Slacker 2.0's page

Slacker 2.0 wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

If you thought PF2 ever had a chance of outselling 5e, it's good you didn't do this. You clearly have absolutely no understanding of branding and market penetration.

Don't quit your day job, is what I'm saying.

I never said it did. Only that Paizo failed to capitalize on its growth as well as it could have and continue to miss chances to grow into the digital realm with the line that they "aren't a tech company."

This you?

Slacker 2.0 wrote:

I'd like it if that changed so I could stop supporting WoTC but the Paizo team seems to want to carve out a small niche rather than aiming for the top.

Especially since PF2 is doing perfectly fine by anyone's measure. They're already sitting pretty in a spot above everyone else, and also managing to stay above the tide of "5e 3pp products", a claim no one else can match.

I don't see why they should have to rewrite their perfectly successful game to satisfy some random person on the internet.

Perhaps so they can pay their staff a living wage and hire somebody in HR to keep the management from abusing members of the team. Have we all forgotten about those issues already?

If you thought PF2 ever had a chance of outselling 5e, it's good you didn't do this. You clearly have absolutely no understanding of branding and market penetration.

Don't quit your day job, is what I'm saying.

I never said it did. Only that Paizo failed to capitalize on its growth as well as it could have and continue to miss chances to grow into the digital realm with the line that they "aren't a tech company."

But plenty of other people are successful at it. That is why it is a ... "crowded indy scene" as you put it.

Successful is a tough term to nail down. I know some indy devs who've published and successful to them only meant that it didn't cost more than it made and that it might have a tail over a long enough timespan. They're not living off their work by any stretch.

I'm quite certain that I already suggested that. And was told that wasn't possible because Slacker 2.0 doesn't actually know how to generate market interest in a product.

I know how to market a product, it's just that the TTRPG space is a very difficult market for an independent entity to gain market share in. It's why I haven't published either of the systems I've been tinkering with over the years.

That's off topic, cross promotion and is expressly against forum rules.

Which is why I haven't posted any links or rules here. I've just mentioned that I make them.

Can't please everyone, better to not try and do the thing you want to do instead.

But the issue is you take your opinion as not only objective fact, but also some majority to be listened to.

You'd be better off designing pf2e home brew

I'm better off designing 5e homebrew which has more earning potential and sees more play at my table. I'm better off posting about it here though.

I honestly don't get your logic here. Why would Paizo need to respond to One D&D in any way? I'm nto saying that One D&D wont' affect them - it'll shake up the situation, especially if it's poorly done - but I just don't understand why you'd think it would make Paizo more inclined to immediately update their own system. Paizo's going to be running PF2 until it starts meaningfully running out of steam, because that's the obvious thing to do both financially and from a playerbase support perspective... and One D&D coming out isn't likely to change that all that much. I can almost guarantee that the people who strongly prefer PF2 to 5e will continue to strongly prefer PF2 to One D&D.

You do it because the One D&D launch is essentially an advertising blitz for the whole industry. You want to cast your net when the fish are biting and WotC will have the ocean boiling with fish.

That's certainly an interpretation of how things played out.

Another one is that PF1 was published in 2009 and the last book published in 2019. That's a 10 year run. In that time the devs had kind of written everything they wanted to mechanically for the system, I mean there is a ton of PF1 content. But the system showed it's age, and had a lot of rough spots inherited from D&D 3.5 that served as it's basis.

Paizo wanted to attempt to fundamentally change the system and improve on a lot of rough parts of the game. They have improved on a lot of parts. Some parts various people would argue are steps back but if nothing else PF2 is definitely different from D&D 3.5, or 5E and PF1.

I won't argue that the edition wasn't long in the tooth and in need of a refresh. I will argue that they chose a path that has, without a doubt, alienated their former fans and sent them to competitors in a way that a less complete reworking on the system would not have.

Paizo doesn't really compete with D&D. Not really. No one competes with D&D.

PF1 did. PF1 was ahead of D&D 4e for the majority of its lifespan and had strong sales until 5e came along and killed it. Paizo could have grown its market instead it chose to retreat.

Slacker 2.0 wrote:

It's less that and more me saying, "I dislike certain aspects of PF2 and would like to see them dialed back when you're all but forced to release a new edition to compete with One D&D."

That's not actually how it works, though. PF2 is running strong, and, indeed, has just gained a flood of new people who are becoming increasingly invested in it. It's got at least 5 more years in it easy, regardless of what One D&D brings to the table. It's not like a gaming system where wen the opposition moves you must move as well. If anything, changing systems too quickly would alienate their playerbase, and "devoted fans" is one of their major advantages.

