Pathfinder PF2 and the Future of Paizo [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Mechalich

2021-09-05, 05:29 PM

There have been plenty of small-scale RPG publishers. You don't need a huge amount of buyers to publish an RPG book.

Yes, but for Paizo to become smaller that would mean downsizing the company and laying people off, which Paizo no doubt wishes to avoid.

Paizo was, for most of the previous decade, the biggest RPG publisher. Yes D&D 5e may have been more popular overall, but the incredibly meager content production for that edition meant it operated with a tiny team. Paizo, meanwhile, splashed PF 1e content all over the place.

However, PF 1e more or less reached market saturation, they made every book they could conceivably make for the edition, there simply isn't much new space available at all within the PF 1e content zone (especially considering the truly massive supply of OGL content from third party presses). As such, they tried to both make new games, Starfinder, and a new edition, PF 2e in the hopes of sustaining renewed content stream. However, both Starfinder and PF 2e, by basically any sales/support metric you can find have not found an audience of the size needed to support the operations level Paizo had during the PF 1e days.

This is actually pretty normal. TTRPGs, especially those set in static secondary worlds, age extremely well as products (especially in the current era of digital books, pdfs don't crumble from use the way old 2e softcovers used to fall apart). The release of an new edition does nothing to invalidate the playability of the old one and in order to pull fans to the new product a new edition needs to be either obviously superior in terms of playability or to offer an experience that appeals to the fanbase more than what's currently available. This rarely happens. Fans are almost always reluctant to switch from a game that is going strong to some new experiment. Usually a game space has to lie moribund for some time before a resurgence is possible (if one can occur at all, the WoD has never regained the heights it once occupied, even though urban fantasy and paranormal romance have only grown more popular).

Rynjin

2021-09-05, 05:35 PM

Fail or admit mistake and make PF1 material? The sheer arrogance in not admitting a mistake is to common though. So failure expected.

Regardless of success or failure, Paizo as a whole would never admit to a mistake. Buhlman's ego is legendary, and Lisa Stevens has shown a trend of being...overly ambitious with where she sees Paizo going, though it may be that the absolute trainwreck of the MMO taught a valuable lesson about reaching beyond the company's means.

Arutema

2021-09-05, 05:55 PM

I wouldn't read too much into table count at physical conventions at present. Paizo is playing it safe with regards to COVID-19 and heavily favoring VTT and PBP events for now.

AmberVael

2021-09-05, 06:10 PM

Most Pathfinder players here in the Playground haven’t seemed too impressed with PF2, and apparently the new edition hasn’t been well-represented at recent conventions.
The Playground is a very biased sample, as it is more heavily rooted in 3.5 (and by extension, PF1) than basically any other community I've seen. Hearing it isn't well-represented at conventions is interesting, but again... that's not exactly polling a wide, diverse group.

Which isn't to say that PF2 is doing great, of course. Just, this is not where I'd look. Personally I keep an eye on things Roll20's Orr Report, stats from Fantasy Grounds, and sales stats from ICv2. None of them are perfect either (as the first two are tied to specific platforms, and the last tends to be very light on specifics and purely focused on sales besides), but I'd consider them better resources.

So, if PF2 isn’t performing well, what other options does Paizo have? They seem to have firmly committed to looking ahead, not behind, so there’s no real hope of any additional PF1 material.

But is it too soon for PF3? And if that's the case, what else can Paizo fall back on?

So some of the suggestions in this thread sum up as "go back to supporting PF1," but I don't think that works. Not only have the play stats over the past years reflected a dwindling playerbase for PF1, but the publishers I've worked with and talked to have noticed dwindling sales for PF1 material. Even if you can argue that supporting PF1 would be better in the short term, I imagine it's going to be a losing strategy if PF1 continues to wane. Reversing that trend would take some serious effort, if you ask me.

I also highly doubt a new edition would solve things, at least right now. Even if it's good, who is their audience? I suspect their old audience was made of two groups: people who played the most popular TTRPG, and people who wanted to stick with 3.5. The overwhelming popularity of 5e makes recapturing the former a titanic task, and the latter... good lucky capturing that group by releasing another new edition.

Is there any evidence to the idea that PF2E is doing worse than Paizo wants or needs it to?

It's hard to have a good perspective on the business side of Paizo.

But... it's been two years, and I have yet to see any play/audience stats where it's more popular than PF1. Having your old product outcompete your new supported product doesn't strike me as the greatest sign?

Murg

2021-09-05, 06:28 PM

I’ve been very tempted by the Strength of Thousands AP, but the PF2 aspect puts me off. If it had stats and support for both editions, I’d be much more willing to give it a try.

I feel the same way. PF1 wasn't terrible, and people aren't going to toss out their years of accumulated PF1 stuff unless the new system is appreciably better, which PF2 isn't.

Paizo is REALLY doubling down and pushing PF2 though. I was just over at their website and everywhere I looked I was being directed to PF2 stuff. I had to actually pointedly search for the PF1 stuff.

I would be happy if all the new PF2 stuff they'd release had a PF1 version too, but as has been pointed out that will never happen for two reasons: #1 It's tantamount to admitting PF2 failed. #2 It would give people even less incentive to switch rule systems, which means no $$$ for Paizo for new rulebooks. However it also means for me at least that I'll probably never buy the PF2 stuff...

As far as PF2 being in trouble, I found this, which is admittedly from a year ago, but still sounds ominous:

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/171621/what-are-the-sales-figures-for-pathfinder-2e-between-launch-year-and-second-year

"It's not a sales statistic, but the Roll20 Orr Group Industry Report for the first quarter of 2020 lists that 1.23% of campaigns are Pathfinder 2e campaigns (compared to, say, 50.40% being 5e campaigns). For reference, here are the Q4 2019 (1.13% of campaigns) and Q3 2019 (0.57% of campaigns; Pathfinder 2e launched halfway through this quarter)."

AmberVael

2021-09-05, 06:52 PM

As far as PF2 being in trouble, I found this, which is admittedly from a year ago, but still sounds ominous:

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/171621/what-are-the-sales-figures-for-pathfinder-2e-between-launch-year-and-second-year

"It's not a sales statistic, but the Roll20 Orr Group Industry Report for the first quarter of 2020 lists that 1.23% of campaigns are Pathfinder 2e campaigns (compared to, say, 50.40% being 5e campaigns). For reference, here are the Q4 2019 (1.13% of campaigns) and Q3 2019 (0.57% of campaigns; Pathfinder 2e launched halfway through this quarter)."

Heh. This leads back into what I said about even the places I look at having flaws, and how the problem with the Orr Report and Fantasy Grounds is that they're tied to specific platforms. I'm given to understand that Roll20 has not... done well in supporting PF2, which in turn means that PF2 is poorly represented in the Orr Report. (Also, that's a year old now, I definitely recommend trying to keep up with the latest info. The latest Orr Report is from Q1 2021, (https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2021/) though PF2 is still lagging well behind PF1 in it.)

Since Roll20 is probably unrepresentative, I'd recommend Fantasy Ground stats instead. Latest is Q4, 2020, (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/reports/2020Q4/) and is fairly similar to stats from its previous quarters. PF2 lags behind PF1 on the platform, but the numbers are much closer than in the Orr Report.

Calthropstu

2021-09-05, 07:21 PM

Heh. This leads back into what I said about even the places I look at having flaws, and how the problem with the Orr Report and Fantasy Grounds is that they're tied to specific platforms. I'm given to understand that Roll20 has not... done well in supporting PF2, which in turn means that PF2 is poorly represented in the Orr Report. (Also, that's a year old now, I definitely recommend trying to keep up with the latest info. The latest Orr Report is from Q1 2021, (https://blog.roll20.net/posts/the-orr-group-industry-report-q1-2021/) though PF2 is still lagging well behind PF1 in it.)

Since Roll20 is probably unrepresentative, I'd recommend Fantasy Ground stats instead. Latest is Q4, 2020, (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/reports/2020Q4/) and is fairly similar to stats from its previous quarters. PF2 lags behind PF1 on the platform, but the numbers are much closer than in the Orr Report.

Interesting. It looks like the gap closed, and 2e even overtook 1e for a bit, before 1e getting a sharp boost and outperforming by a good 2k games.

MaxiDuRaritry

2021-09-05, 07:35 PM

So...should we be doing online content backups for PF1e material like we should've done with online 3e material, in case Paizo pulls a WotC and start yanking all the online stuff?

Calthropstu

2021-09-05, 08:09 PM

So...should we be doing online content backups for PF1e material like we should've done with online 3e material, in case Paizo pulls a WotC and start yanking all the online stuff?

Probably not a bad plan to be honest.

Palanan

2021-09-05, 08:27 PM

Originally Posted by Arutema
I wouldn't read too much into table count at physical conventions at present. Paizo is playing it safe with regards to COVID-19 and heavily favoring VTT and PBP events for now.

That’s a fair point, but do we have any metrics on those VTT and PBP games?

Originally Posted by AmberVael
So some of the suggestions in this thread sum up as "go back to supporting PF1," but I don't think that works.

…I also highly doubt a new edition would solve things, at least right now.

So, if PF2’s performance is indeed anemic, and the above aren't viable, what other options do you see for Paizo?

MaxiDuRaritry

2021-09-05, 08:39 PM

Probably not a bad plan to be honest.Are there any online sources not covered by the Archives of Nethys* website? I'm not terribly familiar with that website, but I get Google hits for most of my PF1e research whenever I'm looking up material.

*I'm not 100% sure what all AoN covers; is it all OGL material, or is it something we shouldn't be talking about here?

Lord Raziere

2021-09-05, 08:44 PM

I personally use the Pathfinder 1 SRD, not sure how much it covers vs. AoN, but it has various third party stuff on it.

Rynjin

2021-09-05, 08:48 PM

The Archives is now the "official" site; Paizo basically just told the Archives guy he was in charge of maintaining the official PRD now because the original PRD sucked ass. It has all official content.

The SRD has all official content as well, but some stuff had to have the serial numbers filed off; namely anything that mentions setting specific material (such as the names of gods, country names, etc.) because that stuff technically isn't OGL, so once they opened their storefront Paizo had to ask them to take all that stuff off (all very polite and easily done from what I understand). The SRD also has some 3rd party material.

AmberVael

2021-09-05, 08:51 PM

That’s a fair point, but do we have any metrics on those VTT and PBP games?

For VTT, see the Orr Report and Fantasy Grounds stats discussed above.

So, if PF2’s performance is indeed anemic, and the above aren't viable, what other options do you see for Paizo?

So, I'll preface this by saying that while I can suggest that maybe PF2 isn't doing that great from a playerbase perspective and provide some evidence to back it up, that isn't nearly as useful for figuring out the business end. Did they make good sales anyway? Do they need a huge success with PF2 to maintain Paizo as it currently is? I dunno. And I'm also not trained or experienced with the business side of things. I don't have a lot of insight or skill that would help figure out their course.

If they're not pulling in as much as they need to the very simple answer would be to slim down. They're larger than a lot of other publishers, and even if PF2 isn't exactly a star seller, they still seem to outperform everyone except WotC. That's a viable business.

Another option is to start building a different audience entirely. The reason I say this is that one of the better comparisons I have for Paizo's situation is Evil Hat. Evil Hat has been exceptionally open about their sales data and situation, and recently talked candidly about the state of Fate, the RPG they built themselves on. The short of it is that Fate's day is done. It still has a footprint, but it's a dwindling footprint, the market for it is not the same as it was, and they do not expect it to recover or do anything but keep slowly declining. By contrast though, Evil Hat is not done. They've seen their most success supporting completely separate systems, and I've heard a lot of good things and seen a lot of enthusiasm around those systems and new developments. So, I see that as an option for Paizo too: branching out to completely new things, with the goal of setting Pathfinder aside as the core of their business.

catagent101

2021-09-06, 01:11 AM

Asmotherion

2021-09-06, 03:03 AM

I'm propably giving an unpopular oppinion, but PF2e so far is my favorite system. I don't know why it's unpopular, but I believe if more people were to give it a chance they'd see it too.

Morty

2021-09-06, 03:10 AM

I'm propably giving an unpopular oppinion, but PF2e so far is my favorite system. I don't know why it's unpopular, but I believe if more people were to give it a chance they'd see it too.

I consider PF2E better than PF1E, if only because PF1E sets the bar so incredibly low.

Anyway, while PF2E may or may not be doing well from Paizo's perspective, expecting them to keep supporting PF1E out of some kind of principle or something is pretty silly. They're running a business, not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. And, again, I say this as someone with little to no sympathy for them or their products.

pabelfly

2021-09-06, 03:28 AM

And, again, I say this as someone with little to no sympathy for them or their products.

Okay, I'll bite - why don't you like Paizo?

Kurald Galain

2021-09-06, 04:55 AM

Is there any evidence to the idea that PF2E is doing worse than Paizo wants or needs it to?
Well this is situational, but if I type "paizo advice" into google, the first hit I get is the PF1 advice forum on the paizo server, not the PF2 forum.

I also note that on public games on Warhorn/Roll20, PF1 remains popular; I'd estimate they're about 50/50? But that's not the numbers a publisher would want for their newest game vs one that is out of support.

Asmotherion

2021-09-06, 06:19 AM

pabelfly

2021-09-06, 06:26 AM

Do you happen to be a Pf1e player? I mean, google does try to give more relevant results based on your previous searches, and in my case, 2e content are the top results.

PF2e recently released new content, so I'm guessing it's going at least moderatelly well.

I did an incognito search and PF1e came up first and second in the search, with 2e coming third.

Asmotherion

2021-09-06, 06:45 AM

I did an incognito search and PF1e came up first and second in the search, with 2e coming third.
Good enough for me.

An other interesting point is that Pathfinder Bancorp, Inc. stock is at an all time high right now, but hit an all time low back in Fall-Winter 2019. This would suggest the company is still doing well.

Not sure if it's the right stock, but Paizo Inc. redirects to this stock.

AmberVael

2021-09-06, 06:53 AM

Well this is situational, but if I type "paizo advice" into google, the first hit I get is the PF1 advice forum on the paizo server, not the PF2 forum.

I also note that on public games on Warhorn/Roll20, PF1 remains popular; I'd estimate they're about 50/50? But that's not the numbers a publisher would want for their newest game vs one that is out of support.

Good enough for me.

An other interesting point is that Pathfinder Bancorp, Inc. stock is at an all time high right now, but hit an all time low back in Fall-Winter 2019. This would suggest the company is still doing well.

Not sure if it's the right stock, but Paizo Inc. redirects to this stock.

I know we're not exactly awash in data, but we can do better than this. A Google search doesn't say much, at least compare search term statistics or something. And using the Orr report is way better than glancing at current roll20 games.

...and Pathfinder Bank is not Paizo.

Asmotherion

2021-09-06, 07:04 AM

I know we're not exactly awash in data, but we can do better than this. A Google search doesn't say much, at least compare search term statistics or something. And using the Orr report is way better than glancing at current roll20 games.

...and Pathfinder Bank is not Paizo.
Thing is, I can't seem to find Paizo anywere in the database. I'd love to have some further info on Paizo if someone can find anything.

Morty

2021-09-06, 07:11 AM

Again, people who talk about PF1E on the Internet aren't necessarily buying new books. Indeed, many of them likely have all the books they need or are going to get. It's not a meaningless metric by any means, but it's not the one primarily keeping Paizo afloat or sinking it.

AmberVael

2021-09-06, 07:35 AM

I feel like it's also worth noting that it's not like Paizo has stopped making money from 1e products including presumably new 3rd-party 1e products in their store (https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shry?Grafts-and-Drawbacks-More-Pathfinder-and).

I can't imagine third party products are making them a statistically significant amount of money. The vast majority is done under the OGL, so the only money they make is whatever cut their store takes, there's no licensing or anything like that. Most 3pp doesn't even sell 50 copies on popular storefronts like DrivethruRPG, and everything I've heard from third party publishers suggests that the Paizo store is not where they sell most of their products, or even the second best market. A small cut from a handful of sales doesn't add up to much.

Thing is, I can't seem to find Paizo anywere in the database. I'd love to have some further info on Paizo if someone can find anything.

Are they public? It's a topic I know very little about but I'd be kinda surprised if they were. They're a tiny publisher.

Again, people who talk about PF1E on the Internet aren't necessarily buying new books. Indeed, many of them likely have all the books they need or are going to get. It's not a meaningless metric by any means, but it's not the one primarily keeping Paizo afloat or sinking it.
Yeah, very much this.

Asmotherion

2021-09-06, 10:53 AM

I can't imagine third party products are making them a statistically significant amount of money. The vast majority is done under the OGL, so the only money they make is whatever cut their store takes, there's no licensing or anything like that. Most 3pp doesn't even sell 50 copies on popular storefronts like DrivethruRPG, and everything I've heard from third party publishers suggests that the Paizo store is not where they sell most of their products, or even the second best market. A small cut from a handful of sales doesn't add up to much.

Are they public? It's a topic I know very little about but I'd be kinda surprised if they were. They're a tiny publisher.

Yeah, very much this.
Hmm, that might be the case...

Particle_Man

2021-09-06, 01:58 PM

What about rpg adjacent thinks like the pathfinder adventure board game or (if they exist) comic books, novels, etc.?

Raven777

2021-09-06, 02:20 PM

I have recently begun purchasing the PF1 pocket editions after years of relying on D20PFSRD. It's nice to have physical books. So at least we can say that Paizo can still make some money from any PF1 pocket edition they're willing to print. The Rise of the Runelord and Curse of the Crimson Throne anthologies are also really nice to have. I would be glad if they made PF1 anthologies from the two other 3.5 APs, especially Legacy of Fire. Apart from hypothetical corporate drive to sabotage the ruleset, nothing stops Paizo from bringing any other PF1 AP to an anthology format once or twice a year, either.

Another thing Paizo could do on PF1's side is to do a Core Rulebook revision. Incorporating The Elephant in the Room (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) (full document (https://mammothisland.itch.io/elephant)) is one low hanging fruit such a revision could provide. Better integration and gameplay for crossbows and guns is another (here's one guy's take on it (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vhwAw2KgXBohwIwTGGuga5SaddjMf4ul0P5CXWag6HU/edit#heading=h.7e8exfcia4pk)). Simplifying movement/action rules a bit towards 5e's take (https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Combat#h-Interacting%20with%20Objects%20Around%20You) is another. These examples of revisions would be almost entirely transparent in regards to compatibility with existing content, as far as I can tell. (And really, they're what PF2 should have been.)

Another option for publishing "new" content is to get in touch with Dreamscarred Press and see if a first party remaster of Ultimate Psionics and a similar Path of War + Expanded anthology would be possible. Mostly art and print style to bring the presentation in line with the usual PF1 books. That would absolutely be a breath of fresh air into PF1. Designing new Adventure Paths to make mileage off these would also be a possibility. Set them in Casmaron and Tian Xia, these places are design space ripe for content. I don't personally like the toolkit, but remaster Akashic powers and do an AP in Vudra.

The short of my take is that there are plenty of low-hanging-fruit ways for Paizo to support PF1 and even make it grow and capture some interest back, through remastering some current content and even writing some new one, but Paizo has to want to do it. Personally, if I was a designer/writer at Paizo and doing that could provide me with employment for a couple more years, I'd absolutely advocate doing it. :smallwink:

Final bit because somebody mentioned the failed MMO: shoutout to Owlcat's Kingmaker (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR-1t28ngkk) and Wrath of the Righteous (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2xJt19Ri74) CRPG adaptations. Their production value is off the charts. If Owlcat could reach wider appeal (on the scale of, say, Baldur's Gate), that could definitely also be a shot in the arm for Paizo's and PF1's name recognition.

Zanos

2021-09-06, 04:04 PM

I'm propably giving an unpopular oppinion, but PF2e so far is my favorite system. I don't know why it's unpopular, but I believe if more people were to give it a chance they'd see it too.
It sits in an a precarious position, system wise. For 3.5/PF1e players, it's less complex than a game that they've probably been playing for 10+ years. Getting people to move to a new edition was always a struggle if they liked the one they were on; getting people to move off a game system that they've been playing through two entire edition cycles is close to impossible. For 5e, it's strength is it's simplicity, and PF2e is without a doubt more complex than 5e. But the people who make 5e popular mostly aren't looking for a more complex system; or at least, 5e sales don't seem to reflect a desire for one.

So you're stuck with moving people off 3.PF, who are happy with what they're playing, and moving people off 5e, who are happy with what they're playing. PF1 was only outrageously successful because 4e flopped, and basically they were just printing more 3.5 content(with some houserules). A system needs to be bad for people to switch off it permanently, usually.

Personally I do think PF2e is a better and more interesting system than 5e, but I still wouldn't play it over 3.5 of PF1.

Rynjin

2021-09-06, 04:34 PM

My problem with PF2e isn't that it's simplified. I like a lot of simple systems.

The problem is that it's a hot mess jumble of Feats for everything. You pick Feats to define your race. Your class. Your skills. And most of them are boooooriiiiing. Every step of character creation is tedious.

It's all of the worst problems with Pathfinder turned up to 11. It shows they didn't learn any lessons at all from their previous RPG.

Psyren

2021-09-06, 05:32 PM

Originally put this in the wrong (Androids) thread, so moving over here where I intended.

Some first-hand reports from Dragon Con over the weekend talked about the lack of tables for PF2e compared to PF1e/3e and 5e.

This is the context for the comments quoted in the OP.

There’s also apparently quite a disparity in the number of games on Roll20. Some of that may simply be the far greater AP resources available for PF1—meaning fewer PF2 games because there are fewer APs in PF2.

