Belisar's page

I think folks are being.a bit harsh here. A person sharing their hobby with their kids is almost always a good thing.

His example doesn't actually show that pf1 game difficulty is severely flawed, as he has taken away all the flawed bits, but nothing wrong with playing this way with his kids. It's still early maths, literacy, cooperation and theatre skills.

Thank you.

My intention was to emphasize that either system has their merits and that it's okay to favor either over the other but all that depends just on the personal taste. PF1 and PF2 advocates have shared very valid points. The only thing we have to keep in mind is, because one system appears to be more accessible to me doesn't mean that has to be the same for everyone else.

Belisar wrote:

Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept.

Wow. Speaking as a player, I doubt I could ever permit such a thing. If a GM floated that idea I'd be like "I'm sitting this one out."

I'm glad it works for your group, but it just takes away too much player autonomy for my tastes. Leveling up for me is half the fun!

If playing with adults I would completely agree. My 6 yrs old daughters are happy telling me their character concepts with cute vivid descriptions and I choose the feats accordingly. They don't have the ambitions in their age to handcraft their chars themselves. With age, they will surely learn to.

Levelling up and choosing your character of choice is the fun in PF1. I mean it’s cool you’re playing it with your family but you have taken away the funnest part of the game. By restricting content and levelling them yourself that really takes away the fun parts of PF1. I still don’t understand why you don’t go with 5e. You can by default get that OP feel and you can let them dip their toes into making character choices. 5e advancement does have very limited advancement but at least there is some with feats vs abilities and the level 3 choice. Plus the game is far more rules light and easy to run as you won’t have to simplify the many clunky systems 3e/PF1 has. But I suppose it’s a good way to guarantee having a PF1 group to GM.

Even my wife (to a degree) and my eldest one are happy that I do their work and mechanically convert their character concepts into numbers and feats and I am happy to oblige them. After all I want to lure them into the hobby. I am sure with advanced player mastery, they will take over that part themselves in time willingly.

If you have a six year old why are you not playing 5e? Then you can be more like a hero and not have the years of complex rules interactions and thousands of feats. I don’t see any six year old spending the time needed to feel like a hero by reading dozens of splat books. I think the decision to DM PF1 says more about you than it does about kids wanting to play as complex a game as PF1. You could have just as easily slapped an elite template on your kids characters in PF2 or just played 5e. That you decided to choose PF1 a game that in no way is attractive to little kids is puzzling.

They love the PF1 Bestiaries and encounters with Goblins, Orcs and the like. They know what they have to add to the D20 and it's a blast for them. I of course narrate the encounters accordingly in a way they find it engaging. PF1 is actually not that difficult if you you limit the content to the main core books. Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept. Knowing their characters I also offer them choices what they like to do, so they don't have to juggle with all those feats and options.

In the end it's about the preferences of the group which game style you apply. I mostly play with my family including 6 yrs old kids. They can handle PF1 easily enough with some benevolent guidance and thus feeling like a hero is one of the main intentions. PF2 seems to rely heavily on intricate team work. As mentioned, this is rather a hindrance when you play with young kids.

To each its own, it depends on the situation and I think it's valid to prefer one over the other. So no big deal, I guess.

Also, a thread started yesterday,

Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition? that has many people explaining which tactics are necessary in PF2 and how some PF1 strategies no longer work.

I actually share your impression. PF2 seem to have high hit point pools because the chars are supposed to be hit with a higher frequency and more damage. It's a constant attrition you couldn't overcome if PF2 hadn't those myriad options to quickly heal people up easily.

This is indeed a very interesting topic I closely follow, especially the pros and cons.
I come from 3.5 and jumped on the PF2 train when the playtesting started. Many concepts of PF2 sounded very promising and I really like the 3 actions economy and the wealth of feats for customization in theory.
But then when I played AoA as a thief I ran into some issues. You really have to consider the traits of everything, is it an action, a spell or whatever, it's very easy to overlook details. And especially as a thief I was crushed under the mountain of feats thrown at me at every level up, especially the skill feets. As I progressed into the two digit levels, I actually had all the skill feats I envisioned for my character concept and was forced to choose skill feats as a filler I wasn't interested in from then on, as all skill, class, ancestry, skill feats, general feats... are very segregated from each other with nigh no option to tap into other types of feats if there is nothing interesting in the feat type I was presented with. So to me personally the abundance of choice of feats in PF2 turned into what some others already mentioned as an illusion of choice comparing to PF1.
Funny anectode, when I started the Wrath of the Righteous PC game I took a deeper look at PF1 character advancement and am now buying every PF1 HC I can lay my hands onto.

