Anyone upholding the 3.5 wizard as a standard of "balanced" is never going to be happy with anything that gets made within the mainstream RPG industry today, unless someone makes an RPG called Wizard: kneel before me or die.
They did, it's called Mage: the awakening and it's actually quite fun !
I prefer Ars Magica for my Wizards are Gods games.
Custos was such a good concept to put these uppity martials in their proper subservient place.
In Ars Magica, martials knew their place.
They still had choices though, they could choose if they wanted to say "Sir! Yes Sir!" or "Ribbit!"
You dont actually know that all of these people have that stance though. For example I'm not interested in paid GMs because I think its against the soul of the artform and collaborative effort of cooperative storytelling. I also have a heavy disdain for people like critical role because they've sold out on their platform and in many ways misrepresent the hobby to thousands of potential players.
If you're making money off of something you WILL approach it differently than if you do it solely for the love of the craft.
I have to challenge this one a bit.
Shakespeare, Mozart, Michelangelo, Dickens were all very much in it for the money - their art was their profession. Pretty sure that whatever the art-form there are examples of true greats who got paid.
Legions of actors, musicians, authors,scriptwriters, painters, sculptors, dancers, storytellers, poets etc etc are superb at their craft and use it to make a living.
Every artistic field has enthusiastic people doing it as a hobby whose fondest dream is to ditch the day job and become a professional practitioner of the craft they love.
I usually just go for direct damage spell-like abilities. Dealing 1d6 + 1/2 levels of fire damage, or acid damage, is pretty low even at 1st-level, but it's a touch attack. A crossbow does not ignore armor. In addition, this accuracy is important because a wizard probably does not want to waste feats on Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot.
I have a newfound respect for the little blast powers some schools and domains (playing a wood elementalist wizard currently). Yes, they become pretty irrelevant after a few levels, but for the early levels they are a nice cushion against not having many spells.
So is it an assumption of 2nd that casters were too powerful and should be punished?
Punished is pretty loaded language. Part of PF2's design goals though were to have fewer egregious balance issues than PF1, if that's your question, yes.
There does seem to be a balance issue with wizards being too weak now for sure.
To those who feel wizards are still a balanced class.
If I want to
1) play an arcane caster
2) not be the +1/-1 guy*
What build should I make and why is it cool?
I admit I'm a tough audience - I saw NO caster-martial disparity in 1E and I need to stress I normally played the martial character there.
* I don't give a damn how epic and awesome a +1 bonus might be in the incredibly miserly maths of 2E - it just does not feel fun and will never be exciting to me. You might as well be playing the fighter's talking magic sword or shield.
Yes. This. Psychologically, it's a different experience. Don't get me wrong, I'll still feel awesome that my action lead to a cool result but it is a different awesome than the fighter awesome.
Thanks for highlighting that, it definitely puts into words a chunk of what wasn't sitting right with me.
There's another part that aligns with this in terms of how things feel emotionally.
Buffing and debuffing are supposed to be major roles for casters now.
We all know in our heads that with the tight maths of PF2, that a +1 or a -1 is a big deal.
However in my heart I can't ever imagine myself thinking "Wow I'm looking for to next week's game night so much. Giving my buddies +1 to hit last time was epic!"
Moving back a level, here's what I want from a magus.
This is not to say I want to the class limited to this way of playing but for me it needs to support something like this =
1) They have a spell book, seeking out and learning new spells is part of their progression and which spells they memorise each day is an important choice. Casting is driven by intelligence
2) They get to spend a good percentage of their day casting spells or using arcane flavoured abilities without anyone* saying this is a waste of an action based on the system maths.
3) Their spell selection includes offensive spells and some self affecting defense or utility - choosing the right mix each day is important.
4) They can use traditional martial weapons like swords and bows and wear some armour
5) I can build them to have melee as a primary role without anyone* telling me they aren't suited to do that
Based on this thread that may all sound like a bit of a tall order for PF2 to accommodate, but bear in mind that's exactly what a PF1 magus does right out the gate at level 1, without needing any weird ancestry / feat / archetype choices to do so.
*when I say anyone I mean not one person in my regular group, no one at a PFS table, not one theory crafter on the forums...
For the first part yes, but crits are far more likely on the animal companion here, which is what happened - rolled something like a 16, no confirmation roll.
