Jacob Jett's page

Well...this is the thorny dichotomy between being given permission to provide the rules for free and being the official source of free rules for the game.

Jacob Jett wrote:

Rolling my eyes here. Minor thing remains minor.

I think you're pretty much missing the point.

Well, we agree that one of us is anyway.

IF the character actually uses their shield, then shield block is pretty much worth a general feat (I say pretty much to try and avoid arguments on where it is on the general feat power spectrum).

But if you're playing a two handed weapon fighter, or an archer, or a two weapon fighter, or a free hand fighter then shield block becomes much less valuable. Still has SOME value since even somebody specializing in another fighting style will still sometimes want to use shield block. But much, much less (especially since the monetary cost to keep a useful shield for blocking is non trivial).

For THOSE characters swapping Shield Block with an arbitrary general feat is very clearly a power up. It is slightly less powerful than just giving those fighters an extra general feat but only slightly. And there are quite a few useful general feats.

And, of course, if Player A sees Player B getting a "free" feat from whining then they're going to want a free feat too. Why can't my druid (especially Pre remaster) ALSO swap out their shield block for a general feat? Why can't my cloistered cleric swap out Proficiency with their dieties weapon for something? Why can't my lizardfolk swap out his claws attack for something?

etc. etc. etc

It is
1) Broken in this specific instance
2) Leads to a massive issue of what can be swapped out for what.

You say you like to make massive sets of house rules. Fine. Do what you want. Most of us, however, don't.

Edit to add: From a purely mechanical point of view, the 2 huge advantages that Humans get that are almost universally considered to make them one of the best ancestries mechanically are
1) Extra General Feat
2) Yet another general feat OR a 1st level class feat.

Especially at low levels general feats can be HUGELY powerful. As in almost character defining or almost meaning the difference between life and death. Eg, grabbing a...

Unfortunately, my interpretation of your diatribe is that the "correct" fighter build is "sword and board," to which I say, piffle. The hallmark of bad design are universal features that are only used by a minority of the population. When this pattern emerges, it's a clear indication that the universal feature should have been an optional one.

To ignore rule #1 is to both over-value and under-value what the GM's role is. Fundamentally, the GM has to have the goal of the players having a good time. The value of rule #1 is that it gives GM's carte blanche to do whatever is necessary to ensure player satisfaction. And I'll be blunt here, player satisfaction = customer satisfaction. And so far from being broken, a house rule here makes the situation salvageable. Frankly this is a clear example of where Fighter, as a class, would have greatly benefited from the kinds of efficiencies afforded to other classes by having clear-cut, rules-forward build paths.

However, it occurs to me that part of the problem here are shields themselves. The rules surrounding them are a kind of simulationist approach to showcasing something that shields in real life are good at--blocking damage from attacks. The problem is that, with the sole exception of blocking ranged attacks, everything you can do with a shield, you can also do with any weapon (even a tiny knife). In point of fact, as anyone trained with martial arts is going to know, blocking with whatever you have at hand, be it your arm, a sword, a glaive, a dagger, etc. is the very first thing all martial arts teach.

And so, it is arguably better to fully merge shields (and their feats) with weapons. We simply combine the parry action with the raise a shield action and get rid of the Parry trait. We rewrite shield as a simple bludgeoning weapon with the a new trait granting it an additional AC bonus against ranged attacks. Now whether you wield a sword (or other weapon) or a shield, you gain a benefit to AC. Rename Shield Block to Block and alter its scope from a shield to a weapon in hand (inclusive of a shield) and mission (mostly) accomplished.

IMO, this is an elegant solution because it's just as simulationist as all the somersaults that have been made for shields previously and doesn't make a class feature useless in (arguably) many situations. This will also promote both a more cinematic approach to combat (now parrying is normalized) and an overall enrichment in fighter choices during combat (now I have some serious risk/reward stakes because blocking too many hits with my weapon is clearly going to break it...kind of like in real life...).

If folks are concerned about the optics of blocking an armed attack while unarmed there are additional permutations of rules that present themselves, not the least of which is roshanbo~ing weapons blocking weapons a la counterspelling (e.g., one needs a sword to block a sword, or a mace to block a mace, etc.). IMO, this isn't really necessary, as there are many ways for the unarmed to block the attack of someone who is armed, many of them having to do with being aggressive and/or employing one's clothing in ways other than what it was intended for.

As usual YMMV and we agree to disagree about the stakes, the role of the rules vs the role of the GM, and what makes for "balanced" vs. "broken."

There was a submarine board game a while back that did a pretty good job. But that was a board game (albeit with many role-play features) and not a TTRPG...

exequiel759 wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Monastic Weaponry being a feat is probably there for Monks who have no interest in weapons, so they can express this by "not taking the feat."