I'm not saying that there wont' ever be a PF3. There will... eventually. It's not going to be any time soon, though.

One D&D isn't set to launch fully until 2025, Paizo will likely respond by opening a PF3 playtest in late 2025 with PF3 launching in 2027.

I gotta say, "I dislike PF2, and I hope to complain loud enough that Paizo stops making it and starts making something that's more like these other games that I like" is certainly an interesting take for the PF2 board.

It's less that and more me saying, "I dislike certain aspects of PF2 and would like to see them dialed back when you're all but forced to release a new edition to compete with One D&D."

If you only build how you think you are incentivized I can see how you'd routinely be upset with this self imposed limitations.

And if the players at your table are only incentivizing dealing damage, I can see why spellcasters are seen as subpar.

But none of that is a game balance problem.

That is far from the only incentive.

Investigator gains increased DaS flexibility if they are built to fight at range.

Magus gains reliability on their spell strike when built to fight at range.

Gunslinger gains better defenses by going with the Way of the Sniper.

In a game where many monsters lack strong ranged attacks range is always going to be incentivized Paizo recognized this as they cut many iconic spells down to 30ft range and when they made baseline movement 25ft per action.

You have to give something up to turn everything into a nail with your Kabooms

Sure, like full access to the spell list via the creation of a blast class that uses a bespoke list of available spells. Technically you could do this by making a domain-like system where you pick domains that grant spells known and focus spells while giving up access to the general list that your casting tradition would normally grant you. Then your feats could focus on providing meaningful buffs to your very limited selection of spells without risk that unforeseen interactions will crop up.

Also just a side comment, saw someone say thru feel paizo pushes turret gameplay for martials and I don't really see it. Unless you go out of your way to build and play that way.

Gunslinger and Ranger have builds that can function as DPS turrets, Magus is better as a ranged class than in melee, and Investigator does better at range. It sure seems like Martials often get a lot of incentives to stay back and deal damage.

Who cares if other people see it. If its easy to do, you could just make it for yourself and your games. Most tables have some sort of house rules

I already do use my own house rules at my table, I just don't play much PF2 because it's more work to make PF2 do what I'd like it to do than it is to make D&D 5e work well enough. I'd like it if that changed so I could stop supporting WoTC but the Paizo team seems to want to carve out a small niche rather than aiming for the top.

Well, it sounds like you already know exactly how to fix it all. So why are you wasting time arguing with people here. Being a 3rd party publisher couldn't possibly be that hard for someone as expert at writing as you are.

The issue isn't writing a good system. It's marketing and distributing said system in a crowded indy scene with no unified storefront and very low, lower than Steam or the Apple Store, levels of discoverability. It's not worth the time to write a better system unless you have a load of funds to ensure people actually see it.

Paizo got away from this for very good logistical reasons. Can't even imagine how much page space is being saved by just listing a spell as being "arcane, occult, divine" rather than having to list every non-druid spellcaster that has been created, and also back adding existing spells to the list of every new spellcaster.

Oh noes, think of all the electrons that might be wasted on the PDF and AoN versions of the rules if we dared to make custom spell lists again! It might even take up a whole text column per new caster class!

In all seriousness, if they wanted to streamline page counts they wouldn't have made this new feat system that makes every class take up many times the page space of classes in older systems. Then added archetypes that do the same thing where we used to have a single page of rules for multiclassing.

EDIT: They also made it so they need to make multiple copies of any fixed DC magic item to waste even more ink.

One thing that could also make spell casting feel better would be to have all spells interact fully with the 3-action system. We have this idea that you can snap cast a spell for a lesser effect or charge it for a bigger one, but this is hardly ever used. Why?

Just like we have martial characters who get to ignore most of the 4DoS mechanics but do get to play with actions. Martial characters using maneuvers should get the full 4DoS experience where they're balanced around failing and have to play a minigame of picking if they should power attack (Fort Save), attack quickly (Reflex Save), or do something tricky (Will Save). Then we can see how people like being told they fail, but... all game long.

The biggest problem that I see with trying to make spellcasters 'simpler' instead of being a big toolbox character is that they always have access to the full tradition spell list.

Just go back to writing bespoke lists for new caster classes and use the tag system to automatically give them new spells as more books are released. Now you can make a class that isn't so flexible, still casts spells, and can specialize in that area without breaking things. Boom.

To my mind I have to ask, why? Why do they?

