Ghost of Fourth Edition's page

Since they presented the extremely flat maths, Critical Hit effects have never really excited me.

When they first introduced the new crit system, I thought that they were trying to reward group cohesion by allowing you to stack buffs and accumulate penalties in order to have a statistically significant chance of achieving a critical hit.

But alas, against enemies that actually matter, your chances of pulling off a crit don't feel worth the investment.

The reason that Pathfinder 2 uses the 4e hitpoint scaling is because it also uses the 4e damage scaling.

This is just what I have seen so far as well as what a friend of mine implied after building first PF2 character.

PF1: I explore so I can buy things that make me better
PF2: I explore so I can learn things that make me better

(just a feeling thus far)

From what I have seen, it seems more like:

PF1: I explore so I can get better at what I want to focus on.

PF2: I explore so that I can keep up with the treadmill.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Ancestry & Heritage is effectively Race and Racial trait.

Can't be. Alternate racial traits are, I kid you not, quoted as being one of the most overpowered things in Pathfinder. There's no way they'd incorporate something so overpowered into the new edition.

(Personally: I highly question how overpowered alternate racial traits were. But that is what the devs claimed once the playtest was released. Can't find any examples of them saying it before the playtest though).

Its almost as if they can redesign concepts from the ground up to avoid the problems they had in the past!

A cynic might see it as if they can invent problems to justify a ground-up redesign.

I'm not speaking only to you Thrandir - I see lots of people on these forums say things like "Paizo, please don't make the same mistake 4e did!".

What confuses me is how anyone could think Paizo needs to be told what 4e's mistakes were. Paizo literally owes its continued existence as a company to the mistakes 4e made. It would be very strange to think they haven't spent quite a lot of time over the years studying 4e and what it did wrong, and even stranger to think they didn't consider that same research when setting out to make 2e.

I would venture to say that half of the PF2 design team should be intimately familiar with the failures of 4e, given that they were partially responsible for them.

Mekkis wrote:

The magnitude of the modifier isn't what's important. The difference between modifier and DC is more important.

I don't care if I have +100 vs DC110 as opposed to +10 vs DC20. And if a modifier that I keep investing in remains at +10 vs DC20 for levels 1-10, it's not advancing.

Likewise, if a modifier that I keep investing in grows to +100 vs DC110 by level 10, it's still not advancing. It's just inflating.

Big numbers alone don't excite me.

Luckily for you, Pathfinder 2e doesn't work that way and neither does the Playtest.

The only system that works that way is the strawman system opponents of +1/level keep inventing.

Unfortunately, the Playtest, as published, and as implemented in Doomsday Dawn, does use such a system.

As with Page 42 of the DMG of the fourth edition of the world's oldest roleplaying game, table 10-02 literally calls it out.

Except this time it's clearly more explicit in that player abilities are also tied to it.

There is no strawman here. It actually exists.

Doktor Weasel wrote:

Yeah, this was never clear before the playtest started, and it wasn't really until rather late in the game (like less than a month ago) that I saw any statement clearly pointing out that the playtest is not PF2 Beta and was never meant to be. I know my entire group assumed that it was, and were therefore very dismayed to see such...

https://imgur.com/XCtPPeJ

This was page four of the playtest book. The book that also said playtest on the front.

I know that when I got my hands on a copy, I stood up in front of my group before we played and explained that this wasn't going to be a normal game of Pathfinder, that it was a playtest. The rules weren't going to look anything like this when it released, so it was important to note things they liked and didn't like.

I don't understand how this wasn't clear.

It could have something to do with the name.

And the "join the evolution " tagline.

I hope some PFS news reinvigorates us from the 2nd ED doom.

Are you religiously doomsaying about second edition?

Pretty sure that's illegal in Rahadoum

Shamelessly stolen from somewhere...

As with any number-based RPG, having a larger amount of "+1" to your rolls/scores will make you significantly stronger than someone who doesn't, even if it's just one; however, +1 represents all PF2 has to offer via optimization.

Before you can optimize, you must first understand the game. Explaining Pun-Pun, for example, necessitates discussing snippets of rules from eight or more books, and this is certainly an optimized character for Dungeons and Dragons, where characters must deal with game-bending effects and situations too wild to list here. Thus, the thought processes for optimization depend on the game.

Primarily, the only thing you can do to a character is hit point damage and applying temporary inhibitors such as slows, dazes, and stuns, so an optimal character might be concerned about having hit points. Unfortunately, the RAW ('Rules as Written', the only thing an optimizer can use to make judgments) for monster damage is so pathetically low, the healing so jaw-droppingly high, that this isn't much of a consideration.

Similarly, characters primarily, almost exclusively, defeat monsters by dealing hit point damage.

The primary way characters do damage is by attacking (go figure.) And this leads to our fundamental philosophy of optimization in PF2: +1 to hit is everything. PF2 is seemingly an extraordinary narrow game, there's really nothing else that's relevant. All of a character's powers are keyed off scoring hits, with the exception of the powers that are keyed off scoring critical hits, which uses the same modifier, but is much less likely. If you can't hit (or have your enemies fail a saving throw), your powers are worthless.

Someone ignorant of the system might think +1 matters more at low levels than at high, (like it does in Pathfinder and 3.5e) but, PF2 uses a treadmill system. A first level character might have +7 to hit, and will attack monsters with a defense of 18 (i.e., they'll have a 50% chance of hitting). A 20th level character might have a +34 to hit, and this might sound better, but the game is designed to keep characters on a treadmill at all times. A 20th level character will fight monsters with a defense of 45, and so still have a 50% chance of hit.

PF2 has been designed with optimization assumed, nearly all character abilities are based around combat, and combat is balanced around optimal characters. Should a suboptimal character be playing, they will necessarily be underperforming. Dropping from that 60% to-hit (with 10% chance to crit) to a 55% chance to-hit (and 5% chance to crit) is so important that failing to find this +1 (either by putting off enchanting your weapon or raising a stat, or by choosing a suboptimal race) will punish you - and in many cases, will guarantee that you're stuck playing a suboptimal character for the entire campaign.