I mean, if you want to play a samurai and use fighter for that, even if you solely dedicate yourself to katana, wakizashi, and maybe nodachi, you still have proficiency with weapons that a normal samurai didn't even know existed or weapons that didn't exist at the time like a bec de corbin, earthbreaker, or most firearms. If you don't have interest in weapons as a monk, don't use them, but don't tax a feat on those that do want to use them.

Small tangent, but the samurai had firearms for most of there existence. Firearms would be completely on brand.

Given that the samurai emerge as a specific military formation in the 600s and congeal into a social class in the 900s, I would say that they only had firearms for about 2/5ths of their existence. That said, yes, for sure, firearms (and bows) are super on brand for samurai. Spears, axes, and even weirder weapons would not be off-brand for samurai.

It's probably important to note that the stereotypical war-mongering samurai that many Western audiences think of really only existed from around the 1070s-1630s, with their most ascendant point actually being from the 1330s-1590s. After the 1630s they are increasingly bureaucrats and before 1070s they're really either somewhat militant land-owners (and in Eastern Japan particularly, many of them were horse ranchers) or gang-like enforcers for really rich land-owners.

One person's rubbish is another's treasure and vice versa. At least one of my old players recently confessed to me that he purposefully chooses sub-optimal options because it makes the character more interesting to role-play.

I'm like, as long as everyone's having a good time, it kinda doesn't matter what's optimal or not or senseless to some.

Personally, I would love a worldbuilder toolkit book for GMs. Preferably, it would be stuffed with tables.

Sounds amazingly like Battlezoo's take on playable Dungeons.

Anne Leckie's Imperial Radch has a similar approach, except the ship's "robotic body" would likely have the troop trait.

If Battle Zoo can turn Dungeons into a playable character why not starships? Found this linked in Reddit.

Starships as characters .

Love where this whole thread went. But also, hopefully the Battlezoo folks will do starships.

See that bit at the end? That's why everyone disagrees with you. Because you apparently think that balance is meaningless, whereas we're coming to it with a real appreciation of the benefit that it brings to PF2 as a game. Balance is something that PF2 does really well, and it's a big part of the draw.

PF2 is a game. Fundamentally, it's a thing that people play together to have fun. Having it be balanced is an important part of maintaining the kind of fun that PF2 supports - open, broad-based, and welcoming, where people of radically different skill levels can sit down at the same table and all contribute usefully to the same party.

In other threads, at other times, you've talked about how you have huge amounts of experience as a GM. I'm a bit surprised you don't know this stuff already.

Know stuff. Yes. That is the problem. I know differently. From experience.

Interestingly, what the analog trait is trying to do is not easily accomplished using Venn diagrams. Like if my inner "analog" circle is 90% of my "weapons" circle is that a useful distinction? Isn't it better to draw a circle around the 10% and call it "foo?"

(And like honestly...this is software and information engineering 101...)

This discussion literally (and figuratively) has nothing to do with balance issues, perceived or otherwise.

Jamming electronic weapons is a time honored mechanic in futuristic games...? It is certainly hardly any different than disarming. More over this is a game made in physical books and they created the trait already? Why argue with me when I'm stating the trait exists in the field test material and a likely reason why it does exist?

I think you mean jamming RADAR-guided weapons is a time-honored method in real life. There are defensive measures you can use against other kinds of guidance (camera-guided, laser-guided, infrared-guided, etc.--e.g., chaff, flares, balloons, etc.) but barring an EMP blast, you really can't do much to weapon electronics. It's not like I would hook up the electronics in the laser sight on my all-too-"analog" 9mm slugthrower to the internets...(like what would be the point,? other than leaking my position to the enemy?)

I'm arguing against it's inclusion because 1) it's silly and 2) it's an unnecessary bit of adipose tissue that SF2 (and by extension PF2) doesn't need.

Ultimately not everything needs a trait. A keyword that appears on most of the data isn't useful in information retrieval situations (#askmeimanexpert).

Bonus points to anyone who can call out the subtle differences among relations, relationships, and entities in the context of relational databases. Also for those that need the proofs, check out the not particularly heavy maths of Boolean and Relational algebras. (Set theoretics is also applicable here but, mostly to explain the results we're trying to get out of the database.)

There is a very real group of theories and maths regarding why keywords and traits are useful. Analog exceeds the "it's useful" boundaries.

I know no writer or director would make trip this common and easy to do. It would look terrible in a story or movie.

The entire wuxia filmography would like to have a word...

Next Question I have is are there any type of humanoid dragon-sort of monsters that could easily replace the dragonborn. I don't need them for use by player characters but they are the working population and primarily source of military soldiers for the draconic empire. In my world history they are focal to winning what essentially was a world war in my world.

Is there any such creature? Or will I have to create my own?

If you're willing to use 3rd-party products, the Roll for Combat folks have an excellent book detailing playable dragons as an ancestry. IMO, it's quite well balanced against PF2's existing engine.

