Gortle's page

Reasons why I dislike attributes:

1. They follow a tradition of bioessentialism that creates false boundaries around what defines characters. Measuring characteristics like intenlligence has a very troubling, racist history and is still very problematic today. I say this as a college writing instructor who understands that we have no tools to measure such things that are not based upon cultural values that favor in-culture members over others.

So tests are not perfect or robust. Intelligence is a well established robust concept in real world science. This type of thinking is destructive and discounts real factors by negative association and mud throwing.

The more we try to create a small number of “essential attributes” the more likely we ignore other ways to be smart or wise or strong or likeable.

Yes its complex but we are playing a game. We need to codify and simply things.

2. They don’t even do what they say they do well. How often does the party only let the smartest character come up with the plan or strategy to solve a challenge? How often do parties even pretend like it was the smart character that came up with the plan? There are literally no game mechanics that actually represent character intelligence (outside of “magic”) as anything other than “how much data can your brain store”

Generally games uses Intelligence to discover information the character might be able to discern, discover, deduce, or remember. Yes some of the effects of what we might call intelligence is mixed in with other factors and is split over Wisdom, Perception, and Charisma

Gortle wrote:

At the risk of stereotyping

Was a mechanical engineering major, I'm liking the trend of quality-of-life smoothing.

Contrary to popular thought, engineering is about making things easier, not making things harder.

But if force barrage is what's tripping you up, odd hangup. I've had tons of player complaints about drow, never one about spell name changes. Players usually don't care long as they can still do the same stuff. What they complain about is losing access to former options, not whether an old option still exists by a different name.

My groups play a lot of different games. I've just finished another GMs D&D5 game and I'm going to now finish up the back third of Kingmaker in PF2 which I was running before the remaster so that will be a change up. But in also in a DCC game and running another homebrew game as well. I'm not in a Traveller game I could be in, and I'll be looking at Cosmere and DC20 soon. Last year was some PBTA and Shadow Dark.

Name changes are a pest. But yes if you only play one game they are easy to get over.

I feel its way easier to axe a gameplay mechanic that really isn't part of the world itself than something thats more tangible like a whole species.

Yes lore changes hurt, but lore is less important to us as we make a lot of it up as we go along. It's the name changes that increase mental load really hurt. Force Barage anyone?

Its also important to note that TTRPGs as a whole are leaning more towards simplification nowadays rather than having complex systems that require system mastery to learn and use

Simplfication is good, removing the dross is important. Lets do that.

You are still missing that there are different people here. At the risk of stereotyping; Engineers, IT, Physics and Maths geeks were the core player base for a long time. They want a different game from the general public. Don't kill this game by trying to make it the same as everything else.

I personally hope PF3e to fully divorce itself from D&D if possible.

The problem is most of the community has a history of playing D&D and don't share your view. In fact the core are players who resisted the changes from D&D3.5.

Much of that was the encounter and daily powers about which you are complaining and the Pazio designers seem to be pushing us towards.

There are limits to what Paizo can and should do. Everyone has different ideas about that.

Some of my players want Paizo to move to the lite Vancian that D&D5 went to. For me I want to get rid of it completely as I think it doesn't scale well, but I'm unclear about what to do with it.

None of us were interested in WellSpring Magic, not because it was a bad idea but it didn't seem well balanced (too weak). There are a lot of interesting options in PF2 that could work well but have got balance or perceived balance problems that should be revisited.

Though I think your specific feat ideas may be too strong. They are generally objectively superior to a +1 attribute, so they would simply drive optimizers to always take those instead of always taking the +4...but not increase the variability of character concepts. Example, your strength feat gives +1 to attack, damage, and Con. This is strictly superior to the +1 to attack and damage that a bump to Strength would give you, so why would anyone ever bump Strength up to 4 in your system? They wouldn't. So you'd simply be replacing "all fighter players feel obligated to take Str 4" with "all fighter players feel obligated to take Str 3 and the strength feat."

Well what us lost is the +1 to grapple and trip which is important to some builds. If that is not a balance factor for you because of class feature X then we can think about it more.

Importantly its not one feat it was one of 6 different feats plus the default +4 str, I could easily find another couple more. The point being every strength based martial doesn't have to look like a Jack Reacher.

