Pathfinder spell lists are so incredibly bloated.

[SangoProduction]

Bard's first level spell list included around 150 spells. Almost all of which are incredible trash. Thankfully, as a bard (or at least a skald), you pull out a select few spells (the few that aren't total trash), and make your own little spell list, and never worry about that ever again.... until you level up.

So, I got to level 4 skald.... There are 238 2nd level spells. Nearly half-again as many spells as first level. But they are second level, so they can't all be.... Oh.
Track Ship.
Slick Walls....
Whip of Spiders......
ugh.
Why?

OK. Still have to sift through... half again as much garbage... but at least they are better than level 1 spells right?
Rotgut... is strictly worse than Tears to Wine. In literally every way, even ignoring the bonus that TtW gives. There are like 4 first level spells that do the exact same thing as Rotgut. Spheres needs 1 talent - and it actually has a use in addition to being the "life of the party" spell. Jesus Christ.
Shadow Anchor is just a worse version of Shadow Trap.

I have to admit... I really enjoy spheres compared to this excessive nonsense. I mean, maybe not Mana sphere, but that's for another reason entirely.

[Maat Mons]

It could be worse, at least you’re allowed to pick the good ones and ignore the bad ones. The same cannot be said of feats.

[Logalmier]

This is true for the entirety of the 3.5 and 3.5 derived catalogue. There are entire supplement books that have about 2 paragraphs worth of content that anyone uses or remembers. Around 90% of all spells, feats, talents, prestige classes, archetypes, items and any other miscellaneous character options in 3.5 and Pathfinder are irredeemable trash. Guides for these systems mostly consist of "I went through and picked out the 5% that isn't trash so you don't have to". I don't really know why this is the case, or how 20 years passed without it at some point coming to be seen as an unacceptable standard. I don't really think the old excuse of "we made toughness trash on purpose because having 90% of options be traps encourages system mastery" is enough of an explanation anymore.

Two recurring flavors of trash:

"You may spend a standard action doing something cute and non-synergistic, like spitting snakes that deal 1d8 damage once per day or something"

and

"You may spend an incredibly precious build resource to get a +2 bonus to, I don't know, let's say Appraise, and only whenever in the presence of an aristocrat picking their nose".

I am happy that other systems have striven for a bit more elegance in their design and standards.

[GeoffWatson]

The trash is important to Pathfinder players.
Being able to sift the good from the bad makes them think they are goddamn geniuses.

[Kurald Galain]

Bard's first level spell list included around 150 spells. Almost all of which are incredible trash.

Sure, but that's in the nature of modular design. The same applies for 3E and 4E and PF2. 5E has shorter lists (there's "only" 52 first-level wizard spells) but again a sizeable percentage are trash.

In a low-op campaign (which, frankly, is most of them outside of these forums) it doesn't really matter all that much, you just pick whatever sounds cool. In a high-op campaign, you either do your homework or read a guidebook; that's why we have guidebooks.

[Satinavian]

The multitude of options is valuable to a PF player. Not necessarily the trash.
If an option is so bad no one ever picks it, not even for a the exact build idea it was made for, it might as well not exist.

PF players like the huge number of very different ideas and inspirations you can realize with the rules. Pure trash doesn't contribute meaningfully to it.


OtOH options that are too good or must-takes are even worse for character diversity.

[Ignimortis]

Track Ship is a good spell. Not very useful for regular PCs, perhaps, but good for worldbuilding and the occasional enterprising player who wants a trade empire or something.

[Logalmier]

Track Ship is a good spell. Not very useful for regular PCs, perhaps, but good for worldbuilding and the occasional enterprising player who wants a trade empire or something.

This is why I like modular systems like Spheres that give you the building blocks to make the spells you want, both from an efficiency perspective and also a worldbuilding one. They give you a better chance of being able to replicate extremely specific effects, without wasting pages on essentially trying to preemptively guess every niche thing that a player is going to want to do.

Also, one of my favorite Rage Powers: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/cor...water-sense-ex

To its credit, it does actually do something, as opposed to the rage power that generously lets you make a trip attempt in place of an attack once per rage, apparently unaware that you can already do that. Honestly, a lot of this stuff comes off to me as authors trying to fulfill a word requirement.

[icefractal]

I'm of mixed feelings, because on the one hand, I do like having this big trove of different possibilities, and especially the fact that non-combat spells like Track Ship exist when all too many systems just go "eh, the action is the important part, you can just freeform anything else".