IRL, redundancy is good. It leads to what we call system robustness. "Redundancy is bad" views largely emerge from capitalism's drive for maximal efficiency and maximized profit margins.

That said, I would want a party with a little of everything before developing any redundancies...

I hope that archaic stays optional. Speaking from real-life examples, Kevlar might be relatively effective at stopping bullets but knives and and other sharp, pointy things (like arrows of all things) tend to slice right through Kevlar. So...

Rounds taking only 6 seconds is cartoon physics. In real life the fastest rate of fire that an Arbalest is capable of is 2 shots / minute. IMO, if you want a more realistic simulationist set of boundaries then you have to start by pegging the length of rounds in combat to 30 seconds.

So I suppose the most OP thing from my perspective is that you can shoot a musket or an arbalest 10 times in a minute. That's alot (not sure how aiming is even possible). To say nothing of melee combat.

Eh, balance is a social construct anyway. It's a snark that no one should hunt. I'm more interested in something Mathmuse just mentioned

Alas, Thurston Hillman's statement, "A good example of this would be that we're going to allow for 1st-level characters with certain ancestries to get unrestricted flight. In PF2's meta this would be an immense change and break all semblance of balance. In SF2, well... guns exist and it's not really a massive game-breaking option," misses the reason why flight is restricted in PF2. After all. in PF2 bows exist and are as useful as guns. The problem is that a lot of low-level monsters in Pathfinder lack both flight and ranged attacks, so if a party could take to the air and shoot the creature, it would have no counterattacks available. The developers want to avoid risk-free fights, such as Anti being able to shoot unsuspecting Shadow Creepers.

Interesting. I have overlooked this issue. I think it was not an issue for older games like AD&D2 or D&D3.5 which, IIRC had plenty of low-level monsters with both ranged attacks and flight. This might be why I perceive the presence of flight and greater reach at lower levels as not game-breaking. IMO, this is a rather bad chink in the armor of PF2's encounter maths. Kind of like having large numbers of lower-level monsters tends to cause the math to break down (due to the significant action advantage simply having greater numbers provides). This of course dovetails nicely with my view that PF2 isn't actually balanced. It simply tries to provide a narrowly scoped experience.

I mean, I don't know why those classes wouldn't at least receive treatment in a sidebar. Why reinvent the wheel? (The fighter is "perfect" after all...) Ultimately it will be like the 4 million ton elephant in the room if they aren't addressed in some way.

Putting an automatic rifle into a Fighter's hands sounds fine (and realistic) to me. Ditto a handgun into the hands of any of the rest of them. We already have firearms in the game so the only thing really missing at this time is defining what automatic/burst fire means.

And OP's point of, what will a notional Mystic do that Cleric/Druid/Psychic/Wizard/Witch (or the spontaneous casting equivalents to these) don't already do. My conclusion is that Mystic probably won't make the cut for jumping from SF1 to SF2. If it does make the cut, it's going to get some very radical reworking to make sure it does something very distinct from the others.

Re: game balance...that's a matter of perspective anyway. In my opinion PF2 is already broken balance wise (because balance is so much more than mere numbers) so it matters little to me. But I also do weird things like mix players whose characters are different levels, occasionally drop in encounters and/or numbers of opponents where the obvious correct choice is not to initiate hostilities, etc.

As always YMMV.

These games are what people are willing to make of them. PF2 is good because for the most part its rules tend to flex instead of break. You always want your systems to act more like grass (or even a willow tree) in a storm than an oak.

Hrmm...I suppose that if you have to convert SF2 into PF2 then you can't really claim they're compatible. My expectation is that you won't really need to worry too much about this as many core rules (e.g., encounter design, stealth/concealment, etc.) will simply carry over. I imagine the primary differences are going to be in the item lists and specifics of various classes.

I took the OP's intention as wanting to discuss overlapping roles of classes. There are several aspects in which overlap could be discussed (e.g., all martial classes overlap, all spellcasting classes overlap, etc.). A more interesting question though is the implications, how would you run a mixed campaign?

One imagines a campaign that conjures the great turn of the 19th/20th century pulp stories like Burrow's John Carter/Mars but Krull and Yor, the Hunter from the Future (and even Cowboys vs. Aliens) provide us some other good examples of science fiction tropes and high-tech weapons mixing it up with swords and axes and barbarians.

My expectation is that Fighter and Rogue and perhaps Cleric and Wizard (this latter thing was the Shadowrun solution) may actually simply appear in the SF2 core rule book bearing appropriate weapons to the genre/time-period. It will all hinge on item design.

