What should Pathfinder 2 have been? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

paladinn

2021-03-04, 04:09 PM

Similarly, I wanted PF2 to fix more of the problems from PF1 and still staying in the same wheelhouse of 3.5.

I wanted to see several Feats dropped or squished together to get rid of the stupid Feat-chains which mostly just hurt martials (like making Two-Weapon Fighting a feat that improves with BAB instead of having to pick up Improved and Greater as feats later. Why is Endurance still its own Feat when it can just as easily be rolled into Diehard? Mobility can be baked into Dodge *or* Spring Attack, etc).

I wanted to see Skills improved upon, such as giving more base Skill Points to classes (one of our Houserules is that only Wizard gains 2 skill points per level, while the others who get 2 get 3 instead. Might be bumped up to 4 since Skills tend to be even-numbered based), or changing around on some Skills (I actually like Persuasion of 5e more than Diplomacy).

Mostly this. I know PF2 streamlined a few things here and there, which is a good thing. But in general I think it went too far off the D20/D&D reservation. People went with PF1 over 4e for a reason. Now 5e has come back from the video game dark side, and PF2 has gone wandering off.

For me it's easier to go into what PF2 should Not have done. One of the biggest criticisms of 3x and PF1 was feat-bloat. Instead of trimming all that up, they did exactly the opposite. Everything is a feat: class abilities, racial abilities. If I'm creating an Elf character, I want some things to not need to be choices. Elves have greater dexterity, are long-lived and are good with bows and swords. I don't think each of these should need to be chosen as feats at separated levels; they're part of being an elf.

Crake

2021-03-04, 04:16 PM

• let abilities be fantastic. The game is supposed to be fun first, not be unable to break modules first.

This, I think, is my greatest gripe with 2e. The system feels like it was designed entirely with publishing modules in mind, rather than actually making a fun and engaging system. Everything is forced to fit so rigidly into a tight range such that, at any given level, the designers of modules know exactly what a given party should be capable of, and can design accordingly. It feels like the ultimate "on-rails" system design. The 3.5 DMG actually describes two types of campaign/adventure designing on quite literally the first page of adventures: Tailored, or Status Quo. 2e embodies the tailored design philosophy to such an intense degree, while I personally, as a DM and as a player, far prefer status quo designing, and as such, 2e can never really work for me. I hate knowing that, no matter what, there's always a way forward, because the adventure is perfectly tailored for success.

I also agree that the degrees of success on spells is annoying. Beating/failing a DC by 10 or more practically never happens in an appropriate level range, so it's often left purely up to minuscule chance of whether you'll get a greater success/fail on your spells on those natural 20s/1s, and when most spells are barely functional on anything other than a greater success, that makes spellcasting incredibly underwhelming, which is something I despise, because fantastical spells were one of the major draws of 3.5 for me, and with that completely gone, I have little to no interest in 2e.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-04, 04:29 PM

Everything is forced to fit so rigidly into a tight range such that, at any given level, the designers of modules know exactly what a given party should be capable of, and can design accordingly.

That's indeed true. But as far as I know, nobody was complaining about module design in the earlier system. Not the players, not the developers either. So this change to "on-rails" was spectacularly unnecessary.

Crake

2021-03-04, 05:49 PM

That's indeed true. But as far as I know, nobody was complaining about module design in the earlier system. Not the players, not the developers either. So this change to "on-rails" was spectacularly unnecessary.

Well, to be fair, we can't really know what was being talked about internally at paizo, maybe the developers were complaining about it.

That said, previous publishing was done in the form of splatbooks and supplemental rules. I think practically everyone saw how that turned out in 3.5 with immense system bloat, and so they wanted to avoid repeating that mistake, but then the question becomes: how do you monetize a system if not through splatbooks? Modules. And if your primary moneymaking mechanism is through modules, you best be sure that they are On. Point. What breaks modules more than players falling off the rails? Seems like both dnd 5e and pf2e saw that issue, and thus both systems are so tightly bound to enable dms to keep players easily on rails throughout modules.

Honestly, in that regard, dnd5e and pf2e are actually more video gamey than 4e.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-04, 05:56 PM

then the question becomes: how do you monetize a system if not through splatbooks? Modules. And if your primary moneymaking mechanism is through modules, you best be sure that they are On. Point.
Counterpoint: PF1 modules were already highly popular and making money. In fact, the only reason Paizo could publish PF1 in the first place, is because they were already famous from their modules.

It's much more likely that Paizo thought "5E is highly popular, 5E has bounded accuracy, therefore we must get bounded acc too".

Elves

2021-03-04, 05:58 PM

I think they made mistakes with PF2, especially the play test. But honestly, I dont think its the failure it is commonly toted as on the major, oldschool D&D boards.
I'm not saying it's a commercial failure. I have no idea. But clearly the regulars on this site didn't find it appealing so I'm interested either what they found lacking or what they'd like to have seen.

Paizo faced an identity question of whether Pathfinder was "king of the d20 System" [OGL] or "off-brand D&D". I'm not surprised that the second is more profitable considering D&D's market share. But I'm disappointed, since I feel it's ripe time for a more serious rework of 3e. The basics of the d20 System are still robust, IMO, but much of the content and many of the particular rules, from PF as well as 3e, are showing their age.

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-04, 06:15 PM

I had the same problem with PF 2e that I had with PF 1e: it just moved a bunch of stuff around, rather than really fixing the problems with the system. When Paizo launched PF 1e, I was quite interested, because the idea of a robustly-playtested version of 3e had the potential to fix pretty much all the problems I had with the system. Instead, they produced something that wasn't really any better than "some random guy's 3e houserules", and had substantially more obnoxious fiddly bits, so I never really bothered. I was briefly interested in the prospect of PF 2e, but then the exact same thing happened all over again.

Crake

2021-03-04, 06:44 PM

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-04, 06:47 PM

The issue with this sentiment is that, apart from a few (almost) universally agreed upon flaws, most people have a different vision of what their ideal 3.5 fixes would be. A change that one person would applaud, another would boo.

I think that argument proves too much. Yes, if you ask ten people how to fix 3e, you'll get eleven answers. I don't think that means you can't fix 3e, I think it just means that asking random people how to make a game good is a bad approach to game design. People are much better at identifying problems than they are at identifying solutions.

Crake

2021-03-04, 06:59 PM

I think that argument proves too much. Yes, if you ask ten people how to fix 3e, you'll get eleven answers. I don't think that means you can't fix 3e, I think it just means that asking random people how to make a game good is a bad approach to game design. People are much better at identifying problems than they are at identifying solutions.

My point was more that fixing it is subjective, and no matter how you go about it, you're going to alienate some portion of the playerbase.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-04, 07:01 PM

I think that argument proves too much. Yes, if you ask ten people how to fix 3e, you'll get eleven answers. I don't think that means you can't fix 3e,

Fixing 3E starts by realizing that the overwhelming majority of players aren't hardcore forum optimizers. What casual players want from a sequel is vastly different from what hardcore forum optimizers want. PF fixes the former (and rather successfully, too), and therefore doesn't appeal to the latter. Various other systems have attempted the latter, but not really succesfully.

Eldonauran

2021-03-04, 07:01 PM

I'm not saying it's a commercial failure. I have no idea. But clearly the regulars on this site didn't find it appealing so I'm interested either what they found lacking or what they'd like to have seen.
From a pure mechanics standpoint, I've already adopted 'house rules' that have taken large steps towards balancing/making Pathfinder 1E what I want it to be. Some of it is blatantly ripping off some mechanics from Starfinder, Pathfinder 2E, D&D 5e and even some rules from earlier editions. Other parts are actually using variant systems from the Unchained book.

At this point, it is no longer me trying to find a game system that fits what I want to do. It is about adapting the system that I love, that I know intimately, and that I find to be the best suited to the game styles I like to play, to be what I want it to be. I am simply NOT interested in a new edition.

Darg

2021-03-04, 07:33 PM

My point was more that fixing it is subjective, and no matter how you go about it, you're going to alienate some portion of the playerbase.

Which is why the "WoWkiller" type mantras never bear fruit. PF1's success was wholly due to filling a niche that was abandoned by WotC. WotC left many of their playerbase floating in the middle of nowhere sea and Paizo threw a life line to these players. PF2e did the same thing WotC did, but this time it feels as if no one thinks it's worth throwing a lifeline anymore.

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-04, 08:24 PM

My point was more that fixing it is subjective, and no matter how you go about it, you're going to alienate some portion of the playerbase.

Well, sure, but I think that's largely vacuous. Anything is going to alienate some people and attract others. Unless you're willing to argue that 3e was at some kind of maxima, I don't think it means very much that changes might piss some people off. Pf had the opportunity to do robust, goal-driven playtesting and design and did not do that. It's not even that they didn't have the exact goals I wanted, it's that they did not have coherent and measurable goals to any meaningful degree.

Fixing 3E starts by realizing that the overwhelming majority of players aren't hardcore forum optimizers. What casual players want from a sequel is vastly different from what hardcore forum optimizers want. PF fixes the former (and rather successfully, too), and therefore doesn't appeal to the latter. Various other systems have attempted the latter, but not really succesfully.

The difference of opinion between the average player and the average forum poster is much smaller than you seem to think. PF didn't particularly do anything to address the concerns of "casual players", because A) the concerns of "casual players" are articulated even less coherently than the concerns of forum posters and B) PF didn't make changes with the kind of focused agenda you'd need to advance the goals of some particular group. The reasons for PF's success basically come down to "Paizo had good name recognition", "4e was monumentally bad", and "art". Like, do you really think that what the vast majority of players desperately wanted was for the Barbarian to get a bunch of fiddly powers to pick from and for characters to get marginally more feats?

Crake

2021-03-04, 08:30 PM

Well, sure, but I think that's largely vacuous. Anything is going to alienate some people and attract others. Unless you're willing to argue that 3e was at some kind of maxima, I don't think it means very much that changes might piss some people off. Pf had the opportunity to do robust, goal-driven playtesting and design and did not do that. It's not even that they didn't have the exact goals I wanted, it's that they did not have coherent and measurable goals to any meaningful degree.

I mean, I personally believe they did, but that their goals were so alien and distant to what we as a community wanted that it just seems to us like they didn't. Paizo designed a system that allowed them to publish as many adventure paths as they wanted and to make it incredibly simple for DMs to operate said adventure paths, in an attempt to scoop up as much of a market share in the beer and pretzels casual tabletop rpg community as they could.

Elves

2021-03-04, 08:37 PM

but this time it feels as if no one thinks it's worth throwing a lifeline anymore.

Are there any heartbreakers being worked on right now?

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-04, 08:39 PM

I mean, I personally believe they did, but that their goals were so alien and distant to what we as a community wanted that it just seems to us like they didn't. Paizo designed a system that allowed them to publish as many adventure paths as they wanted and to make it incredibly simple for DMs to operate said adventure paths, in an attempt to scoop up as much of a market share in the beer and pretzels casual tabletop rpg community as they could.

I think there are two pretty good arguments against that theory.

First, lots of the changes PF makes don't really contribute to that goal. How does adding favored class bonuses, or changing feat progression, or altering skill math, or changing the mechanics of Sneak Attack further the goal of making it easy to write and run APs?

Second, there are lots of things that make writing or running APs harder that are still in the game. Notably, spells that exist almost exclusively to take players off the rails (e.g. Scrying, Teleport) are still in the game. If their goal really was to pump out adventures above all else, you'd expect them to move as much plot magic as possible into DM handwave territory, because that makes it way easier to write plots that can span an entire campaign without going off the rails.

And I think you can apply arguments in that form against pretty much any proposed goal for PF that is simpler than "make PF". The changes made to the game are simply too much like "some guy's houserules" to be anything other than "some guy's houserules", and even well-written houserules usually don't have any kind of goal or vision behind them.

Palanan

2021-03-04, 09:26 PM

Originally Posted by Xervous
…give the damn races their monk-flipping ribbons rather than starting them off as blobs….

What does this mean? Ribbons, blobs, races, what now?

Originally Posted by Albions_Angel
…and refused to engage with things like Cleric Domains and Rogue talents.

Were these just…completely unfamiliar to your players? Or too complex?

Ilorin Lorati

2021-03-04, 09:45 PM

Are there any heartbreakers being worked on right now?

Legendary Games is working on something. We'll see if that works out.

gijoemike

2021-03-04, 10:02 PM

I am curious to see what happens with Legendary games too.

Does anyone remember the game SpyCraft from say 2004-2006? That was a D20 splinter cell, the Driver, James bond style game. But something they did in that game was make feat trees worth it. There were trees that were 5 or 6 steps deep and they were amazing. Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Mighty Cleave, the Greater Mighty cleave or something like that. By the end you could move your entire movement as a free action when you downed an opponent and then cleave the next guy. Your whole movement FOR FREE. Skill feats applied to 3 or 4 skills and gave bonuses, but made it so failures were very hard from the GM to "activate". You could become amazing even if you rolled a 1 or 2 on the die. There was MASSIVE feat bloat but so many of the feats were worth taking.

What am I saying? 5e took away our choices. PF2 gave us more feats but those feats aren't worth it. They affect very little. When I make a character, having the ability to choose something is very important. 5e toons level 1 and 2 are stock characters. Why bother writing a name down?

PF2 got the racial building via feats right though. I wish it went a bit farther.

Rynjin

2021-03-04, 10:09 PM

Basically, what Pathfinder 2 should have been is Pathfinder...2.

Instead, it's basically D&D 4.5.

Dienekes

2021-03-04, 10:18 PM

What does this mean? Ribbons, blobs, races, what now?

PF2 races are essentially stat boosts, stat penalty, speed, vision, and size. And that’s about it at first. But then at level 1 you get a racial feat to show what type of your race you are.

Not a bad idea in concept. Showing not every member of a race is part of a homogeneous group and all that. Except, a lot of the things they split off into these racial feats were the parts that make the race distinctive and you can only get one initially. So your dwarf, for example. Do you want them to be tough, something actually useful for adventuring that will come up often, or do you want them to know about crafting or stonework, not even both you have to pick between knowing about rocks or metalwork.

This stuff, often called ribbon abilities, are usually the part of the flavor of being a dwarf, but unlikely to come up in gameplay nearly as much as being tough will. So the player is pushed toward taking the more powerful but often less thematic racial choices. Which makes an optimally played dwarf, not really have much to distinguish them as being particularly dwarven for awhile. Thus -I assume- where Xervous statement of them feeling like blobs of stats rather than distinct races.

Personally, I kinda agree. I do like the Racial Feats and the ability to tweak your race a bit. But I’d personally try to find a way to get those flavorful but not particularly effective racial abilities in for free.

Crake

2021-03-04, 10:38 PM

I think there are two pretty good arguments against that theory.

First, lots of the changes PF makes don't really contribute to that goal. How does adding favored class bonuses, or changing feat progression, or altering skill math, or changing the mechanics of Sneak Attack further the goal of making it easy to write and run APs?

By placing the expected capabilities and damage output of characters within a very clearly bounded range.

Second, there are lots of things that make writing or running APs harder that are still in the game. Notably, spells that exist almost exclusively to take players off the rails (e.g. Scrying, Teleport) are still in the game. If their goal really was to pump out adventures above all else, you'd expect them to move as much plot magic as possible into DM handwave territory, because that makes it way easier to write plots that can span an entire campaign without going off the rails.

