Frozen Yakman's page

Hopefully it's not like PF2e at all. Hopefully it has a real multiclass system. Hopefully it embraces the toolbox approach of 3e DND again where you can build the character you want to play. The "here are the small number of characters available to you, chose one" of DnD5 and Pathfinder2 is just bad game design.

Among my friends there is a Pathfinder 1e group I'm involved in and a few are involved in a DnD 5e game or two as well. There is no current interest in switching anything over to 2e. When we finish our current AP we'll either play another AP we haven't yet played like Giant Slayer, a Starfinder game, or some other game entirely. My personal resistance to 2e is it suffers from the same bad design decision that both DnD4 and and DnD5 took. Under the d20 System and derived games, the attitude was here's the mechanics, make the character you want to play. Under PF2/DnD4/DnD5 the decision was made to be here's the characters we, the designers, want you to play, you're not allowed to customize them; be happy with that. The decision to remove multiclassing (feat classing wasn't multiclassing in DnD4, and it still isn't multiclassing in PF2), class locking most mechanics, and designers start saying nonsense like "niche-protection" fully cemented that opinion.

Torn between removing feat siloing because it's a mind boggling bad idea or adding multiclassing into the game because I don't see how they could ship a D&D style game without multiclassing.

To put it succinctly, dwarves armed just worse in medium or heavy armor than elves. They are worse across the board.

That has nothing to do with how common medium or heavy armor dwarves are on Golarion. As written right now, a higher percentage of dwarf NPCs will use medium or heavy armor than elf NPCs. This is supported by the lore and the mechanics.

This makes the premise of the OP incorrect.

Have you ever actually played a combat? The difference between an elf's speed armored and unarmored tactically is almost nothing. The difference for a dwarf is tactically is enormous. An elf in armor has the same penalty to speed as the average dwarf in absolute magnitude, but proportionally it is much less. It is tactically sound for the average elf to wear heavy armor. It is suicide for the average dwarf. The only heavy infantry dwarves would ever field would be the small proportion of their population that is unburdened, elves or humans would have no need to rely on some rare genetic anomaly to field heavy infantry and thus would field more. The premise stands.

Frozen Yakman wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

My preference would be to make unburdened actually a "trained" thing so it is just a regular ancestry feat and not a heritage. Like in real life people can just learn how to carry more stuff via experience. Like those Luo women who carry 70% of their bodyweight on their heads learn how to do that; they aren't born with special necks.

Even if it were, Dwarven heavy infantry would be rarer than the other races since it still would require more training than them.

Dwarven heavy infantry doesn't require "more training." Most ancestries don't even have the option of avoiding a speed penalty for armor. Dwarves currently get it as a genetic thing available to significant fraction of their population. For whatever chunk of the dwarf population is born with Unburdened, wearing medium/heavy armor is going to be the default strategy.

Even if it became an ancestry feat, there'd still be more dwarves incentivized to take heavier armors. Most races lose speed for wearing medium. Dwarves who spend a little time adjusting to their armor lose nothing. (Adjusting like they would in basic training for soldiers, for example.) A human's options are wear medium armor and be slower OR move at their full speed in light. A dwarf can move at full speed in medium armor or move at full speed in light. (Substitute heavy with a 10 foot and 5 foot reduction in speed, respectively, and you get the same idea.)

Ergo, dwarves have more reason to wear heavy armor than other ancestries.

Accept that a dwarf in heavy armor is slow to the point of utter tactical uselessness without the feature. Even the most incompetent general would just out-maneuver them. Other species don't have this problem.

My preference would be to make unburdened actually a "trained" thing so it is just a regular ancestry feat and not a heritage. Like in real life people can just learn how to carry more stuff via experience. Like those Luo women who carry 70% of their bodyweight on their heads learn how to do that; they aren't born with special necks.

Even if it were, Dwarven heavy infantry would be rarer than the other races since it still would require more training than them.

