Pathfinders seem to Rollplay their combat so much.

[SangoProduction]

I got to play a Fate Accelerated game in the Eberron system, and we've had an entire session that was nothing but fighting an Aboleth, who had possessed the fighter. Everyone was emotive and descriptive (as the rules kinda require) in their attacks and defenses. It was really fun and engaging.

Meanwhile, two days later, I play a Pathfinder game...and it's just "blah. There's my attack macro, next." And somehow, each turn took forever. It was very dull and uninteresting.

And sad thing is: This seems to be the standard for Pathfinder. I haven't found a single group in years that was both emotive in combat, and played Pathfinder. This is very disheartening because I love Spheres of Power. I think it's one of the best systems to be implemented in a d20 game. (SoM not so much, due to inheriting too much baggage from PF. Particularly in regards to combat maneuvers. And CotS is just a cluster f***.)

Kinda like 4e, where several of the remaining players (who ran campaigns on roll20, don't get me wrong) literally thought of the game as a combat simulator. PF isn't quite there, but the players just...well, there's no life to combat, despite it invariably taking more than half the game time. Even for those who claim to tout a roleplay focus.

Even in the games I stuck with because the players had good personalities, and are generally likable people, regardless of the context of the game being played in a really dull way.

I don't know if I really have a question, so much as I feel like ranting. I'm just kinda frustrated.

[Minion #6]

I really have to say, I find it equally frustrating that people think that "rollplaying" is badwrongfun. You may find that form of play uninspiring, but there are plenty of people who love the more mechanistic and gamist approach that Pathfinder takes. There's a lot of mathematical and tactical overhead that'll eat up your brain's processing power that just isn't present in a game like Fate or Dungeon World.

Square pegs, round holes.

[SangoProduction]

I really have to say, I find it equally frustrating that people think that "rollplaying" is badwrongfun. You may find that form of play uninspiring, but there are plenty of people who love the more mechanistic and gamist approach that Pathfinder takes. There's a lot of mathematical and tactical overhead that'll eat up your brain's processing power that just isn't present in a game like Fate or Dungeon World.

Square pegs, round holes.

I never said "rollplaying" is bad. I said I find it incredibly dull, and there is virtually no pathfinder game on roll20 that play combat emotively, and that my favorite system resides within this unfortunate circumstance.

[The Insanity]

What can I tell you, other than, you have ****ty luck with PF players/games, I guess.

[Minion #6]

I never said "rollplaying" is bad. I said I find it incredibly dull, and there is virtually no pathfinder game on roll20 that play combat emotively, and that my favorite system resides within this unfortunate circumstance.

You said it's dull, not that you find it dull - different things, although it's probably just a wording quibble here. Personally, I find intra-party drama and roleplaying out tension between characters very dull*, and games that encourage that unappealing, so I just avoid them. Doesn't mean that it's somehow not the "right" way to play. I actually do get you though, it sucks to have a system you love in a type of game that doesn't encourage the playstyle you like. Mutants and Masterminds is this for me - combat is super flat and uninteresting, which is a shame because the degree of customisation and flavour flexibility is my jam.

Mike Mearls, much as I'm not a fan of the guy, did talk recently about the way the rules of a game encourage or discourage certain types of play. Underneath the Mearls-ness of what he wrote, there were actually some good insights about the game design differences between 5e and past editions of D&D. He actually does seem to think that past editions really are badwrongfun though, so he failed to grasp the good point he very nearly made - that not every ruleset encourages the sort of play you want, so best to find the system that fits it. From the sounds of it, the style of play encouraged by the design of Pathfinder - highly gamist, highly mechanistic - is not one you like, even if you like individual subsets of those rules.

In conclusion... I don't like Mearls? I guess? This post kind of got away from me.

*I admit this is in large part that I've had too many players IRL who delay games with this sort of stuff and make it less fun for everyone else.

[SangoProduction]

When one talks of an experience, it is rather implicit that it is opinion. But I'll admit I wasn't explicit in my wording.