I feel like the point is that every single barbarian and 90% of fighters are exactly as strong as each other from level 1 to level 20. Strength is an absolutely meaningless stat for talking about the vast majority of characters’ uniqueness or description.

So every strength based character is the same and there are commonly 2 of them in parties. Likewise for every other class /ability score combination apart from that there is typically one of them in a party.

It is a part of a description but a bit bland and predictable, we should be doing better.

Paizo tried to hint that a +3 is OK in a offensive ability score but the optimzer community and most of the player base haven't embraced that.

So here is a start at some other ideas, maybe this could be part of an attributeless system but I'm assuming all the attributes are still there.

Characters can take one of these as a free feat at level 1 if and only if they don't have a +4 ability score.

So looking at Strength

Incredibly Broad: You gain +1 to hit and damage with weapon attacks. You gain +1 Constitution.

Natural Athlete: You gain +1 to hit and damage with melee attacks. You gain +2 to all Athletics checks except for grapple, push and trip.

Deadly Eye: +1 to hit and damage with weapon attacks, and +2 to Perception and Seek checks.

Seasoned Warrior: You know the importance of getting the measure of your enemy. You gain +1 to hit and damage with weapon attacks provided you have made a Seek Action, a Lore Check or a Hunt Prey Action in this round or the preceding round.

Dirty Fighter: You gain +1 to hit and damage with melee attacks. You gain +2 to Deception Checks and Dirty Tricks in combat

Perfect Balance: You gain +1 to hit and damage with weapon attacks. You gain +1 Dexterity.

Now many you can add more variety and make sure the modifiers always stack and close any rules, progression, or balance gaps. This is just an idea being tossed around.

For sure some similar flavour is already in the game. Every one of these is weaker in same way than just having +4 strength, but each also says something about the character and gets something else. If you want balance these are the sort of powers you need to give a martial to compensate for only having a +3 Strength.

Yes, "rolling up" a character can help spur the imagination. However, it's a major pain point when you have a firm character concept in mind and you have to hope the dice align to what you want to do.

And all of the additional steps with methods to help minimize the pure randomness just move more toward point buy or PF2e's ABC (Ancestry, Background, Class).

Note: I started gaming back in the 1st Ed AD&D days with "roll attributes in order"... and both races and classes had minimum and maximum attribute requirements(!) to qualify for. There was a (very understandable) reason people went toward point buy and other methods.

There were a lot of different rules in different games, plus lot of house rules. There is a time and place for random generation. It is obviously not when you have a firm character concept in mind. That is clearly incompatible.

The thing with attributes I think people like, or at least used to like, is that in earlier editions they were effectively random.

Yes we have lost that randomness. Many people still like it but the majority prefer balance so we have point buy. I always liked rolling up a character and rolling some personality/features and then trying to work out who they could be.

In PF2e that's not the case anymore. Even if you can technically juggle your stats a bit like starting with a +4 in your KAS and a +3 somewhere else, most people usually start with a +4/+2/+2/+1/+0/+0

Now every character has +4 in their primary ability. Every Fighter has +4 strength with only a few exceptions for special builds or unusual players.

The designers clearly expected the players to be happy with starting with a +3 in their primary ability score. But the player base have mostly pushed back against that. So everyone is the same. It is bland and boring.

attributes can sometimes work as descriptors, they more often than not work as restrictions. For example, someone that wants to be good at Intimidation is indirectly making themselves good at Diplomacy and Deception as well

There is a bundling everywhere certain skills and certain powers are gated behind classes, feats and attributes. It is the game.

I think the solution for that particular one is to have Strength as an optional ability for Intimidation. Paizo have prefered to have strong niche protection instead. I'm more concerned that Diplomacy and Deception aren't that good in combat. They need a little tweak.

RE: Attributes, I am attributes' biggest hater. I don't like partial boosts, I don't like how much complexity they add to the system for little to no benefit, I don't like the bioessentialist history or implications or how it sets up some players to accidentally behave in ableist ways trying to roleplay their stats, I don't like having to fight new players more used to narrative games getting very upset I'm not letting them make a 12 DEX thief rogue with all their points in INT. I think anything attributes do to help with the fantasy of a class can be better done with more feats, a number that says I'm strong on my sheet that no one will ever look...

I like having attributes. I think they are realistict and help describe the character. I do think it is silly just handing out large amounts of attributes as the characters level. Are you just fixing a maths problem in the game? What are they supposed to represent in the first place?

