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Over in the 1E section, there's a bit of discussion about what we would've liked to see in Pathfinder First Edition. Various ideas came up for expanding Distant Worlds into a series of softcovers, one or more hardcovers, or an AP that leads PCs on a "Grand Tour" throughout the Golarion system.

All of these ideas could be implemented in Second Edition, but I expect Paizo has already mapped out the next several years' worth of 2E releases. Even so, it would be great to know if there's any interest in this sort of product for 2E, and whether anyone at Paizo is considering a return to other worlds in the Golarion system.

I doubt that there is much of a reason or demand to explore many other planets currently or even to go beyond Golarion's solar system, especially since a couple of these aspects have been covered in PF1.

And I wish I could bring myself to homebrew a wholebunch of Dark Sun stuff to run a game in the setting, but every time I try I set the bar too high, and end up giving up once I try to figure out defiling, and class changes.

So correct me if I'm wrong, which I might well be since it has been a couple of years since I've looked at the Dark Sun setting, but would it be that difficult?

Sprinkle in a couple of new ancestries (Thri Keen, Genasi, Half-Giants), tweak (Halflings, Elves) and remove some others (Golbins, Gnomes), remove all classes that get their powers from divine entities or are related to them (Clerics, Paladins, Sorcerers) and rebrand sorcerers to Psionics if you don't want to design a new class.

I know that's probably not all but to me that would be a good approximation to get started with. You don't need to recreate everything to tell engaging and compelling stories, within that setting, that are vastly distinct from Golarion. Removing the divine aspect by itself goes a long way to differentiate these two because the Gods are such an integral part to Golarion.

I actually DON'T believe that the designers, staff, and marketers for Paizo thought that a Beginner Box for Pathfinder 2e was unnecessary. They simply didn't have time to get one prepared and out the door with the Core Rule Book launch, at least not at the quality level people would expect.

For all its accomplishments and the fact that it is still growing, Paizo remains a small company with limited time and resources. They can only do so much in a set period of time. Over a thousand pages of rules and adventure for the August launch? That pretty much tapped them out.

If I remember correctly, Paizo even said back during the Playtest streams that releasing a Beginner's Box at launch was never a goal because the designers first wanted to get feedback, so that they know what newcomers are struggling with, so that they can tailor the experience better to the beginner's needs.

The way magic is balanced in this edition will probably be contentious for years to come.

So far, I've only seen it being contentious on these boards, so I guess I would rephrase it to: "The way is balanced in this edition will probably be problematic for certain former PF1 players for years to come."

As an aside to everything discussed thus far; at current rate of growth, in under 6 weeks this thread will have more comments than the rest of the General Discussion section combined.

If nothing else, I'm sure we can all agree that the state of Wizards is divisive and probably due a little extra attention from Paizo in future releases.

Many, if not the majority, of the arguments that are thrown around in here, apply to casters in general, so there seem to be two different populations in here airing their grievances:

• Those who have problems with the wizard
  
• Those who have problems with spells and spellcasting
  

I'm actually not convinced that wizards specifically need that much of a change when compared to the other casters and the people who are not happy with casters in general probably won't be appeased by additional material unless they are looking for small fixes, like more 1 action spells.

Yes, I am. That is because I have more than 40 years of movie-watching experience in all, and I have actually directed short-films and I know how movies work. Also, I listen to test audiences to hear what people are unhappy about, and I take many of their comments and suggestions into account. It doesn't mean I always do things the way they'd prefer, but I consider everyone's comments.

On the whole, I probably have more film-making experience in general than most professional directors and a vast array of experience with a very wide variety of genres.

As you see, I took the liberty to alter your comment slightly and replace the context of it with another one, to illustrate how ridiculous this comment reads. Would you take this person's opinion on the latest Scorsese movie, in which they claim they know more than him about his movie, seriously after reading that?

I haven't heard much about it but all the fandoms are pretty busy right now.

I imagine once they pull out a Kingmaker-like Adventure Path for 2e (or Starfinder, for that matter) you'll get more talk about 2e. Big old interesting things to draw attention for a bit of time, and Kingmaker's popular enough to do it. Some of the people who come to look will stay, others will find something else. Keep doing it and you've got a fandom.

Numbers don't matter, people will believe what they want, and online you'll always hear more people complaining than saying they like it. Give it some time to stretch and grow.

Well, isn't Kingmaker being released for PF2 next year? The crowd-funding campaign for that one was very successful if I remember correctly and the PC game might also have attracted some new people.

As for Jester David, it's literally impossible to argue for, against or with his position, considering how he has set up his argument. So I guess it's best to leave it alone instead of harping on faulty logic.

