Goblin Squad Member. Organized Play Member. 1,089 posts (12,991 including aliases). 34 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 25 Organized Play characters. 22 aliases.
Many industries have "The Convention" - the main one that is critical to their industry every year. Smaller companies sometimes double up room occupants to save costs. Sending your key employees to it is not just good for that employee, but as that employee grows, good for their employer.
I can't imagine if there was an issue with room sharing that someone as talented and important to the company as the individual we are discussing couldn't have asked the CEO at the time to spring for their own room. Heck, they could have probably funded that directly by having a sale on adventures/scenarios written by that same person.
The incremental $1000 or so a year is well worth the investment in personnel development and more importantly, employee goodwill. This doesn't feel like an issue of "we're over-spoiling our employees!"
James just needs to -
1) take advantage of the whole Infinite thing
2) run a Kickstarter
3) bring back the old guard from the early APs
4) produce another magnum opus or three
I'm confident that a lot of people would "subscribe" for individual releases, get the free PDF or discount for that one product, then unsubscribe.
Believe it or not, this can be a good thing for overall profits for businesses.
Take a look at some of the CDPs out there, some are reasonably priced for companies even as low as $5M ARR and have been key pieces to those companies growing their revenue 4-fold (or more), particularly when companies have business models of hybrid physical/virtual goods and subscription models. Especially true for niche company's with ARPU just like Paizo's.
A CDP would help Paizo understand and treat every customer as an individual. For example it would know which of the 6 books in a given AP a person is missing and prior to just Paizo simply hawking them at half price during a holiday or a cash-strapped month, it could progressively message and discount that one book to just the customers who are missing it (as well as collect the data from that customer that they are in fact not missing it because they picked it up from a FLGS or Amazon).
The models they build would help you identify & tag individual customers who "subscribe-and-cancel-for-benefits" and this feeds into the predictive modeling for your print runs. The technology here is phenomenal compared to even just 5 years ago and the UIs have gotten so good that even non-technical personnel can use them.
Check out a blueshift, exponea, blueconic, etc etc. Some of their case studies (for companies nearly identical to Paizo) can do a much better job of articulating why the more power you give to customers to self-serve, the better your customer data model & predictive models will be (and the more you'll be able to generate revenue/profits from them).
I for one would love if Paizo had a modern CDP so it could more personally market to me and progressively discount some of the products to the right price point where I'd purchase/transact with Paizo.com more often. Even in terms of just re-engagement marketing for 2E, you'd probably have an easy ROI for personalized campaigns to former customers who haven't transacted in months to years.
Apparently my credit card expired and it took over 20 minutes to get an order placed.
1) First I tried a working credit card which for some reason didn't work (it just spun forever on the CVC confirm).
2) Eventually it said declined (the card is good) but nonetheless I play along and go to the cards page to delete it and clear out all the cards
3) I go through checkout again, somehow it still has the old cards I deleted on the payment method page that I just deleted. I go through and enter a new one again.
4) The final checkout page still shows the old card despite adding a new one
5) I clear the cart and try all over again, still showing the old card despite seeing it no longer on the payment methods page (bad cache!)
6) Try another browser, no dice
7) Finally I switch to a whole other Paizo.com account in a new browser and am able to get the order placed with the card that wouldn't go in the other browser.
Would've loved PayPal or something here vs having to dig out several cards in order to navigate a pretty rough checkout with a good number of bugs. Or even another site to use like Drivethrurpg where it's easier to checkout as a backup when it's hard to purchase on Paizo.com.
I have to concur with you, rknop. I really dislike podcasts and streams for disseminating information. Maybe it's a generational thing, but reading is much faster for me. It's easier to reference what was said later. So perhaps a compromise is Paizo could also provide a transcript.
I checked out the Twitch streams yesterday as I was curious how much information could be siloed over there.
I noticed a lot of the GenCon streams were still <10 views a week after posting, so I suspect there's not a ton of crucial stuff being disseminated via Twitch since the audience (at least today) is very small and I imagine Paizo would want to get juicy information out to more than just a few people.
I'm used to a far more collaborative approach than PFS sounds like. And I don't want a finely tuned board game.
At least here, PFS was a major driver of Pathfinder sales. I saw hundreds of books purchased by players to 'prove ownership' whereas home gamers could easily rely on the online SRD alone.
In looking back at the 'death of PFS' here (the region went from ~500 monthly players to ~20), rules were only part of the problem. A lot of players were lost during the sci-fi season. Rules bloat hit a dearth of traditional fantasy simultaneously (there was much consternation at the Technologist feat and how only those 'in the know' had an advantage). This was followed by the 'elemental' season which I know was met with decreased enthusiasm alongside general fatigue, particularly as hybrid classes outshined core classes in play.
I can't help but see the hyper-balanced PF2e chassis is intended specifically to address organized play.
My first play-through of PF2e had all the players cite it felt 'board-gamey' like Munchkin Quest more than D&D. Here, the notion of +1 per level to all rolls isn't objectionable but is common-place as a game mechanic. It's when we are picking a system for home game campaign worlds where we want a better approximation of 'reality with magic'.
My sense is reception of PF2E currently divides a lot depending on how much a gamers' time split between home campaigns and PFS.
The folks coming from organized play fall into 2 camps:
1) Like it! I want a better balanced game (these are folks who played alongside raging barbarian/alchemists who did +32 damage at like 3rd level). They embrace the changes that bring all classes to parity (and things like heroism lasting 1 minute).
2) Dislike it! I want to dominate games (these are the folks who 'broke the game'). They generally don't like PF2e at this stage as it's not clear how to build a character vastly superior to average.
The folks coming from home games fall into 2 camps:
1) Dislike it! They have a finely tuned game world, where they rationalize how fast a character is, or costs of goods, or how magic plays into their campaign (and consequently house ruled things like a Create Water cantrip). They're not as enthused because things like +1 per level to everything means oddities like a 5th level Carpenter who picks up a sword for the first time ever probably has a better chance as striking a target than a 2nd level Fighter (or take your pick of wizards arm-wrestling or other similar metaphors).
2) Like it! Their home groups approximated organized play a little more closer and they had game-breaking players and the system as it stands provides a better engine to reign those players in by using the printed 'rules' as the hammer vs having obvious GM fiat/discussions rein them in.
There's certainly exceptions here, undoubtedly the replies to this post will be those too!
Actually I was told the scaling was *intended* to be the same in this edition...