Since Dwarves are no longer innately unburdened by heavy armor, and it is now a learned ability this creates a paradigm shift in their fluff. Humans and other medium size creatures aren't slowed to the point of pointlessness making heavy armor and thus heavy infantry a valid tactic for their armies. Dwarves on the other hand need to take the learned ability to reduce the speed penalty otherwise heavy armor's penalties are too great. This means that Dwarves in heavy armor have to be more trained than their counterparts from other species. More training means higher rarity. This means the paradigm of heavily armored line infantry is no longer a thing that makes sense for Dwarves. They would instead be a species known for fielding lightly armored foot troops.

Has anybody else noticed any fluff changes necessitated by the rules changes?

Quote:

1. Members of the group are not having fun. They understand the goals of the playtest and how it makes it different from a normal campaign, but these differences have a negative effect on their playing experience. Here are two examples:

---- Creating many different characters that are only played for a short amount of time lessens immersion and interest
---- Participating in "stress tests" of aspects of the system brings flaws to the forefront

I get that people might not enjoy testing this way, but honestly, this is the best way to actually playtest a game. Campaign play is pretty much the worst, as it yields a lot of anecdotes and hand-waving that obscures mechanics, rather than real data resulting from testing and math.

Really there should be a lot more emphasis on repeatedly running encounters and changing only minor details (spells, feats or opponents) to see how they turn out.

How does playing the game the way it's not supposed to be played yield real data about how the game is supposed to be played?

A 3/3 fighter/mage is a 6th level character. That they can stand with level 4 characters is not glowing praise.

They are talking about 2nd edition multiclassing, a 3/3 fighter/mage was not a 6th level character. It was a 3/3 fighter/mage character, it doesn't translate to 3rd edition terminology. XP was tracked per class and each class had its own XP->level chart such that characters would be much different class level and have relatively equivalent power levels. Thieves level faster than fighters who leveled faster than Wizards. Character classes weren't designed to stack rather the best one took priority.

Frozen Yakman wrote:

Dire Ursus wrote:

Or more like: want to make a trip build for Ranger in 2e? Just do it! You don't have feat taxes that you need to take to actually use trip. Just keep boosting your athletics and you can trip people. Much better than 1e.

Not really, that's just an utter lack of support for a trip based fighting style at all. You can only be as good as everybody else.

You do a trip build by spending your skill increases in athletics and keeping a high dex/str. Using a trip weapon helps since you get to add your item bonus to trip attacks. Just because there aren't trip based feats yet doesn't mean you can't do a "trip based fighting style". In fact it's way easier to make a trip based fighting style in this edition than in 1e where you needed a decent int and a few feats.

Yay, my plus is higher, let my enthusiasm gush over this poorly designed feat/"multiclass" system. At the end of this playtest, if this is what we end up with and its complete lack of character customization, it will ultimately be a subscription stopper.

Or more like: want to make a trip build for Ranger in 2e? Just do it! You don't have feat taxes that you need to take to actually use trip. Just keep boosting your athletics and you can trip people. Much better than 1e.

Not really, that's just an utter lack of support for a trip based fighting style at all. You can only be as good as everybody else.

Frozen Yakman wrote:

Dire Ursus wrote:

Chance Wyvernspur wrote:

I often multiclass in pursuit of a character concept and I've been making multiclass characters as part of the playtest.

Thus far, I've not been very happy with multiclassing in 2e. Its hard for me to say it is the archetype feat approach as the class implementations are disappointing. I think I would be unhappy with the results even with the old form of multiclassing because we're being asked to build on a feeble foundation.

It may be true to say that 2e offers more choices, but I wouldn't say that it offers more meaningful choices. I feel my favorite class, the Ranger, went from a customizable package of abilities to where I pick one shtick from a list of four.

One part of the multiclass archtype feats that I find frustrating is the requirement to have a 16 in the primary stat. I wasn't required to have a 16 in my primary stat of my main class. In fact, depending on your eventual goal with the 2e character, it makes sense to short the primary stat of your chosen class and put an 18 in your multiclass archtype's primary stat. One example was that I made a Cleric with a 12 Wisdom, then an 18 Dex and 16 Str and went for the rogue archtype. I basically made a rogue, but got the cleric channel ability. If I would have made the rogue my base class, I would have needed a 16 Wis to support the cleric archtype.