It wasn't like he was sending it to tank a dangerous boss or anything - just moved it towards one of four goons that were attacking unarmed townsfolk.
Whoah, this sounds deeply wrong. A 1st level Cat should have AC 16 or 17 while one of multiple foes at 1st level should have a +6 or +7 to hit. If you're fighting four enemies with better to-hit than that and can do 11+ damage on a crit, you're lucky it wasn't a PC that died, and even then 1st level enemies max out at +9 to hit, so still not a crit on a 16 barring real weirdness. With a mere 11 HP a crit will usually take it out, but the odds of that aren't nearly as bad as you're implying.
JulianW wrote:
To answer the second question he was a ranger, not a druid.
Did he not have Medicine? This seems like what First Aid is for.
OK, maybe it was a roll of 17 or 18 and if he did have medicine he didn't get over there in time to use it.
Maybe he was unlucky, maybe he should have stopped fighting the guy next to him and walked over to do first aid, maybe he should have had more system mastery...
But the point being pets came across as so much more fragile the player who loved having a pet was very much put off.
Well, it is natural to compare PF2 to perceived flaws in PF1 because that is why a new edition was made. If the things people complain about in first edition are not things that bother you, than there's actually not a lot of reason for you to jump ship. You might be like Claxon and want a game you can just tear through with the right build without difficulty, in which case this isn't the right system for you and PF1 is. And as long as you can find enough people to play PF1, I see no reason you shouldn't continue.
Ok so this first part kind of proves my point. A response to a post specifically about maybe talking about the positives of 2nd instead of wailing on 1st, starts with a comment about how if I like 1st maybe its because I'm an min-maxing optimiser that just wants the actual game to be on easy mode.
What I will say is that our golden zone of playing campaigns is around 2nd-12th level - my hunch is this is why my position is that there's nothing wrong with 1st ed and that skills/magic absolutely did not need to be nerfed.
Captain Morgan wrote:
That being said, it has been getting harder and harder to find people to play
PF1 for years now and it is an a hard game to learn, so you may eventually be forced to migrate. :( Hopefully you have a table of folks who are sticking together.
This hits on an interesting point and its why 'edition wars' get so heated. There are lots of comments on the lines of no one is taking your books away / forcing you to play edition A or B. However RPGs are inherently social games - you need a pool of other players/GMs to play, which is probably why everyone gets so passionate about swaying others to support one over the other.
In the various play groups I see here in the UK, its much easier to assemble a 1st ed game than a 2nd ed one. I'm actually one of the most sympathetic, maybe it deserves another chance, viewers of 2nd in the groups I play with.
Captain Morgan wrote:
All that said, stuff I like about PF2 that doesn't require dunking on PF1 and hasn't already been covered up thread...
The 3 action economy and the way feats are usually abilities with narrative effects...
I'm interested in the narrative effects part however - tell me more (apologies for thread de-railing)
This thread seems as good a place as any to say this, because it seems the same conversation is going on.
I recently had a realisation on 1st vs 2nd. I've been unfairly judging 2nd and it maybe deserves another try.
However this came after a discussion in a Facebook forum when someone commented on all the cool things their party's druid was doing.
I realised that the primary thing that made me so averse to 2nd was so many people telling me it was great because of how much they disliked things in 1st. I love 1st edition and have spent countless happy hours playing it. The more people deride it to praise 2nd, the more I knee jerk dislike 2nd.
If you want to win us grognards over, stop telling us what you hated about the old game we love and focus on telling us about what's cool with the new.
Don't tell me how wizards desperately needed to be "fixed" (which sounds like taking a kitten or puppy to the vet to lose certain things). Tell me about how much fun your new wizard is having doing X Y Z now...
What I would if running giantslayer again, because some parts are excellent.
giantslayer spoilers:
Books 1 & 2 are superb - run as is.
Book 3 is the first serious section of giant bashing and book 4 has the whole cool commando raid feel to it so basically sound. But I'd look to add in
- more interactions with possible allies - persuading people from Lastwall, Jandhoff, Magnimar, Nithramas etc that the giants are a threat and they need to start gathering armies (or evacuating small settlements)
Also perhaps side quests to go look for magical items / flying mounts or some such.