It could be covered with a set of feats eg like choose some feats that describe what your character is best at and provide a mechanical bonus. I think I prefer to do both this and have attributes.

I'd prefer if there where a few more options where attributes where not important. Example at the moment you can build a caster with just buff, healing, summons, walls and force barrage. You cut out almost all your offensive options but it is somewhat workable and you don't have to have a good spellcasting attribute. Can we get a class without a primary attribute?

This may rub people the wrong way in the context of the crunchy system that is 2e, but I think it's at least a worthwhile thought experiment to see if we could remove as many modifiers as possible in a future system, in a manner not too dissimilar to how 2e condensed many types of modifiers from 1e.

Modifiers do add to the crunch, and some are how key tactical elements are expressed in 2e, but they also slow down play

I agree. Modifiers are the game. As a player it is what you are trying to maximise at the tactical level. But it the players can't do it quickly enough it just slows the game down. A design can't be perfect until you have taken out the trash.

We probably could do without some of the modifiers. I think item bonuses on skill items are unnecessary.
I also object to having to wear things like a Demon Mask to get an intimidation bonus - it just interferes with my roleplaying of the character too much.

When some of the most basic actions will often involve multiple rolls that each have their own modifiers, gameplay takes more time to resolve

This is probably the biggest area to streamlining. No more rolls to determine modifiers for rolls. It's just a waste of time. Make it all a simple modifier that pushes into a final single roll. Aid shouldn't be a check just a modifier.

I'd also consider all the little ongoing rolls. Thinks like bleeding. Maybe the bleeding stops when you roll a 1 on the damage die. Bleeding is still there but now it is twice as fast to resolve. There are all sorts of things you can do to simplify and speed up the game without reducing its richness.

The worst thing you could do is go to a D&D advantage style system. Because the modifier is so large and so easy to get it devalues all the crunch.

I'm actually quite excited at the prospect of a new edition, especially as Paizo begins to depart from their D&D roots more and more in both design and convention.

Maybe I just find that things are going in all the wrong directions for my taste. No one in my play groups was at all interested in the new playtest classes. The new design decisions seem largely negative to me. There is still lots of clean up to be done with this game. We still don't have a useful Shifter. I'm finding the designers are more interested in adding extra fluff than adequately covering the core game.

I want to see a more serious effort to simplify the game and fix or remove the dross. By which I mean things that don't work reasonably or are adding mass and complexity but not really contributing to the fun.

Moving away from decades-old tropes such as slot-based spellcasting and prepared versus spontaneous

I'm perfectly fine with that. It was too complex and doesn't add enough from mid levels.

my hope is that we get another five to ten years out of 2E most specifically for Starfinder, because they're REALLY cooking over there! From minor QoL things like the Traversal trait streamlining movement rules to great new ideas like the Skill Paragon optional rule and Standardized Ancestry Feats that feel like they should be the new gold standard across both systems, and could pave the way for other ideas like Standardized Class Feats so you don't have so many martial or spellshape feats being reprinted over and over under multiple classes and archetypes and can instead use that space for more unique, flavorful, and interesting options.

I'll have to get around to checking out SF2 but the genre is much less interesting to me.

I would really want to see is a revision of the simple/martial/advanced weapon categories and the light/medium/heavy armor categories

It is a bit clunky but I don't see that it is problematic.

The third and last thing I want is a revision or removal of the 6 attributes.

Revise them if you must but if you remove them you have made a different game. For sure go write that one

* Failing on something and the adventure grinding to a full stop is bad.

Yes and no. Failing and having to try something else is fine. The real problem here is if the adventure or the GM have set the scenario so that there is only one way through. Unfortunately that is the simplest way to write adventures. A better adventure will have multiple ways through. Maybe the players fail and the lock is inpenetrable, but perhaps you can physically bypass it, maybe there is a key to find, maybe an NPC has information about a code or a weakness. I like to give the players options and to explore. This way the players and the dice have agency.

To me that is the heart of traditional RPGs. If you take it away you have a different mostly narrative game. They have their place too and can be great games but they are not the same.

Just allowing the party to proceed on a failure is in a sense cheating. It is bad adventure design. I guess it is acceptable on occassion if you find yourself in a corner as a GM, but not as the default rule.

* Failing on something and having to just try again and again until you succeed is also bad. Even if there's no cost/consequence to it.