If you have a look at most of those spells, many have been nerfed to hell, only really being useful if the target crit fails their save. Scrying for example, explicitly says you cannot use what you see to teleport, and the scrying sensor also doesn't move unless the target crit fails, so if they're on the move, you quickly lose your target. Oh, and if they crit succeed, they instead get a glimpse of you and know your rough distance and direction, so while on the surface players appear to have all the former agency that they did, but really they don't.

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-04, 10:58 PM

By placing the expected capabilities and damage output of characters within a very clearly bounded range.

How do the feat progression changes do that? One of the big trends in PF is an absolutely explosion of fiddly little nobs for characters to turn. That's exactly the opposite of what you would want to do if you were trying to keep people stuck in a well-defined power range.

If you have a look at most of those spells, many have been nerfed to hell, only really being useful if the target crit fails their save. Scrying for example, explicitly says you cannot use what you see to teleport, and the scrying sensor also doesn't move unless the target crit fails, so if they're on the move, you quickly lose your target. Oh, and if they crit succeed, they instead get a glimpse of you and know your rough distance and direction, so while on the surface players appear to have all the former agency that they did, but really they don't.

Are we talking about PF1 or PF2? My comments were in reference to PF1, which has a version of Scrying (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/scrying/) that seems broadly pretty similar to the 3e one. That said, the fact that Scrying exists at all as an ability PCs can simply use causes problems for AP design. Yes, it could fail. But it could also succeed, allowing the PCs to get information that lets them sequence-break.

Nifft

2021-03-04, 11:56 PM

Honestly, in that regard, dnd5e and pf2e are actually more video gamey than 4e. 4e was never like a video game. The abundance of interrupts means it does not play well without face-to-face communication. 4e was a bunch of things that work better at the table than on a monitor.

Fixing 3E starts by realizing that the overwhelming majority of players aren't hardcore forum optimizers. What casual players want from a sequel is vastly different from what hardcore forum optimizers want. PF fixes the former (and rather successfully, too), and therefore doesn't appeal to the latter. Various other systems have attempted the latter, but not really succesfully. From a causal player's perspective, PF presents a daunting combinatorial explosion of choices, some of which are bad.

If you got in early enough, you may have been introduced to these choices gradually enough that you've mastered the system -- but it's not someplace I'd send a new group without a seasoned guide.

5e actually fixes that, and is where I'd send new casual players.

This stuff, usually considered ribbon abilities, are usually the part of the flavor of being a dwarf, but unlikely to come up in gameplay nearly as much as being tough will. So the player is pushed toward taking the more powerful but often less thematic racial choices. Which makes an optimally player dwarf, not really have much to distinguish them as being particularly dwarven for awhile. Thus -I assume- where Xervous statement of them feeling like blobs of stats rather than distinct races.

Personally, I kinda agree. I do like the Racial Feats and the ability to tweak your race a bit. But I’d personally try to find a way to get those flavorful but not particularly effective racial abilities in for free.

Just to add to this, using the word "ribbon" for this stuff comes from the 5e designers.

Abilities like a Rogue speaking Thieves' Cant, which is flavorful but not powerful, are described as "ribbons". They're intended to give flavor without adding much power.

I would definitely agree that a Dwarf should by default get thematic stone and crafting ribbons. It should be possible to trade them out, of course -- character customization is great -- but NOT possible to trade flavor for more raw power. When that choice is possible, it becomes inevitable, and that reduces the game.

Like, if you wanted to be a Dwarf raised by a pack of wild humans, you might lose your Dwarven cultural ribbons and instead gain some ribbons from the human regional background choices.

Rynjin

2021-03-05, 12:49 AM

Which is pretty much how Pathfinder handles it with Alternate Racial Traits. PF2 is a step BACKWARDS in that regard.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-05, 03:34 AM

From a causal player's perspective, PF presents a daunting combinatorial explosion of choices, some of which are bad.
My point is not that PF is the most approachable system for novice players, but that PF largely fixes what casual players complained about in 3E. And largely does not fix what hardcore forum optimizers complain about in 3E, but that was never its goal in the first place.

Albions_Angel

2021-03-05, 03:59 AM

Were these just…completely unfamiliar to your players? Or too complex?

A bit of both. I love them to bits, but all of them want to relax and chill out while playing, half of them greatly dislike character creation, and the other half, while enjoying that part, still dislike "fiddly" mechanics.

We set up a pathfinder two-shot when we went on one of our boardgame week holidays, and I asked them if they wanted help building characters. They said no. They were all veteran 5e players, with some 4e experience, and experience with a couple of other systems. I wasnt going to push the issue.

One person built their character correctly. One. He built a gunslinger, and found the archetype he wanted, and all the right feats to make it do what he intended. The cleric picked well, cleric, got as far as building it up to where a 5e cleric would be complete, and just didnt pick any domains or channel abilities. The uc rogue, my girlfriend as it happens (we were gamers before we were partners - shes not eye candy) basically didnt read the uc rogue sheet beyond sneak attack. Mid way through the first session, she asked if she could throw sand in someones face in combat, I asked if she had that talent, she said "what talent?" and then went "Oh my god, look at all these options!" when I showed her, and practically shut down. I cant even remember what the other 3 players took, but I do remember I had to fix something about every single one of the characters except the gunslinger. And in the total of 12 hours it took to run that 2 shot, never once did they remember flanking, or try to aid another, or correctly add a +2 bonus instead of rolling 2d20 and trying to claim the higher result.

This was after we all sat down a week before and I talked over the differences between the 2 systems, specifically "there is no advantage".

I might, MIGHT get SOME of them to agree to a game now that Foundry has a really good 3.5e character sheet. But never an in person game. They all still refuse, even if someone else agrees to run (and they have been fine with me running other systems too). And this is after we all played Starfinder on roll20 (which, while the system suffers from some major AC issues at mid levels, it still has the best damn character sheet I have ever seen!).

3.P is scary for a LOT of 5e players. This group isnt dumb. 2 STEM PhDs, a STEM MPhil, a pure maths bachelor who is now a sysadmin, an architect, a chemical analyst, a patent clerk, and an accountant. Every single one has a maths mind. I am one of the PhDs and I am the slowest at mental maths. All of us code for fun. But 3.5e, even just core 3.5e (and the same is true of pathfinder) is just this... wall of rules. Many of which dont make sense because they were designed for the table top functionality, not for verisimilitude. Whereas 4e and 5e obfuscate that.

They are all bored of 5e, but they are moving to PF2 and even back to 4e (which is so much easier on PC now) and staying away from 3.5e. I cant sell them on unique classes. I cant sell them on big numbers. I cant sell them on familiar classes. I cant sell them on customisability. I just cant sell them on anything.

PF2 is not designed for us. Its designed for them. And they have issues with it, and its not perfect, and I think we all agree it probably could have done with a bit longer in the oven. But it was never the sequel to pathfinder. In the same way that 4e and 5e are not sequels to 3.5e. It was a new edition. A new game. Designed to leach the MASSIVE 5e playerbase who are starting to get frustrated with the slow release of content and the same limited options.

Morty

2021-03-05, 04:17 AM

I'm not really the target audience here, as I consider 3E D&D/Pathfinder to be the worst system I have ever actually played. But it seems to me like Paizo made enough changes to alienate their famously conservative playbase, without changing enough that people who didn't like their game to begin with would change their minds.

I know that I tried making a fighter and a rogue to see what they're like and the quality of feats I had available put me off the system entirely. Instead of picking the feats I liked, I would pick the feats I disliked the least. The process does resemble 4E powers a lot, but the 4E spirit of letting martial characters do cool things with them is gone entirely. It didn't help that I tried to create a fighter with a two-handed finesse weapon and a rogue with a crossbow - such characters don't seem to have been in consideration for being viable. Then again this is Pathfinder, so really I have no one but myself to blame for expecting otherwise.

Of course, this forum really isn't a very representative place, as it's perhaps the strongest bastion of 3.X/PF there is. People elsewhere seem to enjoy PF2E, which confuses me... but probably less so than enjoying PF1E, honestly. It's overshadowed by D&D 5E, but Paizo could release the most sublime, perfect RPG ever designed by human minds and it'd still be a bush next to 5E's sequoia.

It seems that, as long as you stay in the expected lane (big burly fighter, stabby rogue, dual-wielding or archer ranger), PF2E is "safe" in that it's much harder to mess up your character than in PF1E. Feats are delivered in level-locked packages so you're not faced with a giant list every time you level up. This alone makes it a lot more palatable for new players... even if I still think the feats themselves are as enticing as bland oatmeal.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-05, 04:32 AM

Basically, what Pathfinder 2 should have been is Pathfinder...2.
Instead, it's basically D&D 4.5.

Since P2 and 4E share some of the same designers, an interesting question is whether P2 solves the issues people commonly had with 4E.

As far as I can tell the answer is that yes it did, but in doing so it also removed large parts of what attracted people to 4E. So not a good score there :smallamused:

Kitsuneymg

2021-03-05, 06:08 AM

Morty

2021-03-05, 06:20 AM

I would have personally liked to see Paizo adopt and extend the Spheres of Might/Power system for p2. They opted to double down on vancian casting instead, leaving all the same narrative problems with playing a level 1 character who is supposed to be a necromancer or a time mage or a flash stepper, or any of dozens of other concepts you can’t really pull off at all until level 5+.

I get that the possibility of having someone with nothing but divination talents or whatever presents an issue to module developers who expect dimension door to be common at level 12, but frankly, that’s why we have a GM and not just a computer.

With the doubling down on false choice through feat chains, I just gave up on paizo completely. Looking forward to seeing what Legendary gives us.

In all fairness, a Spheres-inspired system would require some changes to make it more newbie-friendly. As it is, I can see people being pushed away by having a dense list of talents they can take at every level.

I also feel as though Spheres of Might have a similar problem to PF2E martial feats, which is to say, it's a lot of unimpressive rider effects mixed with some more interesting ones.

Elves

2021-03-05, 07:12 AM

One person built their character correctly. One. He built a gunslinger, and found the archetype he wanted, and all the right feats to make it do what he intended. The cleric picked well, cleric, got as far as building it up to where a 5e cleric would be complete, and just didnt pick any domains or channel abilities. The uc rogue, my girlfriend as it happens (we were gamers before we were partners - shes not eye candy) basically didnt read the uc rogue sheet beyond sneak attack. Mid way through the first session, she asked if she could throw sand in someones face in combat, I asked if she had that talent, she said "what talent?" and then went "Oh my god, look at all these options!" when I showed her, and practically shut down.
It sounds like the added complexity of PF was unhelpful. Compared to pure 3.5 it adds archetypes, backgrounds, favored class bonuses, and the endless lists of variable class abilities. Even if I were a PF player, I wouldn't use PF to introduce players to 3.x. With pure 3.5 it's not that much more complex than 5e in a level 1 newb scenario -- all it adds is feat choice and skill rank allocation.

FrogInATopHat

2021-03-05, 07:32 AM

One person built their character correctly. One. He built a gunslinger, and found the archetype he wanted, and all the right feats to make it do what he intended. The cleric picked well, cleric, got as far as building it up to where a 5e cleric would be complete, and just didnt pick any domains or channel abilities. The uc rogue, my girlfriend as it happens (we were gamers before we were partners - shes not eye candy) basically didnt read the uc rogue sheet beyond sneak attack. Mid way through the first session, she asked if she could throw sand in someones face in combat, I asked if she had that talent, she said "what talent?" and then went "Oh my god, look at all these options!" when I showed her, and practically shut down. I cant even remember what the other 3 players took, but I do remember I had to fix something about every single one of the characters except the gunslinger. And in the total of 12 hours it took to run that 2 shot, never once did they remember flanking, or try to aid another, or correctly add a +2 bonus instead of rolling 2d20 and trying to claim the higher result.

This was after we all sat down a week before and I talked over the differences between the 2 systems, specifically "there is no advantage".

It sounds to me like specifically focusing on 'there is no advantage' was not the way to approach this with your players.

I'm not sure what relevance the advantage mechanic has to any of the issues you say cropped up EDIT: except the last 17 words of the entire paragraph.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-05, 07:44 AM

Mid way through the first session, she asked if she could throw sand in someones face in combat, I asked if she had that talent, she said "what talent?"
Throwing sand in someone's face is a Dirty Trick maneuver, so you should simply have asked her to roll CMB. This doesn't need a talent.

That she didn't even read the rogue class beyond the words "sneak attack" is not the system's fault, and it means that either she should have asked for help despite initially saying no to that, or you should have supported them better by checking the characters they'd made. Because yes, 3E/PF is complicated, but it's pretty easy to get new players into it with a bit of support, as they don't need to know most of the complications. Like, instead of pointing to the list of 1000+ feats, just ask them what they want to learn at low level, and suggest something.

all of them want to relax and chill out while playing, half of them greatly dislike character creation, and the other half, while enjoying that part, still dislike "fiddly" mechanics.
While I can certainly sympathize with players who find 3E/PF too fiddly and having too many choices, I fail to see how P2 would appeal to those people. If anything, P2 is even more fiddly. Building, say, an elf rogue requires me to read elf feats, elf heritages (not the same thing), backgrounds (which largely don't do anything, but I don't know that in advance), a loooong list of "general" feats (which largely don't do anything either), subclasses, and only then do I get to the "class feats", basically watered-down versions of 4E powers. Building a 4E character is more exciting than that, and I don't even like 4E.

(of course, by P2 logic throwing sand at somebody's eye would require a critical hit to do anything, meaning you get a 5% chance to succeed)

Gnaeus

2021-03-05, 08:48 AM

When I get a new edition of a game I expect it to be similar to previous editions, maybe slightly streamlined. I expect it to be written for fans of the old game, at least in significant part. So when I get the next edition of GURPS I will expect a point buy system with lots of fiddly advantages and disadvantages. If I buy the next Vampire I would expect a templated system that lets me buy powers, skills and stats with exp based on my template. I was presumably a fan of the old system or I wouldn’t be buying the new one.

This goes triple for pathfinder. Since the only reason most of us bought their stuff to begin with was a fondness for the d20 system. I’m relatively fond of their changes, but really all I cared about ever was more 3.5 style content. At their height the PF design team was maybe very slightly more game savvy than the 3.5 design team (after a decade of experience). They fixed some things ok, and their new classes and archetypes were more often balanced with each other around the T3 level. But they were still making T1s and T5s and pretending they were balanced.

The very last thing I want a new game edition to do is follow the market leader. I could have just bought the market leader. I probably own the market leader. As it happens, I think 5e meets their design goals of tightened power curve with some character flexibility quite a bit better than PF2. (Because actual multiclassing provides more real flexibility than picking 30 feats most of which do nothing) But even if I thought it was as good I don’t need something similar to the industry gorilla. 5e would win solely by virtue of better marketing and support.

PF2 failed on every front. It did not produce a product recognizable as a successor to the first edition. It did nothing for the fans who only ever supported PF because they liked the 3.5 design philosophy. And it made a strictly worse version of a game everyone had.