Don't just let them go off and buy a +1 giantsbane weapon each, have a session or two at least involved in winning the favour of someone who can do it and getting ingredients for them for example.
Give the Storm Tyrant some other allies - doesn't matter what kind of group - just something intelligent and very different to giants. Could just be a bunch of quisling types willing to sell out the human nations for gold or to settle a score with their rulers.
Book 5 goes basically in the bin. As it stands, one communal resist fire spell is about all you need to trivialise all non giant encounters in it.
Instead really play up the orb of dragonkind thing - make this all about fighting dragons.
Towards the end of your replacement book 5, have things start gearing up for a huge pitched battle as the armies of the small folk get ready to clash with armies of giants - lots of trying to win over allies, prepare defences, build ridiculous siege engines, allow the PCs to play drill sergeant giving the regular soldiers training on how to fight giants.
After the battle, the Storm Tyrant flees to his castle and the PCs as the victorious champions take him on in his lair. Have the castle flying over and in danger of crashing into the capital of whichever nation they care most about - otherwise run book 6 as is
I would also like to play Iron Gods but our DM is not a fan of the "Sci-fi stuff" in D&D/Pathfinder.
What is the problem that people have with Giantslayer?
Having reffed it, Giantslayer delivers what it says on the label.
However that becomes problematic for several reasons
1. Its very easy for parties to specialise in killing giants. This leads to big set piece encounters becoming trivial but random wandering encounters nothing to do with the plot were the ones that killed people.
2. So much of a giant's CR is eaten up by their HD & strength there's little room to give them class levels, so they make very poor casters and generally are much worse at missile fire than melee. For obvious reasons they aren't good at sneaking about or social infiltration. This means most encounters turn into them trying to walk up and hit the party, maybe mixed in with some combat maneuvers. This can get very repetitive.
3. Giants live in giant buildings as makes sense. These give rise to huge maps, which is cool. However while the maps are two, three, four times bigger than normal maps, giants are only 10ft around faster than medium creatures. Giants also suck at ranged combat (see #2)- so the party often got to pepper them with arrows, cast any buff spells they wanted, maybe have a leisurely cup of coffee while the giants crawled across the huge maps towards them.
4. Its a pretty straightforward story. After the first couple of books there is very little in the way of roleplay, diplomacy, investigation or
similar - there are big obvious bad guys and you get to go fight them.
This probably adds up to a couple of ways people find books 3-6 get dull
- players that enjoy non-combat stuff may get bored by the lack of it
- players who are very combat focused will find the fights very repetitive
Its eminently fixable though if a referee wants to sub in their own content - I'll put up a separate post under a spoiler shortly
Shadette I think this is most rules lawyering argument, splitting of the finest of hairs I have seen in 40 years of playing RPGs
There’s no RAI, in character logic or game balance argument for your very strange ruling.
Your RAW argument has nothing you quote to support it - only you demanding we give you RAW text to prove you wrong on two separate obscure claims and then denying all rules quoted to you as not being incontrovertible enough in your mind.
You have nothing to positively support any of the claims that
- the bow isn’t the weapon doing the damage
- it makes a difference if the bow or the arrow does the damage
- ammunition doesn’t count as a weapon when used in a bow
This is the second forum I’ve seen you raise this on. On the Facebook group this got hundreds of comments. NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON on either forum has agreed with your bizarre logic - does that not make you consider you might be wrong?
Anyone who drives noticeably faster than you is a reckless boy racer who is a hazard to everyone else on the road and deserves to loose their driving licence.
Anyone who drives noticeably slower than you is a timid Sunday driver who is impeding traffic and shouldn't be on the road.
Anyone whose character is more effective than yours is a fun stealing munchkin optimizer who can't role-play and you should exclude them from your game for lowering the tone.
Anyone whose character is less effective than yours is endangering the rest of the party by not pulling their weight and you should dump the newb loser.
It takes a few uncomfortable conversations to go through with all that and you may take some social splash damage, but it will eventually lead to the nirvana of a perfect game. Or more likely finding yourself googling "how to play TTRPGs solo?"
If gives a nice structure by which a GM can say 'you can assume easy access to any of these and theorycraft to your heart's content, but these things you'll need to work in game to get hold of'
Longer duration buff spells mean they are actually useful in exploration mode & the casters getting to choose if they use them for combat or non-combat purposes - hoping a lot of spells get moved back to decent durations here.