Sidebar: For me, a non-trivial part of how exciting / meaningful mechanical advancement feels is how I can imagine it impacting the character's life beyond the scope of the immediate adventure. "I learned great magic powers that will let me make a thriving city in the middle of a desert" is like 10x more exciting to me than "I learned great magic powers that will let me kill foes better". Not that the two have to be mutually exclusive.


But on the other hand - yeah - a lot of the spells are trash, even for the niche that they're focused in. Choosing to trawl through the chaff can be an interesting activity sometimes, but needing to do so - like when making a character - is often annoying. And I don't really think the ones so trash they never get picked are adding much to the game.

I think to an extent having a lot of trash options (in feats and such, more so than spells even) is a deliberate strategy by Paizo that I consider myself fortunate they weren't able to implement fully in PF1: to provide a lot of "choice" that won't interfere with balance because it has so small a mechanical effect. Works for some people, but for me it's all downside.

[Satinavian]

Track ship is a good spell. Very specialized but perfectly fullfilling its niche.
Sure, it is usually not ideal for a spell known for a bard but even a bard might want it on their spell list for scrolls and wands.

Slick Walls is a spell that is pretty useless on its own but might enable certain combo strategies where you create obstacles and them make them insurmountable. It is exatly the kind of spell a player might want for some wacky build.

Whip of spiders is pretty bad though. Even if you actually use whips and want a damaging version, it is not exactly good with 1 round/lv and relatively low damage. It is not even good for whip users or for spider swarm lowers (who could just use summon swarm insted). Unless you really really need the optics of a spider swarm whip, you would never take it.

[atemu1234]

The trash is important to Pathfinder players.
Being able to sift the good from the bad makes them think they are goddamn geniuses.

It's called enrichment and it's either that or my keeper puts a pumpkin full of raw meat in my enclosure for me to bat around.

For real, though, I like the ridiculous stuff because it gives the impression of a lived-in world. Magic is created for all sorts of purposes, most not relevant to the campaign.

[Satinavian]

For real, though, I like the ridiculous stuff because it gives the impression of a lived-in world. Magic is created for all sorts of purposes, most not relevant to the campaign.

Can't really agree with that. More than half of all spells are made for combat. A system actually highlighting a lived in world would look way differently and spells like Track Ship would be tha vast majority.
I mean, PF is still better than some other games in this regard, but not by much.

[Baroncognito]

One thing I feel about a lot of the spells, feats, and archetypes in Pathfinder is that, while a fair number are entirely useless in the adventure paths and modules, some of them could be really fun to play in the right campaign with a Game Master who knows how to tweak encounter difficulty properly.

Like "You can use a deck of Harrow cards as masterwork darts" is ridiculous in most gameplay, but if there were some serious "You're not allowed to carry weapons" going on in the game world, it could make sense as a ranged weapon that doesn't register as a weapon.

I'm almost certainly never going to use any of those feats, there's not enough time, games, etc, but it's kind of fun knowing they're there.

[Kurald Galain]

it does actually do something, as opposed to the rage power that generously lets you make a trip attempt in place of an attack once per rage, apparently unaware that you can already do that.

Except that this once-per-rage trip deals damage and does not provoke. It's not amazingly powerful, but a decent pick that it does exactly what you'd expect it to.
And as noted above, Track Ship also does exactly what you'd expect (it's also on the cleric and wizard lists, and way better on a prepared caster). In fact, this spell came up recently in my campaign.
Whip of Spiders? Well, it makes touch attacks with iteratives, that each force a save against being nauseated; making it decent for a gish build.

Overall, there's a clear division between spells that are (a) good but highly situational; (b) good but another spell does it better (e.g. the aforementioned Shadow Anchor); and (c) actually trash.

[Crake]

This is why I like modular systems like Spheres that give you the building blocks to make the spells you want, both from an efficiency perspective and also a worldbuilding one. They give you a better chance of being able to replicate extremely specific effects, without wasting pages on essentially trying to preemptively guess every niche thing that a player is going to want to do.

Personally, I think less rules work better for this kind of thing. Instead of using a modular system to build your own spells, or hyper specific spells that fit every niche, just have, say, a divination skill that covers all forms of divination, and just apply it on a moment to moment basis based on the difficulty of the situation.

Oh, you wanna track a ship that's passed through this area 2 days ago on a lonely voyage? DC is X
It was 10 days ago, and it passed through a commonly used shipping lane that many other ships use? DC is Y

[Gnaeus]

Personally, I think less rules work better for this kind of thing. Instead of using a modular system to build your own spells, or hyper specific spells that fit every niche, just have, say, a divination skill that covers all forms of divination, and just apply it on a moment to moment basis based on the difficulty of the situation.

