Multiple players since AD&D - PF2 test abandoned


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I dunno. It sounds like we approach the game differently. You are a forum poster building a "crit" - which sounds like some boring thing you find on an excel spreadsheet. I am a Dm helping players build "characters" who make up a "party." I want the "characters" to be different even if they have similar "crit."

Ultimately, you are saying you can build your "crit" either way. So what do you care?


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DataLoreRPG wrote:

I dunno. It sounds like we approach the game differently. You are a forum poster building a "crit" - which sounds like some boring thing you find on an excel spreadsheet. I am a Dm helping players build "characters" who make up a "party." I want the "characters" to be different even if they have similar "crit."

Ultimately, you are saying you can build your "crit" either way. So what do you care?

Why do I care indeed.

I mean, it's NOT like PF1 forums, games and PFS didn't turn into building NUMBERS and all about the NUMBERS and mathing out the best NUMBERS when it came to any NUMBER of effects and items and if you didn't have your NUMBERS right you were subpar, behind, and playing the game wrong because it's NUMBERS get it right!

Oh wait. That's totally what happened.

And sure, your characters might be different. Fighter should be different from Rogue. Wizard from cleric. Etc etc.

But when you move from table to table, game to game, and see the SAME Crit Fighter, the SAME Crit Rogue, the same Crit Wizard, Cleric, etc, or whatever ELSE the optimal thing turns out to be; doesn't that get bloody tiring?

And also if Paizo takes that as the feed back well...

Crit is just an easy pick as it effects the entire system from combat to skills. I'd say magic too depending on how they handle spells in later books. Who knows, maybe the expected build is everyone having Wizard/Cleric Dedication.


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ErichAD wrote:

You aren't going to get anywhere if you keep bouncing from point to point without bothering to understand anything.

Frozen is stating a very basic fact. If you have a single feat available to all classes that interacts with each class's abilities differently, then you have a multiplier. If you manually adjust the feat based on which class is using it, then you have something merely additive. So, if you want more variety, which method do you chose?

Merlin is stating another very simple fact. The +/- 10 crit mechanic means that there will be no modifier more important than hit frequency and anything that doesn't increase hit frequency will be discarded by most players. That being the case, which ever class/feat combo is best situated to boost hit frequency will be the class/feat combo most commonly selected.

Crits aren't even linked to hit vs defenses in pf1 and nearly every guide you find encourages maxing hit and defenses over most anything else. Making hit and defenses MORE important isn't going to change that behavior. My dude here is right.


Vic Ferrari wrote:
Frozen Yakman wrote:
By modern standards, AD&D is poorly designed.
Yeah, but AD&D has character...character goes a long way...*said like Jules/Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction*

At least we get to make our character with cheese in the metric system, like they do in Paris!


MerlinCross wrote:
DataLoreRPG wrote:

I dunno. It sounds like we approach the game differently. You are a forum poster building a "crit" - which sounds like some boring thing you find on an excel spreadsheet. I am a Dm helping players build "characters" who make up a "party." I want the "characters" to be different even if they have similar "crit."

Ultimately, you are saying you can build your "crit" either way. So what do you care?

Why do I care indeed.

I mean, it's NOT like PF1 forums, games and PFS didn't turn into building NUMBERS and all about the NUMBERS and mathing out the best NUMBERS when it came to any NUMBER of effects and items and if you didn't have your NUMBERS right you were subpar, behind, and playing the game wrong because it's NUMBERS get it right!

Oh wait. That's totally what happened.

And sure, your characters might be different. Fighter should be different from Rogue. Wizard from cleric. Etc etc.

But when you move from table to table, game to game, and see the SAME Crit Fighter, the SAME Crit Rogue, the same Crit Wizard, Cleric, etc, or whatever ELSE the optimal thing turns out to be; doesn't that get bloody tiring?

And also if Paizo takes that as the feed back well...

Crit is just an easy pick as it effects the entire system from combat to skills. I'd say magic too depending on how they handle spells in later books. Who knows, maybe the expected build is everyone having Wizard/Cleric Dedication.

