chibikami's page

0. HONEST QUESTIONS TO THOSE WHO LIKE 2E
What a devilishly disingenuous way to limit your opinion pool.

1. Do you currently like pathfinder 1e? (I know it sounds loaded, but please bare with me.)
Yes. Very much.
And a loaded question is one that makes assumptions within itself, such as "Hank Pym, do you still beat your wife?"

2. Did you once like pathfinder 1e but now find it troublesome? (feel free to give details.)
Recent material occasionally feels like it's missing its own point. However, it is rare that, as a GM, I would disallow first-party crunch. I do try to limit player options to what would be available in the game region, though.

3. Do you like 4th or 5th edition D&D? (Also sounds loaded but again no judgments)
5th edition is a solid return to form for 3e/3.5e purists, while cutting down on bloat (almost too much. There's rather a dearth of material) and reducing the extremity of power level scaling. I like it but it's not without its flaws.
Now let's answer the part that you think is loaded but isn't: It would be inappropriate to make PF2 into a 5e clone

4. Which are you looking for class balance, smoother high level play, more options, or even all of those things?
Rules clarity (hard math is much easier than abstract terms)
Areas of specialization (current 2e rules make everyone good at all things at high levels and at most a disparity of 5 skill points exists between characters of equal level)
An exhaustive list of creatures affected by Shatter would be nice (the word "crystalline" means more the more you know about atomic bonding structures, but only shows up as a descriptor on 1 monster. In Bestiary 4. Shatter is also listed as an exception to magic immunity on some golems, but they still do not count as crystalline)

5. How do you feel about making the game more accessible in general?
PF2e is supposed to be accessible? It's highly simulationist in some regards and every new build choice feels like I'm chopping off a foot

6. Are you willing to give up on accessibility if you can still gain all of the benefits listed in question 4?
See question 5

7. Would you be willing to play an alternative rules system then what we have been presented? (A different version of pathfinder 2nd edition if you will).
Yes

8. And if you said yes to the above question what would you like to see in that theoretical game? (Most of you will see what I'm doing here, I'm finding common ground)
I think what many of us wanted was a more refined 1st edition, not a radical system shift. It honestly feels like Lorraine Williams was involved somehow. Systems are too different, porting characters between editions is broken by incompatibility, etc.
You couldn't just backport Starfinder's rules and ditch the ship combat?

Well, they don't have a -2 penalty to one of their other ability scores, for what that's worth.

The rest of the group and I had actually missed that there were the traditional minuses to racial stats. Not a single one of us realized that there were subtractions to make. We also didn't realize that the Key Ability for each class was a further +2

Here you go

From this post

James Jacobs wrote:

This is a correction we're looking to make that is in many ways long overdue to the world.

Ethnically, Chelaxians are identical to Taldans and really always have been; they've been traditionally treated as their own ethnicity mostly due to the fact that their government is diabolic, which is a weird reason to do that. Especially since that didn't hold true for the nation pre-Age of Lost Omens. (Note that they don't even have their own ethnic language.) So with the new edition, we're adjusting that to include them under the umbrella of the Taldan ethnicity.

Never mind that Chelish and Taldan culture are radically different even before the Age of Lost Omens. Is the only thing binding them the color of their skin (Chelish already tend toward the pale side)?

So my group did a bit of Doomsday Dawn part 1 last night after spending upwards of 3 hours in character generation (unreasonable even for a new system), and I'm going to rant a bit (and I'm going to capitalize game system names for ease of reference):

Including the notes to gain an Ancestry Feat and Background in your class level up chart prompted two players to become confused as to whether they were supposed to pick a second Ancestry Feat and Background.

Switching to Unchained's action economy system is cool (though simply saying how many of my actions are taken by casting a given spell would be better than having a sidebar clumsily explaining that each component takes an action), but:

Adding your character level to absolutely everything serves only to make the wizard replace the fighter. Why make a fighter when I can make a muscle wizard and have him the fighter's equal after 5 levels with a couple weapon and armor proficiencies. At the moment, fighters do not gain additional attacks over time or anything else that makes them a viable threat over a caster class save for attacks of opportunity. And a wise GM mitigates those as much as he can.
Never mind that every skill is now tied intrinsically to your level, making any build a relatively effective face, loremaster, and lockpick all in one. It's trying to be 5e and it's bad at it.

TEML is uncommunicative of its properties.
It does not say -2, +0, +1, +2, or +3, it simply gives us a pip. At first glance this reminded me of WoD, but under analysis it's D&D2e's Weapon Mastery system applied to every skill as well as weapons and armor.
Not only does one not know what value they represent at a glance without reading the rulebook (and it didn't help that the GM miscommunicated their function at first), but the game is actively regressing its systems functions to an age where everyone was expected to memorize a hundred charts. Today's players do not memorize charts.

Action icons are uncommunicative of their properties. I don't want to consult a legend any time two chevrons are connecting in a way I don't quite recognize.

Feat types! There are five g~*~!~n Feat types! FIVE! Not categories, TYPES! Gained at different rates and under different circumstances!

Choosing Class Feats feels more like choosing what you are comfortable with losing. Having a plethora of selections at every Feat level can only exacerbate this, making the player worry about whether they should dip back into a previous level's feat catalogue for a good secondary from that level or to advance ever forward.

Humans are blatantly underpowered compared to literally every other Ancestry. Not only are they at -2 to one ability score, they don't even get their traditional bonus feat. It seems that the only reason to be a human is to spec into something other than human (half-elf/half-orc). And as long as we're making crossbreeding a level 1 feat, I want half-dwarves and three-fourths-lings.

Chelish is no longer considered a viable ethnicity for a character, almost as if we are to automatically assume that anyone from Cheliax is irredeemably evil and not worthy of play. Hmm...

How do I use Combat Maneuvers? Okay, they relocated Grapple to Athletics and breaking it to Acrobatics, but what about the other maneuvers? Where's my CMB and CMD? The simplicity of resolving such maneuvers was, for me, one of three primary draws to Pathfinder over D&D3e/3.5e, the other two being the simplified perception skill and clearly indicated Experience Point gain for each encounter without having to consult a chart. Speaking of which:

The new Experience Point system is TERRIBLE!
Under the PF1 system we had to consult a chart once per level, but now, harkening back to the days of 3e, we must consult a chart every encounter, slowing down the game considerably. Locking it to 1000 XP per level looks like a JRPG (notably the .hack series) and such XP adjustments are best done by a computer.
You could actually put the chart on the character sheet, but that would put the onus on players to figure out how much XP they received. Again, today's players do not memorize charts

And the group couldn't figure out if the goblin fight in Doomsday Dawn A2 was supposed to award 120 XP (30 XP per level 0 creature slain) or just 30 XP for a flat level 0 encounter.

And sideways character sheets are for hipsters! They also make the flap of a binder eat valuable table space. At least PF2 included enough room for spells this time, so there's that.