{Scrubbed}

What should they have done? A ranking of classes by power level would have been nice. Partner with the best of the 3p designers to allow official support for spheres or DSP. Expand and refine useful subsystems like downtime rules and kingdom building. Fix the race builder. Give more support to Starfinder, maybe introduce more genre style spin-offs. Provide unchained versions of the late developed classes that were mostly low quality. Fix problem powers like planar binding similarly to how they fixed polymorph. PF1 has a number of systems I enjoy. Most of which could be improved with more options and development. (Actually I think the starfinder ship system should have borrowed a lot more from the downtime system, with different resources you can spend to build stuff).

Albions_Angel

2021-03-05, 08:52 AM

Oh, I totally accept that I should have guided them more. But I was also getting push back about how they knew their RPGs and could handle it. I also tried to get them on 3.5 instead and... failed. "We have heard too many bad things about it".

It might not have been sand throwing, I admit. This was some years ago now. I remember it WAS a rouge talent of some kind, as I had read through the class (all the classes) once I knew what people were going as.

And they dont find PF2 more complex. Im sorry, as a veteran 3.5e player, I dont find PF2 more complex. Its is way, way simpler. Options are smaller, more limited. Feats matter less and are clearly defined. And yes, the 3rd party resource repositories are much better for PF2 than PF1 or 3.5e. Roll20 and other, less reputable, sites lay everything out methodically and easily. The PF1 srd is a nightmare to navigate, and most resources for 3.5e are in book form only. If you want to find out how this interacts with that, its a book diving exercise.

All together, PF2 feels less complex simply because its a paired down RPG experience built with the internet in mind. And this is them saying it. They found the complexity of PF1, the shear amount of options, bonuses, everything else, even with me suggesting they stick to a few things, overwhelming. I have offered to try again, and to pregen characters. I have offered to run 3.5e, in person, with just the few books I have (PHB1, CAd, CA). But even that is far too much.

Instead, having run through the entirety of 5e, they essentially want that, but a little bit more. PF2 is marketed as that. Not a replacement for PF1. An alternative to 5e.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-05, 09:20 AM

Instead, having run through the entirety of 5e, they essentially want that, but a little bit more. PF2 is marketed as that. Not a replacement for PF1. An alternative to 5e.
That's a fair point. And even if posters like Gnaeus don't want a game that's comparable to the market leader, it makes commercial sense to do that anyway. Let's face it, PF1 players are just gonna PF1; and 3.5 players are just gonna 3.5.

So how does P2 compare to 5E? The main differences I'm seeing are
In 5E, low-level monsters remain a threat to a high-level party (by design); this is not the case in P2. That's a matter of taste.
P2 seems to have more diversity in character building, but due to buffet-style multiclassing, 5E actually has more.
5E has functional and effective buff/debuff/crowdcontrol magic, and P2 largely does not.
5E largely leaves skill and out-of-combat rules to the GM; P2 has extensive rules for both, but I haven't checked how useful they are (other than P2's "legendary" rules being decidedly bland and mundane).

Is that fair? Am I missing something?

Gnaeus

2021-03-05, 09:48 AM

That's a fair point. And even if posters like Gnaeus don't want a game that's comparable to the market leader, it makes commercial sense to do that anyway. Let's face it, PF1 players are just gonna PF1; and 3.5 players are just gonna 3.5.

Does it though? If they had made a game with significantly different design philosophy I know I would have been more likely to buy both. As it stands, yes, I’m going to PF1, or 3.5 if I can’t PF1. But I certainly would have bought the heck out of some 3.75. And if they went off in a more different direction, say a class/level system with limited point buy like Hackmaster, I would likely have bought it if I liked the design. It seems to me that finding a different niche from the market leader makes a ton more sense. My FB account is deluged daily by 3pp games that use the 5e system, with everything from ponies to anthros to ninjas. Some of them look decent and all look better than pf2. Making yourself one more competitor for the $ pot of people who like 5e seems like a super bad commercial idea to me. And bear in mind I paid for 5e and won’t pay for pf2. When I want dungeon crawl for low op players I have that game.

And again, they had a player base that was buying their product. Most of whom now aren’t. They would have been better off selling the PF name to DSP, then marketing their new, totally different game to the different market under a different name. How many people care about the PF brand other than gamers, who mostly have established feelings about it? If the folks who hate Paizo aren’t more likely to buy your game, and the folks who love PF1 are angry, what does making PF 2nd edition get you?

I understand that gaming companies have to reprint their core books every so often to keep the revenue stream alive. But you generally don’t do that by dumping on your previous fans. And unfortunately one of the things Paizo always was bad about was taking fan feedback constructively. I don’t think they even understood how infuriating their game design would be to a large % of their player base. Because when people told them so they were generally called munchkins and blocked from forums.

Palanan

2021-03-05, 10:22 AM

Originally Posted by Gnaeus
{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

This seems like an overreaction, to say the least, and doesn’t really help anyone.

A lot of people have lost their homes through no fault of their own, or are facing the real possibility of losing them, and I don’t see how wishing this on certain individuals is beneficial. There’s just…no good reason for saying this.

Batcathat

2021-03-05, 10:30 AM

Does it though? If they had made a game with significantly different design philosophy I know I would have been more likely to buy both. As it stands, yes, I’m going to PF1, or 3.5 if I can’t PF1. But I certainly would have bought the heck out of some 3.75. And if they went off in a more different direction, say a class/level system with limited point buy like Hackmaster, I would likely have bought it if I liked the design. It seems to me that finding a different niche from the market leader makes a ton more sense. My FB account is deluged daily by 3pp games that use the 5e system, with everything from ponies to anthros to ninjas. Some of them look decent and all look better than pf2. Making yourself one more competitor for the $ pot of people who like 5e seems like a super bad commercial idea to me. And bear in mind I paid for 5e and won’t pay for pf2. When I want dungeon crawl for low op players I have that game.

Whether or not it worked in this particular case, following the leader is certainly common enough to be an understandable market strategy. Just look at all the shared movie universes after the success of the MCU or all the crafting games after the success of Minecraft or all the superhero comics after the success of Superman. Obviously it doesn't always work, whether financially or critically, but it could certainly qualify as making commercial sense.

Morty

2021-03-05, 10:54 AM

Much like Pathfinder 1E, PF2E is also stuck in a trap of trying to provide "build diversity" while operating in a framework that severely curtails it. There's only so much diversity you can get with classes and levels - if they were willing to alter the class list even a little, maybe, but they're not. So any diversity has to come at the cost of piling up more and more feats and archetypes and generally trying to sidestep the system's core conceit (race + class + level). Insistence on some tried and true D&D traditions (finesse weapons must be terrible, rogues need to sneak attack and find traps, rangers need dual-wielding support) doesn't exactly help.

Maat Mons

2021-03-05, 04:00 PM

I haven't played any Pathfinder 2e. I started looking at it, and noticed there seemed to be a lot of mucking around with feats. My main complaint about Pathfinder 1e was that there was too much mucking around with feats.

What I would have liked for it to have been? I'd have liked it to be 5e, but with casting scaled back up to the levels of 3.5/PF1. No special limits on spells above 6th level. Plenty of spells per day. Human Sorcerers getting 60 spells know at 20th level. That sort of thing.

And then I would have liked Dreamscarred Press to come in and do a Psionics book. Wouldn't have minded whoever doing a Tome of Battle/Path of War book for it too.

Oh, and I'd like a return to classes like Beguiler and Dread Necromancer. Classes that are "tier 3" in the sense that picking your class determines what you're good at. (I specify because not everyone has the same notion of what tiers mean.) Simple, training-wheels spellcasting classes for people who just want to stick to a theme and don't want to look through a boatload of options.

But keep classes like Sorcerer, that are "tier 2" in the sense that you can still kind of turn yourself into whatever, even after picking your class. Essentially, a sort of generic "roll your own" class for things that don't fit neatly into the premade molds. Just make sure that trying to use the custom class to duplicate the concept of a pre-built class turns out worse, so the pre-built ones are actually viable choices. E.g., like how a Sorcerer built to focus on Enchantment and Illusion isn't as good at those things as a Beguiler.

And absolutely no classes that can change their capabilities from day to day. … Well, okay, maybe one. But not like Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. More like the Chameleon PrC.

stack

2021-03-05, 04:02 PM

It is my understanding that PF2 has actually sold well, though I don't have numbers to cite.

I haven't gotten to play with it much; I am told that it plays better than it reads, but can't confirm from personal experience.

Nifft

2021-03-05, 04:22 PM

What I would have liked for it to have been? I'd have liked it to be 5e, but with casting scaled back up to the levels of 3.5/PF1. No special limits on spells above 6th level. Plenty of spells per day. Human Sorcerers getting 60 spells know at 20th level. That sort of thing.

Interesting.

I'd have gone the other way, probably: 5e but with Spheres of Power and Path of War instead of D&D-ish spellcasting, so you're building on more equitable footing between muggles & magicians.

Maybe allow D&D-ish spells as special PrC features. Maybe.

Albions_Angel

2021-03-05, 04:34 PM

That's a fair point. And even if posters like Gnaeus don't want a game that's comparable to the market leader, it makes commercial sense to do that anyway. Let's face it, PF1 players are just gonna PF1; and 3.5 players are just gonna 3.5.

So how does P2 compare to 5E? The main differences I'm seeing are
In 5E, low-level monsters remain a threat to a high-level party (by design); this is not the case in P2. That's a matter of taste.
P2 seems to have more diversity in character building, but due to buffet-style multiclassing, 5E actually has more.
5E has functional and effective buff/debuff/crowdcontrol magic, and P2 largely does not.
5E largely leaves skill and out-of-combat rules to the GM; P2 has extensive rules for both, but I haven't checked how useful they are (other than P2's "legendary" rules being decidedly bland and mundane).

Is that fair? Am I missing something?

I am afraid you are still misunderstanding a little.

They dont want a system with more variety than 5e. They just want more variety than 5e has currently. WotC are insanely slow with their content updates. My friends between then have played EVERY variation. A few of them are also feeling a little limited by the in game mechanics. PF2 DOES increase the play complexity, while also providing NEW classes, races, etc. Honestly, if PF2 has just pulled a PF1 and stuck with 5e mechanics, they STILL would have changed because its not another of the same class.

5e has done insanely well. But its slow, and the more experienced players of it are getting bored. PF2 is bouncing around at the sidelines going "Hey, look at me! I am close enough you will still like me, but far enough for you to give me a shot!"

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-05, 05:49 PM

My point is not that PF is the most approachable system for novice players, but that PF largely fixes what casual players complained about in 3E. And largely does not fix what hardcore forum optimizers complain about in 3E, but that was never its goal in the first place.

Can you expound on that? Because at a glance you don't really seem to have explained why you think this, at least in this thread. What were the problems casual players had, and how did PF fix them?

They opted to double down on vancian casting instead, leaving all the same narrative problems with playing a level 1 character who is supposed to be a necromancer or a time mage or a flash stepper, or any of dozens of other concepts you can’t really pull off at all until level 5+.

I really wish people would stop blaming Vancian Magic for problems that have absolutely nothing to do with Vancian Magic. Nothing about it stops you from playing a Time Mage or Necromancer at 1st level. The Dread Necromancer is a Vancian class (arguably, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that the class stops working if it has to prepare spells) that is a Necromancer from 1st level. The reason you can't play Time Mage at 1st level is because there isn't 1st level Time Magic, not because "make choices ahead of time that influence your options later" is somehow off-theme for a Time Mage.

And unfortunately one of the things Paizo always was bad about was taking fan feedback constructively. I don’t think they even understood how infuriating their game design would be to a large % of their player base. Because when people told them so they were generally called munchkins and blocked from forums.

I mean, is that really a surprise? That's what they did in the playtest for PF 1e too. The reality is that making a robust system is hard, and you don't actually need to do it to make money, because the TTRPG market is not very competitive (and is not very profitable, meaning companies can't afford top talent). So lots of designers prefer to just yell at the people who point out problems to them, instead of solving the problems they point out.

And absolutely no classes that can change their capabilities from day to day. … Well, okay, maybe one. But not like Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. More like the Chameleon PrC.

I really don't understand the deep hatred people have for the idea of classes that can change their loadout from day to day. You know what class can do that? The Incarnate. I defy you to find me one person who thinks the Incarnate is broken. The problems with the Wizard really have basically nothing to do with the fact that they can cast Cone of Cold today and Cloudkill tomorrow, and everything to do with the fact that they can cast Planar Binding at all. The ability to adapt your character to the challenges you expect each day is a very reasonable thing to want and not anywhere near as hard to balance as people seem to think.

Seerow

2021-03-06, 12:16 AM

Gonna echo the crowd here that PF2 failed at delivering something I have a reason to care about. Instead of an evolution of 3.5/PF1, it instead feels like it took the worst parts of 5e and 4e and smushed them into a blender. The end result just isn't appealing to me. I hope they found a strong enough player base to keep them afloat, but I am on the lookout for the next 3.5/PF1 successor personally.

I have seen several people calling for something similar to Spheres of Power as the successor, and my group has been diving deep into that system the last year or so, and do really enjoy it. But if it is going to hit mainstream success it needs to be made easier to understand. Many of the spheres (particularly the casting spheres) were written in such a way that is particularly obtuse, and I will regularly find myself rereading the same paragraph a half dozen times to make sure I understand how it works. And then you have stuff like the Tech Sphere which is basically its own whole new subsystem complete with multiple different resource mechanics that is trying to do 5 different things all consolidated into one sphere, when it really could have been its own book with a half dozen spheres or more by itself. I wanted to build myself a lightsaber for a character, and while it is possible, it took literal hours of research trying to figure out exactly what talents I would need, how they interact with each other, what my energy requirements are, etc etc, and I am still not 100% that character was running on RAW but the DM said good enough.

I really don't understand the deep hatred people have for the idea of classes that can change their loadout from day to day. You know what class can do that? The Incarnate. I defy you to find me one person who thinks the Incarnate is broken. The problems with the Wizard really have basically nothing to do with the fact that they can cast Cone of Cold today and Cloudkill tomorrow, and everything to do with the fact that they can cast Planar Binding at all. The ability to adapt your character to the challenges you expect each day is a very reasonable thing to want and not anywhere near as hard to balance as people seem to think.

For me personally, it's less about balance and more about character identity. The powers you use are one of the main defining features of your character. A Wizard who can swap between every spell every written from day to day ends up feeling less like a character and more like any other wizard. By comparison what spells your Sorcerer chooses to pick tells you a lot about that character, what they value, and how they interact with the world. At least to me. I do have similar problems with Incarnates and Binders who are much lower power but can just swap to anything their class has available from day to day because those characters feel defined more by their class than by their selections of abilities. For what it's worth though I have similar issues with Dread Necro/Beguiler in that they all feel the same. So it is very likely that my personal preferences are a pretty specific subset and you don't want to design a whole game around that. I am willing to recognize that. On the bright side that sort of "Pick your Powerset" mentality is front and center in Spheres, so I have a ruleset already that covers what I want and enough design space in it to keep me entertained for several more years while I wait for the next big thing.

Kitsuneymg

2021-03-06, 04:23 AM

In all fairness, a Spheres-inspired system would require some changes to make it more newbie-friendly. As it is, I can see people being pushed away by having a dense list of talents they can take at every level.

I also feel as though Spheres of Might have a similar problem to PF2E martial feats, which is to say, it's a lot of unimpressive rider effects mixed with some more interesting ones.

I’ve got a party of 5. 2 have pathfinder experience. Three have only Sunless Citadel followed by Rise of the Runelords that I’m running for them as previous experience. They’re all doing pretty well with sop.