I believe the context of 'scaling' here was probably.
You can use the 'elite' template to make a monster more challenging (scale it) by adding +2 to their AC, saves, attacks, damage.
Which is like PF1e/3.5 scaling of adding the 'advanced' template to a create.
So scaling encounters from their base printed form is pretty much the same, you add a flat bonus to a bunch of stats.
(rather than suggesting overall scaling of characters from 1 to 20 is the same, as we see things the inability to create a level 1 half-orc with darkvision likely changes the difficulty of lower level adventures for that character if there were darkness mechanics to overcome). That's probably not 'scaling' in the game designers' minds, but rather the 'power curve' of the overall game.
Speaking on the topic of product development and product testing...
Before you even set aside a budget to build and launch a new product, there's quite a bit of market and product research that needs toshould be done. So if you're 'testing' the prospect of product success, it's against the clearly defined goal for that product.
As it's the easier path, products usually go after existing demand in the market. Otherwise, they'll require as part of their launch a significant investment of dollars in 'demand generation' - effectively $ into advertisements to convince and educate people they want something they didn't know they wanted/needed before the product existed.
Applying this in our case, if you just finished a home game of 1e/2e and looked at your players and said "man I wish there was a game just like this but it didn't use THAC0", then there's evidence of demand preceding a product.
Or if you were hanging out at conventions and you kept overhearing people say, "man I wish there was something just like this, but set in space or a post-apocalyptic world" then there's evidence of demand.
Then the hard part is quantifying how much demand there is. But ultimately you've identified an existing audience and your market testing is to see if your product fits that audience. With some notion of how big the market is (in people and $$), you also figure out what's the reasonable return on investment for making this product and optimistically assuming you can do relatively successful at selling it.
From what I've gleaned so far, Paizo's done market testing at conventions. This leads to the question 'Can they, using their budgets for signage and staff, project a reasonable presence and draw folks into their exhibits to sit down and play a 2-4 hour session, have a good time, and at the end part with some money to buy product?'
Based on their posts, the answer seems to be definitely.
It could be that PF2e is specifically targeted to convention atmospheres and not so much targeted to the home gamer running tabletop campaign worlds.
If I view PF2e through that lens, it certainly appears fairly on target.
It's been a while since I've played Munchkin Quest but I don't recall players at my table or their forums when it was released that majorly objected the notion of 'roll a dice, add your level to the result'.
If Paizo called these new rules "Pathfinder Quest", would we be more receptive to them?
(note, in a game like Munchkin Quest there's not really an issue with a high level wizard arm-wrestling ogres)
Many of the authors behind some of Paizo's best products have done just that.
If you flip through the best work Paizo ever did - your old Dungeon magazine, Runelords, Crimson Throne, Carrion Crown, etc APs you'll pick out names like Nick Logue, Greg Vaughan, Richard Pett, Tim Hitchcock, Brandon Hodge and others I'm forgetting (sorry!).
Pett still pens an occasional Pathfinder adventure but has launched the outstanding The Blight with 5e support.
Others are releasing 5e material across all genres (Hitchcock is writing scifi for Legendary Games supporting both 5e and Starfinder).
I'm still waiting to see what Wes Schneider does next since his adventurers were generally very solid and evocative.
One thing I'm curious about is if the new system will bring a lot of the most evocative adventure writers back to PF2e, even if it's via a 3PP.
Maybe it's too soon to start considering house rules.
We've already run into some fatigue on what things cost 1-action vs 2-actions.
Here's a house rule to try.
1. Instead of 3 actions per round, run 2 actions per round.
2. You can always move your movement each round, it doesn't cost an action and you can use it before, after and in-between actions.
3. Verbal components, pure mental actions and things like talking are free.
4. When you ready, its the same as delaying but you use your reaction to 'come back into initiative'.
5. Dropping item(s) costs no actions.
6. You can concentrate on one spell for free. Each additional spell require an action to maintain.
Immediate benefits:
1. Two actions are faster and easier to spend than 3 for folks who are trying to optimize their per-round actions while standing still.
2. The third attack action was lackluster
3. Folks have movement for free, so it's a "use it or lose it" proposition and when movement is free, people will tend to act more like real heroes in a real combat vs oddly moved chess pawns that suddenly don't move because they need to do something like drop something they are already holding.
I've been a Pathfinder Superscriber for years and have basically all the APs until the quality took a recent hit, so know I say this with reservation.
At the risk of drawing ire from other folks on the forums, you might want to consider 5e. It really is well designed from an introductory point of view.
For example - in combat, having just a single action to spend and being able to freely move and interact with objects without spending your 'action points' is just so much less stress on the brain than wrapping your heads around standard/move/swift actions (3.5/PF1e) or that readying or casting Magic Fang will take 2 actions while Summon Nature's Ally takes 3 (PF2e Playtest).
It also has "the label" so she knows she's playing the same game she saw on Stranger Things. I'd think moving to PF1e or PF2e would be a later step as both systems are more complex.
I dragged a player kicking and screaming to create a character to playtest. She went with 'elf ranger', which is her go-to in any game.
I'll try to summarize.
Fast forward through fairly boring and obvious stat boosts to hoping for a chance to feel awesome.
Elf Great, now its time to become more "elf-ey"...
*Scans the list of elf feats*
1. Ageless patience, something-something-downtime, pass
2. Ancestral longevity, meditate to be trained in a skill, pass but maybe come back..
3. Demon skirmisher, too situational, pass
4. Forlorn, +1 saves against emotion effects, blah, pass
5. Keen hearing, hmm some interest at the name, Seek action is a 60-ft cone vs 30-ft cone, blah, pass
6. Nimble, +5 Speed and ignore difficult, that one sounds OK I guess
By process of elimination we pick Nimble, because it's the "least bad"
Ranger OK, big change here is Hunt Target instead of Favored Enemy. This is now going to take an action, and it only benefits subsequent attacks against the same target...
Type of target right? Like designate goblins and its against all..
No, just that one goblin.
Huh, okay I guess.
Let's move on, you get to pick a feat.
Which one makes me a better hunter?
Okay, to this person, by "hunter" she means whichever one makes her a better hunter, like a bonus to Perception, or be a better archer, or better Survival or Stealth maybe)
Hold on, you have 4 to pick from, here they are...
