Automatic Bonus Progression [PF]

[Sayt]

So, I quite like Pathfinder Unchained's Automatic bonus progression roles subset, but I find it raises an issue or two:

Primary casters get a bit shortchanged. The wizard gets to make his walking stick, +4, whoopdedoo, but they eat the full WBL penalty, but don't get as much benefit. Wizards are hardly disadvantage by this, but it doesn't create good feeling.

Possible solutions:
-Primary casters only lose 1/4 WBL. I don't like this one, it's hard to adjudicate in game and seems kinda gamist, in a bad way.
-Casters may forgo their weapon attunement to count their bonded item or familiar as a metamagic rod of roughly equal value to the enhancement bonus they forgo in a configuration of their choosing. Better, but messy and doesn't increment up as smoothly.

Which begs the question of should the ABP system penalize WBL at all? Given that you can't buy the Big Six +number items anymore, you shouldn't have to worry about overinflated numbers, and your players can better explore the available options without consideration to "but I need to remain numerically viable".

Any thoughts?

[digiman619]

Oh no, spellcasters aren't getting amazing things compared to martials. We must fix this immediately before the martials get the delusion that they might be effective!

[Zanos]

Can you spend the weapon bonus on properties If so it's probably fine, I can still think of some semi-decent weapon properties for casters.

[Fizban]

Well there didn't used to be much in the way of items for casters, so it'd be fair to say their WBL was supposed to be mostly wasted. Even just 3.5 changed that with the accursed metamagic rods, I don't know what's available in Pathfinder though.

The reason you need to cut WBL to compensate for bonuses isn't to avoid number inflation, it's to avoid Special Ability inflation. The fact that casters can buy more non-bonus items with their WBL is just another way they're overpowered, letting everyone do the same thing makes the classes more balanced among themselves but makes balance against monsters even worse than it already is.

[NamelessNPC]

You could replace the weapon boni with pages of spell knowledge and the equivalent for prepared casters.

[CharonsHelper]

Primary casters get a bit shortchanged.

And it will cause some sort of Caster/Martial imbalance?

[Psyren]

I wouldn't change it for pure casters. Generally (and as others have pointed out in amusing fashion), they already have significant advantages over martial and 2/3 hybrid classes, so it's perfectly fine to simply ignore the fact that they may not have a meaningful use for this bonus. Let them put it on a dagger or something (even if they never draw it), give them the same WBL reduction as everyone else, and move on.

[Manyasone]

While I agree that casters have less use for weapon enhancements, there are some abilities that could come in handy. Conductive for instance, though limited, I know. Defending on earlier said walking stick. It's something at least

[Psyren]

The attunement only grants raw enhancement; special properties must be purchased/crafted normally. So at most, this variant saves a caster the +1 minimum they would need to add on something else, unless they're using a property like Dueling that cares about how much enhancement bonus is on the weapon.

[digiman619]

All kidding aside, I would be fine with "Full casters may use the bonus from Weapon Attunement to buy weapon enhancements with a bonus of +1 per 4 levels of full casting classes they possess."