Zardnaar's page

DM_Blake wrote:

I say, as much as possible, let the First Amendment dictate which threads are good.

Okay, so we can agree that the U.S. Government cannot lock threads on Paizo's forum or punish people for making bad posts, but this is not a restriction on Paizo mods.

I'm not American but my understanding of it is that it only protects you against criminal liability, it doesn't give you the right to say anything you like without consequences.

At the time the constitution was written you could get put to death in some countries for insulting the King.

Paizo are also under no obligation to provide anyone with a soap box or megaphone. You have the right to say anything you like they have the right to boot you off of their forums even for silly things such as liking the colour red.

Using an absurd example here your politician views are covered by the human rights act, put simply you could admit to being a Nazi in the workplace and your boss would be in the wrong for firing you for it. It doesn't mean you can express those views in the workplace especially if you violate other laws such as bullying and harassment.

IN the USA you have the right to freedom of expression, it doesn't protect you form the consequences of that however such as losing your job, it just means you won't do criminal time over it or be deprived of life or liberty AFAIK.

Ikos wrote:

Scythia wrote:

Pathfinder came about because of players that didn't want the big changes that switching to 4th would entail. They wanted 3.5 to continue on with refinements. That's what Pathfinder was, recognizable as 3.5 but with improvements. So, when Pathfinder 2 was announced, what were players likely to expect? Pathfinder with improvements, still recognizable but refined. What I feel was put out for the playtest was more akin to big changes, like those that originally gave rise to Pathfinder. This could attract a new player base, but seems pretty unlikely to retain much of a base that was with the prior product specifically to avoid such changes and preserve a sense of familiarity. In fact, this would provide an excellent opportunity for some ambitious studio to emerge with the 'true' successor to Pathfinder, much as Paizo itself did before.

The parallel is not congruent. At this point, PF has little to loose and all to gain. 5e dominates the market, literally with its own movie stars. PF has been contracting since 2014. If a third party wanted to carve out a 3.75 niche, it would, at this point, attract a percentage of an already ailing market - perhaps appealing to those uninterested in change, but hardly able to reproduce the coup PF orchestrated in 09. If it were a viable route, Paizo would not be abandoning it.

I wouldn't be so quick to make sweeping assumptions. I would imagine many similar statements were made about the beginning of Pathfinder. Sticking with/improving on 3.5 was clearly a winning formula, yet WotC abandoned it.

3.5 was one of the smallest selling D&Ds of all time, and the market collapsed in 2004. Paizo got a % of them probably 66-80% but 3.5 sold half of what 3.0 did.

4E blew up in there face but 3.5 was sinking before 4E landed. With a possible short lived 4E bump each edition of D&D sold less than the one before it since 1E and B/X (2E sold less than 1E, 2E outsold 3.0 which outsold 3.5, 4E may have outsold 3.5 on release but then tanked fast.

3.0 outsold 2E on release but seemed to sell less overall (Dancey provided figures on GitP forums) but 2E lasted 11 years vs 3.0's 3 years. Either way the big seller for 3.X was 3.0 not 3.5 or Pathfinder. 3.X combined outsold 2E though.

rknop wrote:

Re: players keeping found magic items, I strongly suspect that ship has sailed and is not coming back.

Yeah, buying and selling magic is here to stay. And it really should be. It made no sense in pre-3rd ed that nobody would buy or sell magic items. If something nice or useful exists, people will buy and sell it. The world has magic, there's a market for it. So it will be for sale. The demand for Everburning Torches alone would probably be huge (a light source I only need to buy once, never blows out and won't burn down my house? Cheap at twice the price.)

rknop wrote:

(This also ties directly into the problem of people spamming low-level healing magic items rather than buying ones more suited to their level. A Cure Moderate Wounds potion is only a sensible purchase as an emergency in-combat recovery option. For general healing, Cure Light Wounds potions are so much more efficient per hit point that only somebody who hasn't taken a cursory look at the numbers would ever consider purchasing a Moderate potion... never mind a Serious potion. It's possible this ship has also sailed, as fixing this would require substantial changes to wealth by level, and would make things like dragons sitting on top of impressive-looking hoards impossible. The economics of all kinds of magic items in Pathfiner is completely broken, and things like resonance are just attempts to patch over some of the consequences without recognizing the true underlying problem.)

I'm not sure potions are really a big concern in this regard anyway. I know I always see them as emergency battlefield healing (or I suppose when you're in a situation with nobody that can use the wand). They're more expensive to heal with than wands are. A first level wand is less than half the price per hit-point healed than a potion (assuming an 18 wisdom, but even wis 10 will be cheaper than a potion). So wands are much better for healing between fights while potions are for combat when time is of the essence. The action cost in...

Found magic items is more fun IMHO and we actually houseruled this in 2009 or so right before PF landed with 3.5. We kept things from 3.5 we liked (feats, fort/ref/will, PrCs, multiclassing) and removed an aspect that I thoght broke the game.

That was a fun game, I put more loot in than a normal game a'la AD&D, players spent their gold on other things without feeling like they got punished for it and they found better items as I did not have to worry about them selling it to create some combo between the new bought items and some feat I had not thought of.

I think its past the point where GMs don't want to run Pathfinder because it has to much player agency. They want to play it but don't want to run it and that is a problem.

Letting players pick items+ feats+ PrCs etc etc etc is big problem IMHO. Let them build the PCs they want but remove the cheese of choose your own magic items (4E ha this problem as well).

As for claiming this is unpopular well look at 5E or the old D&Ds that were a magnitude more popular than Pathfinder. They created resonance which is a band aid solution to the real problem- cheap wands of CLW and letting PCs get items they want to easily.

Even IRL you can't buy anything you want, some items are unique or so rare they are almost never for sale (Tiger Tanks for example).

One way to deal with it is have some sort of optional rule where you include prices and put something like " If the GM wants to buy and sell items here is what you do" or "On some worlds they have a ro bust magic item market".

BryonD wrote:

[FWIW, 4E fans also assured us that the complaints online were meaningless....]

FWIW 4E was blatantly and significantly influenced by loud voices on their forums, a LOT of what some of the most obnoxious "3.5 is not up with modern game design" posters wanted was included in 4E. Then it tanked.

TBH the pf 2.0 playtest feels a lot like the WotC forums immediately pre 4e.

From what I understand 4E was more about what was selling well at the time (D&D minis), and the devs being giving a green light to make a D&D they wanted along with feedback from the RPGA network and internal playtesting. Slaviksec, Heinsoo, and Tweet were the ones pushing for it, the last t 2 worked on D&D minis. At the time I wanted a fixed 3.5 walking back some of the changes from 2E to 3.0 such as removing easy access to magic items.

There were a lot of complaints on their forums about 3.5, but there was also a whole thread on how to fix it which was mostly rewriting spells and things like that.

I don't recall to much in the way of burn it all down and start over.

Forum use is fairly useless though a lot of 3.5 did not play the way the "default" was assumed online. A lot of groups I saw for example did not know about wands of CLW and I have seen PF players doing the same thing as late as 2014. They were using PF like a more complex AD&D2E vs the online assumptions of PF1. They are not active atmn or are playing 5E now, one of them was the PFS coordinator.

I'm in the market for a game more complicated than 5E but it can't be PF1 levels or the playtest atm levels of complexity. If we pick up PF2 its to scratch that itch on occasion not as a replacement for 5E.

Even playing SWSE (which we liked a lot 2008/9) is rough these days not because of the complexity but because of the math.

I'll offer my own counter-analogy that I think is more apt.

The Past
Paizo is Sony. WOTC is Nintendo. Sony/Paizo and Nintendo/WOTC partnered to work on the SNES-CDROM/DnD3.5. Adruptly, Nintendo/WOTC ended the partnership and focused on a new platform that alienated third party publishers. Sony/Paizo decided to take their learnings from the SNES-CDROM/DnD3.5 and create a new system Playstation/Pathfinder. Playstation/Pathfinder was a huge success that surpassed the N64/DnD4 (hate to make that comparison) thanks in large part to the wealth of materials generated by third party publishers (and, in Paizo's case, ported from DnD3.5).

The Now
This is where the analogy starts to break down. WOTC skipped the Gamecube and went straight on to make the Wii. They also brought back third party support. And they landed some major marketing wins with Critical Role and Stranger Things.

Paizo has the same challenge that Sony did with the Playstation 2. But there's no new technology to offer like a built-in DVD player and while they briefly dominated the market their brand has yet to solidify into the popular consciousness. This is an extremely challenging moment for Pathfinder - they need to do something new to remain relevant but cutting backwards compatibility to make something completely new also undermines one of their greatest strengths. And WOTC is also in a much stronger position than they are.

Why is the difference important?
Because Paizo - unlike Star Wars - doesn't have the advantage of nostalgia or brand recognition. Many of the fans who are mad at The Last Jedi (in my opinion) are mad because Luke was their childhood hero and it sucks to see your childhood hero return as the equivalent of a cowardly old drunk. Most of the fans who are mad at Paizo are upset because of some rules - rules that can shift and change during a playtest. Compromise is possible. If the playtest results in a fun system that keeps the feel of Pathfinder Paizo will be able to thrive (though they're not...

