What's going on with Arcanist spell slots!?

[ApathicAlpaca]

I understand Arcanist is kind of a cross between spontaneous caster (like Witch) and spell slotter.
But why on earth does he have SO few slots? I currently run a Gnome Phantasmal Mage and have only ONE level 3 slot. The way I see it, you cannot realize ANY caster that relies on more than 2 spells via arcanist. Or am I missing something? Sure, later he gets some more but he's crippled on every new spell level, meaning the most powerful spells in his arsenal are always slot-starved.

Do you use arcanist for anything but super-specialized builds where you basically only need ONE spell per level to fulfill the role? Or maybe maximum 2.

Thanks for any advice. Not sure I can get illusion arca working with this crappy slot limit.

[Tsukada]

What's your INT at?

[Ghost]

it's 1 level behind wizard progression on spell slots

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

I understand Arcanist is kind of a cross between spontaneous caster (like Witch) and spell slotter.
But why on earth does he have SO few slots? I currently run a Gnome Phantasmal Mage and have only ONE level 3 slot. The way I see it, you cannot realize ANY caster that relies on more than 2 spells via arcanist. Or am I missing something? Sure, later he gets some more but he's crippled on every new spell level, meaning the most powerful spells in his arsenal are always slot-starved.

Do you use arcanist for anything but super-specialized builds where you basically only need ONE spell per level to fulfill the role? Or maybe maximum 2.

Thanks for any advice. Not sure I can get illusion arca working with this crappy slot limit.

The slots are equivalent to Sorcerer spells known. They end up with a maximum of 5 slots per level, which is not affected by any stat or bonus. Sorcerers have 6 spells known per level, not counting any bonus spells from their bloodline or any other source.

Arcanists can cast any spell "memorized" as many times or nearly as many times as a sorcerer, so it works out pretty much in the arcanists favor. Sacrfice one or two "spells known" in exchange for being able to swap out "spells known" at any time.

[ExcaliburV]

They have so few slots because they only need to memorize each spell once. They "memorize" what spells they want to cast, then proceed to cast it like a sorcerer. So instead of memorizing two fireballs to be able to cast it twice, you memorize fireball and haste once and can do either one 3 times per day, etc.