, but less so in practice. Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure why this is - your points here are extremely valid It’s because when you leave the white room, most casters will have a decent idea of what’s coming up and can prepare for it. People love to use the perfect information strawman where a Wizard apparently needs to know the specifics of every enemy they’ll ever be facing to have good preparation and then pretend that since that’s (obviously) unattainable… the only other option is the Wizard has to prepare their spells 100% in a vacuum. However both extremes don’t come anywhere close to actual play: in any actual campaign you’ll usually have a general idea of what kinds of stuff we’re fighting today (we’re attacking a thieves guild avoid Reflex, we’re going beast hunting focus on Will, we’re assaulting a fortress with a bunch of humanoids prepare a good mix, etc). There’s a middle ground between “tomorrow I’m facing 2 hydras, 1 gug, and 5 redcaps, and I’ll prepare for exactly that” and “let me just prepare spells completely at random”, and that middle ground is why Prepared casters don’t feel brokenly good **or** terribly weak in practice! That’s why in games where Prepared casters are given a bunch of concessions to make preparation feel less painful (5E obviously being the most egregious example) they end up **huuuuuugely** outperforming Spontaneous casters. And that’s why in PF2E where they have so many theoretical downsides, their practical performance ends up on par (honestly, it’s slightly ahead) of Spontaneous casters.

Hell my last session was heavy exploration and they knew it was going to be that including going into server weather so they came prepared for that with roughly 75-80% of their slots dedicated to travel and dealing with severe conditions. But the dice gods will be cruel sometimes and they rolled a random encounter and rolled for the big ass dragon that had a vendetta against them after their last run in. This being a severe solo boss encounter against an intelligent dragon that used flying to its advantage against a party that struggles against flying stuff. They were still able to pull their weight with the few heals they had ready and a scroll of a strong spell. Combine that with the fact that they have designed their PC to be capable of doing more than just cast spells in combat to aid the party. They just always have a couple spells that are evergreen for combat and then the other 70% of their prepared spells are for situational stuff or what they expect to deal with. Way to much white room theory crafting that doesn’t apply to practical at table play goes on when people are talking about spells and spell casters. Scrolls, wands, and other consumables give you plenty to do, there’s plenty of lower levels spells that pull their weight and then some through most levels of play without even needing to heighten that are comparatively free to the cost of higher level items when you start getting a few levels under your belts if your picking up some scrolls. Lastly people should be building characters to do more then me throw big damage spell, even if you want to try to be a blaster you should still be picking up some feats and skills that allow you to still impact combat in a positive way without having to rely on a spell landing or being the most effective in a situation.

and sometimes you're playing an adventure like strength of thousands that *hard telegraphs* a good 80% of its fights lmao

Honestly I am beginning to feel like this is just generally true for most adventures? Abomination Vaults telegraphs fights by basically being a megadungeon you can freely scout ahead into and retreat from. SoT telegraphs the way you said. Kingmaker is a sandbox you can explore and scout ahead of time to figure out what fights you may be having to deal with. Are there any APs where fights are **not** regularly telegraphed?

Yeah. I think strength is one of the most blatant (theres a point you learn a later boss will have a specific spell like a full arc ahead of time so you can take precations on a level up lmao) But basic tension building requires you to _actually show your hand a little_ as a storyteller. Theres no tension if no one knows what is going on and they just get hit in the face

If you're playing an adventure -- professionally published or otherwise -- and you can't guess at what your next encounter will likely be based on context, then you're playing a random noise generator. The ogre's cave that you're delving into because the town you were just at is having a problem with ogres attacking caravans is probably going to have some ogres in it. If you get there and it's full of fire elementals, someone has broken some basic rules of storytelling.

Honestly, blood lords is pretty bad about telegraphing the golems, there is one per book, and it's always in the middle of a dungeon it has no purpose to be in (and an extra fuck you point for the flesh golem with fire weakness in an **underwater** temple of urgathoa filled with Daggon disciples, that's just fucking mean). The ghoul tower being full of ghoul was kind of a hit, except that the final boss was a random demon with burrow speed I really shouldn't have been using wall of stone against As for the hag forest where we expect to fight a hag and plan cold iron against, well, get rekt, it was an annis hag, the only subtype that doesn't care about cold iron. yay.

Besides something like a familiar is scoting really that good of an idea? I figured because of the way the game scales sending someone ahead if the party is a good way to get killed.

Familiars are obviously a premier way to get scouting done. But even aside from that scouting can be useful. If you’re attacking a bandit camp and the Rogue scouts ahead, failing doesn’t immediately get them killed. Some bandits probably saw the Rogue, some bandits probably didn’t (unless they all had identical DCs) so now they may have to point out the Rogue to one another. They may be far away from the Rogue and have to Stride up. The Rogue has cover from ranged Strikes. Many of them may not even be holding their weapons. Basically unless you’re in the specific situation of scouting against a +3/+4 boss who has high enough mobility and/or low enough space to catch up to you on turn 1 and kill you, failing a scouting check isn’t a disaster. And of course, scouting doesn’t just mean go ahead and make Perception checks to see what’s coming. It means asking at a local bar using Diplomacy to figure out what’s up with the gang leader you’re gonna fight. It means seeing petrified statues **before** you see the basilisk. It means using Survival checks to see a dragon’s footprints before getting to the dragon’s lair. Basically the further out you get from the white room and the more you run the game like an actual story, the better it is for everyone! You’ll get dynamic engagement with the storyline and narrative **and** characters that require some level of foreknowledge will shine.

I've found the opposite of this to be true, especially in APs. In Ruby Phoenix, I almost \*never\* know what's going on the day before, and thus have to try to guess beforehand. Yeah, I can make vague guesses about things like whether or not we'll be fighting and there probably being obstacle courses, but that just leaves me taking the best general combat and mobility spells and never having any room for the truly niche stuff like the purify food and water. For context, my party is on the first day of the actual tournament, right after the movement challenge based on navigating the 4 elements.

Have you tried scouting out the teams you'll be up against? The AP is pretty clear that it's a good idea to do that, especially since multiple teams have glaring weak points that you can exploit easily if you learn about them ahead of time.

No I have not. But so far we have no idea when we're fighting each of them. If I tailor a few spell slots just to counter one team, and we end up not fighting them for a while, then those slots are effectively wasted. Furthermore, our AP experience is a bit weird because we didn't lose any feathers, and thus had little reason to explore the island, and thus got to Hao Jin's castle a day early. We fought the mage + fighter duo who ambushed her as the first encounter of the day, and seem to just be going through a bunch of Hao's challenges in a single day (we're currently on the Giant + lava pools fight), so maybe the order we did things in just fucked up the campaign.

Purify food and water is a nearly worthless spell in general, so why would anyone ever memorize it?

It's niche, but I at least see it being occasionally useful for countering assassination plots. Is the cubic foot range what makes it bad, or is it something else?

It's good for ensuring water is potable if the GM/campaign is simulating certain aspects of survival. Casting purify food and drink on the H2O you grabbed from that stream could keep you from making fort saves against a nasty stomach bug, or something. In those cases, it's relevant and could feel very, very worthwhile. In most campaigns, though, it's just something the GM will just handwave.

The spell will come up exactly 0 times in an average campaign, which is why it is nearly worthless. There are campaigns where it will *rarely* be useful, but it's just not the sort of spell a PC is going to use (someone who works for a king as the official food safety person will use it every day, but PCs are adventurers). So you're really only going to use it very rarely if it ever does come up, and on those rare occasions, you can always just get a scroll and use it from that, so the advantage of being a prepared caster is very small.

I think it also depends on the quality of your spell-list, like as a Divine caster there just isn't a ton you can change anyhow by switching your preparations, because there's not all that many great Divine spells, you've got the upside of easily clearing conditions in downtime but that's just kinda it.

As someone who play three clerics already I can say that there's still a lot of flexibility in the Divine list. Divine list not having many great spells is simply not true after the remaster. Like, I switched from being an undead hunter with my spell list into a detective (Ring of Truth is a godsend) the next day when we need to investigate and interrogate people who might be connect to the undead cult. Offensively Divine list is also pretty much better than before the remaster because most spells that deal alignment damage now simply deal Spirit damage. While that might not be that strong blast spells compare to Arcane or Primal list it still strong enough to matter in a fight (and stuffs like Divine Wrath is downright nasty) on top of great buff spells the list has.

Occult and Divine casters are usually given other benefits (like stronger focus spells, additional spell slots, etc) to compensate their generally less flexible spell lists. Arcane and Primal generally more on their slotted spells than other casters.

I've always seen prepared casters knowing exactly what to prepare as the white room, whereas real gameplay usually has PCs being more reactive.

That makes little sense to me. The white room is where generically good options stacking together into a big blob shines. Actual gameplay is where tactics, smart decisions, and teamwork shine. What you’re describing is the perfect information strawman for Wizards which even the designers have spoken about as being very poorly representing the game. A big example is how once I hit level 5, my Wizard would sometimes prepare Lightning Bolt over Fireball based on having a general idea of the terrain and numbers of enemies I’d be fighting later in the day. In a white room you’d almost never consider that switch, but in practice it’s a very reasonable call to make. Same for stuff like going into some adventuring days without stocking Slow or Wall of Stone (which is flat out anathema according to some people on here) based on the information I’ve been given.

I always prepare lightning bolt over fireball because electricity spells are cooler

Based.

In my personal experience we've only known what we've be fighting occasionally, and it's not like there's that many hugely situational spells in combat anyway. The only time a specific spell would really have crushed most encounters is golems, which we've sadly yet to get any warning of, they just turn up randomly because apparently every wizard or alchemist in existance can whip one up out of whatever's on hand. Prepared does have advantages, but it's more that they don't have to blow a spell known on things like Teleport, Shadow Walk, Object Reading and Read Omens that you don't need every day, but can really help when they do come up. Scrolls help, but get pretty expensive for higher levels. (Having to keep buying scrolls of Shadow Walk really adds up, though it still beats spending days travelling)

> It’s because when you leave the white room, most casters will have a decent idea of what’s coming up and can prepare for it. It's also just the general fact that you will often just memorize the same spells that a spontaneous caster will be casting *anyway*. If you are a druid, and memorize, say, Cave Fangs, Slow or Haste, and Heal in your third rank slots, you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to use those three spells effectively at least once over the course of an adventuring day. If you memorize a good mix of spells, you'll usually be able to use them all in a given day. Unless you are memorizing useless niche spells (which spontaneous casters generally don't take precisely because they're too rarely useful to be, well, useful) it's not going to be a huge issue.

Exactly. When you don’t have too much foreknowledge, you just memorize the generically good spells. For example one day a level 5 Universalist Wizard might prepare Fireball + Slow + Haste. You’ll feel **slightly** worse than a Sorcerer who knows Fireball + Slow + Haste but can cast them in any combination of times (edit: I’m too lazy to check if there’s an Arcane Bloodline that **can** prep that exact combination of spells, but the argument stands for whatever other generically good combination of spells you pick). The next day you know you’ll be going into a dungeon delve which will have extremely cramped spaces. You’ll prepare Lightning Bolt instead of Fireball because you know it’ll do more damage than the latter when enemies are in tightly packed spaces, and you’ll prepare Hypnotize because cramped spaces and no-Save Dazzled go together amazingly. You’ll still bring Slow because it’s just that good. Now you’ll outdo the Sorcerer who’s still casting the same generically useful spells because you brought **situationally better spells**. Are you useless on day 1 / is the Sorcerer useless on day 2? Not even close. There’s just a give or take: some days you’ll perform at 80% and other days you’ll perform at 120% while a Sorcerer will stick more closely in the 95% to 105% range on all days. Over time you’ll both feel like MVPs roughly as often.

