Why is playtesting considered more important than other forms of analysis?


Advanced Class Guide Playtest General Discussion

51 to 100 of 167 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Liberty's Edge

3 people marked this as a favorite.

@AD - The rules exist to support the Adventure Paths and Modules. Unlike TSR and WOTC, they make money on people playing the disposable modules more than needing new crunch to feed the monster.

If the new classes get people to pick up a module or AP to try out the new class, win.

When that doesn't work anymore, that is when we will see a new edition that will still likely be backwards compatible but not rushed out at risk of bankruptcy as was the case with the current book.

As good a job as Jason did, it was still a rush job. All acknowledge that.

I for one look forward to a 1.5 edition.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality. In reality...

One thing I'd like to emphasize is that the end result is supposed to be something fun to play. The numbers may come out perfect, yet the result may still be a loser. It's a bit like designing software for goofed usability. You can put your best analysis and theory to use in building the UI, but if you don't test it with real users, you'll never know if you've got a winner.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:


@Tark - the alternative is as I have said all along, and as I have said for years now on these boards. Focus on fixing the broken stuff before piling more on top of it.

Clearly Paizo has decided that is not the most profitable approach to things.

Perhaps they are right. I suspect they are just perpetuating the cyclical edition problem and PF will become yet another version with its own set of grognards as the game moves on. Time will tell.

Ok, now how?

Remember simply issuing errata doesn't solve the problem of the text in the hardcopies.

You can reprint the class, but, again, that doesn't help the guys who bought the book off the shelf and have no interest in buying another.

And what about the people who don't see the problem? There's a guy running around who preaches that fighters are overpowered and rogues are crazy good, how would a fix to the rogue to make him closer to par with his peers help his group?

So yeah, they release more stuff in books. It's helped certain classes. Barbarian's are certainly better by it. Monks have some actually powerful options. Rogues are a trickier problem since their problems are a touch more fundamental. Really the best place to look for honest to god fixes are in 3pp since they have less to lose and everything to gain by changing the core.

And really, releasing a new edition to fix two or three classes just isn't a good idea when you run a schedule a year a head of time with multiple products going at the same time, a massive organized play organization to support, and a steady stream of adventure paths going out the door.

And ultimately we tabletop gamers are an incredibly conservative lot. Card gamers see edition changes once every couple of years. We are still using the same base system old enough to drive a car and get a job. Any changes will be met with grumbling and irritation about any number of things.

Anyway, subject dropped, I just felt the need to point out that from a business standpoint it's easier to push new content than try and sell you on the "improved" version.


I've been trying to get away from theory crafting lately. I have had fewer chances to actually play the game recently, and each character that should, in theory, have been a ton of fun to play was uninteresting at the actual table.

I had characters designed to be at the top of the power curve, who could probably cleave through whole adventures on their own because I was used to non-contributing party members.

In practice what happened was that my character was never in any real danger. When I wasn't at the table the party got its clocks cleaned but when I was there I would spend a round buffing and then control the battlefield. That was not interesting for me. Also, my characters combinations of abilities required a more extensive knowledge of the rules than my DMs had. So I wound up having a really miserable time with my "build" even with slightly over 20 points to work wit, because of hostility toward "rules lawyers."

Playtesting shows how the rules work themselves out at various tables during play. Jason is going for fun to play characters. Having all the character classes have vital statistics that are balanced against each other would be interesting, but I think a project like that goes outside of thee scope of the first playtest. Besides, how balanced something is doesn't indicate how fun something is going to be (cough 4E cough.)


I think that the Playtest is about 3 things.
And i will list them in random order.

1. They want to hear how the folks that play the game feel about what they are doing.

2 they want the folks that play the game to feel that they are part of the creative process. this is very improtant the thing with being allowed in the back room so to speak, is big in most forms of entertainment today. We are part of the Making of this great game.

3. The play test greate actual playing experiences. Nothing you get for free is worth a dam thing.
But those of us that take the time to sit down and join the Beta play test we feel empovered by it. and even better if we end up seeing the feedback we gave in the final book.

Customer partisapation; how ever that is spelled, is the way to go.

So i may sound like a bitter old man, and i am those things exept bitter, this is about making the players feel part of the team, as mucht as it is about making a better game. And today those things cannot really be seperatet anyway.

Edit: 2 and 3 looks abit like the same i know but one is about peeking to the process and the other is about feeling that it matters that you do.
And both is about experience economy and selling stuff.


I'll toss in my 2 copper:

Here's a reason why play testing matters: Dungeon's & Dragons 3.0 thru 3.5 and the crap tastic ways WoTC slapped together their material. Do you know how much useless crap there was in those splat books? Do you know just how over powered some of their stuff was.

Lets take the 3.5 Sorcerer for example. From 3.0 to 3.5 D&D tried to argue the spontaneous spell casting was SO BROKEN AND POWERFUL that the Sorcerer didn't need anything else in terms of class abilities. It is a well known fact that the Sorcerer was one of the worst classes in the game and that Spontaneous casting was nowhere near as powerful as it was assumed to be. Even after all the "play testing" data came back from 3.0 they still didn't bother updating the class.

While play testing may give biased results, they still tell the developers weather or not something is working mechanically in play which can be very different from how it appears on the design table.

Paizo's solution may not be perfect, but at least the community as a whole has some influence on how these classes come out. And I think many of us despite our gripes with certain design decisions, feel as though the classes in Pathfinder are a better reflection of what the community as a whole wants to play, rather than a set of prescribed classes that the designers think we want to play.


@AD A lot of people have fun playing the rogue, monk, and fighter. If a groups feels they are seriously underpowered the group will usually create houserules. As ciretose pointed out, Paizo makes money selling adventure paths and modules rather than releasing a new edition every few years.

The traditional rogue, monk, and fighter serve an important role as written- there is a relatively simple learning curve to play them at low levels. They hold their own at low levels, and players who have been playing since 1E or the original boxed sets often enjoy having continuing in some of the old standby classes. I'm guessing there will be upgraded archetypes and/or options for all the existing classes in ACG, but even if there aren't a lot of players will play rogues, monks, and fighters and buy modules and APs.

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

They have paid, experienced designers to theorycraft.

The ability to crowd source playtest data is something they can't do in house.

I think theorycrafters are listened to as well (see Arcanist revision). But they need to see if the hypotheses put forth by the designers and theorycrafters hold water in actual play.