I would be incredibly surprised if they give out any easy way to up attack proficiencies. They're heavily limiting bonus defense proficiencies in a way where you give up utility (a lot of the things that give bonus proficiency/success to crit success) are moderately high-level things that compete with offense or utility options.


glass wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
Frozen Yakman wrote:
By modern standards, AD&D is poorly designed.
Yeah, but AD&D has character...character goes a long way...*said like Jules/Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction*

Wasn't it "personality" that goes a long way? It was Winston Wolf that was going on about "character", not Jules IIRC (which to be fair, I may not - it has been a long day).

_
glass.

Bingo, I blew it (too many beers), I have brought shame on my house!

You are right, it is personality for the dog, and Winston says to his daughter "Because you are a character, doesn't mean you have character..."


Makarion wrote:
Vic Ferrari wrote:
Frozen Yakman wrote:
By modern standards, AD&D is poorly designed.
Yeah, but AD&D has character...character goes a long way...*said like Jules/Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction*
At least we get to make our character with cheese in the metric system, like they do in Paris!

Two great things! I love Paris, lots of good things come from there, some of the best in the world: food, art, culture, architecture, fashion, perfume, etc, Paris rocks.

I have never had a Royale with Cheese, while there, though.


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MerlinCross wrote:
You're not going to limit optimal strategies, they're just build around it. I just offered up Crit as the new pillar to build around.

You absolutely can limit optimal strategies. You cannot eliminate them entirely, but the better balanced and more transparent the game is, the less difference they make, so the more viable slightly less optimal strategies become.

For example, D&D 4e and PF1 are games of similar complexity. In 4e and maximally optimised character is maybe 200% more effective than a picked-whatever-looked-fun-as-long-as-it-was-not-obviously-suicidal character. In PF1, it is more like two billion percent.

The devs are (wisely IMO) trying to make PF2 more like 4e than like PF1 in that particular respect, albeit using mostly different methods to get there.

_
glass.


glass wrote:
MerlinCross wrote:
You're not going to limit optimal strategies, they're just build around it. I just offered up Crit as the new pillar to build around.

You absolutely can limit optimal strategies. You cannot eliminate them entirely, but the better balanced and more transparent the game is, the less difference they make, so the more viable slightly less optimal strategies become.

For example, D&D 4e and PF1 are games of similar complexity. In 4e and maximally optimised character is maybe 200% more effective than a picked-whatever-looked-fun-as-long-as-it-was-not-obviously-suicidal character. In PF1, it is more like two billion percent.

The devs are (wisely IMO) trying to make PF2 more like 4e than like PF1 in that particular respect, albeit using mostly different methods to get there.

_
glass.

Yes, good point, I like more parity between PCs (not, one PC only misses on a 1, and the other only hits on a 20, lame), but the balance came at the cost of a bit too much homogeneity in 4th Ed, for me, but the concept is solid.


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Personally, I'd like to play where you can build a really cool character. But not be in a group where everyone is a murder hobo creating stat builds with the most optimal numbers. And parsing damage output from this build or class vs this build or class. And they say that this class is useless because it doesn't do as much damage as that class. Because damage is what makes a good character.
But then again, if Paizo makes the stat monkeys unhappy, then those people won't want to buy the game. And there are thousands of them. So their voices will probably win out.
And I don't know. There's got to be a middle ground.


Barnabas Eckleworth III wrote:

Personally, I'd like to play where you can build a really cool character. But not be in a group where everyone is a murder hobo creating stat builds with the most optimal numbers. And parsing damage output from this build or class vs this build or class. And they say that this class is useless because it doesn't do as much damage as that class. Because damage is what makes a good character.

But then again, if Paizo makes the stat monkeys unhappy, then those people won't want to buy the game. And there are thousands of them. So their voices will probably win out.
And I don't know. There's got to be a middle ground.

Yes, not having to crunch the character like a Magic deck; being able to specialise is cool, but not to the absurdity it gets to In 3rd Ed/PF1. Maybe I am getting older, but I also don't like big modifiers to the d20 roll (d20+47, etc) so much anymore, and ACs of 53 and what-have-you.