1. Animal Companion pass, don't want to deal with another creature on the table...
2. Crossbow Ace pass
3. Double Slice that sounds like melee?yeah..pass
4. Monster Hunter this is the last one...
wow I hope it doesn't suck
When you critically succeed to identify a target you're hunting you and your allies get a +1 bonus on your next roll against it.
Critically succeed?
Yeah, you beat the roll by 10 or more
+1 bonus to just the next attack, which is the first one after that thing that's like Favored Enemy but not as good?
Yeah..
Can I skip that and pick something to boost my Survival or Stealth from General Feats?
No, you need to pick one of these 4 Ranger feats
Seriously?
Yep. How about we take Monster Hunter since that's the only one you have a chance to possibly use.
I guess.
This is the second time I've come close to going off the rails of the Playtest and just let players pick any feat in the book that's level 1 rather than the feats they are restricted to.
I feel like that would go a LONG way towards building enthusiasm.
5e killed PFS at the closest FLGS here (I would visit ~7 for PFS during its peak).
PFS we'd turn away players with 4 full tables (all the store would take), but they've since crammed a 5th table in and set up a half-dozen tents on the street in front to make way for the 5e demand. To be honest, its so crowded for the 5e events, many folks don't want to deal with the crazy crowds especially in the Summer heat.
The upcoming September Con still has 2 PFS tables and 1 PF2E table with 4+ players a piece. Last I checked there were over two dozen packed 5e tables at the same time.
From the folks at our local cons, I'd say about 1 in 25 are hardcore enough to go to GenCon. Out of the wider group, perhaps coincidentally, its the PF players who go to/went to GenCon who project the most satisfaction and positivity with the Playtest (they're also VCs/VLs).
I went ahead and put on my marketing hat for a few minutes and confirmed everything is great.
All missions accomplished.
Marketing Time:
Quote:
PF 2e should feel just like PF 1e.
Look! There's wizards and barbarians! Longswords and glaives! You can worship Shelyn or Gorum! Most importantly... goblins and alchemists! Classic! It feels exactly like PF 1e!
Quote:
Creating a character should be smoother and more intuitive.
Gone are those days of planning out multi-classing before you begin your adventure! Gone are those wonky favored class things. Gone is remembering 5 different abilities your race gave you, now there's 1 and you pick it so you're sure to remember it! Gone is spending points even! Points on stuff like Strength or Bluffing. Just pick your race, class and a single background and you're ready!
Quote:
Clean up flow of play, and add interesting choices in every part of the story (in between adventures, adventures, and combat within adventures.)
Lock into one of 3 binary (trinary?) modes! Explore! Encounter! *drumroll* Downtime! Don't just roll Initiative, roll Stealth! Or Perception! More choice! Are you a fighter? Did you pick a shield! Now choose to keep it raised while you explore, don't just look for traps or doors or monsters!
Quote:
Magic items should be interesting and fun.
Boring items are gone! Now sensational ability boosts for free! No more sleepy 4000gp purchases on a belt or headband just to find out everyone else picked the wrong color to match the team banner!
Quote:
Monsters should be easier to design.
Empowered! Want to make a wolf?! Pick a random number between +1 and +10! That's its attack! Want to make a bear! Do it again! Playtest against your players and see how it goes! Just don't pick a number too high or you'll be testing the new critical success rules too often!
Quote:
Simplify the combat system so that it runs more smoothly and intuitively.
Remember how hard it was to tell a move action, standard action and swift action apart? Remember how hard it was to remember what kind of action(s) your spell took? Your talents or powers? Now they're all just regular actions! Nothing else to remember! Freedom!
In our PF group, we're all pretty gung-ho about it due to the 'rebalancing.' Then again, over half of us are GMs, too, and rotate campaigns, so maybe your last point explains why we're all happy about it? :-)
Absolutely the case!
I'd imagine in a gaming group of 6 co-GMs the "willingness to convert" level is at least twice that of a gaming group with 1 always-GM and 5-never-GM players.
I'm not advocating on increasing 1st-level power creep or power creep at even any level as a benchmark, but that Paizo might want to consider giving some low-power "shinies" so it can better appeal to all those groups that aren't populated by co-GMs.
I mean it's silly but having our regular paladin player be able to start with a gilded pommel on his sword or a regular horse would go a long way without skewing any balance. Retributive strike vs a balanced smite at 1st level is a huge impediment to this player. There's just a ton of little stuff like this.
Pathfinder 1e was designed as a game that would be an easy sell to a table currently in the middle of a 3.5e campaign.
Players flipped through it and compared it to the 3.5e chassis and saw they were picking up feat(s) or their classes were improved in many ways to be more competitive or functional. Depending on the timeline, they saw they were picking up traits, and picking up skill ranks or hit points from favored class bonuses.
It was a very easy sell to a table of six players to convert their characters over.
On top of this, if a player was playing a class that didn't port over to Pathfinder 1e core (like a Psion or a Warblade or whatever), they could keep playing that class pretty interchangeably with it being pretty easy to tell them their favored class bonus would work out to +1hp or +1skill, their choice and handing them a few more feats at their odd levels.
There was very little friction moving from 3.5e to PF1e. In fact, it was greased up and there was a vacuum effect sucking the average player in.
PF2E is different.
Perhaps I can talk a player into a PF2E "one-off" to test the system, but nobody in my gaming groups has any desire to migrate any in-progress PF1E game over to PF2E. They are not all power-gamers either - there are a few though.
I see that being yet another of the really big challenges for Paizo. PF1E immediately built a player base the first month it was released. PF2E, assuming it navigates a lot of the issues it has open at the moment, if it keeps the same design tenets and goals, will likely have to wait for campaigns to end since it has so little draw for converting campaigns in progress.
(That said there are likely some GMs who will insist upon the conversion because they view PF1e as so fundamentally broken and they will want to migrate to a new system as sort of a 'rebalancing' act ~ at least in my games assorted house rules are already putting in place many balancing factors)
Lots of posts with a smattering of replies.. some of the biggest discussion is on the 5e forums, where there's an obvious increase in the number of perspectives/comments from folks who made the 3.5->PF1E->5e journey and are evaluating what's next.
The official reasons for sorcerers not being able to spontaneously heighten were "analysis paralysis" and unlimited spontaneous heightening being OP.
I don't buy either reason..
I buy into this.
In organized play with a bunch of semi-strangers, there's that guy playing the sorcerer.
And everyone's been taking their turns pretty expediently, now it's his turn, and he hasn't been spending the time thinking about what he'd do when it wasn't his turn - he was too busy on his phone, or getting a beer.
