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Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Thinking developers would maliciously include bad stuff just to mess with players is dumb. Even if you believe that the 3.0 design philosophy was like this (which it wasn't, no matter how much you want to slag Monte Cook), PF is not 3.0, and never has been.
But mistakes can be made, and when you release as much material as Paizo has, not everything can be amazing, or even good (although this very thread shows people can't really agree on trap option feats, so....)
I do hope PF2E doesn't have them, but the realist in me knows that if Paizo's business model remains the same, it will have them. Just by virtue of the law of averages.
They don't do bad feats to punish casual players. That would be dumb. But they clearly do feats (and spells and magic items) that are clearly different in power level. It is more to reward system mastery than to punish poor system mastery, but the effect is the same.
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I don't think any of the designers create an option to purposefully be a trap.This was an honest mistake, then?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/sacred-geometry/P
That's the opposite of a trap, I have a Comp. Sci grad student who ran that thing through MatLab and proved that with 7 ranks it is impossible to ever fail (Unless you suck at math, then it's a personal failure and not mechanical).
It is close to the design paradigm that makes Magic the Gathering to produce white creatures that are 2/2 for 2 colorless and one white mana, like the pearl unicorn, and white creatures that are 2/2 flying for 2 colorless and one white mana, like the wild griffin.
However, MtG is a competitive game. It makes sense there that some options or combinations are better, to reward system mastery with more chances to win. In a RPG, that is maybe less ideal.
I believe these sorts of cards in Magic are created for three reasons:
1. Changes over time. Mark Rosewater (head designer of Magic) has mentioned that one of the ways in which Wizards can both impress people with new powerful cards and at the same time keep power creep somewhat in check is to change what's powerful over time. So one set may just have somewhat weaker white weenies in order them to be buffed the next.
2. Rarity, especially as it applies to Limited (draft and sealed deck). While rarity doesn't exactly correspond to power level, it does correlate, so you might have an uncommon 2W 2/2 flier and a common 2W 2/2 groundling.
3. Synergies. While the 2/2 flier is, on the face of it, more powerful than the 2/2 non-flier, perhaps the non-flier is of a relevant creature type or has some other feature that gives it more power in the appropriate deck.
Not really. There are cards which are more powerful in the past (moxes vs diamonds) and sometimes is the other way around plenty of powerful cards that are relatively new, like Jace Mind Sculptor or Stone Forge Mystic. Sometimes cards are more powerful in the same bracket of rarity (mana drain vs counterspell, back in the day) and some cards are clearly more powerful than others even with the sinergy. For example, there is more sinergy for the 2/2 flying griffin than the unicorn.
All the things you said, matter a bit. But just a bit. Doesn't explain the full range. There are Mythic cards that are pretty horrible, and common cards that are awesome.
The real reason why Timmy cards exist, is to make Timmy happy, to reward Spike (the pro player) for not falling in love with Timmy cards, and, more importantly, because it is easier to keep balance and control power creep if a set of 180 cards has 130 crappy ones and only 50 that really matter.
Sacred Geometry is in no way a trap. It is a poorly designed feat because not only is it *extremely* powerful, this is balanced by making it difficult to use in the sense that it is prone to slow the game down.
Personally, to balance it I ruled that you have to be able to do the calculations fast enough to not slow anything down, and no mechanical aids other than paper are allowed. We literally used to play exactly the same sort of game in math class in elementary school so I'm inclined to allow it, but pace of play matters and using an app feels against the spirit of the thing (because you honestly do not need that many skill ranks to auto-succeed.)
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To me calling it a trap option implies malice and I'm sure I'm not the only one. You might find it amazing how well differently you are received when you use different terms for the same thing. just look at politicians they know. If you were to say:
Hey I hope all the feat options are a lot closer in power level this time around! You might find hardly anyone disagree's with you. While as we can see on this thread saying trap options immediately makes people want to argue with you.
Just a little tip to help you guys out in the future.
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A natural tar pit cn work as a trap, with no malice involved. Just because no harm was intended, it doesn't mean I am not trapped
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Thats a bit of a stretch I feel and i'm not just talking about the tar.