I would probably compare Paizo to Sega, they briefly toppled Nintendo, WotC is Sony or Microsoft. Probably Sony they got beaten once (PS3/Xbox360), but they bounced back like how WotC did with 5E.

It remains to be seen if Paizo can become Nintendo or go the way of Sega. The casuals also went to Sony, the hard core went with Sega as well.

Starfinder is apparently outselling PF as well but a lot more people play PF on the VTTs (and probably real life). What that tells you is its probably a saturated market, PF is more popular but everyone who wants it probably already owns it so growth prospects are probably around 0 or are even negative as people drop out (its been 10 years).

This thread is about should you be required to play a healer in Pathfinder/D&D?

Generally the answer is yes, you need some amount of healing to play the typical D&D dungeon hack adventure.

This is also a side effect of the modern expectation of 4 encounters a day (6-8 in 5E, I don't remember the 4E assumption).

The guts of the game has always been about the 4 roles- Warrior, Artillery, Support and Expert which more or less means Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief. Some classes share a bit from other classes in 5E addressed this in the pillars- combat, exploration, and social.

A Paladin for example traditional is not as good at combat as a fighter (less feats or weapon specialisation, less attacks than a fighter in 5E) but it kind of 25-50% of a Cleric (varies by edition). Rangers have a similar ratio in regards to a splash of Druid.
5E addressed this by making it ok for a class to have up to a 3rd of another class built in or being better at say combat (eg Fighter Champion vs Eldritch Knight).

If you have to much healing however the game becomes to easy and ultimately boring. This would be a large bag of wands of CLW, or a party focused on healing in 5E (life domain cleric, thief with healer feat).

D&D/Pathfinder has also spread the healing around with Clerics, Druids, Rangers, Paladins and sometimes Bards (depending on edition) all being able to do it to some extent.

So what do you do if you have no healer? I have played games like this in D&D, put simply you run less combat or use easier encounters. Often in games where the PCs have copious amounts of healing the DM directly or indirectly puts in more damage or the designers do (compare 3E-5E critters vs AD&D ones). An adventure like Tomb of Horrors is going to require more healing than X1 The Isle of Dread and the Pathfinder APs do not generally require a massive amount either as they tend to be on the easy side (some more than others).

Older D&D adventure designs often had Staves of Healing along with potions and scrolls of healing. You could not buy them a'la 3.X but if you ran prepublished adventurers they were fairly common. And level 1 clerics may not have even be able to heal you anyway.
NPCs were often in the adventure along with a magical fountain, font or something similar that could heal.

Basically I don't think there is a right or wrong answer here, if you have a lot of damage built into the game on the monsters (5E) you will want a generous amount of healing. If damage is low and monsters struggle to hit healing can be less (B/X-AD&D). Clerics should still be the best at it IMHO but they can spread the healing around buffing classes if need be (5E did this).

That still does't deal with the what type of adventure you are running- Kingmaker vs one of the harder APs will be very different but I think at that point its up to the GM to figure out what the players like or if they like variety such as doing a dungeon hack after returning from the Isle of Dread.

Its an art form, not a science, 4E tried and failed to enforce a daily limit ultimately boring people and making the game grindy while 3.X has wands of CLW and 5E missed the boat here and there as well (life clerics being to good at it relative to other clerics and clerics being better than everyone else).

Whats more important IMHO is how big the gap is between classes that are good at healing vs the ones that can do it but are not expected to do it all of the time. A Paladin or Ranger for example could maybe heal themselves, a cleric can have some of the best cure spells (shared with Druid), while a cleric with the healing domain should probably be the best (bonus dice of healing or group radius etc). Right now the PF2 cleric is a bit to good at healing relative to the other classes so one step forward two steps back since wands of CLW are going bye bye. But you can buff that and add generic feats perhaps (blessed by XYZ healer god can heal ABC per day).

Reducing monster damage is also another option, once upon a time you could really only heal with your daily spell slots and what you could find. Personally I would put some healing options in the game, and let the players and GMs figure out how much they want to use. No cleric? Well a Bard, or Druid with a side helping of Ranger or Paladin might be an idea. Want to focus on damage instead, well see if you can kill stuff faster reducing the need to heal. Or be nice to NPCs.

Zardnaar wrote:

Everyone would want d12 weapons they obsolete everything else. There is no point having weapon traits.

I can't come up with a good reason not to get a reach weapon and multi-class fighter on every martial character. I would like to politely disagree with your assessment. Upgrading reach weapons with things like finesse or agile would be fun, as would momentum. Deadly could also be sweet, and I would love to see something like a fatal gnome flickmace.

You could easily limit properties based on die size, etc. if it were an actual issue. I just wanted a ROBUST system, and what we have is... again, meh.

Maybe on certain classes or archetypes but you would not want PCs to have open season access to putting whatever they liked on whatever they liked.

Zardnaar wrote:

Its because you would end up with 1 weapon that is just better than everything else. An agile. finesse great sword for example.

Then let it happen. Or tie it to limited proficiency bonuses. I was just really excited about the revamping of weapon properties, and it's so... MEH. For two-handers, you either want a d12 or Reach, for one-handers you either want a big versatile die, finesse and/or agile, and... that's about it. There isn't nearly enough done with it, and I want more!

You do know magic weapons in PF2 deal extra damage dice? A +2 weapon is +2 to hit and +2d8 or 2d12.

A finesse greatsword in the hands of a rogue would be great. An agile one in the hands of a fighter who wants to make multiple attacks would also be great. +3 great sword agile two attacks each hit deals 4d12 damage + everything else. And you could sneak attack with said great sword and finesse it In 5E there is a reason a 1d10+ finesse weapon doesn't exist bet you can get for a two handed weapon is a versatile spear or 1 subclass that can use longswords finessed. It makes the classes/weapons a bit different.

Everyone would want d12 weapons they obsolete everything else. There is no point having weapon traits.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Lou Diamond wrote:

Another design flaw found in the New game system. All classes should be able to increase their weapon skill in a single weapon by spending a general feat. There is no reason for this not to be able too be done.

This bolded part isn't actually true. In many ways, Weapon Proficiency beyond Trained is the equivalent of BAB in this edition, and not allowing it to simply rise via Feats is probably an extremely good idea from a Class Design and Game Balance perspective.

I actually would have personally preferred that Expert proficiency gave you a simple +1 attack bonus, and higher proficiencies allowed you to add or change weapon properties on your weapons.

Mostly, I'm just frustrated that there isn't a way to do this. It would be so much fun! What if you could craft a Deadly Falchion, or a Reach Greatsword, or a Forceful Handaxe? Or wield them in such a way that you could add change them around? This would really open up weapon options and give players a chance to really play with the whole property system, and it's so criminally underutilized! XD

Its because you would end up with 1 weapon that is just better than everything else. An agile. finesse great sword for example.

WHY KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE?

As a retired professional game designer and game historian of some note, I find the Pathfinder Playtest has a fatal game design flaw. My background is: starting designing games in 1959, designing games at Coleco for Colecovision and the Adam and Atari and other computers, designing WarGames which was awarded the #1 game cartridge in 1984, developing the first edition of Axis and Allies, since 1968 being mentored by Gary Gygax, owning and designing games for Nova Games and Game Theory and Design, Simulations Publications (SPI), scenarios for Avalon Hill, etc.

There are many new ideas in the Pathfinder Playtest that are good ideas and have great potential so I will not comment on these ideas. Playtesting will make those good ideas great and streamline the system, removing others.

The fatal flaw is explained as digging a hole in the design to fill it with a plug. This same problem occurred with updates to GPS systems. When GPS for cars first came out you were asked to input address number, street name, city or town name, and state. That system worked great. Then some idiot designer decided you should only input address number and street name. The system would take up to 5 minutes to search every town and city in America and list a number of places based on distance to choose as your destination. The search result was tedious and time consuming, sometimes never listing the destination searched for. That GPS system was worse than a map! The next generation design was even more ridiculous. The idiot designer decided to do the same thing but show a map with circles of locations. You had to guess which circle was your destination. Then you had to press that circle and the GPS system would update your driving directions, almost always giving the wrong destination. You would have to do the same thing all over again until you found the correct driving directions. Terrible! Terrible! Terrible! Siri and the I phone have replaced GPS systems and eliminated an entire industry.

So what...

Number of players are up- they are playing 5E though and that gives even more power to the DM. Giving more power to the players has the inmates running the asylum. And the complexity. If the game is to complex to run for a GM they do something else which atm seems to be 5E.

Seems a fairly common complaint about PF, I like playing it do not like GMing it and if you can't find a GM no game. Magic items are a great example of that. In 5E its back to AD&D get what you are given, PF its get what you can buy or easily make. Its personal preference at that point but some poor sod has to arbitrate the get anything you want and doesn't bother and quits or goes and plays something else.

I'll play most versions of D&D from OD&D to 5E, I won't DM 3.X though and would I am not that motivated to play them or 4E although if it was a choice of that or no D&D I would be more inclined to play.

Its also limiting good at combat things to classes that are good at combat. In effect its the weapon styles from 5E but you get a bonus to hit instead. Indirectly makes the warrior types better at triggering crits as well although.

A Rogue from the look of it can also sneak attack more than once per round, we had one last night who could sneak attack twice and with flanking, agile etc more or less got +3 shaved off the -5 penalty for a second attack.