Sidebar: Some aspects of this discussion remind me of an elderly one had on the Onyx Path boards regarding whether or not the Chronicles of Darkness omni-setting had the breadth to include notional games on mad scientists and/or space/extra-dimensional aliens. IMO, since the omni-setting's chief concern was horror I thought there was plenty of room (much as I think it's fine to dump "high-tech" things into "fantasy" settings) but, a sizable group of folks did not want "high-tech" things messing with their urban fantasy...which begs a bunch of questions discussing: what is fantasy anyway? Food for thought, the saddle and stirrups are magically high-tech things in mesolithic settings. Is the stone age [i.e., going in the opposite direction of technological sophistication] also not a valid fantasy style setting?)

Jacob Jett wrote:

But honestly, why are stats necessary?

Stats help keep everyone on the same page regarding how the rules are intended to work and how the game is meant to be played.

Otherwise we're all just playing cops and robbers with no rules and there's little to no need for any of the books or their mechanics.

If you meant to "attributes," rather than the more ubiquitous "stats," then...

...we don't actually need them, at least not an attributes mechanic specifically. (Though I think you would be hard pressed to find something better.)

What we do need is that extra level of customization and mechanical representation in order to add depth to the game, to avoid limiting potential character concepts, to tie numerous mechanics together for ease of use, and to give everyone a foundational shorthand basis from which to better understand each other's character concepts.

You can actually represent all of that with just skills. The rules don't need to differentiate what you're talented at vs. what you're trained at. You can leave it to the player to make that determination themselves. So, agree to disagree.

Jacob Jett wrote:

I don't know. Seems like they're being civil to me...

But honestly, why are stats necessary?

Honestly?

Because they're useful shorthand. And because they help represent correlated traits.

If I'm good at lifting weights (athletics) I can probably hit things hard (str based attacks).

If you just have skills, then you get weird interactions where someone who can bench press a locomotive can't punch hard at all.

See above. But in many ways this is a moot discussion qua the rules as published. The main point is that if someone wants to simply eliminate the stats from their game using house rules, they could and it's fine. The game's balance point doesn't rely on stats because they're difficult to predict (they vary across players and their characters). Remember both monsters and characters have stats as published. Getting rid of all stats changes the game in a symmetrical manner wrt to damage yields (they go down a bit across the board). This is fine. It definitely doesn't upset the apple cart or break the game. So people can salt and pepper to their taste. YMMV

On the difference between trade and pocket versions.

To the reader (and to some extent the author), format differences don't matter much. It's the same text, communicating the same work (whatever that is).

To the publisher, it's an entirely new work (because its layout is subtly but radically different).

I'll add my 2 cents and ask for some level -1 elementals and kicking summon elemental down to a rank 1 spell...

('twould open some design possibilities for house rules...)

In summation, Alchemists need to be as self-contained as all the other classes. Doing support things for your friends is fine, if you don't make them burn actions for the reward.

I wonder if atomizers need to be a built-in class feature in order to eliminate the action-overhead of gift-then-use that elixirs, mutagens, food items, and poisons all have.

Conceptually, the alchemist was one of the two things that led me to PF2 (the other being treatment of monsters and encounter mechanics). It's sad we have to wait until July to see where the dev team is going to go. But these discussions are useful to me, if I decide to rewrite it to my personal tastes for my campaign setting. (I just finished doing this with the cleric--wholesale replacement by a very similar but radically different class. I'm committed to doing the same for Fighters, Rangers, Monks, and probably Champions).

So seeing what pain points folks feel this class has is very illuminating. It's sort of like Gunslinger, where having expert weapon proficiency out of the gate seems to have failed to overcome the action tax of reloading.

Maybe the Battlezoo folks (or some other 3rd party) need to set up a PFS+ group that serves the same role as PFS for folks that love Battlezoo's work.

In general though, I see enough of these kinds of frustrated, semi-frustrated, or pseudo-frustrated posts here and elsewhere (e.g., Reddit) to think that there needs to be broader-scoped society.

Personally, I use Battlezoo's stuff. It's neat and inventive and resembles the crazy we used to do with D&D3.5. It helps that the lead designer for Battlezoo was one of the lead devs for PF2.

I think part of the issue here is that the flat bonuses the stats provide simply aren't as engaging as how stats in many other systems directly affect things like dice pools. I can see some arguments for eliminating attributes altogether but, attributes are often considered an important aspect of character building since they speak to characters' natural talents.

A happy medium might be to adapt a 4 attribute system like Essence20 did. You have a strength/toughness stat (combining strength and constitution together), an agility stat (basically a slightly expanded dexterity), an intellect stat (combining intelligence and wisdom), and a social stat (an expanded charisma). Instead of flat X+int skill points, each attribute's value contributes skill points towards related skills directly. IMO, the skills themselves could be radically overhauled to support this.

A bit of history here, the skill systems PF2.r uses are not particularly different from the D&D3.5 skill system, which themselves realized a beefing up of the under-developed skill system that was present in (A)D&D2. At its root, it's basically almost 40 years old. Which is part of the reason it's causing dissonance with the more contemporary aspects of PF2.r's system.