As for not having time to playtest. I've been running Kingmaker for going on 4 years now. I asked my group if we could take two weeks to run a playtest at level 1 and level 7. They were cool with it and so that's what we're doing. Long-term campaigns will still be there when the playtest is over.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

The fun part of this discussion is that this constant assertion that Paizo has covered the bases with theorycrafting with their dedicated in house talent, and really only needs playtesting at this point is thoroughly testable, and WLL be tested.

So I'll check back in a few months after this splat book is released and the theorycrafters predictions have, or have not, become actual in game issues. It doesn't matter anyway, the precedent has been set that any problems with the rules can be "fixed" with new content, so if the classes in this book end up with major flaws, heck, that's just a reason to create a new batch of classes to "fix" the ones being introduced now.


Malwing wrote:

Rogue and Monk are often the subject of a lot of arguments on this board.

Its almost unanimous that Rogue is a weak class.

However I've never had a campaign without a Rogue. People like playing Rogues which may be more important to Paizo than how strong the Rogue actually is.

I'd agree with the original point if there was way more playtest feedback than theory-crafting, but as it stands now;

1) I've been following this on the message boards since it was announced and some people have been theory crafting before the pdf even came out. Practically within 5 minutes of the pdf hitting the net 'reviews' started popping up.

2) I think some changes have already happened due to what people have pointed out without playtesting so I don't think they're ignoring what's being said, they just value playtest feedback more due to it's scarcity.

3) In some cases playtests are really needed. I have not played or seen a Brawler yet and I really need to make one before I can form a real opinion on it's Martial Maneuvers class feature. People like it, and it looks good on paper but it makes me nervous of people looking through many books to find the right feat for the job. But Players could just be lazy and make a list of a few feats they like and stick with that, then I have nothing to worry about.

4) I've kept my mouth shut about my builds because I have not played them but some things that are complained about are not my complaints, at least on the character sheets.

Exactly, especially #1. Within minutes (once the servers came back up ;)), people were giving very unkind reviews of the material -- in many cases unhelpful remarks that boiled down to "I don't like this" or "It wasn't what I wanted". While that is useful for a given value, it is hard to work that into what is wrong or right with the classes as they stand.

We're working on playtesting the material at our table; one player said she cannot make a decision until the art is set, so I am not sure how well that is going to work out..

DM aka Dudemeister wrote:

I think theorycrafters are listened to as well (see Arcanist revision). But they need to see if the hypotheses put forth by the designers and theorycrafters hold water in actual play.

As for not having time to playtest. I've been running Kingmaker for going on 4 years now. I asked my group if we could take two weeks to run a playtest at level 1 and level 7. They were cool with it and so that's what we're doing. Long-term campaigns will still be there when the playtest is over.

This is pretty much what we did as well. I can understand the idea of just theorycrafting and moving on about this, but then, I often disagree with much of the theorycrafting on the existing classes -- we have dozens if not hundreds of threads on what is wrong or right with the paladin, rogue, fighter, monk and so on and people aren't exactly agreeing. So practical playtesting experience gives a little better idea what actually is working in play and what isn't rather than just guessing.


@DM_aka_dudemeister - I'm glad you have the ability to take a short diversion from your main campaigns to do play testing. My group has enough problems meeting on a regular basis that I have to do a recap for everyone every time we play already. If we take two or three sessions to do some playtesting, that will mean our regular campaign may not be back in play until after the Superbowl.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
ciretose wrote:


I don't think they are going to be able to "fix" the monk or rogue until the next edition. Doing so would obsolete the core version, and that isn't something I see them being interested in doing.

How is that core rogue and core monk are not obselete now?

Liberty's Edge

Nicos wrote:
ciretose wrote:


I don't think they are going to be able to "fix" the monk or rogue until the next edition. Doing so would obsolete the core version, and that isn't something I see them being interested in doing.
How is that core rogue and core monk are not obselete now?

The monk with a single weapon is still kicking ass and chewing bubble gum Nicos.

And some people like the flavor of the rogue. Crazy concept I know, liking flavor as much as mechanics...

The monk is the mystical warrior to the Brawlers pro-wrestler.

I was never a fan of the rogue, so I'm not going to defend it now. But I will say I know a lot of people who love playing rogues, so in my book it is a huge success.

In the "Name your favorite class" thread, rogue got 7 favorites.

Magus got zero.

People like having fun. Theorycrafting and game play are not the same.


ciretose wrote:


How is that core rogue and core monk are not obselete now?

The monk with a single weapon is still kicking ass and chewing bubble gum Nicos.

And some people like the flavor of the rogue. Crazy concept I know, liking flavor as much as mechanics...

1) it is am onk power attacking two handing a weapon, not just whatever weapon.

2) Weird that youa re talking about the flavor of rogue in the same trhead when you said that unarmed monks have problems, you know, the most flavorful option for monks (At least the one I have seen most used by begginers)

=======

Yes, the flavor of the rogue and the monk is the only reason people still play the class, it is bad that the class mechanics does not meet the class flavor.


I'm thinking along the lines that theorycrafters (like myself) will NEVER shut up. There simply isnt enough time in the short period of playtesting for everyone to test the new classes. So they are trying to get those few who DO test to actually say how it went.
I've been trying to get into a few local testing games, but they simply filled up too fast. So no playtesting for me, there simply isnt time otherwise (especially with finals coming up).

As for general "system" problems, those will never satisfyingly be dealt with. I would hardly be surprised if the designers "thought" they could fix the problems of 3.5, but it simply created new problems. If only because they felt obligated to keep so much stuff from 3.5.4

And since the entire "raison d'être" of paizo is to satisfy those who still want d&d 3.5, they can never stray too far from that center.

A for me, I'm a fairly new player. ONly been playing PnP since this summer. I've played with several different systems, and none of them have the depth & complexity of pathfinder. That is both a blessing & a curse, since, well, there is so much to keep track of. And sometimes, sh*t hits the fan and it's too late to change anything.

Liberty's Edge

@nicos - More people grew up with the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sword fights than the Bruce Lee stuff. A lot of people seem to like the flurrying sword thing.

Flavor is as flavor does. It is a flavor, not my taste but a flavor.


7 people marked this as a favorite.

To all those talking about classes that looked good in theory but ended up terrible in practice, and then mentioned classes like the 3.0 Sorcerer and the Mystic Theurge, I can only say, "Um, what?"

Those are exactly the sorts of classes that need theorycrafting to show why they're weak.

I think a major problem here is the assumption that WotC and Paizo are all run by theorycrafters--they're not. I actually know quite a bit of the staff of another game company and I've learned something over the years: published game designers are generally not theorycrafters.