Rogues maybe more about using more attacks and situational accuracy while warrior types are more brute damage up front.

Izmo wrote:

Most of us were worried that the book's layout and wording are fairly finalized.

This is not meant as a jab or belittlement at all. But how could anyone worry that the initial printing of a months-long playtest document is finalized?

Becuyase it more of an alpha or beta vs a playtest and there is not that much itme left. Paizo have indicated they will change the releases dates but it seems clear they are really pushing some things they want in the game (resonance etc).

1E-2E playtest was over a year (87- 89 release), 5E was 2 years, 3.0 took 3 years in house, 4E was rushed at 2 years.

And how you present things also matters. Consider a mechanic Paizo likes "Hey here is this new mechanics its really great what do you think". They never asked for example do people want resonance or a mechanic limiting items or presented other options.

Consider using resonance as an example vs my sample before.

" Here is this new mechanics resonance, we don't like it much but what do you think?"

Sure you can poll people on what they like but how you push something also matters.

And if its not resonance its something else. There was no survey that I know of along the lines of "hey we are going to fix the spellcaster/martial do you want us to do that. If yes what ideas do you like (list a few).

They have already decided on how they are doing some things with limited time. They might tweak or ditch some if it but there are other ways of doing what they are trying to do.

3 or 4 hours, not quite a speed run but there was not much if any RPing and missed a few rooms in the west where the 4 gobbos were building a statue to Drakus.

So Gorum is basically Garagos from FR now?

Other +1 is only level 20 as well so from level 10-19 the only other increase is off legendary+1 at 15.

You can smooth out the dump stats with the 5 buffs as well. The variance mostly is 5 points + stat modifier which is really +4 or +5 at most probably less.

Level 10-14 its 4 for untrained- expert and no more than +5 off ability score so maybe 6 if someone has an 8 which in a worst case scenario (8 vs 20 untrained vs expert) is +11

Nice

If you want to search easy and fast for an action, try this handy web application:
Http://pf2.espigabb.com

I've started on a cheat sheet. For conditions I just listed the page numbers.

magnuskn wrote:

Doktor Weasel wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Yeah, honestly. The way some people talk about casters, I want to hand them a doll and ask "show me where the bad caster touched you".

Luckily all the people I play with, in both groups, seem to have fun playing their characters no matter what they choose to play and appreciate the way that martials pulverize their opponents and casters add tons of useful stuff for the party.

Hell, the biggest complaints I've had at my table over the last decade have been that Paladins just outclass everyone else when we have one and, if not, that archers are OP vs melee classes. I honestly can't remember anyone saying for many years that they thought that someone with a caster class was running away with the campaign.

Have you seen an archer paladin? We had one in our Wrath of the Righteous game. He was freaking devastating. Of course that game also has Mythic which gives some big power boosts. Although he often was a bit out-damaged by the other archer in the group, a Kasatha Bow Nomad Ranger. Dual-wielding longbows. He was a machine-gun.

Yeah, as I said, Paladins are normally the class where I want to throw up my hands in frustration at how they outclass the others. :) The full casters I've seen in my groups are pretty tame in comparison.

Every single time in my 20 years GMing I've had a character actually break the table it's been a martial.

I played a late era 3.5 game where I was playing a 17th level Arcane Heirophant and the other guy was playing Fighter (and 3 other characters of various kinds at the table), and through an entire dungeon I never acted because the Fighter won initiative every time and did so much damage/attack that he one killed every creature with a single attack routine.

C/MD is as near as I can tell, entirely derived from about a dozen spells-- and then also only exists when the GM goes out of his way to make those spells always work/be more powerful/have no drawbacks, ect.

Take out...

Its mostly how you play. A power gamed martial will be better than a casual type caster or a caster who buffs his allies, heals or otherwise support them.

Generally I find people also like playing martials a lot, doesn't matter on the power levels. Saw very few Druids in 3.5 and it was the most powerful class if you knew what you were doing.

Other things like the uber cleric I think were mostly online theory builds. They required a lot of books some of which were obscure, generally had to be high level (which a lot of D&D players do not reach), and you had to know how to build them which usually meant connected to forums.

I did see some crazy 3.0 builds, 3.5 not so much mostly because we did not try to break the game as much or lacked a key book or two with the offending feat or whatever in it. Probably did not help that it was new to me and I told my players how to do it if they asked, in 3.5 I more or less let them figure it out.

Worst one was the 3.0 Elven persistent spell buffer, 3.0 Incanrtrix and 3.0 Shadow Adept. For 3.5 it was a Druid and a Bard build that granted +8 or +16 on all attacks and damage in an archer heavy party with rapid shot.

Mostly I think most people don't have the required books or forum interest to play like that. A keen+ improved crit scimitar was in the 3.0 core books though.

Zardnaar is a professional doomsayers. He did nothing but whine and moan about how awful the playtest was for 5e and how much he loves AD&D 2e but how P

F1e should be copy pasted wholesale. Expect nothing but click bait thread titles from Zardnaar and if he has something positive to say in the actual thread it will be a refreshing surprise.

5E playtest was awful apart from 3 or 4 packets but I knew 5E success or lack of it would have sod all to do with the playtest vs the final product.

AD&D 2E has a lot of concepts I like, the execution is off in a lot of cases. 2E is good in terms of what you can do with it using official material or taking elements of modern D&D and plugging into it. For example you can dump level and racial restrictions replace THAC0 with BAB plug in BECMI or d20 ability scores and not break the game.

And you have the settings.

Click bait titles get people talking, I had a nice one the other day got all of 1 or 2 reply's. More people want to complain about PF2 than test it, if you test it don't like it fair enough. Well the playtest was good for how they set it up but the packets were lacking although I had a ot of fun with the 2nd packet (the Sorcerer one).

The other funny thing about 2E is you can find the genesis of a lot of "modern" concepts in it from feats through to the disadvantage/advantage mechanic.

I liked the session we had today, I have doubts to higher level PF2 in this playtest version more due to the large prof number required and magic items being built into the system math as I think cantrips for example might actually scale faster than martial damage without magic weapons. Een then I think the example I looked at was with a d12 weapon might have to crunch some numbers.

Took me almost 2 weeks and 15+ hours to grok the system at least to a certain extent.Level 1 was fun the next test for these characters is level 9. Level 1 passed the does this feel like D&D test for me although ins some ways you are more of a level 2 or 3 PC.

Much like 4E PF2 plays better than it reads ATM.

Bluenose wrote:

Zardnaar wrote:

its LG only which is kinda nice if you like ye olde D&Disms (I do BTW).

Presumably only if you're selective about the 'olde D&Disms', as I'm sure you're aware of the major one it throws out.

It's been awhile. Weren't they human only? I seem to remember them needing unreasonable stat rolls as well.

Human only, 17 charisma(which could be broken via henchmen).

When we play AD&D these days I use BAB over THAC0 and no level limits and buff humans. Racial limits and alignment stick though.
If I played 5E Greyhawk I might wheel out optional rules such as racial and alignment restrictions, mostly to stay faithful to the setting. FR, Golarion, Eberron go nuts, Krynn and Greyhawk well well well here is the catch;).

I prefer LG Paladins only but its not a requirement if that makes any sense.

For the Goblins;).

Doomsday Dawn: The Lost Star

So after a 2 hour session 0 did not go so well we spent an additional 10-15 hours going through the rule book figuring things out and making up some preconstructed PCs for the players to use. Decided to try The Lost Star level 1 adventure in Doomsday Dawn.

Also i the process of writing a cheat sheet for player hand outs. After testing note to self add in firing into melee modifiers (if any) and spell DC's.

So casting summon yobbos and play these PCs for us the party wandered off hot joining the adventure under the sewers of Magnimar last used in 2014 for the great Magnimar Yacht Race for 5E. The brace suckers erm heroes had this for a party composition.

Sword and board half elf fighter with power attack
Goblin Rogue using a dogslicer
Human cleric of Sarenrae
Human Bard

Seeing the 3 round structure thing in action was quite interesting, players would often go for a 2nd attack at -5 (often -2 or 3 due to flanking, agile and/or bard buffing), and getting a connecting 2nd attack in is not rare. Buffs,flanking, flat footed and touch ACs. 2 attacks at -10 almost connected missing by 1 (-10 may have been more like -6 or so but Drakus missed by 1 with a 3rd attack).

After playing 5E for a while there was a few things I missed ffom previous editions (2E-4E. Bonuses to hit via flanking being one, 5E has it as an optional rule but it grants advantage and is to swingy +2 feels about right.

I did miss Fort/Ref/Will from 3E just not the implementation of it. Defenses scale kind of like 4E and Star Wars Saga but numbers are smaller and there is a lot less variance in high and low numbers which I think is great. Monsters have similar hp to 5E ones but more to hit but generally deal less damage but the large to hit numbers enable critical success and s AC 14 or so that can be very dangerous to a PCs. PF2 characters have more HP and more healing available via a cleric than a 5E character but a lot less non magical healing.
Combat flowed fairly well maybe not quite as fast as 5E but close and you do have a few more numbers to add up but a lot less than 3.X. Did not bog down to much (had to check some rules on occasion)

Reminds me a bit of 4E but with the things I did not like about 4E (classes, AEDU healing surges ripped out) and more traditional type classes plugged in. It runs a bit more like BECMI Rules Cyclopedia or 2E AD&D with some optional rules ebing used. Power level is a bit higher than 5E at level 1. A level 1 PF2 class is perhaps like a level 3 AD&D 2E character with a kit and using the weapon speed rules except PF2 weapons have traits instead of weapon speed.