Well let's be honest, were you comparing the character concepts of the playtest to the 1e Core rulebook? for example you mention how Ranger was super customizable. Which I disagree with if you're talking about just the 1e core rulebook.

In first edition, I have near all the feats in the rule book to potentially take. In second edition, I only have the siloed feats to choose from. I have far more customization in 1e.

And how many of those feats are actually useful? It's not really a choice when one feat line is basically necessary to take to be useful in combat. Archer Ranger for instance....

Being able to create a bad character is infinitely better than not being able to create a character at all. Want to create a trip build Ranger in 1e, there's never been any Ranger-specific support for it, but you can totally create it. Want to create a trip build Ranger in 2e, your SOL, Paizo hasn't made that yet and is giving no signalling that its on the road-map.

Chance Wyvernspur wrote:

I often multiclass in pursuit of a character concept and I've been making multiclass characters as part of the playtest.

Thus far, I've not been very happy with multiclassing in 2e. Its hard for me to say it is the archetype feat approach as the class implementations are disappointing. I think I would be unhappy with the results even with the old form of multiclassing because we're being asked to build on a feeble foundation.

It may be true to say that 2e offers more choices, but I wouldn't say that it offers more meaningful choices. I feel my favorite class, the Ranger, went from a customizable package of abilities to where I pick one shtick from a list of four.

One part of the multiclass archtype feats that I find frustrating is the requirement to have a 16 in the primary stat. I wasn't required to have a 16 in my primary stat of my main class. In fact, depending on your eventual goal with the 2e character, it makes sense to short the primary stat of your chosen class and put an 18 in your multiclass archtype's primary stat. One example was that I made a Cleric with a 12 Wisdom, then an 18 Dex and 16 Str and went for the rogue archtype. I basically made a rogue, but got the cleric channel ability. If I would have made the rogue my base class, I would have needed a 16 Wis to support the cleric archtype.

Well let's be honest, were you comparing the character concepts of the playtest to the 1e Core rulebook? for example you mention how Ranger was super customizable. Which I disagree with if you're talking about just the 1e core rulebook.

In first edition, I have near all the feats in the rule book to potentially take. In second edition, I only have the siloed feats to choose from. I have far more customization in 1e.

Deighton Thrane wrote:

Frozen Yakman wrote:

Slyme wrote:

Dasrak wrote:

While I'm not willing to throw in the towel myself, I will say that in its current state PF2 has no chance of convincing me to convert from PF1.

Pretty similar to how I feel. Short of a complete ground up rework, PF2 has completely lost my interest. They are turning it into a game I just do not like. I'll give the final version a look once it comes out...but Paizo is unlikely to get my money for anything 2E related.

Same, the switch in attitude from "let us help you create the character you want to create" to "you can only create the characters we want you to create" is too much of a turn off.

Couldn't agree more. If I had to compare how I feel about character creation in first edition versus second edition, it would be like going from a grocery store where I'm given all the ingredients I could ever want to put a meal together the way I like it, to going to a restaurant and having to pick from a couple dozen meal options. Only a few of these really interest me, and the fact that I can substitute fries for a salad really doesn't cut it.

I'm quite sure I know the answer but just to be sure your statement isn't misinterpreted: Do you feel like you have a wider range of characters in PF1e using the CRB only vs PF2e using the playtest material?

If the answer is yes would you attribute class feats as being responsible for those?

1st I don't think it's fair to only limit to the CRB. PF2e is competing against the games in my collection and that includes a near full set of PF1e books. That said, I absolutely could make many more characters in the base PF1e core book than this playtest document. Class feats are a huge part about that, but also the multiclass system. I would much rather a PF1e style multiclass system that finally fixed multiclass spell-casters, monks, and any other archetype who's primary thing wasn't multiclass friendly.