A radical overhaul would also allow the developers of a notional PF3 to implement a robust social "combat" (conflict is probably a better word) a la the one FFG's Genesys system employs. Having a robust system for characters talking NPCs out of shooting them or even defeating them with verbiage opens some pretty huge character and role-play possibilities. Genesys might not be the world's most spectacular system but it does have some fresh and interesting ideas. (I wouldn't be sad to see such a system prototyped with SF2's Envoy class playtest, whenever that happens. And honestly, alt attribute/skill systems could be playtested and make an appearance in a notional SF2 GM guidebook...)

Just to put it out there, as an industry insider from the academic end, it isn't really the case that AI is going to eliminate jobs qua quantities of jobs. Quite a lot of human labor goes into AI development. In particular training datasets do not magically annotate themselves.

All that said, there is a distinctive shift in whose doing the job (art in the example) from an expert in the thing (the artist in this case) to a software engineer (who is not necessarily an expert even in software engineering).

We're talking about an enormous iceberg of cultural issues.

Unfortunately, this is an extension of the same cultural issues that industrialization (and most "progress") causes. This is a perennial issue because every few generations, a couple of the generations get mulched in the labor turnover. E.g., horse production use to be a huge industry but cars turned it into a niche industry. Or as the Buggles tell us, "video killed the radio star."

The pace is much faster this time around though. Like AI is going to change everything pretty hugely with regards to information retrieval and organization in the coming months.

Generative algorithms like ChatGPT get a lot of press, but they're prone to making crap up (the technical term is hallucinate). We have another algorithm that isn't generative and simply lists facts (i.e., indexes) any walled garden of documents you give it. To put this into more lingua franca--imagine we had an AI that could instantly update the Archives of Nethys as soon as you fed it new PDFs. We have that technology already. It's hitting the market now. So yeah...it's about to be really interesting times.

What should really worry you is that there are academics talking about AI governance (and in fact running the experiments already)...so...1984 anyone?

#ineedadrink

Ravingdork wrote:

The algorithms aren't doing anything that artists haven't already been doing for centuries.

This is laughably wrong/uninformed. The brain is not a computer and it does not function like one.

Well...sort of...

The algorithms themselves are broad mathematical models of selected human behaviors (including creating artworks, writing, etc.).

Most folks don't really understand what the broad stacks of intertwined, monstrously complicated equations are doing but it boils down to this. Unfortunately, we've kind of already proven that these algorithms can approximate certain human behaviors. So, it's not as simple as saying headcheese isn't the same as a mdf board full of electronics.

Things are changing for us, and changing faster than they did when we introduced computers, the internet, and smart-phones.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

It seems odd that they'd do that from a balance perspective. Why make low-level summons viable in this way and high-level summons not? Like, that has to have been intentional. So what's the tradeoff there that makes them perceive heavily underleveled level 3 creatures as worthwhile in a way that heavily underleveled level 1 creatures aren't?

My pet theory is that it's balanced for low level and someone didn't realize there was a scaling discrepancy and just thought the numbers were pretty.

If you want to have a 2nd rank summoning spell do more than a 1st, it has to summon creature 1s, since 1st rank summons creature -1s. Then you carry the logic through, so that 3rd rank spells summon creature 2s and 4th rank spells summon creature 3s and oh oops you suddenly have that 4-level gap.

Or it's balanced for high level but there aren't creatures low enough level to do "character level - 4 = summoned creature level" at rank 1, so they had to crunch things down at lower level. Thus massively boosting low-level summoning because there was nowhere else to go.

In theory, someone should have anticipated this issue as PF2's exponentially scaling encounter maths (see Mathmuse's post analyzing this system to learn why it's so good) is it's firmest (and in some opinions--best) feature. I think the real issue is that someone on the design team leveraged perceived hate of summon management to marginalize the viability of the entire sub-system. (To which, you could never implement a Magic: the Gathering-like setting using the systems rules because summons are under good. [And, of course, setting aside the issue of if you would want to implement such a setting anyway.]).

Aside: After reading through the first dozen PF2 books, I've often felt as though one or more of the developers at the time had axes to grind when they encountered the design process and frequently found themselves with the warrant to "solve" those issues. In particular, there's some rather pejorative language surrounding religions and faith in the early books.

Jacob Jett wrote:

Is the point of the debate to stamp out the thinking of one of the groups? If so, isn't that something akin to mere cyberbullying?

That is certainly what it feels like to me. Especially with people insisting on using derogatory terms for the rules text that they don't like despite being informed that it is in fact considered derogatory.

Ah. Well, we agree to disagree that it is a pejorative. Frankly, we used to use it positively more often than pejoratively (and in some communities it still is used this way, and of course I use it in that manner as well). After all the "fluffy" things in the world are important if one is to use a specific setting.

