You know who likes kenders? Red dragons. Apparently they like their food bit sized.
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I personally feel cautiously skeptical about stuff(mostly worried about my old materials and what new material will be released, like whether all of old monsters will ever get into bestiary), but I still feel like most complaints about 2e are variants of "Change scares me! It sucks because they changed it!" and "They are fixing things! That means they are abandoning people who don't like change and that is evil!". Little bit of exaggeration, but some of it does seem hysteric to me. Like, I'm also skeptical about how resonance will work(mainly because its also used with one off items that are wasted if you get unlucky), but it doesn't truly seem "bad", just "different".
Like, if 1e was really that great, then there wouldn't be lot of people who say "Hey, get this 3rd party product, it fixes this problem!". Besides its kinda of hard to argue about it when all of my players thought Pathfinder needed new edition to fix problems it has :p You can't say that system doesn't need to be fixed when it does need lot of house rules to get rid of annoying aspects, like the elephant in the room feat tax one for example.
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I think I threw up a little in my mouth... :PKenderSomeone stealing your PF1 books?I never understood the 'rules bloat' discussion. You don't like a new rule? fine, don't use it. they are optional.
just like PF2 should have been
You know, that’s not the kind of thing I’m typically unsure about. I am fairly confident that I *know* at any given point in time whether I have, in fact, thrown up in my mouth or not. :-)
You know, that’s not the kind of thing I’m typically unsure about. I am fairly confident that I *know* at any given point in time whether I have, in fact, thrown up in my mouth or not. :-)I think I threw up a little in my mouth... :PKenderSomeone stealing your PF1 books?I never understood the 'rules bloat' discussion. You don't like a new rule? fine, don't use it. they are optional.
just like PF2 should have been
Hes not wrong^
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I'm out.
Starfinder wasn't backwards compatible so this version won't be either, thus invalidating a shelf of Pathfinder books.
Not what I wanted. I won't be a part of it.
Not to be terribly off topic, but I agree. While I'm still giving Starfinder a chance, I'm still turned off on how far it has deviated from PRPG.
For me, one of the appeals of PRPG was its "shift" from 3.5 without completely rejecting the old system. For some people, investing in a whole new glut of gaming system source materials in order to keep up with the changes isn't a big issue. It will be for me. That is, unless the system is clearly better than the old system.
At this point, I'm seeing more "different" than "better."
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night
People are talking about 5e like system mastery can't make you tons better than everyone else at the table. Or that it can't be powergamed.
That is my biggest problem with 5e, for all is it's simplification, restriction of Character concepts and narrative pacing, it's still very easy to break the game. I personally find 5e to be far more fragile than PF ever was.
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I'm out.
Starfinder wasn't backwards compatible so this version won't be either, thus invalidating a shelf of Pathfinder books.
Not what I wanted. I won't be a part of it.
Not to be terribly off topic, but I agree. While I'm still giving Starfinder a chance, I'm still turned off on how far it has deviated from PRPG.
For me, one of the appeals of PRPG was its "shift" from 3.5 without completely rejecting the old system. For some people, investing in a whole new glut of gaming system source materials in order to keep up with the changes isn't a big issue. It will be for me. That is, unless the system is clearly better than the old system.
At this point, I'm seeing more "different" than "better."
I'm not sure why "backwards compatible" is that much of a concern with everyone and Starfinder. I've played so many different versions of Star Wars RPG that the words "backwards compatible" are laughable for a space RPG. It's just not a thing. Monsters are going to be reasonably portable between other D20 systems and Starfinder. That's an upgrade from previous edition conversions.
I think a lot of people making these complaints haven't played that many different space setting RPGs in the past and are just now converting over.
Changing editions in any system is going to break some of your toys. I'm a computer programmer. If I change which framework or API I'm dealing with it will break all of my things and I'll have to make changes to adapt. That sort of thing is life. Expecting everything to be handed to you and work with all versions of something is going into it with an already unreasonable expectation.
I'm not sure why "backwards compatible" is that much of a concern with everyone and Starfinder. I've played so many different versions of Star Wars RPG that the words "backwards compatible" are laughable for a space RPG. It's just not a thing. Monsters are going to be reasonably portable between other D20 systems and Starfinder. That's an upgrade from previous edition conversions.
I think a lot of people making these complaints haven't played that many different space setting RPGs in the past and are just now converting over.
Changing editions in any system is going to break some of your toys. I'm a computer programmer. If I change which framework or API I'm dealing with it will break all of my things and I'll have to make changes to adapt. That sort of thing is life. Expecting everything to be handed to you and work with all versions of something is going into it with an already unreasonable expectation.