...
Thinking about lock picking, we've established the mechanic works okay at the time pressure of an encounter. The rogue getting a potential ally out of manacles while the fighter keeps enemies busy, that's fine. If you fail too many checks, it'll take longer and be a harder fight, or you might have to flee and leave them behind.

For sure in combat the loss of time and actions is often a penalty enough in itself. The issue is out of combat the time pressure is often not there. So a rule to cover both is more complex.

I prefer to use a principle from IT called exponential backoff. Basically if you allow a retry then it takes a lot more time. So if you fail it as an action a retry takes a minute, if you fail it as a minute then a retry is going to take you most of the day. Kicking it from in encounter, to exploration, then to downtime and keeping the total number of retrys finite and sane but not making the result inevitable. As a GM it is easy enough to arrange for consequences to each of these results.

The larger issue is that exploration mode doesn’t have enough crunch to it

Yes the rules have a significant gap there and it is up to the GM to fill it.

In the case of no time pressure and a locked door which will eventually open, it doesn't really matter if a Fail result means "it takes you longer to open the door" or just "cross your fingers and roll the die again". If Tridus' version is doing anything, it's reducing the number of times you need to roll the d20 before you're allowed to continue.

It might matter when you consider the critical failure chance.

Now, keying the result of Pick a Lock to a time penalty isn't the version I would personally advocate for

Of course there are other options, it is probably best if the rules provide some options and the GM applies some judgement about what is appropriate for the situation.

Fail Forward does not say "you failed, I guess I have to open the door for you anyway so you don't have to find a different path forward", it says "sometimes failure can be made more interesting if something happens, including but not limited to, succeeding with meaningful consequences, finding a clue about a different path forward, or even just the situation changing in a way that renders this course of action untenable, do something else."

That part of fail forward is fine as I said at the start. I'm very happy to get more information and have options. So don't keep repeating it please. My concern here is that sometimes a good choice is just to say no and accept that a fail is a fail.

I don't want failure eliminated.

Gortle wrote:

Because you can succeed on a failure suddenly your ability with the skill is not that important. It is perhaps whether you have the skill or not.

Gentle reminder that Pick a Lock is still a trained-only skill.

It is pretty common for people to make simple logic mistakes. Less so when directly quoting text.

I think it was very obvious I was aware it was a trained skill.

The base mechanic is one of the things I'm taking issue with, on those. Locks that require 4 successes and where a failure does nothing are not interesting. If you're skilled at the task you're probably going to have to make 5-6 rolls where nothing really goes wrong unless you get a nat 1. That's not interesting, and the failure case is exceptionally dull because it's literally "nothing happens". That's just what's in the rulebook.

That could instead be a single check with a base time requirement of X and the following outcomes:
Critical Success: You unlock it in X / 2 time. That you have unlocked it is unnoticed by any creatures on the other side.
Success: You unlock it in X time. That you have unlocked it is unnoticed unless a creature is observing the lock or specifically checks.
Failure: You unlock it in X * 4 time. That someone is tampering with the lock is easily noticed by creatures on the other side.
Critical Failure: You break your lockpicks and any creature on the other side is likely to notice someone as tampering with the lock.

That's still a generic rule that can fit in the rulebook, except it's now one check that advances the narrative immediately in one way or another unless it's literally a lock to an empty room.

A couple of issues here.

Often the difference between Success and Failure just doesn't matter. There are many situations where time is not important. So as a generic rule it is problematic.

Because you can succeed on a failure suddenly your ability with the skill is not that important. It is perhaps whether you have the skill or not. So suddenly the wizard can become good enough at wrestling and the cleric at lock picking. What is the difference between a +2 and a +4 in this scenario? Are stats really that important anymore?

This is a different game. There are games that do this and they are valid and have their place. Go play those, don't destroy the uniqueness of this one by destroying it's core.

Why do we need to spoon feed our players and make it so easy for them. Failure sometimes is OK. Force them to think and adapt to challenges.

Ravingdork wrote:

I don't know that I care too much for the idea that PCs can just fail their way to victory.