And I guess you're right. Just wished that Fate was more popular. I guess maybe I'll try out 5e and see if those players are more my style.

[Minion #6]

Definitely give Dungeon world a try too! It's been on my radar for a little while, and it has a feel that I think you'd appreciate given what you're talking about here.

[SangoProduction]

Definitely give Dungeon world a try too! It's been on my radar for a little while, and it has a feel that I think you'd appreciate given what you're talking about here.

Hmm. I'll give it a try.

[Fizban]

Something that might not be considered much is that the detail of the 3.x system (and lack of explanation of that detail) does actually discourage wild description quite a bit. I had a game where the DM would say "describe your kill" all the time, but the simple fact is that the over-the-top glory kills that people will immediately jump to in response to that phrase, are not supported by any of the rules. Only a Vorpal weapon can sever heads and I don't think there's any 1st party effect that lets you sever limbs, nothing about breaking bones, and nothing in the death and dying rules gives you the ability to do so as part of a killing blow. You weapon someone to death and their body hits the floor intact, not cloven in two or head flying across the room.

And further, once you try to look into what hp must represent, it becomes clear that 1: every weapon hit must include some amount of skin breaking injury, and 2: no weapon hit applies any sort of gaping wound, internal damage, or anything similarly lethal until you hit negative hit points. No matter what your players want to describe, the mechanics indicate that each combat is a series of grazing blows (including crits) before one final life-threatening blow lands and drops you to bleed out or instant death.

So you've got a system that's already rooted in wargaming, with detailed enough mechanics that the low-hanging fruits of description actually run counter to the rules. and a bunch of people playing it who are quite likely focused only on things they actively perform successfully/over the top crit fails.

[Crake]

Something that might not be considered much is that the detail of the 3.x system (and lack of explanation of that detail) does actually discourage wild description quite a bit. I had a game where the DM would say "describe your kill" all the time, but the simple fact is that the over-the-top glory kills that people will immediately jump to in response to that phrase, are not supported by any of the rules. Only a Vorpal weapon can sever heads and I don't think there's any 1st party effect that lets you sever limbs, nothing about breaking bones, and nothing in the death and dying rules gives you the ability to do so as part of a killing blow. You weapon someone to death and their body hits the floor intact, not cloven in two or head flying across the room.

And further, once you try to look into what hp must represent, it becomes clear that 1: every weapon hit must include some amount of skin breaking injury, and 2: no weapon hit applies any sort of gaping wound, internal damage, or anything similarly lethal until you hit negative hit points. No matter what your players want to describe, the mechanics indicate that each combat is a series of grazing blows (including crits) before one final life-threatening blow lands and drops you to bleed out or instant death.

So you've got a system that's already rooted in wargaming, with detailed enough mechanics that the low-hanging fruits of description actually run counter to the rules. and a bunch of people playing it who are quite likely focused only on things they actively perform successfully/over the top crit fails.

Yeah, the issue I think falls down to lack of interesting attack options. If your action is just "i attack", there's not much you can elaborate on, sure you can describe how you swing your sword down or whatnot, but the twentieth time doing that, it becomes not so interesting, so people stop doing it altogether. On the other hand, I recently had a player playing a swordsage, and he has something like 4-5 strikes ready at any one time, which gives him much more freedom to decide how to describe his attacks.

Pathfinder doesn't have anything like that for it's martial characters baked into the game, sure path of war exists, but it is third party, so people are naturally averse to using it, so you generally end up getting martials who's attack option comes down to "I swing my sword 3 times, my turn's over", anything else they might want to do like "I slide under his legs to confoud him, then stab at him from behind while he's caught offguard" is just something that isn't supported by the rules in any way. It's not that he's being boring in not describing that, it's that he can't do that. That would require a) a tumble check to pass through his square, b) a feint to catch them off guard, and c) an attack to stab them while caught off guard. Tumble is a move action, feint is a standard action (or move action with improved feint), and attacking is a standard action, so you simply can't do all that in a single turn without some kind of feat to reduce one of those actions, or to get a free attack off on something, but then if you have a feat or the like, you don't describe it like that, you instead end up saying "I use XYZ feat to tumble through his square and make him flat footed against my attack", so people understand what you're doing.

