So this was brought up in a thread yesterday when discussing spellcasting in 2e (y'know, that old chestnut), but it was something I hadn't really stopped to think about and I feel needs more attention because it really does touch on a lot of things that are relevant and extremely potent to PF2e as well.
People who've played 5e and follow build guides and theorycrafting for it are probably familiar with Treantmonk, one of the most influential guide authors for the system. Among his catalogue is a guide known as Guide to Wizards, Being a God - also known as the 'god wizard' build. I'd suggest reading it yourself as it is a very potent guide with a lot of good advice (particularly if you're still playing 5e you dirty heretic), but for the sake of this discussion, I want to talk about his anecdote at the start.
In it, he discusses what happened when he joined a particularly meat-grinder-y 3.5 campaign. Despite it being brutal, he was the only person at the table actually optimising in any way, and when he made a martial character, he found he was overshadowing the rest of the party, without actually being able to do much to help them survive. So he took another approach, but the results were interesting. Quoting the relevant few paragraphs, and take note of the other players' reactions:
I had an idea how I could help the group without dominating the action, and I came back with a Wizard character. In the first combat, I was encouraged to use my fireball, and the group was quite confused when I told them that I didn’t have Fireball, lightning bolt or even magic missile. I still remember the DM asking me, “So what DO you do then?” When I explained I would be putting up walls, fogs, buffing, debuffing, etc. My character was declared “useless”
A couple months of playing and my character did not directly cause a single HP of damage to an enemy, nor did he use a single “save or die”. The campaign completed, and since my wizard was introduced, not a single character had died.
What I found really surprising is that everyone in the group still considered my character “useless”. Not a single player seemed to notice that my character had been introduced at the same time that the party death-toll had stopped. They had thought the campaign had become “easier” during the second half.
So just reiterate, this was a Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 campaign.
If you've ever been involved in any discourse surrounding the design of spellcasting in Pathfinder 2nd Edition, you'd be forgiven for thinking Treantmonk is talking about it here.
So for starters, I feel Treantmonk's analysis here is unintentionally, but extremely relevant to discussions around spellcasting in Pathfinder 2nd Edition. With the removal of those game-breaking elements like Save or Suck, and intentionally overtuned damage spells like 5e Fireball, spellcasters are much more nuanced and less dominating than they used to be. Essentially, all spellcasters play as the Treantmonk 'god wizard' now. Sure, it's still possible to make something like a blaster with certain builds, but generally spellcasters are heavily focused on utility, buffs, and crowd control. Which have always been their purview, but have always been overshadowed by more expedient options like Save or Suck. If anything, I think Treantmonk's analysis is wasted on a system like 5e where he has to purposely sandbag his wizard to prove a point about spellcasting utility, but that's a discussion for an Edition Wars thread another time.
I think more than that, Treantmonk's anecdote echoes something I notice a lot in these sorts of discussions around spellcasting, that I think contributes to the perception of spellcasting being weak in PF2e specifically. This is something I have been speculating since I made my treatise on magic at the start of the year, and has only continued to be reinforced in discussions in that thread, and future discussions I've had surrounding magic in the system. Treantmonk's example has merely put to words something I've been theorising for some time now:
The issue is that other players in the party do not understand the value of non-direct damage abilities, thus they dismiss buffs/utility/crowd control etc. as 'useless' and not contributing in any meaningful way, which makes fellow party members feel bad for taking those roles.
Let's be honest; how many times have you or a fellow player made a utility-based character, and received huge kudos for carrying the party, as opposed to the guy who makes a fighter or barbarian who's regularly crit-ing triple digit figures and being the one overtly slaughtering the enemy? How many times have you thanked a cleric for a clutch heal, or thanked a wizard or bard for that +1 status buff that tipped a hit to a crit?