Huzzuh!! ahem....Hazzoh!!! *cough* Hezzah!!!
Damn, am late anyways! XD

My books aren't here yet. They're still otw. So when do the PDFs drop? Noon tomorrow? Midnight tonight?

Hopefully midnight GMT! :D

Damn, Paizo is stealing my money right out of my pockets. After peroordering all the 2e stuff now it's Kingmaker I came to value from the PC game. Woe unto them if I go bancrupt!

So I'm wating for "Kingmaker - The Movie" as the foundation of the KCU. With Peter Dinklage as Linzi and Gal Gadot as Amiri!

If your character starts as a wizard and later decides to reject all magic and spend their life mastering the sword, they still end up with 9-th level casting and worse skill at weapons than the character who started as Fighter and later on spent all their time mastering the arcane arts. And vice versa of course.

If it's the intention to completely reject magic from a narrative perspective, starting a mage nonetheless will always take you in a disadvantegous position.

Personally I love the opportunity to multiclass and still be able to reap the benefits from the primary class, for instance as you mentioned multiclassing into fighter and still later be able to cast 9th level spells.

As I see it, the primary class is not a class, you spontaneously start at level 1 at the beginning of your adventuring career without any experience and learning before. You rather have had to train for years as a wizard apprentice or a military conscript to start as a level 1 wizard or a level 1 fighter. To me a level 1 character is not one that decided to spontaneously be a 1st wizard without having a decent amount of training to back it up.

If you later choose to multiclass into a completely new career, you cannot expect to gain all the advantages of the new class from the minute you choose to delve into unlike those who trained for years to reach level 1 in that class.
So it is just logical that a char who chooses to change profession later in life will always be in disatvantage to those who chose it as the primary class from the start. And this disadvantge is simply the lack of years long training.
Just my 2 cents.

And in addition, you get the feeling that higher level chars can handle low level threats way better, which I call the Conan-Effect. I want my lvl10 PC to feel significantly more powerful than a bunch of lvl1 critters. That's were +1/lvl truly excels.

I think there are more than enough feat slots to allow for plenty of customization. We really don't need more feats... we need better ones instead.

I would prefer for feats to be designed to scale as opposed to being designed to be taken in chains. Instead of taking three or four class feats to unlock all of your multiclass spellslots, you should only be taking one. The same goes for a combat style. They're the biggest reason customization bottlenecks, as you can only invest in one chain per feat-silo, and the class feats are far-and-away the best silo. If you cannot come up with at least a dozen feats for a given class or archetype without resorting to a feat-chain, it doesn't deserve to exist. Nor would I count any of the 'pick-a-thing-from-this-other-list' feats either, but that's just being picky because they're an uncreative design.

Finally, fill out the remainder of the (now much shorter) list with feats that let a player actually do something; because negligable static benefits in specific circumstances make terrible feats.

And putting those "chain feats" into a single scaling feat would prevent that you have the feeling to miss something. So literally, less feats, less feat slots but way more meaning to each single feat. That would be a great take on the feat concept =)

... The most common suggestion is to switch to "Arcanist casting", where you pick the spells you can use in those slots, but don't assign them to slots. So if you wind up need one of those spells twice, you simply use the slots and don't have to have prepared a second one in advance. That certainly helps, especially with spells like Restoration where you really don't know how many you will need because it depends on how many people get hit by problematic status afflictions. I can tell you I really hate to have to tell someone "you're stuck with that condition today because I didn't prepare a third Restoration", and they don't particularly like it either. IMO, this would help quite a lot since even if I get one selection wrong at a given level, I can still use that slot for the two other spells and thus get some value out of it.