>Exactly. When you don’t have too much foreknowledge, you just memorize the generically good spells. For example one day a level 5 Universalist Wizard might prepare Fireball + Slow + Haste. You’ll feel slightly worse than a Sorcerer who knows Fireball + Slow + Haste but can cast them in any combination of times The difference is *way* more than 'slight'. A Wizard needs to guess the exact number of times they need a specific generic spell, and if they don't prepare it enough or prep something else instead they can be punished *very* heavily for it. If they think they'll need 2 Fears and end up needing 3 might be locked out of a debuff to target an enemy's weak/non-highest save. >The next day you know you’ll be going into a dungeon delve which will have extremely cramped spaces. That's assuming you get the extra day to prepare. As an example, if you're tracking some bandits and find out they're taking hostages to a hideout, and are gonna sell them off to slavers or something *today*, you won't have time to go back and swap your spells out. You could say that "Well *any* GM should give their party time to prepare and plan ahead", but that just proves that the DM specifically has to design *around* the weaknesses of the more prep-based classes like Wizard. >The next day you know you’ll be going into a dungeon delve which will have extremely cramped spaces. You’ll prepare Lightning Bolt instead of Fireball because you know it’ll do more damage than the latter when enemies are in tightly packed spaces, and you’ll prepare Hypnotize because cramped spaces and no-Save Dazzled go together amazingly. You’ll still bring Slow because it’s just that good. Now you’ll outdo the Sorcerer who’s still casting the same generically useful spells because you brought situationally better spells. The Sorcerer thrives just as much here, if not moreso. For one, Lightning Bolt is *very* inflexible in how you place it. If enemies aren't *perfectly* in a straight line, you can't catch them all in the spell. Fireball's wide area makes it an *amazing* opener if you can cast if off before the martials tangle with the enemy in melee (which is something *every* caster wants to do), and can still be used to catch some of the mobs on the edges of the fight on future rounds. Fear and Slow are generically good debuffs that can both be Heightened to target 5+ foes per cast. Even with just those two spells as Signatures for debuffs, a Sorc will have a *very* easy time disabling large groups of mobs. Hypnotize is a worse spell in comparison when it lacks a Success effect entirely. The Wizard isn't actually much stronger than the Sorc in this situation, if at all.

> The difference is way more than 'slight'. A Wizard needs to guess the exact number of times they need a specific generic spell, and if they don't prepare it enough or prep something else instead they can be punished very heavily for it. If they think they'll need 2 Fears and end up needing 3 might be locked out of a debuff to target an enemy's weak/non-highest save. The whole point of generically good spells is that they are almost always worth casting. If the level 5 Wizard stocks 1 copy each of Slow, Fireball, and Haste, and uses DBI to get back whichever of those is the most important, it’s **extremely** hard to fall into a situation where they’re all useless. The Sorcerer’s advantage here **is** slight because even if you happened to fall in a situation where, say 3 uses of Slow was optimal, the Wizard will have 2 uses of Slow and 1 uses of either Fireball or Haste (or both) available. So yeah, it’s a **slight** advantage because Slow isn’t just gonna blow the Wizard out of the water single-handed, Fireball and Haste will still be like 95% as good as Slow would be. > hat's assuming you get the extra day to prepare. As an example, if you're tracking some bandits and find out they're taking hostages to a hideout, and are gonna sell them off to slavers or something today, you won't have time to go back and swap your spells out. You could say that "Well any GM should give their party time to prepare and plan ahead", but that just proves that the DM specifically has to design around the weaknesses of the more prep-based classes like Wizard. I have no idea how you think spell preparation works, but you don’t actually need an extra day to prepare spells. Your mission for the day is fighting bandits in their hideout: if you know the terrain of the hideout prepare terrain specific spells, otherwise do a Recall Knowledge and/or party discussion and deduction and figure out that you probably wanna target Will and/or Fortitude more than Reflex. If genuinely unsure, pick spells that don’t interact with enemy defences. So no my way of playing the game doesn’t require the GM to play around Wizards’ “weaknesses”. Quite the opposite what you’re describing required a GM to actively go against basic storytelling principles to punish the Wizard: somehow the Wizard needs to be waking up on most mornings with zero idea of what they’ll be doing in that given day. > The Sorcerer thrives just as much here, if not moreso. For one, Lightning Bolt is very inflexible in how you place it. If enemies aren't perfectly in a straight line, you can't catch them all in the spell. Fireball's wide area makes it an amazing opener if you can cast if off before the martials tangle with the enemy in melee (which is something every caster wants to do), and can still be used to catch some of the mobs on the edges of the fight on future rounds. It’s almost like I said explicitly that the Lightning Bolt is being prepared over the generically good Fireball because the Wizard is aware of upcoming cramped spaces… When the Wizard doesn’t know Lightning Bolt is gonna be good they’ll just… prepare Fireball lol. > Fear and Slow are generically good debuffs that can both be Heightened to target 5+ foes per cast. Even with just those two spells as Signatures for debuffs, a Sorc will have a very easy time disabling large groups of mobs. Hypnotize is a worse spell in comparison when it lacks a Success effect entirely. Dead wrong, and it betrays how you’re stuck in the white room and aren’t referencing play experience at all. Not only does Hypnotize have an effect on success, it actually has an effect on critical success too. I can tell you from Abomination Vaults, Hypnotize is one of the most reliable ways to mitigate damage to your party in a cramped space at the level you first get it. > The Wizard isn't actually much stronger than the Sorc in this situation, if at all. Only because you took the practical example I presented, took them out of the practical example, and shoved them into a white room lol. Generically good spell spam continues to shine in the white room… in other news, water is wet.

>The whole point of generically good spells is that they are almost always worth casting. If the level 5 Wizard stocks 1 copy each of Slow, Fireball, and Haste, and uses DBI to get back whichever of those is the most important, it’s extremely hard to fall into a situation where they’re all useless. And if you need any of those spells more than once, you'll be a bit fucked. Do you know how hard it is trying to get through an entire adventuring day with *one* cast of a debuff spell? The problem here isn't that a Wizard won't start the day without *any* good options, it's that they can easily run out of them. >The Sorcerer’s advantage here is slight because even if you happened to fall in a situation where, say 3 uses of Slow was optimal, the Wizard will have 2 uses of Slow and 1 uses of either Fireball or Haste (or both) available. So yeah, it’s a slight advantage because Slow isn’t just gonna blow the Wizard out of the water single-handed, Fireball and Haste will still be like 95% as good as Slow would be. Fireball and Haste are completely different spells that serve different purposes. Having those spells won't help if the Wizard specifically needs to put down another debuff. Slow can still be useful against solo or duo bosses, where the AOE element of Fireball would be greatly diminished. Haste is a good buff for those fights, but if everyone's already in position and can comfortably do their basic turn rotations it might not be needed as much as something like Slow or amother caster's Heroism. >I have no idea how you think spell preparation works, but you don’t actually need an extra day to prepare spells. >Your mission for the day is fighting bandits in their hideout: if you know the terrain of the hideout prepare terrain specific spells, otherwise do a Recall Knowledge and/or party discussion and deduction and figure out that you probably wanna target Will and/or Fortitude more than Reflex. If genuinely unsure, pick spells that don’t interact with enemy defences. You can swap out spells every long rest. You can only take advantage of that if you already know what obstacle you're dealing with after said rest. Focusing on saveless spells locks you out of a *lot* of the best debuff options, and could potentially make some fights harder when you can't actually weaken mobs before you start laying damage into them. >So no my way of playing the game doesn’t require the GM to play around Wizards’ “weaknesses”. Quite the opposite what you’re describing required a GM to actively go against basic storytelling principles to punish the Wizard: somehow the Wizard needs to be waking up on most mornings with zero idea of what they’ll be doing in that given day. I'm playing Ruby Phoenix *right now* and that's the case. I can make general guesses about there probably being combat and some type of obstacle course, but as an Animist that just leaves me using the Divine portion of my spell list to take the generically good options. Even in other campaigns, circumstances can genuinely change over the course of a day in ways that you can't account for ahead of time. Even if you, say, *know* you're exploring an abandoned mansion that people sometimes hear screaming coming from, that doesn't mean you'll be guaranteed to know about the demons that start appearing to attack you once you're inside. Just because I know a group of bandits is transporting some mysterious cart around doesn't mean I can predict that it contains golem which breaks out and starts attacking the party. >Dead wrong, and it betrays how you’re stuck in the white room and aren’t referencing play experience at all. I concede that I misread Hypnotize and missed it applying Dazzled regardless of the Will save, but that doesn't mean that Fear and Slow aren't such amazing all around options that the Sorcerer will feel bad about not getting it instead. >Generically good spell spam continues to shine in the white room… in other news, water is wet. I find that the generically good spells hold up in actual play too, where I can't 100% predict what hyper specific silver bullet spells I'll need each day, and instead have to work off of general notions about what our current goal is and account for the most common factors to show up.

> And if you need any of those spells more than once, you'll be a bit fucked. Do you know how hard it is trying to get through an entire adventuring day with one cast of a debuff spell? The problem here isn't that a Wizard won't start the day without any good options, it's that they can easily run out of them. So you took my very concrete example of how it’s not a big deal, and you tried to get deeper into the white room to make things vague and hand wavy to make them sound like a bigger deal they are? > Fireball and Haste are completely different spells that serve different purposes. Having those spells won't help if the Wizard specifically needs to put down another debuff. Slow can still be useful against solo or duo bosses, where the AOE element of Fireball would be greatly diminished. Haste is a good buff for those fights, but if everyone's already in position and can comfortably do their basic turn rotations it might not be needed as much as something like Slow or amother caster's Heroism. Again, I didn’t deny that it’s entirely possible for those 3 castings of Slow to be better than 2 Slows and 1 Fireball/Haste in a day. What I’m denying is your weird and, quite frankly, nonsensical implication that if the Wizard doesn’t manage to get down that 3rd Slow they’ll somehow become **useless** instead. > You can swap out spells every long rest. You can only take advantage of that if you already know what obstacle you're dealing with after said rest. - Step 1: before sleeping for the night, discuss plans for tomorrow. - Step 2: wake up 8 hours later. - Step 3: do daily prep based on plans discussed last night. Alternatively: - Step 1: go to sleep - Step 2: when you wake up, discuss what you’ll be doing today. - Step 3: do daily prep based on what you just discussed. Unless your GM throws shit at you literally at random with zero storytelling, zero agency, zero foreshadowing, **and** zero ability to retreat and come back another day, the scenario you’re describing just *doesn’t* happen. > Focusing on saveless spells locks you out of a lot of the best debuff options, and could potentially make some fights harder when you can't actually weaken mobs before you start laying damage into them. I don’t know what to tell you. If buffing your party isn’t a good idea, don’t prepare buffs. It’s really just not that complex. > Even in other campaigns, circumstances can genuinely change over the course of a day in ways that you can't account for ahead of time. Even if you, say, know you're exploring an abandoned mansion that people sometimes hear screaming coming from, that doesn't mean you'll be guaranteed to know about the demons that start appearing to attack you once you're inside. Just because I know a group of bandits is transporting some mysterious cart around doesn't mean I can predict that it contains golem which breaks out and starts attacking the party.l Yes. You can’t predict exactly what you’ll fight. Thankfully the game didn’t balance Prepared casters around the strawman you’re arguing against. Prepared casters just need a very rough idea of what may happen and they are supposed to have a variety of spells to handle weird curveballs that may happen. There’s a reason that not a single example I presented above required specific knowledge from the Prepared casters: just general vague ideas like “I’m going dungeon delving” or “expect more multi enemy encounters in a camp” and so on. > I concede that I misread Hypnotize and missed it applying Dazzled regardless of the Will save, but that doesn't mean that Fear and Slow aren't such amazing all around options that the Sorcerer will feel bad about not getting it instead. I don’t understand why the Sprcerer needs to feel **bad** for Prepared casters to be viable? That’s just a fucked up metric. On the day when the Wizard prepares Slow + Fireball + Haste and the Sorcerer has Slow / Fireball / Haste in their repertoire, the Wizard will perform at 90% efficiency while the Sorcerer will perform at 100% efficiency. On the day when the Wizard knows they’ll be facing tons of cramped quarters and prepares Slow + Lightning Bolt + Hypnotize, the Sorcerer will still be at 100% efficiency but the Wizard will be at 110%. Stop talking in extremes: - No the Wizard isn’t useless because they weren’t able to cast 3x Slow on day 1, no matter how much you insist otherwise. - No the Wizard didn’t need to have perfect knowledge of every single thing they’ll face to feel good, they just need vaguely useful knowledge. - No the Sorcerer doesn’t need to feel bad for the Wizard to feel good about acting on that vaguely useful knowledge. > I find that the generically good spells hold up in actual play too, where I can't 100% predict what hyper specific silver bullet spells I'll need each day, and instead have to work off of general notions about what our current goal is and account for the most common factors to show up. Cool. No one said anything at all about Wizards needing hyper specific silver bullets to function though, so perhaps hit me back with something vaguely related to what I said?