Lanathar wrote:

I believe most game stores are hostile to paizo due to pdf policy (and potentially other factors). So sadly I don’t think there are going to be many game store clerks helping with that

As an example the Forbidden Planet in Southampton U.K. does not stock a single pathfinder item. There was a brief spell when it had war for the crown and return of the Runelords books but I guess they didn’t sell well. And apparently that was driven by a particular manager (who might be gone now)

Interesting. I haven't had that experience with stores, but I note that D&D gets primary shelf space because its a mover, then you see the Pathfinder books, then there's Shadowrun, Vampire, and Warhammer, a pile of one off system books which are fun to page through. Most gaming stores I go to end having most of their shelf space dedicated to Warhammer though, because Warhammer keeps game stores in business.

Yeah, I think that problem is somewhat overblown. It's not like other RPGs don't offer PDFs, with one glaring exception obviously. I bet most stores are more favourable towards WotC mostly because of MtG and not because of D&D. At this point, you don't even have to go to a gaming store anymore to buy a system but many large bookstores even have them on the shelves, so I doubt that it is a primary income source for gaming stores anyway.

I also wanted to add another potential pool for PF2 to draw upon: Those who have left PF1 in general for whatever reason. That's where I'm coming from.

Because someone might come up with an argument that shows me what I am missing, or something so good I can look passed it. On roll20, not had that experience, sadly, have tried multiple games, best was an Eclipse Phase game that lasted 8-10 months.

Sorry, but you seem to hate many of the design choices with a passion, so I doubt that changing your opinion or perspective on this is even possible.

when the group I have moves on, it will be pf2 or nothing. I have tried Roll20 etc, they fizzle, and finding games for anything that isn't 5e is hard enough for current systems on there, let alone abandoned ones, having a group last more than a few sessions is also nigh miraculous.

And how will complaining about a system that you don't like solve that? Also, that is highly hyperbolic and not the case if you put in some time to find the right game with the right people. I've run and played in multiple games and campaigns that lasted for about a year and that in a time-zone that's not exactly primetime for RPG communities.

. You punish evil by proactively striking it down before it acts, not reactively mitigating its effects, innocents are saved when the creatures body is rotting meat, so strike with swift and sure judgement, in righteous fury, the reactions are the opposite of that. If they were an option I could just avoid them, but they aren't, we are stuck with them, and their aren't ways to build out of them. Hint: to me Ragathiel is the perfect holy warrior.

This is a very narrow view of Paladins and Champions and doesn't even fit or describe most LG deities in the Pathfinder pantheon. Redemption and forgiveness play a major role in most of the LG faiths, so just going out to strike down anything evil is a rather simplistic and one-dimensional way of playing Champions. Yet nothing in the rules stops you from playing that way, even throwing in some free reaction attacks if you position well in a combat.

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.

Sometimes I'm really baffled by people's opinions. I don't see how 3.X's and PF1's multiclassing gives us that much more freedom and liberates us from the designers' choices. If the old multi-classing was that great then why did we need hundreds of prestige classes or respectively hundreds of archetypes to access and replace class features? And how are archetypes that different from the current multiclassing of 4e and PF2? You just swap out class abilities... Also doesn't 5e literally use pretty much the same multiclassing as we were used from PF1 (haven't touched 5e for a couple of years)? So why throw it in with 4e and PF2?

You cannot retrain your class in PF2. Multiclass works much much better in PF2 than in PF1 in most aspects but not this one.

One what started life as a Wizard but soon dropped it all and dedicated themselves to the fighting science are best built as Fighter with MCD in Wizard. But that does not fit the character's narrative.

I think this can still be accomplished when looking for solutions outside of class-levels: Starting out with the acolyte background then taking the fighter and picking up some magic powers here and there along the way.

But overall, I never bought this as a good reason to keep PF1 multiclassing around anyway. Yes, in theory, this sounds like an interesting character development but in practice, this resulted, at least in my games, with frustrated players because their characters were hamstrung compared to the other characters. So if that's all you gain from PF1 multiclassing compared to PF2 multiclassing than I'd say that's not worth the trade-off.

When I learned that 2E wasn't going to be backwards-compatible with 1e adventure paths, I decided not to bother with it.

Now that I've actually read the finished product, I'm madly in love and will put up with the extra work, because I know my players will have a great time with 2E!

I have stopped playing PF1 a couple of years ago and I have to say the APs still offer great value even when I haven't been running them. I'm now running book 1 of Tyrant's Grasp in PF2 and the only thing that has been a slight headache to convert is the treasure and loot.

I think that shows that keeping an open mind and not judging beforehand is beneficial in most cases.

I like multiclassing.

However, there are a few issues in this system:

1) Too many skill talents, which does not enhance enough the gameplay ( while a class feat does ). They could allow us to swap them for general/ancestry feats, for example. Or giving us the possibility to chose an extra rank for skills ( 3 legendary ranks per class but rogue is silly. It also "forces" you not to lvl different tiers to expert/master instead. ).

2) Fighter "flexibility" needs to be totally reworked. Having a talent boost is simply broken in terms of multiclasses. There shouldn't be a class better than others in multiclassing ( leaving apart the fact that, if it would exist, it shouldn't be the fighter ).

3) Stupid requirements. A warrior shouldn't necessarily be both str and agi, to make an example. Requirements should be imo removed, to allow players to create whatever character they want.