Due to circumstances I've never actually been able to play Pathfinder with a group regularly; just a couple one shots.
What's kept me interested since 2015 is theory crafting. When I started there was just a wealth of options to draw from. It took a lot of time and commitment to learn the rules, the different options, and piece everything together.
Reading and rereading all the books made theory crafting so fun since you can make just about any concept work. Particularly enticing was that no build was ever perfect or complete, and could always use continual refinement
I like that the rules are so convoluted because it makes builds so much fun to create. PF2 is less enticing because of the simpler rules, and the lack of variety compared to what I'm used to.
So I will miss how dynamic and active these forums are with all the geeks.
This reminds me of a conversation I had years ago with a friend.
Back in the 90s, the UK introduced a lottery. I had a very analytically minded friend who started buying a ticket every week. I asked him why, given the odds. He said "Ah, I'm not just buying a chance of winning, I'm buying an excuse to daydream all week about what I'd buy if I won!"
For me PF1 provides a ton of excuse to daydream and theorycraft character ideas, far beyond the weekly game if even if you aren't actively in a game. I'd miss not having that.
My all time favorite RPG in over 3 decades of gaming.
Why do I love it - the sheer freedom and variety it brings, especially to characters and player choice - that one class can be built to do a dozen different things or that one role could be filled from a dozen different classes - it gives near infinite capacity to keep the game fresh no matter how much you play, especially so long as the adventure content keeps coming...
On the pathfinder group yesterday someone asked about how she could make a character that attacked people with flowers. By the answers there were immediately 20+ ways to do it in the written rules before even considering re-fluffing or house-ruling anything. For me that's one of the essences of Pathfinder.
It always struck me as a bit sad that archetypes and multiclasses were fighting for the same slots.
Some of the archetypes (e.g. pirate) already seem pretty skill based - if you paid for them with skill feats instead it would open up a lot more possible combinations.
One question, though: do you think your players' tactics have, consistently, been informed and efficient? If not, your results may reflect a mismatch between the GM and the players more than a problem with the rules.
You can view the response of a player of mine here.
Very interesting post that tells us a lot about 2E.
You've got a group where everyone is experienced, players enjoy optimising and the GM plays the monsters as efficiently and creatively as they can. Both sides play hardball and in 1E it balances out just fine for them.
In the playtest, the GM plays hardball, the players try to do the same but find they still basically have a softball, because there just isn't that much they can optimise in either build or tactics. Result - TPK after TPK.
For me the amount of time you can enjoyably invest in the game outside of the game session (but don't have to) is a huge positive and something I'm worried about losing in PF2.
Its like painting minis or designing a Magic deck. The hobby provides fun beyond when you can get the gang together to play. Heck, its like the fact I enjoy cooking from scratch more than eating in a restaurant.
I'm a big fan of Dragon Age's crit system (the tabletop rpg version - yes, there is one)
The character / NPC getting the crit gets a number of points to spend on a critical effects table - things like trips, bypassing armour based DR, knockbacks, extra damage etc
The nature of getting to choose when it happens adds a lot of tactical fun for players & referee
Just so long as they don't move to inventing their own weird dice with something other than numbers.
Now that there are lots of companies out there making all sorts of elegant and attractive dice, its annoying when games are designed so you can only use the manufacturer's custom symbol ones
There are extensive posts on these forums that detail how using a weapon is now an essential part of playing a Bard, Sorcerer or Wizard effectively.
It's not just about armour, it's about becoming a martial character - in part. It's likely surveys from later chapters would have revealed people were also taking additional feats from that archetype and not their own, magic-enhancing class feats, because you do not need anything from your class apart from Magical Striker.
This is a core issue - there are plenty of concepts that are about playing characters that don't use weapons. Not every wizard should need to be a gish type to be useful.
Right now the whole game seems to be about either hitting things with weapons, helping yourself hit things with weapons or helping someone else hit things with weapons.
With a lot of spells reduced in duration (presumably with the mindset that these are meant to be single encounter buffs), far fewer spells have much application outside of combat now.