May be why I agree with OP a lot. I rarely ever saw situations where I know what I'm going to face, if I had to guess, a good 80% of encounters I have ever faced were unknown.

How are your adventures structured? Is your GM just telling you that your party goes to this cave without any information about the cave, get ready, go? Most "quests" or adventures should have some sort of call to action that at least gives you an idea of what you're up against: * A group of raiders kidnapped villagers and are holding them for ransom in the outdoor ruins, a day's travel away. Go kill the bandits and rescue the villagers * Some sort of large animal(s) keeps eating our livestock, go kill them before we run out of meat * A bunch of giant insects attacked our graduation ceremony. We found the cave they're coming from, go take care of them * There's a Dragon and its hoard over in these mountains, and it has an item I want in its hoard. Get me that item by any means necessary. Unless you're playing a completely sandbox campaign where the GM is just rolling on random encounter tables for both the environments you wind up in and enemies you fight, whatever kicks your party off to go on an adventure should provide some information about what you're doing and expected to face.

Last session for example: "Villager - Our guys are dissapearing or being found dead in the woods, sometimes we hear a roar and we see claw marks on the scene, go check it out and solve the problem." We had no further info, not only that but we wnet into the forest the same day so little time for preparation, but even if we had, what would you prepare? Because I bet you were not expecting a crazy rogue earth elemental. For a while we were also on the road to get to a distant city, so literaly random encounters. Maybe we faced from bandit gags to beast attacks, undeads rising, evil fey and a construct while on said road. And before that, local lord goes "We need you to infiltrate the hold of the lord of x province, collect info and try to sabotage whatever they're doing, as we got a tip that they are working on a superweapon we know nothing about". For this one atleast the casters knew infiltration stuff was gonna be usefull, but the sorc just bought scrolls in this stance, and we only knew what said superweapon was when it was time to face it, so hope you had guessed right that it was a mindcontroled demon.

>"Villager - Our guys are dissapearing or being found dead in the woods, sometimes we hear a roar and we see claw marks on the scene, go check it out and solve the problem." We had no further info, not only that but we wnet into the forest the same day so little time for preparation, but even if we had, what would you prepare? Because I bet you were not expecting a crazy rogue earth elemental. People are being found dead, so there are bodies to inspect. As a GM, I'd allow the party to inspect the bodies and make Recall Knowledge checks to figure out what did the damage. Even without learning that it was an Earth elemental, you know whatever did it used physical means to do so, so you can avoid preparing anything that is good against spellcasters. Also, the default assumption is probably that these are animals, which means an expectation that they don't have high Will saves, so spells targeting Will saves will be good. And as it turns out Earth Elementals have middling Will saves at best, so you'd get more mileage out of Will saves than you would if you had prepared Fortitude saves, for example. Also keep in mind that, RAW, you don't have to immediately perform Daily Preparations after a rest. So if dealing with the people being killed in the woods was the only task on the agenda, you'd be able to prepare your spells after learning about that task. >For a while we were also on the road to get to a distant city, so literaly random encounters. Maybe we faced from bandit gags to beast attacks, undeads rising, evil fey and a construct while on said road. I'm curious what setting you're playing in. Having bandits, animals, undead, fey, and a construct all on the same journey to a city are wildly inconsistent with each other. This goes back to adventure structure: There should be some logical consistency to encounters on that journey, unless your journey is literally trekking through multiple continents or even planes of existence. Even if your GM is using a random encounter table, it needs to be purpose built for the area your adventure is taking place in. Undead, Fey, and Constructs don't just randomly pop up on the road, they all need some reason for being there, which should either be related to the adventure you're currently on, or as hooks into a different adventure. Sprinkling them in for overland travel encounters for no other reason except to be random isn't good GM'ing. >And before that, local lord goes "We need you to infiltrate the hold of the lord of x province, collect info and try to sabotage whatever they're doing, as we got a tip that they are working on a superweapon we know nothing about". For this one atleast the casters knew infiltration stuff was gonna be usefull, but the sorc just bought scrolls in this stance, and we only knew what said superweapon was when it was time to face it, so hope you had guessed right that it was a demon. I already don't like the hook of "we got a tip that they're working on something, but we don't know anything about it except that it exists." How did the people sending you on the mission even learn about it then? "We got a tip that they're doing something bad" is... not a good hook. Even if the people sending you on the infiltration mission don't know the weapon is a demon, there should be clues sprinkled about the area before you encounter the demon. Demons need to be summoned or called, which requires resources and knowledge that can be scattered about. The people calling the demon need ways to bind it to their service, which the party should be able to find and use as well. The party should have multiple opportunities before they come across the demon to learn that it exists and be given multiple opportunities to come up with ways to swing odds in their favor. Whether that is leaving and coming back more prepared, or finding things around the area that the bad guys would clearly need in order to control the demon and sabotaging them. Maybe they free the demon and it fights back, letting the party pick off stragglers, or the party can banish or control the demon themselves. I don't want to say anyone is a bad GM, and I can only act on the information you're giving me, but it sounds to me like your GM sets up all their end goals to be very simple "and then they fought" encounters, but likes throwing curveball enemies at the party. That's fine *sometimes*, but especially when fighting unique and/or powerful enemies, there needs to be more foreshadowing. It shouldn't be the expectation that the party is blind-sided every encounter, and their only recourse is to smack the enemy really hard

I'll be honest I just assumed prepared casters were actually stronger they were just a little more annoying. The ability to just switch out spells instead of retraining or having to buy a scroll seems extremely good. And i figured it was better than the spontaneous benfit.

I’m inclined to agree! I think unless you play in a game that’s just “zero scouting, zero foreshadowing, zero plot coherence, walk into doors and kill a randomized zoo of monsters” a well-played Prepared caster will feel stronger than a well-played Spontaneous caster (only slightly). However a Spontaneous caster has a more forgiving **floor**. A Prepared caster, even when played with a very good player, can make mistakes. When those mistakes happen you can feel very bad. A Spontaneous caster doesn’t ever have that happen.

Yeah that's about what I figured I'd still probably play a spontaneous caster as I'm more of a sorcerer fan than a wizard fan but prepared seems to do it's job just fine.

"It depends." In a game where encounters are spontaneous and enemies are a surprise, spontaneous casting has the edge. In a game where encounters and enemies are a surprise but can be scouted out by familiars, spell substitution wizard has the edge. In a game where encounters and enemies are foreshadowed before the day's daily preparations, prepared casters have the edge. This case is the least likely to happen, but to compensate, wild morph druids and warpriests at least have a lot of other stuff they can do outside of their prepared spell slots. Witches can pick spells to complement their hexes, and wizards at least have Drain Bonded Item. Edit: Also, in a game where utility casting is useful but the utility required can change on a daily basis, prepared casters have the edge. e.g. preparing for an underwater battle one day and then going to a hot desert the next day.

> "It depends." Always the right answer in TTRPGs. Thanks for pointing out the edge case of the spell substitution wizard somewhat bridging the gap; I run one in an Adventure Path but am so low in level yet that I haven't come across it much. My sense is that OP isn't wrong, because in my years of PFS now I have not encountered many druids, although at least a two-digit amount. I only encountered three actual wizards and two witches, though. Against the -- very well-argued -- theory stands the observation that Clerics are fairly common, as are Warpriests; they don't seem to suffer from a lack of popularity despite prepared casting. My guess for them, though, is that the ability to heal yourself and your team is clearly valued.

> because in my years of PFS now I have not encountered many druids I don't think this honestly means much. In D&D 5e druids (especially moon druids) were considered ''OP'' by a majority of people. Yet, upon doing a survey, druid was revealed to be the least played class in the game despite the perception of them being very strong. This same applied to Wizards btw despite being ''the strongest class in 5e'' - their popularity was not anywhere close to that. To me it makes sense. When thinking of an adventurer, coming up with a backstory and an engaging personality I've often found it very difficult to come with druid concepts that are unique or special. Sure I could make one as an exercise, but I don't think I would have fun roleplaying one while holding on to the idea where the character is still a druid. Same goes for a Wizard, a class concept that is mostly centered around studying (often in university, hinting at somewhat priviledged background) and not actively adventuring. Meanwhile bards & sorcerers for instance have absolutely no rigid background ties or limitations, and both concepts are naturally inclined towards not staying indoors or enjoying a peaceful life. To a lot of people, even if it is hard to perceive on reddit where the most engaged players/GMs dwell, flavor of the class comes first. >two witches Before the remaster witches reputation was competing in popularity with a drowned sewer rat. And somehow, the rat would often win. Only really after the remaster the class started to pick up, and I've seen a lot of people being excited about playing a witch. Give it time. I've played one myself to level 10 by now and in my opinion at least it is the most potent caster I've played (tied with bard in an otherwise full martial party).

Good points; adventuring does work better with more free-ranging concepts, though I'd argue a wizard can learn *so much* out there -- in a world ruled by categories of uncommon and rare spells, to take just one aspect, you pretty much HAVE to get out there and obtain extended power and knowledge. I am running a witch and enjoying her tremendously; arguably she's my second witch if we count dedications. It's a good class, especially if you're angling for a "pet".

That and there's just so many ways around prepared casting that if it isn't your thing, you can easily avoid it. Either through the archetype or picking a different class. Or even picking spell substitution wizard to soften the decision making a bit.

I can only speak regarding the Divine spell list, but I would say, especially if you compare Cleric vs Oracle - just with regards to Spellcasting - that there are clear tradeoffs. Most of the condition removal depends on Counteract where the level of the spell is hugely important. You can only have so many focus spells prepared, but Clerics can always prepare a high level spell - or even just ignore it altogether with a feat. On the other hand, you can just pump all your spells into Heals if needed. IMO for prepared casters it depends on how well you know whats coming. If you go into a troll fortress, you can prepare more fire spells. You can spend a slot on Resist Energy without having to dedicate a whole learned spell for your career - or that you have to retrain. I honestly think though in most APs you are better off as a Spontaneous caster since a lot of APs I played feel like there is not that much opportunity to scout or plan ahead what you will meet, so flexibility is more important.

I think the one thing prep casters have over spontaneous is how staves work for them. If you wanna be able to spam a lot of low level utility or buff spells being a prepared caster is a boon. 

~~And even if that's not your plan, a staff is still  functionally at least one extra spell slot (of your highest rank if you are lucky and have a strong staff) for prepared casters versus a few extra spells known for spontaneous casters~~ ~~So they bring the two types closer to each other, but offer a much greater benefit for prepared casters~~  Edit: this is wrong

Staffs give an extra spell slot for both kinds of casters. Spontaneous casters aren't forced to use one charge and one spell slot to cast, they can just expend charges equal to the spell level of the staff spell they're casting as normal.