With agile weapons and flanking Rogues in effect can get the 2nd attack penalty down to -2 and it seems they can sneak attack multiple times as well and that was useful but not 100% sure that was correct.

Obviously PF2 has more moving parts than say 5E, but in play it was not that complicated. Kind of reminds me of some B/X clones which have added a few options as well such as Adventurer Conquer King or maybe Castles and Crusades with optional "feats" used. And better math. Perhaps early 3.0 when we played it like AD&D 2E with more bells and whistles (before we figured out how to stack numbers, use haste and stack buffs).

The negatives are mostly the actual rules. If 5E was designed as a greatest hits D&D, pF2 is more of a greatest dud collection to read. it has the uselessness of the 5E index, the dryness of 5E, the complexity of 3E (read page 291 for an example), and the organisational mess of OD&D/1E AD&D without the charming cartoons and random harlots table. With 5E we more or less grabbed the starter set and were playing within an hour or so, PHB landed no big deal it was mostly more options. PF2 failed session 0 2 hours, 1-3 hours over the next few nights and a 5 and 3-4 hour session hammering things out. And even then I made a few mistakes in running it no big deal its new I remember a few I made with 5E, 3.0, Pathfinder etc it happens.

Things I liked over 5E.

1. Defenses scale better. 5E saves an be annoying and even ACs as you can get hit a lot at higher levels.

2. Less whack a mole type issues.

3. Weapons are a lot more interesitng with the best parts of 3E and 4E but without the orcket tag X3 and other confirming a threat range.

4. 3 saves are simpler than 6. Less variance between good and bad saves (basically 1-2 points+ ability and other modifiers).

5. Flanking- enables basic tactics and rewards you due to critical success.

6. Critical success/failure. Might be a bit rocket tag later on though (flunking a fireball save).

7. The 3 round system. Was not to enthused at 1st but its starting to grow on me. Making a 2nd attack at -5 is better than no second attack in 5E. 5E handles TWF better and might handle better at higher levels though as they warrior types get 2nd and 3rd attacks built in at no penalty., more testing required. Not a fan of the way shields work. Complicated, ties up a fighters reaction, heavy incentive to just use a bigger weapon.

8. Dex is a super stat in 5E, add feats in and dex becomes to uber for ranged attacks, skills etc. Dex to damage as a class ability is nice along with free weapon finesse on the right weapons. Nice hybrid between 5E and 3.X might be better than both.

9. Smoother transition to level 2. Level 1 in 5E can really go pear shaped.at low levels.

10. Basic monsters deal more traditional levels of damage. 5E Hobgoblins, Kobolds, Bugbears, Orcs and Gnolls can easily go pear shaped at low levels in 5E (Hobgoblin critical hit potentially 2d8+4d6+1 CR 1/2 critter).

Overall impression. I enjoyed it as a DM and can see several combos I would like to try in the player seat. Rules need a clean up and simplification though (see pg 291, 5 pages of conditions, Fighter is 9 pages, races are a bit underwhelming, double slice is confuzzling etc).

The guts of it though I think is a winner. You could use its engine to make a more complicated 5E, OSR clone or an OGL 4E clone. D&D tradition go beat on goblins (Keep on the Borderlands, Lost Mines of Phandelver, Lost Star).

Hard to say. You'll probably get very different answers to that depending who you ask. Judging by this forum alone there are dozens of different styles of play and preferences. which is a good thing, I guess, on paper. It's when one game style dominates the discussion and pushes it's agenda into the mechanics when it comes problematic for me.

On of the reasons I gave up on 4E very early was the feel of the game not being right. It felt like a board game or a video game, less like what D&D was before. During Lost Star I sometimes, not always, had a very similar experience, that got a little better once I decided to drop Exploration Mode as written. But something felt 'off', something didn't felt right. Like Vic, I can't really put my finger on it yet. It will be interesting to see how this will play out on higher levels, but I suspect (and suspecting is all I can do without having played at higher levels) that the video game/4E feel will creep back or the feeling of 'something is wrong here'will become worse due to the skill system and how it interacts with the specialization aspect of the characters.

For the same reasons I let my players roll their stats and get randomness in the game, which is out of their control, while others on the board love point buy because everyone starts with the same inherent set of capabilities. It all comes down to styles and preferances.

The skill system might suit one style of play better, but takes away the options of other play styles.

(Resonance is also a suspect atm, we will see)

And then there are the Ancestries which are just a shell of what they were in previous editions and just become what they once were at high levels. I mean, that's a major difference in feel right there, I guess, but it is also something that I guess will be fixed or at least could easily be fixed.

Broadly speaking there are around 3 playstyles IMHO of D&D although all of them on a casual level are similar in a a lot of ways. They are.

4E Tactical
3.x Options
Casual D&D (1E, basic 2E, 5E, casual 3E)

And variants

fantasy Vietnam (hard core B/X and 1E, Tomb of Horrors and gotcha DMing)

Build your own (advanced 2E, settings+ dials for low magic, low tech, high tech, high maigic etc).

Casual D&D is the main one and is the common thread. Adventures like X1 Isle of Dread, The Night Below, Savage Tide, Rise of the Runelords, and Princes of the Apocalypse would be "casual D&D".

Overall power level on everything has been reduced along with damage spikes.

You can still min/max but the gaps have narrowed on things like damage, saves, skill checks.

Magic weapons give you the bonus to hit but a bonus dice on damage, A +1 1d12 weapon deals 2d12 damage, +2 3d12.

Cantrips scale with level automatically +1 dice level 3,5,7,9 etc and ability score to damage at level 3.

Without weapons spellcasters might out damage martials.

Doktor Weasel wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Yeah, as I said, Paladins are normally the class where I want to throw up my hands in frustration at how they outclass the others. :) The full casters I've seen in my groups are pretty tame in comparison.

That doesn't look like it'll be an issue with PF2 though. No smite, no CHA to saves. There's a few smite-lite options through class feats, but none seem to compare with the raw power of PF1 smite.

Well, I wasn't asking for a nerf for Paladins, neither. They pay for their power with a lot of roleplaying restrictions.

Not that many now, in AD&D yes.

Zardnaar wrote:

Not a fan of the PF Paladin so far. It might be OK power wise (I am judging it on its own merits nt vs the PF or 5E Paladin), the main problem with it it doesn;t feel very Paladin.

No Aura, smite has been tweaked ( I don't consider smite to be 100% required though), no mount, no spells. Its just missing to many abilities I consider iconic to the Paladin although its gets some of them and its LG only which is kinda nice if you like ye olde D&Disms (I do BTW).

Aura of Justice, Courage, Faith, Life, Righteousness, Vengeance, Warding Aura, Anchoring Aura, and Righteous Ally: Righteous Steed cover the auras and mount. Spells are a loss, but available Powers cover for some of the most memorable ones (Litanies and Paladin's Sacrifice). The class is very different and significantly less oppressive, but most of their features still exist in some form.

I was mostly looking at lower level stuff so may have missed a few and some I consider close enough.

Yeah you kind of grow into a bit of that but a few you get a lot earlier in other D&Ds. In AD&D you can't level dip but get a lot of that early on, 5E by level 6 or so, 3.0 a bit to front loaded, PF a bit over the top.

Powerwise it doesn't look to bad on its own merits in PF2, maybe lacking compared with PF1 and 5E.

This threads are about my thoughts about the races viewed from a PF2 perspective. I have not played PF since about 2012 and since then I have been playing OSR games/5E. This means I will not be marking them down if they are missing things PF1 gave you as all races are in the same boat so in that regard they are fine compared with each other. In general though you are getting less racial abilities than say 3E, 4E, 5E and AD&D but everyone is in the same boat.Mechanically its fine but you might like the candy virtually every other edition of D&D offers YMMV that is a subjective thing.

I will consider their racial boosts, flaws, feats, and overall package in my rating. When it comes to stats I rate the primary ability first relevant to your class and also rate con and dex highly due to most characters want a decent score here due to saves, AC, extra hit points etc which are good for everyone.

Anything that I think it good or bad will get mentioned. Generally I rate always on abilities higher than a situational ability unless that situation is fairly common and/or very powerful.

Then I will give an overall observation of anything I think is cute. I am only human but so may misread or miss something so feel free to point anything out, hopefully I don't muck it up to bad. Also note if I mention D&D without a quantifier such as 1E, 3E , B/X I am referring to 1E-5E+ OD&D, BECMI, Pathfinder and clones but not related games like 13th Age or DCC.

All PF2 races also get 1 free boost except humans so in a way that is nice as you can have a good anything but you can still trip up a bit when you discover some things don't work even if you have an 18 prime all of the time if you want it. All races get racial feats, what ones are actually good depends on how much you want to use weapons and what class you are on so its kind of a wash there. If you're a fighter you probably want to use your racial weapons as long as you are playing to sterotypes due to exotic weapons being martial for you and how it interacts with class feats.