That said, there's a nice customization, but you have to deal and limit it because those "unclear" reasons.

1) I don't see how any of this point ties into multiclassing, but I guess Skill Feats are less potent than most General and Ancestry Feats by design, so being able to swap them out for these other options would downgrade them to the lesser choices. Same rationale goes for skill upgrades and "Legendary" would become much to common.

2) I'm a bit at a loss here. Do you mean "Combat Flexibility"? If so, I don't see how that feat would be too powerful when multiclassing, especially since you don't even get access to that ability when taking the Fighter Dedication.

3) I think the requirements are fine because it isn't all that difficult to get 14s in many different stats, especially if you don't specialise too hard in one stat. I disagree strongly with removing the requirements all together because that encourages and makes dipping into the dedications to get quite a few features (skill trainings plus additional abilities or proficiencies) way too easy and accessible. But not only from a balance standpoint do I find it a bad idea but also in terms of flavour because the flavour then clashes with the functionality of a dedication.

The question didn’t come up because PF1 didn’t set the same expectations. By having a fairly traditional and generic core and then 3 years for that core to be pretty firmly established, in my experience most people didn’t stray very far from that core. Contrast that with PF2e...

I can't contrast your experience with your perception of PF2, especially since mine was very different and considering that I find Goblins rather banal and not all that standing out in a fantasy setting.

How about this: if next year’s APG has an iconic that is of an ancestry not from the core Rulebook will people concede that PF2e is setting different expectations with its ancestries compared to PF1e? Because I just went through all the PF1e iconics and with the exception of villain iconics they were all core Rulebook races.

I don't understand what you are trying to get at with "expectation of ancestries" and I find your parameter to measure that also strange. Why would the iconics be a good way to measure this? Maybe Paizo has decided to use a dartboard to decide all further iconic configurations, for all we know. Or maybe having the rule books tie directly into the setting, unlike in PF1, opens up the audience to being more tuned into the setting, thus not needing to stick to dwarves, elves, and "hobbits", to keep the representation generic.

And if they are all core ancestries I will concede they are not pushing new ancestries like D&D 4e did.

Does that sound fair? :D

I have no clue how 4th edition ties into this or how that matters.

SteelGuts wrote:

- Goblins are core, and don't have the Uncommon tag. Which make no sense at all in Golarion or in many universes. This is a just a mascott thing to sell more. You have as many chance to cross the path of a Goblin adventurer than a Halfling adventurer.

You've hit the nail on the head. Goblins and the fact they're going to include more and more ancestries in most player facing books they produce is going to result in a Golarion where most players are not human and are not one of the classic races. We're going to have lizardfolk, tengu, ratfolk, catfolk, etc. That wasn't how my PF1e group played in Golarion and it's not how I like to play in Golarion.

So given two choices: (1) ban most ancestries from the game or (2) play in a different setting where goblins make sense I've gone with option 2.

I'm curious, what your group will be doing long term? Are you just going to suck it up and allow goblins? Ban goblins and allow most monstrous ancestries (orcs, lizardfolk and anything else Paizo comes up with)? Or are you going to ban most ancestries?

I find this sentiment rather peculiar and slightly baffling, especially for people who are familiar with Pathfinder and Golarion. The Halfling comparison is actually a really good one, as being a Halfling adventurer in about half of Golarion is about as feasible as being a Goblin adventurer. Cheliax, Irrisen, Isger, Qadira, and Taldor, are all nations with considerable Halfling populations living mostly in slavery, so should Halflings also be made into an Uncommon ancestry?

I think common sense should solve these problems quite easily: Ask your GM "Hey how does ancestry X work in campaign Y that takes place in Z?". Even the player's guides mention which ancestries play well in that AP and deviating from these recommendations should always spark a small exchange between a player and a GM. No need to ban anything, but a GM can always just say "keep this idea for another campaign because it doesn't fit in here".

This problem isn't new though, as others have already pointed out, as PF1 tons of much weirder options than goblins. How have you dealt with those, when they came up during your PF1 games? The answer to that question will probably provide you with a good guideline on how to handle them in PF2.

I think the general answer to your question is: Yes. But I disagree with the framing of the question, as I would rather say that the rituals are devices and goals that need to be worked towards and earned by the player characters. The end result still stays the same though.

Kind of. Sound is a thing, Rog can get Invis pretty easily too and is better than Wiz by far if so, at hi levels See Invis is super common on monsters (etc.)

"Of course, the subject is not magically silenced, and certain other conditions can render the recipient detectable (such as swimming in water or stepping in a puddle). If a check is required, a stationary invisible creature has a +40 bonus on its Stealth checks. This bonus is reduced to +20 if the creature is moving."

This stealth bonus eclipses most rogue builds for a solid number of levels, so yeah the sound part is in most cases negated by this bonus. And rogues getting wands or whatever to get invisibility only illustrates the problem further, in my opinion. You needed to get the caster's tool to keep up, so that does not minimise the discrepancy between martial characters and casters.