But at the least, it certainly doesn’t seem like there’s been a stampede in the direction of the new edition. I’d be open to a more detailed discussion of PF2’s performance and whether it really is enough to sustain Paizo as a company.

Wow. That is far from what I expected. I expected a bunch more with near empty tables.

Them not even putting the tables forth is genuinely acknowledging that pf2e is a failure.

True, but I expected them to atleast TRY to promote its play at GenCon. If they aren't trying there, then they aren't trying at all. Which does not speak well for the future of Paizo.

As mine was one of the "first-hand reports" that led to this discussion I wanted to clarify a few things.

Gaming tables at DragonCon work on a volunteer basis. (https://gaming.dragoncon.org/faqs) This means that someone volunteers to GM a one-shot or mini-campaign, they follow the process to get added to the schedule in the Gaming track, and con-goers are able to sign up to play in that session on a first-come-first-serve basis.

So the bold part of Calthropstu's quote above is a bit of an exaggeration. Neither Paizo nor DragonCon "put forth" PF2 tables - rather, if there are no PF2 tables it's because no GMs volunteered to run them, and we can't read anything into Paizo or the convention's stance based solely on that. After all, DragonCon as a whole was down to roughly one-third to one-half size this year because of social distancing and vaccination guidelines being enforced by the hosting city, so everybody had fewer volunteers.

Now it's certainly telling that even in these conditions, volunteers did come forward to run 5e, PF1, and even 3.5 games, but almost none for what should be the shiny new edition. If I were Paizo, the adoption rate of PF2 among both convention-going GMs and roll20 GMs is something I would definitely be concerned about. GenCon will be a truer test of that, as Paizo will be more directly involved in PF events there, and thus will likely have a finger on the scale with regards to proportionality of PF2 vs. PF1 representation even as they get inevitably dwarfed by 5e tables. But at the same time, I don't think that slow adoption is necessarily translating to lack of product sales (books, accessories, etc) either, and that is ultimately the metric Paizo is likely to care most about.

Or to put it a different way - as long as people continue to buy splatbooks and subscriptions, whether or not they actually play games (never mind running them!) might not be relevant at the end of the day, at least in the short term. And the amount of new books they announced for PF2 suggests that books are still being sold - new adventure paths, Secrets of Magic, Book of the Dead, even a brand new class (the Inventor) and a Warforged analogue called the Automaton.

Speaking personally, I certainly want Paizo to succeed, and I don't think they're in any kind of trouble financially - far from it. PF2 may not be my cup of tea, but that doesn't mean the inevitable PF3 won't be, even if I'd rather they switched gears and started on that sooner rather than later. Regardless of my opinions on PF2, Starfinder continues to do well, and is most certainly a product I both actively buy and play - with several of the new toys coming there (including two new classes, the Nanocite and the Precog, along with bonafide mecha and terraforming rules) being particularly exciting for me. So all in all, I'm content with a wait-and-see approach.

Rynjin

2021-09-06, 06:06 PM

Starfinder is one I need to give another try. I quite liked what I played of it, but it's considered a bit of a joke whenever I bring it up.

pabelfly

2021-09-06, 07:58 PM

Starfinder is one I need to give another try. I quite liked what I played of it, but it's considered a bit of a joke whenever I bring it up.

I think Starfinder is pretty fun. Pity it doesn't plug into Pathfinder 1e or 2e though.

Rynjin

2021-09-06, 08:36 PM

That's kind of the main rub. It doesn't have anywhere near the same 3rd party support or variety of classes, but the core game is pretty good with some problems. I hear, in how ship combat is handled at high levels...but I kinda did away with hard and fast ship combat rules for my game when I ran Skull and Shackles anyway.

137beth

2021-09-06, 09:30 PM

I'm going to look at a source of data that no one else has mentioned in this thread (unless I missed it, since I skimmed). Back when I paid a lot of attention to non-Paizo Pathfinder-compatible products, some of the people who published such products said they made a plurality of their sales through DriveThruRPG/OneBookShelf. As far as I know, Paizo is the only notable Enlish-language publisher who doesn't sell through DTRPG, so we can look to DTRPG for an estimate of sales of third-party Pathfinder products.

Here (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=44235_0_0_0_0&src=fid44235) is a page that shows the "hottest-selling" products on DTRPG which are claimed by their publishers to be compatible with Pathfinder. DTRPG determines the "hotness" of a product by the total number of sales divided by the number of days it has been in the store. Also note that DTRPG's advanced search system considers Starfinder to be a version of Pathfinder.

Of the top 40 PF-compatible products,
a)28 claim to be compatible with PF1
b)8 claim to be compatible with PF2
c)2 claim to be compatible with Starfinder.

Note that those numbers do not add up to 40, because a publisher can tag their product as being compatible with "Pathfinder" without specifying an edition, and also a publisher can claim their product is compatible with more than one edition.

If we restrict to the top 20 PF-compatible products, then
a)15 claim to be compatible with PF1
b)2 claim to be compatible with PF2. Of those two, one of them is a "system-neutral" product which also claims compatibility with PF1, 5e, and OSRIC.
c)0 claim to be compatible with Starfinder.

So it looks like third-party PF1 products are outselling third-party PF2 and Starfinder products. Note that these rankings are based on recent sales and are provided by the company who actually knows the sales data, so it hopefully sidesteps the issue Morty keeps mentioning.

However, there are a lot of caveats to these numbers, including
1) There are no actual sales numbers: only the relative sales rankings of products from different editions. For all I know it's possible that total sales of third-party PF products are at an all-time high. I don't think this is the case, because when PF2 was announced I recall several third-party publishers commenting that they had seen declining sales for a few years, and I doubt something has changed to create a surge in PF1 sales since then. But I don't really know.

2)DTRPG's hottest-sellers list is based on the number of sales and the age of each product, without regard to the price. I'm not sure if it even distinguishes between PDF and print sales (though I suspect the number of print sales of third-party Pathfinder products are pretty low right now).

3)The relative sales of non-Paizo PF1 products and non-Paizo PF2 products may not be representative of the relative sales between total PF1 sales and total PF2 sales. It's possible that PF1 players are more likely to buy third-party products than their PF2 counterparts: PF1 players looking for new content can only look outside of Paizo, whereas PF2 players may be satisfied with the new content Paizo is releasing. On the other hand, it's also possible PF2 players are more likely to buy third-party products, due to their being less Paizo content available for PF2. Unless Paizo opens up about their sales data, we'll never know for sure.

Akal Saris

2021-09-06, 11:39 PM

I'm propably giving an unpopular oppinion, but PF2e so far is my favorite system. I don't know why it's unpopular, but I believe if more people were to give it a chance they'd see it too.

I'm glad to hear that! My gaming group was very hostile to the idea of switching from PF1E to 2E when I proposed it last year. Of course, some of them are grognards who only started playing PF1E because they hated 4E so much :P

farothel

2021-09-07, 01:47 AM

I'm propably giving an unpopular oppinion, but PF2e so far is my favorite system. I don't know why it's unpopular, but I believe if more people were to give it a chance they'd see it too.

I agree. I have played (and still play) both PF1 and PF2 and I like PF2 more, as I feel it's more balanced even at higher levels (I've played a lvl 1 to 20 campaign in both systems, so I can compare). Some of it is because I feel there are too many options in PF1 and especially in PbPs, I often feel I'm lagging behind as I don't have all the books and people come up with characters who can do what mine does better even though it's not their primary focus. In PF2 the options are (still) limited, which I like more, although I know that some people like to have loads of options. I also like the fact that you can customize your race options without needing optional rules and/or loads of splat books, so that not every human or elf or whatever starts out exactly the same.

I've never played and don't know D&D 5e, so I can't comment on the differences between that and PF2.

noob

2021-09-07, 01:57 AM

Rynjin

2021-09-07, 02:02 AM

It also has a bit of an identity crisis.

I'm not a big fan of 5e, but it's a system I respect a lot. It knew what it wanted to do and it executed on it very well, even if some people (a relative minority) may not be a fan.

PF2e...I never got a satisfactory answer to "who was this game made for?", which I asked a few times during the playtest. It's not a rules light system, and arguably not a rules medium one. It does little to streamline PF1e, but instead provides something that is possibly as complex, but far more shallow at the same time.

So it's a crunchy system with unsatisfying crunch, replacing a crunchy system that is very, very crunchy indeed.

I hear tell it was made in part to make running Adventure Paths easier, which is all well and good...but the first Adventure Path was pretty universally panned (so many people disliked it I canned my plans to convert it to 1e) and I've not heard particularly much about the subsequent ones, so they don't seem to really be putting those resources into making top notch adventures for their mediocre system either.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 02:02 AM

I think it have to do with the following: it did not solve as many problems with pathfinder as people excepted it would.

A new edition of a game pretty much always have the nearly impossible mission of fixing everything people disliked about the old game while keeping everything they liked. Also, there's probably not two people who completely agree on what's what. :smalltongue:

noob

2021-09-07, 02:07 AM

Starfinder is one I need to give another try. I quite liked what I played of it, but it's considered a bit of a joke whenever I bring it up.

If they made player stats scale more automatically instead of having them scale mostly thanks to items then it would reduce the frustration from the unreliable item based progression (you might not always find level appropriate equipment right after bashing the latest encounter nor have the possibility to go to a shop and ask for the latest laser gunsword on the market and encounters are frustrating when you start having 4 levels old equipment).
Otherwise the setting is quite interesting although the whole "can only wield items of your level if you are an adventurer" and the exponential costs for weapons going very far can make the setting look odd. (You can nearly always but a knife that hurts more but each time it cost something like twice as much then you realise you can buy a knife worth as much as the money to equip an entire army of level 1 characters with all the best equipment they could use and wonder why you should not get an army instead of buying the latest weapon because the latter would merely allow you to deal 20% higher damage)
Plus spaceships are cool.

Segev

2021-09-07, 02:13 AM

As one of those who plays Pathfinder because it is "3.75" or "3.PF," I will say I had zero interest and only passing curiosity in PF2 when it came out, and was not impressed by what I saw.

I want to like Starfinder more than I do, but it seemed to give too little thought to how to iNtegrate technology into the class structure, and was too concerned with toning down the heights of power the underlying PF d20 system used. I think it would be more interesting and successful if it had integrated with PF1 in a more useful way than the somewhat foolish suggestion that one could play PF classes in SF. They provided a warning that this may be unbalanced, which means they are aware of the power level drop if SF. I suspect it was intentional.

There seems to be a weird desire to force low power gameplay on the players rather than shifting your advice and focus to emphasizing that lower-power games can be achieved by remaining at lower levels, and trying to give options for non-level advancement. This could even have been a neat place for cybernetics or technology rules in SF.

The biggest problem I have with PF2 is that it seems to think players are gullible; it boasts of how many options or choices you have to customize your PC. But anyone who has played PF1 can recognize that this was done in many cases (base bookaces come to mind) by taking all the ribbons and racial features the races used to get and breaking them out into racial feats. This would be fine and even cool design...except you get far fewer of them than you did in PF1, and so the "choices" feel hollow and underwhelming.

"Our newest model car has more choices! Now you can choose a radio, air conditioning, or power windows or power locks! Any two! Choices, choices, choices!"

Mothman

2021-09-07, 03:59 AM

Sometimes it really does feel like you're the madman on the corner waving a "The End is Nigh" sign or that one Always Sunny bit where Charlie tries to find Pepe Silvia when I try to tell people why I've prefer to play PF1e over 5e. I'd have no problems trying to find a group to play 5e, but the most success I've found trying to get a regular group for my preferred game has been participating in a living world for a Final Fantasy Pathfinder conversion.

These statistics are disheartening to hear, but I'm not surprised in the least. I want to like 5e, but I'm tired of expecting the system to work for me and if I want something enjoyable to play in the game then I have to actively do more to cobble together a character than I've ever needed to when I play PF. I often thought that it was just because I'm more familiar with PF and that I've been expecting too much of a wildly different system, but every time I try I just can't do it. If my irl group ever wants to get back together I'd gladly make a character for their 5e game as their friendship and the experiences I've had with them are more important to me than any ideal game experience. I just need to come to grips with not having a satisfying game experience as a result. PF2e was promising, and I feel that a wide breadth of characters could be made and enjoyed with it, it doesn't feel the same and doesn't grip me the same way that PF1e does.

I'm just glad we got some more Wayne Reynolds art out of it, his cover illustration on the PF1e Ultimate Combat guide still grips me.

Morty

2021-09-07, 06:57 AM

As for what other options exist, Savage Worlds Pathfinder (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/545820095/pathfinder-for-savage-worlds) is a thing now. Make of that what you will.

On another note, Savage Pathfinder is legitimately solid and if I ever feel a burning desire to run a game in Golarion, that's what I'll use. Golarion aside, it should work very nicely for fantasy in general. At least until there's a new Fantasy Companion for Adventure Edition.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 07:09 AM

I have no desire to like 5e, because as far as I can tell 5e is simply taking the math from the part of 3e that worked best out of the box and smearing it out over 20 levels. If I wanted to play a game that was like ~7th level 3e, I would just play 3e at ~7th level. And then I would get to play a Warmage or a Crusader or a Binder, and I would get to fight any of the litany of monsters 5e's anti-content strategy has failed to provide.

There seems to be a weird desire to force low power gameplay on the players rather than shifting your advice and focus to emphasizing that lower-power games can be achieved by remaining at lower levels, and trying to give options for non-level advancement. This could even have been a neat place for cybernetics or technology rules in SF.

I blame this on 4e poisoning the well (and the general lack of competence among the TTRPG design community, but that's another thing). 4e had a genuinely great idea for allowing different power levels of play: section things off in to tiers, and let people play at the tier that reflects the game and setting they want. That's seriously all you need to do to solve basically every power level concern anyone in the community voices. Tell the people who want low power to play at Heroic Tier, tell the people who want high power to play at Epic Tier, and then you never have to hear another complaint about how the Wizard is "breaking the campaign" because you've explicitly told everyone that teleport changes how campaigns work and given them a way to play without it if they want to. But 4e implemented tiers incredibly poorly ("you've reached Epic Tier and become a Demigod, your attacks deal an extra {W} of damage!") and was poorly received overall, and now people (particularly bad-faith actors) have ammunition to shoot down any idea they can paint as being even tangentially related (observe, for instance, how quickly "the game should be more balanced" gets countered by "but 4e did that").

pabelfly

2021-09-07, 07:09 AM

What's so good about Savage Worlds Pathfinder compared to regular pathfinder? I've tried looking for a comparison but haven't gotten much solid information.

Palanan

2021-09-07, 07:10 AM

Originally Posted by Rynjin
…but the first Adventure Path was pretty universally panned….

Which one was this? And why was it so disliked?

Xervous

2021-09-07, 07:19 AM

Looking at PF2 I see low impact choices at every turn. The allure of a crunchy game is a bunch of meaningful choices. The allure of a simple game is smoothness of play. The choices and the system math are structured to reduce the impact of each option, but then they go layer on more of such options, many of which are criminal non choices. Casters are relegated to plot prodding, something Martials have no new tools to address. Combat is an hp slog plain and simple. The game wants me to fail at breaking it more than it cares about me enjoying playing it, and it has a very narrow definition for what isn’t broken.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 07:39 AM

Casters are relegated to plot prodding, something Martials have no new tools to address.

It is genuinely amazing to me that, 20 years after 3e, none of the professional game designers working in the D&D space seem to have figured out that the thing people want is for both casters and non-casters to have meaningful abilities that impact the plot. People are having the same tired "are casters overpowered or martials underpowered" debates about 5e they had about 3e.

Morty

2021-09-07, 08:46 AM

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 10:09 AM

Honestly, I think there is an awareness of the problem and the will to do this in PF2E. It's the execution that comes across as overcautious and tepid.

I would say that "overcautious and tepid" characterizes everything people in the D&D space have done since 4e. PF was just "you liked 3e, here's more 3e". 5e has practically the exact same problems 3e does, and doesn't try to do anything that game didn't. Designers have allowed the failure of 4e to justify becoming overcautious. The lesson they learned was not "you need to do robust testing for your products" but "people hate new things", and that was the wrong lesson.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 10:15 AM

I would say that "overcautious and tepid" characterizes everything people in the D&D space have done since 4e. PF was just "you liked 3e, here's more 3e". 5e has practically the exact same problems 3e does, and doesn't try to do anything that game didn't. Designers have allowed the failure of 4e to justify becoming overcautious. The lesson they learned was not "you need to do robust testing for your products" but "people hate new things", and that was the wrong lesson.

I feel like that sort of thinking is pretty common in the community too. In my experience, the argument of "They did something a little like that in 4e and thus it's obviously a horrible idea that everyone would clearly hate" is a lot more common than it should be.

Zanos

2021-09-07, 10:37 AM

It is genuinely amazing to me that, 20 years after 3e, none of the professional game designers working in the D&D space seem to have figured out that the thing people want is for both casters and non-casters to have meaningful abilities that impact the plot. People are having the same tired "are casters overpowered or martials underpowered" debates about 5e they had about 3e.
It's especially funny because pre-3rd edition many of the classes had baked this in; high level fighters got castles and armies as part of class advancement. 3e threw that out expecting DMs to be smart enough to give characters story rewards for their exploits but I rarely see it actually done.

But yeah one of my favorite things about playing 3.5 casters is the incredible selection of spells that do not only exist to make CR appropriate encounters easier.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 10:39 AM

5e has practically the exact same problems 3e does, and doesn't try to do anything that game didn't.

Have you considered that, outside of a vocal message board minority, the majority of the consumers of these games might not see many of those attributes as "problems" in the first place?

For example, I'd argue that saying to John Q. Gamer on the street "Hey, did you know level 12 wizards can do more stuff than level 12 fighters in this game" would be met with "Well of course they can - they're wizards." And then he would go buy a 5e/PF book anyway.

If I were WotC or Paizo, I know what lesson I'd take away from that about where to allocate my limited design time.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 10:51 AM

I feel like that sort of thinking is pretty common in the community too. In my experience, the argument of "They did something a little like that in 4e and thus it's obviously a horrible idea that everyone would clearly hate" is a lot more common than it should be.

Yep. Go post a thread saying "we should balance D&D somewhat", and by like the third response, you'll get "and yet you dislike 4e, curious".

It's especially funny because pre-3rd edition many of the classes had baked this in; high level fighters got castles and armies as part of class advancement. 3e threw that out expecting DMs to be smart enough to give characters story rewards for their exploits but I rarely see it actually done.

3e really punted on the rules for everything after the "pick your own adventures" stage of character progression. Which is a shame, because the parts of 3e that were rigorously playtested (that is: roughly E6) are far and away the best D&D has ever been at doing what it's trying to do.

For example, I'd argue that saying to John Q. Gamer on the street "Hey, did you know level 12 wizards can do more stuff than level 12 fighters in this game" would be met with "Well of course they can - they're wizards." And then he would go buy a 5e/PF book anyway.

That would not match my experience of talking to actual players of these games at all (especially in a post-MCU world, where the Fighter could reasonably ask to be Thor). When I play with people who have never heard of any of the big gaming boards, the identify problems that are directionally identical to the ones people here do (that is "Wizards > Fighters, that's bad"). They're not the same problems, because the people here will talk about planar binding and Uberchargers rather than black tentacles and Sword-and-Board Fighters, but the idea that game balance is something that only forumites want is, ironically, something only forumites say.

And that's not to mention that a lot of these problems aren't really balance issues directly. The reason the Fighter not having an answer to teleport is bad isn't that it's imbalancing, it's that it means you can't have adventures where teleport is important because then the Fighter can't participate.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 10:55 AM

Yep. Go post a thread saying "we should balance D&D somewhat", and by like the third response, you'll get "and yet you dislike 4e, curious".

I'm well aware. It sort of reminds me how some Hollywood executives saw Catwoman flop and thought the lesson was "People don't like superhero movies with a female lead" rather than the more obvious "People don't like bad movies". I suppose we need the Wonder Woman of balanced RPGs. :smallwink:

Segev

2021-09-07, 10:56 AM

I want to like 5e, but I'm tired of expecting the system to work for me and if I want something enjoyable to play in the game then I have to actively do more to cobble together a character than I've ever needed to when I play PF. I often thought that it was just because I'm more familiar with PF and that I've been expecting too much of a wildly different system, but every time I try I just can't do it.I won't say that it's possible to make everything you can in PF1 in 5e (or vice-versa), but I will recommend the 5e subforum here on this board as a resource for help in making the character you want, next time you're making a 5e character.

One thing I like about 5e and 3.PF as distinct systems is that you can do different things in them. It's a bit of a cliche with me at this point, but as an example: an illusionist in 5e is so much more interesting than an illusionist in 3.PF. Conversely, I would much rather play a Necromancer in 3.PF than 5e.

I would say that "overcautious and tepid" characterizes everything people in the D&D space have done since 4e. PF was just "you liked 3e, here's more 3e". 5e has practically the exact same problems 3e does, and doesn't try to do anything that game didn't. Designers have allowed the failure of 4e to justify becoming overcautious. The lesson they learned was not "you need to do robust testing for your products" but "people hate new things", and that was the wrong lesson.
I will say that 5e actually has some interesting boldness in its design choices. There's some aspect of giving cool features to PCs at low, iconic levels that suddenly 5e seemed to realize wasn't "broken." There are a lot of very cool and flavorful things 5e PCs get at relatively low levels that would have induced the vapors in players and DMs alike in 2e and 3e as grossly overpowered. Flight on Aaracockra as level 1 PCs, the Fighter's Action Surge at level 2, everything about Cunning Action... all of these would be mid- to high-level features, gated behind lots of investment or high skill requirements as just plain overpowered at low levels! But in reality, they're not that powerful, when you really use them at the table. Not that they're not good and useful, but they aren't the game-changing, balance-snapping horrors that earlier-edition designers seemed to think they were. (Dreamscarred Press's psionics for PF1 may have helped open this door, as that was the first place I saw this kind of boldness.)