The funny thing is though: As a DM, you don't need to be completely transparent with your players. In fact, what I typically do as a DM is describe things in a fun way, leaving my players offguard, as they have no idea what the enemy just used to pull that off, then I explain to them afterwards how it was done, so at the very least, it's easy enough to do from a DM's point of view, doubly so, since you'll rarely use the same trick in more than a single encounter, so the descriptions don't start to become boring and stale.

[Florian]

Blame it on the detail level. PF is very mechanically detailed, but a single combat round rarely has any real impact and you know you have to go thru multiple rounds of combat and possible even multiple combat in a session, so that dims the enthusiasm a bit. Add class feature "spam" or lack of class features and just full attacking and enthusiasm to be emotional about it is pretty much gone.

On the other hand, the thing with your example might nut just be Fate, but rather that it was one very complex encounter with no straight solution. That also plays into it.

I play PF with the same people I play L5R with and the later is a very emotional and deep affair, the former less so.

[Mordaedil]

I think the problem lies more in macros being a thing. It just becomes an endless repetition of clicking a button and letting the button do your talking for you.

To fix this, I don't really have much in suggestion that I've tried, but one thing I can imagine would work is if you write a new customized attack macro, where the player has to click one of four buttons in the macro itself, one is attack, the other is full attack, third is damage and the final button is critical hit. That way the macro doesn't do everything for the player, but they have to take a more active role to roll their dice. The macro doing all of it in one go sure is convenient, but it also kills all of the drama associated with rolling your dice. You are just presented with an attack roll and a damage if you beat the given AC of the monster.

I think if you do this or encourage your group to do this you will find it significantly reduces the amount of rollplay.

[CasualViking]

I think you should maybe not try to drive screws with a tablesaw. Fate Accelerated is a very fine game, and there is also something called Dungeon World, which some choose to call an RPG, that might appeal more to you.

[SangoProduction]

I think the problem lies more in macros being a thing. It just becomes an endless repetition of clicking a button and letting the button do your talking for you.

To fix this, I don't really have much in suggestion that I've tried, but one thing I can imagine would work is if you write a new customized attack macro, where the player has to click one of four buttons in the macro itself, one is attack, the other is full attack, third is damage and the final button is critical hit. That way the macro doesn't do everything for the player, but they have to take a more active role to roll their dice. The macro doing all of it in one go sure is convenient, but it also kills all of the drama associated with rolling your dice. You are just presented with an attack roll and a damage if you beat the given AC of the monster.

I think if you do this or encourage your group to do this you will find it significantly reduces the amount of rollplay.

I'd argue that this is very much not the case. Macros are just a quicker means of dice rolling. It'd be more intrusive to have the player manually type it in every time.

[Mordaedil]

I'd argue that this is very much not the case. Macros are just a quicker means of dice rolling. It'd be more intrusive to have the player manually type it in every time.
No, I agree with that manually typing in commands doesn't add anything, I meant the macro should produce a list of buttons that you can click that then trigger individual macros, so everything isn't rolled at once with a single click.

I know for myself, when the macro gives the whole result at once I fail to be motivated to roleplay my attacks properly because I already know I am missing or I know I am doing X amount of damage. By using a button system, you enforce a bit of a pause between each action, which might be just enough to give the incentive to roleplay a bit more than if you are given the full result right out of the gate.

To compare, normal macro:
I click the button for longsword single attack, it shows a box that I am attacking with a longsword, rolling a 13 to hit and 8 points of damage. I tell the players I lunge with my sword and land a solid hit. The DM describes the damage and we move on.

With a button system:
I click the button for a longsword single attack, it shows a box that I am attacking with a longsword with four boxes. I tell the other players I lunge with my longsword. The DM describes my attack.

I click the attack roll box, I roll a 13. I describe the maneuver I do with my sword. The DM describes the result of my attack roll, tells me to roll damage.