I seriously wish people would stop saying things like "the caster invalidated the rest of the party".

That statement is just blatantly false, and comes from either theorycrafting or poor DM'ing. But it was taken at face value and now look at wizards.

I guess I'm a poor GM then: Invisibility makes any character sneak better or at least on par with any rogue. Shape Stone/Wood creates breakthroughs in walls or doors better than any Fighter or Barbarian could ever punch through. Save or Suck spells can end encounters quicker than any martial ever could etc.

So I don't see how the previous statement is false.

As a GM, I like the idea of Rarity, but I have to admit I haven't looked at the execution yet. This makes homebrewing, switching settings up and adding new elements much easier in my opinion, as you can introduce new elements and have them be exclusive to a region or have them be earned by the characters.

This turns brewing up and handing out spells as rewards also a compelling option for a GM, as it can clearly be tied to the events and narrative of that campaign. You could even design spells that become uncommon after a certain amount of time as they spread within that region, like for example bringing back Rune Magic in New Thassilon.

But I guess there is a strong divide here between players who don't like to be restricted and GMs, who probably have more of an eye on narrative and story implications.

NOTE2: I know this is a lot asking, but it would be great if some of the designers of the game could explain their reasoning for this much restrictiveness and weak sauce of the system.

Ah yes, I think calling it weak sauce will certainly encourage and incentivise the designers to respond to your comments and questions.

The_Hanged_Man wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.

You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Not this again... I've just looked the Great Wyrm Red Dragon up and I'd like you to point me to the parts in the rules where player characters get 39 natural armour, frightful presence, Manipulate Flames and Melt Stone.

Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

I think most people don't care how many people it takes to build a house or whatever, which is why there were more abstractions being used for this in the kingdom-building rules.

It was always used in every game I've played in without issues, across several groups in the past 8 years.

And no, it doesn't allow for easier judgement calls. Without any correlation between Bulk and reality, you have no way of knowing what hte Bulk of something should reasonably be. In reality a longsword was similar in size and slightly heavier (2 lb vs 2.5 lb) than a falchion, yet here a falchion has twice as much Bulk as a longsword. Then consider than an unconscious person has about 8 bulk. They're really only 16-20 lb?

Mind you, I rewrote the equipment tables for PF1 to use more realistic weights and item names (not to mention making the terrible weapons useful), but this seems rather difficult for PF2 (for the weights, obviously names are easy enough).

I'm sorry, but again I think less than 1% of this player base cares about the rather pedantic difference of 1/2 lb. being falsely represented by bulk. Most people will probably just ask themselves: "Is it about as heavy or unwieldy as X from the chart?" If, yes then it's about the same as on the chart. That's good enough for most people who don't take the time to rewrite all of the item tables for realism because most people don't care that much about realism. If it doesn't break the verisimilitude of the world then most people won't care.

It means I sometimes have no idea how something will work before I attempt it. I am not a fan of uncertainty. Or in 5e as a specific case, there are not very solid rules on crafting magic items, and whether you can do so at all is entirely up to the GM (let alone buying them)

Yes, the crafting rules of 5e are lacking, to say the least, because magic items aren't integrated well into 5e. But we are playing a game of rolling dice to determine outcomes, so not liking uncertainty in your games feels rather bizarre to me.

No, it's definitely worse. How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table? What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation? How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.

I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.

On top of that, how can it possibly be harder to carry one falchion than 19 hatchets? What about the fact that a longbow is just as hard to carry as an un-worn suit of studded leather strapped to your back? 9 daggers have no mass until you throw a 10th one into the pile. None of this makes sense.

It's called making abstractions and I'm glad Paizo went this way because I find this rather intuitive and allows for easier judgement calls at the table, as it is less granular than having to google weights of whatever wasn't listed in the books. Simplifying this whole weight and encumbrance thing was also necessary so that people would actually use it, as I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of all games would never look at this again after character creation.

No, lack of rules often leads to 'you can't do that', or getting a very lackluster/unsatisfying ruling. Codified rules as they are in PF1 are excellent, and provide mechanical context for doing just about anything at any time.

I think this explains why you are in opposition to most people on the boards here because most more narrative-focused, rules-light systems, like let's say Fate, actively encourage the GMs to say yes. If that isn't your experience than I think that differs from most other people here, which why many people are wishing to put back more power in the hands of the GM, as most of us have realised since the days of 3.X that the GM/player relationship isn't an adversarial one, but a collaborative one and that saying yes leads to more fun for everyone. I think the whole idea of "Yes and..." has spread a lot and has changed ttrpgs significantly.

But all that aside, I'm comfortable sitting on the limb labeled "alienating a chunk of prior fanbase is not good".

I think this was inevitable. I doubt there is a way Paizo could have done a new edition without alienating some people. From reading the boards, I get the feeling that the "I wanted a natural progression/evolution" people, feel alienated right now, as they wanted what PF was to 3.5 from the new edition. This would have raised a lot of questions though for why even release a new edition and in the process alienating people who were looking for a change and not more of the same.