I also wonder if we could go even further and ditch spell slots entirely, in favor of a single casting pool. You get to prepare some spells, and casting them takes from the pool based on the spell level. So if I happen to end up needing eight 2nd level spells and zero 5th level spells, I just go ahead and cast them on the fly from the pool and that's how it goes. This also solves Heighten weirdness, since you simply pay the extra cost when you cast to get the Heightened effect. This is obviously a much more drastic change and I can see some people not liking it, but it would also address the problem.
...

This is my main gripe with the Wizard/Cleric/Druid approach of preparing spells in specific spell slots. This way, many of the niche spells will never be actively prepared to not block spell slots for the more commonly used spells.

A spell points pool would be most flexible of course.

Belisar wrote:

Mark Carlson 255 wrote:

I know of 18-24 groups that have had the same experience as you have. Most of the groups do a fair amount of testing of new rules or have GM's and players looking to create new games.

Honestly?

I personally know 122 to 231 groups and they all enjoy the Playtest so far.
It's okay to not like the playtest but this fantasy novel you bring here is quite amusing and made my day.

It's not like the guy owns a game store and lets groups come to play or simply chats with his most frequent customers, or there's no chance he moderates a Meetup group in a reasonably large town or city, nor is there any real possibility that is a member of a RPG club at a large university or some such.

It's just fantasy?

It's this onesidedness in his statement. If he had mentioned that part of the groups were opposed or unsure, I would have bought it but this total exclusion of any opposing attitude seems a bit unlikely. This would imply that those 100+ people exclusively refuse the playtests unanimously and this is very implausible. Verily so.

Just to be clear: I am overall quite positive on the playtest, and optimistic about its final implementation. I think the devs have done a very fine job, and are continuing to admirably put to use feedback and hard data.

There are only a bare handful of sticking points that stop me from saying I would adopt PF2e as it currently stands.

It's honestly pretty silly to count favorites (which aren't supposed to be upvotes anyway) on forum posts in a forum specifically about giving criticism.

Amen. :)

WatersLethe wrote:

It's honestly pretty silly to count favorites (which aren't supposed to be upvotes anyway)

If people use favorites as upvotes then functionally they become upvotes and you can use their number to count effective upvotes, the only difference being said upvotes are in favorites form

As I mentioned above, the post with the most "upvotes" by far is that of Jason Buhlman, so your theory about the majority hating PF2 like you do is quite preposterous.

Honeslty, I've said my piece in other threads, so I'm not going to say it again. Let me offer up the following data. In this thread, looking at only the first page of posts and ignoring neutral ones and repeats from the same individuals, I saww the following:

Negative posts: 11 individuals, With 165 likes, an average of 15 likes per negative post.
Positive posts: 5 individuals, With 37 likes, an average of 7.5 likes per positive post.

My message in short: Instead of repeatedly trying to justify your decisions about PF2, consider the significant negative feedback and decide:
1. If you don't care, you're going to make the game you want to make, whether or not other people like it.
2. If you do care, and you're willing to listen to that feedback, even if it means making significant changes to the underlying system.

Finally, just because I think it's important to say, you are supposedly making Pathfinder 2nd Edition. You've stated you want it to feel like the game we know and love. Question: If you took the world of Golarion, and played in it using 5e rules, would that feel closer to Pathfinder 1st edition than Golarion using 2nd edition rules?

I'm not saying big changes aren't good, particularly where things are significantly broken, but if you're going to make a different game and market it as a second edition, that's extremely misleading. As someone else had said, it's not that the cake tastes bad, it's just that it's not really cake, even though it's marketed as such.

Honestly, the most upvoted post is that of Jason Buhlman on page one with 55 votes. You could presume that those upvotes come from people rather in favour of PF2, so your "Positive posts: 5 individuals, With 37 likes, an average of 7.5 likes per positive post." is a very shacky assumption at best.

Porridge wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

I mean, seriously, it is all but impossible to gimp a character unless you completely drop the ball on stats needed to use the weapon.

So, I’m not sure what you have in mind. But if you look at the expected damage calculations done here, you’ll see that (for example) a generic ranged combatant who uses a crossbow or a sling will do significantly less damage than they would using a composite shortbow. (In the “8-to-hit” version of the calculation, the composite shortbow user will do almost double the expected damage of a crossbow or sling user.)