I agree that SoM needs another look. Too many bland abilities. But the core of the system (talent based, auto scale abilities) is solid. My other groups agree that SoM was too afraid to let martials do many wizardly things. The teleport talents nice though.

That fact that there is only one save DC (except for the wizard who has her speciality higher) to remember is helping a lot of the newer players. We’ve hit level 15 so they are not “new” anymore.

The wizard especially is enjoying only getting extensions to her spells, not a new list of completely unrelated abilities every level. At best she’ll get two tablets at a level, and since usually she’s adding a new feature to an existing ability, it’s a lot less to mentally work around. Kinda like sorcerer vs wizard.

They’ve all had more fun and an easier time building the Character they want with SoM than they did in SC when using paizo only. So I guess I have one data point that disagrees with you.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-06, 06:25 AM

Can you expound on that? Because at a glance you don't really seem to have explained why you think this, at least in this thread. What were the problems casual players had, and how did PF fix them?
Oh we've had plenty of threads like that. Casual problems are things like "rogues suck because undead are immune to sneak attack", or "blasting magic deals much less damage than melee", or "I need more skill points", or "prestige classes must be planned five levels in advance", or even "monks need pounce". PF has a straightforward fix for all of those (whereas the 3E solutions tend to require multiple splatbooks and/or pretty high level and/or high system knowledge).

By contrast, hardcore forum optimizer complaints tend to be about 8th- or 9th-level spells, or obscure combos involving multiple splatbooks; and there's just not enough of a market in fixing that.

Sneak Dog

2021-03-06, 06:30 AM

Exciting martial abilities. As is, the feats are just little bits of 'meh'. And still no high-level non-combat features for martials.

Spells can make spellcasters very exciting in any situation. Though I fear PF2 fared poorly there with some (many?) spells requiring a critical failure to actually do what the spell advertises?

Kurald Galain

2021-03-06, 06:32 AM

They dont want a system with more variety than 5e. They just want more variety than 5e has currently.
My point is that P2 has long, long lists of options; but these options are so weak and bland that it doesn't really matter what you pick. So while it seems to have a lot of variety, in practice doesn't.

Basically,
3E/PF: many options, high impact
5E: few options, high impact
P2: many options, low impact

I fear PF2 fared poorly there with some (many?) spells requiring a critical failure to actually do what the spell advertises?
Most of them, yes. Did you think a Web spell would immobilize its targets (like it has ever since BECMI)? In P2 it gives them a small penalty to speed instead! Exciting!

Endless Rain

2021-03-06, 03:06 PM

I really don't understand the deep hatred people have for the idea of classes that can change their loadout from day to day. You know what class can do that? The Incarnate. I defy you to find me one person who thinks the Incarnate is broken. The problems with the Wizard really have basically nothing to do with the fact that they can cast Cone of Cold today and Cloudkill tomorrow, and everything to do with the fact that they can cast Planar Binding at all. The ability to adapt your character to the challenges you expect each day is a very reasonable thing to want and not anywhere near as hard to balance as people seem to think.

Classes that change their loadout from day to day can take up a lot of IRL time to actually change that loadout. The reason I eventually banned prepared casting in my games was because my party's Wizard was taking up thirty minutes at the beginning of each session just picking her spells for the day, and the rest of the party had to wait on her to finish before we could even start playing.

Prepared casting is also much harder for GMs to balance for. If a Sorcerer learns overpowered spells, you can plan around those spells and amp up the power level. But if you have a (non-spontaneous) Cleric in your party, you have to be prepared for every single overpowered Cleric spell, and for the possibility that the player picks a poor loadout that contains none of them.

Nifft

2021-03-06, 03:12 PM

and for the possibility that the player picks a poor loadout that contains none of them.

This is a really great point.

As a DM, what I generally want is to challenge the players with winnable fights. I want them to struggle a bit, and then triumph.

If they can dramatically weaken themselves by accident, it becomes significantly more difficult to predict their success.

Crake

2021-03-06, 05:01 PM

How do the feat progression changes do that? One of the big trends in PF is an absolutely explosion of fiddly little nobs for characters to turn. That's exactly the opposite of what you would want to do if you were trying to keep people stuck in a well-defined power range.

Are we talking about PF1 or PF2? My comments were in reference to PF1, which has a version of Scrying (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/s/scrying/) that seems broadly pretty similar to the 3e one. That said, the fact that Scrying exists at all as an ability PCs can simply use causes problems for AP design. Yes, it could fail. But it could also succeed, allowing the PCs to get information that lets them sequence-break.

Ah, I see the confusion here, I'm talking about 2e, since that's the topic of the thread.

Morty

2021-03-06, 06:39 PM

I’ve got a party of 5. 2 have pathfinder experience. Three have only Sunless Citadel followed by Rise of the Runelords that I’m running for them as previous experience. They’re all doing pretty well with sop.

I agree that SoM needs another look. Too many bland abilities. But the core of the system (talent based, auto scale abilities) is solid. My other groups agree that SoM was too afraid to let martials do many wizardly things. The teleport talents nice though.

That fact that there is only one save DC (except for the wizard who has her speciality higher) to remember is helping a lot of the newer players. We’ve hit level 15 so they are not “new” anymore.

The wizard especially is enjoying only getting extensions to her spells, not a new list of completely unrelated abilities every level. At best she’ll get two tablets at a level, and since usually she’s adding a new feature to an existing ability, it’s a lot less to mentally work around. Kinda like sorcerer vs wizard.

They’ve all had more fun and an easier time building the Character they want with SoM than they did in SC when using paizo only. So I guess I have one data point that disagrees with you.

It is true that Spheres talents are meant to be combined, so the actual number of possible options is smaller than it appears. As far as SoM goes, I believe it was a deliberate choice to avoid anything too over the top. Thus relegating such abilities to optional "legendary" talents. But even so, SoM feels afraid to let characters do things rather than shuffle numbers here or there. I respect what it attempts to do, but it's lacking.

NigelWalmsley

2021-03-06, 07:57 PM

For me personally, it's less about balance and more about character identity. The powers you use are one of the main defining features of your character. A Wizard who can swap between every spell every written from day to day ends up feeling less like a character and more like any other wizard.

I get that. But at the same time, it seems like there are concepts where part of the identity is swapping powers around. If my character is a Gadgeteer, for example, I expect that I will have different gadgets that I use on different adventures.

Classes that change their loadout from day to day can take up a lot of IRL time to actually change that loadout. The reason I eventually banned prepared casting in my games was because my party's Wizard was taking up thirty minutes at the beginning of each session just picking her spells for the day, and the rest of the party had to wait on her to finish before we could even start playing.

I have to say that's pretty much the opposite of my experience. IME, prepared casters very rarely change their list of prepared spells, unless you make it blindingly obvious that there's an advantage to be gained by doing so.

Prepared casting is also much harder for GMs to balance for. If a Sorcerer learns overpowered spells, you can plan around those spells and amp up the power level. But if you have a (non-spontaneous) Cleric in your party, you have to be prepared for every single overpowered Cleric spell, and for the possibility that the player picks a poor loadout that contains none of them.

That's more a problem with the Cleric being uniquely bad than prepared spellcasting in general. Wizards have the issue to a much, much smaller degree. Which is kind of my point. Consider Planar Binding. Planar Binding is super broken in 3e. But no one says "we should remove summoners from the game entirely". While there are certainly problems with prepared casters as-implemented, those problems aren't fundamental. But there are a lot of people who seem to have a real hate-on for Vancian Magic.

It is true that Spheres talents are meant to be combined, so the actual number of possible options is smaller than it appears. As far as SoM goes, I believe it was a deliberate choice to avoid anything too over the top. Thus relegating such abilities to optional "legendary" talents. But even so, SoM feels afraid to let characters do things rather than shuffle numbers here or there. I respect what it attempts to do, but it's lacking.

My perception of Spheres was that a lot of it was an overreaction to people's complaints about magic in 3.5. It feels like instead of actually trying to solve problems and present a vision of what characters should be doing outside combat, they just kind of punted to "DM decides".

QuadraticGish

2021-03-06, 08:32 PM

Seerow

2021-03-06, 09:41 PM

One thing that I really go like out of SoM is how the equipment sphere handled proficiencies alongside marital traditions. Though, SoM characters I feel can suffer more with low talent progression than even the low casters with low talent progression.

I agree with this, and I think it's because SoP the base spheres tend to do a lot more. Like almost any sphere in SoP when you first pick it up is giving you 2-3 distinct abilities you can use, and then grows adding new options from there. Also because most of the SoP spheres have a bunch of options, there's a ton of sphere specific drawbacks that give up 1 or 2 of those options or modify them in some way, in exchange for a fairly open ended talent, so you can dig pretty deep into a sphere to get what you want really early. Most of the Martial Spheres only give one ability when you pick them up, then most of your talents are options to improve that base ability instead of continuing to give you more options. And because of how much more limited the base sphere is, Might spheres tend to have fewer drawback options, and almost all of them have a locked in choice that you get with the drawback instead of pick up whatever you want. Ironically despite the system being much closer between martial/casting, it still maintains the divide by giving so much extra flexibility to the casters.

I get that. But at the same time, it seems like there are concepts where part of the identity is swapping powers around. If my character is a Gadgeteer, for example, I expect that I will have different gadgets that I use on different adventures.

I can kind of get behind that, but even then a 100% loadout change is a bit much. Both from a flavor perspective ("Where are your batarangs Batman?") and from a game design perspective ("Seriously just because we wanted to take a rest in game does not mean we wanted to spend 30 minutes out of game while you retailor all of your spells"). Someone mentioned the Chameleon as an example of a class with flexibility who handles it well. I think the Brawler is another good one with more on the fly flexibility instead of day to day flexibility. But if you had a Wizard as basically a Spheres Incanter who could swap out one sphere per 3 or 4 levels (min 1) every day I think that'd be a fair middle ground of being able to tailor your loadout from day to day. So if you have extended downtime? Sure come back as a totally different character. If you are just taking a quick rest swap out a few of your talents but you are not changing the core of how you function.

Dienekes

2021-03-07, 10:17 PM

Alright, so, my thoughts on what Pathfinder 2 should have been. Admittedly, part of this is just what I want to see in a d20 system. But a bit of it is also trying to take what Pathfinder 1 was trying to do and make it cleaner.

Let's start with character creation.

Having Ability Boosts determined through a mixture of direct choice and as a result of your character's life path is fine. I don't see much of a reason why odd numbered ability scores matter anymore. I'd remove them for a simple -5 to +10 (or whatever) system.

Races are more fleshed out at a basic level. They have features determined by just being their race or ancestry. Whatever. Which may give Ability Boosts, sure. But also allow more room to make each ancestry to feel unique and diverse. Feel free to give a couple ribbon abilities to make them feel distinct.

As an Optional Rule that must be OKed by the DM. Have a Culture Subsystem. Where each Ancestry has a couple of their abilities determined not by what the species can do, but from what is emphasized by the culture. These Culture abilities would all be roughly equal to each other. And a player may choose to pick one not necessarily a default for their race. Provided it fits the character's backstory and doesn't break the DM's setting.

Backgrounds unchanged.

And finally you get to Classes.

Each class would be designed from the ground up to provide a completely different experience. Having tailored class-based mechanics is one of the primary benefits of using a class system that is lost with the "everything is a feat" approach. Even when classes share a similar narrative space. If you must have Wizards and Sorcerers or Barbarians and Fighters (and I'm ok with both existing) then each has to be played on a round for round basis as completely different preferably with different subsystems in the class that emphasize how they're supposed to play in combat.

To use the Champion/Fighter/Barbarian divide. Certainly, each class has a foundation of whacking things in combat. But how they go about it should feel radically different even on an individual round.

A Barbarian class can focus entirely on their rage ability. Getting into a Rage and prolonging their Rage and making themselves get angrier with more boosts while they're in a Rage. That sort of thing.

A Champion class could focus on their Oath and what that Oath makes them act. I'd personally wish to move them a step away from just being tied to alignment and more toward designing actually interesting Oaths for the character to swear. Performing actions that fit with the Oath in combat would reward some Oath Points or whatever to power their abilities. These actions should be relatively simple. The Champion that made an Oath about protecting people, for example, would start with an ability to allow them to tank hits aimed toward their allies. Each time they use an ability and take such a hit they gain power to use their abilities to Smite or Lay on Hands or whatever we think they should be able to do.

A Fighter could lean into the martial artist side of the combat fluff and go a bit Tome of Battle with it, using Stances and Maneuvers perhaps don't exactly use the refresh mechanics from ToB necessarily. But something so you can't just spam your best Maneuver over and over again.

You get it. Each should behave very differently and look different even when just reading their Class Table.

Leveling Up.

I'm ok with some Classes getting more strict leveling system, while others getting more free form. For example I can see a Barbarian getting something like a D&D 5e Subclass at level 2 or something that makes them pick a specific fighting style and have that determine what abilities they get for a few levels. The classes designed in this way will have a bit of an indicator that these are the easier ones to pick up. There should be at least one of these easy to pick up classes for martials and magic users. The complexity and long-term decision making for these designated classes start off pretty low.

Do you want your Barbarian to use a really big weapon and hit really hard or two smaller weapons and dance around combat? That sort of thing. And for a few levels they get abilities that allow them to follow those basic decisions. And slowly over the next batch of levels the class opens up to become a bit more complex as the new players get to understanding the system.

While other classes probably the Wizard is a good example, wouldn't really have that system of leveling up. Being more open to what spells they want to pick up every level for the player to determine for themselves. These classes would also be marked as being a bit more complex and requires a bit more system mastery.

And of course the maximum power of each class should all be marked out in levels. Perhaps steal 5e's 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17-20 split or simplify it down to 5 even levels. Whatever. But these cut off points should indicate what level of power the players are expected to be at. And all classes will be designed accordingly. If Wizard's are stopping time and opening portals to other realms the Barbarian is expected to be the Hulk able to lift mountains and break open the land by stomping their feet. And while I personally think this level of power gets more ridiculous than fun, this is Pathfinder. It is made for people who were tied to 3.5 and all the ridiculousness of their spell system. The last few levels being bonkers is what they've signed on for. Let them have it, but make certain everyone has it relatively equally.

Arutema

2021-03-08, 09:48 PM

Albions_Angel

2021-03-09, 05:13 AM

For what PF 2e could have been, look no further than Paizo's other system; Starfinder.

3.5 backwards compatibility is kept with slight but very impactful revisions to full attack and 5' step action economy.

Armor bonuses scaling with armor level and cost replaces the need to buy enchanted armor plus amulet and ring for AC.

Weapon damage scaling with level replaces the need to make iterative attacks at -10 and -15 somehow hit.

All spellcasters are scaled back to the bard spell progression. The sacred cow of prepared spellcasting is sacrificed on the altar of balance.

More generous ability boosts as you level replace the headband/belt. (This was admittedly kept for PF 2e).

Technological items fix things mundanes had to rely on magic consumables for in 3.5. Need to fly? Buy a jetpack, they're affordable around level 4-5.

The stamina/resolve system largely lets folks heal their own wounds with a short rest., fixing "someone has to play the cleric".

But most of these good ideas from Starfinder were thrown out for PF 2e. Possibly because backwards compatibility wasn't expected to sell large sets of new books.