Dasrak wrote:

While I'm not willing to throw in the towel myself, I will say that in its current state PF2 has no chance of convincing me to convert from PF1.

Pretty similar to how I feel. Short of a complete ground up rework, PF2 has completely lost my interest. They are turning it into a game I just do not like. I'll give the final version a look once it comes out...but Paizo is unlikely to get my money for anything 2E related.

Same, the switch in attitude from "let us help you create the character you want to create" to "you can only create the characters we want you to create" is too much of a turn off.

Frozen Yakman wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Frozen Yakman wrote:

Even with the added multiclass options, I'm still not going to advocate for my group to switch to PF2 at this point. Niche protection isn't a valuable concept to me. Characters with multiple equal focuses (e.g. Fighter 2/Rogue 2), characters with more than two focuses (e.g. Fighter 1/Rogue 1/Wizard 1), and characters that change their mind what their focus should be (eg. Fighter 2/Wizard 8 with Wizard only happening at 3rd level and beyond) are far more important options than niche protection. This current design only supports dabbling.

But your Fighter 4/ Rogue 4/ Wizard 4 is a crap Fighter, a crap Rogue and a crap Wizard. Any straight-classed level 12 character is more viable than that (well, maybe except Rogue 12 ;-P)

Your "important options" are cripplingly inadequate under PF1. They exist solely to trap people who don't have enough system mastery to spot that.

It is definitely not a crap fighter nor a crap rogue. The only thing it was bad at was wizardry and that's because the spell-casting system doesn't support multi-classing. If PF2 finally fixed multiclass spell-casting (without the Prestige Class band-aid) instead of giving this frankly bad system, then PF2 would be many steps towards being a good system.

What does a good rogue do in PF1? Having a 3.4 BAB and no spell progression made them a laughing stock of a character that was vastly surpassed by the printing of the ACG. The concept of the dibilitating strikes were interesting, but 4 levels were the most anyone was ever going to put into rogue as a MC character. There is something wrong with a Multi-class system in rogue 5/fighter5 is a much worse character than a level 10 fighter, and still a considerably worse character than a level 6 fighter/4 rogue. PF1 multi-classing worked (or didn't work) because martial characters (with the exception of the rogue) were mostly just one big class with a lot of different tag on options (which became...

Not everything is combat focused nor needs to be. The fighter 3/rogue 3 isn't as good at fighting as fighter 6 and it shouldn't be. Nor is it as good as rogue 6 at non-combat situations. But it's better at combat than rogue 6 and better in non-combat situations than fighter 6. Which is exactly what it should be.

Loves
1) Ancestry feats built into character progression, but not the current ancestry system at start (needs more front loading, and if we're doing half-races this way, then they should be feats on the target race (e.g. Half-Elf should be an Elf feat and other races can take the mixed-feat of another race).
2) Nothing comes to mind
3)

Hates
1) Class feats overwhelming regular feats, this is a REALLY bad design
2) The multiclass system in general especially the delay on multiclassing again. There's no room for triple-class characters in this game nor is it possible for a character to change direction mid-stream. If I want to play a fighter who realizes wizardry is his true calling at level 3, I'm SOL, you can't build that character. You can make a fighter, that is OK at wizardry but you can never make wizardry it's primary focus.
3) Stat-generation - bad rolls make memorable characters.

How about a corollary:

1) specialists should do better at the thing they specialize than generalists
2) generalists (like the classic bard) should be a valid build mathematically

They discussed some things coming in the next update.
1) Signature skills are gone, bulk of the update will be about that
2) Soothe will gain range
3) cleric bonus spells will be adjusted so that none of them are divine

Very positive on the signature skills change.

At this point, if this were the final version of the game, I'd just keep playing 1e and cancel my subs (except the AP).

There's no reason to play a game that's less fun with less options and requires more work than the one I have right now.

-Skeld

Pretty much this. If/when I get tired of 1e, I'd probably switch to Mutants and Masterminds 2 or 3, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2, or a system I haven't played before.

That is a comically huge amount of work the devs would have to take upon themselves to actually accomplish that.