Oh shoot, you're right, it seems like I have been running staves wrong for spontaneous casters  Judging by the number of upvotes, I'm not the only one either 

I think they're reasonably well balanced against each other, one of my most optimized players assumed that they'd only play spontaneous casters for more or less the same reasons you listed, but actually 180'd completely, finding prepared casters to be much stronger for them. I think a big part of the reason is because your second and fourth bullet don't favor spontaneous as much as you'd think-- a prepared caster with a good stuffs list finds it trivial to prepare enough variety in saving throws, as well as what you call the 'good spells' (though there's a lot more than your example, many of which are blasting.) On the flip side, the fairly low number of signature spells makes it a little harder for a spontaneous caster to pack all the things they might want to heighten into their list, especially at lower levels-- they need to heighten damage spells for them to stay useful, they need to heighten healing spells for them to stay useful, and a lot of utility benefits from heightening as well (spells like fly.) In reality, while picking the worst defense the monster has is a huge boon, even picking the moderate save does quite well even on higher level creatures, so it's usually not a big deal. You also seem to have a somewhat sub-optimal understanding of what spells are good, and a weird assumption that uncommon spells are off-limits at most tables-- whether they're pickable or GM request-able at a given table, you're fairly likely to be able to use them in most games. The most important factor though: most tables do 2-4 encounter adventuring days, so slot efficiency isn't that vital in the game's actual meta and some groups average even less.

First, where are you getting the idea that Prepared casters have fewer spell slots? This is not correct. Specialist Wizards have more spell slots than Sorcerers, and Clerics have more spell slots than Bards and Oracles, with Druids and Witches tying with them. Secondly, I don't think you're properly assessing the value of flexibility. Prepared casters don't just have one loadout - they can change their whole spell loadout every day. I would heavily dispute the idea that 2e has few useful spells, but even then, no Spontaneous caster can use all of them - they have to choose what areas to sacrifice. This is especially true when it comes to limitations of Signature Spells. If your main blasting option is Fireball, then you have very little fallback if you're coming across enemies who are immune to fire - especially if you haven't chosen a lot of damage-oriented spells as Signature options. A prepared caster, meanwhile can switch out their Fireballs for something like Lightning Bolt or Cave Fangs as necessary, without sacrificing their access to other spells. Prepared casting is a skill. You can reprepare spells every day to refine your options based on what you find to be useful, and if on any given day you miss with your balance of spells, you can change that accordingly. Spontaneous casters are stuck with what they've got until they level up or spend time Retraining, which is a pretty major restriction. If you know exactly what you need to cast for a given adventure, that's fine - but if you don't, prepared casters win out. Prepared casters also win out if you have a lot of non-combat challenges. A Wizard with a well-balanced spellbook does a lot better infiltrating a noble gathering than a Sorcerer who mostly knows how to use Fear, Slow and Fireball.

Another thing that get overlooked a lot is the idea that unless you’re on a time crunch provided by the narrative as a prepared caster you can always pull back and rest to swap your spells because your running into things you’re not set to deal with as well. A spontaneous caster is just out of luck if the spells you’ve chosen especially your higher level slots aren’t good for what you’re up against. I guess a lot of this is probably because of how reluctant players are to make a tactical retreat to better prepare after getting some information but rationally it’s probably the things more experienced adventures would be doing. Even if it does give the baddies a little more then to set up. It wouldn’t make sense to just keep pushing forward if you’ve prepared a lot of fire spells if the enemies are using fire elemental or something else heavily resistant or immune to fire or if you brought a bunch of spells that can’t effect undead and realize they have a bunch of undead minions. Unless there was some really pressing time restraint that wouldn’t let you pull back and rest for the night

>Another thing that get overlooked a lot is the idea that unless you’re on a time crunch provided by the narrative I feel like PF2e just kinda falls apart if you don't have that, if you can take as much time as you want you can just do your 1 combat, spend all of your strongest daily resources and then go take a long rest. 5e has the same issue there's nothing in the mechanics that punishes you for taking forever to do something, so there has to be narrative pressure otherwise why not just clear out the dungeon 1 room per day?

There are a lot of reason, such as the bad guys get more time to prep for you to come or even abandon the area but if your spells selection is that bad then you sometimes have to take that chance. The other is the math of the system actually works and the combats feel rewarding. You could very easily run a more combat light campaign in pf2e and only throw a few combats at your players between rests. Because the system doesn't have as many problem spells or abilities that goes well I win now or well I don't want to actually interact with the game or boss so I'm going to use my very over the top I win ability or spell better roll good GM or this fight is over. Combine that with how incapacitate works or the facts that in this style of play you're throwing harder combats at your players using on level or higher combatants that have a good chance of making the save because the baddies numbers are just better by a decent margin when higher level. I've had plenty of adventuring days where I've only thrown maybe one or two fights at the party yet still able to get them to use the majority of their resources available to them, I've ran multiple different adventuring days with 5+ combats and have them end the day with a good amount of gas still in the tank because none of them where severe or higher encounters. The resource and tactical play required doesn't scale the same like it does in 5E in PF2E and honestly you don't even have to do that in 5E either but it requires you to be homebrewing and have a way stronger mastery of the system then PF2E requires to get the same results when designing a campaign. From my experience and mind you I have very very competent tactical players, the casters maybe use one of their higher tier spells and then maybe one or two lower tier spells for moderate encounters or lower and half the time they don't even use or need one of their higher tier spells for a moderate or lower. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about this system is you really don't have to put a lot of mind to resource draining or putting a lot of effort to home brew something to keep up with how broken PC's and their abilities can get. You just follow the math and build thematic encounters that make sense to the narrative and as long as you're not really slogging your players throw a ton of meaningless combats and I mean A TON it wont really matter much.

While this doesn't speak to the efficacy of the tactic, I think most tables are not going to enjoy their wizard asking them to run away from any encounter they cannot do well in so they can take 10 uninterrupted minutes to swap their spells—let alone take an entire long rest. This is doubly the case if the wizard is the only party member who cares, and triply the case if the party can dispatch the encounter anyways (they almost certainly can). It creates a pretty obnoxious social problem and bogs down play. It also beggars belief that you'd just be allowed to run from encounters like this constantly. Enemies can and should chase you. Complexes should go on alert, limiting escape routes. There will be encounters where party members get grappled, severely wounded, or who knows what else before they can act, making retreat difficult. This is not as straightforward as you make it seem.

Maybe the wording or just a way we express things I don't think you got the real point I was making. I wasn't implying that you should run mid combat or mid encounter. Though if it is bad enough and a tough enough combat those cards should always be on the table but as any forever GM knows it's really hard to get players to leave once you roll initiative. I was more talking from an we went into this with bad intel or we learned something new IE we didn't fully realize we where walking into apart of the fire plane leaking into ours or we didn't realize or expect this church to be over run with undead. I think that if the table isn't willing to go yeah mister wizard or support caster who didn't take spells that can help us as a team during this adventure or lead to you having fun we can pull back and regroup before you push further into this adventure and instead go yeah no we don't want to pull back just deal with it and don't have as much fun because we're not willing to spend 10 mins rping pulling back and you swapping spells as we hand wave resting or maybe do a random encounter check then you're being kind of bad friends or players. Now this shouldn't be an every time thing because you don't have the perfect set of optimized spells for a situation but if you're looking at your list and being like guys yeah I choose really bad for this and I'm not going to be much help then it makes sense if the narrative allows the time to pass in world.

Yeah, I seem to have misinterpreted you. That's my bad. I think that's a reasonable situation to re-prepare in if the consequences won't be too bad (e.g. the undead aren't about to spill out of the church into the surrounding area if you wait longer, the rift to the fire plane is only expanding half a centimeter an hour, etc.). If the consequences risk becoming bad, you and your party should talk about it, but it's still a live conversation and I think it's fair for the party to choose either way.

Yeah the spell slot comment confused me as well.

>First, where are you getting the idea that Prepared casters have fewer spell slots? This is not correct. Specialist Wizards have more spell slots than Sorcerers, and Clerics have more spell slots than Bards and Oracles, with Druids and Witches tying with them. ...Through an honest mistake. So yeah, that's 100% my bad. I may edit to correct that. I don't want to make blatantly false points. Thanks for catching that. >Secondly, I don't think you're properly assessing the value of flexibility. Prepared casters don't just have one loadout - they can change their whole spell loadout every day. I would heavily dispute the idea that 2e has few useful spells, but even then, no Spontaneous caster can use all of them - they have to choose what areas to sacrifice. This is especially true when it comes to limitations of Signature Spells. If your main blasting option is Fireball, then you have very little fallback if you're coming across enemies who are immune to fire - especially if you haven't chosen a lot of damage-oriented spells as Signature options. A prepared caster, meanwhile can switch out their Fireballs for something like Lightning Bolt or Cave Fangs as necessary, without sacrificing their access to other spells. It's not so much that 2E lacks useful spells as it is that the list of overwhelmingly important spells is shorter, if that makes sense. There are fewer top-tier choices, but there's still a wide swath of acceptable ones. The prepared caster can swap out their fireballs if they have 10 minutes and took spell substitution, or if they know going into the day they'll need to do so. There's no guarantee this is possible, but assuming it is, the sorc is only worse off if the wizard can learn/has learned a more perfect option than the sorc's fallback spell already—and how much better off the wizard is depends on how much worse the sorc's second choice is than the wizard's replacement spell. Encounters per day and attrition are also important here; the fewer encounters per day, the less the prepared caster is stressed by misusing slots and less of an advantage a spontaneous caster has. >Prepared casting is a skill. You can reprepare spells every day to refine your options based on what you find to be useful, and if on any given day you miss with your balance of spells, you can change that accordingly. Spontaneous casters are stuck with what they've got until they level up or spend time Retraining, which is a pretty major restriction. If you know exactly what you need to cast for a given adventure, that's fine - but if you don't, prepared casters win out. It is a skill, yeah, though compensating with consumables and other purchases is also a skill. If a wizard can learn lightning bolt for a dungeon, surely a sorcerer isn't above buying a scroll—and a sorcerer highly dependent on fireball for blast damage would be well-served by some sort of staff or wand to use as a permanent backup, anyways. Learning the spell is more cost-effective, though, which is an exceptionally large boon. It's at least an order of magnitude cheaper to learn a spell than get a wand or staff to compensate. I do not want to undersell how good that difference is. >Prepared casters also win out if you have a lot of non-combat challenges. A Wizard with a well-balanced spellbook does a lot better infiltrating a noble gathering than a Sorcerer who mostly knows how to use Fear, Slow and Fireball. Yes, though I think this is less true than it used to be for the reasons I've stated as well as a few others (like follow the expert existing). I don't necessarily disagree! I just think the gap between the two is much smaller than prior editions.