Now that it's his turn, he hmms and hmms for minutes trying to decide if he should empower this, or maximize that. Maybe he even takes out his phone's calculator app for a couple minutes.
I suspect a lot of changes were to codify a character before it begins play at the table to reduce the amount of things you could decide upon after you sit down and then your turn comes up. This makes everyone's organized play experience better when the person who has a hard time deciding has a lot less they can do when their turn comes up.
In fact, are there any good examples of magic wielders as massive physical pushovers in classic or very popular media. I am struggling to think of any.
I just got quite a chuckle from imagining Dumbledore sans-magic, brawling barehanded in Diagon Alley against a dozen thugs.
(in this imagery, it's young Jackie Chan as the too-obvious stunt double with a barely attached beard no less)
Yeah, "trigger word" is a concise way to phrase it.
Not me, I love feats. I'd buy a book called "Ultimate Feats" with 2500 feats in it along with the HeroLab download for it.
I'm not sure who Paizo seeks to solicit customerwise with the new edition, but the FLGS has a ton of folks who shudder at the word 'feat', claim that's 'why they quit Pathfinder Society' and actually like that they can play 5e and brag they did it "without feats".
Sadly, a survey on the Paizo forum would probably show 80% in favor of 'Moar Feats' whereas a door survey of the folks who quit PFS and moved to Adventurer's League would look quite the opposite.
isn't that basically the same thing that 4e did, try to break into the tactical miniatures combat boardgame market?
It's not a bad gamble to make. When I look at FLGS calendars each week, there's more folks playing the 'semi-TTRPG' board games like Conan, Descent, Gloomhaven than playing PFS scenarios each week now.
As opposed to trying to bash their head against 5e and their subsequent success measured by gamers who are like 'nah, Pathfinder's bad... see 5e AL had 12 tables last night and PFS only had 2', the barometer is set to, 'wow, Pathfinder's kicking butt they had 4 tables playing through the latest scenario and the Conan group disappeared...'
Now when I flip through the Playtest, I can imagine in my mind's eye the 'Spell Points' spot on my character card filled with a '3 counter' and two '1 counters' alongside the 'Resonance Points' spot with four '1 counters' and a Wayne Reynolds' picture of Seoni on the left...
You really can add role-playing to any game... I used to talk in a cowboy accent for the game "bang" Silly? yes!
Yeah, we even add roleplay and accents when we play cards in Coup.
"I'm the Duke, and yes yes, it's my rightful duty to take three coins here.."
I had a friend help me re-calibrate my expectations on PF2e as another game on the shelf that we'd pull to play (alongside Coup, Descent, Talisman, etc) as opposed to 'this is the subsystem for our long-running campaign world'.
Immediately, the mechanics feel pretty good.
As gamers, we're not as picky about things like skill systems, 'plus-level-to-all-rolls', or '10th-level wizard fisticuffs with 10 1st-level fighters' for boxed games as we are with the system that's the foundation of our game world(s).
Think of PF2e as competing against Gloomhaven and using monthly installments of scenarios or adventures to take pole position in that market rather than going head-to-head against 5e (or 3.5e) to be the system for your home/sandbox campaign.
Another thing companies can do with projects facing deadlines is manage scope.
It's possible that things like Resonance (and I imagine the Alchemist) don't make the first rulebook/boxed set and show up later in another book/expansion.
As I suggested earlier, if Paizo is thinking that they'll position 'Pathfinder' as more of a tabletop roleplaying boardgame which occupies a new hybrid space between boardgames like Descent/Legends of Andor and old school RPGs, the next year is really about polishing rules since there's a lot more leeway as the gaming system doesn't need to support the full breadth of oldschool RPG campaigns. Then things like +level to everything or the skill/proficiency system are pretty much on par with other boardgame rules since you're not trying to emulate a fantasy world, but rather complete the scenario/story you selected/pulled/downloaded.
There is a HUGE, HUGE difference between playing a low level premade game with premade characters and building a character ..
I was just having this discussion and the possible epiphany here is that many folks are thinking about Pathfinder 2E all wrong.
(That's those of us who are complaining that the system doesn't feel right to fit our traditional fantasy roleplay system of choice).
The comment that struck to me was that Pathfinder 2E isn't meant to scratch that itch, but is instead meant to potentially be the market leader in the tabletop-pseudo-roleplay-boardgame space.
My closest gaming group has had occasional dalliances where we play games like Talisman, Runebound, the World of Warcraft boardgame, etc. Afterwards all our reactions are almost always very positive that it was a a fun game ~ marching the wizards and rogues we randomly drew around and collecting gear and abilities and feeling that 'leveling up' like going from 'Burning Hands' to 'Fireball' and such.
If you look at Pathfinder 2E through the lens that it's part of your shelf alongside Talisman, and don't look at it through the lens of 'this is what I use as the backbone for my homebrewed world/campaign', it's a tidy little system for running a Fighter, Wizard and Rogue through a pre-printed dungeon that occupies a space somewhere between Talisman and traditional D&D.
The point was even made that the pages in the PF2e Playtest book with feats, spells and powers are about as close to 'cardifying' things you find in a facedown 'chest deck' on a gameboard with keywords, icons, etc.
Depends on what the end-game is for Paizo with their ambitions.
I was having a discussion with someone who thought the current Playtest felt "more like a boardgame than a roleplaying game". Then it kind of devolved into what Paizo's plans were over the next 5-years.
It was compared to playing a couple hours of Talisman, Runebound or the World of Warcraft boardgame where you have essentially a pre-gen with some canned abilities that you may get to pick starting with, and you get to plug in next abilities as part of playing through the content. If Paizo was shifting to this space, maybe it's the coolest game in that space, right?
In that case, PF2e is certainly at beta quality today and it just needs to flesh out rule mistakes that would certainly be discovered in 6 months of playtesting. It's just those folks who want it to supplant 3.5/5e for weekly fantasy roleplay that perhaps feel like it's a lot further away from the end-goal we're strapping onto it.
Let me first state that I love feats. I loved my Pathfinder companion subscription and I loved skimming through a few dozen new feats introduced to the game every month.
I greatly enjoy using Herolab and the "is valid" feature and keyword searching through thousands of feats, both as a GM and a player.
If I could make one change to 5e to make it better, I'd have allowed characters to pick up a feat every other level to enable better character customization.