The siloing of feats assures more variety over time since the feats are made with the class in mind. If the feats are generalized, some will work better with certain classes (as was the case in 3.X).

Folks are so quick cry foul that they dont take the time to consider why things were done and how they may be beneficial to the game.

This is just a mathematically false statement. Every desiloed feat increases the number of possible characters factorially. The extremely restrictive multiclass system also decreases the number of characters factorially.

I think the class feats are fine conceptually. They just need more of them and have stated that is exactly what they will do. There will be rogue dual wield feats for example but they just arent part of the playtest. I think they said every class will be getting a couple pages worth of just extra feats. So rogues will be able to dual wield but just differently than fighters. The problem, I think, is folks are judging an inomplete product and measuring it against PF1 which has been in development for forever and has a billion splat books.

Which is a completely fair comparison. PF2 has to convince players its better than PF1. It's coming out of the gate with the ability to make far fewer characters than PF1's Core Rulebook much less the expansions people have bought over the year. It needs to convince players that despite that rather huge flaw, you'll have more fun with the new ancillary rules.

It is paradoxically odd that you want characters to feel different but you want them to all have access to the same feats. Kinda doesnt make sense.

The purpose of the character creation rules are to minimize the amount of time a player can go from the concept of their character to realizing that character in the game. The more impediments there are to creating the character you want to create, the worse a system is. The purpose of a class system is to round out the characters and pace the characters to make sure the character's remain balanced.

As an aside, I am surprised that an ADnD player would care about siloed class features; that is literally how the hobby started. Want to do skills? Be a thief. Want to attack low cr monsters more than once? Be a fighter. Want to tell you are moving downwards? Be a dwarf. Also, deriding this design as video gamey is funny since the hobby started as an extension of a miniature war game. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.

By modern standards, AD&D is poorly designed.

This thread highlights one of the problems I have with the system too. It's a game where you only get to play the characters the designers want you to play rather than the characters you want to play. That's why all the feats went from well-designed general purpose abilities to highly restrictive no-creativity-allowed abilities that you only get by taking the class. The lack of a good multiclass system only exacerbates this.

The alchemist (for example) would be infinitely better if you took the PF1 alchemist, turned all the Discoveries into proper PF1-style feats. Give all the feats the Discovery keyword (and any other applicable keyword such as Combat, maybe add Mutagen and Bomb as appropriate to open up design space) and change the discovery class feature to granting bonus Discovery feats. Fix multiclass spellcasting while your
at it and you've got an Alchemist mark 2 that is really awesome.

Similar things could be done with Rogue Powers, rather than having Ninja Tricks and Slayer Talents (and the similar abilities for Investigators and Vigilantes). Turn them all into feats and just give the classes bonus feats that have the right keyword. Rogues would get bonus Trick feats. If you really don't want too much class sharing, then use a variety of keywords. Make some of the Ninja Tricks into Trick feats but others into Ki feats and give the Ninja bonus Trick or Ki feats while the Rogue only gets Trick feats. The important things is the feats are general purpose and anybody can take them if they meet the prerequisites.

I'm going to make the argument that is the opposite of the traditional stance. The D&D 3e Spiked Chain was the only balanced PHB Exotic Weapon. All the other ones were under-powered. The exotic weapons in Pathfinder 1e were not feat-worthy and were under-powered. Looking at the ones in 2e, it looks like the same problem.

No it doesn't because DCs are not level dependent values. Eventually everybody reaches 95% success at picking normal locks. The variance between specializing in picking locks and not caring whatsoever gets washed away by level.

This is really the core problem of the fighter.

The axioms of balance are roughly
1) All characters of equal levels should be equally good at adventuring
2) Characters more specialized in a specific area of adventuring should be better in that area than characters less specialized in that area
3) All characters of equal levels should equally good at combat

That third axiom is more important in prior editions than this one, but given how important combat is to the genre it's not something that should be dropped.