I like Starfinder. But its by no means a balance system. Get to level 10, and the bruisers in the party can now chuck out so much damage, and have ACs so high, that they need to be fighting big enemies to not end encounters in round 1. But so many of the classes are incapable of doing that. They might have guns that deal similar damage, but they are SOOO squishy that anything that is a threat to the bruisers is nearly insurmountable for them. Hacking becomes so much of a "get out of jail free" card that it totally laughs at the idea of a wizard's ability to fix any problem in 3.5 or PF1e, and thus requires security systems that if they have a save high enough to provide a chance at failure, also deal so much backlash damage that they kill any of the classes that can boost their hacking that high. Ship to ship combat is clunky and far too swingy. Every ship encounter is a reasonably high chance of a TPK, leading players and DMs to avoid it.

No, the real benefit of starfinder is that it shows that reducing magic and making all casters half casters is fine, and that the roll20 starfinder character sheet might just be the best damn online character sheet ever created.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-09, 06:26 AM

Armor bonuses scaling with armor level and cost replaces the need to buy enchanted armor plus amulet and ring for AC.
To be fair, both P2 and 4E have AC scale with level, too.

Although if to-hit scales with level and AC scales at the same rate, then that doesn't really make a difference in gameplay.

Kitsuneymg

2021-03-09, 06:55 AM

To be fair, both P2 and 4E have AC scale with level, too.

Although if to-hit scales with level and AC scales at the same rate, then that doesn't really make a difference in gameplay.

I’d argue it’s detrimental to game play. In 5e, even when your 10th level, a group of 4th level NPCs can still be threatening somewhat. They can still hit you and their saves and save DCs aren’t too much lower than yours. They have less staying power so you’re obviously more powerful, but it’s not as clear cut as it is in 3.5. In p2, your relative ac and to hit is 6 higher. Just from level. That’s renders it almost to a non-issue.

Level to hit and level to ac does nothing except narrow the band of things that make challenging encounters. It just makes it that much more work to tune encounters just right.

AnimeTheCat

2021-03-09, 09:41 AM

I would definitely agree that a Dwarf should by default get thematic stone and crafting ribbons. It should be possible to trade them out, of course -- character customization is great -- but NOT possible to trade flavor for more raw power. When that choice is possible, it becomes inevitable, and that reduces the game.

Like, if you wanted to be a Dwarf raised by a pack of wild humans, you might lose your Dwarven cultural ribbons and instead gain some ribbons from the human regional background choices.

I don't know that dwarven crafting is, by default, so iconic that it idealizes the entire race. I feel this way because crafting is a learned thing, not an imprinted/DNA/inherited thing. Something that I think all dwarves should have is related specifically to their physiology. Dwarves are stout, tough, short humanoids. With this should come what one might expect; slower movement speed, improved fortitude, and perhaps an improved body/constitution/toughness score. In Pathfinder terms, I would mechanically represent this as 20 ft movement speed but unimpeded, +2 to all fort saves, and +2 constitution.

I think that PF2 didn't go far enough down their "Customize your Race" rabbit hole. Someone else posted about their ideal PF2 giving you the ability to choose your race, ancestry, culture, and background. This gives the DM and the player immense leeway to really customize their character and world. Take "race" and limit it down strictly to what is guaranteed to be due to physiological features. Dwarves, we covered. Elves are lithe, tall, and magically infused fey humanoids, so give them things that are directly tied to that; +2 Dex, +10 ft movement, and Detect Magic at will (or something to represent their innate magical nature). Orcs are strong, intimidating in appearance, and Loud, so give them +2 Strength, +2 intimidation, and a shout ability that causes the shaken ability within 30 ft (DC tied to character level). You can see what I'm doing here. Distilling the physical makeup of the race to only what is consistent through the entire race without ANY regard for learned traits in any capacity.

The next logical step is culture. This is where, regardless of what race you are, you can pick and choose from some expected norms based on the culture your character is from. Have them be as broad or as specific as you want. For instance, let's talk about a Warring Tribal culture; you could pick 1-2 from a list of weapon proficiencies (greatclub, club, spear, javelin, sling, shortbow, etc. generally thematic weapons for warring tribal cultures. If the game world has more "advanced" tribes such as what existed in the 860's IRL, just let it be any simple or martial weapon, for high fantasy tribal just let them pick any weapon at all, including exotic), skill proficiencies (things like Intimidate, Athletics, Handle Animal, Survival, etc.), or special abilities unique to tribal cultures (combat focused abilities, perhaps steal Action Surge from 5e but limit it to just getting an extra attack as an action, or maybe a defensive ability to shrug off a affect for a number of rounds equal to your Con mod or something) that add to the flavor and capability of your character. For Merchant Republic culture; grant proficiencies in various crafting or profession skills, bonuses to crafting or profession skills, grant bonuses on different types of subterfuge skills (diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, stealth, etc), or even give special social abilities (take some feats like quick reconnoiter from 3.5 or something and grant it as an ability, or some skill tricks and stuff). The idea behind all of this is that you have these bonuses as a part of your cultural identity. You're Urvak the Orcish Merchant from the Free City of Lennoira. You have the same physical makeup of Oolg the berserker from the tribe of Bruftawg, but your cultures are so wildly different that the only things you share are your physical abilities. The idea here is that if a Dwarven culture is known for being warlike and aggressive, they're less likely to place such emphasis on crafting and the like, and they are more likely to place emphasis on bravery and combat prowess.

Finally is your background. These are easy but should be available based off of culture. There might be some overlap, but maybe named differently. To use the examples of Warring Tribal and Merchant Republic cultures, both would have some kind of medicinal or spiritual leader, but they would be called different things. Perhaps the Warring Tribal culture would have a Shaman background that grants proficiency in Heal and Knowledge Religion, and a Skald background that grants proficiency in Knowledge History and Perform Oratory. In the Merchant Republic culture, perhaps you have similar but different, such as a Medicine Man/Woman background that grants proficiency in Heal and Knowledge Nature or Profession herbalist or Craft Alchemy (player's choice), or a Bard that grants knowledge Local and Perform (player's choice). Overlap, but distinct and flavorful to the culture.

Ancestry should be distinct and different, in my opinion. This should be your way of making "half" classes. If you're an Elf with Orcish ancestry, you can pick and choose between the features of the orc race as long as they are the same type, ability score increase, trait, ability (give yourself +2 Dex OR +2 Strength, give yourself +10 Movement speed OR +2 Intimidate, give yourself the frightening shout OR the at will detect magic). This gives a huge amount of variation that one would expect from breeding between different fantasy races with distinctly different physiologies. This also removes the need for you to have "half" races that are "player races" or whatever... never understood why D&D won't let players play orcs in the base game without reaching out to the Monster Manual... This also neatly expalins what the other "half" of "half" races is, because you pick it.

The only real similarity this holds to 5e and, I think, PF2 is the background bit. Otherwise, this is far more customizable to a setting and removes societal additives to races and lets there be the room for a culture of war mongering dwarves that don't fit in to the cliches of "we work with stone and metal and are master craftsmen" and instead lets that group be identified by their specific weapon proficiencies, fighting styles, or skills. By all means though, if you want all of your dwarves to be master craftsmen then let them pick that in the cultural section too, but let that be available to all dwarves regardless of culture then. maybe something just clicks for them.

I think I've said enough, just wanted to generally share my thoughts.

Nifft

2021-03-09, 09:50 AM

I don't know that dwarven crafting is, by default, so iconic that it idealizes the entire race. I feel this way because crafting is a learned thing, not an imprinted/DNA/inherited thing.

In the text you quoted, I described Dwarven crafting as a cultural ribbon which could be traded out.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-09, 10:07 AM

In the text you quoted, I described Dwarven crafting as a cultural ribbon which could be traded out.

Hmm, I think an issue (with P2, not with your post) is that basically any dwarven ability can be traded out. This means in practice, that dwarves are not recognizable as such in gameplay.

This is something 4E does right: every race has one specific highly-visible active ability. You can tell a character is a dwarf because he can heal himself as a swift action once per combat (and usually does). In P2 it's more like some dwarves can craft, but not others; some dwarves have a saving throw bonus, but not others. Some non-dwarves also have a saving throw bonus for a different reason. Effectively, you can't tell from the crunch whether a character is a dwarf.

Nifft

2021-03-09, 10:23 AM

Hmm, I think an issue (with P2, not with your post) is that basically any dwarven ability can be traded out. This means in practice, that dwarves are not recognizable as such in gameplay.

This is something 4E does right: every race has one specific highly-visible active ability. You can tell a character is a dwarf because he can heal himself as a swift action once per combat (and usually does). In P2 it's more like some dwarves can craft, but not others; some dwarves have a saving throw bonus, but not others. Some non-dwarves also have a saving throw bonus for a different reason. Effectively, you can't tell from the crunch whether a character is a dwarf.

Yeah, 4e was great about racial bonuses being small but rich in personality.

4e Kobolds being Shifty every combat was another example of a memorable characteristic -- and it was great from both sides of the screen.

AnimeTheCat

2021-03-09, 10:47 AM

In the text you quoted, I described Dwarven crafting as a cultural ribbon which could be traded out.

sorry, I more used your quote as a springboard than a point to refute. Your post is kind of what made me think and expand upon the idea that I had in my head.

Hmm, I think an issue (with P2, not with your post) is that basically any dwarven ability can be traded out. This means in practice, that dwarves are not recognizable as such in gameplay.

This is something 4E does right: every race has one specific highly-visible active ability. You can tell a character is a dwarf because he can heal himself as a swift action once per combat (and usually does). In P2 it's more like some dwarves can craft, but not others; some dwarves have a saving throw bonus, but not others. Some non-dwarves also have a saving throw bonus for a different reason. Effectively, you can't tell from the crunch whether a character is a dwarf.

But my question is do ALL dwarves craft? Like, is every dwarf that has ever lived a craftsdwarf? Or is there something about cliche dwarven culture or society that dictates that an express level of concern and pressure is put on craftsdwarfship and that in another culture or society that same level of concern might not be there? What happens if that other culture is predominantly dwarven? What makes a dwarf a dwarf? Is it a societal cliche, or is is a physiological makeup? Under my interpretation, all dwarves are particularly hardy, but not all dwarves put as much stock in being craftsdwarves.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-09, 10:58 AM

Under my interpretation, all dwarves are particularly hardy, but not all dwarves put as much stock in being craftsdwarves.
I agree with that; in most settings, not all dwarves are craftsdwarves. "+2 to craft checks" could be a ribbon ability that can be traded out.

My point is that it helps a setting if every dwarf has one particular active ability, to make them mechanically stand out. Getting +2 to constitution or to fort saves is noticeable in character creation, but not in gameplay. If every dwarf can e.g. self-heal as a swift action (because they're hardy), and this cannot be traded out, then that stands out in gameplay.

AnimeTheCat

2021-03-09, 11:01 AM

I agree with that; in most settings, not all dwarves are craftsdwarves. "+2 to craft checks" could be a ribbon ability that can be traded out.

My point is that it helps a setting if every dwarf has one particular active ability, to make them mechanically stand out. Getting +2 to constitution or to fort saves is noticeable in character creation, but not in gameplay. If every dwarf can e.g. self-heal as a swift action (because they're hardy), and this cannot be traded out, then that stands out in gameplay.

I agree with that too, though in my example I included the 20 ft movement speed but can't be impeded. it's not flashy (like the example orc shout or at will detect magic), but it was something directly visible.

Dienekes

2021-03-09, 12:30 PM

But my question is do ALL dwarves craft? Like, is every dwarf that has ever lived a craftsdwarf? Or is there something about cliche dwarven culture or society that dictates that an express level of concern and pressure is put on craftsdwarfship and that in another culture or society that same level of concern might not be there? What happens if that other culture is predominantly dwarven? What makes a dwarf a dwarf? Is it a societal cliche, or is is a physiological makeup? Under my interpretation, all dwarves are particularly hardy, but not all dwarves put as much stock in being craftsdwarves.

The thing is, this really depends on the lore of the setting in question. For humans in the real world, crafting is something we learn to do. But in a fantasy setting that does not need to be the case. In LotR (or really the Silmarillion) dwarves were the children of Aule the craftsman of the gods and all of them were blessed with preternatural abilities in the art of craftsmanship.

Now, not all dwarves developed this ability and some rose more to prominence than others. But even their farmers, warriors. and kings were craftsmen just naturally. Even Thorin a prince and king mentions knowledge of crafting things in the Hobbit.

In Dungeons and Dragons Faerun setting, the same thing kind of happened again. But not about crafting this time, but about Stone. They are born with the natural knowledge of rock and stone and what they mean and how to read it.

Now personally, I'm not against departing from that. But I do think a Pathfinder 2 should fit with the setting lore of whatever the Pathfinder setting is. Sorry, I haven't really read Pathfinder lore other than knowing that one of their gods got drunk one night decided to go on an adventure to become a god and somehow did.

The real difficulty with the species/culture divide is that you have to balance the race/culture combinations. Making certain there are no egregious overlaps, or overpowered combinations. And that some races have a lot of their abilities based around their culture more than any other real distinguishing features. The one that comes to mind easiest to me is just comparing Hobgoblins to say Elves. Elves are long-lived, naturally lithe and agile, fair and wise. With keen eyes and a Fey nature that makes them naturally magical. All of that is just what they are as a species. That's a lot to work with there. Then you can add in their culture of being tree huggers or underdark slavers or whatever else.

Hobgoblins natural abilities by contrast are pretty much humans with Darkvision. The rest of what makes them unique all comes from their insanely warlike culture.

Now, I'm not saying you can't balance these. Just that it is a lot of work.

Morty

2021-03-09, 01:16 PM

Hmm, I think an issue (with P2, not with your post) is that basically any dwarven ability can be traded out. This means in practice, that dwarves are not recognizable as such in gameplay.

This is something 4E does right: every race has one specific highly-visible active ability. You can tell a character is a dwarf because he can heal himself as a swift action once per combat (and usually does). In P2 it's more like some dwarves can craft, but not others; some dwarves have a saving throw bonus, but not others. Some non-dwarves also have a saving throw bonus for a different reason. Effectively, you can't tell from the crunch whether a character is a dwarf.

4E's race design is a mixed bag. It has too many pointlessly fiddly abilities and it emphasised "optimal" race/class combos. But the unique racial powers really are very good and it's something PF2E should have embraced instead of giving us the same laundry list of small bonuses but making them optional. Quality, not quantity. Racial feats can still cover the more culture-specific traits in such a setup.

Elves

2021-03-09, 02:03 PM

Agreed that 4e racial powers were a high watermark. And functioned as a way to mechanically tie together NPCs of the same race if you abandon PC-style monster building as 4th and 5th did.

5e kept some of the racial powers (fey step and dragonborn breath). If D&D goes down the route of removing racial ability bonuses it would be well advised to bring back racial powers as a thing for everyone. That's also how world of warcraft does it iirc (which probably inspired them in 4e).

There's probably a lot to learn from videogames simply because as was mentioned earlier they can afford better talent. As long as you keep medium in mind (tracking cooldowns for every ability doesn't work so well at tabletop).

and it emphasised "optimal" race/class combos.
Racial sub levels are pretty good as a way of doing favored classes.