From those of us that are still active on the forums here, I can see those of us still playing Pathfinder as the system of choice are here because of the feats. And I can see many folks when they open the Playtest book pump their fist and they are like "Yes! This is like three times the feats as the 1e Core Rulebook!".
However...
I've been chatting with various folks in my local gaming community (those who have faded away as our PFS scene has shrunk from 100 tables a month down to 2 Starfinder tables and a couple PFS tables) and have been asking "hey, are you going to be coming back and trying the Playtest?".
We've got a couple tables scattered at stores. One has 3 players signed up and one has 5, so there's some interest... but not a crazy backlog of interest.
So far, folks have said they've downloaded the PDF (so they wanted to possibly get hooked back in), but the one thing I've heard consistently is:
(roughly)
"Oh god, it's worse than original Pathfinder. I can't believe they put even more feats into the game."
So as I dig around here, I actually (to my surprise) discover that a lot of the local gaming community actually dislikes a feat-heavy system. This runs against my own personal sensibilities. Who wouldn't like the ability to customize their characters further?
But as I try to make the argument that Pathfinder is superior, I'm argued back against the "fatigue" they have with a "feat heavy system", especially one from a company that produces monthly books that keep adding more feats.
I've come to understand this perspective better, and it's actually hard to surmount.
There's 3 main segments I see in TTRPG participation:
1. Us, The Hardcore Forumites - who are here because we love the word feat, and love games that give us more of these.
2. Volunteer GMs - who as volunteers, directly make more tables available to play at each month. Those folks who are amazing narrative story tellers, who were so amazing we had to have a lottery system to play at their tables. The majority of these say they have no interest in PF2e because it looks "worse than PF1e" and its because to GM over a multi-year span they shudder at all the feats they'd have to adjudicate in organized play. They just prefer to "roleplay" where the collective majority doesn't need to memorize hundreds or thousands of feats.
3. Casual Players - these are the folks who'd never shell out for HeroLab or more than 1-3 books beyond the core player book. They tell countless stories about playing alongside us players that did shell out for all the books and how it was unsatisfying to always feel like they were missing out on something, and how in newer "mostly feat-less games" there's only maybe a dozen or two feats that they need to know about. Total.
Here's the rub..
This is all just packaging and perception. I counter back that "well PF2e has just put the label 'feat' on what other systems, like PF1e before it, called class features or class powers. So it's not like it has that many more.
But these folks, they twitch (really!) at the word feat like someone's mentioned their ex-girl/boyfriend's name. If someone had just run a global search & replace on the PF2e Playtest book and put the word 'Power' or 'Feature' in its place, they'd have had a totally different reaction. They don't care that there's a rational argument here that a system like 5e basically has 'class feats' hidden inside the class descriptions.
I have a decent sense that, at least in August, organized PF2e Playtest game attendance is low simply because of a perceived overuse of a single word in the rules along with some sort of irrational bias against that word 'feat'.
I'd think it's something to consider in a final printing - how to give those of us who want more options what we want, but at the same time acknowledge that there's a decent number of gamers who associate a stigma with a 'feat-heavy system'.
Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Is it? The two local FLGS I frequent still have the same Starfinder hardcover on the shelf from May according to the staff and they claim their 5e monthly sales numbers are outrageous.
I'm in one of the most active TTRPG OP markets (pop 16 million) that used to field over 100 tables of PFS each month (packed at 6 players a piece). We're clocking in around 14 SFS players each month over 2 locations, and those same players are mostly folks that are so into TTRPGs that they are also playing 5e every week too.
Most of the folks who are running stores or gaming are operating on the belief that Pathfinder/Starfinder "are dead" (their words, not mine, I'm trying to make the argument that a comeback is about to happen...)
..that Halfling Rogue has a +7 to beat two +4 rolls. Oh and is instantly seen if there's no cover so I hope the GM didn't just give you a straight hallway to try and sneak up to these guys.
I'm assuming appropriate cover by barrels, garbage, what-not.
But if we just swung the typical 3rd level "rogue sneak" vs a pair of guards from high probability to low probability, remind me to sell all my shares in Golarion Thieves Guilds.
I'm hoping someone else sees something we don't in how this plays out, numbers-wise. i.e. Somehow does the 3rd level small-sized rogue sneak past with a failure and only is seen on a critical failure?
i think that the math that allows you to make a full plate (or any item really) in 1 day (at 0 gp benefit) might be a liiiiiitle more impactful for logistics :P
Whaaaa? Do I need to sell my shares and take up short positions in Weapons & Armory ETFs??
At low levels, without putting feats purposefully into place to boost skills, ranks are all the low level character had to distinguish itself in skill from other characters.
Something I keep meaning to process.
Say you have two 2nd-level guard NPCs watching a hallway. Say they are nothing special, there's no feat investment into detecting/perceiving/guarding.
Take a 3rd-level halfling rogue who hasn't done anything significant to invest in Stealth feat-wise. He's picked it as best he can otherwise (picked it as a skill, or maxxed points in it).
How do PF1e and PF2e rate at the rogue's success? I can recall a Kingmaker adventure where our 3rd-level rogue was something like +14 (6 ranks, 4 Dex, 4 size) sneaking through some level 2 warriors at +0 (0 ranks, 10 Wisdom).
I may be overlooking this, but the default way to handle the critical saving throw miss vs a fireball is for the GM to double the damage that was taken?
This is one point of friction I'm having with my gaming group - is our "arcane player" isn't really excited about the Playtest PDF and is having a hard time overcoming psychological inhibitors to rolling a PC.
I know he revels in grabbing a ton of d6s and possibly reading spell descriptions where he sees a continual progression in the d6s he can haul out and impress other players with.
I'm not sure if telling him "sometimes, for a group of monsters, I'll double the number you tell me to apply to them" is satisfactory enough for him to replace all the little cubes he'd normally roll (granted he would get 1 more when he's a 5th level wizard, but he'd been playing a lot of sorcerers lately so his starting point was 6 dice for years now).
Have you ever played a high level Pathfinder Game where each caster takes 10 minutes each round? I don’t think it will be much more or less cumbersone than that.
Oh God, yes, I have.
My wife has regularly left the room to make brownies from scratch in between her turns during high level play.
I've probably GM'd for at least 1000 different players over the decades and PF/3.5 has a problem when folks can grab their phones and do their 'dailies' in many different phone-based games between turns.