All those unpublished game designers (like me) are, because we're too busy being nitpicky and getting everything perfect, while the successful guys are just putting out content they love and not worrying about the mechanics as long as they're perceived as fun.

Real theorycraft never analyzed the 3.0 Sorcerer--it was just a cursory, "oh, spontaneous casting is clearly better, so it has to be penalized compared to prepared." No real analysis and thought went into that decision, and if it did, it was probably put in there to be bad on purpose, since 3.0 was designed with purposefully bad options to make the people who avoided them feel cool and smart (I'm still mad at myself for the fact that it worked).

Mystic Theurge is another good example. That's just thinking, "Oh no! They have both kinds of spellcasting! That's better than one kind!" If anyone had really thought about it, they'd immediately see why it's problematic (action economy, quadratic rise in magical power, etc.).

So, you guys are coming at it from the stand point that Paizo has all the non-playtest data they could ever need, and in my opinion, they probably need a lot more of those kinds of people, if they even have any at all.

They're great guys and I love how responsive they are with the community, but I mean, look at the playtest. They have a class that is literally a Druid who traded Wildshape and 3 spell levels for some feats and two lesser ranger abilities. They have another class whose main feature (practically their only feature) penalizes the vast majority of classes they're likely to play with. I think maybe a little bit more theorycraft is needed here...


Anthony Kane wrote:
Lets take the 3.5 Sorcerer for example. From 3.0 to 3.5 D&D tried to argue the spontaneous spell casting was SO BROKEN AND POWERFUL that the Sorcerer didn't need anything else in terms of class abilities. It is a well known fact that the Sorcerer was one of the worst classes in the game and that Spontaneous casting was nowhere near as powerful as it was assumed to be. Even after all the "play testing" data came back from 3.0 they still didn't bother updating the class.

Bit OT, but I really must ask where you've been getting these "facts"? The sorcerer is a tier 2, borderline tier 1, class and clearly one of the more powerful classes in the game, regardless of whether that is 3.0, 3.5 or PF. This isn't opinion, but easily provable in theory as well as practice. And AFAIK, an overwhelming majority of the people who have expressed their views and experiences on this subject on the internet (on forums, blogs etc) say the exact same thing. The PF additions to the class (Bloodlines) were good IMO and added some much needed flavor, but don't change the sorcerer's position on the scale of the classes' relative power - the wizard, druid and cleric are still more powerful (perhaps with the exception of human sorcerers) while a majority of the other PF classes are significantly less so. Or did I somehow misinterpret sarcasm or what you meant by "one of the worst classes"?

On topic, this differing view on the sorcerer is a good example of why play testing can be good but may just as well be heavily biased and useless, as it clearly was in this sorcerer case if the mentioned "play testing" data supports the "one of the worst classes" view. As someone said earlier, a theoretical analysis is only as accurate as the person making the analysis is capable of, but the Paizo designers (should) at least have the system mastery to be able to sort out the reasonable and well funded analyses from those clearly based on a poor understanding of the system. Which is why I do believe, at least when discussing mechanics and related issues like balance, theory could be and often is a lot more valuable than play testing.

This is especially true when quite a few posters here as well as on other forums discussing the subject have a greater grasp on the system, and what is needed to remedy its most serious flaws, than the designers themselves seem to have. Which isn't strange or necessarily bad. If I was a designer, I would certainly expect it and carefully read any critical theorycraft such posters write about my work. The question might be whether the designers do that in this case, and if they don't, why not?


There's also issues like the Warpriest where it having like 4-5 per-day pools to track (spells, sacred armor, sacred weapon, blessings, channel energy) makes things a little less fun regardless of whether or not it works. Theorycrafting would account for whether or not it works but you don't realize how much of a pain in the ass it is until someone is trying to find room on their character sheet for all these pools in addition to any non class feature pools they have and having trouble remembering what they can do. I have players with short enough attention spans where this becomes a huge problem.

Speaking of the Sorcerer; In play I've only seen two Wizards. Most people go for Sorcerer. One person who did play a wizard is heavily experienced in building as opposed to playing and pretty much made a crap wizard. One person was relatively new to Pathfinder and while it didn't make the party irrelevant it was extremely useful. I don't know what happened that's just how things went down since I've been playing, a bunch of ok to good sorcerers, a crap Wizard and a good Wizard. There's no real point to that story, they're just observations. I have not seen enough Wizard play to know how good they are on average although I have yet to see a crap Sorcerer and I've seen mostly noobs play them. (Including my fiance who has a hard time believing that Power attack is good for a Barbarian.)


One of the best analogies that compares playtesting in contrast to theorycrafting is World War II and the Germans.

In the sense of theorycraft, the Axis could have easily won that war with their numbers and stategic maneuvering that they could have done with the analyzation of the numbers. But that's all theorycrafting for Pathfinder contains; numbers and equations (1 Time Stop + 20 Delayed Blast Fireballs = Automatic Death, yay!). There is also the universal understanding about theories being mostly true, but not true in all cases. That's why they're called thoeries, which is a major part of the term theorycrafting.

Suppositions and Estimations lack the absolution the Devs need to make a class right. The difference between Thoughts (of Theorycrafting) and Knowledge (of Playtesting) is accuracy. It doesn't contain the instinct of what a player would do in situation X or encounter Y with their chosen build, the same way the numbers don't factor in troop morale, expectations, etc. in the elements of World War II, just like playtesing does.

Expanding on my WWII analogy, if we went by the numbers, we'd all be Nazis or dead with the Jewish people. It's a good thing we're not all Nazis (or dead), otherwise numbers would be the only thing that matters, and it takes a fair portion of fun out of the game.

Of course, numbers do have their place, quantifying the strength of a class, but at the same time we can't just say numbers are superior to instinct and ideals, the very thing that makes the class what it is. Next thing you know, we turn into robots who care only about numbers with no emotion other than elimination. Doesn't that sound familiar?


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
feytharn wrote:
Playtesting is what they can't do that well in house?
I would find this difficult to understand since Paizo is pretty much the only company on earth that will actually pay people to play the game on company time.

The problem is that when you write a set of rules and mechanics, you do it with a certain intent or concept behind it. As a designer, it can sometimes be hard to see all the unintended consequences of the rules you've made when you started out with a concept in mind.

When you open it up to actual playtesting, you now have hundreds of minds looking at this fresh, from many different angles.

And while theorycrafting is all well and good, I've never had a character "plan" survive more than a few levels when faced with in-game situations. This is why playtesting helps the developers. Because what actually happens in a game can be drastically different from planned theorycraft. You actually have to live through those levels from encounter to encounter, non-combat and combat alike, marathon monster waves and single BBEG APL+5 TPKs.