Pf1e exists and has more content than I could play through in my life

5e has its own fans and offshoots I'm not sure why paizo needs to cater to them?

Plus, in many ways, they already have. Flexible caster exists for that reason.

I'm not even trying to be mean pf2e is a product and that product sells. It has its identity and you like it or you don't.

I'm not sure why they needs to be sacrificed

To capture the willing converts that are willing to leave D&D 5e but are put off by how unfriendly PF2 can be to new players. Paizo is costing itself money by not securing this new player base.

Could play the plethora of games that don't care about balance instead

I can and do employ that method already. That said, I would like Paizo to consider those of us that liked PF1 and dislike WoTC a bit more heavily as there are a lot of us and PF2 can be offputting and unfun to those fresh from 5e.

Level 1 casters in PF2 are miles ahead of level casters in PF1, or 3.5. It is just a misleading to say casters generally have been down graded from the past. That is a false narrative that will confuse new players.

1st level casters in PF1 can end fights with their limited spells and have better odds to do so than a PF2 caster. They are squishier and worse when their spells run out but that doesn't mean they're not better at actually, you know, casting spells.

Enemies regularly critically fail spells in PF2. It happens, at a minimum 1 out of 20 times a caster casts a saving throw targeting spell, but often times it is more like 10 to 20 percent of the time, and most spells feel incredible when it happens. I’ve seen hydraulic push crit for 30 points of damage at level 1, pushing an enemy that was grabbing a PC with 2 hp left and have to provoke an AoO at the start of their turn to get back in position, ending them.

Not said here is that the expected outcome is a mildly damp enemy and a downed party member.

Also, a 1 in 20 chance doesn't mean that every 20 saves made/spells cast gets you a crit. You're above 50% to have had one in that span, but it's not a sure thing.

Yeah.

I don't see it as an issue that some classes are more complex to play for the same reward.

"The same reward" is vital for a balanced game.

But the difference in complexity is vital to address diversity in the pool of players.

A more intelligent or intellectual player is going to get bored of the game if everything is easy to play. If there's no challenge in picking the right methodology to what you do for a given situation that has player's left mentally idling. That's the moment in other games where I 'tab out" of my VTT until my turn comes up, or back in the old days I'd start reading a book that was on the table.

Conversely a less intellectual player is going to be unable to engage or have fun if they have to "think things through" all the time. If the player "just wants action" (and it's non-combat equiv) the game is better for providing options where they can just hit the ground running.

Classes having different "skill floors" / playstyles (how easy...

I can just play Gloomhaven and have a more balanced game where complexity is somewhat rewarded. You can still RP if you want as well.

graystone wrote:

Recall is one of the worst grey areas, especially for characters that need it like Mastermind Rogues, Investigator or casters in general, especially once you factor in things like rarity and such.

Myself, I'd like to see a reduction in gray areas, not an increase of them like Slacker 2.0 suggested, though I'm all for clever use of abilities and spells.

Agreed on recall, my GM is pretty good otherwise but very stingy on it, which is pretty bad for my thaumaturge who have invested 3 feat into it already.

On the other hand, I think what slacker meant about gray area isn't really about actual grey area, but more the fact that spell utility is far more constrained in PF2 in ways that reduce creative use. Shape wood for exemple, in PF1 was :

"Wood shape enables you to form one existing piece of wood into any shape that suits your purpose. While it is possible to make crude coffers, doors, and so forth, fine detail isn’t possible. There is a 30% chance that any shape that includes moving parts simply doesn’t work." (target "one touched piece of wood no larger than 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level")

While in PF 2 it's :

"You shape the wood into a rough shape of your choice. The shaping power is too crude to produce with intricate parts, fine details, moving pieces, or the like. You cannot use this spell to enhance the value of the wooden object you are shaping." (target "an unworked piece of wood up to 20 cubic feet in volume")

In PF1, it was pretty clear : you can do whatever you want, but if there are moving pieces it have 30% chance it doesn't work, and it doesn't do "fine details". The utility was insane (probably too big), but RAW the spell let you be as creative as possible without having "grey area", with the exception being in what "fine details" mean exactly (is a spike a fine detail? a cog? at what point something become sharp/pointy enought to be a fine detail?).

PF2 on the other hand is both more restrictive and far "greyer": you can only use on an...

You hit the nail squarely across its head.

Hard is for the people who want to beat a game. The kind of people who think Dark Souls is too easy on default difficulty. These people crave that sort of challenge, and Wizards and Alchemists exist.