That's not what failing forward means, though. Failing forward is about failures advancing the adventure, even if it means bad stuff happening. Rather than "you fail to pick the lock, try again," this can mean "as you try to pick the lock, you're spotted by a guard, who is about to run and raise the alarm. What do you do?" The basic idea of failing forward is that failure means progress as much as success, so you're never stagnating: progress doesn't mean victory, though, and failures in systems that do have a concept of failing forward tend to complicate things for the player characters in ways they have to deal with in interesting ways.

Well we need to be clear in our implications here.

Failure should provide information, failure should have consequences. Failure should result in a retry or a plan B.
So suggestions from an adventure writer about some possible fallback options for the GM to divert the players on to is great. If this is what you mean by "Failing Forward" then I'm with you.

However while the GM and adventure writer set up the scenario, I like the players to have agency, I also like the dice to rule. The outcome of actions has to be meaningful and have consequence - including potentially real failure - or else there is no real tension.

I do find attack/skill roll then miss can get a bit boring for players. Which is why I still try to create richer scenarios so that there are other options. Every character should be able to do something more than Strike. I think PF2 is better at supporting these other options with mechanics than most. Personally I like players taking Seek actions and Recall Knowledge type actions to gain a hint from the GM about when they realise they are stuck.

if i am swallowed whole by a demon, and i am a cleric with divine castigation can i cast a 2 action heal spell to affect rupture?

How are you doing piercing or slashing damage?

So no.

Gortle wrote:

You don't understand that Imaginary Weapon and Exemplar cleary stepped outside the normal range of damage expectations that they had established?

For me it was as a distinct change where they went off the rails.

It's funny because fire ray's damage is almost identical in damage.

I used past tense. If you thought Fire Rays damage was the same then you don't understand.

I don't understand the Imaginary Weapon nerf. There was no need to do such a thing as well as kill off one of the two best MC Archetypes in the game. That leaves only . . . Exemplar as the only other good MC and that's if your GM allows it.

You don't understand that Imaginary Weapon and Exemplar cleary stepped outside the normal range of damage expectations that they had established?

But that is not really the main point. You can make a good druid, but the wildshaping is just not strong enough.

Paizo have kept the top line balance moderately reasonable. The system itself really helps. But there remain subclasses and parts of the design space which is clearly supposed to be used eg Wildshape Druid, the Fury Barbarian , the Scoundrel Rogue, the Outwit Ranger etc, that just don't work well enough when doing the main point of their concept compared to the other options.

I think the Alchemical Sciences Investigator works fine as far as power level goes by the way - I'm just not that keen on the other options.

But Paizo have fixed many things like the War Priest, the Superstition Barbarian etc.

This isn't a 'they should suck' this is a '(remastered) swashbuckler is the gold standard of balanced martial power' and 'investigator is roughly where martial with heavy out of combat investment is' which is where a untamed order druid who never uses spells in combat should be, logically.

Maybe investigator could be bumped up a bit but if you try to get everything chasing fighter highs that's just asking for power creep and isn't going to be particularly healthy or fun.

It is illogical to balance out of combat utility versus in combat.

Yes every class should be aimed at around the same power.

If community engagement is so hard, why does every other company in the space do it better than Paizo?

That is too harsh. Paizo are better than all the larger gaming companies.

Pick a lane—either they’re full casters and should be able to cast in form, or their melee damage should be better.

Their melee damage should be better. Some limited casting in form is OK, but they need to be more viable in melee.

Funnythinker wrote:

Untamed druids must invest in Strength just to meet the requirements for their +2 bonus, which means they won’t have spell DCs as high as other orders.

This is just false. A druid can easily start with +3 Str, +4 Wis and keep both Str and Wis maxed out. If they grab heavy armor proficiency then they don't even really need Dex so they can even branch out into either (or both) Cha and Int if they want.

There are issues with druids but being MAD is NOT one of them.

It is false because they only get their +2 bonus on a couple of levels anyway.

But I think both Animist and Druid wild shape less and less at the higher levels. Spells are just so much better.

So you have effectively conceded the point. Wild shape needs a boost.

I just do NOT find the resulting character in any way not viable.

Well it is not viable for me and quite a reasonable portion of the player base.

Gortle wrote:

It is a generalist option. It is OK ish. But it is never great. It does not feel good enough.

As a generalist option it is exceedingly cheap (1 second level class feat Order Explorer or even just throw money at the problem and buy some scrolls). This lets your Str -1 Gnome have the option of being a reasonably decent melee character (NOT on par with a true martial, but moderately decent) when the situation warrants it. I've got a gnome druid and he only rarely shifts but he does so way more than enough to warrant the 1 feat he has invested in it.