It's one of those things I noticed a lot in my Treatise on Magic thread discussion, and have seen in a lot of discussion since; players feeling like they're 'not contributing' for providing buff states, saying it's boring to just give players a +1 or provide a soft debuff that isn't raw damage or a hard save or suck effect. And even those who realised the value personally felt like they were being undervalued and dismissed as not helping sufficiently, not unlike Treantmonk in his example at the top of his guide.
I vividly remember a comment thread some time ago where someone was complaining about how they felt spellcasting was too weak and didn't scale enough at higher levels. I was pointing out this was to ensure combat was more balanced and the game didn't devolve into save of suck at higher levels like it did in 1e. They countered saying it was was brutal, pointing to an astradaemon as an example of a creature with an instant kill, and that a caster's only purpose there was to remove the debuff or resurrect them if they failed the save for it.
Let's take that in for a second. The 'only thing' the spell caster was good for in that situation, was literally bringing back the player from death.
Let it sink in that someone dismissed literal resurrection as an example of 'weakened' spellcasting.
(Also I pointed out that said instant kill ability can literally not be used on the same turn as it attacks another creature, so they literally have a whole turn to try and free the captured player, which if you can't do at level 14+ then I don't know how to help you)
Ultimately what this comes down to is, people only see innate worth in direct damage contribution. I see phrases like 'casters are just cheerleaders for martials' and the like in these discussions, but really, this assumes a class' worth is innately tied to direct damage (or at the very least hard disabling utility, which casters used to have but now have less of) they provide. Casters are often the backbone propping up martials and keeping them from getting in over their heads, buffing their AC to ensure survival, zoning monsters to create chokepoints or making it more difficult to maneuver, or just straight-up healing them when they take a nasty crit, let alone potentially being able to ressurect them if they die. It creates this culture where value is consolidated into pure damage roles and anything peripheral to that is done solely to prop up those roles, as if they're a quarterback who only gets the position if they're the best on the team and thus deserving of all the glory.
To be fair to this though, I understand the logic of why this likely happens, for two key reasons:
- The irrational, purely emotive reason; people like playing damage roles themselves, and thus project their own wants and interests on others, seeing non-damage roles as pointless and weak
- More logically, non-damage benefits are much harder to measure than pure damage
The reality is, damage is a much easier scale to measure because there are hard numbers tied to it. You can figure out the approximate DPR of a particular class using certain feats with certain weapons. It's much harder to numerically figure out the utility of whether an Obscuring Mist or Wall of Stone in the right place, or the Slow that drained the big boss' third action actually made the difference between life or death. This is only exacerbated by the fact each group, GM, and campaign - even those of the same module - will be run differently. It's not exactly like anyone is keeping tabs on the raw data of how many people are dying to the vrock in the mines in Age of Ashes or the zoo encounter in Agents of Edgewatch to see if caster utility is actually contributing to the groups that have an easier time.
That all said, I think it all comes back to the greatest issue with these sorts of discussions: player psychology. It's a hard thing to touch upon without coming off as condescending, as there's this taboo in TTRPG communities about not telling players what they should find fun, and a lot of people take statements like all the above as 'well you're a big stupid doo-doo head because you can't see value in spellcasters who don't just blast everything to smithereens.'
But like....maybe players are just being big stupid doo-doo heads if they aren't valuing the non-damage contributions of their party members?
In all seriousness, I don't see challenging these perceptions and asking players to think outside the box the same as gatekeeping fun or telling people they're playing the game wrong. If anything, I would like to think it encourages people to consider value outside of raw damage; which is especially important in a system like 2e where defensive play and buff states are far more important to victory than in previous d20 systems, where they were often gratuitous at best and just plain unnecessary at worst. I think a lot of the issues people have with spellcasting in 2e - and not just 2e, but any hard tactics gaming system that moves away from expedient solutions like Save or Suck - would change if they stopped valuing the game by raw damage and focusing on those more peripheral results, like...
You know, whether you can survive the campaign without party members dying frequently, if at all.
Anyways, hopefully this has been some food for thought for some people, and puts thoughts to words for others in the same way Treantmonk's anecdote did for me.