So I think it is not entirely fair to say 5e is "tepid" or "overcautious."

Psyren

2021-09-07, 11:16 AM

And that's not to mention that a lot of these problems aren't really balance issues directly. The reason the Fighter not having an answer to teleport is bad isn't that it's imbalancing, it's that it means you can't have adventures where teleport is important because then the Fighter can't participate.

Why does the fighter class need that answer specifically? Even if nobody in the party can cover that role, Items/wealth exist (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html) and NPCs exist. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0366.html) Bam, fighter participated in the teleport plot.

That would not match my experience of talking to actual players of these games at all (especially in a post-MCU world, where the Fighter could reasonably ask to be Thor). When I play with people who have never heard of any of the big gaming boards, the identify problems that are directionally identical to the ones people here do (that is "Wizards > Fighters, that's bad"). They're not the same problems, because the people here will talk about planar binding and Uberchargers rather than black tentacles and Sword-and-Board Fighters, but the idea that game balance is something that only forumites want is, ironically, something only forumites say.

1) It matches mine, and the fact that games with caster/martial disparity keep being the most popular games on the market tells me that most people just don't care. Or at the very least, not enough people care to convince the big publishers to invest a bunch of dev time into "solving the problem," which they'd likely fail at anyway.

2) I view the idea that a desirable level of game balance means casters and martials must be on equal footing to be erroneous.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 11:28 AM

Flight on Aaracockra as level 1 PCs, the Fighter's Action Surge at level 2, everything about Cunning Action... all of these would be mid- to high-level features, gated behind lots of investment or high skill requirements as just plain overpowered at low levels!

Would they, really? They don't really seem (except perhaps Flight, but I'd have to look at what exactly it means mechanically) any more impressive than what martials got at 1st level in ToB. Different, perhaps, but not some radically new thing that shows any kind of boldness.

Why does the fighter class need that answer specifically? Even if nobody in the party can cover that role, Items/wealth exist (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html) and NPCs exist. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0366.html) Bam, fighter participated in the teleport plot.

And that is exactly my point. You've solved the problem of the Fighter not having teleport by making it so that it doesn't matter if anyone has teleport. This is the wrong solution. The only way for the abilities of casters to be meaningful is if everyone has meaningful abilities. If the Fighter is forced to turn to DM pity, it collapses the illusion that your choices and options matter.

1) It matches mine, and the fact that games with caster/martial disparity keep being the most popular games on the market tells me that most people just don't care.

Dungeons and Dragons keeps being the most popular game on the market. The idea that it's because of your personal hobby horse and not because that is the only game anyone who has never played a TTRPG can name is an entirely unjustifiable flight of fancy. We might as easily say that having classes go to 20th level in the PHB is the key to a successful game, because that matches all the same data points.

which they'd likely fail at anyway.

And we should see this as anything other than a scathing indictment of the mechanical competence of the designers because?

Morty

2021-09-07, 11:47 AM

I would say that "overcautious and tepid" characterizes everything people in the D&D space have done since 4e. PF was just "you liked 3e, here's more 3e". 5e has practically the exact same problems 3e does, and doesn't try to do anything that game didn't. Designers have allowed the failure of 4e to justify becoming overcautious. The lesson they learned was not "you need to do robust testing for your products" but "people hate new things", and that was the wrong lesson.

One of the things I'll give PF2E credit for over 5E are skill feats. They're a legitimate attempt to make skill use more interesting and alleviate the "if you want to do anything cool, use a spell" problem that is very acute in 5E. They do suffer from taking forever to get to the good stuff, but still.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 11:54 AM

And that is exactly my point. You've solved the problem of the Fighter not having teleport by making it so that it doesn't matter if anyone has teleport.

But it does matter; the class with teleport has more potential solutions. My point is that the one with fewer still gets to participate. Differences in kind (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlBR1z-ue-I) are how you create mechanical depth.

And no, purchasing/crafting items and hiring services are not "DM pity," they are baseline expectations of the system. Allowing them is not DM pity, rather curtailing them unreasonably is DM obstruction. What did you think WBL was for, diving into like Scrooge McDuck?

Dungeons and Dragons keeps being the most popular game on the market. The idea that it's because of your personal hobby horse and not because that is the only game anyone who has never played a TTRPG can name is an entirely unjustifiable flight of fancy. We might as easily say that having classes go to 20th level in the PHB is the key to a successful game, because that matches all the same data points.

Sure, let's put D&D and Pathfinder aside. The other top fantasy TTRPGs on the market generally also have caster/martial disparity - Warhammer, Star Wars, Shadowrun, World of Darkness - or else they don't really have playable casters at all in a traditional sense (e.g. Call of Cthulhu). Whatever effect you think D&D's brand recognition is having isn't unique to that game.

And we should see this as anything other than a scathing indictment of the mechanical competence of the designers because?

So you'd rather them try to cater to you and fail, instead of catering to the masses and succeed? Is that a reasonable stance for a business?

Faily

2021-09-07, 11:57 AM

Why does the fighter class need that answer specifically? Even if nobody in the party can cover that role, Items/wealth exist (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html) and NPCs exist. (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0366.html) Bam, fighter participated in the teleport plot.

1) It matches mine, and the fact that games with caster/martial disparity keep being the most popular games on the market tells me that most people just don't care. Or at the very least, not enough people care to convince the big publishers to invest a bunch of dev time into "solving the problem," which they'd likely fail at anyway.

2) I view the idea that a desirable level of game balance means casters and martials must be on equal footing to be erroneous.

I very much agree with this. And what was said earlier about how there's a distinct difference between people on forums and people who are not. Honestly I never encountered the gripe of caster/martial disparity until I started reading threads here on the playground.

Because in the groups I play in, it doesn't matter if the Wizard has Teleport but the Fighter does not - because they're both on the same time and working together. That the Wizard has Teleport means that the Wizard has a new tool in the arsenal of the group.

I think that is something that often get lost in the shuffle on these conversations, that D&D (and Pathfinder) are ultimately a group-game where the characters work together.

RexDart

2021-09-07, 12:16 PM

I very much agree with this. And what was said earlier about how there's a distinct difference between people on forums and people who are not. Honestly I never encountered the gripe of caster/martial disparity until I started reading threads here on the playground.

Because in the groups I play in, it doesn't matter if the Wizard has Teleport but the Fighter does not - because they're both on the same time and working together. That the Wizard has Teleport means that the Wizard has a new tool in the arsenal of the group.

I think that is something that often get lost in the shuffle on these conversations, that D&D (and Pathfinder) are ultimately a group-game where the characters work together.

I think balance does matter, but not necessarily in the way most people think. "Balance of power level" isn't all that important, but "balance of fun" definitely is. Maybe the Wizard's spellcasting is more "powerful" than the Fighter's hitting stuff with an axe, but as long as the latter player feels like she's contributing and is enjoying herself, who cares?

Now, that being said, power level differences can make a class less fun, like in one of the 3.5 campaigns I'm in, where, if the monk actually hit something, she'd do trivial damage compared to the rest of the group, and nothing else about the class made the experience particularly fun or interesting.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 12:28 PM

One of the things I'll give PF2E credit for over 5E are skill feats. They're a legitimate attempt to make skill use more interesting and alleviate the "if you want to do anything cool, use a spell" problem that is very acute in 5E. They do suffer from taking forever to get to the good stuff, but still.

How different is that from what already existed in 3e and PF?

But it does matter; the class with teleport has more potential solutions.

So what? You only need one solution, and you'll get it whether your class gives it to you or not. "I find an NPC who can do it" is a Commoner's solution to a problem. If that solution will always be available, nothing the players can do makes them any more important than a Commoner.

Sure, let's put D&D and Pathfinder aside. The other top fantasy TTRPGs on the market generally also have caster/martial disparity - Warhammer, Star Wars, Shadowrun, World of Darkness - or else they don't really have playable casters at all in a traditional sense (e.g. Call of Cthulhu). Whatever effect you think D&D's brand recognition is having isn't unique to that game.

That's not really a great list of examples. Shadowrun, for instance, has far better balance between casters and non-casters than D&D has ever had. And "Magicrun" is still a big complaint among the playerbase. World of Darkness doesn't let you play non-magical characters at all (at least, not in the three big lines). And you forgot to mention Exalted, presumably because it doesn't support the narrative you're trying to build.

So you'd rather them try to cater to you and fail, instead of catering to the masses and succeed? Is that a reasonable stance for a business?

I don't think they should try to cater to me. If I thought that, I would be asking for the martial classes to get the boot entirely. I just want the thing that the majority of players want: for classes to be balanced and have meaningful abilities in all areas of play. If you think that's impossible for designers to achieve, I can't see that as anything other than you calling them incompetent.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 12:42 PM

That's not really a great list of examples. Shadowrun, for instance, has far better balance between casters and non-casters than D&D has ever had. And "Magicrun" is still a big complaint among the playerbase.

You do realize this is exactly my point right? Forums complain about "Magicrun", and the game is still consistently in roll20's top 10, DTR sales etc. Because forums ultimately matter far less than you think they do, and that's not unique to D&D or Pathfinder.

World of Darkness doesn't let you play non-magical characters at all (at least, not in the three big lines). And you forgot to mention Exalted, presumably because it doesn't support the narrative you're trying to build.

Actually, I didn't mention Exalted because it didn't show up in my top RPGs at all (Orr, DTRPG etc.) It's a known name around here, but doesn't seem to be that popular outside of this forum.

And I specifically mentioned "casterless RPGs" so that would cover most of WoD.

So what? You only need one solution, and you'll get it whether your class gives it to you or not. "I find an NPC who can do it" is a Commoner's solution to a problem. If that solution will always be available, nothing the players can do makes them any more important than a Commoner.

Commoners don't have WBL. (Not PC WBL at any rate.) They're not expected to have to solve these problems.

I don't think they should try to cater to me. If I thought that, I would be asking for the martial classes to get the boot entirely. I just want the thing that the majority of players want: for classes to be balanced and have meaningful abilities in all areas of play. If you think that's impossible for designers to achieve, I can't see that as anything other than you calling them incompetent.

I don't think it's impossible. Rather, I think it's a foolish waste of precious dev time and resources to chase that unicorn that could be put to much better use elsewhere. The devs apparently agree.

I think balance does matter, but not necessarily in the way most people think. "Balance of power level" isn't all that important, but "balance of fun" definitely is. Maybe the Wizard's spellcasting is more "powerful" than the Fighter's hitting stuff with an axe, but as long as the latter player feels like she's contributing and is enjoying herself, who cares?

Now, that being said, power level differences can make a class less fun, like in one of the 3.5 campaigns I'm in, where, if the monk actually hit something, she'd do trivial damage compared to the rest of the group, and nothing else about the class made the experience particularly fun or interesting.

I agree, and I think buffing the monk to be fun is possible without making them equal to a druid. PF did that.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 12:50 PM

I don't think it's impossible. Rather, I think it's a foolish waste of precious dev time and resources to chase that unicorn that could be put to much better use elsewhere. The devs apparently agree.

To a point I agree with you, chasing some perfect balance between diverse classes is probably a waste of time. But I don't think that means that they should settle on the monumental gap that is between some classes. It's like saying "Well, I'll never be an Olympic athlete so I'm just never gonna exercise at all".

Psyren

2021-09-07, 12:52 PM

To a point I agree with you, chasing some perfect balance between diverse classes is probably a waste of time. But I don't think that means that they should settle on the monumental gap that is between some classes. It's like saying "Well, I'll never be an Olympic athlete so I'm just never gonna exercise at all".

I agree with this too, and PF1 did take steps to reduce this gap, especially later in its life (see Weapon/Armor Master's Handbook, Pathfinder Unchained etc.)

What "monumental gaps" are there in 5e?

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 01:04 PM

You do realize this is exactly my point right? Forums complain about "Magicrun", and the game is still consistently in roll20's top 10, DTR sales etc. Because forums ultimately matter far less than you think they do, and that's not unique to D&D or Pathfinder.

So your point is that we can't ask for things to be better unless we boycott existing products? Because that's an entirely unreasonable demand.

Commoners don't have WBL. (Not PC WBL at any rate.) They're not expected to have to solve these problems.

If the difference between your character and a Commoner is that you got PC WBL, I don't think your character is meaningfully different from a Commoner.

I don't think it's impossible. Rather, I think it's a foolish waste of precious dev time and resources to chase that unicorn that could be put to much better use elsewhere. The devs apparently agree.

It costs less dev time to make casters and martials balanced. Your game is always going to have some balance point, and some deviation around that balance point. Maybe it's very tight because you're doing a lot of testing and iteration. Maybe it's very lose because you ship things after one draft. But that has absolutely nothing to do with CMD. Because CMD is an intentional choice to have multiple balance points, and that, by definition, takes more effort than having just one. The proposal you're arguing against isn't "the eleven classes in the 3.5 PHB should have been perfectly balanced", but "instead of the top classes in the 3.5 PHB being the Cleric, Druid, and Wizard and the bottom classes being the Monk, Fighter, and Paladin, the top classes should have been the Cleric, Fighter, and Bard and the bottom classes should have been the Monk, Druid, and Ranger". And you're right that the former would have taken more work and might not have had a huge impact. But the latter? I don't see how you can argue that would have been harder to pull off.

Or to put it another way: people disliked 4e for a variety of reasons. But I've never seen anyone say that they disliked 4e because the Ranger was a top-tier class while being martial.

Elves

2021-09-07, 01:27 PM

PF2 was a doomed project because it was based on an incorrect assumption: that people had brand loyalty to Pathfinder. In reality, PF's success was an outgrowth of brand loyalty to the d20 system (aka 3e). Pathfinder's only viable path was to stick with the d20 system and make 2e effectively a 3.75 -- something just different enough to make old fans buy again without alienating them -- while trying to use their videogames to draw fresh players.

Instead, they got greedy and wanted a slice of the 5e pie without considering whether they had anything to offer 5e players. The result is a system for no one.

Their idea was probably that it's for 5e players who want more complexity than 5e offers. But the d20 system can serve that role just fine. A 3.75 could have incorporated elements from 5e to make that transition easier, like naturalizing the advantage mechanic into the system.

Basically, it was an arrogant misfire to assume their company had escaped the shadow of D&D when being off-brand D&D is its entire identity.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 01:34 PM

So your point is that we can't ask for things to be better unless we boycott existing products? Because that's an entirely unreasonable demand.

I think that if enough of you hate what they're doing, but continue to buy enough of their products to consistently put them in the industry top 10, then at best that's going to be a mixed message. And if a boycott among those who think like you do isn't likely to succeed, at some point you should consider that there aren't as many of you as you think.

If the difference between your character and a Commoner is that you got PC WBL, I don't think your character is meaningfully different from a Commoner.

"Can I buy this good/service or not" is indeed a question of financial resources. That doesn't mean we're not substantially different in other ways, but an affordability question is rather straightforward.

It costs less dev time to make casters and martials balanced. Your game is always going to have some balance point, and some deviation around that balance point. Maybe it's very tight because you're doing a lot of testing and iteration. Maybe it's very lose because you ship things after one draft. But that has absolutely nothing to do with CMD. Because CMD is an intentional choice to have multiple balance points, and that, by definition, takes more effort than having just one. The proposal you're arguing against isn't "the eleven classes in the 3.5 PHB should have been perfectly balanced", but "instead of the top classes in the 3.5 PHB being the Cleric, Druid, and Wizard and the bottom classes being the Monk, Fighter, and Paladin, the top classes should have been the Cleric, Fighter, and Bard and the bottom classes should have been the Monk, Druid, and Ranger". And you're right that the former would have taken more work and might not have had a huge impact. But the latter? I don't see how you can argue that would have been harder to pull off.

Or to put it another way: people disliked 4e for a variety of reasons. But I've never seen anyone say that they disliked 4e because the Ranger was a top-tier class while being martial.

Sure, you could quickly and easily make the same class 5 times with different names on all the abilities. If your goal is for them to actually feel and play differently however, you're going to need substantially more development time than you're implying here.

I didn't actually mention 4e, so I think it's interesting your mind went there when we started discussing homogeneity.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 02:11 PM

Basically, it was an arrogant misfire to assume their company had escaped the shadow of D&D when being off-brand D&D is its entire identity.

Pretty much. I also think it kinda shows how weak their game-design chops are. It turns out they were never all that good at game design, just at making things within the existing framework. Which is something most forumites can do with some competence.

I think that if enough of you hate what they're doing, but continue to buy enough of their products to consistently put them in the industry top 10, then at best that's going to be a mixed message. And if a boycott among those who think like you do isn't likely to succeed, at some point you should consider that there aren't as many of you as you think.

Yes, because the only feature of D&D is CMD, and the decision to support it is a direct referendum on that topic. I assume you also believe that the wild success of 3e is proof that people deeply believed that Monks should not be proficient with unarmed strikes?

"Can I buy this good/service or not" is indeed a question of financial resources. That doesn't mean we're not substantially different in other ways, but an affordability question is rather straightforward.

Sure, a Fighter is better in combat, but that was never the point. If your impact on the plot is that of a Commoner, and you demand that adventures be structured so that you are the equal of characters with actual abilities, you are demanding quite directly that no character have more of an impact on the plot than a Commoner.

Sure, you could quickly and easily make the same class 5 times with different names on all the abilities. If your goal is for them to actually feel and play differently however, you're going to need substantially more development time than you're implying here.

You seem to have missed the entire point of the argument. You have to do that to achieve perfect balance. You don't have to do that to eliminate CMD. Balancing casters to one level and martials to a different, lower level, is by definition more work than balancing everyone to the same level. It doesn't matter what that level is, or how closely you balance to it. Hitting CMD perfectly is more work than hitting balance perfectly. Hitting CMD kinda okay is more work than hitting balance kinda okay. Wildly varying around CMD is more work than wildly varying around balance. "How many balance points should there be" and "how tightly should we hit those balance points" are separate questions. Maybe you are willing to tolerate a less balanced game than I am. But you are unwilling to tolerate one with as few balance points, so let's not pretend I'm the one who wants companies to "try to cater to me and fail".

I didn't actually mention 4e, so I think it's interesting your mind went there when we started discussing homogeneity.

Oh, look, it's that argument I told people shows up every time you advocate for game balance, showing up when I advocate for game balance.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 02:36 PM

Yes, because the only feature of D&D is CMD, and the decision to support it is a direct referendum on that topic. I assume you also believe that the wild success of 3e is proof that people deeply believed that Monks should not be proficient with unarmed strikes?

Whether you consider it a direct referendum or not, the point is that clearly what you and those aligned with you see as a problem, isn't enough of one to impact your financial support of the system. So why, then, should they expend considerable resources correcting it? (And your monk analogy doesn't work either, by the way - Pathfinder fixed that issue with a single sentence, possibly during a lunch break, and 5e doesn't have it either.)

Sure, a Fighter is better in combat, but that was never the point. If your impact on the plot is that of a Commoner, and you demand that adventures be structured so that you are the equal of characters with actual abilities, you are demanding quite directly that no character have more of an impact on the plot than a Commoner.

"Can we find a way to teleport there" is not a plot.

You seem to have missed the entire point of the argument. You have to do that to achieve perfect balance. You don't have to do that to eliminate CMD. Balancing casters to one level and martials to a different, lower level, is by definition more work than balancing everyone to the same level. It doesn't matter what that level is, or how closely you balance to it. Hitting CMD perfectly is more work than hitting balance perfectly. Hitting CMD kinda okay is more work than hitting balance kinda okay. Wildly varying around CMD is more work than wildly varying around balance. "How many balance points should there be" and "how tightly should we hit those balance points" are separate questions. Maybe you are willing to tolerate a less balanced game than I am. But you are unwilling to tolerate one with as few balance points, so let's not pretend I'm the one who wants companies to "try to cater to me and fail".

Eliminating C/MD is indeed easy. Doing it in a way that is broadly appealing and commercially successful is the issue.

Some people I suspect would be completely fine with the fighter, say, being able to cut a hole in the air and step through it to teleport, or slash a corpse to bring it back to life. Others would have their immersion ruined by that and reject it out of hand. Still others would be open to the idea as long as it was properly justified in-universe as well as mechanically distinct from a spell. From what we've seen of the devs' actions, the first group appears to be too insignificant to carry a viable major game product on their own, while the second are an entirely lost cause, so that leaves the third - and the third is where the design and development time starts to increase beyond what is worthwhile.

Oh, look, it's that argument I told people shows up every time you advocate for game balance, showing up when I advocate for game balance.

Well I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I personally find the debate fun :smallbiggrin:

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 02:55 PM

So why, then, should they expend considerable resources correcting it?

It would literally cost them less resources to eliminate the problem.

"Can we find a way to teleport there" is not a plot.

It's not allowed to be a plot, because plots that are based on characters using their abilities to solve problems can't exist in a world where half the classes don't have those abilities.

Some people I suspect would be completely fine with the fighter, say, being able to cut a hole in the air and step through it to teleport, or slash a corpse to bring it back to life. Others would have their immersion ruined by that and reject it out of hand.