I click the damage roll box, I roll an 8. I describe the brutality of the attack. The DM describes the damage I deal with my damage roll.

Basically, the pause can add a bit of drama. Or so I reckon as a suggestion.

[VladtheLad]

I find it weird that there is a difference between 3.5 and pathfinder (in your experience).
The typical complaint is that 4th edition and sometimes 3.5/pathfinder are to roll oriented while older editions and 5th are more role oriented, not that I agree with this split mind you, but its the typical complaint.

[Fizban]

Pathfinder doesn't have anything like that for it's martial characters baked into the game, sure path of war exists, but it is third party, so people are naturally averse to using it, so you generally end up getting martials who's attack option comes down to "I swing my sword 3 times, my turn's over", anything else they might want to do like "I slide under his legs to confoud him, then stab at him from behind while he's caught offguard" is just something that isn't supported by the rules in any way. It's not that he's being boring in not describing that, it's that he can't do that. That would require a) a tumble check to pass through his square, b) a feint to catch them off guard, and c) an attack to stab them while caught off guard. Tumble is a move action, feint is a standard action (or move action with improved feint), and attacking is a standard action, so you simply can't do all that in a single turn without some kind of feat to reduce one of those actions, or to get a free attack off on something, but then if you have a feat or the like, you don't describe it like that, you instead end up saying "I use XYZ feat to tumble through his square and make him flat footed against my attack", so people understand what you're doing.
And although you're agreeing with my point, I do have to say there's still some wiggle room. It just comes after the dice have been rolled, and relies on the person describing the action to know what is within the tolerance for description- something that 4 players will probably slip up on, so for consistency it's best left to the DM, assuming that is their aim.

While you couldn't slide through their legs and get a sneak attack with follow up hits without some serious abilities, you can still describe an otherwise bland scene with some vigor. A 5' step across the diagonal into a full attack that misses on the first hit but lands the second two might be "I edge around him towards a flanking position, lead with a feint and then score two glancing blows across his face and shoulder." Against a foe with a shield scoring a hit and two misses you might have "The first hammer blow rings out like a gong and the shield bounces back into his face, but it's not enough to break his guard yet." It's not spectacular, but I think it's enough.

[Minion #6]

I find it weird that there is a difference between 3.5 and pathfinder (in your experience).
The typical complaint is that 4th edition and sometimes 3.5/pathfinder are to roll oriented while older editions and 5th are more role oriented, not that I agree with this split mind you, but its the typical complaint.

Older editions and 5e are lighter - and messier - systems than 3.P and 4e. The idea is that because there are less rules - or because some of the rules are crap so you should ignore them in the case of older editions - that somehow means that there is more roleplaying. In the same way that less apples toooootally means more oranges.

Bit of a silly argument, but there you go. There are games out there that support highly narrativist play a lot better than anything D20, and people should be looking into those if that's what they want.

[SangoProduction]

And although you're agreeing with my point, I do have to say there's still some wiggle room. It just comes after the dice have been rolled, and relies on the person describing the action to know what is within the tolerance for description- something that 4 players will probably slip up on, so for consistency it's best left to the DM, assuming that is their aim.

While you couldn't slide through their legs and get a sneak attack with follow up hits without some serious abilities, you can still describe an otherwise bland scene with some vigor. A 5' step across the diagonal into a full attack that misses on the first hit but lands the second two might be "I edge around him towards a flanking position, lead with a feint and then score two glancing blows across his face and shoulder." Against a foe with a shield scoring a hit and two misses you might have "The first hammer blow rings out like a gong and the shield bounces back into his face, but it's not enough to break his guard yet." It's not spectacular, but I think it's enough.

Yeah. At least with that, there's the attempt to make the actions more interesting.

[Pex]

As 2D8HP wrote, some people play D&D like chess, others like charades. You prefer charades, but that doesn't make the chess players wrong. Vice versa of course.

[Crake]

And although you're agreeing with my point, I do have to say there's still some wiggle room. It just comes after the dice have been rolled, and relies on the person describing the action to know what is within the tolerance for description- something that 4 players will probably slip up on, so for consistency it's best left to the DM, assuming that is their aim.