Oh, you wanna track a ship that's passed through this area 2 days ago on a lonely voyage? DC is X
It was 10 days ago, and it passed through a commonly used shipping lane that many other ships use? DC is Y

But that's just a vast power increase for the characters that need it least. You are basically just giving that ability away to every caster. I would much rather have what we have. Oh cool, I found this scroll of this niche spell or the old sea wizard knows find ship and offered to teach it to you is infinitely better than diviner wizard has ability know all the things. 10/10 for power gaming, 1/10 for balance, -2/10 for an interesting game or character development

OK. Still have to sift through... half again as much garbage... but at least they are better than level 1 spells right?
.

Omg someone threatened your family if you didn't read every spell personally and pick the very best ones? Were you in some kind of competition for best optimized bard where winner gets a new car? If you don't like it, you can make a fine bard with core. Or read a guide and look up the recommended spells. Not entirely sure why limiting other people's options improves your game experience.

The multitude of options is valuable to a PF player. Not necessarily the trash.
If an option is so bad no one ever picks it, not even for a the exact build idea it was made for, it might as well not exist.

The trash is what gives us the multitude. If every option has to be carefully checked against every other option to make sure it isn't weaker than another printed spell, with no redeeming options that might make it the right shaped piece for your build, adding a spell to a sourcebook becomes a thing that takes hours of dev work instead of 5 minutes. Yeah, it might be cool if someday we could have a new edition that didn't just junk everything decent about the prior ones, but just revised the lists for convenience. But I don't know if that is even marketable and for sure we will never get it. I would like to thank find ship guy and whip of spiders guy for their work. In a better world, they would still be printing new sourcebooks with new stuff in them.

[Logalmier]

Except that this once-per-rage trip deals damage and does not provoke. It's not amazingly powerful, but a decent pick that it does exactly what you'd expect it to.
And as noted above, Track Ship also does exactly what you'd expect (it's also on the cleric and wizard lists, and way better on a prepared caster). In fact, this spell came up recently in my campaign.
Whip of Spiders? Well, it makes touch attacks with iteratives, that each force a save against being nauseated; making it decent for a gish build.

Overall, there's a clear division between spells that are (a) good but highly situational; (b) good but another spell does it better (e.g. the aforementioned Shadow Anchor); and (c) actually trash.

You're right, I was incorrect to describe the trip power as useless. In fact, looking back over the Chained Barbarian's prerequisiteless rage powers, it might even be one of the better ones - I don't find it to be a super impressive list. Unchained was a significant improvement.

The trash is what gives us the multitude. If every option has to be carefully checked against every other option to make sure it isn't weaker than another printed spell, with no redeeming options that might make it the right shaped piece for your build, adding a spell to a sourcebook becomes a thing that takes hours of dev work instead of 5 minutes. Yeah, it might be cool if someday we could have a new edition that didn't just junk everything decent about the prior ones, but just revised the lists for convenience. But I don't know if that is even marketable and for sure we will never get it. I would like to thank find ship guy and whip of spiders guy for their work. In a better world, they would still be printing new sourcebooks with new stuff in them.

I don't know if "you have to publish mountains of trash to have an interesting system" is true, but I really hope it isn't. In retrospect, yeah, 3.5 is interesting primarily because it spent like a decade publishing mountains of trash that we can now pick through. But at the time they were charging like $30 per sourcebook, and these days I would be pretty miffed if I was spending money like that on products whose quality are clearly slapdash.

[Crake]

But that's just a vast power increase for the characters that need it least. You are basically just giving that ability away to every caster. I would much rather have what we have. Oh cool, I found this scroll of this niche spell or the old sea wizard knows find ship and offered to teach it to you is infinitely better than diviner wizard has ability know all the things. 10/10 for power gaming, 1/10 for balance, -2/10 for an interesting game or character development

I mean, that's one very cynical way of looking at it. You're also looking at it in the context of 3.5 spellcasting, under the assumption that such a system would allow a character to cast magic of normal level spells, but with complete freedom at hand. I would see it more akin as a nerf to spellcasters, because it would make exponentially more powerful spells get locked behind exponentially higher DCs, wheras the bonuses would scale linearly. It would probably mean that 9th level spells would require the participation of many, many spellcasters, and other mitigating factors as well, such as spell components, and long casting time, so something like wish, or greater teleport, or numerous other high level spells that a lot of people take for granted, suddenly are no longer easily accessible, single action spells, and would require probably participation from the whole party to actually achieve.