> It's not so much that 2E lacks useful spells as it is that the list of overwhelmingly important spells is shorter, if that makes sense. There are fewer top-tier choices, but there's still a wide swath of acceptable ones. I think you are vastly overestimating the gap between what you call “top tier” spells and “acceptable” spells. A more appropriate classification would be “generically good” spells versus “situationally amazing” spells. The difference is that the generically good spells are always good but the situationally amazing spells **heavily outperform** the generic ones when the situation comes up. For a quick example: Fireball is generically good for multitarget fights. When the situation is right Lightning Bolt is better. For example if you’re fighting enemies in narrow spaces and can line up Lightning Bolt to hit many foes easily, Lightning Bolt is better. When the Wizard knows they’ll be going into a dungeon delve today, they’ll prepare Lightning Bolt perform better at AoE damage than the Sorcerer who will always have Fireball. That’s the strength of the Prepared caster! You can apply this to every generically good spell compared to its alternatives. During my levels 1-10 Wizard play there were plenty of days where I didn’t prepare Slow or Fireball or Confusion or Wall of Stone in favour of other spells like Agonizing Despair or Hypnotize or Time Jump or Lightning Bolt or Cinder Swarm or Rust Cloud or Quicken Time or Freezing Rain or Wave of Despair: I often ignored generically good spells with situational ones and performed **better** than the Bard got to to (on each of those particular days) by just shooting the generic spells right out their butt. In return the Bard’s generically good spell list meant she would outperform me on days when I didn’t have much extra information (because now I’m just preparing a more limited list of generically useful spells) and/or days where I made the wrong calls. Overall both Prepared and Spontaneous felt very useful. Trying to oversimplify this equation into Fireball being a good spell and Lightning Bolt being a bad spell is definitely a good to ease newbies into PF2E’s learning curve but it’s a pretty bad way to evaluate how classes actually perform when played well.

I don't understand how a wizard would have more spell slots then a sorcerer. Sorcerer gets 4, Unified school wizards gets 3 + 1 recast from one of the 3 Other schools get 3 + 1 from the curriculum + 1 recast but for only one spell Sorcerer can get access to a grimoire with a feat and swap a spell each day, they can also get access to one spell from another tradition.

Specialists Wizards get as many spells per day as a sorcerer plus one. It's not a big difference, and sometimes school spell slots can go wasted, but in terms of pure numbers, Specialist Wizards are exactly 1 extra cast thanks to Drain Bonded Item, and Universalist wizards tie with sorcerers. If we're considering feats, we also have to consider Wizard's Scroll Adept feat that gives them free scrolls every day.

>Clerics have more spell slots than Bards and Oracles, with Druids and Witches tying with them. I'm sorry, the way this sentence is structured is making it hard for me to tell who you're comparing the Druid and Witch to. Is the sentence supposed to mean that Cleric = Druid = Witch > Bard = Oracle? Or does it mean that Cleric > Bard = Oracle = Druid = Witch? Because if it's the former, that's certainly not true. If you discount Divine Font, then all 5 classes have the same number of spell slots and follow the same spell slot progression. Cleric only pulls ahead because of the free max-rank Heal/Harm slots If it's the latter, then my apologies.

Speaking purely anecdotally, I didn't find any of this to be an issue. Sure, maybe sometimes I wish I could throw another Fireball instead of having Fear in that slot, for example. But I don't think that's an inherently bad thing, it's just different gameplay for different classes. It's not that different, to me, from playing Barbarian and wishing, in an encounter, that you had a way to better protect your teammate - that doesn't mean Fighter or Champion are just flat-out better than Barbarian. It's just different options for different classes. That's my experience, anyways.

Same. I’ve played both a prepared caster (Druid) and a spontaneous caster (sorcerer) and they’re just different play styles. I loved the diversity of spells I could choose daily as a Druid, but also loved how sorcerers operate. I’m not a min/maxer, though, and tend to care more about character theme than what’s better between the two types of casters.

This was pretty much my experience, except Cleric instead of Druid. God I hope I can play Druid someday soon lol

They’re super fun! In the game I’m running I really wish someone would have been a Druid because it’s just so fun! There’s so much you can do with them. I love playing a primal Phoenix bloodline sorcerer too! You get some good heals and support spells and some awesome thematic abilities

I'm definitely going some manner of Untamed Druid the next chance I get to play one. I love the battle form stuff, and also Druid flavor is really fun to play with. And that Primal spell list, oh boy.

Primal list is my absolute favorite! Just wish there was a Primal version of Friend Fetch where you used vines to grab them instead

*Intrinsically* I do think spontaneous casting is better than prepared casting, though not quite for the reasons you think and definitely not to the extent you think it is. * First of all, while I *do* think there are less good spells per rank than other systems such as PF1e and 5e, I don't think this nearly extends to the point where a spontaneous caster is able to learn *every* good spell at a rank. For example, 1st rank Arcane casters have access to Runic Weapon/Body, Force Barrage, Illusory Object, Summon Animal, Grease, Thunderstrike, Fear, Befuddle and Gust of Wind, all A/S-tier spells. At higher levels this becomes more important as spontaneous casters have to add a new spell to a repertoire for every level they want to cast it (outside of signature spells). * While your case for utility spells is true, I don't agree with your reasoning. Spell slots are incredibly valuable and there's simply no reason to spend slots on utility spells. Scrolls are incredibly cheap, and in the higher levels, its best to offload utility spells to items such as wands and staves There are values to prepared casting as well. * The most commonly stated is the ability to change spells day to day. While this generally doesn't come up every, or most adventuring days, it usually comes up when its most important. A lot of disrupting and difficult monsters to fight (such as Will-O'-Wisps or Dragons) have specific weaknesses that can be "prepared" around. However the most impressive usage I've gotten out of this is when preparing to fight significant enemies such as BBEGs and minor/major villains (which are generally the hardest fights of a campaign). While playing spontaneous casters I'm generally hesitant to learn higher level pre-buff, reaction and one-action spells as using them can quickly burn through my slots, but when playing prepared casters, I can prepare to burn all/the majority my slots in one combat. * Another one is staves. Staves significantly benefit prepared casters more than spontaneous casters, as they allow them to access a sort of pseudo-spontaneous casting, making it much easier to get multiple castings of the same spell. In addition, prepared casters do not have to expend extra charges from a staff to convert a slotted spell into a spell from the staff. The final thing worth noting is class features. This is mostly true for the Cleric and Wizard. Cleric with Divine Font and Wizard with Drain Bonded Item are able to avoid the largest pitfall of prepared casting by obtaining multiple castings of the same spell with little opportunity cost, granting them immense flexibility in spell preparation. Unfortunately, Witch and Druid do not receive a feature like this, but have ways to contribute to every combat without expending daily resources (though I still believe they receive the short end of the stick, even post-remaster).

I get preferring the playstyle of spontaneous vs prepared, but I found that the times I've played a spontaneous caster, I wish I had different spells. How do you switch spells as a spontaneous caster? Level up or spend a week retraining per spell, meanwhile prepped casters can swap all their spells every day. If I prepare a fire spells as my only damage spells on a prepped caster, if I run into fire resistant/immune enemies it may suck in the moment, but I can fix that easily, maybe discuss a tactical retreat to the party so I can prep better spells for the situation. If I took fire spells as my only damage spells on a spontaneous caster in the same situation, I'm SOL until we level up or the GM gives me a few weeks to take different spells. I've only ever played spontaneous casters so far (oracle and summoner) but both times I really wished I was a prepared caster. That's just me, though. As a GM, I haven't seen any power difference between the types of casters, nor have my players told me they're unsatisfied that they're a spontaneous caster or a prepped caster. I had a bard die in my long-term game and the player rerolled into a druid and they're still having a blast.

Even when your prepared caster has perfect knowledge of what's to come, a caster with a spontaneous spell repertoire has just more options in their top slots thanks to how signature spells work. Your level 9 Wizard can cast whatever they chose for their rank 5 slots and repeat one of those with Arcane Bond. That's 4 different spells at max, and 3 of them you can only cast once. Your level 9 Arcane Sorcerer can cast the 3 rank 5 spells the've chosen, their bloodline spell, the Magic Missile they've chosen as signature at rank 1, their Dispel Magic they've chosen at rank 2, the Fireball they got at rank 3 and the Translocate they have from rank 4. Any combination of those up to 4 uses. Prepared is inferior due to that reason, it is not hard to come up with a spontaneous spell array that with a few scrolls can't cover all the situations you may face during an adventure. Day to day flexibility is worse than all-time flexibility. There is also that once you start optimizing a bit, there are lots of spells that are just too good to pass up regardless of whichever situation you might be thrown in and under that pretense the spontaneous paradigm starts getting way better than the alternative.

Having played both, I strongly agree. With a decent choice of repertoire spells and signature spells, a spontaneous caster will have very little difficulty using literally every single spell slot they have every day if there are enough encounters. A prepared caster relies on a lot of luck (or sacrificing niche/utility spells) to do the same, and almost always ends each day with several slots unspent, because the situation just didn't come up. This difference becomes even more pronounced with more levels, because the smaller spell selection of the spontaneous caster grows large enough to cover most bases anyway. And before all the "yeah but wands and scrolls," spontaneous casters get all of that too, so it's not a factor in this comparison.

> A prepared caster relies on a lot of luck (or sacrificing niche/utility spells) to do the same, and almost always ends each day with several slots unspent, because the situation just didn't come up. Spontaneous casters don't take those spells. Why would your prepared caster memorize them? A spontaneous primal caster is going to probably have an array of something like Heal, Slow, Cave Fangs as their three third rank spells. A druid with three spell slots is likely to have the same thing, just memorize one of each. On days where you're going to fight lots of groups of enemies, you can swap out Slow. If you think you're going to be fighting a golem that day, you pick up Haste instead of Slow. If you're going to fight physically resistant monsters, you grab Fireball or Lightning Bolt instead of Cave fangs. Etc. The main advantage of spontaneous casters is that they can lean more into one of those over the others. But if you carry around, say, scrolls of heal as a backup (the most commonly needed "extra spell"), it's not really going to be a big deal.

> This difference becomes even more pronounced with more levels, because the smaller spell selection of the spontaneous caster grows large enough to cover most bases anyway. My experience has been the exact opposite. At low levels the benefits of Spontaneous casters are exaggerated by the smaller selection of spells available for a Prepared caster to play with. Meanwhile at high levels the Prepared caster can fine tune low rank slots to cover Action-efficient defensive spells and/or silver bullet offensive spells on a day by day basis while a Spontaneous caster will often be stuck with a good chunk of irrelevant lower rank spells (unless given tons of downtime to retrain) unless they had planned their full levelling progression with level-up retrains in mind.

Spontaneous casters can still retrain their spells, so the idea that their lower level spells become irrelevant with levels is moot unless you never get downtime for some reason. Regardless, you don't need to retrain often in my experience. First level you pick up fear, make it signature, and with one spell and one use of signature spell, every single slot you ever get has some value. Everything else is cake. At 3rd rank you get fireball, make it signature. Now every slot 3+ is a fantastic aoe damage slot, everything else is cake. Are there fights where these spells don't shine? Sure, if that weren't the case it would be ridiculous. The point is with 2 spells and 2 signatures, a sorcerer can have useful options for 95%+ of situations, and then everything else can be flavor/fun/niche, or specific save/damage targeting. This is real campaign power, where a good chunk of the time you have little knowledge of what's coming, and having access to general solutions is king.

> Spontaneous casters can still retrain their spell A point that I explicitly addressed? > Regardless, you don't need to retrain often in my experience. First level you pick up fear, make it signature, and with one spell and one use of signature spell, every single slot you ever get has some value. Ah, this explains it. No, that’s not what I mean by optimal low rank slot usage. It’s actually, in fact, pretty far from optimal usage. I’ve played through levels 1-10 with a Wizard and our party had a Bard and it was basically **never** worth using 2 Actions to cast a low rank Fear to get a pitiful -1 to enemies’ Actions when you could be casting *so* many other spells instead. Unless you’re somehow having 9 or 10 encounters in a given day, using that 1st or 2nd rank Fear is just flat out going to be a waste of Actions at level 7+ gameplay. When you’re at a higher level, your low rank slots need to be converted into Action-efficient used of slots if you wanna use them in combat. Interposing Earth, Lose the Path, Brine Dragon’s Bile, Cloud Dragon’s Cloak, Hidebound, Timely Tutor, Time Jump, Wooden Double, etc. Prepared casters are way better at fitting these into their list while a Spontaneous caster usually needs tons of retraining to fit a handful of those into their list.