That's not the only way to fix the issue. Look at what 4e did. Tiers fix the problem entirely, and the idea was actually quite popular. It's just that 4e's failure poisoned the well.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 03:03 PM

What "monumental gaps" are there in 5e?

I suppose whether to call them "monumental" or not is a matter of opinion, but it's still very much the case of some classes getting a lot more toys than other classes. A smaller gap, sure, but in the way that K2 is a smaller mountain than Mount Everest. (This comparison would really be much better with actual gaps, but I can't really think of any famous ones besides Grand Canyon...)

Whether you consider it a direct referendum or not, the point is that clearly what you and those aligned with you see as a problem, isn't enough of one to impact your financial support of the system. So why, then, should they expend considerable resources correcting it? (And your monk analogy doesn't work either, by the way - Pathfinder fixed that issue with a single sentence, possibly during a lunch break, and 5e doesn't have it either.)

You're correct in that clearly the bonkers balance isn't enough to keep people from buying and playing the systems in question but saying that there's no need to fix a glaring error that lots of people complain about (yes, it might be a vocal minority but it's been vocal for decades so I think it's somewhat significant) just because they still buy the product doesn't exactly scream good business.

Imagine if PF2 had been a game that took everything good about D&D and PF1 but also had actually balanced classes. Now that's a game that might've had a shot at dethroning 5e.

Well I certainly can't speak for everyone, but I personally find the debate fun :smallbiggrin:

On that we agree, at least. :smallamused:

PhoenixPhyre

2021-09-07, 03:12 PM

Imagine if PF2 had been a game that took everything good about D&D and PF1 but also had actually balanced classes. Now that's a game that might've had a shot at dethroning 5e.

What if that's not possible? First you'd have to define "balanced classes". And then you'd have to find a way to meet that without homogeneity, because the heterogeneity is one of the "good things" of D&D and PF1. Unless there's a meaningful set of tasks that spells cannot accomplish (as in "there cannot be a spell written to do X"), the only way to bring balance is make everyone a spellcaster. Which gives up a lot of things that many people consider good about D&D.

Balance is a good thing, but it's not the good thing. It's one of many competing goals. And a rather ill-defined one.

"Everything good" is a fundamentally subjective statement. And as such, "everything good" about PF1 (as defined by these forums, generally) would not meet my needs and would be much worse than 5e. Because I find most of those "everything good"s to be "actually bad" for me, personally. And everyone has their own set of these things.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 03:12 PM

It would literally cost them less resources to eliminate the problem.

"Eliminate the problem" - yes.
"Eliminate the problem while preserving class identity and diversity of play" - no.

It's not allowed to be a plot, because plots that are based on characters using their abilities to solve problems can't exist in a world where half the classes don't have those abilities.

...

That's not the only way to fix the issue. Look at what 4e did. Tiers fix the problem entirely, and the idea was actually quite popular. It's just that 4e's failure poisoned the well.

And how would a teleport plot work in 4e? All of the class powers that do this are short range/line of sight affairs. The only long range options use rituals, which every class can access. As boring as it sounds, you can do that just fine in 3.5/PF by banning the spell and using Incantations instead.

What if that's not possible? First you'd have to define "balanced classes". And then you'd have to find a way to meet that without homogeneity, because the heterogeneity is one of the "good things" of D&D and PF1. Unless there's a meaningful set of tasks that spells cannot accomplish (as in "there cannot be a spell written to do X"), the only way to bring balance is make everyone a spellcaster. Which gives up a lot of things that many people consider good about D&D.

Balance is a good thing, but it's not the good thing. It's one of many competing goals. And a rather ill-defined one.

"Everything good" is a fundamentally subjective statement. And as such, "everything good" about PF1 (as defined by these forums, generally) would not meet my needs and would be much worse than 5e. Because I find most of those "everything good"s to be "actually bad" for me, personally. And everyone has their own set of these things.

^ This. I would hate that even more than the PF2 we got.

You're correct in that clearly the bonkers balance isn't enough to keep people from buying and playing the systems in question but saying that there's no need to fix a glaring error that lots of people complain about (yes, it might be a vocal minority but it's been vocal for decades so I think it's somewhat significant) just because they still buy the product doesn't exactly scream good business.

Imagine if PF2 had been a game that took everything good about D&D and PF1 but also had actually balanced classes. Now that's a game that might've had a shot at dethroning 5e.

Honestly? What I would have loved would be a PF1.5 (Essentials?) reprint that simply took the stuff from the latter part of the system and baked it in up front. Give Fighters Combat Stamina and Item Mastery and Skill Mastery baseline, and 4+Int skills, and consolidate feat chains all over the place. And give Fighters Martial Versatility, or maybe a simplified version of that that gives you feat packages if you want to make it easier on new players, with the fully unrestricted one being an archetype for the advanced players. Things like that. You'd get a fighter that can participate in all three pillars easily, to say nothing of a Ranger, Rogue, or Barbarian.

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 03:21 PM

Unless there's a meaningful set of tasks that spells cannot accomplish (as in "there cannot be a spell written to do X"), the only way to bring balance is make everyone a spellcaster. Which gives up a lot of things that many people consider good about D&D.

I agree. I think a large part of the balance problem is that not only can magic do pretty much everything, a lot of magic users can also use a wide variety of magic. A fighter can't switch between what weapons and tactics they are masters of every day, a skill-monkey can't just move their skill points around at will, so why is it that magic users must have access to (almost) all of the magic?

It doesn't have anything to do with balance, but I personally also find magic systems where "magic can do anything, 'cause it's magic" pretty boring.

This is also why I always disagree with people who argue in favor of balancing by only boosting the weaker classes and never nerfing the stronger ones. A party where everyone can do almost anything would be more balanced, but I would also find it pretty boring.

EDIT: This is turning into yet another caster/martial balance debate thread, isn't it? While I'm always up for that discussion, I feel a little bad about it derailing a thread for the millionth time...

WesleyVos

2021-09-07, 03:23 PM

I was an avid 3.5e player. I loved the mechanics, the gaming of the system, the crunch of it. I could build most anything I wanted, within some boundaries. I never made the switch to PF 1e, mostly because I was perfectly satisfied with 3.5e and there wasn't enough difference between them. And I hated 4e and 5e.

But I tried out PF 2e and loved it. It's still really complex, but it actually allows for a lot more customization than even 3.5e did. The general power level seems to have moved a bit towards the middle, and the archetype system is simply amazing.

If I had to guess, based on my own experiences, I'd say that PF 2e's struggles (and there are struggles) are mainly from people not willing to give the system a fair shot, particularly older players who prefer 3.5e or older systems (or PF 1e). I wouldn't expect most 5e players to switch, given that the systems do vastly different things. 5e is designed to eliminate complexity and math, while PF 2e is still math- and option-heavy. But I think if most 3.5e/PF 1e players gave the system a fair shot, they'd find it's actually extremely enjoyable and (IMO) an upgrade to 3.5e and PF 1e.

Palanan

2021-09-07, 03:30 PM

Originally Posted by Rynjin
…but the first Adventure Path was pretty universally panned….

My earlier question seems to have been lost in the free-for-all systems debate, so I’ll ask again—

Which AP are you referring to, and why was it widely criticized?

icefractal

2021-09-07, 03:50 PM

PF2 is a natural development of the material Paizo created for PF1. Which is not necessarily the same as the material people used in PF1.

Consider all the "chaff" options (feats, spells, items, etc) in PF1. From having played 3E, we're all used to these, and skip over them as a matter of course, picking the relatively few good ones that have significant effects. So from that perspective, being expected to get excited about something giving a situational +1 in PF2 seems bizarre.

But when you consider that the chaff options are what Paizo thinks the game should look like, PF2 is right in line with that. And more importantly, it's the "AP friendly" edition, with many of the abilities that could disrupt the course of an AP being removed. Whether those are good things depends on what you're looking for from the game - for me, they aren't.

That's one thing that 5E has - feats that feel significant. At the cost of being much fewer.

Metastachydium

2021-09-07, 03:55 PM

I will say that 5e actually has some interesting boldness in its design choices. (…) Flight on Aaracockra as level 1 PCs

Would they, really? They don't really seem (except perhaps Flight, but I'd have to look at what exactly it means mechanically) any more impressive

(It is possible to get flight as a level 1 PC in both 3.5e (crane/sparrow hengeyokai) and PF1e (strix), though.)

Kuulvheysoon

2021-09-07, 04:02 PM

(It is possible to get flight as a level 1 PC in both 3.5e (crane/sparrow hengeyokai) and PF1e (strix), though.)

I don't know about Strix, but 5E allows flight from a number of non-transformed races at 1st level, some as a base racial ability and at least 2 as subraces/variants. So full capacity archers/mages/whatever instead of utility/transport like 3.5E.

Metastachydium

2021-09-07, 04:16 PM

I don't know about Strix, but 5E allows flight from a number of non-transformed races at 1st level, some as a base racial ability and at least 2 as subraces/variants. So full capacity archers/mages/whatever instead of utility/transport like 3.5E.

Strix can do that.
As for the hengeyokai, I prefer to think they don't have six limbs (because seriously), but that's not stated anywhere to be the case. Nor is it established that the human form (which is a useless joke anyway) is their true form if I remember correctly.

Lord Raziere

2021-09-07, 04:23 PM

Actually, I didn't mention Exalted because it didn't show up in my top RPGs at all (Orr, DTRPG etc.) It's a known name around here, but doesn't seem to be that popular outside of this forum.

HA!

This forum isn't "popular" in Exalted terms. I've been to the websites where its popular, until you have long discussions about whether the Realm is evil or not on the same frequency as alignment discussions, Exalted is not popular on this forum.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 04:47 PM

HA!

This forum isn't "popular" in Exalted terms. I've been to the websites where its popular, until you have long discussions about whether the Realm is evil or not on the same frequency as alignment discussions, Exalted is not popular on this forum.

I meant more that it's a known quantity here. If I brought it up on a random D&D discord or facebook group or something (especially a 5e-focused one with more newcomers to the hobby), they'd be much less likely to know what I'm talking about than the folks here.

My earlier question seems to have been lost in the free-for-all systems debate, so I’ll ask again—

Which AP are you referring to, and why was it widely criticized?

I can't guarantee this is the one Rynjin meant but Age of Ashes (https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Age_of_Ashes_(adventure_path)) appears to be the first P2 AP?

Palanan

2021-09-07, 04:47 PM

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 04:48 PM

You're correct in that clearly the bonkers balance isn't enough to keep people from buying and playing the systems in question but saying that there's no need to fix a glaring error that lots of people complain about (yes, it might be a vocal minority but it's been vocal for decades so I think it's somewhat significant) just because they still buy the product doesn't exactly scream good business.

The other side of it is that there's not actually anyone pushing for the things Psyren is demanding we keep in the game. Like, seriously, when have you ever seen someone say "you know, the thing I really love about 3e is the way that the Wizard gets a wide range of abilities that impact the plot and the Fighter gets a series of small bonuses to combat stats"? Because I've never seen that. Maybe the "balancing the game is good, actually" ground is small. But the "the game being imbalanced is good, actually" crowd is the one you'd piss off by fixing things, and they're nonexistent.

Imagine if PF2 had been a game that took everything good about D&D and PF1 but also had actually balanced classes. Now that's a game that might've had a shot at dethroning 5e.

No, it wouldn't. The harsh reality of the industry is that no one dethrones D&D. PF1 didn't "dethrone" D&D, D&D jumped off it's throne into a pit full of spikes. Similarly, there was a period where WoD beat D&D, but that was the period where TSR was going under.

What if that's not possible? First you'd have to define "balanced classes". And then you'd have to find a way to meet that without homogeneity,

You mean like how they already did that a decade ago with the Crusader, the Binder, the Warmage, and the Totemist? I suppose there are arguments you can make against the idea that the game can be balanced, but the idea that you have to make every class the same to do it is not one I see any reason to assign any particular credibility to.

Unless there's a meaningful set of tasks that spells cannot accomplish (as in "there cannot be a spell written to do X"), the only way to bring balance is make everyone a spellcaster. Which gives up a lot of things that many people consider good about D&D.

I would say that "there are challenges certain characters cannot solve, or even meaningfully contribute to" is precisely zero of the things people like about D&D. For all that it gets defended by forumites, I have never once seen anyone I have spoken to in person defend CMD as affirmatively good. I've seen people minimize it, I've seen people who don't care, I've seen people who say things like "it's a team game", I've seen people say it's a DMing problem, I've even seen people who insist it is in fact the martials who are better. But I've never seen anyone say "there are problems Fighters can't solve and Wizards can, and that's why I like D&D". Not once.

And how would a teleport plot work in 4e?

It wouldn't, because 4e made the baffling decision to pursue two opposite approaches to balancing the game. On the one hand, they imposed a tier system that would have allowed martial characters to elegantly advance to abilities that matched those of spellcasters. On the other hand, they removed the overwhelming majority of the spells that impacted the plot.

This is also why I always disagree with people who argue in favor of balancing by only boosting the weaker classes and never nerfing the stronger ones. A party where everyone can do almost anything would be more balanced, but I would also find it pretty boring.

I don't think that's what anyone is arguing for. People don't want characters to be able to do almost anything, and that's not really how casters play in practice. People want characters to be able to contribute in all situations, and that's not at all unreasonable. Consider how combat works. If you have a party of a Wizard, a Fighter, a Cleric, and a Rogue, they can all contribute to any combat encounter. Their contribution won't always be equal, nor will it be the same, but they'll always have something they can do. And if you take those characters and run them against an encounter that's much lower level (e.g. 15th level Fighter v EL 10 encounter), they'll win every time even if it's something they were weak against when it was level-appropriate. Conversely, the Fighter doesn't just not have any abilities on par with teleport when the Wizard gets it, he never gets any. The encounter that stops the 9th level Fighter stops every Fighter in the entire game. And that's a real issue.

Lord Raziere

2021-09-07, 04:59 PM

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 05:04 PM

If that attitude is often found among Exalted players, I can well imagine they wouldn’t be among the Playground regulars. I can only hope that attitude was more of an outlier.

I'm fairly certain that that's an attitude that (with some slight variations) can be found in fans of any RPG (as well as fans of pretty much anything in general). I've certainly heard D&D players who don't think that rules light or free form games are real RPGs. There will always be people who can't understand that their personal opinion isn't some sort of objective fact.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 05:08 PM

Re: Exalted, I had a close encounter with a DM for a prospective Exalted game several years ago. I had never heard of it, and was intrigued—until I found myself receiving a long harangue about how Exalted was “real” roleplaying, and Dungeons & Dragons was nothing of the kind. He made it plain that he considered me somewhat crippled as a roleplayer if I had “only” played D&D, but he would think about accepting me into his game.

If that attitude is often found among Exalted players, I can well imagine they wouldn’t be among the Playground regulars. I can only hope that attitude was more of an outlier.

If it helps, I don't think that's at all unique to Exalted, I've seen that from several other GMs of other systems who have left D&D behind for what they see as greener pastures.

The other side of it is that there's not actually anyone pushing for the things Psyren is demanding we keep in the game. Like, seriously, when have you ever seen someone say "you know, the thing I really love about 3e is the way that the Wizard gets a wide range of abilities that impact the plot and the Fighter gets a series of small bonuses to combat stats"? Because I've never seen that. Maybe the "balancing the game is good, actually" ground is small. But the "the game being imbalanced is good, actually" crowd is the one you'd piss off by fixing things, and they're nonexistent.

...Where did I say I only want the Fighter to "get a series of small bonuses to combat stats?" :smallconfused:

In fact, in this very thread I listed several examples of nice things PF1 gave to Fighters that are actual differences in kind, not just scale, that I would have loved to see made baseline in a PF1.5, but that would not have turned them into "reskinned muscle wizard."

No, it wouldn't. The harsh reality of the industry is that no one dethrones D&D. PF1 didn't "dethrone" D&D, D&D jumped off it's throne into a pit full of spikes. Similarly, there was a period where WoD beat D&D, but that was the period where TSR was going under.

Dethroning PF1 was a decent goal though, and they failed at that too (at least by the roll20 and convention metrics that started this thread.) Now, that doesn't mean PF2 is failing or that Paizo is in any kind of trouble of course; as long as they keep selling books it doesn't actually matter how hard it is to find a game. But if a third competitor like a Corefinder that is closer to PF1 enters the ring, I'd be very curious to see what that does to the hobby meta.

You mean like how they already did that a decade ago with the Crusader, the Binder, the Warmage, and the Totemist? I suppose there are arguments you can make against the idea that the game can be balanced, but the idea that you have to make every class the same to do it is not one I see any reason to assign any particular credibility to.

...Those aren't even balanced with each other, never mind the core classes. Yeah they're roughly the same tier because T3 and T4 are extremely broad, but Totemist and Binder are much more versatile overall than the other two unless you start cheesing, and even then Binder doesn't get a lot of that until mid-levels.

I would say that "there are challenges certain characters cannot solve, or even meaningfully contribute to" is precisely zero of the things people like about D&D. For all that it gets defended by forumites, I have never once seen anyone I have spoken to in person defend CMD as affirmatively good. I've seen people minimize it, I've seen people who don't care, I've seen people who say things like "it's a team game", I've seen people say it's a DMing problem, I've even seen people who insist it is in fact the martials who are better. But I've never seen anyone say "there are problems Fighters can't solve and Wizards can, and that's why I like D&D". Not once.

I don't want a Fighter that can flex his muscles and raise the dead. There, now you have one.

It wouldn't, because 4e made the baffling decision to pursue two opposite approaches to balancing the game. On the one hand, they imposed a tier system that would have allowed martial characters to elegantly advance to abilities that matched those of spellcasters. On the other hand, they removed the overwhelming majority of the spells that impacted the plot.

But even with the tier system and the removal of utility powers you see these inequities creeping in, because it breaks verisimilitude otherwise. How high up does a Fighter need to go to get even a short-range teleportation effect? Now how about a Cleric or Swordmage?

Slithery D

2021-09-07, 05:25 PM

As far as popularity and community uptake goes, I was surprised to see a few weeks ago that PF2's dedicated Reddit forum had only then overtaken the Starfinder forum in number of members, even though it has a vastly greater amount of traffic and participants.

As of this moment (just after 5pm on the east coast, still working hours elsewhere) there are 500 active users of the Pathfinder 2e subreddit, 1000 of the Pathfinder_RPG (which includes 2e content, but it's a substantial minority), and 50 in Starfinder. Members are 113k for Pathfinder_RPG, 32k for Pathfinder 2e, and 30k for Starfinder, although Starfinder definitely has a lot of legacy members who joined early in the hype and never came back or actively participated.

Rynjin

2021-09-07, 05:33 PM

My earlier question seems to have been lost in the free-for-all systems debate, so I’ll ask again—

Which AP are you referring to, and why was it widely criticized?

I did completely lose this in the shuffle, so thanks for reposting it.

That would be Age of Ashes, which back when it first came out caught a lot of flak for a few reasons.

1.) It has little to no coherent plot; it's basically just a travelogue of Golarion and each book is almost completely self-contained.

2.) It's very railroady in some spots (as in for entire books); Adventure Paths aren't exactly known for being completely sandboxy most of the time, but they're usually pretty good about providing alternate paths and GM guidance for "what do if PCs do something funky".

3.) The thing that, in particular, disappointed me was how the villain was utilized. The true architect of the vague plot that was going on is Mengkare, the Gold Dragon that rules Hermea (an island nation that's basically one big experiment in creating a utopia with a side of super eugenics). I have always been fascinated by this little slice of Golarion; I had a character once who was born there. Mengkare was never really detailed in PF1e, so him being the villain was THE thing that drew me to check out the AP in the first place.

He's not revealed as the villain until the end of book 5. His motivations are basically nonexistent (he slipped from LN to LE at some point and now he bad, oooh...), and he's just kind of summarily killed off by the PCs (*optionally, to be fair) without really revealing much about why he's doing what he's doing or what the point of the big Hermean experiment was.

This might be more of a me thing, but I really wanted an in-depth exploration of Hermea and Mengkare, which by all accounts this book does not give.

Lord Raziere

2021-09-07, 05:33 PM

I don't want a Fighter that can flex his muscles and raise the dead. There, now you have one.

Look I'm a person who wants fighters to be better and more powerful. But I don't think anyone who likes Tome of Battle and such wants to play Flex Mentallo.

Psyren

2021-09-07, 05:34 PM

^ Might be a good idea to spoiler some of the plot stuff there Rynjin

Look I'm a person who wants fighters to be better and more powerful. But I don't think anyone who likes Tome of Battle and such wants to play Flex Mentallo.

I was giving an example of a challenge/problem I don't think fighters should be able to solve on their own (dead teammate.)

(As for "meaningfully contribute to," that's debatable. Rezzing someone is expensive and takes a long time to cast, both of which generate sub-challenges that a fighter can contribute to.)

Batcathat

2021-09-07, 06:03 PM

I was giving an example of a challenge/problem I don't think fighters should be able to solve on their own (dead teammate.)

I agree, there should be problems fighters can't solve on their own. But I also think the same should be true of wizards and other casters. What's you stance on that?

RandomPeasant

2021-09-07, 06:21 PM

...Those aren't even balanced with each other, never mind the core classes.

Those classes are totally balanced with each-other. And of course they're not balanced with the core classes, the core classes aren't balanced. It's like saying "you can't have multiple words that are the same length", then when someone says "hey, wait a second, 'have' and 'same' are the same length" complaining that those words aren't the same length as "adventurous" and "who".