Or you go the other route and invest fairly heavily. Raise Str. Take something like fighter archetype to get Reactive Strike. Maybe martial or some racial weapon proficiency to get access to some better weapons.

This makes your character a decent Gish when NOT shapeshifted, relying mostly on spells but able to go into the front line and do the Strike for one action/Throw a spell for 2 actions routine. And then, when the situation warrants it you turn into a better form (maybe better just because of reach and Reactive Strike, maybe you're at one of the few levels where the +2 status bonus for using your own attacks kicks in).

I've played both types and been quite satisfied with both. But both absolutely are spell casters first and melee combatants second. Which is why I'd personally LOVE to see a Shifter class. All of my comments on how decent the druid currently is do NOT change the fact that a decent Shifter class would be a wonderful thing to have

Ok but really this is misleading. It is not cheap. That you can poach a couple of forms cheaply is a separate problem.

For the Wild Order Druid - which should be viable being wild most of the time - you should invest in Strength or many of your feats are shut to you. You can easily spend all of your feats on this. Then you also need to pick up a couple of typically Fighter feats to get a maneuver and reactive strike. Then you still look like a very pathetic martial. Even though it is the focus of your build and you are aiming at the core of your class flavour.

It is the fact that the wild druid doesn't work that well, that is the real problem. Their main ability the +2 status bonus just doen't apply most of the time. It is weak. Yes other builds can steal a few forms and really the martial primary is really the only one that works.

The problem with large parties is the balance is thrown out with regard to being able to focus fire.
If you can concentrate all that damage on one PC or the party can focus fire on one enemy then players/enemies can go puff before they get to act. Or even just totally neuted.

6 players instead of 4 is 50% extra.

I'm running a group of 6 at the moment. My suggestion is make sure the terrain is complex. Split your fire onto at least 2 targets as the GM. I home brew all my monsters and I'm no afraid to step outside the bounds for the numbers of hit points for monster etc.

I think the goal is that a battle form gets you 90% of the melee power of a martial with far, far less investment. You can be a druid that ignores strength but turn into a gorilla that still hits just as hard.

The change I'd personally like would to to make Untamed Form a 1-action spell. It feels like right now it just takes a bit too long to get started in combat if you decide to brawl it out, compared to slinging spells. Making it 1-action would allow you to transform, move and strike in one turn.

But it does not get you 90% of the power. It still falls behind dedicated martials in AC, damage and attack value. A few points in each from mid level for just a simple strike ie about 30-50% off there. Then it falls down from the lack of maneuvers and other abilities martials get. One of the major points of PF2 was to stop prebuffing - it costs you actions - so while you have magic options because of the action economy they aren't really that much of a benefit.

It is a generalist option. It is OK ish. But it is never great. It does not feel good enough.

Then there are all the polymorph rule problems which have been around from the very start. These need to be fixed.

Well I'm just glad we finally have a ruling on instance of damage. Not a clean definition but a probably good enough example.

Gortle wrote:

... Unfortunately that list includes Activate an Item. ...

I think I'd say the companion items rule for "... can never Activate an Item ..." would still be specific enough to trump this spells effect, granting all minus Activate, imo.

Probably. It is just that I have seen specific versus general interpreted many different ways.

Note that I have used two different uses of specific and general in the same sentence to identify the conflict. The actually rules on Specific Overrides General is unclear leaving it to the GM to decide.

Xenocrat wrote:

It is limited to "basic actions," which are a defined group in Player Core (e.g. stride, seek, strike[but not for you!], etc.), and not any familiar ability actions.

"...any basic action it knows." is future-proofed wording.

If you give the familiar Manual Dex, that adds in Interact for Draw, Swap, "Ranged Pass," etc.

Take Cover is another "basic action"

It specifically adds ALL basic actions.

Sounds like the sort of thing some GMs are going to house rule.

Another balance issue here is that casters really like their high rank spell slots, so most people won't want to use this spell until higher levels. So this is very strong from around level 9.

I never subscribed to the notion that first edition PF was broken, rather that the average player doesn't respect the tactical wargaming roots of D&D. This mentality has lead to the average 5e player thinking every PC build should be able to walk into the midst of enemy forces in combat regardless of their build.

