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Then aren't you invalidating your own point as you make it?
No.
My point was that being clear about whether they are guidelines or not is not the problem. The problem is in player's ability to accept a book of rules as mere guidelines. If you as a player have trouble with that, and most players I've dealt with in a game do have trouble with it, then no amount of clarity will help.
But players who can accept that well enough to comfortably apply it, will gain better understanding of RAI by the system being clear on that point. And most such players are apt to treat rules as guidelines even when it isn't RAI. The goal being better communication of intent between designer and player. This actually can make a difference as I've seen cases where perspective has literally turned players from thinking of a mechanic as horrible enough to never use to suddenly acceptable and easy to use simply by changing their understanding of what the mechanic is doing.
Basically, how clear the rules are on treating the rules as mere guidelines affects, one way or the other, only a small minority, which means you may as well do right by that minority as a designer since it won't affect the majority, and as a player, you should accept that aspects of the rules are written with the understanding that most players won't grasp all the RAI.
Even Gygax at the beginning understood that most people would never understand that goal they were trying to achieve with the game, and yet still wrote the game for those who would understand what he was trying to achieve.
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I can see this, actually. I had a similar experience trying to get a new group into gaming while I was deployed. I can not remember exact numbers, but out of a group of 9 or 10, two people outright dropped out when they saw just how many books there where, not even wanting to give it a shot. I almost lost another one when I started explaining different class possibilities, and then the topic of Archetypes/prestige classes/races, etc. . . came up in casual conversation, or how much Pathfinder seemed to lack so many different sorts of options for so many different classes or concepts, but seemed to have so many for others.In the end, about half stayed and played. Almost all of them had experience with other similar games and hobbies, from 3E or 4E, to Magic the Gathering, but it had been a while for some with TTRPGs.
It took an enormous effort from me to try to convince them all to give it a shot, that I could help offer solid suggestions as to what they might want to do or try, and that I would allow them a few free opportunities to swap things around if after a few games they didn't like it, but even with that, and even with a pretty restricted character creation (as far as books), a good deal of them found it too much effort and buy in to consider it. And that's with me already having all of the books, so the...
Only half-way through this thread....
I'm a long time gamer with four new players: my teenage son, two of his teenage friends and one of the friend's dad (my age). We started with Beginner Box to give them some basic experience. Not to long ago they all decided to graduate ;-) and we recently finished creating their new characters (CRB only). I keep telling them to not worry about all the options (even just from the CRB) and just tell me what you want your character to do and I'll tell you when/how/if you succeed and what dice you need to roll. My goal is to inspire the role-playing (but not ignoring tactics and strategy either during combat or character building). I've let them know that if some feat/skill/whatever they've taken isn't working out the way they expected, no problem, we'll just change it to something else.
I don't see any use in overwhelming new players (regardless of their experience in TTRPGs). As DMs we need to make the game accessible to new players and not scare them with 3 full book shelves of options. :-)
As to the thread topic itself: no 2.0 for me, thank you kindly. Pick and choose what you want in your game and don't be afraid to <gasp> limit your players options.
(And BTW, it's much harder to have an edition war with only one edition. :-D )
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It's a matter of taste. I don't enjoy casters being extremely overpowered, and having limitless options.Besides that, I'd like less spells or specialized casters. If you're Blaster your capacity for Crowd Control is limited, cost you more and you can't do it.I hope this never happens, high magic, and in general the way casters works now, is something that I associated heavily with D&D/Pathfinder and one of the primary things that make them apart from other TTRPG.If everyone is overpowered then nobody is. My view is leave mages roughly where they are and crank the martials up to over nine thousand
EDIT: substituted 'up to eleven' with 'up to over nine thousand' for humor and because such cranked martials are typically associated with anime [though a more appropriate analogy may be mythology.]
You have to up the monsters too then.
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If everyone is overpowered then nobody is.
That seems odd to me. I would have said that if everyone is overpowered then everyone is.
For me the benchmark isn't the other classes it's some kind of ideal "the sort of thing a hero should be able to do". If one class is above that, lifting everyone else is just making things worse, IMO.
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Probably of course we are already talking about min-maxed top performance anyways
Also the CR's are balanced with a party of fighter thief cleric and wizard so if one of those suddenly starts doing twice the damage or w/e then you have to re balance things.
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Also the CR's are balanced with a party of fighter thief cleric and wizard...
Are they? I thought one of the criticisms of the CR system is that it treats all PC classes identically.
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I've always heard that was the design If i could find something saying one way or the other I would post it but seems like hearsay either way.