I don't want a Fighter that can flex his muscles and raise the dead. There, now you have one.

No, I don't. Because the Wizard can't raise the dead either. And neither can the Beguiler or the Dread Necromancer (well, not for family-friendly values of "raise the dead"). In fact, the list of classes, even magic-using classes, that can't raise the dead exceeds the list of the ones that can. Saying "there are abilities I don't want the Fighter to have" is not the same as "it is affirmatively good that the Fighter is worse than the Wizard", and even if you do believe that it still doesn't put you in the majority. Unlike "game balance is good", "I like when my character's contribution is smaller than other characters" really is a belief that only forumites have. The overwhelming majority of people do not enjoy being told "sit in your corner, this is a Wizard problem and Fighters aren't allowed to solve it".

But even with the tier system and the removal of utility powers you see these inequities creeping in, because it breaks verisimilitude otherwise.

The largest movie franchise in the world is one where "fly", "punch space whales to death", "shoot lightning", and "teleport through space" are all abilities martial characters can just have. I literally cannot remember the last fantasy book I read that enforces the mundane dogmatism people demand from the D&D Fighter. The idea that sword-wielding meant not having any superhuman abilities was never all that strong, but the genre has passed way beyond it by this point.

137beth

2021-09-07, 06:29 PM

GeoffWatson

2021-09-07, 06:31 PM

The other side of it is that there's not actually anyone pushing for the things Psyren is demanding we keep in the game. Like, seriously, when have you ever seen someone say "you know, the thing I really love about 3e is the way that the Wizard gets a wide range of abilities that impact the plot and the Fighter gets a series of small bonuses to combat stats"? Because I've never seen that. Maybe the "balancing the game is good, actually" ground is small. But the "the game being imbalanced is good, actually" crowd is the one you'd piss off by fixing things, and they're nonexistent.

Rubbish. There are plenty of 3e/Pathfinder fans who love that Wizards/casters are Just Better than Fighters/non-casters.

Rynjin

2021-09-07, 06:47 PM

It's all about letting non-casters compete in the same sorts of stories in different ways. No, a Fighter shouldn't be able to teleport. He might should be able to Hulk-leap 120 miles to get to town. Teleporting is faster and more convenient, and can be extended to multiple people, but the Fighter can still, under his own power, travel at campaign speeds.

For a less absurd example, the classic scenario of "We need to get across a chasm". The Wizard casts Fly.

The Fighter begs the Wizard to cast Fly on him too.

What if instead the Fighter flexes his mighty thews and brings down a spire of rock to make a makeshift bridge? This is something that can't really be done RAW...by a Fighter anyway. The DCs are far, far too high on a "break object" for something that big. The Cleric and Druid can do it with Stone Shape, because casters are, indeed, Just Better.

It does not require all that much creativity to think of ways a non-caster can compete in the same arenas, in entirely different ways, than casters if the game were only designed that way.

Elves

2021-09-07, 07:06 PM

Dethroning PF1 was a decent goal though, and they failed at that too (at least by the roll20 and convention metrics that started this thread.)
The point I made earlier is: there was no Pathfinder 1. PF was an extension of 3e that offered 3e fans more content. Moving on from 3e means abandoning its own fundamentals. Struggling to "dethrone" its former product is both bad business, and an example of how little power Paizo had on its own.

D&D is king because of its brand. The brand is strong enough to sustain changes in the system. PF was ultimately not proactive enough in creating a brand that could sustain further products once the initial revenue stream declined. And admittedly, that's a tough ask given the nature of its success. But I think the path for them was, and could still be, to embrace and develop the d20 system that WOTC abandoned to them. The brand is weak, but the system is fundamentally solid.

Remuko

2021-09-07, 07:55 PM

Look I'm a person who wants fighters to be better and more powerful. But I don't think anyone who likes Tome of Battle and such wants to play Flex Mentallo.

damn i was hoping to be the first to mention Flex Mentallo when I was going to reply about how Psyren's idea seemed like it would stop people from playing Flex Mentallo (who is awesome and while I specifically havent wanted to play an expy of him, yet), is something totally reasonable to want to be able to do

Calthropstu

2021-09-07, 10:43 PM

The 4e rulebooks said the game is supposed to be fun. Therefore, any attempts to make D&D fun inevitably turn it into a clone of 4e. Thus, to avoid becoming 4e, WotC must strive to make 6e as un-fun as possible.

You have entered yon dungeon. On the floor you see a flask. Next to the flask is a scroll. Obvious exits are north south and Dennis.

Lord Raziere

2021-09-08, 12:09 AM

damn i was hoping to be the first to mention Flex Mentallo when I was going to reply about how Psyren's idea seemed like it would stop people from playing Flex Mentallo (who is awesome and while I specifically havent wanted to play an expy of him, yet), is something totally reasonable to want to be able to do

Look I'm not saying Flex Mentallo is a bad character or anything. or that the people who want to play him are wrong or bad (they're not).

Its just not the vibe I'd want to go for. the Flex Mentallo vibe is more for people who like the Jojo/Major Armstrong memes to death, and because warping reality by literally flexing muscle is a silly goofy vibe, which is not the vibe I want to go for with my characters personally. and when you put it to paper the whole concept would start looking a lot like a wizard with a STR score instead of Int score and then your right back at square one with everyone going "just refluff the wizard then" or going "I CAST FIST! MASCLE WIZ-ARD!". which isn't what I'm going for.

Crake

2021-09-08, 12:19 AM

You have entered yon dungeon. On the floor you see a flask. Next to the flask is a scroll. Obvious exits are north south and Dennis.

Go Dennis.

Raven777

2021-09-08, 12:20 AM

/get flask

Data point of one, but I'm probably that rare and elusive player who likes PF1 exactly the way it is (possibly with a few minor revisions touching on feat chains, the Elephant in the Room (https://michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/) still being my favorite rules mod). The above example of a Fighter doing a 120 mile Hulk jump just doesn't vibe with me. The narrative that does vibe with me is supernatural contributions to the hero's journey being the province of Gandalf, Raistlin or Merlin. On the other hand, an edition where my Illusionist/Enchantment Sorcerer can't Shadow Conjure or Shadow Invocate, is no edition I want to play. PF2 and 5e took my toys away, therefore I stuck to PF1.

Rynjin

2021-09-08, 12:24 AM

The problem I've always had with statements like that is it sounds very "**** you, got mine". I know there's not any malice behind your post, but it's kind of annoying that there's always at least one person who's like "I'm perfectly happy that martial characters suck and can't do anything because I like to play Wizards so it doesn't affect me".

Raven777

2021-09-08, 12:46 AM

I feel it would be malicious if I only ever played that archetype (and honestly I do always come back to it, "What-Would-Loki-Do" party face Sorcerer is to my PF what Stealth Archer is to my Skyrim), but I also played Paladin, Ranger, Gunslinger and Alchemist in other campaigns and absolutely enjoyed my time as well. I never experienced that "martials or T3 get overshadowed" feeling others seem to have when I played mine. What I do agree is that casters definitely have more toys to play with, or even daydream about outside the game. As a Sorcerer I get to make plans to abuse partial reality with shadow magic. As a Gunslinger? Not so much. I still don't think it warrants taking the Sorcerer's toys away.

Also, 80% of my play is/was in Adventure Paths where the room for game breaking caster shennannigans might be more curtained. Usually, if you count both roleplay and mechanics actions together for screen time, the whole group seems to always contribute pretty evenly. Maybe playing with coworkers and MMO guildies and reasonable decent people I know also makes me an outlier. Is the discrepency something that would happen more in one shot tables or had-hoc groups of strangers?

I'm going to take my first shot at the GM seat with Rise of the Runelords by the end of the month. Maybe I'll see things differently from the other side of the curtain.

Psyren

2021-09-08, 12:57 AM

I agree, there should be problems fighters can't solve on their own. But I also think the same should be true of wizards and other casters. What's you stance on that?

Putting aside that antimagic and SR both exist, my stance is that magic's limitations are already innate. Limited slots, limited instances within those slots, VSM components, and of course the weaknesses/clauses of the spells themselves.

For example - when a wizard needs to unlock a door or chest, he can use magic to do so - by chanting loudly, or by sacrificing even greater power (or wealth) on metamagic to not need to do that. And in both cases he has to anticipate how many locked doors he'll come across in advance, with each one cutting into his ability to defend himself and his party. And if a door or chest has more than two locks on it, you'll need even more castings just to get it open. PF nerfs it further by requiring a check (you can't take 20)

So yeah, you could go through all that... or you could just let the rogue be the rogue, and use those slots to prepare something else that the rogue can't do (or that makes the rogue even better), thus maximizing the group's chances of success overall.

Now, a problem I will say exists with both 3.5 and PF1 is that spellcasters get entirely too much ammunition for this kind of out-of-class problem solving. Between bonus slots, pearls, consumables and more, those limitations of magic become attenuated. Both 5e and PF2 have taken a look at this, but my personal solution is to just use Simplified Spellcasting from Unchained, and not allowing unrestricted Magic Mart.

TL;DR: I don't mind that magic can do anything, so long as its limits are such that it can't do everything.

Those classes are totally balanced with each-other.

They're not. Take some of the non-combat challenges in the Same Game test, like "make contact with the underground resistance" or "sneak past a guard outpost without raising an alarm." A Totemist and Binder are going to have a much easier time with those than a Crusader and Warmage, and even in the Binder's case they're probably going to want their second vestige (8+).

No, I don't. Because the Wizard can't raise the dead either.

Limited Wish, Planar Binding, and Clone all say hi.

The largest movie franchise in the world is one where "fly", "punch space whales to death", "shoot lightning", and "teleport through space" are all abilities martial characters can just have.

Avengers is not D&D and Thor is not the benchmark for a martial character. For starters, his powers clearly come from his race, not his class.

It's all about letting non-casters compete in the same sorts of stories in different ways. No, a Fighter shouldn't be able to teleport. He might should be able to Hulk-leap 120 miles to get to town. Teleporting is faster and more convenient, and can be extended to multiple people, but the Fighter can still, under his own power, travel at campaign speeds.

For a less absurd example, the classic scenario of "We need to get across a chasm". The Wizard casts Fly.

The Fighter begs the Wizard to cast Fly on him too.

I'm glad you agree that leaping 120 miles is absurd.

I'm completely fine with "leap across a chasm" however.

T.G. Oskar

2021-09-08, 01:06 AM

The biggest problem I have with PF2 is that it seems to think players are gullible; it boasts of how many options or choices you have to customize your PC. But anyone who has played PF1 can recognize that this was done in many cases (base bookaces come to mind) by taking all the ribbons and racial features the races used to get and breaking them out into racial feats. This would be fine and even cool design...except you get far fewer of them than you did in PF1, and so the "choices" feel hollow and underwhelming.

"Our newest model car has more choices! Now you can choose a radio, air conditioning, or power windows or power locks! Any two! Choices, choices, choices!"

You've hit it on the nail as to why I don't really like PF2 that much.

I could make it bigger and say that it feels like they're trying to outdo 4e, what with very tight numbers coupled with the illusion of choices, but refusing to use the AEDU mechanic. Spells feel like PF Vancian spells, and martial characters get something akin to 5e Battlemaster Maneuvers, where they can effectively spend one action to modify the next attack with something or spend 2 actions to...modify the attack with something. Most of the "class feats" offered are either too shoehorned (effectively making a feat chain that closes you from the other choices) or fiddly numerical bonuses that are too specific to work.

I mean...maybe it's meant to reward system mastery? I'll be honest - I haven't played, but I've made some builds and compared them to 5e characters. As it stands, the magic item system is a lot more rewarding (far and above the Striking Rune, since it turns that +1 to damage into +1[W], which is a far better bonus even if it rewards some weapons more than others), and comparing similar builds, there's some levels in which PF2e pulls ahead, and some feats that are amazing (IMO, Alchemical Crafting is the best skill feat ever, followed very closely by ones such as the Mortal Healing line, Battle Prayer or Scare to Death) while others...eh. (Divine Grace is a downright nerf and an insult to Paladin/Champion players!) However, if you do some feat acrobatics, you can achieve pretty surprising results: for example, IIRC there's a general feat that allows you to count as if you were from another Ancestry. You could use that to count as a Human, then get Ancestral Paragon to get a class feat (1st level only, though) as part of an Ancestry feat, which can potentially open up some options. Also - spellcasters are pretty much better than other classes here, since they have a resource that's easier to manage and lets you do far more things than what martial characters can, even with skill feats galore. (But, perhaps it's just my impression.)

However, you have to pre-make your builds to determine their effectiveness, and when you do so, you notice that you're effectively driven down to certain builds. Fighters have Combat Versatility, but the bulk of their class feats are led towards one specific fighting style, making Combat Versatility the equivalent of dabbling into another fighting style to some extent. (Now: that it allows you to switch-hit from, say, SnB or THF into Archery should be pointed out.) Champions have either Blade Ally or Shield Ally or Steed Ally, but half of their class choices effectively rely on improving one of these three. (Two or three choices alone involve the Oath, and the rest are...fiddly at best.) Clerics are too focused on either Healing or causing Harm, and the Domains and Deities feel like minor additions - about the two main choices you make are whether you are a caster Cleric or a warrior Priest, and whether you Harm or Heal. With this, it seems like most of these choices exist to pad out what you get at every level in order to make you feel like you got more.

As someone who tried to understand the mechanics in order to see if it was a straight improvement to PF1e (which, I must admit, I was biased against from the start), it felt like a disappointment. It really gave me that 4e vibe just from looking at it, without the "you must have these feats to pass" concept, or the AEDU mechanic. This is in big contrast to 5e: it looks simple, but one thing I see as its strength is that you can see the strong choices and the weak choices almost from the get-go, and while most builds feel samey after playing them, you do have an interesting amount of build options around - some of which are pretty unusual. Creating a character in PF2e, even just as a mental exercise, seems like a chore; have to do it if you want to play, but doesn't feel that gratifying.

In the interest of fairness, it has some decent ideas (the Striking Rune is pretty boss, for one; the critical success/failure threshold is another, though I'm not exactly a fan of the 3 action mechanic where using a friggin' shield costs 1 action, Attacks still cause multiple attack penalties, and moving has the same weight as one attack), but it tries to streamline things far too much to make them meaningful. The difference between tiers of proficiency is always 2 points, which doesn't seem like much - if it weren't because of the "turn a critical failure into a failure/success into a critical success" concept, the critical hit specializations and armor specializations and other bonuses, proficiency upgrades would seem boring - and even then, they don't feel like truly rewarding.

I guess that, in the end, part of what made 5e successful is that it "feels" good to play it. All the surveys exist to gauge how players feel about playing the new content, tweaking out things to see if they feel better, and once they feel they got enough good responses, they publish it. Some published content can end up egregiously strong, but nowhere near the 3.x levels of brokenness. However, WotC went for a qualitative approach to the game. Paizo...publishes the playtests and seeks feedback, but whether they adopt what the players want isn't as clear. That, and 5e is in the mainstream - I know there's one or two PF streamed games, but they don't have the popularity of Critical Role or Acquisitions Incorporated, which have their own sourcebooks published by WotC.

Paizo's future most likely relies on getting those streamers and YouTubers that really like PF2e and have them work together into a sponsored game that showcases what playing Pathfinder is about, then release any content they make for their homebrewed game or perhaps have them provide ideas for their next adventure path. Paizo has always been strong with its APs, so having a group of players do a preview of the newest AP and heavily promote it could do wonders for their product. However, that can only do as much as the system itself, since if the viewers still see the game as "too complex", they might get unmotivated. They did a good first step by having Owlbear Games (sp?) publish cRPGs based on their best-known APs (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous), but they still need to build more brand awareness between people. More than simplicity or popularity, WotC knows how to market 5e, and it's leaving a lot of dividends to them.

Rynjin

2021-09-08, 01:08 AM

I'm glad you agree that leaping 120 miles is absurd.

I'm completely fine with "leap across a chasm" however.

Personally I do think that Seven League Leap should be a high level, non-Mythic ability available to Barbarians; maybe a Rage Power available at 14, 16 something along those lines.

But the general point is that beyond human feats should be possible, easily, within the framework of a martial class. And for most classes they aren't.

Batcathat

2021-09-08, 01:34 AM

Putting aside that antimagic and SR both exist, my stance is that magic's limitations are already innate. Limited slots, limited instances within those slots, VSM components, and of course the weaknesses/clauses of the spells themselves.

Sure, there are some limits and the party balance can be a little better if those are emphasized (by avoiding the 15 minute adventuring day, etc.) but in a lot of situations they are nowhere near as severe as the limits of the non-casters.

If the wizard encounters a problem he can't solve, he can rest and memorize spells more suited to the situation and even if he doesn't have those spells it's usually fairly easy (at least in the context of the larger campaign) to learn them. If the fighter encounters a problem she can't solve, she can... I don't know? Take a level of some other class?

noob

2021-09-08, 01:43 AM

There is a fighting man class that instead of flexing to resurrect does that by punching the dead hard enough for undeading it. Is it fine in your "no flexing to resurrect" view of things?

Psyren

2021-09-08, 01:48 AM

Personally I do think that Seven League Leap should be a high level, non-Mythic ability available to Barbarians; maybe a Rage Power available at 14, 16 something along those lines.

But the general point is that beyond human feats should be possible, easily, within the framework of a martial class. And for most classes they aren't.

There are several mythic martial abilities that I think could be given to high-level non-mythic martials, yes. Though I'll note that even 7LL is extremely unlikely to propel you 30 miles, never mind 120.

Sure, there are some limits and the party balance can be a little better if those are emphasized (by avoiding the 15 minute adventuring day, etc.) but in a lot of situations they are nowhere near as severe as the limits of the non-casters.

If the wizard encounters a problem he can't solve, he can rest and memorize spells more suited to the situation and even if he doesn't have those spells it's usually fairly easy (at least in the context of the larger campaign) to learn them. If the fighter encounters a problem she can't solve, she can... I don't know? Take a level of some other class?

1) Even when it's possible to just stop and prepare spells that are more suited, they tend to not be a silver bullet. Again, see the Knock example - loud, limited-use, takes a slot that could have helped in a fight (we're talking about the levels where "locked door/chest" is a notable obstacle after all), can't take 20 in PF's case, etc.

2) I don't actually care that the absolute limits are less severe for the casters. In a broad sense, magic should be more capable - it's magic, and spells in particular are subject to the drawbacks noted in 1.

There is a fighting man class that instead of flexing to resurrect does that by punching the dead hard enough for undeading it. Is it fine in your "no flexing to resurrect" view of things?

Assuming you're asking me, no I wouldn't be fine with that outside of a comedy game of some kind.

Batcathat

2021-09-08, 01:56 AM

1) Even when it's possible to just stop and prepare spells that are more suited, they tend to not be a silver bullet. Again, see the Knock example - loud, limited-use, takes a slot that could have helped in a fight (we're talking about the levels where "locked door/chest" is a notable obstacle after all), can't take 20 in PF's case, etc.

Sure, maybe they can't prepare a new spell right then and maybe the spell won't automatically fix everything but the fact remains that they can switch out basically their entire set of abilities with some prep time which the fighter very much cannot. Wizards certainly have limits, but they are waaaaay less limiting than a non-caster's in a lot of situations.

2) I don't actually care that the absolute limits are less severe for the casters. In a broad sense, magic should be more capable - it's magic, and spells in particular are subject to the drawbacks noted in 1.

That's where we disagree. Magic should be capable of different things than non-magic but there's no reason why it should be more capable in a general sense. I think a lot of the issues I have are the result of developers agreeing with you and having magic do anything because "it's magic!".

Psyren

2021-09-08, 02:02 AM

Sure, maybe they can't prepare a new spell right then and maybe the spell won't automatically fix everything but the fact remains that they can switch out basically their entire set of abilities with some prep time which the fighter very much cannot. Wizards certainly have limits, but they are waaaaay less limiting than a non-caster's in a lot of situations.

I don't mind Fighter getting some "swappability," a la Martial Versatility. I agree though, even when it has such an ability, the stuff they are swapping lacks the impact ceiling that spells have.

That's where we disagree. Magic should be capable of different things than non-magic but there's no reason why it should be more capable in a general sense. I think a lot of the issues I have are the result of developers agreeing with you and having magic do anything because "it's magic!".

I understand what you're saying but yeah, we do disagree.

Xervous

2021-09-08, 07:23 AM

Looking at it from another angle, “I’m currently playing 3.5/PF1/5e. What’s the selling point of PF2 that gets me to switch to PF2 rather than one of the aforementioned?”

pabelfly

2021-09-08, 09:56 AM

Looking at it from another angle, “I’m currently playing 3.5/PF1/5e. What’s the selling point of PF2 that gets me to switch to PF2 rather than one of the aforementioned?”

Well here's what I think is good about PF 2e:
- They've absolutely nailed multiclassing and prestige classes in 2e. You can pick any two classes you like and it's stupidly easy to combine them. You can enter any "prestige class" (dedications in 2e) from any base class. For example, a gish is as easy as picking a base class (say, Fighter), then picking the dedication of the caster class you like and take feats for it.
- The game splits up feats into different feat types so you get to boost the non-combat aspects of your character without feeling like you're handicapping yourself.
- The modular nature of class feats means you can easily give extra campaign-suitable feats and class features with no extra work. For example, the newest AP for PF 2e is called "Strength of Thousands" and is set in a school, and gives any player a side of "Wizard" or "Druid" without stopping them from making whatever build they were otherwise planning to make.
- It's hard to make a "bad" character. Having one base class that you stay in from level 1 to 20 means you'll be getting class features and power boosts consistently, so you'll at least be adequate
- The three-action turn is simple and easy to understand, but really good design

The two things I'm ambivalent about with PF 2e:
- many early feat choices are really weak and feel less meaningful than 3.5/1e.
- there are less options compared to 3.5/PF, which is only to be expected of a system that's two years old being compared to systems that had seven and ten years of releases to support them

farothel

2021-09-08, 11:10 AM

Psyren

2021-09-08, 11:29 AM

farothel

2021-09-08, 11:42 AM

If someone's high level PF Fighter is "just an audience," then I'm sorry, but they absolutely suck at building them. Either that or they're playing in a CRB-only campaign, and even then the Fighter can at least contribute.