I actually like PF's favored class bonuses in principle, but the combinatorics make it impractical. But you could have a racial bonus that the favored class bonus replaces, reducing the need to check the boxes.

Nifft

2021-03-09, 02:08 PM

There's probably a lot to learn from videogames simply because as was mentioned earlier they can afford better talent. As long as you keep medium in mind (tracking cooldowns for every ability doesn't work so well at tabletop).

Also video games have:
- a HUGE beta-tester pool (called "paying customers");
- success metrics you can objectively measure (e.g. were Zerg nerfed or is that vocal Zerg player merely salty?);
- and to be perfectly frank video games deserve to be ripped off by D&D, since so many video game mechanics and tropes can be traced back to D&D originally.

Efrate

2021-03-09, 06:11 PM

On pf2e spells. I do not mind crit success and fails having an impact, but regular success and fail need to as well to make things worth casting.

Take web.

Crit success, be it natural 20 or 5 or 10 or whatever the threshold is above ( I think these need tuning), totally unaffected. Maybe even can use them to climb like a spider with no penalties or whatever.
Succeed not stuck, still difficult terrain/half speed.
Fail stuck. Cannot move, save every round to end, still difficult terrain if you can move. 1 round minimum stuck.
Critical fail, natural 1 or 5 or 10 below threshold (again numbers need tuning). You cannot escape. For the duration of the spell, you are immobilized totally, cannot escape, no save, and possibly take some amount of constrict damage as your feebly struggle and ths webs tighten.

That make the spell worth casting, rewards/punishments meaningful, and makes more sense. My 2 copper.

Maat Mons

2021-03-09, 09:25 PM

Maybe a more nuanced degree-of-success thing? The number of rounds you're immobilized for is equal to the amount by which your roll was under the save DC?

Nifft

2021-03-09, 10:17 PM

Maybe a more nuanced degree-of-success thing? The number of rounds you're immobilized for is equal to the amount by which your roll was under the save DC?

The trouble with knowing you'll be immobilized for N rounds is that the player is effectively told to tune out for N rounds.

4e did variable duration debuffs very well, and in part that's because it kept players engaged (even while dying). Rolling your save every turn meant you had a thing to do every round, even if it wasn't a particularly great thing, at least you rolled dice and cared about the results.

If PF2 had stolen more from 4e, that would have been a dunk on 5e's cowardly avoidance.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-10, 05:02 AM

Crit success, be it natural 20 or 5 or 10 or whatever the threshold is above ( I think these need tuning), totally unaffected. Maybe even can use them to climb like a spider with no penalties or whatever.
Succeed not stuck, still difficult terrain/half speed.
Fail stuck. Cannot move, save every round to end, still difficult terrain if you can move. 1 round minimum stuck.
Critical fail, natural 1 or 5 or 10 below threshold (again numbers need tuning). You cannot escape. For the duration of the spell, you are immobilized totally, cannot escape, no save, and possibly take some amount of constrict damage as your feebly struggle and ths webs tighten.

Compare with P2's web, which goes

Critical success - no effect
Success - no effect
Fail - slight reduction in speed while inside the web, meaning you can automatically walk out but maybe not in the direction you want to go.
Critical fail (which monsters will only do on a natural 1) - immobilized for one round, can take an action to reroll the save.

I mean seriously, whoever thought that was not a waste of paper?

AnimeTheCat

2021-03-10, 10:46 AM

The thing is, this really depends on the lore of the setting in question. For humans in the real world, crafting is something we learn to do. But in a fantasy setting that does not need to be the case. In LotR (or really the Silmarillion) dwarves were the children of Aule the craftsman of the gods and all of them were blessed with preternatural abilities in the art of craftsmanship.

Now, not all dwarves developed this ability and some rose more to prominence than others. But even their farmers, warriors. and kings were craftsmen just naturally. Even Thorin a prince and king mentions knowledge of crafting things in the Hobbit.

In Dungeons and Dragons Faerun setting, the same thing kind of happened again. But not about crafting this time, but about Stone. They are born with the natural knowledge of rock and stone and what they mean and how to read it.

Now personally, I'm not against departing from that. But I do think a Pathfinder 2 should fit with the setting lore of whatever the Pathfinder setting is. Sorry, I haven't really read Pathfinder lore other than knowing that one of their gods got drunk one night decided to go on an adventure to become a god and somehow did.

I see what you mean with all of this, and if the setting (whatever the setting is) calls for like some "all stone" that birthed the first dwarf and all dwarves, regardless of anything, have the stone knowledge passed down no matter what... well alright, that's specific to dwarves and is more in the biological/physiological vein so my general concept still stands no problem. The thing is, there are so many racial alternate features in PF1 that, for pathfinder at least, that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm fairly certain there are 3 or 4 different alternate racial features that trade out that stonesense ability, so obviously it's more in the vein of a learned or culturally applied feature, rather than one that is a baked in aspect of all dwarves everywhere all the time. I even touched on that with the elf bit, but I do see what you're saying.

The real difficulty with the species/culture divide is that you have to balance the race/culture combinations. Making certain there are no egregious overlaps, or overpowered combinations. And that some races have a lot of their abilities based around their culture more than any other real distinguishing features. The one that comes to mind easiest to me is just comparing Hobgoblins to say Elves. Elves are long-lived, naturally lithe and agile, fair and wise. With keen eyes and a Fey nature that makes them naturally magical. All of that is just what they are as a species. That's a lot to work with there. Then you can add in their culture of being tree huggers or underdark slavers or whatever else.

Hobgoblins natural abilities by contrast are pretty much humans with Darkvision. The rest of what makes them unique all comes from their insanely warlike culture.

I also see what you're saying here, but I don't see the overpublication of any one race and the underpublication of any one race as a bad or even a good thing. It's a weakness in the development of a system in my opinion. This is less of an issue and more of an opportunity, and I think this is the way that 5e has gone. Take Firbolgs, for example. Before 5e, the only things I remember about Firbolgs were the Monster Manual entry and maaaaaaybe something in Savage Species? Not a lot to work with. But I believe that Firbolgs, as a race, were expanded upon to be more flavorful in 5e (could be wrong, very much not a 5e player, just been dabbling a bit lately).

The same can be done with all of the playable/commonly used races, and it's not that difficult. Even with just what's in the Monster Manual though, I bet we could come up with something.

Hobgoblins
Hobgoblins are larger cousins of goblins. they are far more aggressive and organize than their smaller relatives and wage a perpetual war with other humanoids, particularly elves. Hobgoblins' hair... (cutting out appearances that don't give valuable information)
Combat
These creatures have a strong grasp of strategy and tactics an are capable of carrying out sophistocated battle plans...
(Skipping specifically society things)
Hobgoblin Characters
...Hobgoblin characters possess the following racial traits.
- +2 Dextirity, +2 Constitution
- A hobgoblin's base land speed is 30 feet.
- Darkvision out to 60 feet
- +4 Racial Bonus on Move Silently checks.
...

So between the very brief "Hobgoblins" section plus the "Combat" section, we can get a little bit of an idea what might characterize hobgoblins, so maybe there's something there we can easily expand upon to have a total racial characterization. Then in the "Hobgoblin Characters" section we get physical characterization of them. Obviously by the +2 Dex and +4 Move Silently checks, we might be able to determine that hobgoblins are naturally quite, maybe akin to cats.

I think there's enough here that can be expanded upon to pick an ability score to boost (probably Dex) a skill bonus to give (probably stealth in PF terms), and a special ability. Maybe make their special ability Darkvision (though that's lame...), or perhaps give them an ability to pounce or something, and then expand the "warlike" nature to be predatory, akin to cats, and boom you're made a singular minor change that thematically fits the remainder of the race, can be a feasible biological/physiological trait, and you're cooking with fire.

Now, I'm not saying you can't balance these. Just that it is a lot of work.
I know not all of them will be so simple, but I don't think it would be that big of a lift to generically expand the playable races, especially if it is done in splat books as actual option expansions, rather than stacking more and more options on the core races.

Morty

2021-03-11, 03:56 AM

Rynjin

2021-03-11, 04:06 AM

Having seen Web trivialize an encounter during my first foray into 5E D&D, I'm very much in favor of keeping control spells on a very short leash. It's possible that PF2E's take on them is overkill, but immobilizing a whole group of enemies for even one round is still really good for a level two spell. Never mind that there's little chance all or most of them will make the save after one round, so it still disrupts their entire formation.

The question I've always wondered is "why is trivializing an encounter a problem?" Or, perhaps it should be "why is trivializing a non-climactic encounter a problem?".

Most encounters that are meant to be harrowing can be built to be relatively non-trivialize-able by the GM planning for common PC tactics; your disc 1 final boss likely has some way to counter common spells like Web and similar low level lockdown effects, even with minimal GM metagaming. Even very simple stuff like "is a Barbarian" (meaning they can rip right through the webbing like it's made of cotton candy" works.

But that random group of bandits? Who cares if they get webbed down and mulched? It makes the PCs feel powerful and competent, which is what makes it all the more harrowing when an enemy DOESN'T get flexed on later.

Exceptions can be made for particularly problematic spells which may need to be culled, but for the most part something like Web doing what Web do is fine; especially since it's commonly used AGAINST the PCs to the same effect anyway.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-11, 04:09 AM

Having seen Web trivialize an encounter during my first foray into 5E D&D,
The important question here is whether 5E's Web commonly trivializes encounters, or only occasionally does so. I'd be fine with the latter. Note that "disrupting their formation" is a far cry from "trivializing the encounter".

Since I have not seen an outcry over this spell among 5E fans, is it possible that in your first foray the party either got lucky (enemies rolled poorly on their saves) and/or the party got tactical (they used teamwork to get the enemies grouped together without any PCs in the middle or nearby)? And yeah, as Rynjin notes, trivializing an encounter with mooks shouldn't be an issue.

My point of view is that if you compare P2's web spell not to web spells in other editions, but to other spells/actions in P2, then the web spell is a waste of your actions. The P2 caster is better off making weapon attacks than casting web.

Morty

2021-03-11, 04:33 AM

The question I've always wondered is "why is trivializing an encounter a problem?" Or, perhaps it should be "why is trivializing a non-climactic encounter a problem?".

Most encounters that are meant to be harrowing can be built to be relatively non-trivialize-able by the GM planning for common PC tactics; your disc 1 final boss likely has some way to counter common spells like Web and similar low level lockdown effects, even with minimal GM metagaming. Even very simple stuff like "is a Barbarian" (meaning they can rip right through the webbing like it's made of cotton candy" works.

But that random group of bandits? Who cares if they get webbed down and mulched? It makes the PCs feel powerful and competent, which is what makes it all the more harrowing when an enemy DOESN'T get flexed on later.

Exceptions can be made for particularly problematic spells which may need to be culled, but for the most part something like Web doing what Web do is fine; especially since it's commonly used AGAINST the PCs to the same effect anyway.

The important question here is whether 5E's Web commonly trivializes encounters, or only occasionally does so. I'd be fine with the latter. Note that "disrupting their formation" is a far cry from "trivializing the encounter".

Since I have not seen an outcry over this spell among 5E fans, is it possible that in your first foray the party either got lucky (enemies rolled poorly on their saves) and/or the party got tactical (they used teamwork to get the enemies grouped together without any PCs in the middle or nearby)? And yeah, as Rynjin notes, trivializing an encounter with mooks shouldn't be an issue.

My point of view is that if you compare P2's web spell not to web spells in other editions, but to other spells/actions in P2, then the web spell is a waste of your actions. The P2 caster is better off making weapon attacks than casting web.

There's a major difference between an encounter being easy period and an encounter being rendered easy by a single spell from a single character. Always the same kind of character, to boot, contributing to the "spellcasters do the real work and everyone else carries their bags" issue.

It's been a while since that game (I quit it prematurely because of how bad the 5E rogue is) but it wasn't supposed to be trivial anyway. It was the finale of some goblin caves early on in Storm King's Thunder. Not the real enemy of the adventure, but not something the players should walk over either. If such a fight can be turned into mop-up with one well-placed spell, that's a problem. One D&D has pretty much always had - the dominance of control effects isn't new. 5E is still better about it than pre-Pathfinder 3E was.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-11, 04:46 AM

There's a major difference between an encounter being easy period and an encounter being rendered easy by a single spell from a single character. Always the same kind of character, to boot, contributing to the "spellcasters do the real work and everyone else carries their bags" issue.
Control characters are a force multiplier, so rendering the encounter easy is their entire job.

I share the view that they are simply too good at this in 3E, but they're fine in P1 and 4E and 5E, and they're entirely too weak at this in P2. Basically, controllers cast "save or lose" spells in 3E (and sometimes "no save, just lose" spells); they cast "save or suck" spells in P1/4E/5E; and they cast "mild inconvenience if you roll a 1 on your save" spells in P2.

Zombimode

2021-03-11, 04:55 AM

I don't see the issue. Web is only really good against specific types of opposition. Using Web against this type of opposition is just good tactical thinking. These kind of match-up specific differences also underline neatly the specific strengths and weaknesses of the party in question.

Asmotherion

2021-03-11, 06:42 AM

I DM for 2 different groups on PF2e and the concensus is "it's simple like 5e, but with character customisation similar to 3.P".

Personally, it's my favorite d20-based system as of yet.

I have to admit I was a bit sceptical at first on trying it, mostly because it branded itself badly as "5e but better". In contrast with 3.5e, where there were multiple balance issues, 5e is almost perfectly balanced, so people didn't want a "5.5e" but rather an independant system. PF2e is exactly that, but it failed to market itself properly, which resulted in many players not even checking it out, because they expected it would be "5e but with slight thematic changes".

An other aspect that makes it less popular than 5e is it is less new-player friendly, and people who want to check out their first Tabletop RPG will be better off with 5e.

So, it's essentially marketed towards the veteran RPG hobbist who wants to try something new, and it's pre-existing audiance from PF1e, most of who are reluctant to try a new system.

NomGarret

2021-03-13, 10:56 AM

Though, and again this forum probably over represents this demographic, it’s probably best for people who are veterans of 5e, as it doesn’t address what moderately dissatisfied P1/3.5/4e players want.

For instance, what I want from a revised Pathfinder is for character builds to come online sooner, without a lot of needless feat trees, and to power up some of the options that Paizo has been overly cautious with in the past. P2 has done none of these things to any significant degree, and in several cases has doubled down on them. Sure, they cleaned up a couple of the most egregious cases - Combat Expertise is no longer a prerequisite for a dozen things that have nothing to do with fighting defensively - but I still feel like it takes 3 feats over at least 4 levels to put together any basic gimmick. In terms of power level, and spells in particular, my experience was that people took a few good ones because a whole lot were bad or far too situational. The problem was not that Color Spray* was too good, it was that so few of the others were good enough.

*This example was picked off the top of my head.

Cortillaen

2021-03-15, 10:06 PM

I was really hoping 2e would be great and really disappointed in the end. The 3-action economy and some of the streamlining are really good, but it has an unfortunately-large list of failings.

