Extroth's page

Extroth wrote:

Also, I've never been able to follow the logic of "PC's are special?"

If you were playing a superhero game, would you want to be a non-hero? Or would you want every NPC in the game to be a super? I'd say no, simply because part of the reason I play RPGs is to play a cool character who is not like everyone else, and who has way cooler abilities than almost everyone else. I can't speak for other players, but if PCs were not special I wouldn't play in the first place.

Maybe we just have a philosophical difference then--because I have played a non-hero in a superhero game. And I have run a game where most of the population had powers (think my hero academia).

But in that case, there is a logical, in-universe, explanation, superpowers are rear things caused by genetic quarks or very strange circumstances. If in Pathfinder all spell casters were sorcerer’s I would buy this comparison.

Extroth wrote:

Also, I've never been able to follow the logic of "PC's are special?" if they are then how do they get that specialness in-universe? Why is the Pathfinder society even a thing if 99% of people can't even come by the talents needed to join up?

Why are Doctors a thing if 99% of people can't even come by the resources and talents needed to join up? The fact that 99% of people can't do something is the reason the organization exists.

This is a fair point, though funnily during the middle ages most doctors were actually really bad at their jobs. It wasn’t until modern communications and education networks came into being that it was possible to spread proper knowledge of medicine. I could totally see a world where there are only a few “real” wizards and everyone else is faking it. But that doesn’t really lead to the kind of high fantasy adventures Pathfinder is known for. There are an awful lot of magic items and magically constructed creatures wandering around the dungeons of the world for only a “few” wizards to have produced.

The logic of the PCs being special is simply a result of the fact that they're the main characters of the story. And since it's an interactive fiction medium, the PCs being the only ones that the GM can't control the choices of makes them pretty special indeed. The kind of special that breaks prophecies, for example, simply by showing up in a world.

I understand that this is the case from a meta-perspective of course. And when playing tabletop games you sometimes can’t get away from the meta. But that was not really the context of this thread. If we’re going to think about the implications of the game mechanics as elements of lore then these are the questions we have to ask. If people don’t want to think about these implications I can respect that. People play these games for different reasons. My players come to the table for RP and world-building. And we’ve gone whole sessions without combat.

Now responding to the thread more generally: if an NPC dies when they hit zero hit points but a PC lives--consitently--every time. Then there is in fact an in world difference between these two beings. Maybe it’s not clear what it is--but there is a difference. If you want to handwave it and say that’s only a gameplay mechanic then there is probably a good chance that some NPC’s in the world have lived when dropping bellow zero hit points and it’s just not relevant to the players. In which case the points being made are still valid.

You can’t have it both ways.

I don't think I particularly like the philosophy I'm seeing in this thread where people dismiss NPC as not having access to cantrips or magic at all just because they're an NPC. NPC's are made helpless enough by not being able to take classes at all--why do we feel the need to deny them their heritage feats too?

Also, I've never been able to follow the logic of "PC's are special?" if they are then how do they get that specialness in-universe? Why is the Pathfinder society even a thing if 99% of people can't even come by the talents needed to join up?

My wizard needs to learn magic from somewhere--they probably had to learn it from an NPC--and then that NPC had to learn magic from someone else. Do you see how this doesn't add up?

I come down fairly middle of the road on these arguments. I think the issue is the wizard specifically is boring. But I do understand the resistance to making changes. In 1e most casters could just end combat and there was very little a DM could do about that most of the time. 2e does a lot of work to make it so everyone can contribute to combat without the combat ending as soon as the caster's turn comes around. But the Wizard is so dang generic that I would only play it as the "Default" arcane caster option right now and the moment an archanist or something like that comes out with more interesting class features I'm dropping the wizard, like a hot potato.

If you don't think that's a problem then nothing needs to change. But personally I think if your core classes are made obsolete by additional classes you've closed off a lot of design space. Let's face it, one of the things that makes pathfinder so good is the amazing amount of class options that we all know are going to come eventually. But right now the wizard is the white bread of casters, kind of bland and not very good for you.

Thinking about it further if someone had asked me to design the wizard for 2e I would have probably just skipped the wizard and make the arcanist the primary prepared casting class. We could still call it the wizard if people got super defensive about tradition and flavor. But that's just me.