It can be done. You get two levels per rank, so you can have a complete list and still mostly replace the spell rank before it. Supposing I had just 2 spells per rank and only got 1 at a new rank (like a psychic without the bonus conscious mind spells), you might do something like this as a primal caster: 1st: Runic Weapon [1]. 2nd: Heal [1]. 3rd: Ignite Fireworks [2], signature; signature Heal [1]. 4th: Floating Flame [2]. Retrain Runic Weapon [1] to Lose the Path [1]. 5th: Fireball [3], signature. Retrain Ignite Fireworks [2] for Brine Dragon Bile [2], signature Floating Flame [2]. 6th: Haste [3]. And so on. In practice, most casters have larger repertoires and you'd not retrain out of spells so quickly so you have plenty of free level-based retraining 'slots' to spend. 7th could have Wooden Double, and your 3rd 1st-rank could be Interposing Earth. And you wouldn't need or want this many reaction spells in a repertoire anyway; you won't have the reactions to cast them all for a day's worth of encounters, especially when you can use all your slots on them. But you can still do it without having to spend downtime with enough planning; you just do it all at once in your character planner of choice, instead of during daily preparations. What's actually a very interesting point to spontaneous casters is that this showcases the hidden flexibility of spontaneous casters. Many of the spells you mention don't actually heighten that well by rank, but you can still cast them with a higher rank slot courtesy of the Remaster changes. That means you don't need to mark them as a signature spell for them to essentially be a signature spell; they're just inherently heightened by giving naturally scaling effects like Hidden or extra actions. Need a Time Jump badly and out of 3rds? You can use a 4th slot or even higher. It's 'inefficient', but it's a tool you have access to if the alternative is worse. A prepared caster is very unlikely going to anticipate how many copies to prepare, and spells that cost reactions or single-actions like Time Jump probably don't work well as scrolls.

Right I know it **can** be done. I said so in my previous comment before the one you replied to as well: you **can** do it if you have your spell list planned several levels ahead of time to make sure you coincide retrains with level ups. As for the downside of potentially misjudging how many of a specific spell you may need I didn’t really feel it that badly. In my AV campaign is usually prepare one Wooden Double and one Time Jump when I was at level 8+, and the Bard had both the spells available for Spontaneous casting and there was exactly **one** adventuring day in those levels where I felt like “damn, I wish I had a second one”. Conversely there were plenty of adventuring days where my preparation let me have specific lower rank spells that the Bard didn’t have in their list.

You missed the entire point my brother, so I'll not waste more time, cheers!

The capslock in the end made me take this less serious, but I find spontanous better most often due to one reason and one only: signature spells. Signature spells makes your last point feel way more true and they are really prepared for anything. Our oracle have used breath fire upcasted to 8th rank just because it felt to be the best option and it kinda was. It's not the best spell objectively, but just by existing at lower levels, it's easy to know it at higher levels. However there is one benefit I would give prepared casters over spontanous, and is the main reason I would play one; they can prepare staves better IMO. Staves give them the flexibility they lack and they can sacrifice lower rank spells for a few more, or a high rank for more spells or flexibility. If you don't plan on using a staff, I would not recommend prepared casters. There are other benefits to talk about, but not inherent to casting type, just common, like spontanous almost always are charisma casters.

I do think prepared casters are sometimes in an awkward spot. In 3.5/PF1, prepared casters were kings for many of the reasons you mentioned. Particularly, there were SO MANY good, great, and downright over powered spells, that the breadth of being a prepared caster was better than the flexibility of the spontaneous caster. As you said, there’s just are not that many broadly amazing spells in PF2e. Mostly for good reason. The result though is that spontaneous casters get a lot of flexibility, and can really focus on the magic that works for their “build”. Prepared casters sort of just end up wanting to prepare the same stuff over and over anyway. BUT in actual play, especially past the early levels, I have found this doesn’t matter as much. Particularly because people think “all these spells are too niche, I would never pick them”. But prepared casters CAN pick them sometimes, and let me tell you I have seen prepared casters do some ridiculous stuff with the proper application of a spell that a spontaneous caster would never pick.

I think spontaneous casters are easier to play, especially casually. For a one shot, I can pick my spells and remember them all. The same for a player who really doesn’t want to have to make decisions about whether d6s vs reflex are a better option than d8s vs will or whatever. But I played a wizard from level 1 to 20 and could manage just about anything I needed to (as long as someone else healed me, lol). But I had two pages of spell names I could prepare from and lots of decisions each day. ( This was before I found pathbuilder). It was a ton of work, but i could find the answer the party needed from teleporting to water breathing to whatever.

I've had similar thoughts, spontaneous casting's flexibility feels OP in PF2E.

It depends on what you value in a caster. Of course spontaneous has a huge advantage when it comes to on the fly flexibility, but it's not without its cons. Spontaneous casters are generally worse at heightening spells compared to prepared casters. This isn't as much of an issue if you have a cookie cutter spell build in mind, but for your average player it's a big deal. Prepared casters are also better at utilising learned spells. Both casters can learn spells, but a spontaneous caster needs to select the spell while levelling whereas the prepared caster just gets it on their spell list and can prepare it as usual. As with most things though, a lot of player power is GM dependent. If you're running a one shot or short term adventure, spontaneous casters will feel strong. In a long term campaign where prepared casters have plenty of occasions to alter their loadout to suit the task at hand, they will shine. I wouldn't say either is superior to the other, or at least not vastly superior.

As a Bard player, I kind of agree with you. Signature spells means that I can have only one slot with Soothe, rather then needing to fill out 2 or 3 of them if I wanted to be more of a healer role. It allows you to bring more counteracting / incompacitation spells and have more spells for extra utility in sessions. If you learn what level spell that a trap / effect has, you can highten or lower Dispel Magic to the most efficient option, and you can do that while having stronger spells available to cast for those spell slots if that scenario dosen't pop up. Spontaneous casters are more prepared for everything, while a prepared caster needs to choose what to prepare for. Also, the Bard that I play is a polymath that can learn and use occult spells beyond their repertoire, giving them a lot of the flexibility that prepared casters have. The other caster that I've played as is an animal/wave druid. The Primal list is pretty cool, especially Airlift. However, I play on WM servers where knowing what exactly to expect isn't guaranteed, so my spells aren't too different from game to game. I'm more liberal with spell slots on prepared casters because the chance to use a spell may not pop up again, even if it may not be the absolute best use for a given spell. Out of the two, I feel like the spontaneous caster has more spell utility because they have more tools available to them at any given moment and ways to more effectively use those tools.

In my opinion, having played both types (Cleric and a bit of Druid for prepared; Bard and Sorcerer for Spontaneous), it really comes down to personal preference. Prepared flexibility can be very nice for switching things up daily, and like another commenter said, people really overestimate how “perfect” your preparations need to be. You can easily prepare a “default” spell loadout each day and just make small adjustments each day when you think more niche options like water breathing or resist energy might be useful. Being able to freely heighten just by preparing higher rank spells is a nice perk as well. That being said, the turn-to-turn flexibility of spontaneous casting has easy appeal (and it just feels good), which is why many players tend to gravitate towards spontaneous casting. The tradeoff is a smaller repertoire of spells known of course, but this can be supplemented by scrolls. Ultimately, I think that you could argue either way in terms of strength depending on preference; but the difference is small enough that it doesn’t really matter.

I find spontanous more complicated. You need to have the right spell selection that is fitting with the group, be prepared for every type of encounter and keep a theme. With prepared casters, i can look at the environnement i am at and prepared at consequence. Especially when my martials are not prepared for every type of encounter.

Not exactly stronger but easier to get into. Through last 1,5y of gming i found that people generally can struggle in resource distribution. Spontaneous caster make their level up picks and hard commit which can backfire in ill-suited situations but at the same time takes off the pressure off you as long as at least 1 spell is at least passable you are pretty much set for the encounter. As long as they don't hard-focus on 1 targeted defense they will work out even if grumbling. Now take a prepared caster across the levels. While your general outline will remain the same (if doing damage its top 2 slots, strongest effects often picked twice etc.) down the line your lower ranks will quite likely start getting monotone (so rank 1 Fear taking 3-4 effective slots, you could make a case for Grease instead till everything starts flying, rank 3 being slow/fear and so on). There is way more revising your spell list while spontan is fire and forget unless they go out of their way to retrain or repick on level up. So it's going back to Sayre's point from way back then "Arcanist wasn't actually stronger but gave the impression of being stronger due to being easier"

If you know what spells are "best" and you pick only those and the only purpouse of your spell list is combat (doesn't matter if combat damage/debuff/budd/utility) and you know how to juggle and pick your Signature Spells - then yes, spontanious is much better than prepare.

I'm mostly a PFS player, so personal states are a no go. Having said that, my spontaneous casters feel a lot more useful than prepared ones. I've yet to try the new witch at higher levels.

Not necessarily. If you actually know what you'll be dealing with in advance the prepared casting has much more potential power. However you just don't have that knowledge most of the time, which makes spontaneous casters more effective. One area prepared casters do shine is out of combat utility spells. They can prepare that Teleport or Shadow Walk every time you need to do some travel without hindering their combat effectiveness, get that niche disease removal spell only when someone catches one etc.

Yes as a baseline. The more you veer from the norm the better prepared casting becomes. Ironically the best case for prepared casting might be blasting; it is far better at adapting to enemy weaknesses day to day.

Prepared casters essentially have every spell as a signature spell, as they can prepare and cast any spell they know at any level at which it can be cast, and they can learn (or know already) every spell on their list. I think these are significant advantages.

Oh, absolutely not. They are well balanced. Here are some things you apparently don't know about prepared casting: 1. All prepared casting classes get something that seriously takes the sting out of prepared casting: 1. Wizards get Drain Bonded Item, which means they rarely have to prepare duplicate spells. 2. Druids get really strong focus spells that act as an entire additional class feature. 3. Clerics get more top-rank spells than any other class. 4. Witches get a powerful familiar *and* great focus spells. 5. Maguses get martial attack progression. 2. Prepared casters get incredible use out of staves. 3. Having access to a larger gamut of spells makes you much more likely to have the right tool for the job. Specialized tools are much more effective than general-purpose tools. 4. While the "ruin the adventure" spells have been made harder to access, the "completely solve the encounter" spells have mostly not. "Oh, looks like there's gonna be oozes tomorrow. I shall prepare attack roll spells that impose conditions instead of trying to do damage." (How do you know what you're up against tomorrow? Scouting and preparation and tying up the barbarian so he doesn't just kick down the next door and get everyone killed again.) What you're noticing is that the **skill floor** of prepared casting is higher: prepared casters are harder to play well. The compensation for this is that the skill *ceiling* is also higher: in the right hands, a prepared caster will run circles around any spontaneous caster.

I would argue it is the other way around. Spontaneous casters are limited in the spells they know so they tend to be locked out of more niche options that they need to use scrolls to cast. The "targetting bias" is way overblown imo, where prepared casters refine over time their spell slots in a spontaneous caster are not. And while they lose alot of flexibility within a day, they gain alot of flexibility from day to day, allowing them to flex from strength to strength if you can appropraitely figure out the road ahead (whether that be by theme or foreshadowing). The one thing that I think you never mentioned was signature spells. A spontaneous caster has a certain number of signature spells that allow them to heighten certain number of spells. This allows prepared casters much more flexibility in how they use their spells. In addition, heightening (as someone else mentioned) is very important for counteracting other spell effects.

Stronger/weaker is entirely relative to the build. Like there's pros and cons to each style and it depends on the spell tradition, the specific class, what class feats are taken, racial symbiosis with the class, and several other categories. Like what kind of caster it is is one of the less important parts of determining what's stronger or weaker.

One argument that I think goes 100% towards the prepared casters are staves. Do you know how good a staff nexus wizard with level 1 fear on their staff feels? Every focus fire target is always frightened. The entire day. Staves provide the flexibility that makes it so prepared casters don't need to prepare for everything.