I think this was already in RotRl, but it's been quite some time since I've played that. I think it was overshadowed by the more destructive tendencies of the Goblins, liking Fire, hating horses, etc.

Yes, this thread is dangerously close to provoking edition warfare. But money is tight, so I want to know if it is worth it.

Why not ask this instead from the get go? Because I don't think the other question will provide you a good answer, especially since you didn't provide any criterea for what you mean with "better". I think PF2 is "better" because it is much easier to run. Another person might find PF1 "better" because of all the choices available.

Defining what you are looking for and what you mean with "better" will raise the chances that you'll get usable and meaningful feedback. If you don't, it will probably devolve into why rarities are a plight, or something like that.

I think QuidEst hits the nail on the head: There are some fundamental paradigms that give D&D, and by proxy Pathfinder, a distinct feeling and most of these that you listed fall under these paradigms, in my opinion.

I certainly can't speak for the devs, but one of the stated goals was to make Pathfinder simpler, while still giving it the feeling of Pathfinder, and if you start removing all or most of these, than you might as well be playing Fate or CoC or whatever else you might want to throw into this category, because they are quintessential mechanics of PF. And while I'm not a fan of all these mechanics, I recognise that they are too interwoven with the fabric of the game or the setting. For example, I dislike alignment, but removing it from the game would raise a whole lot of questions on Golarion, which was another no-go, as isn't supposed to change greatly from 1st edition to PF2.

I'm generally excited for PF2. I quit GMing PF around 2 to 3 years ago, as I found preparing for sessions just too cumbersome and tedious. So I've switched with my group of friends to a leaner system, that's easier on me as the GM, but still allows for a lot of customisation for the players.

Anyway, in that same time span I've joined an online group with rotating games and so we ended up playing some of the Playtest when it dropped. And while the Playtest wasn't always fun (having whole turns of no one hitting anything and new rules every two weeks, just to name a couple), at least I was liking the direction we are going in. The new action economy, streamlining classes, to allow more adaptability and modality between classes, and independent monster rules (Hooray!) simplified the system, while the degrees of success added a welcomed layer of complexity.

Overall since my experience with the Playtest, I actually could see myself GMing Pathfinder again, and that makes me really happy, as I want to return to Golarion for some more adventures and I always love to bring back PCs with previous campaigns and do callbacks to these campaigns.

An sadly, they have chosen to nerf everything into a bland, joyless mush, where everyone sucks, no one is powerful and altering the math wont change that feeling of classes being this stodgy concrete you are dragging around.

Hm, I guess we playtested different games, because I enjoyed myself mostly and don't share your experience. Also changing the math will have an effect on success rates, which should have an impact on how you feel about how well a character performs. But I guess you have already decided for yourself how the changes will play out, even without having seen them.

1. I've yet to hear them talk about survey quality (which is a separate thing from talking about survey results).

2. They've mentioned initial formatting being a problem, but to my knowledge haven't indicated what they plan to do about it outside of general "make it better".
3. There's been no talk of deadline and how on/off track they think they are with respect to it.
4. I can't attest to dev responses on the boards more recently, as I've been away. I will say the *only* response this thread got was one from Jason when it was essentially clickbait because I used the wrong words...

1. They are game designers, so I'm not even sure that they've designed the surveys themselves. They could have outsourced that part, because talking about survey quality is difficult as a layman and overall I don't think they want to discuss those topics, because it don't see any benefit for the game designers going into detail about survey design.

2. That's probably all they can do about it at the moment. I highly doubt that we will hear any further about that topic until we get closer to the actual release, because I'm quite sure Paizo won't release a revamped Playtest. They acknowledged the problem and will try to fix it with the release of PF2, so I don't know what else you expect here.

3. Why would Paizo discuss or reveal deadlines to their customers? That's rather ridiculous. That's stuff we don't need to worry about as playtesters. Do we need to know by what date the final draft needs to be at the printer, etc? I wouldn't say so.

4. If you think the topic is important than just open a new dedicated thread for archery, in this case. I honestly didn't find that discussion all that enlightening, but if someone feels differently about it, than feel free to address it. But I'm quite certain that that topic has been broached a couple of times.

While it was easy enough at the beginning, the high-level play almost drove me insane with so many stuff to keep track on. I was GMing for 5 experienced players, so there was so many ways to break narrative that most of my job was to work around the adventure path to keep it interesting while nerfing/baning some stuff. For each 4 hour session, I had to spend 6~8 hours preparing myself while praying they wouldn't teleport somewhere I haven't read and familiarized before. Eventually, the challenges offered by the books were just trivial for them. That's how I learned that CR is most of the time broken at high levels. I could see an APL 13 group trivialize a CR17 encounter. The rocket tag effect was just unappealing.

Oh man, I feel you on that one. Even though I was running APs, I would still have to invest quite alot of time in preparing the adventures. I was often only feeling comfortable when I had prepared an hour for every hour we would be playing and at this point I just don't have that amount of time anymore. I'm willing to bet that I'm not the only in that boat.