I'd love to see all newer era TTRPGs try to make it so the "touches" (to use a basketball analogy) a player gets in combat happen more often than they do today.
I'd want to improve upon 5e even for how frequently action comes back around to "out of turn players" ~ maybe not Hackmaster style, but I'm not sure codifying 3 actions per turn and loading everyone with more dice to roll is the right direction.
This is particularly salient with any new modern game.
If you go back to a 1E/2E game, it's actually way better for holding player engagement in combat since players know their turn is coming around much sooner. The 3E+ era took a step backwards with attacks/actions per turn per player at the same time in history it gave everyone a portable computer in their hand.
In PF2E, he won't be adding as many modifiers, and instead will roll more dice. The numbers will be right in front of him, instead of us having to remind him what each one is or look them up. That should help with the math - as will buff spells requiring an action to concentrate on them.
This is probably the best explanation I've ever read for rolling more dice - when the alternative is a person having a half-dozen floating modifiers that they may or may not forget.
This deserves to be a "Designer's Sidebar" in the finished product, if they continue to go with more dice as part of the system.
This is almost boardgame-esque - i.e. a player who normally rolls grey dice, you could image "Bardic Inspire" dice always being red or Smite dice being blue.
True, but that dmg scaled with your level for FREE to a maximum of 10d6. The new system may have the same or higher ceiling, but you have to actively "pay" to push it there.
How deep have folks looked at fireball?
We haven't had a ton of enthusiasm here on wizards or sorcerers, mostly because of a perception (which may be true or false) that mid-level doesn't look "as fun anymore".
I don't think the PF1e core Fireball was overpowered. It was later on when folks picked up metamagic rods of maximize, empower and/or selective and were cross-blooded and what-not that fireball was problematic on the power scale.
Where does theorycrafting on PF2e fireball stand? (I imagine concrete playtesting is pretty limited at this stage)
In another thread, someone pointed out that this game gives too many ability score boosts. If you start the game as a gentle but strong paladin with Str 14, by 10th level you end up with an 18 Strength, which is typically depicted as being rippling with muscles.
This was pointed out by our group as well as somewhere PF2e fell flat against other systems.
Specifically, you have a decent number of female gamers who want to play a female warrior but don't necessarily want to play one that's starting with an 18 Strength.
Sure you could always say "pretend that she looks like she's still lithe even though she behaves as she has this strength" but ultimately your subconscious makes you feel that if someone has an 18 Strength (the peak of Human potential at 1st level), there should be visible signs that they are that strong.
At any rate, you have this idea for a heroine warrioress who isn't giving off an Amazonian vibe...
"I know, I'll make a paladin archer..."
*looks at rules*
"Nevermind..."
Paladin was a nice class because you didn't need to overload Strength to be effective. The same is true for archery.
(I know the optimizers will always say the best choice was to max that Strength for both paladins and archery, which is correct - but the point here is you could be competitive without doing that).
Now it feels a little more like an MMO where your stat array doesn't really matter - it's like playing Warcraft where you don't really pay attention that your Strength is 932 (or whatever it is these days) and just accept because you picked X as your class, your stats will roughly always look like Y.
The biggest question I've heard from the gamers in my circles who have enough interest in PF2e to download the PDF (but aren't hardcore enough to participate on forums):
"When's the next beta release of the rules?"
A lot of them discarded the rules from the PDF last week for various reasons (most around not wanting to learn certain systems, but many because their wasn't a clear path to certain character concepts). They are willing to invest the effort once it's a little more polished and it's another step iterated (with some of the baggage they don't want to learn - Resonance, Dying rules, etc jettisoned or improved upon).
I'm been suggesting that we'd probably see something in November since that'd be enough time for some 'alpha testing' to have run its course and seems about on par with other TTRPG rulesets I've seen tested via an online audience.
One thing I'm curious about, is why there was such a big push to get more damage dice rather than boosting static modifiers? Is rolling handfuls of dice for every melee attack really that important?
After some discussion, it almost feels like PF2e was designed to make every little operation in the game be more time-consuming and cumbersome for the average gamer.
That way your gutcheck when picking your fantasy tabletop system is "wow, PF2e is way more heavy than 5e".
A little playtesting and it's pretty apparent that the game (as it exists today in the playtest) finds every possible way to be bulkier than its 5e counterpart (which some folks will like and some will not like).
1. Watching players have to roll more dice (and instead of pick the highest, making them add them all up). To me, it seems like folks are getting worse at basic addition each day.
2. Watching players figure out how to use 3 actions per turn (vs an action and bonus action). "Guys, whats the best way for me to use my last action?"
3. Watching players remember if their action took 1 action, 2 action or 3 actions, or a variable number and what that variable number of actions does.
4. Watching some players take 3 move actions and start counting out squares on a tactical map and lose their place and then have to start over and wonder where they started again.
5. Having players who are a bit math handicapped tell you, "uhh, I hit in the low 20s" and then telling them you need an exact number because you now need to determine if they beat the target by more than 10 since the effect will be different (or vice versa) and then waiting so folks who used to give you "low 20s" as a result" now need to always deliver the exact number.
This will certainly be an uphill battle for PF2e. While a better balanced system from PF1e, he switch cost from PF1e to PF2e is substantially higher than from PF1e to 5e, which will mean many groups stick to PF1e or if they opt to switch they switch to the system that's easier to switch to.
(I have mine on this alias's profile in a spoiler)
As a bit of an advantage, I already understood the proficiency system. A little table for what's at the top of page 9 to start off the "Skills" section on page 142 would probably help tremendously.
It took me about 30 minutes to bang through a fairly generic human rogue and I promise that I was quickly decisive at every decision point with a crystallized fantasy concept out of the gate. I also skipped buying equipment beyond the sword and armor (the math for purchases would've probably taken another 15 min).
There wasn't really that much of an opportunity for pause. I think the biggest moment of hesitation was when I saw a rogue could maybe go for a maces/clubs vibe or a "cocky threatener" vibe with their 1st class feat.
Outside of that, not much decision-wise to make in terms of options, but it takes a while to look everything up and get it written down.
I'm still trying to figure out what I'd be most looking forward to in the rogue as it levels up. Footpad's Focus at 2nd? Sabotage at 4th? Evasion at 7th? Debilitating Strike at 9th?
There's nothing preventing folks from sharing characters right?
Perhaps in Spoilers here?
It would be great to see "Here's what I made in 5 minutes" or "Here's what I made in 2 hours" along with some commentary on where the time sink went (i.e. ancestry selection, equipment, etc).