Lantern Lodge

The only way number crunching is going to subside is if there is a drastic change to the math in PF2 to bring it more in line with 5E (which would be a good thing in my opinion). When your dice rolls can be modified by such high numbers it leads to potential drastic differences in power. It seems skill DC and monster attack bonuses are currently geared for about 50% successs for a fully optimized character which further pushes players to optimize. Also, the new +10/-10 degrees of success/failure further reward players for playing the numbers game pretty much making it essential.

High numbers in the system is a bit antiquated in my opinion. For me not only does it break the verisimilitude of the world but also the system falls apart generally after 12th level.


kaisc006 wrote:
High numbers in the system is a bit antiquated in my opinion. For me not only does it break the verisimilitude of the world but also the system falls apart generally after 12th level.

Yeah, antiquated's another good word for it, the+Level deals seems like an odd, previously not so successful (SWSE, gets goofy at high levels), mechanic to bring back.


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glass wrote:

For example, D&D 4e and PF1 are games of similar complexity. In 4e and maximally optimised character is maybe 200% more effective than a picked-whatever-looked-fun-as-long-as-it-was-not-obviously-suicidal character. In PF1, it is more like two billion percent.

The devs are (wisely IMO) trying to make PF2 more like 4e than like PF1 in that particular respect, albeit using mostly different methods to get there.

_
glass.

I am very confident that there is some important subtleties in this that are overlooked.

Hyperbole like "two billion percent" aside, I agree with the big picture observation that the range of possibilities has been significantly constrained. And there are positive things which may be said about that.

But the negatives, as well as the positives for the PF1 approach, are both harder to see and also more significant over the medium and long term play experience.

First, I've always said that the core 3E system does not have training wheels and does not stop you from crashing it. So if you do crash it, then it crashes and you will have a bad experience. But, so far, I have yet to find a game that prevents the players from crashing it without simultaneously constraining what can be accomplished in terms of play experience.

In 2E the "sneak past the gate" issue gets brought up over and over. If you make sneaking past the gate easy, it won't be "fun" it just won't be something between the party and the next thing which, hopefully *is* fun. I haven’t seen anyone proclaim how excited they are for the first time their dwarf cleric will sneak past a guard. I have seen people proclaiming not having to deal with it. So, truly, all that has happened is a kind of encounter has been hand waved out of the game, at least for any significance. And if you do make it a challenge still, then you have defeated the point of this system change. So, it fails either way. Unless you just don’t want those events at all.

But, give it a dozen sessions. Nobody will be talking about sneaking past guards. But they guy who love splaying the rogue is going to have the growing annoyance that the full plate dwarf is “good enough” and anything his rogue can do. The rogue will find himself failing to be as awesome as he used to be. The full plate dwarf isn’t there to be cool at sneaking, he just wants sneaking out of his way. So in this exchange you have removed some of the rogue’s awesome and replaced it with something the dwarf will quickly stop even noticing. And, yes, I realize that the rogue gets all kinds of cool unlocks and “awesome” things. We have had all kinds of awesome things for two decades now.

This is not a question of all or nothing. The point is that, despite the first time joy of “advance directly to past the guards”, the long term value will be diminishing returns for persistent lost reward.

In combat, my current game is PF1E L13. There is a HUGE difference in some of the party ACs and to hit bonuses. To read the pro-2E comments, this is supposed to be a terrible burden on my game. We love it. First of all, it *feels right*. The bard and sorcerer are not standing shoulder to shoulder with the group’s Conan clone. And they would all feel that the game wasn’t working right if they were.

A big group of orcs or gnolls is still scary to the bard. Her AC is not high enough to ignore them, and a lot of them would quickly be overwhelming. Of course, the front liner guys run in without fear and the “I’ll be back here” sorcerer typically blasts a lot of them in a hurry.

So, as I read it, a 2E fan would say that nothing has changed. A “trivial” encounter in 1E is still a trivial encounter in 2E. But in my game the sorcerer and bard still breath a sigh of relief while also recognizing that it wasn’t hard to overcome. But they still know that toe-to-toe, that was a real threat. A 13th level 2E bard has a +13 AC “just because” and would be as hard to hurt for the orcs as the Conan and the full plate dwarf. There would be no tension. My game would be robbed of this.

And then when the fire giant drops on the table, the fear is there. The bard knows that three attacks will almost certainly mean three hard hits. And the Conan knows he has a good fight this time.