IMO, saying that I'd like my rules separate from particular setting-facing narrative is the same thing as telling the person at the fast-food counter that I don't want salt on my fries. Perhaps we're attaching to much negativity to others.

Jacob Jett wrote:

I see what you're trying to say. I don't think it's necessary. If everyone at a table agrees, it's fine to color outside the lines and do both. Pre-historic technology clashing with high-tech space opera sounds fine to me. #workedfortheewoks

Yes. if everyone at the table agrees. But it isn't something that one player should just feel entitled to do completely on their own and without consulting anyone else at the table.

You aren't at my table. Not sure why you think I need to know this...

Jacob Jett wrote:

I think the intent of the conversation though is that its a nice-to-have when core rules make this an easier process for tables by strongly signaling what is "fluff" and what is game mechanics. I agree that sentiment, which I think is contrary to yours.

Ultimately for some it won't matter because they can implement their visions anyway.

Yes, that is contrary to my sentiment. I feel that having the defaults in place is valuable. And that separating that out into two locations is ineffective and will do more harm than good. It makes the default flavor harder to find if nothing else.

We agree to disagree. I thought it was quite workable in the first three and half editions of D&D, worked well for HERO, GURPS, TORG, and a slew of other games, including relatively recent ones like Genesys.

Jacob Jett wrote:

Also, I think my base assumption is that when folks customize, they do so with "intention and thought put into it." So I'm not sure were we're really going here...

The reason for the debate is because there are some on this thread that want to remove the flavor entirely and leave only generic mechanics, and others that claim that having the flavor and the mechanics together means that the flavor must be enforced as rigid and unchangeable rules. Both of those ideas have problems.

I would be a proponent of this position for the core rule books. It works well for other systems. I have no reason to believe it won't work well here. (It would definitely make my ongoing setting migration from D&D3.5 to PF2/PF2.r easier.)

Ultimately, I'm not sure why the debate has to happen. Some folks think thing A. Some think thing B. There's more than enough community space for both groups to coexist. Is the point of the debate to stamp out the thinking of one of the groups? If so, isn't that something akin to mere cyberbullying?

IIRC you're in academia, so I'll put on my paper reviewer hat.

Jacob, from your previous posts, it makes it clear that you feel no issue with changing either the narrative or the rules to fit the game you want to play.

I'm not sure why this sentence is here. It isn't adding anything to the conversation.

My argument is that that is the intended way for the game to be played, but it becomes more complicated to play it that way when people see "rules" as some fundamental feature of a game that have to be respected as is, but "narrative" is something entirely irrelevant to understanding or using those rules, so it can be discarded without consideration for the changes that will make on the game as a whole.

I've spent a long time trying to parse this argument. It would probably benefit from being broken into several smaller sentences that make the argument clearer. I think what you're trying to argue is that splitting game mechanics (i.e., rules) from setting-facing narrative (i.e., "fluff") makes it more complicated to customize a ttrpg to one's own stories, settings, worlds, etc. Is that right?

Assuming that I got your argument right, er...we agree to disagree?

I'm not sure how separating someone else's stories, settings, worlds, etc. from a game's mechanics makes it more difficult to redeploy those game mechanics into one's own stories, settings, worlds, etc. Experience (and logic really) would indicate that the opposite is going to be true because game mechanics don't necessarily have intentions the same way that a bolt and washer connecting something in a garage door don't necessarily have intentions. E.g., the game mechanics realizing a spell, realize a spell. That spell might be realized in the Lost Omens setting as easily as my own setting.

Now we could argue that what we have are game mechanics that realize spells in Golarion. However, game mechanics are not like brownies. It isn't the case that the Golarion part is baked in and inseparable. The game mechanics are communicated by sentences which comprise phrases, comprising words, all of which can be teased apart until I have game mechanics for a spell and some portion that adjusts it for "in Golarion". It's more work to repurpose for a different setting but still achievable. That's rather the opposite of the argument I think you were trying to make.

Ultimately though, I'm not sure why your making that argument or even why this kind of conversation is happening. The game mechanisms for any (and every ttrpg) can be repurposed. That is the nature of machinery. This repurposing may go against the intentions of the creators of said machinery--although I'm going to argue that all of the encouraging sentences in the existing rule books aimed specifically at customization means that the creators intend for repurposing to occur--but such repurposing never goes against the intention of the machinery itself. Machinery isn't the kind of thing that has intentions.

Jacob Jett wrote:

breithauptclan wrote:

Jacob Jett wrote:

My setting, my worlds, my narrative. I'll handle the layering in of those things myself.

Yes. But the point is that you - and the other players playing with you - have to actually handle those things.

If you and your friends are coming up with completely separate and often incompatible narrative flavor, the game isn't going to go well.

This would be wrong per most of the rulebooks (everywhere they say, [and I paraphrase] 'feel free to customize').