Spellcasting. I could write, and have elsewhere, pages of analysis on things wrong with PF2e spellcasting. Paizo piled on so many nerfs it seems they lost track of how they all interacted. Fewer spells I can deal with, but they also drastically increased the opportunity cost of situational spells, removed ways to prepare new spells, locked spell DCs to "garbage or worse" (seriously, even targeting the weakest save of an average enemy of your level, an optimized caster has rarely above 50% chance the target will fail), left already-meh spell damage as-is while raising HP totals (and removed all means of improving damage), thoroughly ruined metamagic as a whole, nearly erased "battlefield control" as a concept, and nerfed the majority of spell effects so that (when combined with garbage DCs) most of them aren't really worth it. It tried to fix the caster/martial disparity by making the vast majority of spells mathematically pointless. And still left a number of higher level spells with game-changing effects intact. I'm honestly not sure how they screwed spellcasting up this bad other than a lack of strong creative direction.
Bonus types are limited to 3 (and untyped bonuses explicitly don't exist): Circumstance granted exclusively by just a couple things like cover/prone/flatfooted, Item granted only by magic items and alchemy, and Status granted by magic and abilities. So 90% of all numerical buffs and debuffs in combat do not stack. I hope you didn't want to be a buff/debuff caster.
There are only 4 spell lists, so every class shares its list with at least one other class. Easier to balance, sure (though they even failed hard at that), but it leaves the feature-light casters feeling really same-y on top of their other host of problems.
The +X magic item treadmill is compressed into fewer items but even more important than ever. If you are more than a level late getting a rune upgrade, you're gonna have a bad time against anything level-appropriate. And the variant Automatic Bonus Progression rules are still clunky and confusing.
Most feats are way too low-impact. A handful of multiclass/archetype ones and some of the lv15+ ones are cool, but the vast majority are even less exciting than Weapon Focus. And because this is the Screw Casters Edition, caster feats are largely the worst. Seriously, the entire Wizard list has like 2 that are exciting at all.
Focus spells are about 20% good and useful, 40% very situational, and 40% pointless. For being another gimmick taking up design space in the caster classes, only a handful of them contribute anything to the classes.
Combat math is "balanced" against 100% optimized (insofar as one can; max starting key stat, raise it every chance, and get every rune upgrade as soon as you reach its level) characters having around 55-60% hit chance at their full bonus against an average on-level enemy and the enemy having a similar chance against a 100% optimized defense. The only exceptions to this are the few classes that get a +2 in either attacks or AC compared to everyone else. So the best you can ever achieve is treading water against on-level foes, and even a slight deviation from optimal takes you underwater.
Crafting was "fixed" by making it mechanically worthless. It requires substantial GM adjustment and shaping of the setting to be worthwhile.
The difference between "decent" and "the best there is" at a given task is smaller than it should be, in my opinion. I get flashbacks to D&D 5e where Joe Shmoe who just grabbed proficiency in a skill for no reason frequently beats Eric Expert who did everything he could to specialize in that skill.
Paizo leaned in hard on making thematic-but-worthless archetypes that are largely power downgrades.

I think what most 3.5/PF1 players really wanted from PF2 was just a deep refinement-and-fix pass on 3.5/PF1 content. Fix systems that were broken or clunky, prune the feat trees of all the taxes and traps, give martials more/better toys, and reign in 9-level casters some (maybe by reducing numbers of slots while giving better at-will fallbacks). I would not have minded a complete departure from the d20 (disclaimer: I actually don't like linear distributions, so things like 2d10, 3d6, or dice pools appeal to me) and spell slots so long as they had fixed issues, streamlined some (without "streamlining" things to death, like crafting), and preserved the robustness of base classes with large elements being alterable and/or a la carte features. Maybe the single biggest sin Paizo committed against those of us who like PF1 was killing any real optimization. Optimization in PF2e is both shallow and narrow: there are only a couple factors to adjust and minimal options for them, and it can never let you specialize in the sense of getting ahead of the curve. Optimization was obviously out of hand in PF1, but decently balanced optimization options are something a lot of us crave.

If they wanted to build something new, I think they should have gone further than the D&D 4e/5e-mashup with PF paint and shifted to something like "class blocks" where you build your own class out of blocks of related features. You can see a bit of the concept in PF2's archetypes, but those are overly reserved and hindered by fitting into the anemic power scaling of PF2 feats. I'm talking something along the lines of 3-5 levels of PF1 class powers in a block. Each block would have theme-related features (like an entry-level Fighter-esque block giving full BAB progression, all weapon and armor proficiencies, core abilities like Power Attack, and a few bonus feats), and blocks intended to be taken later would have various prerequisites. Blocks could even be different numbers of levels, with a few basic 1- and 2-level blocks tossed in to make sure players can always "finish" their build. Put that alongside rebalanced casting (and giving martial options a lot of superhuman abilities to even the playing field a little) and feat trees pruned and tightened up, and I would love to have that game to try. Admittedly, getting the balance right on a system like this would be a herculean task, but Paizo had literally hordes of willing playtesters to work with.

I've been working on-and-off on a complete overhaul of PF2 spellcasting to convert it to a system based on having just Major and Minor spell slots (some spells having two versions, others just one of them) and simply using the caster's level instead of a separate system of Spell Levels for both restricting access to stronger spells and increasing the power of old spells as you level. The core principles are giving casters very limited numbers of Major slots (something like 5-8, depending on class) that have suitable major impacts on a combat or situation, larger numbers of Minor slots that are of limited use in combat and can rarely solve out-of-combat problems outright, each class reaching its max number of slots around 5th-level, keeping cantrips as casters' "basic attack" options, and having most spells improve in power as you level. However, there are so many systemic issues with the core PF2 system that I wonder if it's really worth the effort.

Elves

2021-03-16, 12:20 AM

I would not have minded a complete departure from the d20 (disclaimer: I actually don't like linear distributions, so things like 2d10, 3d6, or dice pools appeal to me)
Dice pools are great because they have so many mechanics you can hinge off them, but I don't think 2d10/3d6 works at all. Every time you roll the die you want it to feel meaningful, and a bell curve roll saps it of drama, so that rolling begins to feel like a chore and the snooze point where you just want to take averages comes much sooner (a feeling that's enhanced by the annoyance of having to add the dice together).

You could do a hybrid where the digits you get matter as well as the sum, but that just makes the arithmetic even more of a processing tax -- not good.

If they wanted to build something new, I think they should have gone further than the D&D 4e/5e-mashup with PF paint and shifted to something like "class blocks" where you build your own class out of blocks of related features. You can see a bit of the concept in PF2's archetypes, but those are overly reserved and hindered by fitting into the anemic power scaling of PF2 feats. I'm talking something along the lines of 3-5 levels of PF1 class powers in a block. Each block would have theme-related features (like an entry-level Fighter-esque block giving full BAB progression, all weapon and armor proficiencies, core abilities like Power Attack, and a few bonus feats), and blocks intended to be taken later would have various prerequisites. Blocks could even be different numbers of levels, with a few basic 1- and 2-level blocks tossed in to make sure players can always "finish" their build. Put that alongside rebalanced casting (and giving martial options a lot of superhuman abilities to even the playing field a little) and feat trees pruned and tightened up, and I would love to have that game to try. Admittedly, getting the balance right on a system like this would be a herculean task, but Paizo had literally hordes of willing playtesters to work with.
I was just saying something similar about PRCs in that prestige classes thread. Rather than trying to be a freeform/point buy system, a d20 game that wanted more customization would IMO be better served by leaning further into its system and emphasizing a lego block modularity with levels as the building blocks. Instead of putting together different classes, you're building your class table. Could be a fun reframing.

Nifft

2021-03-16, 12:27 AM

Elves

2021-03-16, 01:29 AM

Kurald Galain

2021-03-16, 06:21 AM

Spellcasting. I could write, and have elsewhere, pages of analysis on things wrong with PF2e spellcasting.

Please share a link, I'd be interested in reading that.

Nifft

2021-03-16, 12:41 PM

It's more exciting when you do get the 00, but it's about both reward frequency and distribution. Lower randomness in the roll is fundamentally less exciting. And stringing players along on dozens of boring rolls while holding out for that one really exciting roll is a much more tiring reward drip than giving them a reward that is just rare enough to feel rare while still coming consistently. You also have to take into account that there are multiple players and their own 20 is more exciting to them than someone else's. So while there may be several 20s per session, they're spread out among several people who each get to have their special moment and so don't get tired of it.

Hmm. A Wizard can have "special moments" in a session where the Wizard never rolls to hit nor to crit. In fact the Wizard will tend to have more "special moments" thanks to having the best class feature (spells), not limited by any particular dice mechanic. (I had a player who hated rolling to-hit, and he was an effective Wizard, while taking care to never roll to-hit.)

Rolling a non-crit isn't "stringing the players along", and non-critical success isn't boring.

It honestly sounds like you just don't like things other than d20, which is a valid preference, but not an excuse to make stuff up about other mechanics.

2d10 can work very well for the game. It isn't whatever bad thing you are trying to paint over it.

MoiMagnus

2021-03-16, 01:36 PM

We don't have the sales #s to judge its success, but on this site at least it has zero traction which suggests people here aren't on board.

On the paizo website, both PF1e and PF2e seems to be quite active, but it's difficult to judge from it.
But on Roll20, the split 1e/2e is a 73%/27% in number of tables (for Q2 of 2020, https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q2-2020/), so it's definitely not a success, but not irrelevant either.

Gnaeus

2021-03-16, 01:52 PM

On the paizo website, both PF1e and PF2e seems to be quite active, but it's difficult to judge from it.
But on Roll20, the split 1e/2e is a 73%/27% in number of tables (for Q2 of 2020, https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q2-2020/), so it's definitely not a success, but not irrelevant either.

That suggests to me that following the market leader worked out spectacularly poorly for them. Given that 5e is outperforming it by approximately 35-1.

Also, I suspect there are a lot of people like myself who may have a PF/3.5 preference but ultimately will happily play whichever has a group/DM. If you assume that 3.PF is mostly the same game with different houserules, 3.PF outperforms PF2 by closer to 4-1 than 3-1. More than that if you include Starfinder.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-16, 02:01 PM

Gnaeus

2021-03-16, 02:11 PM

Interesting. Do you also have stats from Fantasy Grounds and Foundry? I think those are the other two major virtual tabletops. It is possible (albeit unlikely) that certain systems favor certain VTTs substantially more.

I’m certain D20pro numbers are heavily favoring older systems, since they only released their PF2 materials a month ago. I doubt many people played it on an unsupported platform.

MoiMagnus

2021-03-16, 02:12 PM

That suggests to me that following the market leader worked out spectacularly poorly for them. Given that 5e is outperforming it by approximately 35-1.

Also, I suspect there are a lot of people like myself who may have a PF/3.5 preference but ultimately will happily play whichever has a group/DM. If you assume that 3.PF is mostly the same game with different houserules, 3.PF outperforms PF2 by closer to 4-1 than 3-1. More than that if you include Starfinder.

I agree, but the comparison with 5e is quite unfair. Indeed, 5e's numbers come from the fact that they targeted a new player base, much more casual, but also much bigger in size. While PF2e was, from the beginning, targetting a very niche set of players. The "best case scenario" for PF2e was probably miles lower than the current 5e sales.

While that's not relevant to the conversation, I decided to check the earlier report from Roll20, and here are the stats from Q3 2014:
+ Pathfinder at 27%
+ 3.5E at 18%
+ 5E at 12%
+ 4E at 11%
(https://blog.roll20.net/posts/what-is-the-orr-group-industry-report-and-what-does/)

Gnaeus

2021-03-16, 02:30 PM

I agree, but the comparison with 5e is quite unfair. Indeed, 5e's numbers come from the fact that they targeted a new player base, much more casual, but also much bigger in size. While PF2e was, from the beginning, targetting a very niche set of players. The "best case scenario" for PF2e was probably miles lower than the current 5e sales

I disagree. Pretty clearly, their design goals of a heavily nerfed version of older D&D editions with tightly restrained character math, are virtually copypasted from 5e. So if I want a fantasy d20ish game with tight math and less character options, I’m looking at those 2 as direct competitors. There is no similar option among industry leaders. 5e may also appeal more to casual players. But assuming PF2 was as good a product as 5e (not even close) and as an experienced gamer (the target audience) I was as ambivalent between the 2 as I am between PF1 and 3.5 (also not true), and I went on a site and saw 35 LFP announcements for every one, I’m going to be playing a lot more 5e than PF2 for that reason alone. And buying more 5e because that’s who is running games. (I world expect a similar breakdown among convention games if that were a thing right now, with similar results.)

(By comparison, warhammer is a war game not directly competing, Star Wars and WoD have similar character design philosophy with each other just in different genres, CoC is a much different animal, and 3.PF/starfinder are similar. 5e and PF2 are natural competitors. Same genre, similar design, both in print).

Starbuck_II

2021-03-16, 04:20 PM

Compare with P2's web, which goes

Critical success - no effect
Success - no effect
Fail - slight reduction in speed while inside the web, meaning you can automatically walk out but maybe not in the direction you want to go.
Critical fail (which monsters will only do on a natural 1) - immobilized for one round, can take an action to reroll the save.

I mean seriously, whoever thought that was not a waste of paper?

Isn't 3.5 Web:
Critical success: Same as Success
Success: Entangled, but can move at 1/2 speed.
Fail: Entangled, can't move. Check to free entanglement each round as 1 rd action (DC 20 Str or DC 25 Escape artist), The creature moves 5 feet for each full 5 points by which the check result exceeds 10.
Crit Fail: same as fail.

How big is the slight reduction in PF 2E?
Because 3.5 it is usually 1/2 speed (or worse).
Heck, even on a success you were still entangled and move at half speed.

Kurald Galain

2021-03-16, 04:41 PM

Isn't 3.5 Web:
It's actually worse than you think. 3E's entangle condition gives attack and defense penalties; and the web gives cover (P2's web does neither of that). Also, that strength check to move is for creatures that make the save (or that have escaped).

How big is the slight reduction in PF 2E?
10' less, until you leave the web. Oh, and I forgot to mention that creatures that make the save can automatically remove all webs they walk through, which will free other people.

So basically, 3E's web is nasty even if you make the save; P2's web is negligible even if you fail the save (except if you crit-fail and have no allies nearby).

Oh! Oh!! Did I mention how 3E's web has a much bigger range, and a larger area, and a much longer duration, and also a shorter casting time? Yes, really all of that. This has to be one of the worst nerfs I've ever seen!

malloc

2021-03-16, 06:49 PM

tl;dr: PF2 is a great framework, ruined by overly-cautious implementation.

1) The concept of class features being pick-and-choose by feat selection is great. It allows for a lot of depth of customization when building your character. The problem is, all the feats are locked behind lengthy prerequisite chains, and there aren't enough class feats to really pursue 2 tracks. So you can either pick 1 thing that keeps pace with the content, or do two things kinda okay that are flexible, but maybe not as impressively scaling as other options. So you pick 1 thing that keeps pace with the content. At that point, you might as well be playing 5e's archetype system.

A simple homebrew fix to that is to say that players can take a feat, ignoring previous feat prerequisites, if they take it a certain number of feat opportunities later. You could just say "one feat late", or do something like one feat late per 2 ignored prereq feats. It's something I plan on playtesting for the next game I host, but it's definitely something I want to work into the system, to try and encourage the system to meet the potential for flexibility that I see.