I have players who can spend 2 hours on gear regardless of the game system.
FWIW, it took me ~30 minutes to crank out a human rogue given I already knew the concept I wanted and rushing through it as quick as I could.
Other Class Features
------------------
Finesse Striker : Add Dex to damage instead of Str
Surprise Attack : On the first round of combat, creatures are flat-footed if they havent acted
Sneak Attack : When striking flat-footed with agile/finesse, +1d6 extra precision dmg
Rogue Feats (x2, pick one of 4):
* Nimble Dodge (reaction? to gain +2 circumstance to AC)
* Trap Finder (+1 Percept, AC and saves vs traps; disable Traps as master in Thievery)
Thinking:
.. Passed on Bludgeoner (didnt want to use maces/clubs) and You're Next (not an Intimidator)
Skill Feat
Wanted the character to be a good Bluffer.. what are Bluff/Deception feats?
Only two choices - Charming Liar or Close Match
* Charming Liar by default as Close Match is basically choosing to disguise gender
Charming Liar: When critical success at Bluff, improve attitude by 1 step
But, this is a playtest document. This isn't a polished book. This is about testing rules and such. It isn't about hyping the player up, that isn't what playtesting is for.
You're saying a product company wouldn't want to get my gaming group's players interested/hyped about creating their characters?
We live in a world with a plethora of early access and playtest material for fantasy gaming. In order to even have a shot at being playtested (and thus evolve & shake out to be ultimately successful), a game needs something to motivate a player to spend their evening with their game vs copious alternatives.
I'll elaborate further on my above comments - where I sit today is all the campaigns I'm involved in are still running under non-PF-3.5e or PF rules. Nothing in 5e yet.
Ultimately when we sit down with any of these systems, it's because we are looking for a fantasy roleplaying game, which means a bunch of people who are planning to sit at a table and pretend they're really haughty elves or holier-than-thou paladins or feytouched sorcerers.
My impression is when the kinds of players I know get their hands on a fantasy roleplaying game, they flip to the race or class of the kinds of characters they like to play. For particular folks I'm thinking of (waving at them) - that means flipping to bard, ranger and paladin chapters.
If I were to give a player 5 minutes to flip through:
1) the PF2e Playtest Paladin (pg 104-111)
2) the 5e Paladin (pg 82-88)
3) the PF1e Paladin (pg 60-64)
I feel like PF2e is sorely lacking on what I'd refer to as marketing "fantastical inspiration" that motivates a prospective player to immediately starting rolling up a character.
This has nothing to do with the underlying mechanics of the system (and the fact that a PF2e paladin who dedicates to cleric or fighter paths could be more interesting than their counterparts in other systems, for example).
Consider a prospective player who is weighing their judgement and enthusiasm of a system solely to fulfill their paladin fantasy based on the Playtest pgs 104-111. There's not enough focused on marketing to them, seeding them with ideas and luring them into the PF2e universe to begin play. There's very little that stokes your imagination within the class section and leaves you staring at your buddy saying "Daaaaamn, dude wait 'til you see what I'm gonna make!"
This is because PF2e spends way too much space on pages on very bland concepts. For paladin, this is:
a) (proficient) access to deific weapon
b) a retributive strike if an ally is hit
c) general education about champion powers/spell points
d) getting some feats, and some skill feats
e) a righteous ally (finally something a little interesting..)
f) some general feats
g) some skill increases
h) some ability boosts
i) some ancestry stuff
j) expertise with a weapon
k) some fortitude with armor
l) holy smite (yay! something interesting *at 9th level*)
m) aura of justice (sounds cool, but not too exciting to read)
n) armory mastery
... {list goes on} ...
There's a lot of weeds in the way for someone to find and pick 1 or 2 flowers ~ Your imagination is really not stoked by 2 full pages of "class features".
OK, finally page 108 and some feats to read. I'm sure I'll get something exciting at level 1... what cool choice do I get??
a) domain access (that I need to flip to read)
b) some hospice training
c) lay on hands being less hand gestures
There's not a ton here for fantasy imaginations. I'm not lured into something sensational about being a paladin with these level 1 feats.
So keep reading.
d) divine grace for +2 when I save
e) when i retributive strike vs dragons, bonus..
f) same, with fiends
g) same, with undead
The kicker here is I'm 5 full pages into a paladin section and there's been very little to get imaginative juices flowing.
Now the 5e comparison...
Here's where 5e has learned some tricks to employ in a modern TTRPG which is that a class section has to carry a marketing workload to entice a future budding roleplayer.
Whether you like the underlying crunch of 5e or not, your chronological 5-page journey into the paladin class has:
a) Divine senses, with imagination stoking copy ~ "like a noxious odor", "rings like a heavenly bell"
b) Lay on hands (most folks don't get excited by this)
c) Picking a fighting style, defensive? dueling? great weapon fighting? protection?
d) Spellcasting
e) Divine smiting
f) Divine oaths that "bind the paladin forever, who up to this time was in a preparatory stage..."
g,h,i,j) ... { more ho hum stuff ommitted }
k) Oath of Devotion .. bunch of imaginative, flavorful stuff
l) Oath of Ancients .. bunch of imaginative, flavorful stuff
m) Oath of Vengeance .. bunch of imaginative, flavorful stuff
What 5e has done is its figured out how to make what really is not a ton of choice seem like a "sensational possibility". It's done it really with just tricks on copy choice and how it lays out the content.
PF2e could have within its copy similar "placebo choice" that stokes the imagination to the possibilities that await. Something like "At 2nd level, you'll pick what kind of paladin you want to be with your dedication feat choosing from combat mastery like archery or defensive shield-wielding to focusing more on your medical prowess". And then possibly listing 4 common choices here on how to fulfill those (many which possibly follow the path of a Fighter dedication and some follow up feat choices).
Some of us get how this works. But many folks will not just because of how it was laid out, and that is one of the biggest threats to PF2e success.
Thus this specifically, is my Playtest feedback:
The Playtest doc needs to recognize it must sell fringe players of gaming groups on their favorite styles of class fantasy, hyping them to get to the table in order to test out novel, theatrical abilities (like 5e's spectral grasping hands for an Oath of Ancient's paladin that I gave earlier).