And you are still not understanding what I am saying.

Yes. Customize. Of course you should make your game your own.

But you have to do it with intention and thought put into it. If all of the players at the table are customizing in different directions, then the story you are telling won't make much sense.

So sure. Re-skin PF2 to look like Starfinder. Adapt it to a prehistoric low technology setting. But work it out with the other players so that you don't try to do both at the same time.

I see what you're trying to say. I don't think it's necessary. If everyone at a table agrees, it's fine to color outside the lines and do both. Pre-historic technology clashing with high-tech space opera sounds fine to me. #workedfortheewoks

I think the intent of the conversation though is that its a nice-to-have when core rules make this an easier process for tables by strongly signaling what is "fluff" and what is game mechanics. I agree that sentiment, which I think is contrary to yours.

Ultimately for some it won't matter because they can implement their visions anyway.

Also, I think my base assumption is that when folks customize, they do so with "intention and thought put into it." So I'm not sure were we're really going here...

I am not speaking for anyone except myself, but I do think that mechanical text at its best is also narrative text.

Rules are a prescriptive story for how to resolve actions and conflict. If you use "the rules as written" for PF2, you are adding a whole lot of narrative constraint to the game you are playing, even if you try to create some arbitrary line between "rules" and "narrative." Wizards exist in any game played with PF2 in pretty particular narrative constraints by having spell slots and requiring a spell book. It is a game where fighting dragons requires specialized heroes and not armies of untrained militia.

That is certainly a respectable position to take. Speaking for myself, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. My setting, my worlds, my narrative. I'll handle the layering in of those things myself.

EDIT: I should note, several of the core rule books (and at least one Lost Omens book) take some pains to lay out the customizability of the ruleset and how GMs can change things like narrative "fluff" (which is why I say Paizo would like to eat their cake and still have it at the same time). It's also why I think these conversations are kinda moot. It's pointless for anyone (not you specifically or at all) to nerd rage about integrated "fluff" when Paizo has written many, many sentences walking that fluff's existence back to reinsure folks with their own settings (or even own versions of Lost Omens/Golarion) that they can customize as they like. So despite being at opposite ends of the spectrum there's hardly anything to converse about let alone argue over...

I'm not so certain. There's definitely a perceived "balance" along with 1/encounter mechanic-set that the next edition could double down on. IMO, this would provide a three-fold benefit:

1) Make more observable the games mathematical balance points (which some perceive as "balance" in and of itself).

2) Institute a series of feel-goods through better aligning martial and spell-casting classes abilities into broad, @will, 1/encounter, 1/day abilities. (The flaw of D&D4 not being the institution of these things but in retaining the D&D brand for it. Better if they had made a new game and then slowly merged their lines...but that requires the kind of multi-year planning that the average business-person calling the shots doesn't have.)

3) Provide a distinct differentiation point between PF2/PF2.r and PF3. While lagging sales is often the primary cause of a new edition being created, the fact is that sales start to lag because people start to yearn for shiny and new things. This is actually part of GW's sales strategies (beyond the rolling balance issues that their tournament organizers face...). Newness is an important aspect for new editions. And truly, developers and authors like to try out new things too.

So, I would not expect so small an incremental advance as the differences between (A)D&D1 and (A)D&D2--the latter in some ways being more akin to a (A)D&D1.5 version of the former than a true iterative edition.

- Frogs are predators. Deer are not, but they certainly are on the receiving end of the rage of wild predators. I'd simply play a deer barbarian as having more flight in their fight or flight response.

I don't think that's really necessary. Herbivores can be quite aggressive. Having a close encounter with a buck during rut season is definitely something to be avoided. Even mice have been know to fend off cats when sufficiently motivated. And...some food for thought...most herbivores are known to supplement their diets with meat. Deer have been caught eating small mammals and insects on occasion.

The whole carnivore/herbivore divide is a bit more porous than folks think. (Which is the case for the boundaries of most groupings.)

"The fury of a wild predator fills you when you Rage" => deers and frogs are hardly predators, so no Deer nor Frog Animal Barbarian.

Er...frogs are predators...

I think inevitably, PF3 (when it arrives years from now) is highly likely to resemble D&D4.

I think archetypes as a whole are a bit overloaded. It would be a nice-to-have if a future GM-facing book had some verbiage unpacking all of the different roles they play and how their specifications vary according to the role. Afterall being a Hellknight Armiger is different from being a Ghoul is different from being an Archer is different from the Fighter multiclass archetype.

These all fulfill very different ludo-narrative roles. That they use the exact same game engine portions to achieve this speaks to the overall robustness of the engine but also showcases a design pain-point in which it becomes difficult to produce things like a Gunslinger - Ghoul Fighter Hellknight Armiger Archer. Narratively, there's no reason such a combination couldn't occur (e.g., as it could in a novel...).