2) The action economy is very well implemented, and really shines in comparison to 3.5/PF1 or 5e. They kicked a lot of popular spells back a level, so martials remain relevant for longer while casters still get to play with old favorites. The many uses for reactions is really cool, as is having to actually have attack of opportunity to make said attacks. It opens up movement, and the system encourages movement due to how iterative attacks scale. That means fights tend to be more dynamic than "I stand here and slam you in the face. Okay now you slam me." Not that fights in previous editions had to be that way, but...for less creative players, it gets them thinking "Okay, what could I do on my turn that isn't making an attack at -10? Well, I could move, but where would I go...and when I get there, what would I do..." It encourages player creativity, especially when you as the DM leave juicy hooks for them to grab.

3) The math is...somewhat self-balancing. With proficiency adding level to all checks, attacks, and AC, there's a much smaller chance of your party of 13th level adventurers dying to a band of 35 goblins with rusty shanks. The math better supports solo bosses, and players being able to take on epically large fights against many smaller, weaker foes. It also means that grabbing proficiency in a wide range of things at low level is very valuable, meaning players who diversify can more closely match the successes of players who specialize. It means that if you want to effectively dip something you've discovered is REALLY important for a specific game, it's just a manner of obtaining proficiency in a single thing--even the lowest proficiency--to instantly become capable. I think it's a nice way of looking at scaling concerns from previous editions, but it can be cumbersome to remember, and the numbers do get quite silly.

4) Character creation has a lot of options, and can be overwhelming if you want to look at all of (or most of) them. Class feats, skill feats, skill proficiencies, general feats, ancestry feats, background stuff, oh my! Many bits and pieces--this is a crunchy system, and not for the feint of heart. I'm a 3.5 guy, so the crunch isn't a bad thing, from my point of view, but there are a lot of different categories of "stuff you have to choose". Which is good--lots of player options! But also bad--lots of information to digest. I'd say it's not a major problem, especially if you plan on playing the system for a few campaigns. After a year or so of play and causal character builds, you'll have a mastery of it, but it does have a rather steep entry level, especially for a system that's so young (lots of splat so far!)

5) Not all of the rules are super-well written. A lot of things are somewhat difficult to look up, the rulebooks and websites aren't really laid out in a natural way of reading, and it's sometimes hard to tell what is a Key Word and what is just common use of a term. A minor thing, but it can make things time-consuming to hunt down, especially if you're getting into the deep end of rules-lawyering.

3.5 is still my go-to system for crunchy fantasy. PF2 has the potential to get there, but even after all the splat releases I'd want to see to make the system as robust as 3.5/PF1, I foresee a fair amount of homebrew to the character creation mechanics necessary before the system is really what I want it to be.

Elves

2021-03-16, 07:46 PM

The many uses for reactions is really cool, as is having to actually have attack of opportunity to make said attacks.
I haven't read the whole ruleset but this is by far the most interesting change IMO. It makes intuitive sense, explains the 1 AoO per round restriction, and ties reactions into the game at a basic level as opposed to 3e where they were stapled on later and so you have to search for ways to fill them.

Ofc should still be a way to get extra AoOs for a lockdown character.

the rulebooks and websites aren't really laid out in a natural way of reading
I was just looking at the gamebook PDF and found it painful to read. The fonts don't match. And they made the bizarre choice of using a condensed font for the mechanical text, which is the densest portion to read and therefore the part where you want to give people the most help. The feats and abilities are cluttered with multiple extraneous divider lines. The text wrap around the images is either right up against the text or chilling in an awkward block of blank space, which destroys any sense of spaciousness, making the layout feel cramped. If I do finish reading this it will have to be on the wiki, cause it's really unpleasant.

NomGarret

2021-03-16, 10:28 PM

Gnaeus

2021-03-17, 08:00 AM

4) Character creation has a lot of options, and can be overwhelming if you want to look at all of (or most of) them. Class feats, skill feats, skill proficiencies, general feats, ancestry feats, background stuff, oh my! Many bits and pieces--this is a crunchy system, and not for the feint of heart. I'm a 3.5 guy, so the crunch isn't a bad thing, from my point of view, but there are a lot of different categories of "stuff you have to choose". Which is good--lots of player options! But also bad--lots of information to digest. I'd say it's not a major problem, especially if you plan on playing the system for a few campaigns. After a year or so of play and causal character builds, you'll have a mastery of it, but it does have a rather steep entry level, especially for a system that's so young (lots of splat so far!).

The problem is that choices have to be meaningful to matter. Yeah, you get a ton of feats. But most of them are ribbons. Or a minor bonus to a skill. Or a +1 that you are obligated to take to keep up with the math. Or the next step in a long tree (as you mentioned in point 1). So every level you get choices, but the choices are mostly either mandatory or irrelevant.

A 5e character also gets choices at every level. The main choice being what class to take. And a wizard who takes levels of bard or cleric or fighter is changing his character in a far more profound way than half a dozen background and skill feats.

Xervous

2021-03-17, 09:01 AM

2) The action economy is very well implemented, and really shines in comparison to 3.5/PF1 or 5e. They kicked a lot of popular spells back a level, so martials remain relevant for longer while casters still get to play with old favorites. The many uses for reactions is really cool, as is having to actually have attack of opportunity to make said attacks. It opens up movement, and the system encourages movement due to how iterative attacks scale. That means fights tend to be more dynamic than "I stand here and slam you in the face. Okay now you slam me." Not that fights in previous editions had to be that way, but...for less creative players, it gets them thinking "Okay, what could I do on my turn that isn't making an attack at -10? Well, I could move, but where would I go...and when I get there, what would I do..." It encourages player creativity, especially when you as the DM leave juicy hooks for them to grab.

I’ve played enough systems and games to form the opinion that AoOs and more generous movement aren’t enough to address the melee thunderdome. Last I remember the striker classes had two action (you get three actions per turn) attacks that when made at -5 out valued two basic attacks at -5 and -10. That or you had a 2 action opener that you followed with a 1 action Press (can’t be used as first attack). Making it easier to move reduces the importance of positioning. The melee character mechanically desires to sit on the opponent and unload, easier movement just means they can switch targets to dogpile whatever the party feels it needs to focus (and enemies can in theory do this too raising questions on how efficient a wall a front liner can be). So long as the character is on top of the ideal target for the round they will merrily slap away. This is quite literally the only thing some classes can end up capable of when you take the damage throughput class feat chains the game expects you to grab.

Effects that change the battlefield or impose conditions based on proximity to creatures are more the sort of thing that invite dynamic decision making beyond 3.5/PF/5/PF2 melee shin kicking contest. In their absence the fighter will either brute force its math over the enemy, or be chewed up by the meat grinder. Kind of like two players in a fighting game trading safe strings that never lead to knockdowns, tootsies or zoning.

NomGarret

2021-03-17, 07:59 PM

The action economy needs actions that are equivalent to Strike. They can, and should, be better or worse on a situational basis, but it’s too rare that they are. Players will naturally *want* to try something different rather than attack -10, but there are very few meaningful choices that are.

Cortillaen

2021-03-17, 11:03 PM

Dice pools are great because they have so many mechanics you can hinge off them, but I don't think 2d10/3d6 works at all. Every time you roll the die you want it to feel meaningful, and a bell curve roll saps it of drama, so that rolling begins to feel like a chore and the snooze point where you just want to take averages comes much sooner (a feeling that's enhanced by the annoyance of having to add the dice together).
I disagree, but that really just comes down to personal preference. I enjoy 2d10 in particular because it's not an intense normalization but lessens the frequency of a string of bad rolls making your character comically bad at the thing they are supposed to be great at.

Please share a link, I'd be interested in reading that.
I wish I could share a link, but almost all of it is scattered across dozens, maybe hundreds of reddit posts, and some of them appear to have disappeared for some reason since a couple of my bookmarks are now dead links. That includes a two-post rant about caster math that is probably what you want. Kinda wishing I'd saved that one now after putting so much time into it. The single biggest result that I remember is that a perfectly-optimized caster targeting the weakest save of an average same-level creature has only about around a 50% chance of the target failing their save to start with, and that slides down to around 35-40% as you level. I do still have at least one spreadsheet (can't link yet, though) showing how bad attack roll spells' hit chances are (1-4 points below a non-Fighter martial's attack). I can't find the sheet I worked those numbers out on (it had the ACs for all creatures published at that time, so I just took the averages), but the differences between them stand regardless since they are just the differences in bonus between an optimized martial and optimized caster making their respective attack rolls.

The action economy needs actions that are equivalent to Strike. They can, and should, be better or worse on a situational basis, but it’s too rare that they are. Players will naturally *want* to try something different rather than attack -10, but there are very few meaningful choices that are.
The most annoying part of that is how the vast majority of third-actions you'd love to use are hamstrung by being subject to Multiple Attack Penalty. I wonder how much would be solved just by making a bunch of them not "attacks".

Kurald Galain

2021-03-18, 03:40 AM

The action economy needs actions that are equivalent to Strike.
Yes. Also, what bothers me is that so many feats are (arbitrarily) two or three actions; that defies the whole point of having a straightforward "three action" economy.

The single biggest result that I remember is that a perfectly-optimized caster targeting the weakest save of an average same-level creature has only about around a 50% chance of the target failing their save to start with, and that slides down to around 35-40% as you level.
This matches my results when I did some math on saving throws. Specifically, that in almost every case, enemies will only crit-fail a save on a natural one. That's disheartening since so many effects (and spells) require a crit-failed save to do something worthwhile.

some of them appear to have disappeared for some reason since a couple of my bookmarks are now dead links.
I suppose this is you? https://www.reddit.com/user/Cortillaen/comments/ (then second tab and keep scrolling down)

Cortillaen

2021-03-18, 10:39 PM

I suppose this is you? [de-linked] (then second tab and keep scrolling down)
It is indeed (benefits of a unique and long-time handle). However, I've gone through everything back to the August around when PF2 launched, and I can't find some of my posts. One had a ton of links to saved Anydice programs, and another was mostly tables (not the one where I discuss the impacts of shifting the result-windows). They were both in threads quite critical of the system, which of course makes me wonder, but I do see my two-post spread on why PF2 Wizards just don't work well on another critical thread (titled "Wizard players, what is annoying about your class?" if you want to search it; you may note I was a good bit more optimistic about the system back then, while subsequent releases that ignored issues cured me of that), so I'm not sure what's up. That thread (I really need to post more and get linking privileges) has a lot of good info on the problems with Wizard design and the Arcane spell list combined with various casting, but it's not about spellcasting as a whole. There's also a brief but illuminating analysis of how poor damage really is in a thread about how a caster killed a bunch of giants with a single Chain Lightning; a bunch of lower-level, halfway-down-already giants with poor Reflex saves where he got super lucky with 3 of them crit-failing. That thread is titled "My friend's Wizard dealt 383 damage in a single round today.".

Regarding the saves math, the particularly nasty thing is how the PL+3 (party level + 3) and +4 enemies the published adventures love using often have a "weak" save bonus that is only 3-5 points below an optimized caster's DC, so they crit-succeed about as often as they fail (not crit-fail). Combined with how many of the good single-target debuffs have the Incapacitation trait and how that works, and debuff casters really struggle to contribute in those major boss fights. Which leads to the observation that offensive casters (both blasters and debuffers) in PF2e seem designed to work best in boring horde-of-mooks fights and worst in the boss fights that actually stick in people's minds. Not a great design philosophy, and it's baked into the system.

Starbuck_II

2021-03-18, 11:42 PM

Kurald Galain

2021-03-19, 04:21 AM

So, how would a level 3 Pathfinder 2E character compare to a level 3 Sphere of Might Pathfinder 1E character in a fight?

I mean, 2E has 3 actions, but SoM has pretty good actions too with right talents.

P1 characters also have three actions (i.e. standard/move/swift, or fullattack/5' step/swift). It's not like P2 characters can do more in one round than in the earlier edition. A P1 class with good action economy (e.g. Magus, warpriest, or any pet class) has more effective actions per round than a P2 character.

Arkhios

2021-03-19, 04:48 AM

Anything but this mess

On a more serious note, I understand the appeal of handling everything with apparent freedom of optional features, too many moving parts ends up being nothing but chaos and mess.

Personally, I would've preferred that Pathfinder 2e had ended up being more like what Pathfinder 1e was to 3.5; System that tried to fix acknowledged issues with better an overall better whole.

PF2e seems to be more like D&D 4e was; a complete overhaul.

Morty

2021-03-19, 05:03 AM

When we first saw the "raise shield" action, I thought, perhaps naively, that there would be other actions characters can take instead of just attacking, but it seems there's just the usual shove/trip/grapple and some miscellaneous actions.

Xervous

2021-03-19, 12:06 PM

PoeticallyPsyco

2021-03-19, 05:24 PM

Care to elaborate with some examples of these hopeful concepts?

Well, I'd love to see some abilities to use a shield more actively. Parry incoming attacks (to take advantage of high to-hit but low AC), defend allies, block AOEs... there's a lot of cool stuff to do with a shield besides it just being kind of there or using it as basically an improvised bludgeoning weapon, so I feel like the design space is being somewhat neglected.

Nifft

2021-03-19, 05:43 PM

Well, I'd love to see some abilities to use a shield more actively. Parry incoming attacks (to take advantage of high to-hit but low AC), defend allies, block AOEs... there's a lot of cool stuff to do with a shield besides it just being kind of there or using it as basically an improvised bludgeoning weapon, so I feel like the design space is being somewhat neglected.

Warhammer Fantasy RP had active defenses -- Block, Parry, Dodge -- and those worked pretty well in my (limited) experience.

A really nice consequence of that design was how you got an elegant and implicit mechanical explanation for why (and how) being outnumbered absolutely sucked.

You could also tie mechanical perks to the active effects -- Riposte onto Parry, for one obvious example, but you could also tie iconic racial abilities onto active defenses.

It really is a neglected design space.

Elves

2021-03-19, 06:08 PM

Dienekes

2021-03-19, 06:51 PM

It would be interesting if you put all those plus AoOs on the reaction.

Parry obviously defined as opposed attack rolls to negate their attack, dodge a dex roll vs same? Not sure what shield block would be, perhaps giving yoursekf cover or a parry with a bonus equal to the shield’s AC bonus?

A non-d20 game had it essentially like this:

Parry: Great at negating damage from melee attacks. If your parry was good enough you can riposte or a few other moves. You can attempt to parry ranged attacks but it is harder.

Dodge: Great at avoiding damage from ranged attacks. If you Dodge well enough you can sneak a movement in. Repositioning to get closer to the ranged attacker or even disengage the melee attacker. You can attempt to dodge a melee attack but it is hard to do (with strikes... thrusts were easier but I don’t think we’re aiming for that level of fidelity).

Shield Block: Can negate melee or ranged attacks with near equal ease (exact specifics depending on type of shield, bucklers were only slightly better at avoiding ranged attacks than melee weapons but again this game had way more granularity with equipment). But you can’t really get a full additional riposte strike like a melee weapon or gain terrain advantage like Dodge. You do gain some slight edge if you Shield Block really well but it is lesser than Parry or Dodge.

Absorb: Greatly reduce the damage taken based on the armor you wear. Unlike the others there is less of a chance of messing this up, but to completely negate an attack like parry, dodge, or block might you need to be wearing very good armor. But if you are, you kinda are just a near unkillable beast unless the enemy specifically try to aim toward the gaps in your armor, which is much harder to do unless you are grappled.

Could take some fidgeting but that may be made workable in a d20 system. Would need to be tinkered with to make work against enemies that throw magic around as well.