I had the same experience with high-level encounters, which the balancing often seems impossible to get right, because either the fight ends in the most anticlimatic way possible, with the worst case being the BBEG literally dying within 1 round (yes, this actually happened twice when I was running APs), or the fights becoming immensely tedious, because I had to overbuff the BBEG up to a point where a single fight would last more than an hour.

I understand that many players here are soured by the fact that some of their favourite shiny toys are being taken away or being nerfed, which many seem to attribute to a need for balance, but I'm not sure that that's actually the case. Rather I think many of these changes are more aimed toward making the game more managable from a GMs perspective, because the original Pathfinder is a pain in the butt to run, which is why fewer and fewer people are getting into the game. I have never had a problem finding players, even for the most obscure of games, but if no one is willing to GM a system, than that system has a bleak outlook.

Obviously PF1 wasn't perfect (which as many pointed out, wasn't the point they were making), but to those calling for an updated Pathfinder, instead of an overhauled Pathfinder, I'd have to ask the question: Let's say Pathfinder gets a bunch of the Unchained modifications and some popular stuff, like removing the tax feats, how would that solve any of the high-level encounter and balancing problems, because those are in my opinion inherently part of the 3.X chassis. Also, what options are there to make an updated version anymore pleasant to run for GMs?

By being a new edition in the same setting ,that setting still has to work, and right now it doesn't. The Rune Lords for instance (without massive fiat) would be a complete joke, and if you do use fiat you state clearly that PCs are deliberately made to suck, which is how the you are terrible at everything maths feels tbh, like a punishment for playing.

Runelords could and should have access to a bunch of uncommon and rare spells and rituals, which the PCs wouldn't have access to. I think that falls perfectly in line with the setting and the narrative that they are enormously powerful and ancient wizards and casters, which have cast through long forgotten Rune Magic.

If you consider that a massive fiat, than I think we should agree to disagree on the topic, but I don't see that scenario as a problem.

The biggest issue is that PF2 is not being marketed as an entirely different game. It's being marketed as a replacement for PF1. Thus it is understandable that people are upset that they can't still do the same thing. It feels like something got taken away from them.

So far I haven't seen PF2 being marketed as anything, as it doesn't exist yet. The Playtest hasn't been marketed all that much either in my opinion (understandably), but from the interviews I have watched and read I felt that the devs rather clearly announced it as a new edition, instead of the "next step", so maybe you are projecting your expectations onto the sparse marketing?

I’m not sure if this is aimed at me but the fact is certain topics and what some players consider to be problems have been addressed while others haven’t, I do all the surveys and want to believe it’s going to help, but there are others who are wondering why some issues have been publicly addressed while others have not, I don’t want to hover I was merely saying why I think some people are unhappy no need to get prickly

I think the most obvious answer to why some topics get more attention than others is that some topics are widely considered to be problematic (like resonance), while others might only be problematic to some (like spells seem to be for some hardcore PF1 acolytes).

If you only form your opinion on what is considered to be consensus about the Playtest by reading the boards, than you might think the system is terrible, but from my experience outside these boards, people have been rather content with the Playtest. We obviously don't have the data like Paizo does, but the boards might consider some topics as problematic that rest of the players doesn't. In my groups, no one has complained about spells being to weak, at least yet.

I disagree. It's a lot easier to build from the ground up, knowing where everything is coming from. It takes an extra 5 or 10 minutes, but it's definitely worth it, and it's a lot more satisfying.

Maybe they could release both monster design systems so that people can use the one they like.

5 to 10 minutes extra from what? If we assume PF2 will get a system similar to the one from Starfinder, than I could build monsters and encounters with 15 to 20 minutes, pretty much for any level. If you can do the same for Pathfinder within 30 minutes, than that's truly impressive, especially once you reach the higher levels, but I'd be willing to bet that you are within a minority who are able to do so.

So I'd say to most people it's easier to have a simplified quick-build system, even if you might be able to create encounters on the fly in Pathfinder.

Then you realize that the entire campaign is advancing at a snails pace because you only get one or two combats done each session. And then you start being happy for fast-paced combat.

I find this to be a perfectly acceptable amount of combats for a 3 to 4 hour session, but I might be in a minority on this. I have to say after not having run or played PF for a year, it was quite the change of pace going back to multiple encounters in a row.

I don't understand the bullet sponge argument personally. I like longer combats. I felt one of the weaker parts of the 1st edition system is that if you have a boss character take on players there's a very high likelihood that the boss character would get owned in 1 round.

Because too often longer fights in RPGs aren't well designed or are harder to manage, so they become stale and boring. I agree with you that having a 2-round bossfight is very much anti-climatic, but the same goes for fights that last 6 to 8 rounds where every faction of the fight does the same thing over and over.

It's one of the problems that high-level 5e combat has, because even though you hit the boss all the time, the fight doesn't become more interesting just because it lasts longer. To achieve that you'd have to integrate more moving parts and additional challenges to the combat, instead of just whacking at the BBEG.