A wishes-for-fishes would be variant rules that break the space down into different, if related, sets of game-facing mechanics.

I honestly thought that Kaiju generally were more interesting than the tarrasque... So, I suppose I won't miss it any more than I'm going to miss alignment. Other things like the Otyugh on the other hand...

Hasbro net worth 8.6 Billion

Blizzard net worth 63.4 Billion

So...

Eh...net worth is for speculators. Annual revenues say what kind and how many lawyers you can afford. IMO, compared to it's miniscule annual revenues, Blizzard appears to be grossly overvalued. But this is true for many media companies. Quite possibly a financial correction is coming that will simply erase all of that net worth like a pair of fingers snapping away 50% of the universe (if you take my meaning).

YMMV

So if I am getting this right we have moved the discussion into "Is the Fighter AS good than Monk at Unarmed Attacks or are they BETTER?" and just completely accepted that this idea that they should even be tied is just genre and concept defying madness...

I get that we have a developer up in here defending the idea that the Monk is good with Unarmed Combat "in other ways" than Fighter but here is the thing, the Fighter can do everything the Monk can BETTER than a Monk with Weapons and can be at least AS GOOD as a fully single class specialized Monk in Unarmed Attacks if the Fighter simply takes a few Monk MCA Feats. There is NO WAY a Monk can EVER even approach being as good at what a Fighter is good at via MCA Feats or anything else... but the Fighter gets a free pass to invest a few of their one resource the also happen to get more of than any other Class to have or surpass parity with the power scale of the actual Class they're poaching from. Maybe the team should look at it from this perspective, that is unless the whole idea of the Fighter Class has always been "the best at Martial Combat THE-END."

The Fighter seems to be getting special treatment here where they have their own niche protection but at the same time, they're allowed to poach the niche of other Classes all while still maintaining accuracy superiority and having a bunch of flexible Class Feats to spare and gain consistent bonuses to damage that don't rely on gimmicks to pull off.

We agree (let's not agree violently). The maths say, fighters are a privileged class (in more ways than one).

Wei Ji the Learner wrote:

Not sure where Divine fits yet.

Wasn't that Gods & Magic?

Gods & Magic is specifically a Lost Omens book. Whereas Secrets of Magic, Dark Archive, and Howl of the Wild are more simply just PF2 source books.

So, I'm in the camp of, "hope we get a divine book soon," too. Hopefully it addresses non-deistic faiths pike philosophies, nature worship, animism, etc., etc. (if Tian Xia does not in fact address some of these already).

The obsession with Legendary proficiency on martials in this forum is bizarre, NGL.

IMO, it would make some sense if they had expert/master for unarmed, and possibly monk weapons, a bit quicker than they do.

Fighters are mathematically superior to other martial classes. Now it would be easy to argue for nerfs, but I think sharing the expertise around to other martial classes also shares around the feel goods.

Edit: Part of the design issue with archetypes is that they come in four very distinct types: cross-training (i.e., multiclassing), specialist (e.g., sentinel), elite group membership (e.g., Hellknight Armiger), and cursed/undead (e.g., ghoul). This makes for a schizophrenic design space that troes to solve multiple design problems with a single tool. Unfortunately it has all the problems of the single tool approach. E.g., while a swiss army knife is useful in a pinch, actual screwdrivers, scissors, etc. are superior tools. Or alternately, if you don't like the multitool analogy, "if all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail."

IMO, the simplest solution is going to look something like, every wizard gets access to the entire arcane spell list from which they select spells for the old spell-book. Then specialists get small bonus lists from which they can add spells to their spell-books and universalists get some other bonus. You have to think the solution will be the lightest weight solution possible. No body likes make work.

Frankly, until we see sample pages or other spoilery info though, we won't really know what the impact of the OGL changes is. I, like others, think it's going to be fine (if a pain to expand on) but the kind of up in arms, Paizo's wrecking everything talk is over the top IMO. These are all Schrödinger's manuscript drafts for now.

Lurker in Insomnia wrote:

In other words, as far as niches go we still have the Universalist, evokers (battle magic), transmuters (protean form), and others right? Even if they are rough analogs, they are still similar roles and should be mechanically similar?

Not quite.

As it currently stands currently Evocation Wizards can get an extra slot of every level (except 10th) to cast any evocation spell that they know from the entire list of arcane spells. The new system appears to only grant a small list of spells closer to what sorcerers bloodline and cleric deities get.

So the wizard is losing a tons of versatility (what was its bread and butter). For a single unique spells and the flavor of "I went to college" that was already provided by the fact that they got a thesis and had it all over their feats.

We actually can't be sure that this is what's happening. It's better to reserve judgement until we see the actual text as it will be implemented. What you're describing is kind of a "worse case scenario". My bet is that wizards will have some general versatility with universalists ruling the roost with regards to versatility.