Looks at DS challenge runners and speed runners... People who play souls games often break them pretty badly. If I'm going to play a Dark Souls class I want to make a boss walk himself off a cliff a few times in between getting my face smashed in.

The thing is that this is a cooperative game and there's never a leaderboard at the end to see who "contributed the most" since some of these things are going to interfere constructively.

Like in getting rid of Rocket Tag in PF2 we've created a situation in which "when things are attacking you you're going to get hit" and casters are the platforms that are least comfortable in this situation. So some part is not just "doing as much damage as possible" it's also "avoiding damage for yourself and your allies."

Even at low levels casters are much better at inflicting conditions (aside from grabbed, prone, and flat-footed) than martials are, and many of your damaging spells also debuff on certain roles. This is great, and it's great not just for you but also for your fighter buddy. If you've frightened the monster with your phantasmal killer, their reflex DC to trip them also went down.

The issue is that the martial rolls and gets to hear the GM say, "You hit, how much damage did you roll? Does that attack trip him too?" While the caster more often hears, "He makes his save but..." For a class that already takes the most work to play to also have their spells rarely actually work is demoralizing. The four degrees of success too often feels like four degrees of failure and martial classes don't even have to interact with it outside of scoring critical hits, which they also do more than casters.

If you play a caster worse than average or take spells like Hydraulic Push you're just going to feel like you suck and nothing you try works.

And you are then dismissing everyone that doesn't want to use those spells as playing wrong for wanting to use an

If you did pass the bar for taking the right spells and building right i PF1 you got paid out for it. In PF2 you do all that and might just be as effective as Grrrghrmph the Barbarian who has to remember to rage and stand near enemies.

It was often the case in PF1 as well. I played many casters in PF1 and my power mode feat combinations did not come online until much later.

PF1 had quicken which required a 5th level minimum slot just to quicken magic missile. You weren't getting many of your best feats, magic items, and the like until high level in PF1 when your high stats allowed you to have an enormous number of spell slots and you acquired wands and scrolls for trivial buff spells.

You still had Sleep, Color Spray, Grease, Hypnotism, and Cause Fear just at level 1. These are fight-enders and even at level 1, you can make it very unlikely that the targets make their saves.

So... Sifting through the detritus trying to find something useful in this conversation, I am seeing:

Spellcasters are more complex than many martial classes, but are not more powerful - and may be worse at the dealing damage part of the game unless a particular set of circumstances all arise.

So, for those who feel that way, what do you propose to do to remedy that?

Some things that I would not be happy to see would be:

Increase the damage dealing capabilities of damaging spells. (If those circumstances do arise, then spellcasters would be able to do dramatically more damage than martial characters and then the meta of the game would be to try and ensure that those circumstances are more common)

Simplifying spellcasters by taking away the abilities and options that they have so that the few options that they do have can be made more reliable and comparable to martial Strike actions. (Though I suspect that this is what people are wanting with Kineticist - I would not be opposed to a new non-spellcasting class that does this)

Remove True Strike from the game and give casters better single-target damage which also helps out the Magus.

Sorry but I'm not seeing the problem. Maybe it is just the skill level of my players. Casters and martials have different roles. They are all valuable. You can keep measuring casters by the yardstick that martials use and complain they don't stack up - but it is just not reasonable thing to do.

"I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded."

Well, martial classes are easy and generally outperform casters until high levels. A well-played caster is capped to be no more effective than an easy-to-play class. So the class that works harder gets no reward for their skilled play.

This seems counter to your statement above.

Temperans wrote:

And you are then dismissing everyone that doesn't want to use those spells as playing wrong for wanting to use an option that was given....

Casters have a toolbox. Put the hammer back and bring out the hacksaw.

Yes I'm going to penalize you for using the wrong tool. That is part and parcel of playing a toolbox character - which most casters are.

I don't want to play in a kindergarten socialist utopia where everyone gets the same result and thinking and effort are not rewarded.

It feels like the paste-eating Barbarian is getting universal basic income while the Wizard is slaving away at a 9 - 5 and getting paid less for it. So I don't think your point has any validity to it.

Must be nice to be a totally omniscient GM who knows every ability all the characters have

You have their character sheets so...

AND the uses the players will put said abilities to.

It's usually pretty obvious what players' builds are supposed to do. There are only so many spells and abilities that can "ruin" an encounter and usually players get pretty excited about adding new spells so the GM will likely hear about the new combo pretty quickly before it shows up at the table.

Usually people dislike the fixed DCs and lack of good custom item creation rules, this is a new angle and I'm here for it.