Simple vs Martial weapon could be why. The Crossbow has several disadvantages compared to the Short Bow, perhaps too many (it does have better range though). The sling is in the same predicament. It is possible they need to be reviewed (I am not sure why the sling has a reload of 1 while the Shortbow is 0, myself).

If you are in a class that gets Martial Weapons, you should probably choose the composite shortbow. If you only get simple weapons, well then you probably aren't using the weapon all that much anyway? I don't think it is gimp to use a crossbow as a backup/range weapon if your class is not proficient with Composite shortbows. You should have other class features that make up for that lack of martial proficiency.

A Ranger who uses the Crossbow does come out a feat behind to only be almost as good as if they just chose the Comp Shortbow. I don't think that is gimp, but it surely is weaker unnecessarily.

Actually especially regarding the crossbow, this was historicaly not a weapon with much dedication in mind. Bowmen were "expensive" to train, it took years over years of training to train a decent bowman while crossbows were ranged weapons you could put into the hands of fairly inexperienced soldiers, it was never intended to be the weapon of choice of ranged specialists. Experienced bowmen where always superior to crossbow wielding men. That's why the crossbow is a simple ranged weapon.

I guess this particular concept is not so tough in PF2, but I think it would feel like a pretty garbage character. If I want to get faster crossbow reload on a cleric it's gonna be a mess and will probably lose most cleric abilities in the way.

This is because clerics are not mainly about being expert sharpshooters? It is doable but it tied to costs. Wanting to be as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character all the same sounds like a contradiction. At least if you create a cleric with a fighter multiclass archetype you do not lose any spell progression like you would by multiclassing in PF1 where you would also forgo cleric class abilities.

Cyouni wrote:

Point of order: general/skill feats effectively existed in PF1 as well, just it was rare to see someone take them because they were by and large worse than taking more class features.

Very true. Which also served to reduce choice in PF1e because you were pressured to take the more impactful combat feats.

That's why if PF2e can loosen up Class Feats (sort them into larger level brackets, for example) and make general feats more impactful (by introducing combat feats), I think PF2e will be well positioned to hit most of the good points of PF1e *and* provide skill customization through skill feats too.

I would be all on board for that system.

But here is the issue, if you solely make combat feats free for all to choose, you take distinct capabilities from the the fighter class whose focus lies in melee and ranged combats while iconic abilities from other classes like spellcasting or rogue skills still remain gated behind those classes.

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

Your choice in pathfinder 1e would already let you draw from a bigger pool; not only because there was more content but also because you were free to make your own choice in what type of feat you wanted for your general feats.

While I personally like the distinction of class feats (as choosable class abilities rather than fixed abilities), general and skill feats I agree that the pools of those feats are smaller compared to PF1. I guess expanding those pools might help supporting the new approach in PF2.

I tend to agree. Still this is just playtest material and I guess/hope there will be substancially more feats in the final product.

Belisar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Belisar wrote:

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.

Not agreeing does make the other party dishonest.

Okay then, Vic, let numbers speak why it is dishonest in an objective way. The PF1 fighter has "tons of feats", from level 1 to 20 he gains 21 feats. The PF2 fighter, though, gets 31 feats, that's 10 feats in addition to what a PF1 fighter gets. Even if PF1 classes get more fixed abilities, the amount of choices in PF2 is way superior. In fact in PF2 I can decide myself to chose the abilities while PF1 simply lacks this choice. Before this background, yes, claiming that PF1 is more flexible is objectively dishonest.

it gets 31 things called feats..a lot of which go on buying back ancestry abilities you used to get baked in, and on the really lackluster general and skill feats, so claiming that a Playtest Feat is the same as a PF1 feat, is to use your own words, 'very dishonest'

PF1 and PF2 ought to be distinct games, PF2 is not intended to be a mere PF1 clone with some minor tweaks. So comparing PF1 feats with their PF2 "pendants" is comparing lemons to apples.

Belisar wrote:

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.

Not agreeing does make the other party dishonest.