Theorycrafting also skirts a line of armchair developing. What's "balanced" or "broken" is actually kind of a wide margin amongst the gaming populace. Being the internet, people will use hyperbole to push their own agenda of class development by use of theorycraft.

Actually playing the class, and then saying that your character didn't hack it because X gives more weight because you actually gave it a shot in the real world.

It's like my 5 yr old saying he doesn't like the new pasta cassarole I made, even though it has the exact same ingredients as the spaghetti meal he loves so much. Gotta try it before you can tell me you don't like it!

.

Playtesting also gives data that is hard to see in just the numbers. Does parry in play actually feel like you are parrying? Or does it feel too much like a skill check or a dodge? You can write a rule a number of different ways to get the same effect (proactively stop an attack from landing), but the way you do can make it feel like a very different thing.
You can guess and estimate, but until you actually try it out repeatedly in play, you won't know exactly how it "feels". Perhaps it feels to "dodgy-like" instead of "I attack your attack" that parry should feel. This is info they will very much like to know, and would be hard for a developer who wrote the rules to suss out on himself.
If the majority of playtest reports come back saying "it was effective, but it felt too much like dodging attacks", that is exactly what they are wanting to get from this.

.

Lastly, I don't think they are ignoring theorycrafting completely here. They've already looked at changing the Arcanist quite dramatically and I don't recall seeing a flood of playtest reports about it.

It's just that playtesting data can cut through some of the knee-jerk numbers crunch responses and tone back some of the responses given.

I'm guessing the responses that give both playtesting data and theorycrafting on the reasons they experienced what they did holds the most weight overall.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Malwing wrote:
There's also issues like the Warpriest where it having like 4-5 per-day pools to track (spells, sacred armor, sacred weapon, blessings, channel energy) makes things a little less fun regardless of whether or not it works. Theorycrafting would account for whether or not it works but you don't realize how much of a pain in the ass it is until someone is trying to find room on their character sheet for all these pools in addition to any non class feature pools they have and having trouble remembering what they can do. I have players with short enough attention spans where this becomes a huge problem.

Huh? I've seen plenty of theoretical analyses of classes taking fiddly bookkeeping into account. Not in order to judge the class' power level of course, since that would be irrelevant, but certainly when judging its playability and "fun potential" for various types of players. I do this kind of analysis myself when looking at a class I've never played and so far I don't think I've ever been proven wrong when I see the class played in practice.

mplindustries wrote:

Those are exactly the sorts of classes that need theorycrafting to show why they're weak.

*snip*
Mystic Theurge is another good example. That's just thinking, "Oh no! They have both kinds of spellcasting! That's better than one kind!" If anyone had really thought about it, they'd immediately see why it's problematic (action economy, quadratic rise in magical power, etc.
This. The MT was actually proven to be much less powerful than many people thought just by using theorycraft. Quoting from the Giant in the Playground forums:
Quote:

NO! It did not show everyone otherwise because I and many others got it right from theorycraft. I had a prolonged internet argument with a guy who thought theurge was good based on having "so many spells", I kept pointing out that a single classed cleric was better by ANY reasonable standard. I finally had to point out that the single classed character could simply PREPARE level 2 spells in his level 6 slots if the other guy really thought more level 2 slots were all that.

He still didn't really concede, claiming that "no one would do that" so the theurge would still have more of the VITAL low level buffs.

I agreed that no one would do that, because nerfing yourself down to MT power was a stupid self nerf, and pointed to the existence of MASS versions of those buffs which is what you'd actually do. At which point he more or less conceded.

Note that my argument was theory craft, so was his, but one of us had actually looked at the classes and done the math based on what was available when 3.5 came out and got the later consensus analysis without serious difficulty.

I'll wager that pretty much ANYTHING you claim is only learned by practical experience about 3.x was spotted by SOMEONE prior to such experience based on theorycraft. This includes things that are wrong, but it's perfectly possible to come to correct conclusions from theorycraft and YOUR CHOSEN EXAMPLE of something missed by theorycraft is in fact something I personally spotted based on theorycraft.

So no.

I also think this poster is spot on in the last paragraph and I agree totally:

"I'll wager that pretty much ANYTHING you claim is only learned by practical experience about 3.x was spotted by SOMEONE prior to such experience based on theorycraft."


4 people marked this as a favorite.

All of the severely pro-playtesting posts here have common themes, and I'm starting to see that the developers probably share them.

They don't really care about the mechanical performance of the classes, they mostly seem concerned with the feel. They also seem to be coming from the perspective that the mechanics are basically done and set in stone, so the only thing left to work on is the "feel." That's why Arcanist was changed, not because it was weak (it's probably the only strong class in the playtest, frankly--maybe Shaman) but because it felt wrong.

I'm not worried about any of these classes becoming part of a broken combo or anything--they're all too weak for that. Investigator and Slayer are just the two flavors of upgraded Rogue, and that's good (frankly, it's about time), but the Investigator is no better than the Alchemist and Slayer is probably just the best spell-less class, which isn't much. Brawler is the unarmed DPR class lots of people wanted Monk to be, though it's still not very powerful--probably weaker in combat than a Figther, even. Swashbuckler is a more fun Dex fighter, but it's really no different, power wise, than a Lore Warden. Shaman is a prepared Oracle that trades their curse for a familiar and calls their revelations Hexes. Bloodrager seems like the new hotness, but it's going to prove to just be in the Ranger/Paladin tier, long term (though I must say it has a really, really bizarre flavor to be considered a "standard" concept I'll be seeing all the time).

No, my fear is that there will be very weak classes that serve no purpose getting published, and I will be constantly having to shoo people away from them because of how flavorful they are.

Skald is bad, but I think both the flavor and execution are lame, and everyone seems to know it (just look at how few posts their thread has), so I'm not worried about them so much.

But Hunter and Warpriest have extremely large amounts of traction with the playerbase (people like pets and WoW Beastmasters in particular, and Warpriest sounds cool and gives flashy cool abilities that seem fun). My fear here is that playtest reports are going to be generally favorable towards them, and disguise how bad they are.

"ZOMG, I love my Tiger! It's so cool that we can get better flank bonuses together!" Except you could do the same thing with a Druid or Ranger and have, you know, other features, too.

"I like beating face for my deity, but I don't want the flavor of a paladin--Warpriest is great!" Uh, have you seen this brand new thing available called the original cleric that has been basically the same since the original D&D? Congratulations on having an extra feat or two, I'll take my spells, channeling, and better domain powers, thanks.