While you couldn't slide through their legs and get a sneak attack with follow up hits without some serious abilities, you can still describe an otherwise bland scene with some vigor. A 5' step across the diagonal into a full attack that misses on the first hit but lands the second two might be "I edge around him towards a flanking position, lead with a feint and then score two glancing blows across his face and shoulder." Against a foe with a shield scoring a hit and two misses you might have "The first hammer blow rings out like a gong and the shield bounces back into his face, but it's not enough to break his guard yet." It's not spectacular, but I think it's enough.

Yeah, as I said though, you can really only keep that up to a point before you just start saying "I roll, hit, X damage, uhh.. miss, and...Hit, X damage". I definitely agree it's something you CAN do, just that, once you describe "generic hit #589" you just start to give up, and when an attack that comes up that DOES have an option to describe it with flair... you're too burned out to care.

That's just my anecdotal experience though.

[Adghar]

In the same way that less apples toooootally means more oranges.


To be fair, if you're stuffing so many apples into a crate that oranges can't fit, removing apples will allow you to place more oranges into the crate if you have the wherewithal to do so.

However, I believe the point you were trying to make is that people need not choose between a crate full of apples and a crate half full of apples, but rather just buy a crate that is half-filled with apples and half-filled with oranges :P

[Psyren]

What can I tell you, other than, you have ****ty luck with PF players/games, I guess.

Mostly that, with a dash of "rules-heavy isn't for everyone."

We play 3.P and have plenty of fun/variety in our combats. Some are all-out brawls, some involve saving NPCs before they can be killed, some involve creative solutions like dealing with a roomful of swarms pouring in through a portal when they were immune to our AoE. (I came up with the solution to that one, I was pretty proud of it.) In one encounter we had to expose an impostor to start a riot right under the noses of his Zhentarim handlers. Knowing the rules well gives options rather than taking them away.

[Elkad]

I don't think it's system related.

I'm very much a rollplayer in combat. A crit might get me to say "Right in the Liver!" or similar, but I never go into a long description.

Doesn't matter if I'm playing 1e, 2e, 3.5, PF, Gamma World, Paranoia, SFB, GURPs, Champions, or anything else. Online with macros, or at a table with a bag of dice, it's the same.

So if you end up in a group of combat-simulationists, you are going to get bare descriptions - if anything at all.

I've got a player at my table who insists on rolling all the dice even when it isn't necessary. Announcing his overkill damage is his idea of a description.
14hp mook, he uses Elder Mountain Hammer on it when his base damage is 6d6+23 without it.
"It's dead"
"Threat, confirming for times four damage"
"Confirmed, it's extra dead"
He collects 30d6 and launches them all down the dice tower at once, and then adds it all up.
"206 damage - a new record! I'm done with my turn."

Meanwhile the guy next to him is saying "if I power attack for 1, I get a guaranteed kill on 14hp". So I do that and full attack. *clatter*. That's 6 hits, the threats don't matter, and I don't need to roll damage. These 6 guys are dead.

[Pleh]

anything else they might want to do like "I slide under his legs to confoud him, then stab at him from behind while he's caught offguard" is just something that isn't supported by the rules in any way. It's not that he's being boring in not describing that, it's that he can't do that. That would require a) a tumble check to pass through his square, b) a feint to catch them off guard, and c) an attack to stab them while caught off guard. Tumble is a move action, feint is a standard action (or move action with improved feint), and attacking is a standard action, so you simply can't do all that in a single turn without some kind of feat to reduce one of those actions

I dunno if it's added to PF, but 3.5 tried to do this with the Acrobatic Backstab Skill Trick.

1/encounter make enemy FF by timbling through their square.

Even has an illustration depicting its use. Only real problem is that skill tricks are 1/encounter. Seems like the kind of thing you want to be able to use routinely through a fight.

Maybe should have been, "do as part of a charge" to keep it from being every round attack, but either way, the game makers DID think of it.