Okay then, Vic, let numbers speak why it is dishonest in an objective way. The PF1 fighter has "tons of feats", from level 1 to 20 he gains 21 feats. The PF2 fighter, though, gets 31 feats, that's 10 feats in addition to what a PF1 fighter gets. Even if PF1 classes get more fixed abilities, the amount of choices in PF2 is way superior. In fact in PF2 I can decide myself to chose the abilities while PF1 simply lacks this choice. Before this background, yes, claiming that PF1 is more flexible is objectively dishonest.

So instead of, say, playing a Druid who spends some feats on useful Two Handed Weapon stuff as in PF1e, I am playing a partial druid who trades out what should be flavorful class abilities for skill with the weapon.

No, not really. You overlook that in PF2 when you multiclass by multiclass archetypes your druid spell progression still advances with every level. This is not the case when you multiclass in PF1 where your spell progression is on hold when taking some fighter levels for instance.

So this is just another myth, in fact multiclassing chars in PF1 are way more partial class characters than in PF2.
Same is the myth about the superior flexibility in PF1, many mention. In PF1 the classes have level fixed class abilities, where in PF2 you can choose your class abilities amongst several class feats.

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.

So a complaint I'm hearing a lot, both on the forums and from my own group, is about forcing classes into niches, such as making two-weapon fighting available only to Rangers and Fighters. I think the biggest issue I have with this line of complaint is that it seems pretty obvious to me that all options available in this admittedly rather limited playtest book are not the only options that will exist in the new system. Maybe the current class feats will be the only ones represented in the new CRB, but there's nothing stoping Paizo from releasing books that contain a whole pile of additional class feats. That's why I personally love the class feat system as opposed to first edition Archetypes. I compare those two systems because I feel that class feats do a lot of what Archetypes do in the current edition, while 2.0 archetypes fill a similar but markably different role. In any case, I think that, as limited as the options are now, they will not remain so as books continue to be released. The real flexibility of this system is how easy it is to add more stuff to it.

Classes are niches by definition, classes group certain abilities available to a class. If you want to syphon abilities from other classes, multiclass archetypes are your best friend. In prior editions if you multiclassed fighter and rogue for instance, you were definitely superior to any single class fighter or single class rogue. That's what Jason meant by power cherry picking. I totally prefer the approach to tap into abilities of other classes by multiclass archetypes, but this should happen at a cost. Every single class character should be superior in his class by logic because he dedicated all his time to advance in that class than another character who seeks to diversify and create a jack of all trades.

Great post! Thanks for the info, it's very much appreciated!

I have two quibbles.

1. Quote: "allowing characters to thrive in their defined role."

This is a big red flag for me. It might just be the way it's worded, but I want to sincerely caution you against enforcing "roles" in the sense of Tank, DPS, Healer, but also in the sense of "this is your little niche and no one else is allowed in". If you listen to actual play podcasts and many, many games: people make characters with a person in mind, not a role. Throw away characters are centered around a role, but the ones we really remember are as fluid as we are in real life.

2. I am not seeing enough of the flexibility of PF1e either.

There aren't enough options and points of customization. Class is choosing too much, backgrounds are too static, race feats are underwhelming, and I'm constantly being herded away from making choices that the designers didn't have in mind. This is a very big issue, and I want you to take it seriously. Pathfinder is *all about* customization, and to sacrifice too much of it for achieving balance is not the way to go.

That being said I see many ways you could fix things, reducing multiclass requirements, introducing old-school multiclassing, granting more general feats and giving combat feat pools, beefing up backgrounds to be less bland and anemic, letting people pick their proficiencies...

1. Quote: I guess this is what Jason meant by cherry picking the power level and I can see his point. This is an RPG based on classes and this inevitably means niches by definition. You seemingly want to pick every class ability at no cost putting the class concept ad absurdum. Any classless system may be the best for you.

2. I am not that versed in PF1 but I know 3.5 in and out and started to skim through the PF1 core rule books (which is very similar) and I can assure you, to me character advancement is way more flexible in PF2 in every regard. In PF1 you are stuck with fixed class abilities, in PF2 you can select those class abilities freely amongst class feats. Thus I do not understand where many fierce PF1 defenders see the superior flexibility in PF1 character developement. And multiclassing exessively just to syphon the first level abilities of each class is not really innovative thinking.