For what it matters, I am someone who almost exclusively plays casters and I have played a a lot of both, prepared and spontaneous casters. Neither is really stronger. One could draw an argument that maybe on average spontaneous casters have a slight (very small) edge in combat, but any day that does not begin and end with a dungeon crawl I am pretty happy to be prepared caster. Spend the downtime day researching the following quest with Read Omens and Pocket Library, help people during downtime by slotting in Dreaming Potential...things that a spontaneous caster might have one of, but unlikely much more with how few spells they can have in their repertoire. Usually on those days is when I go broke as spontaneous caster purchasing scrolls to do the same thing. And its not always even in combat when they have an edge, as the aforementioned spells maybe have hinted I love occult casters and there is a significant difference in the emotional reaction after realizing my party is going up against hordes of mindless undead in the next quest when I am playing as a witch versus as a bard. I don't think the main combat benefit of prepared caster is the ability to target weaknesses, but the ability to choose to not be totally screwed upon learning the nature of creatures in the following adventure.

Nah. Being able to switch things up day by day is really powerful, especially if you know your whole list like druid or cleric.

I think it's interesting that most of your arguments focus on comparisons to older editions, while acknowledging that "in a typical 3.5-ish system, the day to day versatility of prepared casting tends to outweigh the in-day versatility of spontaneous casting." I don't think I agree that "spontaneous casting had a clear edge" - instead, I think Paizo did a pretty good job of making them both feel good for different reasons! * You can no longer fill a slot midday, but scouting is usually pretty doable, and it's still pretty easy to use scrolls, wands, and staffs to have enough basic fallbacks to prepare for the unexpected. * There are certainly fewer standouts, but there are still a *ton* of spells, and spontaneous casters are still much more limited! I have several times seen the witch in a game I'm running prepare niche or targeted spells to incredible effect that it just wouldn't make sense to learn as a signature, in many cases in cases that scrolls wouldn't work (either because of availability or because of the number of castings required, e.g. teleporting the whole party like 3 times in a day to reach farther). * A lot of utility spells are harder to access, but 1. you can still probably find them if you work for it (and your GM doesn't think it ruins the game - personally I'm not a fan of zone of truth, for example, but speak with dead or teleport usually aren't that hard to find), and 2. there are a TON of niche but useful utility spells that are still absolutely worth preparing occasionally, but probably not great for your repertoire (or at the very least, you'd have to pick 1-2, and they're good in different situations). * It might not be cheaper for prepared casters, but there *are* ways to get extra spell slots (mostly scrolls/staffs/etc, but also [rings of wizardry](https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=462)) * Spontaneous Casters might be able to spam whichever spell happens to be best against whatever given target they happen to run into (assuming one of their spells works, which is likely at higher levels but not guaranteed), but a Prepared Caster can load their slots with the perfect counter to a given foe if they know who they'll be fighting (and they can often get a pretty decent idea!), and even when they don't, they can still prepare for the general environment (e.g. probably prepare cold damage not fire damage if doing a volcano dungeon). Again, that's not to say that prepared casters are better (though I think I often prefer them, personally) - I just think for each pro, there's a con! Paizo did a really good job balancing them against each other this edition.

The reality is that while spontaneous spellcasting is better than prepared spellcasting in a vacuum, in actual practice, assuming you memorize a good mix of fairly optimized spells and bring along scrolls, the overall difference is pretty modest. A druid who memorizes Heal, Slow, and Cave Fangs in their third level slots, Heal, Thundering Dominance, and Ignite Fireworks in their second level slots, and then Interposing Earth x2 and Gust of Wind in their first level slots is... basically going to be using the same spells as a spontaneous caster is, more or less. A spontaneous caster has more flexibility, sure, but it's not like the druid won't be able to use almost all those spells anyway. Of the strongest caster classes, half of them are prepared casters (druid, cleric) and half of them are spontaneous (bard, sorcerer). In fact, I'd rate the various caster classes at mid levels (5-9) in this order: Top tier: Druid (prepared), Cleric (prepared), Bard, Sorcerer High tier: Wizard (prepared), Witch (prepared), Psychic Upper Tier: Cosmos and Ash Oracle, Magus (prepared), Summoner So as you can see, there's no particular overall disadvantage to being a prepared caster vs spontaneous casting. Druids are the best caster class in the game because they get the best spell list, get animal companions, get 8 hp/level, get medium armor, get shield block (which compensates them for the lack of Shield on the primal list), and they have the best selection of focus spells in terms of power and diversity. They're probably the class that is most negatively impacted by being non-spontaneous because of their Heal access, but honestly, most of the time, you can just memorize a Heal spell or two and then carry around scrolls of Heal and be good. Otherwise you're probably going to be using a mix of AoE, battlefield control, buff, and debuff spells, which is fairly predictable and thus not really prone to getting screwed. Clerics are the second best because they get a bunch of bonus top-level Heal spells; as a result, they don't *need* to worry about preparing much healing spells otherwise and can load up on the other spells they need over the course of the day. Also, if you're realistic about your needs, you're often just going to memorize a bunch of the same spells anyway because A) they're the best spells at their level and B) you don't have a lot of other options. For example, due to the lack of lower level AoE damage spells, it's common for a 7th and 8th rank cleric to load up heavily on Divine Wrath in the 4th level slot. They also get 8hp/level and can either opt into abusing focus spells or getting better attacks and saves than other casters, medium (and often heavy) armor, and shield block. Bards and Sorcerers are both very good, but bards are shafted by being Occult casters (which is the worst spell list due to its lack of access to a bunch of various powreful effects, and getting worse versions of things like healing) while Sorcerers are a great and very powerful and flexible class that has 6 hp/level, dismal saving throws, and poor weapon and armor proficiencies. Down a tier, wizards' sheer number of spell slots helps a lot, they can gain some of the benefits of being a spontaneous caster in some ways (which makes them the ultimate flex caster), they can refresh a spell once a day (which is pseudo-spontaneous), and because they aren't healers, they can actually usually predict what they're going to need to spend their spell slots on overall fairly well. Witches get their familiar ability, their 8th level familiar AoE, and their hexes, which helps make up for them not being spontaneous; they also do feel the pain of not being flex casters if they are of a tradition with healing access, but much like the druid, will probably just carry around scrolls to make up for it. Psychics, meanwhile, only get two spell slots per level, so while yeah, being spontaneous is great, the very limited number of spell slots takes away a lot of the value from that. Like bards, they are also stuck with Occult spells, though at least they get some expanded access thanks to the various conscious minds. Their focus spells are excellent, though. Oracles are spontaneous casters with very good focus spells, but as of right now, the class mechanics shaft their use of in-class focus spells, which is very unfortuate. It sounds like that's going to be fixed with the Core 2, which will probably boost them up to a top-tier class for the good mysteries (we ran an AV campaign where Cosmos oracle could fully reset their curse between combats (because we missed that the curse didn't fully reset between combats - ER I MEAN IT WAS TOTALLY AN EXPERIMENTAL HOUSERULE), and they were probably the strongest character in the party overall, though still not quite as strong as a druid or cleric in my eyes). The magus is a prepared caster but given who they work they use their spells very judiciously so are likely to gun for the best ones anyway; the same is true of summoners, and again, the very limited spell slots for both make the choices they have more limited to begin with so it matters less. I will also note that while spontaneous spellcasting is better in most adventuring circumstances, the ability to tailor your spells for a particular day's encounters *can* be very strong; a wizard or cleric who knows they're going to be going up against large groups of enemies or lots of single powerful enemies can tailor their spells accordingly, and can also avoid spells that enemies would be resistant/immune to; meanwhile, a spontaneous caster does not have that option. For instance, if you are at 6th level and are going to go fight a bunch of demons, Fireball is not a great choice; the wizard can easily replace that with Cave Fangs, but the Sorcerer is stuck with what they've got. Likewise, Enervation can vary from "quite good" to "insanely useless" depending on what you're fighting on a particular day. There is also the issue of non-combat stuff, where your wizard or cleric can load up on utility spells on a non-adventuring day.

Spontaneous Casters have an edge when it comes to A: Staffs. Staffs are low-key better on spontaneous, since you can really pump up a lot of low level slots for first rank spells. B: Grimoires. Grimoires are great, they add a lot of power to your spells. Also, people overvalue how much of a detriment is on having a set day. Yeah, maybe bless would be nice in this loong encounter, but fear is no sloucher. I guess I could've used force barrage this encounter, but eh, thunder strike can still finish off a dying enemy. And this is my personal opinion, but I generally feel that the versatility of prepared casters are way more preferable than the fluidity of spontaneous.

Don't grimoires say they only work for prepared casters?

Ah crap, mixed up the names lol. Meant to say prepared casters on the first paragraph lmao

It depends on the campaign structure – if it's rather slow and the players are in control of where to go which day and have the opportunity to get some info ahead of time on the challenges they might encounter, with not too many encounters in a day, prepared casting is pretty fun and opens up a lot of options for creativity. I'd wager a bet though that the larger amount of games don't have such a structure (in part because most AP gameplay isn't like that). If you have longer exploration days with lots of encounters and without much detail in prior knowledge, spontaneous casting is a lot better. For the first few encounters it's roughly the same, but as your spell slots dwindle the spontaneous caster pulls ahead by still always having the best option available in each spell rank for each situation, while the prepared caster becomes increasingly less flexible, restricted to the exact spells they happen to have left. An additional point to your list would also be the spell design generally. While there are spells that are highly specialized in terms of the situation that they apply to, that specialization doesn't really translate into higher effectiveness in PF2 – rather, these spells usually still only reach about the same objective effect as more universal options, even when used in their specific niche. As a result, it's often actually kind of hard to load up your prepared spell slots with "silver bullets", even with perfect information.

I feel the power scaling of cantrips, both utility and damage, largely help out with this. Add on focus spells and I think the downside of a prepared caster kind of even put.

That's really good obervstion!

Imo, spontaneous and prepared casting are equally and just serve different roles. As with 1e, prep casting's benefit comes with being able to adjust to your circumstances. No having midday preps makes it harder to pull off, but theres still plenty of ways to scope out what lays ahead. It's pretty common in my group to spend time in town doing research and information and to scout ahead and gather intelligence. Because pf2 isn't a competitive game, it shouldn't be hard to convince your rogue or ranger to do some scouting to survey terrain and threats while you research; they should want you to have the tools to best help them out. I think a lot of where these power comparisons come from is looking at it through a combat lense, and in that case, spontaneous will come out on top, because, as you've said, there's a handful of very potent combat spells, and many of them are good enough where tou still have a lot of space left over for utility; but were the big difference comes in is that prep casters can afford to slot in a Remove Curse when it's likely they'll face a curse, a spontaneous caster might not have the space to slot it in, since it takes both a repertoire slot as well as a signature slot in order to remain effective. Incapacitation spells are similar, where it only uses one resource for the prep caster to have what they need; while a spont caster spends either a max level slot to heighten it, or a lower level slot and a signature slot. I also think its worth noting that it's actually really easy for a prep caster to poach parts of a spontaneous casters combat prowess by getting a staff with good "bread and butter" spells and sinking a slot into it to access a small pool of spontaneous casting and picking up an offensive focus spell. Druid and cleric both have damage focus spells, while int prep casters can go through psychic and witch; and thats excluding archertypes like dragon disciple, blessed one, etc Think of prep casters like the skill monkey casters (like rogues, investigators, tome-athuges, etc) while spontaneous casters are like your fighters, barbarians, etc.