Now, the class has way too high a skill floor for the "pick up and play" niche it ostensibly occupies, I'll readily admit that. Many of the toys it got later should be baseline, and/or folded into some updated "Unchained Fighter" that replaces the original, but all the tools are right there in 1PP.

And that's the point I was trying the make (maybe exaggerating slightly). You need a lot of the splat books to make a decent fighter in PF1, whereas in PF2 you had all those things rolled into the class from the start (as you want your 'unchained fighter' to be). When we started playing Age of Ashes the only book out was the core book and for most of the campaign that's the only book we used (we added the Advanced Player's Guide around lvl15 and that was it), and still the fighter held his own easily when compared to the others. In fact, all classes were very balanced against each other. I feel a lot of the imbalance in classes you have in PF1 (and D&D 3.x) has been removed in PF2. I'm actually a bit afraid that with more classes and more books coming out, that imbalance will return. But by restricting books you can take care of that, whereas in PF1 you have to add books to bring balance back (books not every player has).

Psyren

2021-09-08, 11:49 AM

If I valued balance above everything else then yeah, that might be appealing. But from what I've seen, PF2 gives up too much value in pursuit of bringing the classes closer together, so that's not a selling point for me. Maybe after it's been out longer. I am interested in their takes on the Magus, Summoner, and the new Inventor class coming out in the near future (I was at DragonCon and attended Jason Buhlman and Erik Mona's previews panel.) Most likely though I'll end up backporting the Inventor to PF1.

I do like the three-action system, but PF Unchained has that too, so I don't need to convert for that either. In short, I'm more than content to keep playing P1 while I wait.

I also still buy SF books, so it's not like I stopped supporting Paizo financially.

Gnaeus

2021-09-08, 11:50 AM

Xervous

2021-09-08, 12:04 PM

Well here's what I think is good about PF 2e:
- They've absolutely nailed multiclassing and prestige classes in 2e. You can pick any two classes you like and it's stupidly easy to combine them. You can enter any "prestige class" (dedications in 2e) from any base class. For example, a gish is as easy as picking a base class (say, Fighter), then picking the dedication of the caster class you like and take feats for it.
A plus for dabbling, but comes up short on fine tuning. A point in favor for specific 5e players who want that dabbling feel but can’t find it.

- The game splits up feats into different feat types so you get to boost the non-combat aspects of your character without feeling like you're handicapping yourself.
The big problem with the feats is summarized as too little, too late. In all its simplicity, 5e managed to deliver impactful non combat feats that were sufficiently desirable to see play. PF1 swims in feats, but the lackluster nature of 3.5 noncombat feats is generally known. The thing is even going from lackluster 3.5 feats to PF2 free lackluster feats isn’t much of a sell, it’s a ribbon. If it’s explicitly ribbons a player desires that’s a whole other mode of analysis.

- The modular nature of class feats means you can easily give extra campaign-suitable feats and class features with no extra work. For example, the newest AP for PF 2e is called "Strength of Thousands" and is set in a school, and gives any player a side of "Wizard" or "Druid" without stopping them from making whatever build they were otherwise planning to make.

Selling point for a GM... maybe? But stop me if I’m wrong when I say it’s not too hard to wave your hands and say “everyone gets 1/3 rate wizard spells or Druid abilities”. It’s a wise move to quantify something players have been doing for decades (why nobody can think to do this for designing adventures to accommodate the fighters...), but it doesn’t seem to be integral to the system.

- It's hard to make a "bad" character. Having one base class that you stay in from level 1 to 20 means you'll be getting class features and power boosts consistently, so you'll at least be adequate

5e already has this, so why should that player jump ship? What of the players in 3.5/PF who like the systems because their choices have consequences and are thereby a tangible way of exercising the players’ agency? If you can’t select your way into competency or select your way out of relevance what impact do those choices really have? False, empty choices provide no lasting allure.

- The three-action turn is simple and easy to understand, but really good design

Three, two, four? You’re going to need to elaborate for the 3.5/PF1/5e players who you’re trying to convince to play PF2.

pabelfly

2021-09-08, 01:54 PM

If someone's high level PF Fighter is "just an audience," then I'm sorry, but they absolutely suck at building them. Either that or they're playing in a CRB-only campaign, and even then the Fighter can at least contribute.

The only reason a wizard and Fighter work at the same table is an informal gentleman's agreement between the two. That said, it does work.

Psyren

2021-09-08, 02:08 PM

The only reason a wizard and Fighter work at the same table is an informal gentleman's agreement between the two. That said, it does work.

Yeah, and? The entire game needs a gentleman's agreement of some kind, otherwise everyone would just play Pun-Pun.

pabelfly

2021-09-08, 02:21 PM

Here’s what is bad about PF2e.

There is no multiclassing. It is completely nonexistent. You can’t be a fighter/wizard. The best you can be is a fighter with a few wizard abilities.

I'm not getting your complaint. The game has a different system to what 3.5 and PF1 does, but you end up in the same place regardless of system - with a fighter with spellcasting ability, or a wizard with boosted melee combat ability, and you get it much easier than the other two systems.

The game treats you like a 10 year old who can’t figure out how to allocate points so they allocate feats for you because you were doing it wrong.

The feat system for 3.5 and Pathfinder share a common flaws: one, that feats are all valued the same, regardless of the part of the game system they influence, and that it's extremely easy to fixate on boosting offense and defence (and disregard non-combat feats) since losing a fight often has a penalty of death whereas penalties for bad skill checks are rarely that severe.

I would equate PF 2e's feat progression system somewhat akin to saying "Okay, houserule for Pathfinder 1e: Every even level you can take any feat that boosts your skills, and do whatever you want for your feat at odd levels."

The modular nature of class/race feats means you can’t make campaign suitable classes or races without writing a full set of feats for them.

But if you wanted to match the depth of what's available for 3.5 of a race with any decent amount of support, you'd have to do a lot of work regardless of the system. I don't see how it's specifically a critique of PF 2e.

Your choices are so meaningless that you may as well not make them. Everyone is adequate. Have a trophy.

Any one of those would make the system only worthwhile for lighting fires, like any other piece of dry animal waste.

I agree that there's a lack of power in the choice of many early feats, I said as much in my original post. I would even go so far to say it's one of the flaws of the system.

...

I summed up what I think are the reasons for why PF 2e are at least worth looking at as a system. In spite of my response to Gnaeus, I'm not really caring to debate the existence of PF 2e or otherwise.

WesleyVos

2021-09-08, 03:26 PM

A plus for dabbling, but comes up short on fine tuning. A point in favor for specific 5e players who want that dabbling feel but canÂ’t find it.

This is actually multi-classing as it should be. It could use a bit more explanation (probably where PF2 fails the most is the scattered nature of the sourcebook), but it's actually competently put together and is one of the best parts of PF2. Book for book, I'd argue you have more varied options with PF2 than with PF1 or 3.5e, because there are so many ways you can go with your character. And that doesn't take into account ancestries and backgrounds, which have a relative ton of depth to them now.

The big problem with the feats is summarized as too little, too late. In all its simplicity, 5e managed to deliver impactful non combat feats that were sufficiently desirable to see play. PF1 swims in feats, but the lackluster nature of 3.5 noncombat feats is generally known. The thing is even going from lackluster 3.5 feats to PF2 free lackluster feats isnÂ’t much of a sell, itÂ’s a ribbon. If itÂ’s explicitly ribbons a player desires thatÂ’s a whole other mode of analysis.

I actually really like the PF2 skill feats. It makes skills something worth investing in and gives you additional non-combat options. It moves the game out of the realm of diving into a dungeon and just murder-hoboing your way through it to more of a roleplay focus. Even in 3.5e and PF1, if you wanted to be competent at combat you had to abandon everything else and just focus there. Now you have the option of building a competent combatant who can also competently contribute in out of combat roles as well, and can do so in a unique and flavorful way. (Of course, the GM could always handwave that, but now there are mechanics to back it up.)

As for the other feats, I like that ancestries and classes are becoming more focused and at the same time more modular. I love that most classes have varied progressions that define their character (druid, for example, being either wild shape or animal companion focused, requiring a feat to add the other). The feats might be lower-powered, but so are the mechanics across the board, which is a welcome change, at least to me.

Selling point for a GM... maybe? But stop me if IÂ’m wrong when I say itÂ’s not too hard to wave your hands and say Â“everyone gets 1/3 rate wizard spells or Druid abilitiesÂ”. ItÂ’s a wise move to quantify something players have been doing for decades (why nobody can think to do this for designing adventures to accommodate the fighters...), but it doesnÂ’t seem to be integral to the system.

Big plus for GMs, actually. It's easy to slide a campaign specific feat or archetype in without a ton of work. It's not PF2's biggest selling point, but it is a benefit.

5e already has this, so why should that player jump ship? What of the players in 3.5/PF who like the systems because their choices have consequences and are thereby a tangible way of exercising the playersÂ’ agency? If you canÂ’t select your way into competency or select your way out of relevance what impact do those choices really have? False, empty choices provide no lasting allure.

Yes, 5e has this. 5e also has a lot of other issues that make dedicated 3.5e players like me not want to switch. I tried 5e out a few times and hated it.

On top of that, PF2 actually does this a lot better. By decreasing the power level, adding some survivability to 1st level characters, and providing good ancestry/background/class chassis, they have made it so the choices you make in feats and skills and equipment add both value and flavor to the character without having a bunch of trap options that nobody will ever take. Having those trap options is actually poor game design.

Three, two, four? YouÂ’re going to need to elaborate for the 3.5/PF1/5e players who youÂ’re trying to convince to play PF2.

PF2's 3 action system is really just a simplification and expansion of the rule that existed in 3.5/PF1 (I can't really speak to 5e). Instead of a Standard/Move/Swift mechanic, you get three actions per turn. Those actions can be used to attack, move, cast spells, etc., in any order. So you can move, attack, then move again. You can move, then cast a 2-action spell (most spells cost two actions). You can move, attack, then raise your shield to defend, or attack, then move away, then raise your shield. Your options in combat become much more numerous and what you do with those options much more important. In addition, that means you can move three times or attack three times (with -5 penalties for each additional attack), or any combination of various other actions. It's both a lot simpler to understand, explain, and play out and a lot more varied in the things you can do.

Psyren

2021-09-08, 03:49 PM

I really hate that "raise shield as an action" nonsense. Is there a way to make that passive?

Morty

2021-09-08, 03:59 PM

This is actually multi-classing as it should be. It could use a bit more explanation (probably where PF2 fails the most is the scattered nature of the sourcebook), but it's actually competently put together and is one of the best parts of PF2. Book for book, I'd argue you have more varied options with PF2 than with PF1 or 3.5e, because there are so many ways you can go with your character. And that doesn't take into account ancestries and backgrounds, which have a relative ton of depth to them now.

I'm not a huge fan of PF2E, but I agree that its multi-classing seems like a major improvement. Granted, that's because the bar is pretty low, as D&D multi-classing has never exactly worked.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-08, 04:36 PM

Rubbish. There are plenty of 3e/Pathfinder fans who love that Wizards/casters are Just Better than Fighters/non-casters.

Again, I've never seen that view expressed outside of strawmen of people who want imbalance addressed through buffs rather than nerfs. And I'm a lot less sympathetic to "I want my character to outshine yours" than I am to "I want your character to outshine mine".

Look I'm not saying Flex Mentallo is a bad character or anything. or that the people who want to play him are wrong or bad (they're not).

What Flex Mentallo is is a strawman. High level martial characters shouldn't be warping reality with their mighty pecs, they should just get supernatural abilities through an appropriate idiom. Look at the arc of a character like Kaladin. He starts off as a non-magical character who is very good at using a spear. He eventually gains some relatively low-end superpowers (fast movement, fast healing) that aren't that much more impressive than what a generic action movie hero does. Then eventually that progresses to flight and superhuman speed and all the other stuff he needs to compete in an environment where "a giant monster made out of solid stone" isn't even a named boss mob.

They're not. Take some of the non-combat challenges in the Same Game test, like "make contact with the underground resistance" or "sneak past a guard outpost without raising an alarm." A Totemist and Binder are going to have a much easier time with those than a Crusader and Warmage, and even in the Binder's case they're probably going to want their second vestige (8+).

The expectation of the Same Game Test is that any given character will fail some of the challenges. The fact that a Crusader does, in fact, fail some of the challenges means that they're balanced. You can't point to a few of the challenges and expect that to mean anything, you need to show that overall performance differs at a consistent level of optimization.

Limited Wish, Planar Binding, and Clone all say hi.

clone doesn't raise the dead, it's a strategy for avoiding death. planar binding doesn't let you raise the dead, it lets you contract with someone who can raise the dead. limited wish is the only example that actually counts, and even then it's substantially worse and more delayed than what the Cleric gets, which is what you actually want because no party should ever be in a situation where the choices made at chargen completely lock them out of solving certain problems.

Avengers is not D&D and Thor is not the benchmark for a martial character. For starters, his powers clearly come from his race, not his class.

No they don't. Thor has different powers from Odin or Hela, who are both the same race. He has substantially more powers than the various random Asgardian soldiers we see, or even the Warriors Three. I can see an argument to be made that the Asgardian race is natively equivalent to a 6th level character, but Thor clearly has personal powers that exceed his racial abilities, and in D&D those would be modeled as a class. The first part of your argument is just circular. I can name a dozen more examples of martial characters from the fantasy genre that exceed what D&D lets Fighters do. The demand that Fighters never get anything nice is something a certain class of D&D fans have invented for reasons I am unable to understand, not something that has any kind of basis in the source material.

Sure, maybe they can't prepare a new spell right then and maybe the spell won't automatically fix everything but the fact remains that they can switch out basically their entire set of abilities with some prep time which the fighter very much cannot.

I really wish people would stop presenting this as the core issue with the Wizard. Even if we grant that our primary solution to the problem should be hitting the Wizard with the nerfing stick, the range of spells or the ability to choose new spells each day is just not what you should target. The ability to swap spells every day and learn new spells from scrolls is not what makes the Wizard better than the Fighter. It's not even all of what makes the Wizard better than the Sorcerer. Consider three classes: the Cleric, the Favored Soul, and the Incarnate. The Cleric casts spells off the Cleric list and can pick new ones each day. The Favored Soul casts spells off the Cleric list, but is stuck with his picks from level to level. The Incarnate gets Soulmelds off the Incarnate list and can pick new ones each day (they can even customize their essentia investment during the day, arguably making them more versatile than the Cleric). If it was versatility that made the Cleric good, we would expect the Incarnate to be the second-best of those classes. Yet while the Cleric is T1, the Favored Soul is T2 and the Incarnate is T4.

It's not the flexibility that makes the Wizard good. It's the spells. It genuinely does not matter at all if one character can prepare an entirely new set of abilities every day and another is stuck with the ones they picked at level up. In fact, you want the Wizard to pick new abilities every day, because "searching ancient tombs for lost knowledge", "carefully planning out your strategies for the day", and "researching your enemies to identify their weaknesses" are all things you definitely want the knowledge-themed caster to be doing.

I think a lot of the issues I have are the result of developers agreeing with you and having magic do anything because "it's magic!".

I would not give the designers that much credit. The designers don't agree with Psyren, it's just that nothing since "low level 3.0" in this product line has gotten properly tested, so nothing ever hits its targets. Paizo aggressively drove off the people who wanted to do scientific testing in the PF1 beta.

Yeah, and? The entire game needs a gentleman's agreement of some kind, otherwise everyone would just play Pun-Pun.

Or, maybe, we could expect designers to release products that don't include infinite loops. If I developed software at the level of competence designers for TTRPGs demonstrate for their work, there's no company in the world that would hire me and no person who would buy my products. The TTRPG industry has trapped itself in a vicious cycle of designer incompetence mollified by "just fix it yourself", and it's driving quality into the ground.

But if you wanted to match the depth of what's available for 3.5 of a race with any decent amount of support, you'd have to do a lot of work regardless of the system. I don't see how it's specifically a critique of PF 2e.

I don't know enough about the system to say, but I don't think that's what he was asking for. There are plenty of races in 3e that are plug-and-play, even setting-specific ones.

Psyren

2021-09-08, 04:49 PM

The expectation of the Same Game Test is that any given character will fail some of the challenges. The fact that a Crusader does, in fact, fail some of the challenges means that they're balanced. You can't point to a few of the challenges and expect that to mean anything, you need to show that overall performance differs at a consistent level of optimization.

Which challenges does a Totemist fail that a Crusader succeeds at? And equally important, how many are in each class' column?
They are not on the same footing.

clone doesn't raise the dead, it's a strategy for avoiding death. planar binding doesn't let you raise the dead, it lets you contract with someone who can raise the dead. limited wish is the only example that actually counts, and even then it's substantially worse and more delayed than what the Cleric gets, which is what you actually want because no party should ever be in a situation where the choices made at chargen completely lock them out of solving certain problems.

Wrong, read clone again. As long as you got/preserved the bit of flesh, you can (and indeed should) cast it after they are dead. Creating the clone while they're alive is pointless, you get a big blob of nothing by doing that.

"Contract with someone who can raise the dead" still allows the wizard to pull it off without any assistance from their party, which was the point under discussion.

Limited Wish being more delayed than a cleric is irrelevant. I never said they had to be equal to a cleric, just that they can beat the challenge. They are not "locked out" of solving the problem.

No they don't. Thor has different powers from Odin or Hela, who are both the same race.

Dispater has different powers from Mephistopheles and Asmodeus, who are both the same race.

Or, maybe, we could expect designers to release products that don't include infinite loops. If I developed software at the level of competence designers for TTRPGs demonstrate for their work, there's no company in the world that would hire me and no person who would buy my products. The TTRPG industry has trapped itself in a vicious cycle of designer incompetence mollified by "just fix it yourself", and it's driving quality into the ground.

If that's how you feel, here's a radical thought, stop giving them money then. And convince enough others to do the same. Or acknowledge that yours is a fringe opinion that the designers can safely ignore.

Batcathat

2021-09-08, 04:52 PM

I really wish people would stop presenting this as the core issue with the Wizard.

I'm not saying it's the issue, but it's very much a issue. Personally, I often mind casters' superior versatility than I mind their superior power and while changing out their spells isn't the entire reason for that (spells are indeed that good, I agree) it's certainly part of it.

Not that being able to change out your abilities isn't a valid character concept, but that should come with being worse than the people who are stuck with specific abilities.

I would not give the designers that much credit. The designers don't agree with Psyren, it's just that nothing since "low level 3.0" in this product line has gotten properly tested, so nothing ever hits its targets. Paizo aggressively drove off the people who wanted to do scientific testing in the PF1 beta.

I'm sure testing would've fixed a lot of the really broken stuff but I doubt it would have changed the basic assumption of "magic can do anything". While people disagree on where to draw the line, most probably agree that there should be things a martial character can't do but that rarely seems to come up with casters 'cause it's maaaaaagic.

icefractal

2021-09-08, 06:47 PM

I haven't seen "I want to outshine the other PCs" as anyone's stated position, although people may have secretly thought it.

What I have seen, and somewhat feel myself, is:
"I'm happy with where casters are at in 3.x, and how they relate to monsters and the world. Feel free to boost non-casters up to parity however you like, but leave casters how they are."

That said, I'd be on board for a more defined view of what magic can do, and particularly what different types of magic can do. I think it'd be cool if high-level arcane/divine/psionic/etc characters were less fungible.

Now personally, I think it's a lot easier to boost non-casters in a coherent way if you give that a theme besides not having something.
"I've learned the secret martial technique of Third Sight, illusions can't fool me." - ok, sounds good.
"The strength of my ideals can pierce through your illusions!" - also good.
"The strength of my ... nothing ... can pierce through your illusions! I defeat them by being an ordinary person!" - umm, so are illusions actually just stupid **** that only casters believe in? Should every ordinary villager be able to ignore illusions too?

Endless Rain

2021-09-08, 07:24 PM

PF2e feels like... kind of like it has a lot of D&D 4e influence in its ruleset. This isn't an attempt at edition warring, 4e is a very good game. But both games started with similar design goals of "balance and fix late 3.5, and rebuild the system from the ground up to do it", and both games ended up with many of the same features. You can see it in the way class feats are structured, the way multiclassing works, the replacing of granular skill ranks with proficiency ranks, etc.

Which, again, is not bad, but PF2e is targeted at an audience of players who bought Pathfinder 1e, in part, because they did not like D&D 4e. And Paizo doesn't seem to be marketing PF2 to D&D 4e fans even though the game would be a very good fit for many of them.

The design of PF2e is sound. The marketing, however, has been a failure because it is targeting the people who are the least likely to be interested in a 4e-like RPG.

Calthropstu

2021-09-08, 07:33 PM

RandomPeasant

2021-09-08, 09:22 PM

Which challenges does a Totemist fail that a Crusader succeeds at? And equally important, how many are in each class' column?