Dwarf.
Dwarves seem t be a favourite for D&D players and are usually very good in most versions of D&D. A bonus to constitution is always good going back to AD&D. They get boosts to con (great), wisdom (useful), + 1 free and a -2 to charisma which unless you want to play a charsima based class is fairly minor hit so in effect you get around 2.5 boosts as long as you don't care about charisma or -1 resonance to much along with a minor hit to charisma based skills.

You also get a whopping +10 hit points which is great at level 1 but racial hit points will matter less proportionally as you level up. Darkvision over low light vision is nice.

Great stats and racial hit points and then you hit the feats. A lot of these feats are situational and/or are based of things going back into AD&D. Even ignoring that fact there are way to many situational ones here (like almost all of them) so the stand out ones are weapon cunning and familiarity IMHO which are semi useless for some classes. You also pick up Darkvision and are not slowed down as much in heavier armors but you already move slow at 20.

Great racial package as such, weak feats I foresee a few Dwarven orphans who have been adopted or they have very close friends from other races. Main drawbacks are slow speed and weak racial feats.

Elves

Elves are basically the opposite of Dwarves. Racial package is a bit meh but you get good racial feats.

SO dexterity and intelligence as boosts, con as a flaw + 1 free. Dexterity and intelligence really only matter a lot for 2 classes-0 the Rogue andd wizard although intelligence in PF2 is not a dump stat unlike 5E as more skill points are always nice but I don''t consider it a great secondary or tertiary stat. And the constitution flaw hurts although I think you can buy it off with your free boost but then you are in effect +2 Dex and Int.

Languages, low light vision and 6 hit points are all worse than the Dwarf package but you do get 30' movement and that is unique to elves. That is good you may be squishy comparatively but you're fast. This leaves feats. Several stand out. Ancestral Longevity is a free skill and you can change it daily it seems. That is better than +1 skill and its versatile. More skills are nice, being able to change it is neat. Skill monkey Elf option.

Nimble also stands out and its another +5' movement. Elves are now 10' faster than anyone else, 15' faster than slow races. Thats not bad in this low powered race meta.

Otherwordly Magic. I thought this was really good as cantrips are very good in PF2 IMHO. From level 3 you get 2 dice+ ability score to damage and that scales up to 3 dice at 5th, 4 dice at 7th etc. PF2 critters have hp similar to 5E ones and 2 dice+ ability mod is a level 8 or 10 ability. Comparatively PF2 cantrips hit harder than 4E and 5E ones. Looks great until you read innate ability. Buried somewhere in the text innate abilities are keyed of charisma and not intelligence so the 5E high elf gets a better deal here. Still decent but being adoptive into elf culture could be beneficial for some races. Doesn't scale very well either so utility over damage might be better.

Elf weapons cold be useful YMMV but a not bad elf package and 2-4 decent feasts makes the elf the best race so far and they make decent anythings for the most part, just a bit more squishy although they are a bit weaker at charisma based classes as using your free boost on charisma for example is not as good as other races who can get charisma+dex and con for example.

Gnome
Racial abilities basically add up to weak Dwarf but your stats are very very good for a spellcaster. This is because your flaw is strength and you get constitution+ charisma and your free one can be dexterty or whatever. Any charisma based spellcaster (Bards, Sorcerer) in effect gets 3 boosts and strength is a dump stat. Rogues can also get dex to hit and damage and have uses for con and charisma. So the Gnome is one of the better spellcasters in the game even if you pick wizard. Moving onto racial feats.

Animal Accomplice. You get a familiar. Familiars can be useful if you get creative and have been useful since forever in D&D. YMMV but this can reward clever players. Its not great but not bad.

Animal whisperer. Makes the prerequisite feat a bit obsolete but talking to animals can be useful in exploration and social pillars and can reward clever players. Not sure if its worth 2 feats to talk to animals and gain a +1 bonus though YMMV.

1st world magic.
Similar to the elven ability you get a primal (Druidic) cantrip as an innate ability. Gnomes do get a charisma bonus so this could be useful to a Bard or Sorcerer, not so much for damage perhaps due to the half scaling thing.

Overall great spellcaster option, weaker than a Dwarf but strength makes a good dump stat and 3 boosts are nice. Racial feats are a bit lacking though. I think my parents might be dead though and Gnome orphans can be put up for adoption.

Goblin
Low racial hit points, medium speed of 25'+ darkvsion. Goblins are another small race that are better than Gnomes IMHO although the -2 wisdom hurts more than strength. This is because Goblins are useful at all of the classes with the exception of wisdom based casters. They can even make decent fighters although PF2 doesn't reward dex based fighters that well so a Rogue MC into fighter might be the better bet. Goblins are charismatic who knew.

As the new it race Gobbos have decent class feats. Stand out ones are.

Burn It.

Goblin pyromancer! And if you can use your free boost to offset your wisdom flaw (IDK if this is legal I think it is?) you can even probably make a cleric of Sasraena (sp?) work as they pick up burning hands and fireball. PF2 has damage tuned a bit lower in some ways so this ability is not to bad so while the race may be weighted towards Alchemist I think Sorcerer or Bard might be the better play.

Flame Heart.

Resist fire damage, fire damage is common in D&D's.

Rough Rider.
If you want a mount this is not a bad option.

Very sneaky.
This lets you sneak at 15' instead of 10' if I have read it right. And it helps vs flat footed so its easier to hit.

Goblin Weapon feats.

Check out the dogslicer for Rogues. Just saying.

Halflings.

The better goblin. Your stat arrays is betetr than the Goblins and Gnomes IMHO and as it turns out the small races make great charisma based casters. A penalty to strength mostly doesn't matter in that situation or if you are a Rogue. Low hit points though and no form of darkvision. Its like Paizo though of this already. Nice basic package there though unless you want a halfling fighter (not recommended). Golden for Bards, Sorcerers, Rogues etc and you have decent speed by PF2 standards.

Distracting Shadows.
Basically the same ability as 5E. Not sure if the same trick works in PF2 but you may be able to hide behind larger members of the party and try to get surprise. Guess where Paizo got the idea for this ability, it has King Snurre on the cover.

Lucky Halfling.
At first glance I thought this was great and once again it looks similar to a 5E halfling ability. A key difference however is you can only use this once per day vs daily. In PF2 however this is more useful due to critical failures. Useful effect but once a day hurts proabbly need to be buffed to once per minute or hour, at will is too good in PF2, OK in 5E.

Sure Footed.
Turns success into critical success on fairly common D&Disms of climbing and balancing. Useful.

Titan Slinger.

Bonus damage in a common D&D situation vs large critters. Once upon a time halflings made decent fighters with slings and thrown weapons.

Humans
Mr/Mrs Average all around on the racial traits. medium speed, 8 hit points.Nothing to get excited about. However they get some of the best racial feats in the game.

Racial Feats.

Adapted Spell.
This ability is great. Put simply you can filch a cantrip and cast it at full power from another class and key it off your classes primary spellcasting stat. If your class has meh cantrips this is one way to pick up better ones or get adopted. You might make a better archer getting this than mucking around with a bow.

Clever Improviser. More or less +1 to all the skills you are untrained in. For a low skill fighter that is a lot of skills and almost eliminates the untrained penalty. Less useful for Rogues. If you want a skill monkey this is good.

General Training.
You get a general feat. Its a general feat. This means you can get adopted to cherry pick another races stuff.

Natural Ambition
You get a class feat. This can be very useful for obvious reasons and in effect you get hurt less (less opportunity cost)if you multiclass at level 2.You miss out on a level 2 class feat but pick up an additional level 1 feat and some of them are better IMHO than level 2 ones anyway.

Skilled.
Pick up 2 skills. By level 5 you can be more or less a PF1 human but are 1 skill up.

Half Orc/Elf
You are basically a human but get to pick some other bits and pieces. The half elf is better due to better choices of the heritage feat and they can cherry pick human and elven feats. Human feats> Half Orc and Orc Feats and there are some nice elven ones as well.

Not a fan of the PF Paladin so far. It might be OK power wise (I am judging it on its own merits nt vs the PF or 5E Paladin), the main problem with it it doesn;t feel very Paladin.

No Aura, smite has been tweaked ( I don't consider smite to be 100% required though), no mount, no spells. Its just missing to many abilities I consider iconic to the Paladin although its gets some of them and its LG only which is kinda nice if you like ye olde D&Disms (I do BTW).

Visanideth wrote:

I wouldn't make a big deal out of the technical language for now. I'm sure Paizo will be able to embellish the text.

And honestly, I'll take a dry, technical rulebook that leaves no room to misinterpretation over pretty prose that forces me to spend an hour a week over twitter asking the authors what they really meant with that (looking at you, 5E).

I generally find 5th Ed pretty clear, sort of like a 3rd Ed Lite, but I agree, it is muddy in some areas (stealth, bonus action sequence) and there are some horrendous design decisions (welcome to the 5th Ed D&D Multiverse, where Bards and Rogues are the best wrestlers in town).

And healing is whack a mole, Rogue+ healer feat are one of the best healers and the best at whack a mole (at least clerics run out of healing words), and they put magical healing potions in the water supply.

And the 6-8 encounters things can be hard to pace along with short rest vs daily vs at will classes (Rogue, Warlock or monk+ wizard have fun pacing that).