Agreed. We won't know if "different" will become "better" or not - and no small part of that is subjective opinion. We'll all be sorting this out for ourselves come this and next August.
The group I was gaming with is in the process of fracturing due to a couple more cross-country moves, so only time will tell on that front.Your group might be able to get together via Virtual Table Top (VTT) gaming.
Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds both have licensing deals with Paizo so that you can run your Pathfinder games via their sites.
Roll20 is also perfectly usable without a subscription or purchasing new materials, since you can use the free version and upload your own maps, tokens, etc.
We were more of a face-to-face group. At least two of the players have no interest in a VTT-based game. Also, I've tried the various VTT products at one time or another over the past few years. I found all of them to be difficult or annoying in one way or another, probably irrationally so. I'm a software engineer myself, and I should be perfectly conditioned to use those products, but for some reason, none of them ever gelled with me into a good experience.
For the foreseeable future, my gaming will be downsized. The announcement has actually thrown my plans awry. I'm not sure whether to go foward with the single player game of War for the Crown starting this summer or to have both of us jump into the playtest. I'm also way behind on my latest/last Dead Suns write up.
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I spent, like, 1.5 hours typing up an in-depth explanation of why I think a new edition is necessary, but my fingers hurt and I'm tired and I don't wanna type any more but I also don't want to delete it all. So here's how it boils down to a few key points that I'll list here as a tl;dr, and I'll post the rest as-is in a spoiler.
1. The system is complex in a good way, but also in a bad way - learning it is a years-long endeavor that is nigh-unapproachable to new players (or at least the nearly-20 I've had varying levels of success teaching over the last six years).
2. There are many issues with Pathfinder 1e that should be fixed, but doing so is a massive undertaking that A) cannot be done without redesigning the system and its core assumptions and B) cannot be done for free.
3. The longer the developers spend updating the system the worse Points 1 and 2 become. 11 years is a massive amount of time for an edition to last without significant alterations, and that's where Pathfinder 1e will be once Pathfinder 2e hits.
I've tried to teach nearly 20 people with no background or experience in the game since I started, and lately I don't even ask my players to make many decisions when building characters - I do all the work for them and ask simple questions like "What do you want your character to do?" and "Do you want to be more tough or hit harder?" In all that time, I've had maybe 3 players who tried to read more about the game and broaden their understanding without prompting, and every single one has complained about how much information there is to take in.
Everyone seems to have their own measure and definition of rules bloat, but I'm going to keep it simple and refer to the game in terms of complexity. Pathfinder 1e is a very complex system, meaning there are countless rules and interactions that shape how the game runs and how the players interact with it. This is both good and bad - on one hand it means that the people most experienced and knowledgable of the system can use it to create seemingly-infinite character concepts and scenarios, but on the other hand it means that gaining that mastery takes a lot of time and patience. I wouldn't say I have completely mastered this system - I'm maybe an 8/10 right now - and for five years I've been reading about it nearly every day and have built countless characters (even builds covering every individual level from 1-20!). It is immensely more difficult to approach Pathfinder today than it was when I started, and the longer Paizo spends updating it the harder it becomes for players to learn.
Additionally, as someone who's been learning about this game for years, I can confidently say that there are some problems that have needed addressing for years. Pathfinder Unchained did a lot to improve the state of the game, but actually fixing the system requires a lot more than just a hardback here or there. Here's a very short list of a few:
* Combat at Level 1 and at high levels is too swingy (aka Rocket Tag).
* Concentration bonus outscales Cast Defensively DC severely in late game.
* CMD scales too quickly and too high on non-humanoid & larger enemies.
* AoOs and Full Attack action economy causes combats to become static.
* Spells too frequently negate and outscale skills completely.
* The gap between the worst and best feats is too large.
* Several feat trees are too long and inaccessible.
There are plenty more things that should be addressed, and many of them occupy my Houserules document. Some of these issues cannot be addressed without a complete rework of the system and re-evaluation of its core assumptions - otherwise they'd need to make yet another book a mandatory purchase or otherwise invalidate old physical copies, plus update all the old materials to match the new reworked system. They wouldn't be able to do this for free, either, given how much work that would take.
I was thinking about the benefits of making a new edition might be and I thought of something very crucial. Adjusting the baseline.
Now, a good designer will not want to design things so far out of the baseline power, otherwise you get power creep or useless options. With making a new edition, they can change what they baseline is.
This, for instance, is changing what a baseline martial weapon is. We are now seeing the basic weapons have a greater variance in ability with numerous qualities being a basic tenant.