Hi
First post, and I apologize for the length of the post. But as completely new player when it comes to pen and paper RPGs I have maybe a unique perspective on the game. And hopefully someone here can help me or cause improvements in future books. I don't expect answers to the questions in the following text, most of them are rhetorical anyways. Just help me with the overall points of critic and how to avoid them myself, if at all possible.
My friends and I are hardcore strategy board gamer, as a matter of fact we learned from the Pathfinder RPG because we played the Pathfinder adventure card game. Long story short a group of well educated (we all have PHDs) fantasy nerds want to try this RPG thing and these are our expectations:
1. Interesting decisions, high decision density and the decisions have to matter. (This is a necessity for all our games)
2. No artificial boundaries due to game mechanics. (This is The selling point for RPGs for us and for us the main difference to board games)
3. Robust fantasy framework and world building. (The world has to make sense, given the new fantasy elements. It should feel organic and should have a closed intrinsic logic.)
Our plan was to start with 2 or 3 sessions around xmas this year. To learn the game and how to gm a game, I played PF2E since the play test. Up to now I played under 4 different GMs (mostly to learn different stiles) and in 5-6 groups and my experiences are:
1. The game is boring.
I know harsh critic, but this is my reasoning. From my point of view the decisions of the player don't matter at all. Most choices regarding my characters have nearly no influence. Just an example what can a 18 strength char do, what a char with 16 can't?
What it boils down to are tiny numerical advantages, which don't matter most of the time. Yes you do 1 damage more with 18 strength but this only matters if the evil guy would go down exactly due to this 1 point difference. Otherwise you have to spend another action just like the 16 strength char. Feat choices are even worse from my experience. For me there are three categories of feat “choices”: 1. necessary, 2. niche and tiny numerical advantage, 3. improved action/spell economy. None of these are really fun or interesting decisions, because all of them don't really change what your char can do. Its just more of the same or you have the feeling “I need a feat to do this trivial thing, really?”
Than you have the combat part of the game. In one group I play a 2-handed fighter. I'm level 6 now and my combat is: attack/attack/move. That's it. The times when it was useful to use other actions are in the low single digit percentage and even than dictated by the adventure path. In another group I play a sword and board fighter and despite having a different setup it boils down to nearly the same: attack/(attack or raise shield)/(move or raise shield). Also the versatile classes (aka caster) are extremely predictable. Which is not only repetitive but also causes the feeling of “this game is solved a trained monkey could do this”. In addition you cant really fight together, enabling new and unique actions and “comboing of” what some else did. If at all, it boils down to boring and tiny numerical advantages.
Then we have the out of combat decisions. In my experience, it doesn't really matter what you do our what your background is. The game itself dictates how much wealth, exp, cohords you will have at a certain point in the story. One of my fighters is a whoring drunkard, raised in an orphanage and the other is a son from a rich, no-drama mercantile family. The later is impossible to play and in constant conflict with the wealth limit of the game, access to items and the adventure path. While the drunkard fits rights in, because he doesn't have his own agenda or ties to the world. Yes the GM has a lot of influence and can try to make it “work”, but the game doesn't make it easy for him/her. And the solution feels most of the time like a cube in the triangle part of the puzzle.
For me it boils down to: follow the adventure hook to the next fight or skill check; then roll dice; then die or go on to the next adventure hook. While the inter party banter on the way can be fun, ultimately I'm not the one who makes the decisions. The author of the adventure path or the GM made most of them a long time ago.
2. The game is/feels unfair or trivial.
The variance in the game is by design extremely high, which doesn't lead to good story telling. Just two examples. After a headed discussion about dwarven ale. A fight breaks out. The dwarven monk looses initiative against all 3 low level opponents. After 9 attacks (incl. 3 crits), where the monk player could not do anything, the monk goes down. Second example. Paladin in heavy armor leads the group into a cavern. We spot some “lizards” and they us, initiative is rolled, 4 lizards are first to go and charge the paladin because she was in front. Some lucky crits later and the paladin is dead. Non of us could do anything to prevent this. The bad part is there was no player mistake, if we would run the last encounter several times in nearly all of them the player would easily win. What the sudden death experiences achieved, is that we are all now extremely risk averse. Which starts a very sad cascade. Because we don't want to fight or do anything remotely dangerous the GM has to force us due to even more dangerous plot consequences. Now gang pressed into a decision we just roll the dice. Of course the GM can mitigate the “dying” problem by essentially cheating but at this point the player win by default and their decisions matter even less.
3. Immunities are bad game design
Most likely immunity against XY are in the game because it “makes sense” or to give flaws to some strategies. But in reality its just bad game design. Just for the discussion sake lets take my rogue (thief) poisoner. In the last 4 sessions this char had to fight against monsters who are immune to: sneak attack or critical damage or precision damage or piercing damage or poison or paralyze. Every! single! creature! had one or several of these immunities. The GM apologized, he only read the first 2 books before the campaign began and only in book 3 the “immune to rogue” started. In my opinion, this is not the GMs fault. The game should provide alternative strategies to overcome or circumvent such obstacles. But there are no such options. I had to take all my feats and wealth just to be able to attack with poisoned daggers. With only 3-4 feat choices you cant really diversify your combat strategies. The only reasonable approach for a player or GM for this adventure path would be to not play or let play a rogue. Which just relegates the -circumvent the immunities part- to outside knowledge before the campaign even starts. If for example, no one in the party uses poison (because the GM warned the players) the line “immune to poison” has 0 relevance. So what did the immunity mechanic achieve in diversifying strategies or allow interesting decisions in game?