Given exploration and downtime are more formal modes now, I'd love to see more spells that are designed to use in those modes - e.g. travel, investigation, stealth or even crafting things that aren't intended for use in combat but have more interaction with the exploration rules.
I've always enjoyed having the option to adjust my wizard or druid's focus to something other than combat.
If equal level enemies should be massively inferior at stealth and detection than players, then shouldn't they also be significantly worse at combat?
This is the problem with the +level to everything on the monster side.
It leaves little room for a monster like a big dumb giant who is great at smashing things with his club but not so good at perception.
I.e. where the sensible choice is to send the halfling rogue to try to sneak past him rather than the whole party walk up and fight.
Or conversely the alert guard dog with great perception but weak will save, where sending the rogue is a terrible plan but the ranger with a juicy chunk of meat or a wizard with a sleep spell is better.
1. Move to silver as the basic standard. A huge amount of flavour setting for a tiny change.
2. The multi-class option. This one has grown on me - means we get an ever growing number of possible hybrid classes
3. Crit success on beating by > 10 (not the nat 20 part)
Dislikes
1. Spells and caster nerfing. I don't accept the premise that casters were unbalanced compared to maritals in the slightest or that there was a need for any kind of nerf to spells at all.
2. Skills #1 - can't specialise - lack of ability to be notably good at any skill, no degree of choice between competent at a broad range of skills or really good at a narrower list.
3. Skills #2 - too low chance of success - having a maxed out character pegged to 50% chance of success vs level appropriate monsters makes takes like scouting or bluffing so risky most groups won't let their rogue or bard try them
As things are now, all the likes are 'ooh that's kind of nice' and all the dislikes are 'this needs to change for me to want to play the game beyond playtesting'
This would certainly explain the number of 'this is not the same game' / 'this is not the style of game I wanted from Pathfinder' reactions I've seen from passionate fans of 1st edition.
Maybe just toss in (at least) a small section under each encounter that says things like: "The GM can, if they wish, substitute out these monsters for X, Y, or Z if they choose to."
The idea of scenarios offering you a subs bench for some encounters seems cool.
Especially as a lot of scenarios have a monster with a statblock that recurs and/or turns up in large groups - e.g. a group of 'basic orc warriors' turn up a couple of times - scenario gives the options to swap some for some archers or a shaman's apprentice or just give one a bag of alchemist's fire vials or a magic weapon
If cloaks of flying and pegasi steeds are commonly available, flying is not a problem for martials. But many GMs think magic items should be something the GM hands out and the players just have to accept what they get. In such a game, casters will shine, not because they are powerful, but because they are the only ones with access to all the candy. The other PCs have to beg them for handouts. Not cool.
Very true
I've never experienced the caster-martial disparity & always been mystified by reports casters are overpowered - and I play far more martials than casters
But then I've never had a GM that's combined both high fantasy style encounters (i.e. lots of flying monsters, long underwater sections, planar travel) with low fantasy availability of magic items.
It would actually be nice to see a list of goals rather than some over-arching philosophy.
Specifically, each contentious system could be described by what it is attempting to achieve.
Totally agree here.
I feel like the feedback surveys are trying to ask 'how well did mechanic X do at preventing Y on a scale of 1 - 10?' and I'm trying to find how to say 'But I don't want to prevent Y, I want more of it, having it is one of the cool parts of Pathfinder 1E!'
Counting out the 2 that left due to technical issues / scheduling, that means only 1 in 3 of the signed up players is enjoying it enough to keep playing - the rest either put off by the rulebook or the experience of play.
Colette - did any/many of them say what it was that was putting them off?
Actually, I feel like the current system really discourages fumble house rules for attack rolls, which is where they tend to matter most. Having it explicitly spelled out that a critical failure the same as a failure in strikes, and having critical failures be so much more common, really makes me feel like fumble decks are dead this edition. Using them would rapidly destroy your game.
Having played a demo game where we mistakenly thought fumbles did happen on attacks, it certainly felt way off - in the very first round of the very first combat, 4 people (2 PCs and 2 kobolds) dropped their weapons and it just felt farcical.
You really don't want fumbles on attacks with the current maths unless your desired theme is something like "Drunken Clowns vs Wilie Coyote"
One thing that is quite critical for me this new edtion is the magic nerfs. Honestly in its current form there is no way i would sit to play PF2 outside the playtest.