You realize that is textbook victim blaming. It is not the GMs fault if the system can be easily exploited.

As a GM it's your job to know what your party can and cannot do. If you don't account for your party you're a bad GM and the encounter falling flat is 100% on you. A system cannot prevent a GM failing to understand their players and building badly because of it.

Recall is one of the worst grey areas, especially for characters that need it like Mastermind Rogues, Investigator or casters in general, especially once you factor in things like rarity and such.

Myself, I'd like to see a reduction in gray areas, not an increase of them like Slacker 2.0 suggested, though I'm all for cleaver use of abilities and spells.

There are good grey areas and frustrating grey areas. Recall Knowledge is poor because it's both important and poorly defined. A spell-like Wish has fun grey areas when used for things beyond simply mimicking a lower-level spell.

No, that isn't at all correct.

Sure, spells are well defined (as are swords, skills, magic items, etc).

But there are LOTS and LOTS of grey areas (not at all sure that is a good thing). I've seen "discussions" on what is meant by something just about every session I've played or GMed.

If spells are well-defined and you keep having "discussions" it sounds like you play with people who are either willfully bad at reading rules text or who just genuinely suck at reading the rules.

But much more importantly there is still huge room for being clever. I EXPECT to be surprised by my players on a fairly regular basis.

It seems like what you would call clever is something I might call, using a spell properly.

Now there isn't much room for a "creative" interpretation of a spell to totally shut down an encounter any longer. To me, that is a good thing. I've seen far too many "creative" players use their "interpretation" of a spell (especially an illusion spell) to achieve ridiculous results over the years.

If you didn't want [instert bad thing] to happen to you BBEG you shouldn't have stood him next to [insert abusable situation]. Plus you often didn't need to be very creative if you just built well.

The largest issue is that magic doesn't feel very magical these days. It's very locked down and rigidly ruled upon with very little grey area of the kind that older versions of D&D and even Pathfinder 1e had. There simply isn't as much room for being clever because being clever could lead to imbalance and we simply cannot have that in our modern system.

Gortle wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

Everyone else has covered it pretty well but I will chime in just to say that if a PF2 GM is constantly throwing encounters at the party that features creatures that are ABOVE the level of the party then they are almost certainly just a sadist who is trying to rack up kills against player characters instead of running a "fair" game, one who has a fixation on only using "boss fight" encounters, or is someone operating on assumptions created from playing other RPG systems that don't have a well balanced Party vs. Creature Level dynamic and is doing so thinking that's the only way to even come close to challenging a group.

If like to see some more boss options that aren't just level based. Solo monster or dual monster encounters tend to happen a lot as they are just easier and faster to run. I'm after other options than just a few extra levels.

I'm not sure what you had in mind, but I'd probably decide on what XP budget I wanted. For a boss level encounter I'd probably set it as either an 80 or 120 XP budget. I might go with 120 XP with one creature of party level, and one creature of party level+1. This technically leaves a bit in the XP budget. So what do you do? Well spend it on terrain, traps, or other effects. If you build actual hidden traps they would need to be factored into the XP budget differently, but if you build it more like obvious terrain that needs to be avoided or bad things happen then I think you don't. Add it some walls or other stuff that your bad guys have ways of dealing with that can hamper the party if they don't. Now you have an interesting encounter that is just about the enemies you're trying to hit.

What about a boss that isn't the primary threat that spawns a number of CR-3 minions each turn while generally having tough defenses? Or an abductor-type enemy that removes a single PC early and has to be fought a man down while the captured PC makes skill checks to get free before a lesser threat starts munching on them? It's easy enough to make bosses that aren't just big dudes standing in an area waiting for the players to arrive.

It sounds like we need a one shot pistol that is also a bomb.

It would actually be kinda cool if after firing the pistol, a device captured all the smoke from the black powder and could be a smoke bomb after firing

Some kind of double-charge pistol that can be reloaded twice with a single action, for a chance of a misfire that deals damage and damages the weapon when fired and which always explodes and breaks when thrown, might be interesting to explore for this concept.

You could avoid the action to switch between modes of the dagger pistol by using a regular pistol and Weapon Improviser.

Though at that point you risk breaking your pistols.

Swashbuckler with the Weapon Improvisor archetype actually seems like it would be a blast to play. Dedication, Improvised Pummeler, and Surprise Strike all fit the idea of a mad lad who's like as not to throw his pistol at you rather than fire it. The fact that you can use the thrown pistol to catch them flatfooted for a good chunk of finishers is just gravy.