No amount of playtesting is going to tell me any number of feats and some extra gold from not buying belts is worth 3 levels of spells and wildshape. None.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
mplindustries wrote:
But Hunter and Warpriest have extremely large amounts of traction with the playerbase (people like pets and WoW Beastmasters in particular, and Warpriest sounds cool and gives flashy cool abilities that seem fun). My fear here is that playtest reports are going to be generally favorable towards them, and disguise how bad they are.

Have you been reading the playtest reports in the feedback portion of this?

Because I have and that's not the feeling I've gotten from them at all.

So far the impression I've been getting is:

Hunters are the diet coke of druids.

Bloodragers are ragealicious.

Warpriests are mediocre to "alright".

Investigators are okay.

Slayers feel all but useless at times.

HAven't seen much on Brawlers.

Swashbucklers are hungry for Panache. Must be a new drug.

Shaman's are neat but confusing.

Skalds are Bard minus but spell kenning's neat.

And Arcanist's are not the heralds of the coming caster apocalypse afterall.

For all this doomsaying here that's not what I've really been seeing so far.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:
ciretose wrote:
@AD - And they gave monk and rogue alternative classes...

ciretose, I find you to be one of the most rational and valuable commenters on these boards, so your comments have heavy weight with me.

But is it your true opinion that the way to "fix" the rogue and monk is to replace them with new classes that might address the old classes' problems but also change the flavor rather dramatically?

I've got a player who loves monks. He has been bummed out since we converted to PF by his inability to create a monk that satisfies his goals. He's not going to want to play a replacement class. He wants to play a monk.

Our group has the same thing with rogues.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
TarkXT wrote:
Adamantine Dragon wrote:
ciretose wrote:
Adamantine Dragon wrote:
ciretose wrote:
@AD - And they gave monk and rogue alternative classes...

ciretose, I find you to be one of the most rational and valuable commenters on these boards, so your comments have heavy weight with me.

But is it your true opinion that the way to "fix" the rogue and monk is to replace them with new classes that might address the old classes' problems but also change the flavor rather dramatically?

I've got a player who loves monks. He has been bummed out since we converted to PF by his inability to create a monk that satisfies his goals. He's not going to want to play a replacement class. He wants to play a monk.

I don't think they are going to be able to "fix" the monk or rogue until the next edition. Doing so would obsolete the core version, and that isn't something I see them being interested in doing.

I think "a" monk is pretty good right now. It just isn't the unarmed monk.

I think the investigator or slayer fill the two things people complained about wanting in a rogue.

While neither is the perfect, I try to avoid having the perfect be the enemy of improvement.

Ah, so does that imply that you have more or less given up on the existing issues in the already published rules then?

Last I checked the Paizo staff on these boards have said they have no current plans to do a 2nd edition. So to say they won't be fixed until a new edition essentially is the same as saying they won't be fixed.

Which I think is a problem that can't be fixed with contrived new classes that will just cost people more money and which GMs may or may not accept in their games.

I have to admit that "Oh you want a fix for the monk? Buy this new book and accept the new flavor, oh and talk your GM into accepting (and buying) it too" isn't really the sort of "solution" to the problem that I would prefer.

I can see it bringing smiles to the finance dept at Paizo though.

So the alternative would be what exactly?

Just some little patches. Not rewrites of the classes, just some little patches in the form of new options.

In the same way that barbarians got some of the best rage powers in later books, a new book could have some cool rogue talents. Feats that could give fighters some narrative influence. Stuff like that. No need to go back to the drawing board or wait until Pathfinder Reloaded or whatever.


mplindustries wrote:
No amount of playtesting is going to tell me any number of feats and some extra gold from not buying belts is worth 3 levels of spells and wildshape. None.

These classes are supposed to be base classes of what people would have if they were multiclass of two classes. That's what the are being compared to.

So they are going to be built for people who wanted that combination.

Considering you've basically written off 7 feats, blessings, and free +5 enhancements to weapon and armor for 3 spell levels and 3d6 channeling, tells me you are looking for a full caster anyways.

Of course full caster wins. 7-9th spells basically win the game, when it comes to power.
But if someone wanted fightery combat instead of full caster, then this is a much better alternative than Fighter 10 / Cleric 10, and that's the point.

Get out of the thinking of "it sucks if it loses full caster power" and look at what this class is for.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Kaisoku wrote:
mplindustries wrote:
No amount of playtesting is going to tell me any number of feats and some extra gold from not buying belts is worth 3 levels of spells and wildshape. None.

These classes are supposed to be base classes of what people would have if they were multiclass of two classes. That's what the are being compared to.

So they are going to be built for people who wanted that combination.

Considering you've basically written off 7 feats, blessings, and free +5 enhancements to weapon and armor for 3 spell levels and 3d6 channeling, tells me you are looking for a full caster anyways.

Of course full caster wins. 7-9th spells basically win the game, when it comes to power.
But if someone wanted fightery combat instead of full caster, then this is a much better alternative than Fighter 10 / Cleric 10, and that's the point.

Get out of the thinking of "it sucks if it loses full caster power" and look at what this class is for.

Oh wow the confusion here is gold.

Mpl is going on about Hunters. Which, frankly, need love.

And you just jumped on him about Warpriests, who also need love but not in the way MPL described.


Mechalibur wrote:
The biggest reason, however, is that theory crafting can't answer one extremely important aspect of he class: is it fun to play?

The issue with this: I can play an NPC class and have a grand ol' time. That doesn't mean the class is good enough to sit among the PC classes though.

Cheapy wrote:
Why is experimental science considered more important than natural philosophy?

Theorycrafting is experimental science. Playtest is what comes after theorycraft. The Devs have already done their theorycrafting - That's how we got the classes as the .pdf presents them. It would be foolish of us to test them without providing our own theorycrafting. ;)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just tossing blades of grass in the wind here, but- it probably has something to do with the fact that this is a *playtest*, and not a *critical analysis* test.

They're not trying to get 50,000 extra designers on board, they'd just like some feedback into whether what the designers they've got are doing something that works and that is enjoyed.

On top of which, frankly, is the fact that the critical analysis that people seem to feel is falling upon deaf ears is not, in fact, falling upon deaf ears. Just because the folks at Paizo aren't jumping in to respond to every criticism, every suggestion, and every complaint, doesn't mean they aren't responding off-boards. (Vis a vis, the Arcanist revisions.)