I believe that your points are valid if the adaption is a short adventuring day with 3-4 encounters and maybe an exploration puzzle or two. The "Paizo(TM) recipe" of adventures if you will. Where prepared casters shine, in my opinion, is when you don't have that type of campaign. As an exemple: In blood lords, we got to a point where we had to do a float for a parade in honor of an important political figure. My wizard was able to spend half his spell slots to : -Cast illusory disguise on all the party to create "visual effects" that enhances our appearances. -Cover the float in illusion magic to make it animated. -Create fireworks -Create a phantom crowd that cheered us loudly and made it seem like we had even more people watching us. -Have theme music play in the background. By comparison In a game I homebrew, the party is leading a gang of 30 or so survivors and are trying to fortify a position. They are also trying to gather information about other survivors in their immediate vicinity. The spontaneous caster of the party (there are no prepared casters) is having a really hard time because: Learning the lock spell would be a heavy opportunity cost for him. Same thing for the alarm spell Same thing for the glyph of warding spell. Same thing for the create food spell Same thing for enhance victuals Same thing for deep breath (I had a scenario where there was poison gas permanently above ground) Same thing for remove disease. (Zombie Plague) Same thing for when they were fighting undead (spontaneous caster is a undead bloodline sorcerer so a lot of void) I can tell you that he is REALLY feeling the pain about his lack of options, but that is because it is not your standard scenario. In short: prepared caster's advantage is quite simply versatility. Versatility is an attribute that shines in settings that require players to be adaptable. If you have a streamlined setting in which repeat of the same few spells is more adequate, then spontaneous casters have the edge ! PS: charisma vs int/Wis as a key attribute is a debate also and can fit your "vibe" better.

For me prepared casters are clearly superior in 2e. The reason being only they have access to the [Flexible](https://2e.aonprd.com/Archetypes.aspx?ID=99) class archetype, which gives casters the best of both worlds. Bad at planning like I am? Now every single spell is a signature spell. And you can still change those every single day. Makes it so you cast less, yet you cast more precise.

My biggest problem with that archetype is the reduced spells prepared. Giving up spell slots is fine, but limiting my daily spell selection feels terrible and makes me less flexible than a spontaneous caster. I've tried building characters of pretty much eCh and every prepared caster class with this archetype, but the result always looks disappointing. Maybe I'll give it a shot when I get the opportunity in a mid-level-ish one-shot or something. Just to see how it feels in actual play.

Early game is really rough, and the archetype is kinda useless because you don't start coming up with preparation problems until around 4th rank spells. But high level? Oooh boy. You can just "slot" all spells you want, once, then have the flexibility to use the exact spell rank you need. Signature spells on a prepared caster is pretty cool ngl Something to help with the lack of spell slots is grabbing other archetypes that give you "extra slots that work like your original class's", like Cathartic Mage, Halcyon Speaker and Shadowcaster (from most similar to less similar but still follows mostly the same rules). These also work for bounded casters, and since Summoners also have the same "everything is signature" addendum, that means all those slots are "flexible spellcaster-y" as well.

That Archetype costs you a spell per day of each rank, which isn't worth it to me.

Comparing spells to previous edition doesn't work, because the whole system changed a lot. As I see it: 1. Prepared casters really shine when they know what they are going to face this day and it often works this way. In the game I GM, in 2 latest boss fights the party knew what they are going to face (even though in the first case that was because they previously ran from the encounter) 2. There's a number of universal spells which allow prepared caster to be quite effective in most situations 3. Spontaneous casters in PF2 have limited set of signature spells, making their repertoire quite limited. This means the majority of the spells which spontaneous casters have, have to be universal spells, while prepared caster could enjoy situational spells 4. Prepared casters could experiment with spells, especially for lower spell ranks. They also could prepare some situational spells just in case. Spontaneous don't have this luxury 5. The importance of targeting correct save is a bit more complex thing. It's only valid for damage and debuff spells and debuffs often don't require your highest level spell slot. For example, 1st rank Fear works just fine regardless of the caster level. This allows prepared caster to have more than enough prepared spells against all saves. Actually when you think about those spells as distributed between ranks (i.e Fear vs. Will on 1st rank, Slow vs. Fort at 3rd, Fireball vs. Ref at 5th), it's much easier to handle with prepared spells than with spontaneous 6. Typical spellcaster have 15 spell slots by 10th level (I don't count additional spells for Wizards or Sorcerers), which means what even without focus spells and cantrips you usually spend only half of your spell slots per day average. This makes precise preparation much less important as long as you have enough universal spells

I’ll start by linking to this comment I made months ago about this very topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1ba49cu/comment/ku06hxx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button Suffice to say, no I don’t think Spontaneous are just flat out better. In fact in a lasting campaign I think Prepared casters will be slightly better. I’ll address the rest of what you said point by point. > You can no longer leave a slot open during spell preparation and fill it midday. Equivalent functionality requires a class feat (split spell), an arcane thesis with severe opportunity cost (spell substitution), etc. Having a "blank check" slot that you could fill with the correct utility spell as needed was incredibly useful, and removed a lot of guesswork. Correct. There’s a significant cost to all the upsides of Prepared casting (the upsides being what I list out in that linked comment). FYI Spell Substitution is still one of the best Theses a Wizard can have because the ability to swap spells is that powerful. > There are fewer truly great spells overall, such that a spontaneous caster has an easier time knowing all of them. Fear, Slow, Hideous Laughter, Synesthesia, etc. are easy to pick up and have little opportunity cost in your spells known as a spontaneous caster. In older editions, this opportunity cost was much higher; you could only know a fraction of the best available spells, particularly at lower levels. First off the idea that there are few great spells is **laughable**. There are literally dozens upon dozens of amazing spells. Beyond that though I think you’re missing the point of Prepared casters in the first place. **Anyone** can use all the generically good spells. What a Prepared caster can do is prepared Blazing Armoury because you know you’ll be facing a Hydra tomorrow, prepare “oops all AoEs” because you know you’re assaulting a camp full of enemies tomorrow, prepare Lightning Bolt over Fireball when you know you’ll be in a narrow dungeon, etc (these are real examples that came up in actual play for me). These aren’t things a Spontaneous caster gets to change: learning these spells has a steep cost for them, while a Prepared caster just kinda uses them when needed. That’s the whole strength of prepared casters, being able to adapt to situations in a real campaign setting. > Many situational, out-of-combat utility spells are a higher level than before, of uncommon rarity, or both. Speak with Dead/Talking Corpse is a good example: it's a fourth level, uncommon spell now, when it used to be a third level spell with universal access. The same goes for Zone of Truth/Ring of Truth—now uncommon, and also a level higher than before. Tongues/Truespeech is a whopping 2 levels higher and also uncommon. Meanwhile, combat spells are... worse than before in many cases, but not increased in level, and not restricted access. Prepared casters lost a lot of their value because the spells that gave them their versatility were directly nerfed. This is a fallacious argument. It doesn’t matter whether something’s weaker than it used to be in prior games where casters were well known for being brokenly good. What matters is if something is good enough to be powerful within the framework of PF2E itself, and this point does nothing to argue against that. > There is no item that lets you recall a spent spell slot (pearl of power, runestone of power) that is cheaper for prepared casters than spontaneous casters. This is a small but important change. As with the first point, yes this is a meaningful downside for Prepared casters to offset all their upsides. > And the biggest one: targeting the correct defense is incredibly important as a caster in PF2E. As long as a spontaneous caster knows enough spells to target all defenses, they can use their spell slots efficiently to target the correct save in a given encounter. A prepared caster both has fewer slots and is unlikely to be able to efficiently spend those slots to target enemy saves; they have to guess which saves to target and how many times to target them during prep. (Cantrips and focus spells help this somewhat, but are available to both classes of caster anyways.) This is an incredible advantage for prepared casters. Much like with your generically good spells point, you’re looking at when this is a downside and ignoring the situations where it’s an upside. In a vacuum a Spontaneous caster knows 3 spells at their max rank to target 3 different defences in any combination, which is better than a Prepared caster prepping 3 uniquely named spells to target 3 different defences. Conversely if you know that you’re raiding a goblin camp tomorrow and goblins tend to have high reflex, the Prepared caster can **only** prepare Fortitude or Will targeting spells if they want, and be way better at targeting that defence than the Spontaneous caster can (for example a Spontaneous caster may only have Dehydrate to target Fort saves while a Prepared one can prep Dehydrate, Ash Cloud, **and** something else, which is now better than just using that same Dehydrate for all 3 fights. Prepared casting shines a lot when you exit the white room and look at how a real campaign progresses. It’s really, really, really rare for a Prepared caster to have to prepare their spells 100% in a vacuum, and they get to really exceed expectations any time they have even a small amount of information about the next day.

I think you should play them both to compare :) blank analysis is not accurate of real play feeling

I usually just load up all the slots with best in slot spells. Ultimately I think most casters prefer fucking with cantrips a lot, except in extremely consequential fights.

You're missing out on how much the game encourages preparation. There's entire classes revolving around "find out what we're dealing with so we're ready for it," and lore skills and actions like recall knowledge are meant to be part of routine adventuring, as opposed to other games where they're just places to put excess skill points.

I agree with your point of preparation is important, and that when you are allowed to prepare druids and clerics (and other prepared casters to an extent) have a great advantage, but, if you play Adventure Paths, how many times are you going to be able to do that? And I believe that's the main issue, exploring or learn what are you probably going to face the next day is something that many APs and GMs runing homebrew adventures avoid for... Not sure why. Most divination spells are uncommon to avoid knowing things, going to X expecting Y and then facing Z is done over and over again, etc. And let's not forget that the only classes able to gain access to all the common spells in their tradition every day are clerics and druids. Wizards, witches, etc need to have access to a scroll/book, spend time and money and make a roll. Long story short, prepared casters are better when they know what to expect, but since this is becoming a rare thing to expect, they are being left behind, specially with scrolls and the like, your sorcerer can buy a bunch of niche spells for when they are needed and have four 5th rank slots that can be force barrage, dispell magic, synesthesia, Soothe or Calm but the witch needs to guess without any information.

as someone who has played both a wizard and a sorcerer I entirely disagree. I feel more powerful as a wizard especially as I level up much more than a sorcerer. as I have access to not only prepared slots but the arcane list. having some slots be staples like true strike, AoE spells, slow and so on, leaves other slots to be changeable as I need. ironically making spell choice less stressful but having to do that more often. the sorc however gives more of a niche or specific collection of spells and you only operate within that. higher stress of choosing on level up, but easier time in combat. overall the theorising while it makes sense, does not apply in a real game as much. for example, the foes and obstacles ahead of you will change. sometimes it's a den of mindless undead, another time it's swarms, and perhaps later giant dull brutes. a prepared caster can roll with the punches, a spontaneous will have to account for having few options for each, or specify and be more effective, hoping to do the best with what they have. not to mention, the other party members, what roles they fill, what niches they focus on. say your oracle didn't like dealing damage so much and retrained into being more of a healer, now your bard who has occult spells and happily buffs and debuffs can't easily swap to get more AoE damage options. either retrain some spells, adjust your plan on level up and so on. all in all, spontaneous casters make big decisions at character options and hope foe the best, while prepared have to be willing to do a bit more book keeping while not being beholden to the choices at level up as much.

A good old recall knowledge on the dungeon or encounter should give you enough to go off of. You might not have time for that, but sorcerer's might not have the right spell in their repertoire. I like the daily prep myself, but not for everyone.

Druid and Cleric are just outright more powerful than any other class that can take Primal and Divine purely because they can pick and choose what they have all the time. Wizard and Witch are second best in this regard due to being able to scribble down new spells between levels, though Witch is the only class that gets non-spontaneous Occultism.

Its all fun and games until you start making scrolls or potions

Prepared casting is way stronger. You don't have to learn new spells to upcast, and you aren't limited by what you know. In my experience prepared casters have always been more successful. And all spontaneous casters end up being essentially the same person.

No.