It also depends on how you intend to improve the martial classes. If were talking direct increases in damage etc. I could see it being a problem I've already seen optimized martial put down some equal Cr's with unexpected swiftness. Double the numbers I could see some martial classes TKOing some enemies first round. granted wizards have save or die as well and clerics too but at higher levels SR, Saves and immunities can help there. save or die is slightly different then I hit on a 2 and do 600 damage.
Now if we are talking about broadening the fighter options (mostly non-combat options) I'm cool with that. As long as it makes sense anyways.
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This is what levels are to me. If the game pushes beyond the level that one is comfortable partaking in, then they shouldn't partake in those levels.If everyone is overpowered then nobody is.That seems odd to me. I would have said that if everyone is overpowered then everyone is.
For me the benchmark isn't the other classes it's some kind of ideal "the sort of thing a hero should be able to do". If one class is above that, lifting everyone else is just making things worse, IMO.
This is not acceptable as long as levels are treated as a reward and necessity to develop your character.
Adventure where nobody ever grows in levels make perfect narrative sense.But it is obviously also not fun because character builds can't progress and you never get anything new to play with.
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Irrelevant really.
Be whatever the max level of that campaign, players anticipate the very max level.
You could reduce the question to "how much fantasy do you really need to roleplay" which there is no real answer because it interests nobody. What I know is that this game works only with momentum of new things to throw at the players and becomes real stagnant the moment it slows down.
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That Pathfinder games tend to stop well before you hit the max level is really about how much of a PITA it is to run combat at higher levels more than anything else.
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This is what levels are to me. If the game pushes beyond the level that one is comfortable partaking in, then they shouldn't partake in those levels.If everyone is overpowered then nobody is.That seems odd to me. I would have said that if everyone is overpowered then everyone is.
For me the benchmark isn't the other classes it's some kind of ideal "the sort of thing a hero should be able to do". If one class is above that, lifting everyone else is just making things worse, IMO.
I think there's a serious risk of equivocation using overpowered like that. When people say "casters are more powerful than martials" they don't mean casters operate as if they are higher level martial characters. They generally refer to the qualitative difference in the classes across many levels.
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Except they do... in that Martials don't level properly. Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards is a thing.
Look at the way spells change in scope and function with level. I don't see any Martials in Pathfinder capable of standing alongside a full caster of level 13 or higher, and haven't personally seen any over level 8 but suspect a few might exist. [Coincidentally, level 8 full casters have the same class of spellcasting as Paladins and Rangers at max level.]
I don't understand the first comment I quoted, in that case. It seems a clear cut case of equivocation, to me.
However, it's not terribly important because my preferred scale of "what a hero should be able to do" depends on whether they have magic, in my ideal game - so we're solving two different problems anyhow.
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Except they do... in that Martials don't level properly. Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards is a thing.
Look at the way spells change in scope and function with level. I don't see any Martials in Pathfinder capable of standing alongside a full caster of level 13 or higher, and haven't personally seen any over level 8 but suspect a few might exist. [Coincidentally, level 8 full casters have the same class of spellcasting as Paladins and Rangers at max level.]
This isn't to say that they don't grow- they do- but their growth isn't so much 'leveling' as 'gaining more hit dice.'
In Pathfinder high level martials more closely resemble high level brute monsters than they do high level player characters.
But by saying that Martials should always be as powerful as Wizards using their very best spell, aren't you just suggesting replacing Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards with Quadratic Wizards Schrodinger Warriors? Wizards aren't always as powerful as Wizards using their very best spell.
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I think you can solve a lot of problems with wizards are just due to the accumulation of "different wizard spells that solve problems all by themselves." If you were to remove or significantly limit the majority of the spells that simply make problems go away, and generally reduce rocket tag in this game, you'd improve a lot of things.
Like "there are a thousand wizard spells" is the sort of thing that only a revision is really going to fix.
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I don't disagree. Back when wizards were magic-users, spells were harder to come by and harder to learn, and each successive edition has made playing a magic-user/wizard just a little bit better so that now Wizards start to pull ahead of Fighters at a much lower level than before. My issue is, I don't think overcompensating on behalf of fighters is a particularly great answer.
In the interests of full disclosure, a lot of my concerns about PF vs PF 2.0 vanished like a dandelion in the wind when I started playing 5e.
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Given my design preferences, I feel PF "corrected" a few non-problems in Wizard class design, so overcompensation is the only way to level the playing field for fighters IMO. That is, I think there are plenty of solutions to the linear fighter quadratic wizard problem, but PF is sort of built around the LFQW model, so you have to look to another rule system. Powerful but risky magic with mundane martials and toned down monsters describes Dungeon Crawl Classic to a T, but that's not what PF's subscriber base prefers, you know?