I think there is a really strong sense of entitlement that comes along with the playtest that people seem to think they are going to have a direct and quantifiable role in the design process of these classes that is not only unrealistic, but completely unwarranted. It's the same sort of sense of entitlement that accompanied months of "When's it out? Is it out yet? How about now? C'mon guys! How long does it take to slap something together and put it out for us to look at? For free?"


3 people marked this as a favorite.
mplindustries wrote:
Psyren wrote:
This, and also, a lot of the theorycraft is off-base still. Sturgeon's Law very much applies to message boards and it's a lot easier for them to encourage playtest rather than wade through piles of conflicting theorycraft. After all, if they make it clear how much they value playtesting, they might convince people to playtest that might otherwise not have done so. This isn't a knock against theorycrafters, just an attempt to focus the feedback.

I would understand this point of view if the theorycrafting was actually conflicting, but in general, it's fairly unified on several issues.

Hunters, Warpriests, and Skalds, for example, have legitimate problems that the vast majority of analysts agree on. Swashbucklers have a lot of conflict about weapon choice, but the save issue is again, acknowledged universally. But these obvious mechanical issues keep getting swept under the, "I can't wait to hear about your playtest" rug.

In fact, other than minor typos and clarifications, the only issue that has really been addressed so far in the playtest was non-mechanical. Just about everyone complained about the (lack of) flavor in the Arcanist and they swiftly went about correcting it. This bothers me--they're putting "feel" above effectiveness.

Two points:

1 - In general, I think the Devs know that they'll get plenty of armchair feedback, so it would be foolish of them to not hammer home that they want people actually playing the classes as much as possible.
However...
2 - I think what I quoted above is spot-on. When problems with a class are blatant and playtesting isn't required to point them out, it's very... disheartening, when the Devs make a point to "sweep your opinion under the rug" because you aren't backing up the statement with numbers.

(And, for what it's worth, from what I can see most of the conflicting opinions on the classes aren't actually about the classes themselves, but instead on "which fix to this problem is the right one." People are disagreeing on how to fix the classes more than they're disagreeing on whether the classes need to be fixed or not.)


TarkXT wrote:
And you just jumped on him about Warpriests, who also need love but not in the way MPL described.

Ack, wrong quote.

Replace it with this:

mplindustries wrote:
Uh, have you seen this brand new thing available called the original cleric that has been basically the same since the original D&D? Congratulations on having an extra feat or two, I'll take my spells, channeling, and better domain powers, thanks.


mplindustries wrote:

All of the severely pro-playtesting posts here have common themes, and I'm starting to see that the developers probably share them.

They don't really care about the mechanical performance of the classes, they mostly seem concerned with the feel. They also seem to be coming from the perspective that the mechanics are basically done and set in stone, so the only thing left to work on is the "feel." That's why Arcanist was changed, not because it was weak (it's probably the only strong class in the playtest, frankly--maybe Shaman) but because it felt wrong.

I'm not worried about any of these classes becoming part of a broken combo or anything--they're all too weak for that. Investigator and Slayer are just the two flavors of upgraded Rogue, and that's good (frankly, it's about time), but the Investigator is no better than the Alchemist and Slayer is probably just the best spell-less class, which isn't much. Brawler is the unarmed DPR class lots of people wanted Monk to be, though it's still not very powerful--probably weaker in combat than a Figther, even. Swashbuckler is a more fun Dex fighter, but it's really no different, power wise, than a Lore Warden. Shaman is a prepared Oracle that trades their curse for a familiar and calls their revelations Hexes. Bloodrager seems like the new hotness, but it's going to prove to just be in the Ranger/Paladin tier, long term (though I must say it has a really, really bizarre flavor to be considered a "standard" concept I'll be seeing all the time).

No, my fear is that there will be very weak classes that serve no purpose getting published, and I will be constantly having to shoo people away from them because of how flavorful they are.

Skald is bad, but I think both the flavor and execution are lame, and everyone seems to know it (just look at how few posts their thread has), so I'm not worried about them so much.

But Hunter and Warpriest have extremely large amounts of traction with the playerbase (people like pets and WoW Beastmasters in...

The theme is common, but the levels are different.

The ratio from Flavor to Numbers is what makes the difference, whether it be 60/40, 75/25, etc.; I'd like to think a 50/50 ratio is fair and is something that people strife for, but if we do, then the power struggle ensues. One must be greater. One must be superior and make the bigger difference. Some value Flavor more than Numbers, and vice versa. Hence why we get into these arguments of Flavors V.S. Numbers.

As far as I'm concerned, the Devs are of the former in argument. From what I've seen from their actions, they want to keep the class features they have written as close to them as they possibly can; they aren't really open to rewriting classes entirely if they don't have to, since it's a lot of work and they don't want all that thought and "pure gold" gone to waste. My issue? They are going at it too much from a conservative viewpoint, even if it simply because it all doesn't add up, on both sides of the spectrum. The classes are being playtested, theorycrafted, and if the numbers or the flavor doesn't add up, changes that aren't being implemented, regardless of drasticity, need to occur for the consumers to stay ingratiated and continue to pursue business.

But the issue then stems from the same age old question asked on these boards: "Are the Numbers more important than the Flavor?" The numbers shouldn't be too difficult to figure out for class features, as it's a lesser part of the equation. This doesn't disregard its importance, but simply denotes its involvement ratio in developing the class. The Flavor comprises more of it because it not only helps form the mechanics of the class, but also signal what a feature is supposed to do, and the Numbers are simply a tool to assist with explaining its details.

On the topic of the new classes and their power regarding the numbers, it's obvious that the Devs are making these into Hybrid Classes; that is, a character build essentially comprised of 2 separate classes, when they designed this game to actually discourage multi-classing, due to the decreased effectiveness in character performance.

So of course these classes are going to be weaker; because they're designed like the same thing they lessened when they published Pathfinder. Who plays full-level multi-classes? Most are 1 or 2 level dips at best.

What they need to do is make them their own unique classes; this doesn't mean elements of what classes they are combined with aren't important, but that they shouldn't be taken so directly from the classes they are comprised of. For example, a Skald's Raging Song should not function exactly like the Rage class feature; it should have similar mechanics (+2 Str/Con, +1 Will Saves, scaling) to show its resemblance, but it needs its specific differences to make the class feature successful and have its own feel, and it needs to do so on a level unlike any other.