The fighter is, however; incompatible with the axioms. The fighter specializes in combat, moreover; it doesn't have the option to not specialize in combat. Therefore, he must be unequivocally better at combat than any other class that is not similarly focused. This makes it incompatible with the third axiom. And if you balance it to the third axiom, the fighter becomes incompatible with the first and second.

I did my initial read through last week and I'm trying to decide if I want to participate more in the play test or even make the switch over.

One of my first concerns is the tendency to use the word "simple" as better than "complex". Moreover, the attempt to frame 1e as too complex. Too simple is just as bad as too complex. With that said trying to frame the new action system as better because its simpler is just wrong. The difference in complexity is negligible and this is pretty much a lateral change. I would have to say my reaction to the action system or the degrees of success change is "meh".

Next let's look at Ancestries/Races. My main criticism for Races in D&D3e to PF1e would be that your race is mechanically significant at 1st level and almost totally unimportant by 10th. If any variant of the d20 system did races right it would be Arcana Unearthed/Evolved, if you wanted to keep your race as a significant mechanical aspect of your character in that system you definitely could. Looking at Ancestries in PF2e, I like the automatic racial feats idea but overall, I think this area needs a lot of work. The mechanical contribution of the race at first level is far too little and the feats are not interesting. Not a single one has a requirement over level 5. Also not a fan of the way Half-Elf and Half-Orc were done.

Next let's look at classes, feats, and archetypes since they're so intertwined it's hard to separate. First, the single best feature of D&D3e was its multiclass system. Multiclass fighters worked because everybody got BAB and everybody got feats. Multiclass rogues worked because everybody got skill points. If I had a criticism of the multiclass system in D&D3e was that the designers punted when making it work for the spell casting system. Instead of designing it so Wizard 20, Wizard 10/Fighter 10, Wizard 10/Cleric 10, and Wizard 7/Cleric 7/Fighter 6 worked because every class could improve spell casting in some manner, they instead siloed spellcasting inside its class. They papered over it a little with Prestige Classes but it still needed work. With PF1e in addition to not fixing spellcaster multiclassing, it worked very hard to discourage multiclassing at all by making sticking to one class much better than multiclassing. In this regard, PF2e is really bad. Far too many feats are siloed inside their classes, and the multiclass system is hugely incomplete and too costly. Moreover, going back to simplicity/complexity, feats having lots of prerequisites is not a bad thing, you removed those for no reason. This part just needs to be reworked.

Next I want to talk about adventuring stages. In d20 your character goes through roughly 3 stages. Fledgling adventurer, adventurer, and high level. In the fledgling stage, you probably haven't created the character you want to play yet and it's mechanically uninteresting. This area of the game would be boring but tension is added because death is always around the corner. In the adventuring stage, you've probably created the core of your character, you're survivable, and you get to do cool stuff. At high level, you've made your character and fully fleshed out the character but the game falls apart in book-keeping. In D&D3e-PF1e this stages are roughly 1-4, 5-10, 11+ in character level. My main concern reading through PF2e is that the added HP at first level removes the tension and makes the fledgling stage far too boring. Moreover the defrontloading of characters means you'll be in the fledgling stage far too long. Suggestion, drop Ancestry HP, put back a lot more of the racial abilities and ratchet up the mechanical aspect of Backgrounds to accelerate characters out of the fledgling state as fast as possible.

Finally I want to talk about staleness. The d20 system is nearing its 20th birthday. In that time I've played a lot of characters. In my current game, with my last death; my GM gave me the option: get raised or make a character only from the core rulebook. I chose the former option. The latter option was so detestable, I might've considered dropping the game than taking it if it was my only option. I've played the Core Rulebook. The fact that that the new Core rules only contain Goblin as a newish race and Alchemist as a newish class is a major problem for me. I get the need for basic archetypes for new players but veterans also need a reason to switch and right now; I'm not inspired. PF1e core was 575 pages, 2e is 428, that means you've got over 150 pages to fill with more stuff. 1e's problem wasn't that it was too complex, its problem was it was too sprawling. Having more options in the core book would go a long way to get me to consider to switch over.