Your post makes me feel like your missing the point. Is it easier to explain hey I'm only using the term trap options because im referring to tar trap options and tar traps aren't always malicious or to just say hey can feats be a bit closer together in power?
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Okay so the things we've learned from so-called "trap options" in PF1 are:
1) (Whirlwind Attack) Avoid printing options where the investment far outweighs the benefit.
2) (Prone Shooter) Avoid printing options that do literally nothing because someone misunderstood the rule and no one caught it.
It seems like these are pretty easy to avoid- anything else?
1) is not easy to avoid at all, because it's sometimes not easy at all to correctly judge the investment and the benefit.
Feats that do not work would fit into the idea of a trap feat. Detrimental to the player.
But when you begin categorizing feats based on efficiency, you start that road of madness where you start seeing everything in dogmatic guide color ratings. To me personally madness was having the debate whether cleave counted as a trap feat because GM can always intentionally place enemies in such spots that player is denied cleave activation. Just what kind of antagonism do we have to take for default. Is Cat's Fall a trap because it needs you to take dangerous falls to work? If you just look at net benefit in sterile environment, nothing is going to beat Iron Will and Improved Initiative. And those two are super boring to the bone.
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NPCs *can* be made using the full PC rules if the GM wants to fully flesh out this person/thing, it's just that they don't have to. So something like the "Bard who is a local celebrity" or "the plucky squire" are things that could be made using PC generation rules and archetypes that probably were not intended for PCs.
I've got my fingers crossed that this is true in PF2e, because it's not true in Starfinder.
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They don't do bad feats to punish casual players. That would be dumb. But they clearly do feats (and spells and magic items) that are clearly different in power level. It is more to reward system mastery than to punish poor system mastery, but the effect is the same.Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity
Thinking developers would maliciously include bad stuff just to mess with players is dumb. Even if you believe that the 3.0 design philosophy was like this (which it wasn't, no matter how much you want to slag Monte Cook), PF is not 3.0, and never has been.
But mistakes can be made, and when you release as much material as Paizo has, not everything can be amazing, or even good (although this very thread shows people can't really agree on trap option feats, so....)
I do hope PF2E doesn't have them, but the realist in me knows that if Paizo's business model remains the same, it will have them. Just by virtue of the law of averages.
You are implying that they are purposefully making some options less powerful than other options, with the power of the option only in mind.
What if they are making interesting options simply because the option is interesting. And the power level of the option is a secondary consideration.
I'd be more inclined to believe that the disparity in power levels of similar items has more to do with power level not being a primary concern, but rather, "this sounds cool."
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1) is not easy to avoid at all, because it's sometimes not easy at all to correctly judge the investment and the benefit.Okay so the things we've learned from so-called "trap options" in PF1 are:
1) (Whirlwind Attack) Avoid printing options where the investment far outweighs the benefit.
2) (Prone Shooter) Avoid printing options that do literally nothing because someone misunderstood the rule and no one caught it.
It seems like these are pretty easy to avoid- anything else?
I feel like they have fixed it simply by eliminating most forms of feat chains. So there will not be, for example, 4 feats unrelated to whirlwind attack which are needed for whirlwind attack.
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I think there should be a distinction between sub-optimal options like Cleave, and trap options like the Powerful Sneak rogue talent. Trap options, in my mind, advertise that they will let you do a thing, but then don't deliver or deliver the opposite.
For example, powerful sneak actually reduces your damage output in every situation. Heavy Crossbows can't be made into a real weapon. Monkey Lunge does nothing, etc...
I got good use out of a Heavy Crossbow as a low level caster; when conserving spells, fire one shot from it at the start of battle, then ditch it and switch to cantrips.
The problem comes when you try to use a Heavy Crossbow as a martial's primary weapon.
It's an interesting example of why trap options appear. Heavy Crossbow has a niche, just as Power Attack has a niche. Power Attack isn't useful for Wizards, and Heavy Crossbows aren't useful for archery types.
The problem is, Heavy Crossbows sound better than they are, while the Power Attacking Wizard doesn't.
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I don't think it's fair to call something a trap simply because it's less useful than another option, though.It's a matter of degree.
Anything less than about 70% (yes that's an arbitrary statistic for an intangible value) of the value of the best option available for a given role is a waste of layout space.