- The attack routine is always the same, because there's only one that works : get into melee>strike with melee weapon x2, rinse and repeat

I find this critique of the playtest befuddling, because in my experience many combats have become much more dynamic than in PF1, which can often be boiled down to: Full-Attacks once all the pieces are in place.

Their boards, their rules, fine. But it seems disingenuous to put out a play test, which many have paid for, ask for input and then actively shut down some of the discourse on the product you claim to want feedback on.

I think it would be great if board users could decide what topics are worthwhile of discussion and not have an active topic closed because of reasons.

I'd generally agree with this statement, but most of these threads are just repeating talking points that have been made dozens, if not more, times and than ending in circular arguments. Just look at the last couple of posts about AoOs in the 4e thread, which is neither helpful nor productive, so I don't mind shutting that kind of "discussion" down.

Vic Ferrari wrote:

D@rK-SePHiRoTH- wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

D@rK-SePHiRoTH- wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

AoOs made Fighters tanks? How? How was a Fighter, or anybody thanks to AoO, able to stop enemies from moving away or force them to attack the AoO-er instead of squishies in the second line?

Aoo is a danger that deters enemy from leaving threatened area

The psychological impact of potential AoO is a detriment to 3rd Ed/PF1 play, I find.

I have only ever found it beneficial and interesting.

Right on, how have they been beneficial and interesting, in your experience?

Entails interesting tactical choice related to positioning

Yes, but interesting how, what its so interesting that is occurring? Taking 5-steps to gain flanking and counting squares to avoid AoO never seems very interesting and dynamic to me. Seems to stifle movement.

A tactical choice is not required to be dynamic in order to be tactically interesting

You still haven't provided any response to how AoOs make combat tactically more interesting...

1. Reduction of choice

With the latest update, you can multiclass into any other class (I'd say some of these multiclasses need some reworks, like Ranger and Barbarian) and I'd say the playtest offers overall many more choices than 4ed or PF1 Core.

2. Class role homogenization

I don't understand what you are trying to say here. First you complain that classes get locked into niches and then you call it "homogenization". Those two statements seem to be diametrically opposed in my opinion. Also since when are AoOs essential or necessary for tanking? I'd say using the Paladin as an example would have supported your claim much better.

3. Over-reliance on magical gear

I don't think I have ever played a system more reliant on magic items than PF1, where you NEED your +X to saving throws to keep pace with DCs, +Y to weapons to get through reductions and +Z to attributes to boost your main stats, so calling that out in 4e feels kinda ironic.

4. Reduction of availability, scope and power of status effects

5. Reduction of power for utility spells

I'll address those together, but before you again make contradicting claims when you say "reduction of availability" and then complain about martials now being able to inflict these effects.

I'm truly baffled by those two points though, because they are being brought up all the time, so this is more of a question to the people who feel this way: Up until the Playtest dropped people were complaining that the martial/caster disparity was too wide, especially during higher levels. The Playtest obviously tries to address that disparity, but apperantly not to satisfying degree for some people. So how would you guys like a revamped casting system to look like?

6. No backward compatibility

I think the Playtest lets you play quite many character concepts and designs from the previous edition and even a couple that I wouldn't have fought of previously, but I guess some people on the boards have a different perception on that.

7. Sluggish combat

We are in playtesting and while I agree with you on this point, there is still enough time for Paizo to work on the math, so I'm fairly optimistic that some of the math gets some fine-tuning until the release.

If they're not of the same general power level, they shouldn't be called the same thing.

Going by that logic Power Attack and all the other staple feats from PF1 should have been in a different category from feats like Monkey Lunge and Dodge (or whatever other crappy feat you can think of).

This has very consistently been my experience. New players or casual gamers who had previously dropped Pathfinder because of its density and complexity have been greatly enjoying the new system, while some of the more experienced players and those who have been using the PF1 framework since D&D 3E can get frustrated by the changes.

I've had a very similar experience with my newcomers, but I (8 years of Pathfinder-Gming experience, but little playing experience) and the veteran players (all with several years of experience, but all of us have moved away from the system for different reasons) felt pretty much the same way as the newcomers. Our group felt that buidling characters and getting into the game is much easier and more straight forward than in PF1, which is a huge upside to me, because I could invite people as guest players into a PF2 game without them feeling overwhelmed or alienated.

I've noticed that how people conceptualize their characters can greatly affect build time as well; if the character concept is "I want to play a elven hunter who was outcast from her people and now wanders the world making her living as a hired soldier" players seem to be able to put their characters together very quickly and intuitively. If the concept is "I want to deal the absolute maximum amount of combat damage possible while swinging a giant hammer" it can take quite a bit longer. I suspect that if you build from broad character concept following the same flow as the book (Ancestry, Background, Class, Details) it goes a lot quicker, while if you're used to a fairly common style of character building in PF1 where you pick a cool feat or mechanic and then try to form a character around optimizing that mechanic, it will take a lot longer due to how everything is laid out.