I don't know, you're the one saying that a consensus a decade old that says the classes are reasonably balanced with each other is wrong. Maybe you could do the legwork to at least sketch out why your position is correct, rather than making an argument that would be equally accurate whether you were right or wrong. I'm not going to build an entire argument just to tell you why you're wrong when you haven't done anything that tells me you're right.

"Contract with someone who can raise the dead" still allows the wizard to pull it off without any assistance from their party, which was the point under discussion.

You've activated my trap card! Remember how you said the Fighter paying NPCs or buying items was him solving a challenge where you needed teleport? Well, by that standard the Fighter can already raise the dead.

Dispater has different powers from Mephistopheles and Asmodeus, who are both the same race.

Redgar has different powers from Jozan, despite them being the same race. Clearly, we need to abolish the Fighter and Cleric classes and replace them with a single Human class that can be built to do either thing.

If that's how you feel, here's a radical thought, stop giving them money then. And convince enough others to do the same. Or acknowledge that yours is a fringe opinion that the designers can safely ignore.

"The only feedback you can give to products is boycotts" will not start being a reasonable position no matter how many times you repeat it. Neither will "products should be good" start being a fringe opinion. A product that is half-finished halves the work I need to do to get a working product. That does not, by any stretch of the imagination, suggest that I am unjustified in complaining at being sold unfinished work.

Personally, I often mind casters' superior versatility than I mind their superior power and while changing out their spells isn't the entire reason for that (spells are indeed that good, I agree) it's certainly part of it.

I mean I guess? But by that standard so are things like "having a familiar" or "getting Knowledge as a class skill" or any number of other traits caster classes have that are technically positive. I think if you want to say that you have an aesthetic preference for characters with an immutable (or mostly immutable) set of abilities, that's fine. You are, as anyone is, allowed to have any aesthetic preference that you want. But I think you need to stop presenting it as part of the balance debate, because a broad look at the data shows that it's just not a big issue. Binders, Incarnates, and Totemists can all swap their powers around, and none of them are a problem.

Not that being able to change out your abilities isn't a valid character concept, but that should come with being worse than the people who are stuck with specific abilities.

That gets into the delicate issue of doing comparisons across power levels. Because if your contention is that being a generalist should make you worse at a particular field than a specialist in that field, it's not enough to simply point at a generalist and a specialist, you have to point at a generalist and a specialist who are at (roughly) the same power level to begin with. So just saying "the Wizard can fight better than the Fighter" is sort of missing the point. Of course the Wizard can fight better than the Fighter, the Wizard is much better than the Fighter.

If we are going to be rebalancing things, the question we need to ask is not if the Wizard has an absolute advantage over the Fighter (because those would get smoothed out in the rebalancing), but if the Wizard has a comparative advantage. And I think that case is much harder to make. It's true that a Gish Wizard can fight as well as a comparably optimized Fighter. But they're less effective than a comparably optimized Wizard overall, because the Wizard isn't particularly effective at being a melee combatant, they just have so much power (and the Fighter so little) that they can squander it doing something they're not very good at and still end up ahead. That implies that if you did scale the Fighter up to the overall power level of the Wizard, they would in fact be better at whatever it is you consider the Fighter's exact specialty to be.

I think, once you get down into the nitty-gritty, the issue largely is just a power problem. The way the Wizard works is not fundamentally flawed, it's just that the Wizard is tuned much higher than the rest of the system. Now, I think you can make some arguments about nonlinearities that would arise for raising everyone all the way up to the peak of what the Wizard can do, but in general I don't think the way the Wizard works is the issue.

I'm sure testing would've fixed a lot of the really broken stuff but I doubt it would have changed the basic assumption of "magic can do anything". While people disagree on where to draw the line, most probably agree that there should be things a martial character can't do but that rarely seems to come up with casters 'cause it's maaaaaagic.

Maybe, but I don't think the evidence backs that up. At the levels where the game was actually tested, magic is balanced. knock measures up fairly against Open Lock at 3rd level. The Wizard's ability to take out a squad of goblins with sleep matches up evenly with the Fighter's ability to kill one goblin a round forever and survive attacks from those goblins at 1st level. You can argue the counterfactual that they would eventually have been unwilling to kill the necessary sacred cows, but the reality is that the things they tested work.

I don't even think the opposition to martial characters eventually leveling up into some superpowers was all that strong. The 3.5 DMG comes with three PrCs that are aimed at Rogues. Every single one gives you some kind of superhuman ability, whether it's spellcasting or the Shadowdancers idiosyncratic shadow-based powers. The hole mundanes are in is not something people want. It's not an inevitable part of the game. It's the result of designers not trying very hard, and I am not enough of a capitalist to accept "well, it's the most profitable option" as a defense of a bad product, nor do I believe that it is.

That said, I'd be on board for a more defined view of what magic can do, and particularly what different types of magic can do. I think it'd be cool if high-level arcane/divine/psionic/etc characters were less fungible.

I think the power level arguments against the Wizard are fairly weak. I think the conceptual arguments against the Wizard are quite strong. People like specialized classes. People are more excited to play an Elementalist than a Wizard, and more excited still to play a Snowshaper or Fire Mage. You do need generalists just from a coverage perspective, but people will flock to your Thunder Mages and Ninjas in droves, even if they are conceptually a subset of the Druid and the Rogue.

Now personally, I think it's a lot easier to boost non-casters in a coherent way if you give that a theme besides not having something.

Not having something also tends to be quite mechanically dull. If the way the Fighter competes in a high-level environment is by turning it back into a low level environment, you should've just had the stones to say "Fighters do not scale to high levels, take a Paragon Path" and let the guy who wants to play at low level do that.

WesleyVos

2021-09-08, 09:53 PM

I really hate that "raise shield as an action" nonsense. Is there a way to make that passive?

I mean, you can. When playing around with it, I did...for about five rounds. Then I realized that with the way shields work now, it's actually better this way. Your shield doesn't just give a static bonus to a certain type of AC, but applies to all AC (there's no longer a distinction between touch and normal AC), but your shield absorbs damage and can break if it gets hit hard enough (which is why crafting is actually useful and important in PF2e). And if you're using a shield, you then get to choose between making a third attack at -10 (or second at -5 if you also moved) or raising your shield for defense. Are you all-out attacking, or are you going to be cautious? It's got some great RP implications as well.

Rynjin

2021-09-08, 10:09 PM

Rhyltran

2021-09-08, 10:29 PM

The RP implications are that your supposed combat specialist has exactly zero idea of how to fight with a shield.

It reeks of Jason Buhlman's uncoordinated ass basing game mechanics on what he personally can do AGAIN.

Mostly lurking but I have to agree with this. Yeah, I get it. This is an RPG and not real life but there is a reason in 3.5 shields provide a passive AC. That's because your shield in combat should always be up. You shouldn't have to specify to raise it. The default assumption is that it is raised.

There is no case in a battle that the shield should be "down" or "relaxed." Nor should it take an action like movement/attack.

Psyren

2021-09-08, 11:21 PM

I don't know, you're the one saying that a consensus a decade old that says the classes are reasonably balanced with each other is wrong. Maybe you could do the legwork to at least sketch out why your position is correct, rather than making an argument that would be equally accurate whether you were right or wrong.

So you'd rather regurgitate Appeal To Tradition than think critically about something for yourself?

Totemists have class features that interact with all three pillars of the game (combat, exploration, interaction). Crusaders interact with one, maybe two if you squint.

You've activated my trap card! Remember how you said the Fighter paying NPCs or buying items was him solving a challenge where you needed teleport? Well, by that standard the Fighter can already raise the dead.

I'm not the one complaining that every class can't solve everything solo, you are. I'm the one who's okay with a degree of imbalance if it means we get meaningful differences, remember?

Redgar has different powers from Jozan, despite them being the same race.

Nice try, but Jozan and Redgar's power differences are from their classes. Dispater and Mephistopheles' powers don't come from class, and neither do Thor and Odin's.

"The only feedback you can give to products is boycotts" will not start being a reasonable position no matter how many times you repeat it. Neither will "products should be good" start being a fringe opinion. A product that is half-finished halves the work I need to do to get a working product. That does not, by any stretch of the imagination, suggest that I am unjustified in complaining at being sold unfinished work.

You can complain about whatever you want to complain about. But expecting your complaints to be worth anything when you follow them up by rewarding products you dislike is not a rational expectation.

Arkhios

2021-09-09, 12:19 AM

Thoroughly not surprised, whether or not this is accurate. PF2 is a mess. PF1 is still far better, even if they didn't produce more player content. They could always shift their focus more on publishing adventures. There's already enough material to pique imagination.

Batcathat

2021-09-09, 01:11 AM

I think if you want to say that you have an aesthetic preference for characters with an immutable (or mostly immutable) set of abilities, that's fine.

Not at all, I quite like the idea in some forms but I think that a) it should come with some drawbacks and b) they should still have to specialize to some degree. I suppose the latter is more of an aesthetic preference though, since aside from balance issues I find the wizard who can change all of their abilities about as often and easy as they change their pants a little boring (from a mechanical standpoint, they can obviously still be an interesting character in other ways).

But I think you need to stop presenting it as part of the balance debate, because a broad look at the data shows that it's just not a big issue. Binders, Incarnates, and Totemists can all swap their powers around, and none of them are a problem.

Yes, swapping powers around is in itself not a problem but if you have a class that has superior abilities and the ability to change their abilities to suit the situation, it's even more likely to overshadow other classes than a class with superior but static abilities. Again, I'm not saying it's the main problem or anything but it is part of it.

Maybe, but I don't think the evidence backs that up. At the levels where the game was actually tested, magic is balanced. knock measures up fairly against Open Lock at 3rd level. The Wizard's ability to take out a squad of goblins with sleep matches up evenly with the Fighter's ability to kill one goblin a round forever and survive attacks from those goblins at 1st level. You can argue the counterfactual that they would eventually have been unwilling to kill the necessary sacred cows, but the reality is that the things they tested work.

The balance may (mostly) work but I don't think that's any evidence of them setting any conceptual limits on magic. If I were to create a magic system, the very first thing I would want to do would be to do is to decide what magic can do and what it can't do (whether this is dozens of pages or a few sentences). I don't see any evidence that anyone ever did that for D&D. This doesn't have anything directly to do with class balance, of course, but it probably contributes to it indirectly.

Xervous

2021-09-09, 07:09 AM

pabelfly

2021-09-09, 08:30 AM

Re: empty/false choices

I’m not saying PF2 is littered with trap options. It’s a search query of all subclass features that failed to return the index pages for each subclass. Multitudes of abilities are explicitly part of feat chains, many more are only usable by or worth using with the archetype you picked at level 1. Once you get past the initial impression of, for example, “60 feats across 20 levels” you realize there’s really just 3-4 paths on offer.

You do have the roughly 3-4 paths if you don't want to leave the base class, true, but then you have dedications for every other class, as well as all the prestige classes available, and you do have all the general feats too.

But definitely could do with more options, agreed.

Palanan

2021-09-09, 08:32 AM

Originally Posted by Rynjin
That would be Age of Ashes, which back when it first came out caught a lot of flak for a few reasons.

Thanks for following up on this. I had looked at it earlier and it seemed…generic, somehow, without much to really grab me.

It sounds like that may have been on purpose, to draw in players with classic game elements—which seems likely if they combined it with the Grand Tour of Golarion to highlight all their favorite parts of the setting.

And the final villain does sound disappointingly handled—especially since, like you, I always wondered what was really going on in that corner of Golarion. Unfortunate that they didn’t develop it further.

Originally Posted by RandomPeasant
…but Thor clearly has personal powers that exceed his racial abilities, and in D&D those would be modeled as a class.

Thor’s powers could just as easily be from a template; there is no a priori reason why they have to be modeled by class.

Originally Posted by Xervous
It’s a search query of all subclass features that failed to return the index pages for each subclass.

I cannot make the slightest sense of this. Can you clarify here?

Lord Raziere

2021-09-09, 08:50 AM

Thor’s powers could just as easily be from a template; there is no a priori reason why they have to be modeled by class.

This is ignoring the fact that most people don't use templates, the expected game is "class/race" thats it.

now you can argue that those expectations are nonsense and that if people want them they should think outside of them or something, or that only the template is an accurate reflection of what is happening with Thor.

but that doesn't address the problem, because in all probability people will continue to use "class/race" and not care about addons. nor is this being accurate to biology or the source material particularly relevant. there are a lot of places where DnD only takes partial or passing inspiration from something and doesn't care about representing it accurately 100%.

and then there is the problem that that in DnD, the sorcerer exists, no matter what your opinion of the sorcerer that is an example of someone canonically getting a class because they were born that way, not because of training or the like. so if Thor's abilities are not trained, that doesn't matter, because a class can be anything as long as it as it can fit into a 20 level progression system.

Xervous

2021-09-09, 10:52 AM

I cannot make the slightest sense of this. Can you clarify here?

The various options are generally either explicit or implicit feat chains that frequently align themselves with one of the starting archetypes you choose for the class. The degree to which they mechanically and statistically feel tied to these archetypes suggests something very close to subclasses. Consider a 5e monk subclass or a PF sorcerer bloodline. They have the format of:

Level (low): You’re an X Harry! You get the following things at these levels:
A
B
C
D
Etc

Meanwhile PF2 presents it as
Level 1: yer an X Harry!

Ability A: can only be used with weapons favored by X
Ability B: requires ability A
Ability C: requires ability B
Ability D: effect is only noteworthy if you’re explicitly an X

Newcomers see the steps in selecting these abilities and may confuse it for breadth of options. In reality they’ve obfuscated subclasses and littered a few universal choices around the edges.

Psyren

2021-09-09, 10:52 AM

I cannot make the slightest sense of this. Can you clarify here?

Not Xervous, but my understanding is - the majority of PF2 feats are part of invisible or barely visible feat chains. The system is therefore a lot less modular than it first seems, hence the "only 3-4 paths." In other words, they might as well have just done subclasses like 5e did since you're basically locked into specific ability paths anyway, and it would be a lot easier on new players who don't have to read through a pile of feats to parse the chains out themselves.

Ninja'd

RandomPeasant

2021-09-09, 05:00 PM

Totemists have class features that interact with all three pillars of the game (combat, exploration, interaction). Crusaders interact with one, maybe two if you squint.

So what? Unlike what you seem to believe, balance doesn't require homogeneity. The Crusader is better at combat than the Totemist is, and combat is a much larger part of the game. One might argue that "go sit in the corner, this is an exploration challenge and you're a Crusader" is a bad paradigm for the game, but that would be incompatible with your desire for there to be challenges only Wizards get to solve.

I'm not the one complaining that every class can't solve everything solo, you are. I'm the one who's okay with a degree of imbalance if it means we get meaningful differences, remember?

You seem to have lost the thread somewhere. You claim to want Fighters not to be able to raise the dead. You also claim that using your wealth to pay for an ability counts as having an ability. You further claim that planar binding summoning up outside contractors to solve a problem counts as the Wizard solving that problem. Therefore, by your own standards, the Fighter can already raise the dead. If you specifically object to the Fighter having a "Resur-flex-tion" ability, that's totally fine and no one is saying he should. But that doesn't preclude him having some less silly way of raising the dead, or having some other ability on par with that.

Nice try, but Jozan and Redgar's power differences are from their classes. Dispater and Mephistopheles' powers don't come from class, and neither do Thor and Odin's.

Why?

You can complain about whatever you want to complain about. But expecting your complaints to be worth anything when you follow them up by rewarding products you dislike is not a rational expectation.

What's not a rational expectation is that companies should ignore the feedback of their paying customers in favor of your personal hobby horse. "Fighters should be worse than Wizards" costs extra design effort to implement, is deeply unpopular among the playerbase, and is not remotely consistent with the source material. The only reason to do it is that you like it, and that's not enough reason to do it.

Not at all, I quite like the idea in some forms but I think that a) it should come with some drawbacks and b) they should still have to specialize to some degree.

But again, it does come with drawbacks. The fact that the Wizard prepares their spells each day, instead of choosing their spells during the day, is a disadvantage compared to the Sorcerer. At least, in theory. In practice, getting spells earlier is more than enough for the Wizard to close the gap, and the fact that the Sorcerer starts out with one spell known of each level (past 1st) makes the idea of tactical flexibility a cruel joke. "You can cast any spell you want, as long as it's stinking cloud!"

Yes, swapping powers around is in itself not a problem but if you have a class that has superior abilities and the ability to change their abilities to suit the situation, it's even more likely to overshadow other classes than a class with superior but static abilities. Again, I'm not saying it's the main problem or anything but it is part of it.

But what I'm saying is that "part of it" is weasel words. "Part of" the reason the Wizard is better than the Fighter is the fact that the Wizard can cast arcane lock and the Fighter can't. But if someone started every debate about the Wizard and the Fighter by demanding that we address arcane lock, I at least would consider that person's position pretty weak.

This doesn't have anything directly to do with class balance, of course, but it probably contributes to it indirectly.

Does it contribute to the balance between the Wizard and the Beguiler? The Crusader and the Spirit Shaman? Laws of magic are good, but again I think they are largely good for reasons outside of balance. Obviously we can't know the counterfactual, but looking at the data that we do have, I think that if high levels had been extensively playtested, the contradictions present there would have gotten resolved somehow. WotC was willing to give martials the kinds of abilities they needed to keep up with casters (even fairly early on), they just failed to realize that A) those abilities needed to be given to all martials and B) they needed to come online much faster. Robust playtesting would have uncovered both those things.

Thor’s powers could just as easily be from a template; there is no a priori reason why they have to be modeled by class.

Sure. And the things modeled by Clerics could be from a "god-blessed" template. But that's just not how the system models things.

This is ignoring the fact that most people don't use templates, the expected game is "class/race" thats it.

More than that, they generally don't expect to be told "sorry, you don't get to realize your character concept at high levels, you picked the wrong race". If "Thor" is a race or template that gives you a bunch of lightning powers and fighting, rather than simply a Barbarian/Thunder King, then you're basically saying that if your game starts below a certain level, you can't build a character who can ever be Thor. Which is exactly the sort of anti-organic-character design that the game should avoid as much as possible. It's fine to say that "Thor" is a high level concept that belongs in a high level game. It's not okay to say that ever being able to become Thor is a high level concept that belongs in a high level game.

Batcathat

2021-09-09, 05:38 PM

But again, it does come with drawbacks. The fact that the Wizard prepares their spells each day, instead of choosing their spells during the day, is a disadvantage compared to the Sorcerer. At least, in theory. In practice, getting spells earlier is more than enough for the Wizard to close the gap, and the fact that the Sorcerer starts out with one spell known of each level (past 1st) makes the idea of tactical flexibility a cruel joke. "You can cast any spell you want, as long as it's stinking cloud!"

Sure, there are drawbacks (Vancian magic is in some ways a very restrictive system) but they aren't really anywhere near limiting enough to change the fact that being able to swap out your already very powerful abilities to whatever the situation requires makes a very powerful class even more powerful.

It's as if Superman could take a nap and wake up with a different set of overpowered superpowers. I'd consider that Superman quite a bit more powerful than the normal one.

But what I'm saying is that "part of it" is weasel words. "Part of" the reason the Wizard is better than the Fighter is the fact that the Wizard can cast arcane lock and the Fighter can't. But if someone started every debate about the Wizard and the Fighter by demanding that we address arcane lock, I at least would consider that person's position pretty weak.

I'm not sure what point you are making. We can't adress part of the problem but only (what you consider to be) the majority of the problem?

Does it contribute to the balance between the Wizard and the Beguiler? The Crusader and the Spirit Shaman? Laws of magic are good, but again I think they are largely good for reasons outside of balance. Obviously we can't know the counterfactual, but looking at the data that we do have, I think that if high levels had been extensively playtested, the contradictions present there would have gotten resolved somehow. WotC was willing to give martials the kinds of abilities they needed to keep up with casters (even fairly early on), they just failed to realize that A) those abilities needed to be given to all martials and B) they needed to come online much faster. Robust playtesting would have uncovered both those things.

While we can't know for sure, I'm feeling pretty confident that a system where it was clear from the start that "Magic can do X, Y and Z but it can't do A or B" would lead to more balance than "magic can do anything we can think of".

I think proper rules for magic and proper playtesting, while both important, solve different problems. You could playtest the system for a decade but as long as magic can do anything, I doubt you'll end up with balanced classes. Like I said, better playtesting would probably take care of some of the rough edges and truly broken stuff but I doubt it would change the basic concept of magic.

Psyren

2021-09-09, 05:59 PM

So what? Unlike what you seem to believe, balance doesn't require homogeneity.

The point is that none of your examples of heterogeneity are actually balanced., and you just admitted that.

You seem to have lost the thread somewhere. You claim to want Fighters not to be able to raise the dead. You also claim that using your wealth to pay for an ability counts as having an ability.

No, I said the character has a means of solving the problem without needing an ability (class feature). Heterogeneity is thus maintained.

Why?

Because some powers in the game come from race or being, not class. Thor's ability to fly and throw lightning aren't trained, they're just things he does. If you want to play as Thor, ask your GM - don't expect every single Fighter to become Thor if he does enough push-ups, that's nonsense.

...is deeply unpopular among the playerbase,

Then why does "the playerbase" keep paying for it?

Lord Raziere

2021-09-09, 06:07 PM

Because some powers in the game come from race or being, not class. Thor's ability to fly and throw lightning aren't trained, they're just things he does. If you want to play as Thor, ask your GM - don't expect every single Fighter to become Thor if he does enough push-ups, that's nonsense.