ANyway we are doing char gen atm spent around 8-10 ours reading the book and flipping back and forth. Things are starting to click and I think I have a spicy little pyromancer build or even 3 of them (Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric, maybe alchemist).

Some of the "bad" classes I think may also be good but people are comparing them to the PF1 versions, damage has been nerfed across the board some some of those +1 damage abilities or whatever may not look exciting but they are equivalent to +2,+3 and +4 abilities in other editions.

My wife is has been devouring the book over the last 3 hours or so making some PCs. Goblin seems very good.

Nice I wanted to do a 2 page cheat sheet with conditions included. Did not realise the conditions would be 2 pages by themselves.

THere are other mundane thigns fighters can do that are still useful in the D&D context. %E and AD&D 2E ones for example with great saves (something 5E fails at).

You can give them more attacks for example, one of the 5E ones can actually cast fly at higher levels.

They tried wuxia stuff in 4E, crashed and burned. Supernatural abilities can be put on archetypes, sub classes, or high level feats just make them magical, psionic, blessed by the gods or something else that makes sense in the D&D context. No damage on a miss or come and get it type rubbish. Yes fighters can have nice things, bbut make it work in the D&D context. Even something basic like +10 on all saves is a big FU to casters who can't just save or suck them.

PF2 from the look of it has narrowed the save thing down though.

Ghilteras wrote:

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

gustavo iglesias wrote:

What is gone forever is the option to keep the status quo. Revolution is coming, be it one way or another, I feel.

That revolution may be a repeat of the one that took place with 4e.

A substantial percentage of the player base leaving for another company.

In case you have not noticed this is what's been going on in the past 2 years with people leaving Pathfinder for 5e. PF2e needed to come out a year ago, but they needed to finish Starfinder first, which is opinionated, but still a success, mainly for the fact that there are no competitors in the sci-fi niche. It's not too late to fight back before 5e gets the whole pie and the only way to do it is to provide feedback so PF2e can become better. It won't change dramatically of course and why should it? It has some excellent ideas. It need work and tuning, sure. We need to help.

Starfinder has sci-fi competitors in Shadowrun, 40k, and of course Star Wars.

Star Wars is not sci fi as such. Its Space Opera- kind of like fantasy in space as the force is essentially magic.

Saedar wrote:

I get that it is rules-dense and pretty technical, but it is a technical document. There are problems, yes, but this isn't a consumer product.

The Pathfinder/1e core rulebook is pretty fun to read, despite being a technical document.

I wasn't around for the PF1 playtest. For those who were, how did reading the PF1 playtest compare to the final PF1 CRB? Was the PF1 playtest dry in comparison to the final CRB? Were there any similar kinds of complaints about having to jump around a lot to figure out how to build your character, and about it not being inspiring?

It's not clear to me if the PF2 playtest is supposed to be "here's a purely technical description of the rules for testing", or "here's a proposed draft if Pathfinder 2". The layout and some flavor text suggests to me that it's the latter. If so, then it is supposed to be a consumer product, and people having trouble being inspired to read it is a problem. If it's the former, then it would help if the designers communicated that clearly to us, as that would head off some of the comments.

(What they should have tried to put out, a technical rules specification or a draft of PF2, is a different question from what the document we have is intended to be.)

The PF1 playtest had an alpah and beta stage IIRC, I gave away my hardcopy years ago and can't find the PDF files (different PC). It was a lot smaller initially, probably 1/4 or half the size of PF2.

We have a lot better handle on things now, between the forums and another 4-6 hours of reading I think we have manage to grok it better. A big problem was learning all the keywords and cross referencing so you need to figure out some of the basics 1st to work out how some of the class feats work, double slice is a good example of that.

5E playtest was also easier, I do have some of the packets left over. They were a lot smaller, B/W text only not to densely type in. It also had a smaller amount of material I think my 1st one (packet two) only had 6 classes to level 5, no feats etc so it built on that. The game did not really take shape until the final 2 packets it was mostly concept testing.It was a lot easier to print out as you only needed to print a few pages and B/W text only was easier on the ink. Half a ream of paper later (a few mistakes made with double sided printing) and I had to buy a new toner cartridge as well I more or less printed the whole document now (we used the classes + PDF for session 0).

I might make pregenerated characters for the PCs and/or make a cheat cheat summarising the guts of the system with page numbers to refer to. 2-3 hours of session zero and 2-3 hours since then reading stuff each day.

Complete Gnome Cobblers Book was great.

Ironically 4E stripped out crafting and its now a major component of a lot of RPGs these days and similar adventure games such as Tomb Raider.

We did that in 2E with The Complete Fighters bookosome fo the fighters wouod craft basically +1 non magical weapons. If they were lucky the spellcasters would enchant it.

They didn't do it often but it was special when they did. A few wands a couple of swords and maybe a bow its been a while.

Zardnaar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Zardnaar wrote:

4E evolved out of late 3.5, however if you only has the PHB and maybe a splat or 2 and did not have the late 3.5 material 4E came out of the blue.

It also evolved out of DDM, which was very popular at the time, 4th Ed is sort of like an advanced version, and SWSE and ToB/Bo9S were snapshots into 4th Ed design at the time.

I own D&DM's which was fun at the time. I had 80 odd 3E books but missed a few at the time such as Book of 9 Swords, Races of the Dragon, Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum and the last Complete book (Complete Champion?).

Bo9S has some great ideas (highly recommend for Manga and Wuxia-style action), but poor implementation in some areas (refreshing of Manoeuvres).

I like Magic of Incarnum (cool way to utilise magic item slots), trippy idea/concept, but not enough oomph, seems to very much not liked.

Tome of Magic has 3 ideas, 2 of them really cool concepts (Pact magic/Binders, and Truename magic/Truenamers), but only 1 is implemented well (Pact magic/Binders).

I lost touch by Complete Scoundrel and Races of the Dragon.

I had complete scoundrel but thought it was crap along with the Psin and Mage? THe 1st 4 books were the best ones except for a few broken bits mostly in Complete Divine.

Stopped buying splat type books as I thought the 1st 4 Complete and the PHB were about the peak of 3.5. I got Bo9S after 4E and would not allow it- to wuxia, silly etc.

Zardnaar wrote:

Also complexity look at Calculate the Result pg 291), that is potentially 10 steps to resolve something.

I was shaking my head when I read that torturous equation. Why not simply state the following?

Result of a roll = die roll + ability modifier + level + proficiency modifier + item bonuses and penalties + other bonuses and penalties?

(and note that I separate proficiency modifier from level)

The current way it's stated is dreadfully abstruse.

EDIT: The same presentation of this information on page 292 is visually better, but still problematic.

So its not just me then?

Zardnaar wrote:

4E evolved out of late 3.5, however if you only has the PHB and maybe a splat or 2 and did not have the late 3.5 material 4E came out of the blue.

It also evolved out of DDM, which was very popular at the time, 4th Ed is sort of like an advanced version, and SWSE and ToB/Bo9S were snapshots into 4th Ed design at the time.

I own D&DM's which was fun at the time. I had 80 odd 3E books but missed a few at the time such as Book of 9 Swords, Races of the Dragon, Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum and the last Complete book (Complete Champion?).

5E you can go OGL with it there is no GSL.

Well you can't clone it I suppose there is that you can make hardcovers, campaign settings etc.

If the choice comes down to die now or maybe die later though.

I don't get the problem people are having. I read the book cover to cover. Character creation takes maybe 30 minutes maximum for any class. Where is the confusion? I can understand it if you are coming at it from a min-max munchkin style but if you just want to build a decent character, it's extremely quick.

Its the cross referncing. For ewxample we're doing Session 0.1 now and the wife is looking at bards and druids. She has to go read cantrips and figure out what they do, then she wants to find out what a level 10 spell is, then she is trying to figure out why Bards don;t seem to get a level 10 spell (maybe they do she is still looking).

She has not tread the action economy section yet, she has to go and find out what expert, mater, legendary+ signature stuff is etc.

My printer is also out of ink the 270 odd pages I did print killed it and I am reading the PDF more.

Its also very dry to read (hard, boring etc) its like reading the 3.5 Spell Compendium or 4E PHB again. Sometimes I translate stuff into 5E terms for her like the level 20 stuff is capstone abilities like 5E but you can pick what you want such as level 10 spell or use your wild shape to shapechange (and then she has to go read wild shape and shapechange).

If you are used to it from late Pathfinder books in general or Starfinder it might be easier but we stopped playing Pathfinder in 2012 (as DM) last played 2014 (as player).We also did not go that deep down the warren of splat books mostly just using the core book+ advanced player guide and Ultimate Magic/Combat so maybe missed some evolution there in later PF books IDK.

Ultimate Campaign and Skull and Shackles/Kingmaker was the last time I paid much attention to Pathfinder. And I barely read Ultimate Campaign being honest.

Also complexity look at Calculate the Result pg 291), that is potentially 10 steps to resolve something.

I do wish that instead of supporting severe casters nerfs, we could see significant buffs to martial classes. I think that maneuvers like those seen in path of war and tomb of battle offer melee characters significantly more battlefield options than the baseline PF1 or 3.5 combat feat systems.