The problem is that some people worked the PF1 build system in multiple different ways. So PCs had wildy different damage ouputs and defenses. It became difficult to challenge as a GM without arbitrarily limiting the combos your particular group liked. Especially if you have groups with a few casual players. If your group has come to a satisfactory position then please enjoy PF1.

Making Off Guard have a penalty to reflex saves and otherwise making small changes to the flanking rules to help ranged players might be a part of the solution. Encouraging team work....

I think Paizo intentionally creates some minor imbalance to make things more interesting.

They sure do go out of their way to create different wordings on similar powers. There are a lot of very specific differences which overly complicate the game. It seems to be a design decision.

I don't actually think you can remove attributes because D&D players care a lot about legacy, but it's pretty clearly a feature that doesn't do much except provide ways to make your character worse.

Legacy is important. I for one liked the traditional 3d6 normal distribution of stats because it said something about normal people in your game world. But people have walked away from that.

Quote:

From a characterisation and roleplaying point of view, stats are part of the description of your character

To be honest, I think sometimes this can be detrimental too, because having that stat written down kind of... locks you into a certain reality.

But in many ways stats are reality. I'm a physically imposing person. I can't really do anything much about it, it just is. I don't have to lean into that. I can go a different direction in my life but short of magic I can't really do much about it. Now you don't have to include this level of reality in a game, but it is important to many people.

Anyhow I think I'll have a discussion with my gaming group next week on it and see if they want to try attributeless. I'm playing a game with a lot of radical homebrew at the moment.

... Huh? Rolling closer to 11 every time makes every +1 matter more (for failure vs. success), not less.

It is a big part of the reason I gave up on Gurps the tight 3d6 distribution means that the numbers are very important, but once you get your skill to 14+ the numbers become irrelevant. This combined badly with the huge numbers of skills. So the game became all about whether or not the skill you had invested in was relevant or not - and hence was very much GM arbitrary.

Get rid of stats.

Ok your points are fair and reasonate with some other people as well in this list. There are a few who are saying you can get away with a +3 main stat but I can tell you that most (not all) of the players in my local groups wouldn't be prepared to do that. RPGs are about roleplaying fun and competitive dice fun.

Every fighter being just as strong as the next fighter is clearly unrealistic, but every fighter being near enough equally as effective as the next fighter is desirable from a balance point of view.

But what do stats actually do for the game and what could you replace them with? No one really seems to be getting at that.

From a characterisation and roleplaying point of view, stats are part of the description of your character. Or at least they can be. So if you want to get rid of stats you should replace them with a selection of descriptive feats which have minor secondary benefits. Things like you are bursting with youthful energy and exhurburance, or you are a highly disciplined at your training, or you concentrate really well and study the movements of your opponent, or you are just a physically large specimen.

Get rid of any options that feel meaningless

Meaningless from a power sense or a roleplay sense? It is hard to cover both of these, but I do want game designers to do both.

Each class should also fill a niche and each player should be able to accomplish that niche while playing in the session. Not just once in a blue moon, but constantly.

Maybe. I certainly find it very annoying when some classes like inventors have failure chances on their main power and others don't. Do you really want everything to be like the new swashbuckler when you gain panache even when you fail?

Instead of creating new classes all the time, offer meaningful support and new options or variations for whats already been released.

Yes more breadth would be great. There is a lot which needs to be rounded off and cleaned up and Paizo never seem to get to it. So it falls onto the players and GMs to patch the game.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

You don't need RK for optimal group play. For some reason some folks are holding onto this idea of the wizard making some RK check to figure out some secret that makes winning easy. It doesn't work like that anymore.

I think it's because it's something people want from the game. Not because the game necessarily delivers on that, but it's something people want.

It is something they should fix.

The problem is the name Recall Knowledge. They should introduce an similiar skill action to discover or investigate to be able to uncover tactics or weakness in combat.

There is perhaps some overlap with Perception. Thematically it can justify gaining useful information. In a way that Recall Knowledge can't because you are constantly running into rare and unique monsters.

Any chance of the SF2E spells being added to the list?

Not really on my radar. I just haven't looked at SF2.

The Astral Rune is almost essential on weapons.

NielsenE wrote:

Has Paizo tried a Precision Resistance to have a lesser form to use when it feels thematic, without completely turning off a precision class's core feature?

