The PDF for the Remaster Core Preview is now available. Seems to mainly include stuff relating to things mentioned in Rage of Elements, including the text of several of the new or renamed spells.
There’s a new rule on focus points that says “The maximum number of Focus Points in your pool is always equal to the number of focus spells you know” which seems very significant, though I’ve seen clarifications elsewhere saying that it’s still gonna be capped at 3. The limit on refocusing to just once is gone, though.
Someone on the Paizo team confirmed the focus pool is still capped at 3.
I hope Thunder Strike is not replacing Shocking Grasp because it is not an attack roll and Magus still need their butter to go with the bread.
Some cantrip got nerfed… The fire one doesn’t add ability mod to the damage anymore. I don’t like this.
I like the Edict/Anathema flavor to replace the old school alignment.
I don’t know how I feel about Wizard… They get a very limited pool of spell to choose from instead of a school of magic (evokation, illusion …) for their bonus spells per day.
Shame for the focus. I don’t think it wouldn’t have been op to have more points basedo on the spells known
Ignition is not a straight nerf from Produce Flame - it now does more damage (and scales faster) when used at melee range
There is a loss of 1.5 damage at range but melee seem buffed you are right. Average 7 damage at lvl 1 instead of 6.5 but ability mod on damage is less random than dices so I think we still lose some damage.
Given that thunder strike seems to be a spell and not a cantrip, I don’t think it’ll replace shocking grasp.
Edit: As for the Wizard, they also explicitly stated that your GM may add spells to that list they deem thematically appropriate, so there’s a lot of wiggleroom.
- I’m very happy to see they’re keeping the “Anyspell” version of Wish as a ranked spell. That was an important component of Wish and was my biggest concern about moving Wish to a ritual. Making the gamebreaking side of Wish a ritual makes a lot of sense.
- I also like that the “monkey’s paw” aspect of Wish is now tied into the ritual check. Crit-succeeding a level 18 ritual is not trivial so it’s probably not going to break anything, and it adds some more chaos into world development instead of kicking it to the DM.
- I kind of wish the focus pool scaled independently of spells known, because now we still have the issue of a character that really only wants to do one thing with his focus pool having to spend extra feats on things he won’t use just to expand the pool. I think maybe the game just needs more focus spell options, especially utility stuff, and it will be easier to fill out the pool now that every spell expands the pool, but it’d be nice to not just have to take filler. A feat that just pushes the pool to 3 and nothing else would be neat.
For your third point, isn’t that already the case? The only difference is that now there is no focus spell option that doesn’t increase your pool size.
Yes, sorry, I was saying that I wish that they had fixed that when they reworked focus points.
Taking random focus spells that you don’t need because you had to boost your pool was an issue before the rewrite, and it’s arguably even worse now post rewrite, because you benefit by taking them earlier.
Previously you just needed a second focus point by 12 and a third by 18 (since the once-a-day extra points weren’t that big a deal). Now if your party has time to rest longer you can get more focus spells per encounter as soon as you can take more spells.
@renaissancegamer It is really nice to see that the limit on refocusing has been removed! 10/10
It’s has been confirmed they removed the + ability mod to damage on all spell.
Caster got nerfed hard at low lvl. You can now do 1 or 2 damage on bad roll for 2 actions.
Having an assured minimum with ability mod was a good thing. Hope they reconsider.
Rolling more dices does reduce the likelihood of a low roll. And I’ll reserve balance judgement until the Player Core 1 has been out and testesld for a while.
With the new focus point rules, I wonder if there’s gonna be any changes to psychic, given that its ability to use two focus points per fight isn’t that special any more.
I’m very pleased to see Grab and Knockdown are no longer auto-successes for monsters.
Oh, my players are going to be disappointed if is still capped at three. That seemed like am interesting potential to have a lot of points, and more motivation to get the level 12 feat.