The Devs really need to think back and remember: What made the Gunslinger so successful? Its own niche of abilities and weapons and features. What about the Witch, Oracle, Cavalier, Inquisitor, and Alchemist? Same thing; some features are obviously quite similar, but there are several very different, very defining features that made them successful and fun to play. The fact that we're essentially re-hashing the same stuff because people wanted a better 'multi-classing' feel isn't going to sell because it's not anything new or better or cool; it's just a weaker, more silly version of two good classes that already exist.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
So of course these classes are going to be weaker; because they're designed like the same thing they lessened when they published Pathfinder.

Not lessened. Just not fixed. Like they fixed the single classing issue from 3.X.

Before it was "PrC or get out". Now it's "Single class or get out".

That doesn't mean multi-classing was reduced at all. People multi-class now as much as they did before (not a lot really, other than dipping, as you yourself mentioned).

.

I do agree with most of the rest of your post. I don't want ineffective classes or mechanics either, and would prefer more uniqueness in the class abilities (like what the Arcanist is getting).


1 person marked this as a favorite.
mplindustries wrote:

All of the severely pro-playtesting posts here have common themes, and I'm starting to see that the developers probably share them.

They don't really care about the mechanical performance of the classes, they mostly seem concerned with the feel.

mplindustries wrote:

No, my fear is that there will be very weak classes that serve no purpose getting published, and I will be constantly having to shoo people away from them because of how flavorful they are.

mplindustries wrote:

But Hunter and Warpriest have extremely large amounts of traction with the playerbase (people like pets and WoW Beastmasters in particular, and Warpriest sounds cool and gives flashy cool abilities that seem fun). My fear here is that playtest reports are going to be generally favorable towards them, and disguise how bad they are.

I think you just answered your own question with this.

If enough people find it fun, then they'll likely buy the product. What else really matters to a company at the end of the day? If enough players don't care about the mechanical performance, there's a cutoff point where the extra effort of balancing it simply isn't worth it.

Paizo have a winning formula right now. Why would they change it?

I really do sympathize with you as a player that wants the game to be different to the way it currently is in order to better support your playstyle. However, looking at the big picture clinically, you have to ask yourself how many more copies of Pathfinder products would get sold if they started worrying more about mechanical balance, and would the effort of maintaining that balance through every single new splatbook (as well as updating every existing product to fit) be worth it to them?

If enough people fed back in their playtest data that it felt unbalanced and unplayable (and here are the figures to prove it) then yes, it might help. If the majority however are just telling them how much fun they had playing that class, then it makes sense to go with that focus.


Matt Thomason wrote:
mplindustries wrote:

All of the severely pro-playtesting posts here have common themes, and I'm starting to see that the developers probably share them.

They don't really care about the mechanical performance of the classes, they mostly seem concerned with the feel.

mplindustries wrote:

No, my fear is that there will be very weak classes that serve no purpose getting published, and I will be constantly having to shoo people away from them because of how flavorful they are.

mplindustries wrote:

But Hunter and Warpriest have extremely large amounts of traction with the playerbase (people like pets and WoW Beastmasters in particular, and Warpriest sounds cool and gives flashy cool abilities that seem fun). My fear here is that playtest reports are going to be generally favorable towards them, and disguise how bad they are.

I think you just answered your own question with this.

If enough people find it fun, then they'll likely buy the product. What else really matters to a company at the end of the day? If enough players don't care about the mechanical performance, there's a cutoff point where the extra effort of balancing it simply isn't worth it.

Paizo have a winning formula right now. Why would they change it?

Because the collapse of 3.5 proves it isn't a winning formula. Once these are released into the wild these happy players will use the unbalanced classes in normal games and their companions will either be overshadowed or forced to carry the load and have less fun.

Exciting but unbalanced characters are only fun for the person playing them or in casual groups. They're anti-fun for everyone else at the table and the playtests aren't getting their input.

Really, I think this book probably shouldn't exist. Unless the AP line is flagging they should have started winding down the RPG line after Ultimate Campaign. Everything important is out. They probably have more Bestiaries to do, but not many. They need a couple more NPC Codices to cover the APG and Ultimate classes, but at this point there's already more player oriented content than most people can easily handle. About the only thing I'd like to see is something akin to Unearthed Arcana with alternate rules systems for some of the problem children like firearms, stealth, and combat maneuvers and maybe another attempt at words of power.


I figure that most of the other styles of analysis are doable by the design team easy enough. Versus the massive amounts of new thinking people have when building and playing.


Atarlost wrote:


Because the collapse of 3.5 proves it isn't a winning formula.

Really, that's about as much proof as the "we shouldn't balance Pathfinder because 4e failed" claims. Neither statement is proof of anything without real customer analysis to back it up. We could sit here all day arguing about why 3.5 collapsed, but it doesn't change the fact that Pathfinder is selling well.

Pathfinder isn't 3.5 (other in terms of inherited mechanics), it's a product with a completely different sales focus. The rulebooks are written to support the adventures rather than vice-versa.

What we do know is that Pathfinder books sell, which proves that whatever Paizo have been doing the past few years is working for them.

The product is an obvious success, so again - why would they want to change their focus? What can matter more than "people that buy it are having fun and buying more books"? That's why actual playtesting is far more important than any amount of out-of-game theorycrafting.

Atarlost wrote:


Exciting but unbalanced characters are only fun for the person playing them or in casual groups. They're anti-fun for everyone else at the table and the playtests aren't getting their input.

A look at the percentage of pathfinder groups that are "casual" groups would be useful here. Given that Pathfinder sells just fine right now without that level of balance, it sorta follows that "casual" (and I use your term extremely loosely here as I know plenty of players that are very serious about their game, just not at a mechanical level) players represent enough of a portion to keep the sales figures up.

As I said earlier though - if enough people feel strongly enough about imbalance in the new classes and post that in their playtest results, then they might listen. They're not going to listen to bare theorycrafting though because that doesn't tell them if players actually enjoyed it or not, or whether they will buy the product. They might listen if enough people don't enjoy the new classes during play because they felt under or overpowered, and then show the proof of that through theorycrafting.

Just remember Paizo is a company. They exist to sell product, not to research and develop the world's most mechanically perfect game. If fun sells more than mechanics do, they're going to prioritize the fun in their development. The day the majority of their player base demands balance, then they'll likely prioritize balance.


I feel like it's important to distinguish between well-grounded, informed theorycrafting that is careful about the extent of its claims and gut reactions. Gut reactions aren't very useful, and tend to create a lot of noise and echo-chambery-ness. (They're useful for gauging what gut reactions to a class are, I guess, but that's not the primary aim of the playtest, I assume.) When it's done well, theorycrafting can reveal a lot about a class in an accurate and efficient manner. Yes, some assumptions go into theorycrafting, and sometimes those assumptions aren't perfect. Yes, there's a sense in which theorycrafting's objectivity can sometimes fail to capture how things feel (although sometimes it can.)