Then why does "the playerbase" keep paying for it?

A sorcerer's abilities are also untrained, technically. By this logic, sorcerer should be a race.

Why they keep paying for it is irrelevant, Psyren. What matters is they pay at all. The paying customer has a demand that is not be fulfilled, and the customer is always right.

Clistenes

2021-09-09, 06:22 PM

You do have the roughly 3-4 paths if you don't want to leave the base class, true, but then you have dedications for every other class, as well as all the prestige classes available, and you do have all the general feats too.

But definitely could do with more options, agreed.

I haven't played PF2, but I have fiddled with character creation, and the feeling I got is that the process of creation is way more complex than in say 5e, but you aren't rewarded for the effort... the character I get in the end doesn't feel better that what I could build using 3.5, PF1 or 5e...

Also, the Core book is a mess... they need better editors that help them make the final product easier to digest...

Psyren

2021-09-09, 06:29 PM

Why they keep paying for it is irrelevant, Psyren. What matters is they pay at all. The paying customer has a demand that is not be fulfilled, and the customer is always right.

When there are competing demands, the designers have to pick one to allocate their resources to. The sound business decision is to side with the majority. You know, kind of like they're doing.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-09, 06:45 PM

It's as if Superman could take a nap and wake up with a different set of overpowered superpowers. I'd consider that Superman quite a bit more powerful than the normal one.

But is that what's happening? A Wizard who specialized in Necromancy can't wake up tomorrow and be as good a Gish as a dedicated Gish. Your argument only hold because you're doing comparisons that aren't valid. You're comparing across a vast gap in absolute power, and using that to make assertions about comparisons between specialists and generalists, but that just doesn't hold up. It's like saying the Fighter is secretly a generalist because he can do things as well as a specialized Expert.

I'm not sure what point you are making. We can't adress part of the problem but only (what you consider to be) the majority of the problem?

I'm saying that there are a lot of things that make the Wizard powerful. The Wizard has access to very good spells. It has a very fast spellcasting progression. It has a very favorable mechanic for learning new spells. But the thing you're focusing on is the one part of the Wizard that is actually worse than its competition. The ability to prepare new spells every day is not something you need to address to balance the Wizard, and addressing it won't particularly balance the Wizard. If you required Wizards to choose a single set of prepared spells each time they leveled up, the only classes that would make the Wizard worse than are the other T1 casters.

I think proper rules for magic and proper playtesting, while both important, solve different problems. You could playtest the system for a decade but as long as magic can do anything, I doubt you'll end up with balanced classes.

Sure you can. You just have to give all the classes (broadly-defined, not everyone needs to be a Wizard or cast spells) magic. It's true that you'll never balance the purely mundane Fighter some people want against a Wizard if magic is unlimited, but honestly you'll never balance him against the Wizard even under very sharp limits for magic. But you know what you can balance? Someone like Kaladin, who transitions from a purely mundane Fighter to someone with supernatural abilities of his own. And the designers showed that they weren't opposed in principle to the game working that way, they just didn't test enough to understand the degree to which it would be necessary.

The point is that none of your examples of heterogeneity are actually balanced., and you just admitted that.

Oh, look, your strategic unwillingness to define the position you are defending has paid off for you, allowing you to baselessly assert that I have agreed with you when I've done nothing of the sort. It's almost like I knew this is exactly the unproductive track this argument would take if you refused to define your terms, and is precisely why I asked you to define them before I engaged with your position.

No, I said the character has a means of solving the problem without needing an ability (class feature). Heterogeneity is thus maintained.

That's a distinction without a difference, or an explicit admission that you want to remove the ability to have adventures that depend on the abilities of characters from the game.

Because some powers in the game come from race or being, not class. Thor's ability to fly and throw lightning aren't trained, they're just things he does.

The Warlock's abilities aren't trained, they're borrowed from their patron. Does that mean Warlock can't be a class? The Sorcerer's abilities aren't trained, they're innate bloodline magic. Does that mean the Sorcerer can't be a class? The Favored Soul's abilities aren't trained, they're bestowed by a god. Does that mean the Favored Soul can't be a class? I also dispute that Thor's abilities aren't trained. Ragnarok shows him needing to achieve personal advancement to use his lightning powers without his hammer. It's not as close a match for class progression as Sacred Arts advancement in Cradle or Radiant Oaths in The Stormlight Archive, but Thor's development through the MCU looks a lot more like someone gaining class levels than someone with a pile of racial abilities.

Then why does "the playerbase" keep paying for it?

You are the only person I have ever met who thinks "you buy a product even though it is not perfect" is a gotcha.

When there are competing demands, the designers have to pick one to allocate their resources to. The sound business decision is to side with the majority. You know, kind of like they're doing.

Again, your position is the one that puts greater demands on scarce resources. And, no, your side is not the majority. "I don't care" is the majority, and you're equivocating between that and your extremely fringe position that the imbalance is good. Lots of people could care either way about the relative balance of the Wizard and the Fighter. Basically no one thinks it is good that the Fighter is worse.

Psyren

2021-09-09, 07:17 PM

"I don't care" is the majority,

Perfect! Now please explain why they should waste resources chasing the unicorn of the few who do.

torrasque666

2021-09-09, 07:22 PM

Why they keep paying for it is irrelevant, Psyren. What matters is they pay at all. The paying customer has a demand that is not be fulfilled, and the customer is always right.
If the customer continues to pay despite their demands being unmet, clearly the demand isn't important enough to them. Because if the demand was actually in demand they'd go to a competitor that met it. The customer is only right so far as they determine what is in demand. But they still have to enforce that by going to those who meet it, and not buying from those who don't. Otherwise, what reason does the producer have to meet it? They get the money regardless, who cares if their customerbase has an unmet demand. Its on the customers to then vote with their wallets, otherwise they can whine and complain all they want, but if they keep giving money their whinging has no weight to it.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-09, 07:37 PM

Perfect! Now please explain why they should waste resources chasing the unicorn of the few who do.

I agree, they should stop expending the engineering effort they're wasting on supporting the minority preference for martials to be worse than casters. I'm glad you're willing to put aside your personal hobby-horse so that other people can play the game the way they want.

If the customer continues to pay despite their demands being unmet, clearly the demand isn't important enough to them. Because if the demand was actually in demand they'd go to a competitor that met it.

I'll take "Market Failure" for $200, Alex. Is it really unimaginable that the people who wrote a game that contained infinite loops that were found before they were published would decide not to expend the effort to make their product better because they're lazy, rather than because that is the perfectly rational response? Alternatively, consider that in most places the market for TTRPGs is basically "the current edition of D&D or a prior edition of D&D or the game that one guy at the LGS is obsessed with", so there may simply not be a viable alternative.

Psyren

2021-09-09, 09:34 PM

If the customer continues to pay despite their demands being unmet, clearly the demand isn't important enough to them. Because if the demand was actually in demand they'd go to a competitor that met it. The customer is only right so far as they determine what is in demand. But they still have to enforce that by going to those who meet it, and not buying from those who don't. Otherwise, what reason does the producer have to meet it? They get the money regardless, who cares if their customerbase has an unmet demand. Its on the customers to then vote with their wallets, otherwise they can whine and complain all they want, but if they keep giving money their whinging has no weight to it.

Precisely.

I agree, they should stop expending the engineering effort they're wasting on supporting the minority preference for martials to be worse than casters. I'm glad you're willing to put aside your personal hobby-horse so that other people can play the game the way they want.

But it's not, because they want classes to actually be different and magic to feel special. This is a natural consequence of that.

Lord Raziere

2021-09-09, 10:25 PM

I'll take "Market Failure" for $200, Alex. Is it really unimaginable that the people who wrote a game that contained infinite loops that were found before they were published would decide not to expend the effort to make their product better because they're lazy, rather than because that is the perfectly rational response? Alternatively, consider that in most places the market for TTRPGs is basically "the current edition of D&D or a prior edition of D&D or the game that one guy at the LGS is obsessed with", so there may simply not be a viable alternative.

Indeed. Also "vote with your wallet" is a commonly recommended tactic but I've never seen any successful examples of it. seems like it would just get out any who criticizes the product, thus creating an echo chamber of people who like it too much to put in a nonbiased critique, thus ensuring the product remains the same and only benefiting the people who recommend it to others but don't need to themselves.

while I've seen the alternatives with fighters being good: they're all online pdfs, there is no shortage of wuxia, anime or superhero rpgs that could easily pull off giving fighters nice things even if they can't really balance it. but I bet you if I mentioned any of them in real life most people wouldn't know what I'm talking about. for there to be a viable alternative, DnD would have to stop being this monolith in the rpg industry that dominates everything, and I don't know how to opt out of background radiation.

torrasque666

2021-09-09, 11:26 PM

Indeed. Also "vote with your wallet" is a commonly recommended tactic but I've never seen any successful examples of it. seems like it would just get out any who criticizes the product, thus creating an echo chamber of people who like it too much to put in a nonbiased critique, thus ensuring the product remains the same and only benefiting the people who recommend it to others but don't need to themselves.

Really. You've never seen an example of things that don't suit what the market wants dying due to competitors that did? That's like literally Business 101.

Rynjin

2021-09-09, 11:32 PM

I'm sitting here trying to figure out where the assumption that people who don't like a thing are buying it comes from.

I haven't paid Paizo a dime in years.

Crake

2021-09-09, 11:39 PM

Indeed. Also "vote with your wallet" is a commonly recommended tactic but I've never seen any successful examples of it. seems like it would just get out any who criticizes the product, thus creating an echo chamber of people who like it too much to put in a nonbiased critique, thus ensuring the product remains the same and only benefiting the people who recommend it to others but don't need to themselves.

Then the echo chamber festers, the product becomes worse and worse, until it reaches a breaking point, and you have a final, mass-exodus of the product/system/company. It works, it just takes time to reach that point.

Batcathat

2021-09-10, 01:35 AM

But is that what's happening? A Wizard who specialized in Necromancy can't wake up tomorrow and be as good a Gish as a dedicated Gish. Your argument only hold because you're doing comparisons that aren't valid. You're comparing across a vast gap in absolute power, and using that to make assertions about comparisons between specialists and generalists, but that just doesn't hold up. It's like saying the Fighter is secretly a generalist because he can do things as well as a specialized Expert.

Oh, I'm sorry. I should have clarified that I didn't mean they could swap for literally any abilities (or superpowers, in the case of the simile), merely chosen for a potentially very long list.

Yes, the Necromancer can't wake up a dedicated gish, but they can wake up with virtually completely different spells available than the day before. How is that not more powerful than having access to the same spells all the time? Wouldn't a theoretical skill-monkey class that could swap out all their skills overnight be more powerful than one that couldn't? (All other things being equal, of course).

I'm saying that there are a lot of things that make the Wizard powerful. The Wizard has access to very good spells. It has a very fast spellcasting progression. It has a very favorable mechanic for learning new spells. But the thing you're focusing on is the one part of the Wizard that is actually worse than its competition. The ability to prepare new spells every day is not something you need to address to balance the Wizard, and addressing it won't particularly balance the Wizard. If you required Wizards to choose a single set of prepared spells each time they leveled up, the only classes that would make the Wizard worse than are the other T1 casters.

I wouldn't say I was focused on it, at least not until we started specifically started discussing it. Again, I'm saying it's part of the problem, not the entire problem or even most of the problem. Yes, it would probably be possible to balance a wizard that can swap out their spells every day but as it is, it's part of what makes them unbalanced.

And how is "able to pick the spells best suited to the situation" worse than "always have the same spells" exactly? :smallconfused:

Sure you can. You just have to give all the classes (broadly-defined, not everyone needs to be a Wizard or cast spells) magic. It's true that you'll never balance the purely mundane Fighter some people want against a Wizard if magic is unlimited, but honestly you'll never balance him against the Wizard even under very sharp limits for magic. But you know what you can balance? Someone like Kaladin, who transitions from a purely mundane Fighter to someone with supernatural abilities of his own. And the designers showed that they weren't opposed in principle to the game working that way, they just didn't test enough to understand the degree to which it would be necessary.

If there's no limit to magic and wizards are defined by their ability to do magic, there's not really any conceptual upper limit to what they can do. So sure, if we give some equally unlimited character concept to all the other classes I guess we might be able to balance them, but it seems a lot more troublesome than just setting some basic rules for what magic can do.

Psyren

2021-09-10, 01:39 AM

I'm sitting here trying to figure out where the assumption that people who don't like a thing are buying it comes from.

I haven't paid Paizo a dime in years.

Not sure if this was aimed at me, but I made -two- points actually:

1) If someone hates a design philosophy (Paizo or WotC), continuing to financially support them undermines their criticism of that philosophy. (The point quoted above)

2) If you and everyone who thinks like you stops doing #1, and the designers can clearly/safely not care, then mathematically you must be a minority of their customer base. And expecting them to radically shift their design philosophy instead of spending that time making product that the majority wants to see doesn't make business sense.

Now granted, in my case, I currently support Paizo by buying Starfinder products. But conversely, I don't hate P2 either, so I don't mind that I'm likely supporting it indirectly. And moving away from Paizo, I definitely buy 5e. Both of these current games maintain a level of C/MD that I find reasonable.

For those who truly hate C/MD, I'd actually recommend Starfinder, which can \do a decent job moving away from it and still feeling immersive since technology keeping up with magic makes sense.

Then the echo chamber festers, the product becomes worse and worse, until it reaches a breaking point, and you have a final, mass-exodus of the product/system/company. It works, it just takes time to reach that point.

It's funny - I just find it amusing that the one time this actually happened, was the time WotC did try to eliminate C/MD. Hmmm :smallamused:

Batcathat

2021-09-10, 01:53 AM

But it's not, because they want classes to actually be different and magic to feel special. This is a natural consequence of that.

No, it's not. Well, I suppose it depends on what's necessary for magic to feel special. If it's "must be objectively better than non-magic" I suppose you're entirely correct.

Psyren

2021-09-10, 01:57 AM

No, it's not. Well, I suppose it depends on what's necessary for magic to feel special. If it's "must be objectively better than non-magic" I suppose you're entirely correct.

Define "objectively better." Magic has multiple drawbacks last I checked.

Batcathat

2021-09-10, 02:03 AM

Define "objectively better." Magic has multiple drawbacks last I checked.

Well, casters have drawbacks (even if they are usually lesser than the non-caster drawbacks) but I'm not really sure magic itself has many drawbacks. There are things like anti-magic zones, I suppose, but they're unlikely to pop up enough to matter in most situations.

I absolutely think that magic should be able to do things that mundane means cannot and that casters should be superior in some situations. It's just that I think the reverse should be true as well.

Psyren

2021-09-10, 02:20 AM

I think the reverse can be true, provided those drawbacks are allowed to matter.

I don't even really count dead magic; that's a cudgel and should be used sparingly. I mean more subtle things like a Knock spell being louder and having less ammunition that a rogue with a set of lockpicks.

Batcathat

2021-09-10, 02:29 AM

I don't even really count dead magic; that's a cudgel and should be used sparingly. I mean more subtle things like a Knock spell being louder and having less ammunition that a rogue with a set of lockpicks.

Sure, some individual spells are worse than the mundane alternative or at least comes with their own drawbacks. If all spells worked like that, things would probably be a lot more balanced.

But I think neither of us want casters and non-casters to be able to do the exact same things in slightly different ways. So I'm all for some spells being better than the mundane option or even doing things not available to non-casters. But again, it should go both ways.

icefractal

2021-09-10, 04:31 AM

This is where I think having a theme beyond "not having magic" would really help. Because we do want a mage to be better than "some random guy off the street", which means it can't be balanced by being zero-sum (having mages be so incompetent at normal tasks that they need supernatural powers just to get through a normal day, for example).

So we need to distinguish why, say, a Rogue is not just "some random guy off the street". There could be a lot of reasons, but it does need at least one.

RandomPeasant

2021-09-10, 06:32 AM

But it's not, because they want classes to actually be different and magic to feel special. This is a natural consequence of that.

Odd that the characters with the most unique mechanics (Warlocks, Crusaders, Binders, Incarnates, Duskblades, and so on) are also the most balanced, then. Almost like restraining yourself to make a certain class of characters worse does shrink the design space. Who could have predicted that?

And how is "able to pick the spells best suited to the situation" worse than "always have the same spells" exactly? :smallconfused:

How is "choose what you'll do with each spell slot at the beginning of the day" better than "choose what you'll do with each spell slot when you use it", exactly? You're conflating the fact that the Wizard has an extremely generous mechanism for learning additional spells (though notably less generous than the Cleric or the Druid) with the fact that the Wizard can change which of their known spells they prepare each day. The former is a big deal, and if you wanted to suggest that Wizards should not have free access to a magic mart at which to buy scrolls, I would agree that that is a good change. But the latter is completely and totally fine. As evidenced by all the classes that do it and are not remotely overpowered.

just setting some basic rules for what magic can do.

Can you make a martial that can compete with the Beguiler while maintaining his mundane dogmatism? The Dread Necromancer? Unless you limit magic far beyond what's reasonable for the sort of game D&D is, or limit it mechanically so much that it becomes unfun to play spellcasters, the martials need to scale past "I am a normal dude who is very skilled at sword-ing". I also reject the notion that that makes the Fighter "the same as" the Wizard in any real way. A Swordsage is not the same as a Warmage. Thor is not the same as Doctor Strange. Taniel Two-Shot is not the same as Privileged Borbador. Characters don't have to be the same to reach the same level of power. But if one character's concept is "I don't have superpowers", the only way to balance them against the ones with superpowers is a really harsh power level cap, and that's just not appropriate for D&D.

It's funny - I just find it amusing that the one time this actually happened, was the time WotC did try to eliminate C/MD. Hmmm :smallamused:

Sorry, no, this argument is wrong. People hated 4e because they really liked having the game go for exactly 20 levels. Less cheekily, 4e tried to eliminate CMD by bringing casters down to the level of martials. What 4e suggests is that people really hate characters like the Fighter that don't have meaningful non-combat abilities and tolerated 3e, PF, and 5e because some characters got them. It is the opposite of evidence for your position.

I absolutely think that magic should be able to do things that mundane means cannot and that casters should be superior in some situations. It's just that I think the reverse should be true as well.

What do you envision the protected role for "mundane means" being that is as impactful as raise dead, teleport, or plane shift? Bear in mind that those are abilities 9th level casters get, and there are twenty levels in the game.

This is where I think having a theme beyond "not having magic" would really help. Because we do want a mage to be better than "some random guy off the street", which means it can't be balanced by being zero-sum (having mages be so incompetent at normal tasks that they need supernatural powers just to get through a normal day, for example).

Pretty much. I can totally understand and support the desire to have a Paladin be good at a different set of things and to do things in a different way from a Wizard. But what I've never been able to wrap my head around is the demand for a Fighter who is completely mundane to be better than a Wizard at some things throughout the game's progression. You can start poking at it from the end of the Wizard, but to me the more obvious question has always been the martial characters who aren't mundane. If the Fighter's mundane sword skill is supposed to carry him to 20th level, what the hell is supposed to happen with classes like the Duskblade or Ranger (that have martial skill and magic), or characters from the source material like Anomander Rake or even Logen Ninefingers who are skilled combatants while having magical abilities? Am I supposed to believe that Logen is a 21st level character?

Batcathat

2021-09-10, 07:02 AM

How is "choose what you'll do with each spell slot at the beginning of the day" better than "choose what you'll do with each spell slot when you use it", exactly? You're conflating the fact that the Wizard has an extremely generous mechanism for learning additional spells (though notably less generous than the Cleric or the Druid) with the fact that the Wizard can change which of their known spells they prepare each day. The former is a big deal, and if you wanted to suggest that Wizards should not have free access to a magic mart at which to buy scrolls, I would agree that that is a good change. But the latter is completely and totally fine. As evidenced by all the classes that do it and are not remotely overpowered.

Oh, I think we're genuinely arguing past each other. I should probably have been clearer (and this time I'm saying that without sarcasm :smallamused: ). I didn't mean that a wizard's way of picking what spells to cast was superior to any other way of picking what spells to cast, just that it was superior to always having the exact same spells to cast, similar to how a fighter or rogue is locked into always having (more or less) the same abilities from day to day.

Can you make a martial that can compete with the Beguiler while maintaining his mundane dogmatism? The Dread Necromancer? Unless you limit magic far beyond what's reasonable for the sort of game D&D is, or limit it mechanically so much that it becomes unfun to play spellcasters, the martials need to scale past "I am a normal dude who is very skilled at sword-ing".

Sure, I don't mind non-casters having supernatural abilities (while I can understand those who do, I agree that it's probably not possible to balance in a game like D&D). I'm very much in favor of balancing by nerfing one end and boosting the other. That said, I still think magic should have clear limits and there should be things it can't do that can be done through non-magic means.

I also reject the notion that that makes the Fighter "the same as" the Wizard in any real way. A Swordsage is not the same as a Warmage. Thor is not the same as Doctor Strange. Taniel Two-Shot is not the same as Privileged Borbador. Characters don't have to be the same to reach the same level of power. But if one character's concept is "I don't have superpowers", the only way to balance them against the ones with superpowers is a really harsh power level cap, and that's just not appropriate for D&D.

I'm not sure what this is a reaction to. Was it my comment about having an equally unlimited concept for non-caster classes? If so, I agree that it wouldn't make them the same, but it most likely would cause a lot of the same problems. Designing abilities without any set limit for what those abilities should be able to accomplish seems like begging for problems.