Casters also had to sacrifice XP for item crafting, which had a huge effect on LFQW. Ditto the HD increase from d4 to d6 in terms of early level survivability.
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My understanding of 3.5 op-fu with regards to XP costs can be roughly summed up as "XP is a river, spend, spend, spend". With all the ways of boosting wizard survivability, HP isn't a big issue either past the first level or two, and the first two levels are a crap shoot anyway.
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Swoosh does have the right of that one Hitdice. Google "Experience is a River."
In 3E, lower level characters receive higher EXP relative to the encounter than their higher EXP counterparts.
@Swoosh: 2 HP is worth almost as much as Toughness at level 1. It's not 'much' but at that level it is noteworthy.
EDIT: my google-fu isn't turning up the old XP is a River forum post, but the basic principle remains true.
I can't find the XP is a River post either; no harm, no foul. :)
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Experience is a river -Is it this thing from gianttip forums?
First thing in my search.
IMHO
You should gain a level after every session and the length of the campaign is based on how high of level you go to.
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There's a group that stays on task...
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A lot of games give players *something* after every session that they can use to improve their characters for the next session. But the handouts kind of need to be something smaller than "an entire level" (which is a whole bunch of stuff at once).
Some sort of system where you give players part of a level after every session could work though. Say you get one of: your next BAB, your next level's saves, next level's feat, next level's class feature, etc. Something like that could work.
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Steve, I know you're fond of magic being able to do crazy things that martials can't but I do have one question...
... would you prefer a system where magic was handicapped in terms of it's actual use in battle? The way where a Mage is a terribly dangerous battlefield asset... but incredibly vulnerable to interruption and outright murder by mundane means while casting his magic?
Might you be more interested in a 'Magic against magic' that requires 'Steel against steel' as opposed to a game like Pathfinder where the magic is snap-your-fingers-and-it-happens?
Yeah thats definitely my preference as a player. A group of mes would play a Swords&Wizardry/AD&D mashup I expect.
I generally DM though (so leave choice of system to the rest of them).
If i understand your query correctly, youre right. My ideal rebalancing of PF would involve increasing the cost or danger of using magic, rather than boosting martials to the same scope.
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Do I just have a different perspective on what a level is?
To me, a level is a big deal, it's a person breaking past their limitations and becoming something greater.
It may happen fairly fast in-character, but the only way I could see it happening every IRL session [or even every other] is if a LOT of character development gets skipped.
I'm with you on that (both on a slower RL speed of levelling AND on limiting a campaign to a clearly defined span of levels).
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Do I just have a different perspective on what a level is?
To me, a level is a big deal, it's a person breaking past their limitations and becoming something greater.
I think that "how big an improvement a level is" is why I'd prefer to have it broken up in smaller chunks. When you gain a level you simultaneously become tougher, get better reflexes, have a stronger will, get better at fighting, get better at magic, get better at like 7 different skills, and learn one or more wholly new techniques.
That just doesn't seem true to life to me; to get better at everything at once. More incremental improvement seems far more realistic.
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It also depends on how you intend to improve the martial classes. If were talking direct increases in damage etc. I could see it being a problem I've already seen optimized martial put down some equal Cr's with unexpected swiftness. Double the numbers I could see some martial classes TKOing some enemies first round. granted wizards have save or die as well and clerics too but at higher levels SR, Saves and immunities can help there. save or die is slightly different then I hit on a 2 and do 600 damage.
Now if we are talking about broadening the fighter options (mostly non-combat options) I'm cool with that. As long as it makes sense anyways.Think of it this way-
A Martial should always be performing at the same level as a Wizard using his VERY BEST spells.
He will have a few tricks up his sleeve that are at that level of performance, able to excel in his chosen field, but he lacks the flexibility of a caster.
The martial is the professional who goes all day long doing what he does best, the caster is the magician with with a card for almost every situation, but a limited number of them up his sleeve.
Now hold on that doesn't make sense shouldn't it be as effective as a wizard using his middle spells. If every thing the fighter does is just as good as the wizards best and the wizard can run out of spells but the fighter can't then the wizard is sub par.
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The wizard has a hand full of different best spells.
Balancing against the middle spells doesn't work because the party rests when the casters run out of their best spells anyway.
The wizard is the swiss army knife, the Fighter is the KABAR, the Paladin is the vicegrip, the ranger is the multi-screwdriver
In your games maybe.