The bard is played by my wife and she loves the character. It doesn’t wade in a kill giant giants or orcs. But she provides a lot of critical support, buffs, problem solving, and social heroism. Her character is instrumental to the campaign story and the other players often look to her for guidance, both based on her as a player and, very specifically, the mechanical awesomeness of her character that nobody else can match.
These are all things that don’t raise their head when you play a one-off at a convention. They don’t show up when you play 1st level characters and then hit L2. They don’t show up when you all declare you sneak past the guards. But when you play for session after session, they do show up.

There are reasons that 4E hurt and they lost more players as time went by. And there are reason that the 3X core, despite the very really warts, has lasted so long. [and that last is NOT a call for sticking with 3X core, everything grows old and it *HAS*. I’m just saying, look to the lessons of the past for forging the new].


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I'm honestly shocked to find such a lively discussion still ongoing here.

The core concept of the new edition is solid.

Ancestry and Class feats are a great idea in theory.

Making class and ancestry feats that will not be either niche choices or obvious choices will be a design challenge that I'm not sure ANY designer is up for over the course of many books. Things that give your character a bonus only in a certain situation are only interesting in a narrative standpoint if the situation comes up enough for it to be a defining aspect of a character. Certain options will inevitably be the 'core' options for each race and class, and players will be expected to have those options in order to be 'good' in organized play.

It really feels like a lot of the redesign of the game comes specifically with society play in mind. For those of us that play with the same people we've played with for years, society play is less of a concern. So when core concepts of the game are changed to 'protect' a particular function of a class role, it really challenges our ability to play the game the way we want. Particularly when the protection extends only to certain things.

Clerics are so much better at healing than everyone else, it's less of a protection and more of a system requirement to have a cleric in the group. If any other caster attempts to play the healer, they will use all of their casting resources for healing.

Thievery checks are gated by proficiency levels, so someone MUST have it as a signature skill in the group, or you will not be able to unlock doors at high levels.

All the other classes, despite the 'protections' are optional, but there is certainly not a way for the low-level characters to be kept alive in the action economy with just a bard or druid attempting to heal them.

One of the concepts I was most excited about when it was first mentioned in the previews was the division of the spells. Arcane, Occult, Primal, and Divine. Then, we got the implementation, and everyone was stuck on one list...except oddly the clerics, who could cross over depending on their choice of religion. So...the class that has the most spells per day is the one that gets to cross the bridge and have arcane and divine spells. I'm no longer excited about this, instead I'm concerned that because of the high level power of arcane casters in previous editions, that they have been subject to restrictions by omission in order to keep people from complaining about them again.

At my table, we EXPECT the wizard to be amazing at high level. They bend reality if they can survive long enough to do so. As it is though, I'll have trouble getting anyone to willingly play the wizard, since the casting options for the other classes are more compelling. A high level druid is just as capable of wiping a city off the map as a wizard. From a design balance standpoint, that is good...but what is it that a wizard has that makes it a unique class? Just what spell they use to do the same thing that everyone else can do? Ouch. Step down from your throne oh mighty wizard king, for none fear you. Currently they have NO unique 10th level spells, unlike EVERY OTHER LIST.

Again, I'll be monitoring the forums, and the changes for the new edition. We haven't given up hope. We WANT the new edition to be worth moving to. The playtest, however, is too restrictive for our limited time at the table. We're too old and grumpy to test mechanics we aren't enjoying.


ErichAD wrote:

You aren't going to get anywhere if you keep bouncing from point to point without bothering to understand anything.

Frozen is stating a very basic fact. If you have a single feat available to all classes that interacts with each class's abilities differently, then you have a multiplier. If you manually adjust the feat based on which class is using it, then you have something merely additive. So, if you want more variety, which method do you chose?

Merlin is stating another very simple fact. The +/- 10 crit mechanic means that there will be no modifier more important than hit frequency and anything that doesn't increase hit frequency will be discarded by most players. That being the case, which ever class/feat combo is best situated to boost hit frequency will be the class/feat combo most commonly selected.