I also feel as if, in high fantasy settings, fighter shouldn't have to equal mundane. If for example, a fighter wants to teleport 60 ft. into the air to slam a flying enemy into the ground with a hammer the size of a grand piano, more power to them.

Even if you don't like the idea of a super magical fighter, you can refluff many existing spells as fighter abilities. For example, fireball becomes hail of dragonfire arrows. Haste becomes rally allies. Time stop becomes battlefield acceleration.

I'm not saying we should give martials all a casters toys, just something to bring them past: 5ft. step, full attack over and over again.

I understand that their are people out their who enjoy playing mundane characters. But its unreasonable to expect other characters to be balanced (mechanically) around such an obvious limitation in a fantasy setting.

Finally, Casters are not perfect in either 3.5 or PF1. However, I find their main issue to be certain specific spells that consistently cause problems at a table when in the hands of power-gamers. Power gamers will always find a way to break the game, especially when it is a game that offers lots of player choice (I still remember a player with a tier 0 paladin build that made my 3.5 game especially unpleasant). In the end, its just up to the DM to tell a player no.

Defualt fighter being magical is probably a no no but there is no reason why you can't have an arcane using warrior or a fighter archetype that can use magic. or pick feats.

I think you need an in game explanation though for why a character can do that (supernatural being, blessed by the gods, magic, psionics etc).

Just ran my group thru Session 0 last night (link), and our Rogue was very nearly brought to tears as well. It took them 4 hours to finish creating their character, and a good 2-3 hours for everyone else.

Mind you, the biggest issue we ran into was ability score generation. That ground everything to such a halt and was so incomprehensible that I'm flat-out shocked that your group enjoyed it! O_o;

That was the fun part of the night lol. We were familiar with back grounds from 5E, it was only 2 pages and my wife (with me) followed the step by step guide in the PF2 printout. Also we did not have to cross reference it much. Also helps that over the years I have used a lot of stat generation methods. For example Method 5 1E UA, 4d6 drop the lowest, 2d6+6, 3d6, 5d4, 6d4 drop the lowest, point buy, stat array, roll+ substitution (roll stats, -2+1 as you prefer) etc.

We both have the next 10 days or so off work so going to have another crack at it. Printing more material and probably going to write a 2 page cheat cheat which summarizes some of the new rules and puts them all in one place. I bought a cheat sheet for 5E off the DMGuild so will probably copy that template. I'll probably build her a Rogue or the Gnome Druid she wanted.

necromental wrote:

One other thing to consider is that, AFAIK, the people at conventions play premade characters. Building a character you're gonna play for a campaign is a different beast than being handed a sheet and told: go have fun. And character building is not making me tingle right now, as opposed to PF1.

Just wanted to chime in here. While the demo tables in the booth only used pregens, the Pathfinder Society playtest scenarios had a mix of pregens and player-made characters. So there were quite a few characters made by players. Many bought their playtest books and then sat down to spend a few hours creating their character before diving in. So we did get some feedback from them on that process as well as actual play.

-Lisa

The problem with that though is.

1. They all had physical copies of the book.
2. Fan conventions by nature are for the most hard core.
3. They could network with each other in person.
4. They are existing and fanatical fans of Pathfinder.

Mike Mearls explained the 4E disconnect. 4E evolved out of late 3.5, however if you only has the PHB and maybe a splat or 2 and did not have the late 3.5 material 4E came out of the blue.

We left Pathfinder in 2012, Ultimate Campaign was the last book we bought except for some humble bundles. We have not seen late Pathfinder material, we have not played Starfinder. I have the PF core book, some splats, Inner Sea World Guide and I am struggling with PF2. My D&D history BECMI-2E,1E, 3.0, 3.5, SWSE, 4E, SWSE/3.5, Pathfinder, 2E AD&D, B/X+ clones, 5E. I was a Paizo customer 2002-2012.

I did not like 4E but I understood the basics. I'm struggling with PF2, my wife gave up trying to create a Rogue. This is the 1st D&D this has happened with. And we have a rough idea what finesse and agile weapons are, if I was a new player I can't imagine trying to figure this out.

If it takes you hours to generate a PC that is a problem right there. I played B/X again after playing 3E and the adventures often have a stat array in the back so you pick one and adventuring pack ,B or C and off you go its 5-10 minutes to start a game.

I have most of the Paizo era Dragons and Dungeons (lost a couple of issues) but I remember in the final issues IIRC it may have been you stating that they were proud of Kyuss stat block being 3 pages long.

Think about it 3 pages for a monster, who can run that in a real game. Is that really a good idea? Compare it with the deity stat blocks in 1E Deities and Demigods book. PF2 has 9 or 10 pages for a basic fighter.

IDK if PF2 will be aimed at new players, I assume you want them but I don't see vast numbers getting on board with that IMHO of course.

Zardnaar wrote:

The basic D&D DNA was the 6 attribute scores, class based, alignment, and a few other bits and pieces- most gamers don't care about THAC0, BAB, feats, powers builds, level 11+ etc.

True, and I found in a 3rd Ed campaign I ran where I allowed any WotC book, with 2 full casters in the party, that problems can start at 7th level, once 4th-level spells hit the table it can become a nightmare (murderous mist still makes me ill thinking about it), I managed, but, wow, it seemed like a lot of effort to maintain.

i think the 3.X sweet spot is level 3-7. Level 7 is where a lot of problems start though.

Level 4 spells and when buff spells hit +2 and +3 and can be stacked (level 9 divine favor/power etc 3.0, +2 level 8 3.5 + persistent spell in both cases).

The math is a bigger problem for me I can deal with Op stuff easier, if the math is really borked you can't do much about it.

Thankfully Paizo has already mentioned the poor way this rulebook is set out and rules are explained. Hopefully that'll make the less rules learning keen players out. I struggled making my first pc, and I've been following pretty closely

+1 they know about it.

Its a bit of a mystery to me. The trend in gaming overall is less complexity and then they make something more complex than Pathfinder.

More puzzling a lot of it is complexity for complexities sake.

Red Rabbit wrote:

Zardnaar wrote:

And then we got to the actual Rogue. And this is where things fell apart. Put simply there is a lot of moving parts in PF2. She had to go and read the class feats, then the feat section and the skill section, then cross reference everything if required. One could actually see the enthusiasm die. Note she is an ex 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder player, currently she likes 5E but will play OSR games if that is what I want to play. Some comments.

I read your post a few times now, but I can't get my head around this: there are 4 class feats (Bludgeoner, Nimble Dodge, Trap Finder and You're next), roughly a half page of text. You need to pick one of them, and you can always retrain them later, so it's not like you need to plan your character for the next ten levels if you don't enjoy doing that. And then there is a skill feat, where I would just go with "what skill sounds cool? - and then go through the 2 or so skill feats for that skill and level 1 (and again: if you picked the wrong skill, just retrain). It is orders of magnitudes more easy to build a PF2 character than it is to build a PF1 character, where you had to decide on at least one feat at level 1 (out of a list of how many? 50 or so?).

My group struggled with this sort of thing too. I think it's less about picking one of the four class feats, it's that just about everything is so rules-dense that you need to go look up stuff all the time if you don't already know the system. Take Sneak Attack, for example:

sneak attack wrote:

You deal additional damage to flat-footed creatures (see page 322). If you Strike a flat-footed creature with an agile or finesse melee weapon, an agile or finesse unarmed attack, or a ranged attack, you deal 1d6 extra precision damage. For a ranged attack with a thrown weapon, that weapon must also be agile or finesse. As your rogue levels increase, so does the number of damage dice of your sneak attack. Increase the number of dice by one at 5th, 11th, and 17th

...

This lol. We got the 4 class feats you can pick at level 1, it was all the referencing.

Zardnaar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Visanideth wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

We removed the +1/2 level treadmill from 4th Ed after about 5 sessions (and used the Inherent Bonus rule from the DMG2), worked out great.

We started with that, but once we decided to actually create a commercial game, we ended up removing the d20 altogether.

Our engine is now a radically different beast from the D20 engine, and honestly we've landed with something that (ideally) scratches the D&D itch but looks nothing like it.

Right on, a non-d20 D&D itch-scratching system, colour me intrigued, not Badd!

FOr me it goes into the good game maybe not D&D thing.

There are other fantasy RPGs out there and things like the D6 system which avoid some of the problems D&D has. But then you're not playing D&D.

Well, we clearly don't have the rights to D&D and it would be vanity to try and say "You should play this instead!".

But it's a fantasy RPG that is class and level based, that works around the notion of having a strong focus on combat and task-solving, and that is based on the principle that the rules are there to simulate the "physics" of the action rather than informing the narrative (which is up to the players and DMs).

And all of that makes it similar to D&D. We want to scratch the same itch, not be the same thing. But this isn't the time and place for self-promotion.

Fair enough, actually sounds decent but I usually stick to D&D and switch systems if we want variety, currently playing 5E but had a lot of that over the last 4 years looking at my clones and PF2 for a bit of variety again. Star Wars (D6, SWSE) if we want to do something not D&D.

Zardnaar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

MaxAstro wrote:

There are several reasons for this, but the biggest one is that the more closely 2e hews to 1e, the more likely people are to treat it as a supplement for 1e rather than adopt it wholesale.

That makes no sense. People didn't treat 3.5 as only a supplement for 3.0 and they neither did so for PF1E for 3.5.