[Seto]

I dunno if it's added to PF, but 3.5 tried to do this with the Acrobatic Backstab Skill Trick.

Still, it's a problem that I do encounter with new players coming from more narrative-based games. They want to describe the cool action they're envisioning, and I have to explain to them that it's impossible. "You can't do that, because there's a feat for that purpose buried in a manual and you don't have that feat" is even more frustrating for them than "you can't do that because it takes too many actions". It's the paradox of rules-heavy systems: every additional option is a restriction rather than a new possibility for the majority of characters, because having a "Do X feat" means that characters without the feat couldn't possibly do X.

Now, I'm not giving Pathfinder crap for this. Pathfinder and Fate Accelerated happen to be the two games I play regularly, and I enjoy Pathfinder more, precisely because of the complexity and tactical dimension it brings to the table. But I do understand the frustration when you approach it with a narrative and descriptive mindset. So the advice I give those players (and myself) is: "It's a game. It's a tactical game. Know your character, know the mechanics, choose the option you want to use. Then think about how you want to describe and narrate that action." Incidentally, that's the exact opposite of what Fate Accelerated makes you do ("describe what you do, and that will tell you which Approach you're using").
In a way, Pathfinder is a roleplaying game and Fate (especially Accelerated) is a roleplaying game.

[Pleh]

Honestly, I often let players describe kills in 3.5.

Take vorpal and decapitation, for example. Any weapon with a sufficient hit could decapitate someone, but only vorpal swords magically make it happen unerringly.

My rule tends to be, "if you drop them to zero, they fall to the ground, succumbing to wounds. If you drop them below -10 with one strike, you can describe a vicious kill. If you drop them to or below negative their max HP, have fun describing the explosion."

Then, if someone swings a crit with a vorpal blade, we describe how the blade seems to guide itself and effortlessly sever the victim's head from its shoulders.

Feels within the bounds of the hard crunch.

[137beth]

Today's kids just don't know how to rollplay anymore. Back in my day, we locked players inside barrels, and sent them rolling down a big, bumpy hill. We had to decide what our characters did while we were bouncing and rolling at 50 miles per hour. But nowadays, kids just SIT STILL when they roll play? The new generation has no respect for how rollplaying used to be done.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

The problem is mostly in two parts:
First, the designers hated martials doing anything cool so if you play without Spheres of Might and/or Path of War there’s nothing interesting about them.
Second, people get hung up on the idea that Rule Zero only allows the DM to *add* rules, rather than also selectively ignoring rules that are in the way of fun, and so beliebe that (for example) the Rogue Talent allowing you to crawl or the Vorpal enchantment existing means normal characters can neither crawl nor behead anyone. This is untrue. The rules exist to provide shape and risk to the narrative, not constrain it.

[Darth Ultron]

a Pathfinder game...and it's just "blah. There's my attack macro, next." And somehow, each turn took forever. It was very dull and uninteresting.

And sad thing is: This seems to be the standard for Pathfinder.

3X and Pathfinder are very combat mechanics heavy, so they attract a lot of Roll Players. And a lot of gamers are Roll Players.

Now, note there is nothing wrong with roll playing.

Though over all, this has nothing to do with the game: it's a choice the players all make.

[Crake]

I dunno if it's added to PF, but 3.5 tried to do this with the Acrobatic Backstab Skill Trick.

1/encounter make enemy FF by timbling through their square.

Even has an illustration depicting its use. Only real problem is that skill tricks are 1/encounter. Seems like the kind of thing you want to be able to use routinely through a fight.

Maybe should have been, "do as part of a charge" to keep it from being every round attack, but either way, the game makers DID think of it.

Yeah, I was aware such a trick existed back in 3.5, that's what I was basing my example around. I couldn't remember what it was called, but when you have something like that, you typically just end up saying "I tumble through his square with my acrobatic backstab skill trick and attack him flat footed".

Also, the reason I would give for why you can't do it more than once per encounter would be because people would wizen up to it, after the first time, people wouldn't be so surprised, so you could continue to tumble through their squares and attack them, but they wouldn't be caught off guard anymore.