Theorycrafting and playtesting complement each other. Theorycrafting can let you know which of two highly comparable effects is better much more rapidly and accurately than playtesting will. Playtesting answers questions that are harder to pin down with theorycrafting. Do Brawler players actually mix up with Martial Maneuver feats they use, or do they basically just stick to the same ones for the most part to reduce the cognitive load of the ability? A view of how people are using the mechanics is something that playtesting results are great for.

Theorycrafting vs. Playtesting isn't Philosophy vs. Natural Science. It's using standard measures to decompose a candy bar to determine how many calories the candy bar contains vs. eating a candy bar and trying to figure out if you seem to be getting fatter. (Gut reactions are "That candy bar looks super bad for you!") It's actually important to have both; if a bunch of people are eating lots of candy bars and not getting any fatter, there may be something in what's going on there that needs to be better reflected in the model, but for well-tread ground, theorycrafting done well can provide a quick and accurate picture of where the numbers and incentives shake out.

The thread seems to, in places, be lumping all forms of non-playtest evaluation together, but I don't really think that's reasonable. It's possible to do extremely useful mechanics evaluation if you know what you're doing (especially on a bunch of things that are heavily new configurations of well-understood game elements), and it's also possible to contribute a ton of noise and echo (both positive and negative) with gut reactions to the material, or worse, with reactions to just what other people are saying about the material.


Coming from Magic: the Gathering forums I see this level of doomsaying every year.

Wait, if play test feedback says they are fun, why not print them? if they were play tested at an actual table wouldn't it being unfun to other players come up? Also why hasn't the game imploded from people playing rogues all the time?


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Grimmy wrote:

Just some little patches. Not rewrites of the classes, just some little patches in the form of new options.

In the same way that barbarians got some of the best rage powers in later books, a new book could have some cool rogue talents. Feats that could give fighters some narrative influence. Stuff like that. No need to go back to the drawing board or wait until Pathfinder Reloaded or whatever.

Glad somebody likes this aproach. In fact one of the rogues problems is that in all ths years the class recieved so few love (with the esception of scout and thug)

I woudl even say that the rogue problem is not in core (that book was made in a rush after all, problem happens) but with all the years of abandon.

Although, one of the simpler little "fix" for fighter is perfectly doable in a errata, give them 4+int skill per level.


Theorycraft is a useful tool. Primarily for encounter design.

When used to optimize PC's it actually creates more problems than it solves. And regardless of your opinion, these boards are a living, evolving testament to that statement.

Actual play is what that useful tool is used to simulate. Theory craft is simply the theory of what might happen in actual play.

Playtesting provides their theorycrafters (like J.B.) with the information that they need to improve actual play.

The simple fact of the matter is that the people who post on this forum do not represent an accurate cross-section of their player base. They only represent the most vocal portion of the player base. Period.

Now you theory craft folks are going to jump on me and insinuate that I am a fool who does not know what he is talking about, but the fact of the matter is that I personally know more than 50 different gamers and almost a dozen gamemasters. Admittedly, I see half of them only about twice a year, but we talk a lot via the internet. I used to own a gaming and hobby shop for nearly a decade. That is how I met all these GM's and their players. They have all played games at and purchased items from my store. Only about 20% of them are theorycrafters. About the same percentage that are GM's and, rather surprisingly, those percentages do not overlap much. About 40% of the players that I know are casual players. Another 20% are your story oriented players. The final 20% are, of course, the Gm's. Before my gaming shop I personally helped organize gaming conventions in San Francisco, Dallas and Houston. I am not even counting all the gamers that I have met and played games with from this era of my life. Only the past fifteen years. So, my expansive personal experience shows that the theory crafter/numbers folks are actually just a niche crowd. And I would be willing to put good money down (at 2:1 odds even) that an in depth statistical analysis of the player base would support my experience.

So, one of you needs to explain to me precisely why Paizo should risk alienating the majority of their player base just to satisfy one niche of playstyle. Why should they roll the dice and risk it all on all these theorycrafters absolutely unproven opinions of what would make their game better. That is just bad business. Better to lose the niche customers than the core of their player base.

I lurked these boards for years soaking up information that did nothing but contradict what I have seen in actual play at many, many tables. Theory craft says that rogues do not work in play. Every GM that I personally know disagrees and cites actual play to prove their point. Theory craft says that fighters are wussies who cannot crack an egg, much less defeat an equivalent level barbarian or wizard in one-on-one combat. Every GM that I personally know disagrees and cites actual play to prove their point. Theory crafters insist that the monk is an underpowered class and cannot hold its own in a party. And yet, every game master that I personally know disagrees and during actual play in my friends Jade Regent AP my 7th level air-walking, vanilla monk successfully used a stunning blow on an adult white dragon while it was in flight above a deep chasm. These holes in the "science" of theory craft alone are enough to explain why the Paizoans would (and, rightly, should) place a much higher emphasis on the value of actual play over armchair quarterbacking being performed by a teensy percentage of their player base.

Now, like any other social gathering of humans, 20% of the populace can usually get another 30% to do what they say if they screech and carry on loudly and consistently enough. An analysis of political sciences proves this. It is not theory. It is fact. I see examples of this all over these boards. I see it right now in this playtest.

So...that is my $.02 and that is why actual playtest information is far more valuable than theorycraft. Actual play represents actual play.

Theory craft is just the theory of what might happen in actual play.


mplindustries wrote:

To all those talking about classes that looked good in theory but ended up terrible in practice, and then mentioned classes like the 3.0 Sorcerer and the Mystic Theurge, I can only say, "Um, what?"

Those are exactly the sorts of classes that need theorycrafting to show why they're weak.

You know, I remember the theorycrafting on the internet saying the mystic theurge, when it debuted in 3e, was over-powered. Theorycrafting looked at the monk in 3.0 and said the same thing.

Part of the issue is that theorycraft largely advances in skill with play testing the system. When 3e debuted, the action economy didn't figure into the theorycrafting to same degree it does now. It took actually playing the system to discover just how disadvantaged the single boss monster is compared to a party of attackers. The topics of theorycraft applied to 3e and PF have changed substantially over the last decade and that's a direct outgrowth of actual play.

51 to 100 of 167 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Advanced Class Guide Playtest / General Discussion / Why is playtesting considered more important than other forms of analysis? All Messageboards