It probably needs some tweaking, since I think the level appropriate minimum resistance would still be close to effectively immune. So it might feel as bad.

Proteans have precision resistance.

Which just makes it even more important that they clean up their resistance / damage rules.

I'd issue a proper errata for the damage issues they continue to avoid. Then I'd go back and balance up a few more of the existing classes and subclasses that don't get played much.

Immunity to each specific damage type should exist. Because everyone should have to deal with it now and then.

However precision immunity shows up in oozes, ghosts, spirits, swarms, other incorporeal creatures and a moderate number of special "puzzle" type monsters.

A GM just needs to bear in mind that running an adventure where a character's main shtick is useless a large portion of the time is not fun. Anything more than say 20% is probably too much. Looking specifically at the early levels of Abomination Vaults.

Personally I'd choose a different monster to challenge the party with or just remove from it incorporeal creatures as they tend to have a physical resistance anyway.

The other immunity that is over done is poison immunity. More classes should get access to the Toxicologist benefit of swapping aicd for poison.

Probably time to create new threads for these subjects. The ruling is clear we can discuss it elsewhere.

Maya Coleman wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

Maya Coleman wrote:

Hey all! Guides are great, but please don't include generative AI images in them! It puts them in a kind of weird grey area where it's not us using the AI, which is something we don't do, but having AI associated with our content and on our forums puts us in a tricky position. The things on our forums are things we promote and support, and we do not promote or support the use of generative AI in our products or products associated with them. Please continue to make the guides, but just make sure the art you're using is from an artist!

We'll just go back to stealing original artwork directly from the artists then. *shrugs in jest*

Any of the art used on our blogs is free for you to use with proper credit and association (abiding by our Community Use Policy), and we're currently working on compiling it all (the art files) in one place for easy access and use.

I know other companies also do this and it's genuinely for the best health of the community in my experience, so thank you to Paizo for looking for a solution that benefits creators.

Generative AI genuinely has no place in creative content. Call me old fashioned, but I'd prefer to have no images in a guide to images from generative AI. It would make me question the integrity and passion behind the guide as a whole.

I'm sure the guides have passion and integrity behind them, but the use of AI at all makes me hesitant to share with my players as if you used AI for one piece of the content, there's no reason to assume you didn't elsewhere.

My guides are for my own reference and are useful to the community. They are in no way commercial or for profit.

My guides had no images in them and I often got badgered to dress them up with art. I carefully respected copyright so I didn't steal images - which seems to be the traditional practice. I'm not aware of much in the way of protests about actual copyright violations on the forums but I assume there must have been some. It is funny what people choose to be sensitive about.

I eventually added a few simple AI images last year - because it is legal and easy.

The guides listed here almost all predate ChatGPT anyway so even if the irregular spelling and formatting mistakes don't convince you, you can still be reasonable confident there is little AI content.

This moralising crusade to exclude AI content is not supported by the vast majority of consumers. In the long run cheap and convenient is going to win out.

As far as preventing harm to content creators and artists. Change is inevitable, most of us have been through lots already and we adjusted fine. Progress always has a downside but it is always more of an oppourtunity than a curse. There is a lot to be said about the simple virtue of the Amish lifestyle, but it is never going to be for me.

All you are doing with a boycott is forcing people to leave and making change faster.

Hey all! Guides are great, but please don't include generative AI images in them! It puts them in a kind of weird grey area where it's not us using the AI, which is something we don't do, but having AI associated with our content and on our forums puts us in a tricky position. The things on our forums are things we promote and support, and we do not promote or support the use of generative AI in our products or products associated with them. Please continue to make the guides, but just make sure the art you're using is from an artist!

No it doesn't put you in that position. You don't own our content, or our commentary on your content. You never have.

Don't try to enforce a principle that you endorse on others. We don't all agree. Let us make our own decisions. You can try to persuade us. But AI is the future not just for artists, but for hobbists, GMs, writers and guide writers.

Well level 14 for Mysterious Repertoire instead of level 8 for the old sorcerer. It is befinitely a good point. You have always been more keen on higher level play. But I think you'd be more upset about missing Effortless Concentration.
Sorcerer get divine access as a level 1 feat - Blessed Blood, which is arguably better than a free class ability at level 11.

It is just that the best Oracle abilities are there level 1 cursebound feats. Which anyone can get via a couple of archetype feats.