[Ramza00]

can not decide if the 3.5 / Pathfinder philosophy

• is more Sturgeon's law is a saying that 90 % of anything is really bad. (talking about 1950s sci fi magazines full of short stories)
• or magic the gathering business model where a 15 card booster is, the first 7 cards are common, card 8 to 10 is uncommon, card 11 is a rarer or the more unique mythic rare, card 12 is land, card 13 and 14 are wild cards can be any rarity, card 15 is a non playable card such as a creature token.

they purposefully added fiber / chaff to the printing to make wheat feel special.

[rel]

This has been how D&D works for a long time. The reasons are manifold but the result is always the same.

Page count needs to be filled, so spells need to be written whether or not they are needed or the designer has any good ideas left.

Iconic old spells need to be preserved and get ported from older versions of the game often unchanged regardless of usefulness or balance.

Since the only approved way to add utility to the game is magic, whenever an NPC needs to do something special for an adventure, they often get a bizarrely specific custom spell. These then get added to the general spell lists.

Finally, while it doesn't happen often, PC crafted spells occasionally find their way into the general spell lists as developers crib from their home games or the wider community. Such spells are often built with very specific design goals rather than an eye for balance or general usefulness.

[GreatDane]

I can't comment on the design ethos, but my table uses the below house rules for spells (slightly edited for brevity):

Spoiler: House Rules for Magic

Show

The spells described in the Player's Handbok represent the common core of spells, known to most for their power and usefulness. For simplicity, these essential spells will be referred to as "core" spells [...] Spells described in other rulebooks represent more unique effects, such as a spell taught by a specific university or granted to clerics of a particular region or deity. There are three gameplay effects of this distinction:

1. Spellcasting classes that prepare spells daily from a class list do not gain wholesale access to all non-core spells. Among base classes, this includes only the cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, and spirit shaman. These classes prepare their daily spells from the core spell list only. At each level, these classes may choose one non-core spell to treat as a core spell for the purpose of preparing spells. Thus, a tenth-level cleric prepares her daily spells from the core cleric list, plus ten non-core spells.
2. Scrolls of non-core spells are harder to find. [rules for d% rolls, etc.] Non-core spells above level 5 represent the personal research of individual spellcasters or powers granted to specific divine casters by their deities and are not available for general purchase.
3. Non-core spells are harder to identify - see the description of the Spellcraft skill on page 11 for details.

This helps our table a lot by:

1. Curbing the power bloat gained by fixed-list casters (druid, cleric, etc.) when more splatbooks are available
2. Allowing players who enjoy rummaging through the books to pick their favorites (we have one of these)
3. Reducing rules overhead for the players who don't want to read every single spell

[Arkhios]

I don't think I've ever seen the D&D 3.5 equivalent spell lists compiled in one place, but the amount of splat book bloat makes it painfully obvious who to blame for OP's conundrum. After all, 1st edition Pathfinder was supposed to be backwards compatible with D&D 3.5 ((Pathfinder was originally dubbed as the "D&D 3.75" by the community)), until they (Paizo) realized it's not realistic.

[Condé]

I like having really trash or niche options. It gave us Iron Chef and I love trying to make good things out of bad ones too. Not everyone want to play an incantrix.

In fact this is why I am still here. Because I have choices. A lot of it. It is like having a Big box of Lego pièces and I can do whatever I want.

5e is boring to me because WotC are lazy schmucks and they pretend everything is balances because of playtesting.
Tell that to a Sun Soul Monk player for example.

I do not really care about balance anymore because it is mostly an argument for people with a big ego.
I have seen plenty of spellcaster being overshadowed by martials because they are Bad at the game.
And I have seen excellent build do nothing because of poor rolls.

At the end it doesn't matter because it created good memories we still share nowadays.

I can understand the frustration sometimes but we have to remind this game is from another age, is not competitive and still really enjoyable for nerds like me.

And there is plenty of second, third party material if you still are not satisfied by what WotC did back then.

And it is the same for Pathfinder.

[Snowbluff]

Sure, but that's in the nature of modular design. The same applies for 3E and 4E and PF2. 5E has shorter lists (there's "only" 52 first-level wizard spells) but again a sizeable percentage are trash.

In a low-op campaign (which, frankly, is most of them outside of these forums) it doesn't really matter all that much, you just pick whatever sounds cool. In a high-op campaign, you either do your homework or read a guidebook; that's why we have guidebooks.

Definitely. I think a lot of people forget how many options are simply awful.


However, I do think that the PF1 spell lists definitely have issues. I feel that we do get a lot of those super niche "+2 bonus in a super specific condition" spells.