This is particularly salient for Paizo as thats been a bullet fired across their bow countless times - "Finding something cool to do with your characters is like finding a needle in a haystack and better done with build guides". Some of us like that hunt, but there's those folks who just want to sit down and be a hot-headed dragonblooded sorcerer for an evening, with the enabling rulebook sending them with purpose in the direction they didn't know they wanted to go until they read the copy that led them there.
On another note, I suspect this is why Paizo is where they are:
If you're running a game at a con, and if you hand out the pre-gen paladin, it's not as jarring. You avoid the mental tax of parsing the dull and boring copy/formatting and page flipping.
(Thus the positive feedback to date is mostly reflective of being handed a pre-gen and socializing with other games, and not "at home time" having to go from cold to absorbing a system that's standing between you and your future class fantasy)
However, if you flip open the Playtest doc to a class you're interested in - there's a lot of tedium to wade through to try to find something to get excited about, and way too much mental friction to find the "something cool" / sizzle item(s).
The Playtest Doc shows you can't make a new player work hard to find the sizzle in their steak ~ it's like making someone eat 3 bowls of broccoli first.
I see similar friction in just getting player desire to play the game.
I know there's some folks who crack open an RPG and starting reading on page 1, but I think a player who's got some prior experience has some idea of "class fantasy" already in their head when they pick up a Player's Book ~ stuff like "man I love rangers" or "I can't wait to be a shining paladin" floating around already.
So they flip open to their favorite class and try to get invested into the system by starting there (some others might start with a race like elves or dwarves).
Here's where PF2e really struggles vs PF1e, 3.5e or 5e. There's too much "foreign stuff" in the way and not enough sensationalizing why your paladin will be so exciting to play.
Grab the 5e handbook and just the way the written word is presented can get you kind of psyched to play a paladin. The way they present the choice of Oaths. Reading flavor text in order like "you can cause spectral vines to spring up and reach for a creature..." just after you read your Tenets of the Ancients. And because there's not all this ugly formatting and keyword baggage, you keep reading about how you can "utter ancient words that are painful for fey and fiends to hear".
It's like damn, I'm reading about this awesome paladin I could be.
Now compare to PF2e...
The first page is fine, but let's get to what paladins can do.
Deific Weapon : "If your deity's favored weapon is uncommon, you gain access to it..." Yawn.
Retributive Strike : "You are a stalwart protector of those under your charge..." Yawn.
Champion Powers : "Divine power flows through you, and you have learned... Spell points, blah blah." Yawn.
(this is a problem all this junk is here because now I'm getting really bored and skipping through what looks like generic baggage and miss Holy Smite since its sandwiched in all this boring stuff about proficiency in simple or martial weapons becoming expert).
OK, I'm finally onto page 108. Here's some feats. What exciting thing can I do?
Deity's Domain: You embody an aspect of your deity. Choose a domain and gain the initial domain power. Gah, I gotta flip around to another area to get excited about this. Pass, I'll flip pages later, maybe this next one...
Hospice Knight : Your long hours in hospice have taught you additional ... Yawn! My time in hospice?? Really?
Warded Touch : You can lay hands in a simple motion without any complicated gestures. THIS IS IT! THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN... wait, no.
**
The above I believe is the biggest impediment to PF2e success. Getting players excited about playing a class. I imagine if we had hidden cameras trained on would-be players, Paladin is maybe #1 for the class flipped to first so it's a decent litmus test for being the gateway vehicle for a fantasy RPG.
Try it ~ Hand someone the 3.5e, PF1e, 5e and PF2e "Paladin" section and see which one stirs their fantastic imaginations and gets them fired up to play the most.
Talking to a 3.5/PF1e Player (that refused 4e):
"Hey look! This isn't 4e! There's no silly daily or encounter powers. It might look that way, but it's just a bunch of feats! No powers here! Remember you you told me that you love feats?"
(try to avoid any conversation about how their 1st level Paladin can't Power Attack or make AoOs)
Talking to a 4e Player (that's alienated by 5e):
"Didn't you feel alienated by 5e and how all those amazing Powers went away! Look here at the Fighter chapter. I've used my sharpie to write the word Power and Exploit over whatever was here before. Feels like home right?"
Talking to a 5e Player (who played 3e before 5e):
"Getting a little bored with 5e? Don't you miss all those cool feats you could pick every other level? Check this book out, you can get one every level!"
(try to avoid any conversation about how Class Features have choices contained within them, focus on how now that they're Feats, they're better because the word "Feat" is better)
The actual delivery of the document was a bit of a bomb here.
"It's just a total mess".
Let's take someone who wants to play a Paladin. For me, most of my players flip to their favorite class and start there in order to get excited.
PF Playtest
1) Page 105 reads great, it's nice fluff about paladins
2) Page 106 has this incredibly dense table which makes it at a glance look like a ton of stuff is going on every level. The word density here is just too high versus the old tables that made leveling a paladin look less tedius
3) I get some friction here as "what if my paladin isn't retributive?" and "where's good old smite evil?"
Here's where it goes downhill FAST
4) Pages 107-111 start to make the game look "messy" and "a lot like what made 4e bad". There's tons of little light grey boxes filled with [Paladin] and the word FEAT dozens of times and tons of horizontal divider lines and the number (14) a bunch of times under a heading of "14th Level" for example.
I'm battling a gut reaction to just how the game is presented which is "an ungodly mess".
5e PHB
Flip open to the 5e Paladin, pages 84-87 and consider the first impression of it "at a glance". The readability here is so much more engaging to a reader versus with PF2e it feels like you're trying to parse information like a code compiler or computer might, like you need HTML tags around each ability to be self contained.
The general notion of "just having spells" vs if you read PF2e having to deal with all kinds of terms from "Spell Points" to "champion powers" to "feats" to "litany" to "metamagic" to "oath".
PF1e Core Rulebook
Pop open your Pathfinder Core Book on the paladin, pages 60-63. There's so much less distracting/business/messiness in the formatting, you can read through your future paladin and the features are organized in the order you'd level up with them, so if you were just worried about a low level paladin you're basically done on page 61.
The main takeaway is that there's some magical about the presentation of game mechanics in 2e, 3e, PF1e and 5e for my player groups. 4e and PF2e do something that the general sentiment is "messy" which derails the desire to fight through the mess and want to play. A lot of the excitement to play fantasy comes from reading fantasy fiction and when the game rules deviate from that simple pleasure of reading fantasy fiction and morph into an appendix for special abilities at the back of a CRPG manual, the enthusiasm wanes significantly.