To be honest, I use material from 3.0, 3.5, and PF1 for my "3rd Ed" campaigns, they are all simply too similar for me to really categorise as completely different games (such as AD&D and 4th Ed), but I generally agree with you about nothing wrong with releasing an evolutionary version of a system that works. Even 5th Ed is more evolutionary than revolutionary, sort of like 3rd Ed Lite.

Early on I used PF as errata for 3.5.

I mix and match OSR systems I can run a B/X adventure in 2E or Castles and Crusades. That is with no drastic modifications or conversions.

Ah, I really want to check out Castles & Crusades (heard about it for years, from you!), it sounds like a cross between AD&D and 3rd Ed, is that right? If so, that is exactly what I was looking for/doing, after I got disillusioned with 4th Ed.

Yes we actually had it out tonight after sesison 0 crashed and burned. It has some issues but its more like a sane AD&D 1E with modern mechanics with set DCs of 12 (trained) and 18 (untrained). Its level+ ability mod to hit those DCs and a 1-10 modifier if the DC needs to be higher such as trying to climb while its wet.

No skill system either but the various classes in effect have skills built in. It gets a bit funky at higher levels and with Dragons but not to the extent you want to pull your teeth out or ragequit and its not like any of the other D&Ds/clones have done any better. It also has the best MC system in any D&D or clone IMHO its a tweaked AD&D MC but you add the xp together and use a table to work out the new classes HD. You can also rename the MC so rather than a Fighter/Mage you can be a Mageknight or whatever (and there is a Knight class).

Not recommended if feats are your be all and end all of D&D. If you like OSR games or a simplified 3E it might be up your alley. I'm usually a DM though so I rate any D&D that is easy to run highly that usually translates to a page or two of notes and houserules. DC 12 and 18 is the guts of the system the PHB is around 160 pages.

Its not perfect and there is not many moving parts although the DMG has basically feats you can layer on. It also has a lot of adventures some of which are really great and my players will actually play and enjoy it, wife loved her Ranger/Druid MC.

BTW D&D in this context includes OD&D-5E, Pathfinder, OSR clones. Doesn't include games like DCC.

The biggest turn off is if it gives me a headache to run it as I usually DM although one of my players will run 5E or Star Wars on occasion. If I want to play Pathfinder or OSR I have to run it myself.

Visanideth wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

We removed the +1/2 level treadmill from 4th Ed after about 5 sessions (and used the Inherent Bonus rule from the DMG2), worked out great.

We started with that, but once we decided to actually create a commercial game, we ended up removing the d20 altogether.

Our engine is now a radically different beast from the D20 engine, and honestly we've landed with something that (ideally) scratches the D&D itch but looks nothing like it.

Right on, a non-d20 D&D itch-scratching system, colour me intrigued, not Badd!

FOr me it goes into the good game maybe not D&D thing.

There are other fantasy RPGs out there and things like the D6 system which avoid some of the problems D&D has. But then you're not playing D&D.

BryonD wrote:

But in 1E a level meant you had become better at some concept and brought advancement that was primarily reflective of that concept. It had flexibility which allowed customization, but the narrative which informed "you gained a level" carried a lot of weight.

At lower levels this was mostly true, but PF1 falls apart at higher levels exactly because the spread between characters who have been focusing leveling up resources into one specialized category were so much better than characters of the same level who had not been. It turns high level play into a very dangerous game of roulette as far as whether you will be well prepared for what the enemy is going to throw at you.

At least + level to proficiency makes those outcomes a little more predicable for GMs and game designers.

You can still design kewl abilites but something like rerolls or some effect is better than + moar number".

Or example maybe once per day a Rogue can auto pick a lock. Its not that different from one just casting knock or using a wand of knock. Kewl ability, does the same job mostly, no numbers required. 5E advantage/disadvantage is something similar.

The difference is ideally in PF2 you would get more choice as to what kewl ability you get,the math can be simplified IMHO.

Visanideth wrote:

Zardnaar wrote:

Visanideth wrote:

Zardnaar wrote:

It doesn't drastically bother me to much I want something with more complexity than 5E, but without the math problems of 3.X and 4E.

Don't we all?

While the market has a huge offer of functional, quality games starting from 5E and going down the mechanical engagement scale, there's basically nothing north of that. We all want a game with 3.X's or 4E's offer of options, mechanical widgets and tactical engagement and better math, but nobody is really focusing on providing that.

It's not easy.

Slapping a few houserules on OD&D's engine and calling it an OSR game is easy. Writing something with the mechanical complexity of Pathfinder and making the math work... is another thing.

Yeah I have been working on a homebrew system currently using the 5E round structure (option B is 4E), but best way of describing it is Advanced B/X with microfeats. Some 3.5 feats have been merged (Great foritude, iron will, lightning reflexes), others removed (natural spell) while some 4E feats were ported in as is (power attack).

I also stapled on parts of 5E I liked but removed short rest mechanics as I don't think they play nice with daily resources and forcing the expected 2 short rests ting is a pain.

Even with 4E you could strip out the classes, plug in whatever and tweak the skill system and I don;'t think thats a bad thing either.

As much as I love 4E, I think the biggest weakness is the number threadmill. In fact, one of the things that got us started on our project was the question "Can you build a game that feels like D&D while moving away from the d20+x formula?".

We removed the +1/2 level treadmill from 4th Ed after about 5 sessions, worked out great.

I think that is a good idea at least on THACO/BAB/proficiency numbers. Not on scaling defences though, 5E prof system only some of them scale.

I would probably add it to saves but have the saves modified by class as well and you can pick feats that boost them further so saves would actually scale faster than DCs. Spell casters still have damage dealing spells, utility, summons etc to fall back on.
Not a fan of 5E saves, int saves mostly don't matter and spell DCs scale at a rate saves don't so you fall further and further behind.

Beats me how to fix the 5E save system conceptually IDK if modern designers have managed any better than AD&D in terms of saves and multiclassing. Best idea I can come up with is narrow the gap between a good and bad save to 3 or 4 points, no more than 5.

Zardnaar wrote:

I think we are on the same page here. If you clone 5E and ripped out the classes and made feats non optional and had different class structure that is roughly what I want.

Layer on some concepts from PF2 and AD&D 2E options that is something useful/fun.

For what it's worth, I'm part of a project that fundamentally follows the premise of taking the kind of mechanical engagement the 3.x/4E generation pursued (huge number of classes, rich character options, strong options for customizing actions) while completely removing the number threadmill.

In a way we were relieved to see PF2 doubled down on scaling, growing numbers because it makes it go in a different direction. We believe in horizontal growth more than vertical growth, so to say.

PF2 seems to double down on the "pick this to become +1 good at thing" ethos of 3.X, which may or may not be your thing.

At the time it was fine these days na. Make the bonus +2, and put in less of them t prevent lots of stacking.

For example I am making an Elf and they get the racial proficiency of modern D&D and +2 to hit with them. AD&D gave them +1 but the long sword is not an uber weapon and has not been a good weapon for a long time now (alright in 4E?). Same deal with shortsword and longbow. Since I am not using anything like the -5/+10 part of 5E sharpshooter feat I prevent that abuse there. If you want to be accurate with some swords and bows be an elf or pick something else. At least that is what I want anyway.

Not 1E D&D Faerie iire was also a +2 bonus and I would change 5E bless spell to a flat +2 as well instead of a d4 although that is more due to how good bless is in the 5E context maybe tweaked the way saves scaled and the -5/+10 feats and concentration are more responsible than the 1d4 itself.

Functionally Xanathars Guide to Everything brought back encounter powers as well. Its worded more like "once you use this ability you can't use it again for 1 minute". I don't think AEDU was the problem in 4E making every class universally use it and replace the yea olde D&Disms was the real culprit IMHO.

People are still trying to fix things from bad decisions made 20 years ago 3.5, PF, 4E, 5E have all hada go but conceptually AD&D and B/X fixed it 30 odd years ago it was in the 2E to 3.0 transition they broke things (saving throws for example). I eman AD&D is a hot mess, 5E for example uses BA which is not that fundamentally differnt to B/X where a level 20 fighter got +13 to hit, +11 in 5E.

Zardnaar wrote:

It doesn't drastically bother me to much I want something with more complexity than 5E, but without the math problems of 3.X and 4E.

Don't we all?

While the market has a huge offer of functional, quality games starting from 5E and going down the mechanical engagement scale, there's basically nothing north of that. We all want a game with 3.X's or 4E's offer of options, mechanical widgets and tactical engagement and better math, but nobody is really focusing on providing that.

It's not easy.

Slapping a few houserules on OD&D's engine and calling it an OSR game is easy. Writing something with the mechanical complexity of Pathfinder and making the math work... is another thing.

Yeah I have been working on a homebrew system currently using the 5E round structure (option B is 4E), but best way of describing it is Advanced B/X with microfeats. Some 3.5 feats have been merged (Great foritude, iron will, lightning reflexes), others removed (natural spell) while some 4E feats were ported in as is (power attack).

I also stapled on parts of 5E I liked but removed short rest mechanics as I don't think they play nice with daily resources and forcing the expected 2 short rests ting is a pain.

Even with 4E you could strip out the classes, plug in whatever and tweak the skill system and I don;'t think thats a bad thing either.