I hope feedback during the it makes paizo see the light regarding this subject.
+1 to this many times over.
Thank you Magnuskn for all the detailed and insightful analysis.
For me too this is the most critical barrier to the new edition. While I'm happy to playtest, there's no way I'd chose to play PF2 if magic is crippled like this in the final version.
Other parts I'd like to see change in, especially the skills area, but could probably live with. This is the real deal-breaker that would stop me playing, reffing and buying PF2 products.
Thankfully, success rates can be tweaked. It's not a matter of the core design, but just the numbers being a bit out of whack. With a little bit of change, I'm sure Paizo can get the numbers to where players feel powerful but still keep the game challenging.
Hopefully so.
My guess is that this is a by-product opposed skill checks being driven off the same proficiency mechanic as trying to hit someone.
That nets the PCs a significantly less than 50% success rate at opposing monsters of equal level in skills. Which feels terrible, and like the PCs are complete incompetents outside of combat.
It feels like the numbers were designed for combat and then extended to non-combat skills.
Regardless of if 50% chance to hit is right or wrong in combat, its terrible in more skill based non-combat situations.
In combat if it fails you can keep making more attacks / casting more spells in later actions or next turn if you haven't been knocked out.
Out of combat 1 or 2 failures quite often mean whatever your plan was has failed. The rogue's been spotted by the sentry who raises the alarm, the gate guards don't fall for the bard's story and turn the party away.
We saw the effects of this when playing game in a different system - Robin Laws' Heroquest. The mechanics there worked out to about 50% chance of succeeding even on the few things you were good at.
Its already quite depressing but worse, a lot of the time PCs need to succeed at a couple of skill rolls to succeed. E.g. spot the trap then disarm it. Sense the NPC has more to say and persuade them to do so. Then you only have a 25% chance of succeeding at two in a row.
If you have anything looking like a plan it gets worse still. E.g. 'OK so I try to climb over the wall, sneak past the patrolling guard then pick the lock on the back door' - that's three checks - we're down to a 1 in 8 chance of success.
In the end we decided we'd misread the label on the game and it must have been called Robin Flaws' Crippledpeasantquest.
We abandoned playing after a few sessions because it felt so frustrating - you couldn't plan on doing anything, just stumbled along at the mercy of the dice.
I fear for anything non-combat in PF2 will skills at these levels even for optimised specialists.
a) many characters will become very dependent on a single magical weapon because of how big an impact the extra damage dice have
b) when it comes to attacking a monster with a weapon, there isn't a big enough difference between martial classes, classes like cleric/bard and classes like wizard and sorcerer
I worry (a) will mean that fighters don't get the promised ability to be effective with a variety of weapons and swap them around based on situation. (b) leads to spells being painfully dialed down because everyone has a full BAB now.
(a) also leads to the potential feeling that the hero is the magic sword, not the person wielding it
Which gave me an idea - how would people feel if the effects of magic weapons and proficiency swapped?
I.e. your weapon proficiency levels lead to extra damage and magical plusses add to the to hit?
Obviously the levels you got them might need to be tinkered with for balance
Found the answer - Pete needs to take terrain mastery skill feat a lot.
That lets him do this kind of 'sneak up to an unaware enemy' stuff very reliably in the right terrain.
By 4th level he can have all four of the listed terrains (underbrush, reeds, rubble and snow)
Much happier now.
However I can see arguments with some GMs that involve the line 'but I have ALL the published terrain types, what do you mean scrub doesn't count as underbrush, you're just making up new ones to negate my feats!'
I personally prefer keeping it martial and not versatile because that lets more types of characters (and Amiri) use it. But if enough playtesters want it to be versatile for both damage types, we can certainly do that and make it exotic; Amiri could get away with having a greatsword if necessary anyway, since she rarely one-hands her weapon.
Please please please keep it martial but slashing (rather than piercing) !
An impassioned plea based purely on bastard swords being my favourite weapon* during decades of live roleplay
* they are also good for retrieving lost D20s from under the sideboard it turns out*
Someone else mentioned the katana, yeah, what is the point of its entry (talk about a waste of space)?
I love the fact a katana and a longsword have basically identical stats. Wield the one you think suits your character's background / personal style best without losing out.