PF2 has been a potential win for D&D5e. My group has actually mentioned converting over to it. Before the playtest they were diehard Pathfinder fans.

So they leave beloved PF1 for 5e because PF2 is lacking the complexity of PF1? And of all they leave for 5e which ist probably one of the simplest non complex RPGs? Seriously?

The best guess I got when I asked about selling points for PF2 is that players of D&D 5e were the primary target. If so then while keeping as much as possible of the PF1 player base is still good, writing some of it off is expected.

I am actually one of those target 5e players. I wouldn't be interested in PF2 if it was a mere clone of PF1 with some minor tweaks but stayed that bloated. And so I guess most other 5e players wouldn't probably (I know, I dislike this "most players" as well, but it is a valid assumption, that those who chose 5e over PF1 because it was too bloated wouldn't even glance at PF2 if it only was a PF1+).

Belisar wrote:

Actually a fighter in PF2 get's 31 feats till level 20 while the same fighter just receives 21 feats in PF1. So actually even if a PF2 char multiclasses via archetype to receive some wanted gated feats he will still be better of in PF2. And this archetype feat approach is way more flexible than stuffing fixed subclasses and fixed abilities to fixed levels. I like it to be able to choose class abilities via class feats than gaining fixed abilities like it has been in PF1.

I do not understand why assigning fixed class abilities are making characters more unique than chosing from a pool of plenty class feats, like many argue.
And if you want to have every feat being accessible for every char you can literally scrap the class concept and then have everybody choose abilities freely like they see fit. Create feats to access spellcasting, create general feats to access rogue abilities and everybody can truly make unique characters.

As someone mentioned less than half of those are combat oriented (Skill, General, Ancestry)

And you're not counting he abilities fighters get that are now made into Feats, Weapon Specialization, Bravery, Armor Spec, etc

Better choosing freely from Skill, General, Ancestry feats than getting fixed fighter abilities which rather makes every fighter look the same.

Actually a fighter in PF2 get's 31 feats till level 20 while the same fighter just receives 21 feats in PF1. So actually even if a PF2 char multiclasses via archetype to receive some wanted gated feats he will still be better of in PF2. And this archetype feat approach is way more flexible than stuffing fixed subclasses and fixed abilities to fixed levels. I like it to be able to choose class abilities via class feats than gaining fixed abilities like it has been in PF1.
I do not understand why assigning fixed class abilities are making characters more unique than chosing from a pool of plenty class feats, like many argue.
And if you want to have every feat being accessible for every char you can literally scrap the class concept and then have everybody choose abilities freely like they see fit. Create feats to access spellcasting, create general feats to access rogue abilities and everybody can truly make unique characters.

The sorcerer has a spell repertoire from which she can choose freely when casting as long as spell slots are available.
Clerics and wizards can only cast the spells, they have specifically prepared. How if they could prepare a subset of the spells from the spellbook/domain from which they choose freely not unlike the spell repertoire of the sorcerer? That would make those caster classes more appealing and way more flexible.

For me, this looks like a character where the GM didn't quite do his job when he introduced the new game (yes, I read that the OP was also a GM). As a GM myself, I expect to have greater system mastery than my players do. My response to the character would be as follows:

"You made a dwarf fighter as your first character, huh? Can I look at your character sheet?... It looks like you dumped charisma, it's possible you may want to rethink that. As a front-line fighter there's a very good chance you are going to be taking some damage, and magic items, particularly including potions, use a resource in this game based off charisma. With an 8 you won't reliably be able to use healing potions at level 1, and you might even be at a disadvantage in using magic items at later levels. All your stats matter for important parts of gameplay now, so you have to make decisions on what you are willing to go without."

Knowing my regular players, whoever made this character would have follow-up questions where I would probably expand on the rules regarding resonance.

This would be a min-max rule driven approach. But if you have a RP heavy table, where every player creates the character according to a character concept and vision, a dwarf with a lack of social skills is not that far fetched. It would be sad if that roleplay aspect would fall short in PF2 .