Your second statement is very true and eerily mimics the problem with D&D 4E. To hit rolls become paramount as do defenses. Thus they become feat taxes that don't really enhance play but just keep you at the current threshold as monsters attacks and defenses will probably be calculated to accommodate these feat choice. Thus feat taxes for everyone! Its extremely apparent for spellcasters since monsters don't seem to have a bad save category any more and the differences between their good and bad saves is 1 or 2 points on average


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AsmoSoulpyre wrote:

I'm honestly shocked to find such a lively discussion still ongoing here.

The core concept of the new edition is solid.

Ancestry and Class feats are a great idea in theory.

Making class and ancestry feats that will not be either niche choices or obvious choices will be a design challenge that I'm not sure ANY designer is up for over the course of many books. Things that give your character a bonus only in a certain situation are only interesting in a narrative standpoint if the situation comes up enough for it to be a defining aspect of a character. Certain options will inevitably be the 'core' options for each race and class, and players will be expected to have those options in order to be 'good' in organized play.

It really feels like a lot of the redesign of the game comes specifically with society play in mind. For those of us that play with the same people we've played with for years, society play is less of a concern. So when core concepts of the game are changed to 'protect' a particular function of a class role, it really challenges our ability to play the game the way we want. Particularly when the protection extends only to certain things.

Clerics are so much better at healing than everyone else, it's less of a protection and more of a system requirement to have a cleric in the group. If any other caster attempts to play the healer, they will use all of their casting resources for healing.

Thievery checks are gated by proficiency levels, so someone MUST have it as a signature skill in the group, or you will not be able to unlock doors at high levels.

All the other classes, despite the 'protections' are optional, but there is certainly not a way for the low-level characters to be kept alive in the action economy with just a bard or druid attempting to heal them.

One of the concepts I was most excited about when it was first mentioned in the previews was the division of the spells. Arcane, Occult, Primal, and Divine. Then, we got the implementation, and everyone...

That is so true. Wish does not even deserve the title of 10th level spell. There is nothing special or magical about magic anymore. The martials have won and no we are stuck in their grimy world cleaning our own clothes by hand because spells like Prestidigitation were too OP.


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glass wrote:
MerlinCross wrote:
You're not going to limit optimal strategies, they're just build around it. I just offered up Crit as the new pillar to build around.

You absolutely can limit optimal strategies. You cannot eliminate them entirely, but the better balanced and more transparent the game is, the less difference they make, so the more viable slightly less optimal strategies become.

For example, D&D 4e and PF1 are games of similar complexity. In 4e and maximally optimised character is maybe 200% more effective than a picked-whatever-looked-fun-as-long-as-it-was-not-obviously-suicidal character. In PF1, it is more like two billion percent.

The devs are (wisely IMO) trying to make PF2 more like 4e than like PF1 in that particular respect, albeit using mostly different methods to get there.

_
glass.

And yet that's not the point I'm trying to make. It can be 200% better. It can be 20000000% better. It can be 100%, 50% or even 15% better.

If it is better, it is better, and the guides/community have a chance of latching onto it and making it the standard expected build that everyone is going to build or be wrong in doing anything else.

"Is this viable? Yeah it is. You're doing it wrong but it's viable."

How annoying to depressing is it to see this in some form or another again and again? They can fix the math as best they can but I don't think the devs are going to be able to change the community think of "X is best, always take".

I'm starting to rant but I just find it questionable to say that they are going to limit the "optimal options" when the community has gotten really good at looking for them in the first place and basing most things around the optimal options anyway.


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Arrow17 wrote:


That is so true. Wish does not even deserve the title of 10th level spell. There is nothing special or magical about magic anymore. The martials have won and no we are stuck in their grimy world cleaning our own clothes by hand because spells like Prestidigitation were too OP.

And the sad realty is, martial players just wanted BEING A MARTIAL to have more non combat options added to them so the out of combat gap wasn't so wide, not a mass nerfing of magic.


More skills and resonance would helps that somewhat, but it ignores the hope of some players to somehow have standing on the ground and hitting things with a sword always be a good solution to a problem.


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ErichAD wrote:
More skills and resonance would helps that somewhat, but it ignores the hope of some players to somehow have standing on the ground and hitting things with a sword always be a good solution to a problem.

Resonance is just a bad solution to the problem.

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