4. The rules and character sheet are to abstract
As I understand it up to now. The rules are on purpose very abstract to allow fast game play and avoid unfun game states. Nothing wrong here, but the abstraction level is just to high for the story telling part. As a beginner, game actions often don't make sense or the immersion is constantly gone. Together with the points above I have most of the time the feeling as if I play a bad dungeon crawl board game and not a role playing game. Just some examples:
1. Combat is so abstract, as a fighter you just stand in the same spot and attack. It doesn't matter if your enemy is a gargantuan sized T-Rex or a wolf.
2. No GM could explain what the short cut “hit points” represents in the game world. Why can a char fall down from 300 feet, survive with 1 HP, and then go on and run a marathon in record time.
3. Similar is the short cut “experience points”. Why can a char go in a cave, shank some goblins, and come out speaking and writing perfect Japanese and guzzling down a vial of poison he would have died to before, just because he “leveled up” and his HP pool increased.
I don't want to make fun out of the game design. My point is -as a new player- I have to constantly reverse engineer what the game wants to tell me and it doesn't help that the game terminology is contradictory or confusing. For example HP -according to GMs- should be a short cut for the “combat functionality” including luck, ability to reduce a fatal blow to a miss, stamina and the ability to take some bruising hits. According to GMs - HP has nothing to do with wounds or injuries and a loss of HP means nothing until explicitly caused by an attack ability (for example bleeding). Also an increase of HP does not mean that the character can tank now several fatal hits. The first fatal hit is when you go to negative HP.
Given that, why are we rolling -to hit- and than -damage-? Implying a player hits and gets hit and takes damage. Why does a cleric uses spells like -cure critical wounds- or -heal- to reload the HP bar. When according to the explanation my char is not wounded or needs healing. How do -temporary HPs- fit into all of it? Is my character in game aware of his current HP pool status?
5. No robust fantasy framework.
To play Pathfinder you have to accept that magic, wizards and monster exist. Just like in any fantasy movie or novel. But the artist must provide a framework for the audience so they can achieve -plausible denial of disbelieve-. Or more simply the story just have to makes sense. In a collaborative story telling game the framework must go one step further and must be robust. As audience you accept that A leads to B and action A was a good plan because the hero just did it and the hero was successful. If you play the hero you have to know all the options and the consequences, to be able to choose action A instead of B or C. The Pathfinder RPG does a very bad job explaining the framework of the game in game. The game just assumes that you have this kind of knowledge.
Another really important characteristic of a robust framework is a closed logic. Lets take as example dragons. So in our world dragon exist. We establish some simple facts what dragons are: T-Rex size or bigger, flying, fire breathing, the source of fire, life cycle, intelligence, food requirement than run a “simulation” with your fantasy setting up to now and let the inhabitants react to the new thread. Than you take the result and let the dragon side react and so on until both sides are in a closed and balanced ecosystem. The final step is to take this ecosystem and explain it in your lore.
The end result is the GM and players have the same framework to play with. Player can make deductions, GMs can explain why something is the way it is and most importantly allow for creative game play without the feeling you are cheesing the game.
But not only monster have a bad framework. Magic itself is a complete mess. Especially Golarion lore is self contradictory regarding magic, its use by players, the protection against magic, use of magic or magic items, availability of magic items, crafting of magic items, economy or market share of magic services / magic items and influence of magic on everyday life. And all of this in a single small town like Sandpoint.
Gods and religion are in a similar state. You can literally talk to gods, ask them questions and they answer. The same is true for plants, animals and even water or stone. And on top all of this you can visits the afterlife and bring deceased back to life. The sad part of all this is, all the new possibilities are not in game for interesting philosophical questions or a radical fantasy framework. Nope 100% of the time they are used for cheap adventure plot hooks / solutions.
Last characteristic of a robust framework: If it is fundamentally different, make it fundamentally different. In Pathfinder, if a wizard, sorcerer, druid or cleric cast fireball it is 100% identical. Why does the sorcerer whose magic is impulsive, improvised, spontaneous use exactly the same spell as all other. Why does a cleric of Sarenrae (very strong healing theme) grant a spell which harms allies in a battle. Why does she not grant a variant which heals allies and damages enemies of the faith?
If you have a multiclass wizard, druid, cleric, sorcerer. It would be possible to learn Fireball from 3-4 different sources. Is the character aware of the differences? Your char sheet is clear because you have several spell pages/lists but in game the differences feel superficial. Also the limitations on spellcasting feel artificial. If such a multiclass char had access to 8 level 3 fireballs why can't a normal wiz not achieve such a feat. Other example, lets just take multiclass sorc/wiz. The char starts out as an improvised caster and later goes to study under some master wizard. Shouldn't the sorc/wiz just improve and refine his raw talents and not learn spellcasting new or parallel? From the game lore he just makes the exact same thing twice.
The bad framework is also the sole reason one of the sandbox / free form stile campaigns imploded after a couple of sessions. It came down to a “mother may I” game, which was not fun for all involved. Maybe my expectations are to high but frankly a good framework is why I would pay for an RPG. As an amateur I could come up with a bad framework myself a good one needs professionals.
6. Constant rules discussions
All of the points above cause a lot of “rule discussions” in the groups I play. The discussions are for me very annoying, the end of a lot of groups or campaigns and most likely the end of my RPG experience. At its core all discussions start because someone wants to preserve the tiny advantage a feat gives. Or the player wants to try something out of the box but the game framework is just bad and what you think happens or is possible is miles from what the GM thinks is possible. And by design of the game the GM “wins” such discussions by default. But this leaves an interesting philosophical question. If I present the GM infinite possibilities and ask what can I do, and the GM says -only this one- who made the decision and ultimately is the player of the game?