I sincerely don't understand how you managed to not understand What I was saying To the point you reached a nearly total reverse of my intent.

I want people To :
- Take more feats INSIDE THE CLASS so that you could be a swordy Paladin with a bit of mount ability, or a bit of shield. Or a shield specialist with a bit of sword. That would make 12 différent Paladin build instead of the 3 currently in game.
- Have feats that Feel like feats. New actions / réactions (Like a Monk reaction to trip opponent
- Multiclassing would still means less Class Stuff but that may be a bit overpowered so maybe you need to change Multiclassing system as Well.

Parts I might have missunderstood but putting all iconical class feats of one certain class into all the other classes it is literally equivalent to opening classes for every feat. But yeah, if classes would be broadened only by fitting feats, which will probably happen, I see your point.

Belisar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Belisar wrote:

master_marshmallow wrote:

I don;t like that certain tactics are restricted to different classes, and they sometimes have different prereqs and tags.

Barbarians can sudden charge after making a strike, where for fighters it has the [open] trait.

Blind-Fight is only available to fighters at 10th level, but rogues get it at 6th.

Counterspell has two completely different texts for wizard and sorcerer, instead of being a game mechanic.

I don;t like all these game mechanics being locked behind classes, it makes the classes seem less interesting.

I've got a whole thread on how I think combat ought be changed around.

Exactly, we should provide every class with arcane, divine and occult spellcasting and sneak attack.

Well, let's not get hysterical.

Some seemingly only want to cherrypick. All the goodies without a drawback. If I were hysterical, I would send the derailing player to your table! :P

Cherrypick what?

What goodies?

What derailing player?

Stay away from my table!

I'm harmless sucker for quests, was talking about mathmuse's expectation subverting wife! :P

and about cherrypicking read many of posts above which state "I don;t like that certain tactics are restricted to different classes".

Belisar wrote:

master_marshmallow wrote:

I don;t like that certain tactics are restricted to different classes, and they sometimes have different prereqs and tags.

Barbarians can sudden charge after making a strike, where for fighters it has the [open] trait.

Blind-Fight is only available to fighters at 10th level, but rogues get it at 6th.

Counterspell has two completely different texts for wizard and sorcerer, instead of being a game mechanic.

I don;t like all these game mechanics being locked behind classes, it makes the classes seem less interesting.

I've got a whole thread on how I think combat ought be changed around.

Exactly, we should provide every class with arcane, divine and occult spellcasting and sneak attack.

Well, let's not get hysterical.

Some seemingly only want to cherrypick. All the goodies without a drawback. If I were hysterical, I would send the derailing player to your table! :P

I don;t like that certain tactics are restricted to different classes, and they sometimes have different prereqs and tags.

Barbarians can sudden charge after making a strike, where for fighters it has the [open] trait.

Blind-Fight is only available to fighters at 10th level, but rogues get it at 6th.

Counterspell has two completely different texts for wizard and sorcerer, instead of being a game mechanic.

I don;t like all these game mechanics being locked behind classes, it makes the classes seem less interesting.

I've got a whole thread on how I think combat ought be changed around.

Exactly, we should provide every class with arcane, divine and occult spellcasting and sneak attack. I don't like those game mechanics being locked behind caster and the rogue classes. Surely you will agree?

When a writer writes a module, they cannot cover every branch in the story. They cover the obvious branches, such as if the party decided on a hack-and-slash campaign or if they follow the trail of breadcrumbs that the writer laid down. Highly thought-out characters take their own path rather than an obvious path, so they leave the written material. Fortunately, Paizo modules also make excellent sourcebooks for when I have to write a new adventure in the same place.

In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

I asked my wife, and she says her goal as a player is "to be unpredicable." She has a reputation for derailing adventure paths, even among other GMs than me. I like how she improves the story because her derailments are from her characters having more realistic concerns and reactions than stereotypical adventurers have. For example, in Fires of Creation she played a young dwarf smith, an exceptional townsfolk with ordinary ambitions forced into exceptional circumstances. When they discovered a villain's base in town and could have broken in and claimed the villain's secret loot, they went to the town council and reported it like responsible citizens. The module did not plan for that.