5e is boring to me because WotC are lazy schmucks and they pretend everything is balances because of playtesting.
Tell that to a Sun Soul Monk player for example.

I do not really care about balance anymore because it is mostly an argument for people with a big ego.
I have seen plenty of spellcaster being overshadowed by martials because they are Bad at the game.
And I have seen excellent build do nothing because of poor rolls.

I'm of the opposite opinion. To me I think that 5e gets negative comments about not being concerned with balance as opposed to "feels." Compared to other modern contemporaries, I like 5e for giving the relatively fewest cares about balancing and focusing more on creating an experience.


This was a sticking point with a lot of strange choices in PF1 and 4e (games I like in their own way) being the result of "balance," and has extended into PF2 (game that invokes games I like while ruining the vibes). I agree I do not prioritize balance, but I don't think that 5e really strives to make a tightly wound experience. It's such and easy system in many ways that really any class can succeed at contributing on some level.

[Condé]

5e has obviously qualiies.
It is hard to tell sometimes what the players make and want of the game and what the developpers wanted.

I do not buy that they did not care about balance.

It just that it is, as everything, really hard to balance a system through many years and different designers...

But not to hijack this thread too much I am going to say : every spells list from 3.5 to pf2 and many other are doomed to have a bunch of very specific or even bad elements.

[Psyren]

As someone who used to be known for writing 3.5 and PF handbooks, I can see the appeal in big lists of options that have varying degrees of power to sort through. There's a degree of fun in reading through spell text and realizing you may have stumbled on a gem that others have overlooked, or come up with a novel use for a situational or even a good spell.

But you don't need to do all of that to mitigate the frustrations in the OP, because other optimizers have done the legwork already. Skald spells come from the PF Bard spell list, so grab any Bard handbook (especially one aimed at martial bards like the Dervish Dancer, Arcane Duelist etc) and you'll find most of the spells have already been evaluated. At the very least, it should allow for eliminating large swathes of the "chaff" right off the bat.

[atemu1234]

I don't think I've ever seen the D&D 3.5 equivalent spell lists compiled in one place, but the amount of splat book bloat makes it painfully obvious who to blame for OP's conundrum. After all, 1st edition Pathfinder was supposed to be backwards compatible with D&D 3.5 ((Pathfinder was originally dubbed as the "D&D 3.75" by the community)), until they (Paizo) realized it's not realistic.

I mean, I'm not sure if it was all meant to be backwards compatible, I think that it was meant so that 3.5 would be forwards compatible, like 3e was for 3.5 (though even spells have been at their most basic format forwards compatible since 1st edition, all the way up through 3.5).

I honestly think most of OP's problem can be reasonably be solved by sticking to the PF Core Rulebook spells - it's not like that's a massive hit to power, I usually stick to them for NPCs just so I don't spend twice as long on their spell lists versus the rest of their statblock, adding a few spells from maybe the Spell Compendium in 3.5 for variety.

[aglondier]

I rather like having a massive potential spell list available to me. I usually play wizards, so I do get the most from it. I particularly like crafting unique custom magic items, sifting through the list of unused or unusable spells to snag some minor portion of the spell to add to some horrible abomination of an item to curse my dm with...brings a warm feeling to my bitter twisted heart 😁

But seriously, if you don't want to be scouring the entire 150-250+ spell list every level, then just go through it while creating your character and design a spell list flavoured to your group or faction. Pick 16 or so cantrips, 30 or so 1st through 5th, 25 or so 6th and 7th, and 20 or so 8th and 9th. Choose them based around what you feel are the core themes of your family/clan/guild/school/bloodline/order/whatever. I did something similar for my dwarven magus/deep marshal giving him a flavourful and well rounded spell list while keeping to the restrictions of the archetype. It's not a limit, you can still collect any class spell you come across, but it gives you a bit of flavour and makes picking your 2 spells each level easier...

[Draconi Redfir]

Honestly, i'd rather have a huge list of spells then a tiny one. Even if some spells are bad, it can be fun to take them anyways to play around with them, maybe homebrew a few changes to make a themed character. I was able to make a siren-themed bard with almost exclusively sonic-damage, enchantment, and illusion spells, whereas if the spell list was smaller, I'd inevitably need to pick up spells that didn't fit the theme i was going for.


A larger spell list means you can roll the same class multiple times and still have them turn out vastly different. Compare that to games with smaller spell lists, where everyone inevitably just takes the same things each and every time, making effectively the same character.

How many times have you had a 5th ed warlock without any of the following? Eldrich Blast, Armor of Agethys, Hex, Arms of Hadar.