I agree with your assessement here. I was invited to play in a PF1 campaign recently and it's the first in a year or so that I have touched PF1, after having sworn of off it as a GM. I decided on a concept that would fit the theme and the campaign, but then you have dozens of different routes you could take and this lead me to having spent more time on building a level 3 PF1 character, than building a level 13 PF2 character. So it seems to me that it is much easier to build a character for PF2, if you have a narrative and story in mind, which more and more players in the hobby are wanting to focus on, I'd say, instead on focusing on stuff like system mastery, which might be more appealing to the people who are still playing PF1.

The playtest overall has led to a significant net gain in people playing Pathfinder in my area but I can't speak to what it might look like on a broader international scale.

I think this is one of the implict goals: Making PF2 more accessible to a wider audience. It seems like this goal might split the "hardcore" base of fans though, because I get the impression that some people would just want a new Pathfinder version that is what PF1 was to 3.5.

A lot of things look "fun" on paper but aren't that "fun" in practice.

Take the classic 3.5/PF situation, where I have +15 to a skill with my Slayer, which makes me feel that the math is fun because double digits and I hit high numbers and I got rewarded for being specialised. And I'm better than the Cleric, because with her crap skill point count and ACP and whatanot she's at +5 to that skill.

BUT

it also means that the GM has a very hard time making a challenge for a group when one person is at +15 and the other are at +5. Such challenge is either impossible for them or trivial for me. If it's trivial, well, where's the challenge, if it's impossible - woe be to the party if I don't turn up for the game, or if my PC gets kidnapped by the bad guys, or if for any other reason my super-specialised ability is unavilable. Bummer.

I think this is an aspect that gets overlooked or at least not talked about enough: The math also needs to be fun for the GM. The PF1 math-discrepancy has led to quite a lot of frustration on my end as a GM and has made the game not fun on my end, especially since quite a few unexperienced players have joined our group over the years. I know quite a few GMs who had similar problems and it made designing encounters quite difficult and tedious, which led to no one running any Pathfinder games anymore in my area, even though the hobby has grown quite a bit over the last couple of years.

With PF2 math, most common challenges (eg. sneaking among sleepy orcs, climbing a cliff, swimming upstream) can be attempted by the entire party, not just by one or two super-specialised PCs. Does that take away some fun out of hyperspecialisation? Sure it does. But on the other hand, it allows more challenges where the entire party can succeed, leaving them less dependant on hyper-specialist, discourages gamey character advancement ("OK we need everybody to max Perception and now we need to split Knowledges, Sense Motive, Stealth, Diplomacy etc. among us so that we have everything maxed out) and leads to fewer situations where the party is split because only the specialist stands a chance, while others are a dead weight or worse, a liability.

And woe be to a PF1 party that has turbo-optimizers mixed with people who don't powergame at all. The discrepancies in math between those quickly reach the levels where frustration arises as the former feel dragged down by the latter while the latter feel pressurised to keep up with the former.

Lowering the floor does take some empowerment out of the game, but it does that for the sake of being more a collective experience and less an evening of vignettes on how one specialist handles the situation while everybody else gets to sit and watch.

While I think the math needs some tweaking, in favour of the specialists and maybe even PCs in general, I still find the math to be much more fun as a GM, but it seems like most people on here only, or mostly, consider the player's point of view. I think that's a serious mistake or shortcoming of the discourse on the boards here, because without any GMs to run any games and campaigns there won't be any people playing.

I hope Paizo finds a happy middleground to satisfy both players and GMs, but in my experience so far I have been very happy with the tighter math that Paizo has chosen to go with. Also, I think that some players will have to accept that with the current math auto-success or even 80 to 90% success rates are gone, and I appreciate that fact.

Angel Hunter D wrote:

And I see a bunch of people say stuff like "I guess they'll never have 10 minutes to rest"...

I'm gonna take a controversial stance here: GMs who can only challenge the party by denying them healing are bad GMs.

Agreed and they could have done the same in PF1 and disrupt every Cure Light Wounds-wanding session, which at higher levels also took a considerable amount of time.

My first worry wouldn't be balancing, because that doesn't sound too powerful to me, but rather pacing during combats. One of the biggest strengths of the playtest, to me, so far has been that combat moves much quicker along than in PF1. I think giving out multiple reactions could throw a monkey wrench into that pacing, by adding too many options for some classes.

The problematic sentence is the "only the most vicious..." sentence, which gives a GM permission to declare that, "Yes, this is indeed an especially vicious enemy" and go to town on dying creatures.

That sounds like a cop-out. A GM has control over the narrative at all times, so a GM doesn't need permission to let PCs live or to finish them off and as other people have shown, there are passages even in the same sentence that contradict this position.

So yes, it was your choice to cause these TPKs, which is fine if you let the players know that you'll try to kill their PCs at every opportunity you'll get, but I hope there weren't many newcomers and beginners among them, so that they don't get the wrong impression of what a regular game of Pathfinder, or any RPG for that matter, looks like.