You have to excuse me, I had to grin widely when reading this. I immediately thought of an adventure path around a horticultural show, where a cast of diverse gardeners compete to raise the biggest pumpkin.

But jokes aside, the town council should just have sent them back after chastising them why they did not return with the villain's secret loot like a loyal citizen would have done. Easy solution there! XD

I guess I am part of what you could call the target group. Every company needs to expand its customer base not to stagnate. PF1 appeals to a group of 3.5 fans that didn't want to follow WotC on its path to 4e. This group was large at the beginning but years show, it will not draw new players into its fold and starts to dwindle. I also loved 3.5, but PF1 has too much bloat, I just have not the spare time to read into this bloat. I played 5e in the meantime and while it is oversimplistic and easy to learn but it can become bland and boring easily as well. When I heard of the PF playtest by coincidence I immediately jumped on board and yeah, it looks very promising to me and I had a ton of fun since.
Honestly, staunch PF1 fans will probably stay with PF1 anyways. And why not, you still have tons of material and adventures to play for decades. Your hope for PF2 is a minimally tweaked PF1 and will not accept less but this will not attract new players.

I would just prefer that Feats also auto-scale (To remove some remaining feat taxes. Looking at you Animal Companion) and players able to select more feats (around 5 should be fine) so that they could 100% go in a set of feat skill (like archery) but still can pick a few outside of it to be more diverse.

Alchemaic, this is another example.

This call for auto scaling feats so you could take more feats from a different class you multiclass into without losing the full progress advantages in your primary class. But this literally means, you spend less time in your primary class but want to rip full benefits of that class like you weren't dabbling into other classes. Why should a primary class feat auto scale, when you do not focus on your primary class and instead dabble into other classes to rip benefits from them?

Again, if a char wants to diversify and studies/trains different fields of expertise he can only do so at the expense of his primary class. Even in Golarion, the day has only that much hours.

Belisar wrote:

If I read some of the comments I get the impression, they want all the spicey class core abilities without paying some price, they want a character which is eaqually good in two or more classes the same time.

For instance if they have a 10th level fighter with the rogue dedication feat there is the notion to grab all the class abilities of the rogue of the same level. Meaning they have in fact the a 10th level char that is equally a 10th level full fighter and a 10th level full rogue at the same time. But this will definitely imbalance the game, such a character will always outperform a 10th level fighter only and a 10th level rogue only, he is literally two 10th level character in a single body.
If you have a concept in mind you usually have primary class in mind. Maybe your concept envisions some abilities of another class, that will be the secondary class. But this choice should always be at the expense of the primary class, you turn your focus elsewhere. A single class char should always outperform a character, who dabbles in more than one class at the same time, in his specific class.

I would really love to know what comments you're reading where it sounds like someone wants to make a character that's a 10th level Fighter and Rogue simultaneously, because I haven't seen anything to that extent and it seems to be unduly coloring your perception of the situation as a whole.

Niche protection can find a comfortable place to curl up and wither.

There's nothing wrong with a sword-swinging rogue, or a fist-mage, or a ranger that dabbles in the occult in his strange path. The idea of 'protecting' the core archetypes is laughable in my view. We've come some distance since their inception.

Just one of them. Calling to end niche protection is clearly asking to take every specialty of every class without some restriction.

Take the cleric dedication feat as an example:

You cast spells like a cleric. You gain access to
the Cast a Spell activity and the Material Casting,
Somatic Casting, and Verbal Casting actions. You can prepare two
cantrips each day from the divine spell list or any other cantrips
you learn or discover. You’re trained in spell rolls and spell DCs
for casting divine spells and in attacks you make with divine
spells. Your key spellcasting ability for these spells is Wisdom.
You can use wands, scrolls, and staves, but only for spells of a
spell level that you can cast. Religion is a signature skill for you.
Choose a deity as you would if you were a cleric. You’re bound
by that deity’s anathema.

You really get alot from only one dedication feat, which is impressive and elegant in my eyes.

Mind you, multiclassing before didn't let a caster have the spell progresssion of his character level, he only had as much spell slots as his level in his caster class. So in PF2 a caster wanting to dabble into other classes is way better off than before.