Terranigma's page

Balanced? No clue, haven't thought about it. Exciting? Heck yeah!

I think this should be the design philosophy.

In general I'd love to see improvements to the overall game design and a change in the design philosophy, i.e. "Fun First". Personally, I'd just cut a lot of systems, categories, etc. pp. that make the game more tedious to play the game but not more fun. Just a few ideas:

(1) Make the skill system more elegant! Cut the number gloat on skills. Cut the gating of basic activities behind Trained/Expert/Etc. pp. I prefer the "You can try"-approach in Pathfinder and D&D 5e. Whether I succeed or not should be determined by my roll. Profiency should not be added to skill checks, as it causes the numbers to explode and leads to situations where tasks that very difficult at level 1 become trivial just a few levels later. The linear, numercial progression was one of the worst aspects in Pathfinder and they repeat the same mistake in Pathfinder 2. Smaller numbers are better numbers. The same is true for AC and saves.

(2) Choices should matter! Feats and abilities feel very restricted so far. It feels like there was a guard checking the designers and telling them "Nope, that's too funky", "Tune it down", "That's too impactful" whenever they created a new feat. Just be bold. Pathfinder 2 is not a PvP game, so if a class happens to be stronger than others, we'll handle. I'd rather have classes that feel too strong and too impactful rather than too weak.

I mean, have a look at 'Stormborn' (Feat 1, Druid): "Reduce any circumstance penalties to your ranged attacks or
Perception checks caused by weather or weather effects (such as wind) by 1." That is not fun, exciting or thrilling. It is plain boring. Don't be boring. I mean, if you call a feat 'Stormborn' and want it to be situational, then be situationally cool with it, like: "Reduce any circumstance penalties to your ranged attacks or Perception checks caused by weather or weather effects (such as wind) by half rounded down. Addtionally, you can channel and redirect one thunderbolt during storms or severe winds to strike your foe. You can use this ability 1 + WIS-modifier per day." Is it too strong? Maybe, I don't know. But it's more flavourful. Again, this isn't a a PvP game, balancing should not trump fun.

Feats should grant players new things to DO, instead of mere numerical improvements that feel negligible because of how fast numbers increase in this game. A feat that grants a +1 bonus is okay'ish at level 1 but eventually becomes irrelevant just a few levels later.

(3) Add fluff! The handbook should not read like a manual for a dish washer, but like a book for a game that allows you to roleplay your wildest imaginations and fantasies. At least the non-sexual ones.

(4) Cut mechanics that don't add to the fun. Why does Finesse only add your DEX-modifier to the attack roll, but not the damage? If I want to play a DEX-based fighter that uses Finesse weapons then the game should help me to do build such a character effectively without constantly telling me, "But, but ... the math! It might be too strong if you can add to +2 DEX-modifier to the damage." Why does each component of a spell require one action? Just give each spell a specifc cast time. Again, all this subdivsion and adding of just another category does not make the game better, it just adds complexity for its own sake. Cut Bulk and Carryping Capacity and just write this sentence: "Players are intelligent beings. Every character can carry as much as is considered reasonable by the players and DM." If you enjoy book keeping and filling out tables, add Bulk as an optional rule.

But that's not what Paizo wants for feedback here.

"Tell us about your actual game play. Theory is all well and good, but everybody’s got theories, and we’ve probably heard most of them already. Tell us how things are actually working in play, not how you think things will work." - Vic Wertz

I see your point, but agree with the other poster: Me and three friends met today because we were looking forward to have a first look at Pathfinder 2 together. We went through the character creation, had a look at the changes, talked about our initial impressiond and came to the same conclusion. It looks organized, structured, clean and neat - just like an Excel sheet. But it doesn't look fun, exciting or thrilling. It doesn't seem to adress what we consider problematic about Pathfinder and doesn't seem to add any qualitity of life changes.

We were willing to give it a try and play it, but eventually decided that no one of us feels in anyway motivated to play the game, neither as a DM nor as a player. So while I understand Paizo's wish to get feedback on actual gameplay, I've never seen such a case of curiosity turning into indifference as I did today.

And I think that's valuable feedback, too. The main concern of Paizo shouldn't be to design a well-balanced and well-organized game, but to create one that looks fun and that gets people into the mood of giving it a try. For us, Pathfinder 2 failed in this regard. It doesn't look fun.

I currently GM for a homebrew campaign and, playing d20-system (D&D/PF) for several years already, I wanted to try to do things a bit more different as routine has sneaked in over the course of time. That being sad, I switched to PF as D&D became more and more a game I couldn't enjoy anymore - it encouraged players so tremendously to powergame and felt more like a dungeoncrawler, as the official material supported that kind of gameplay. While it's all up to the GM how the campaign works, now I took over - we're playing PF as being said - and I want to turn the game in a little bit different direction in two aspects.

First, it's more orientated towards a steampunk-style world. Magic is, if existent, usually consider as superstituion, pagan religious stuff noone takes really serious. There is magic, but I want to become magic again more 'magical' and mysterious. D&D, and sadly PF as well, treats magic like some sort of tool you can easily buy at a shop and usually, is degraded to mere mechanics - there's nothing magical or special about magic in usual D&D/PF-campaigns. Therefore, magic is very rare and there won't be any Shortsword+1 or such. Instead, I've substituted those more 'mechanical' progressions into mundane, non-magical items. If you want a better sword, get a better blade for it. If you want to improve your leather armor, get some harder material to improve it. On one side, I don't change 'too' much about the overall balance - even though the characters are weaker due to the lack of magic 'tools' - but present it in a more 'low-magic'-fashion and encourage the players to make frequent use of the craft-skills in order to improve their equipment by themselves.

That being said, I'm happy with it so far. Is kinda lot of work as I have to write most of the material myself but I like it, because magic - when it appears - is usually stranger and more powerful. Anyway, now here's where I need some help and advice:

Half a year ago I ran a Realms of Cthulhu (Savage Worlds)-campaign and it was a blast, because the game felt so gritty and even the players were - finally! - acting cautiously and tactically as they knew that a wrong step might kill them. It is a very intense system and only then I realized how I love such deadly system and how much I've become to dislike the high-fantasy-superhero-marvel-epic feeling of D&D/PF. When I first played D&D, it was the AD&D system which was nowhere as 'powergamingly' as it is nowadays. Anyway, I currently search for some EASY to include ways to change the pace and feel of PF a bit.

Cutting out most magic and substituting it with non-magical means was a good start. Still, I'm still a bit puuzled how to turn PF a bit more into a grittier fashion. I don't speak of horror and such but a fight - if taken - should be deadly. I could, of course, simply tweak the numbers of the enemies but that wouldn't do the job; the enemies would feel stronger but the players wouldn't feel less powerful after all. I'd like to work a bit more with moral, the way armour works, the way hit points work - I mean, you can be beaten down to 1 HP and still can act as you havn't received a scratch, according to rules. I know there are some official variant-rules: have you ever tried them out and can give me some feedback on how it turned out or do you have any other ideas how to 'tone down' PF a bit. The work-in-progress products sadly go in the right opposite direction, turning players in even bigger monster/heroes, thinking, that bigger numbers make a game more fun or even epic.

However, do you have any EASY to implement ideas - or maybe even some more difficult ones? The alternative systems for armour and hit points look like they require a lot of calculations and I'm no huge fan of spending all the time doing math and calculating weird formulas in order to play a game. The more simply and straightforward, the better. I like PF and D&D, but I somehow miss the feeling I got when I've GMd Realms of Culthu and somehow want to bring it back, making the player's character again a bit more 'human'. Yes, even the dwarves and elves, but you get the point! :P