I disagree. Not everyone plays this game just for the numbers. Not everyone needs to have the "best" character possible. Sometimes options may not be "optimal" but fit the flair of the character. And sometimes people do not even care.
In short, don't use your play style and your opinion as the one true measure of the game.
I still hold that using the term "trap" for game options is disrespectful to the designers, and I resent people using it.
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This would become less likely with fewer options and more balanced and rounded out-of-the-box base classes.Very few game designers create deliberately crappy options -- but many do turn out that way after they have been published.
I would think that having more options is rather the whole point most pathfinder players play pathfinder over d&d.
i know its a major reason i prefer pathfinder
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Nice strawman.There's no reason a given flair should be dramatically weaker than another.
You misunderstand me. You're right, there is no such reason. However, there is also no reason that all flairs must be equally powerful.
I just object to proclaiming that your interpretation is the only true way to play the game.
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Nice strawman.There's no reason a given flair should be dramatically weaker than another.
You misunderstand me. You're right, there is no such reason. However, there is also no reason that all flairs must be equally powerful.
I just object to proclaiming that your interpretation is the only true way to play the game.
Yes, but you can have somewhat balanced options with a variety of flavor and make most people happy. Or, you can produce unbalanced options with a variety of flavor and some people will still be happy.
I understand that you fall into the later category. That's fine. But advocating for most the rest of the community isn't "one true wayism" it's just advocating for balance.
Unless you are saying that your prefer poorly balanced options. Which is true of at least a vocal minority on the boards... but then we get back into trap territory, thus the topic of this thread.
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Did it ever occur to you that perhaps I prefer to play for flair and simply want all flairs to be equivalent?
I would say that expectation is unrealistic, if you want various options to actually be different. In a game as complicated as Pathfinder, there will always be options that are "better" and ones that are "worse;" asking for them all to be perfectly balanced is just not feasible.
From the point of view of a player that builds for theme, but tries to make an effective expression of that theme, Pathfinder 1e doesn't have a lot of trap options. There are certainly a few - I imagine we've all had the experience of reading a new feat and wondering "why in the world would I ever take that?" but the fact that those stand out is actually a testament to how good most feats actually are.
Equivalency is unachievable within a complex game due to the synergistic qualities of the abilities themselves as well as variations in play-styles and the nature of a campaign which deny useful benchmarks to work from even if all benefits of a given feat could be objectively quantified. Sameness is achievable (though it still won't be 'balanced') and is likely to be the net result of any such attempts.Equivalent does not mean the same.
PF1 has whole classes that are traps to a theme. Core Monk and Core Rogue being shimmering examples.
Upthread I gave an acceptable value margin of error between the best and the worst of 30%. It's difficult to quantify value like that, but I stand by that judgement.
Only 4E could achieve that, but it comes at a huge price. You are right indeed.
That "infamous" Monte Cook Ivory Tower article talks about this. Feats are designed in a way that they're good for specific things and bad for others because perfect balance would make things very homogenous and ruin everything.
Only 4E could achieve that, but it comes at a huge price. You are right indeed.Equivalency is unachievable within a complex game due to the synergistic qualities of the abilities themselves as well as variations in play-styles and the nature of a campaign which deny useful benchmarks to work from even if all benefits of a given feat could be objectively quantified. Sameness is achievable (though it still won't be 'balanced') and is likely to be the net result of any such attempts.Equivalent does not mean the same.
PF1 has whole classes that are traps to a theme. Core Monk and Core Rogue being shimmering examples.
Upthread I gave an acceptable value margin of error between the best and the worst of 30%. It's difficult to quantify value like that, but I stand by that judgement.
So because adding seasoning to a dish can make it bad if done poorly, we should never season our dishes.
To put it another way, change can be bad so never seek to improve?
They tried to make combat balanced, and they succeeded! The design goal wasn't to make things so homogeneus but it happened as a reuslt of making sure nothing was "too good" or "too bad, specially between the classes.
Quoting from a pretty good Blog:
"The larger fallacy here is the belief that you can allow for meaningful choice in any kind of complex system without having some choices be inferior to other choices. This is something I discuss with more detail in “The Many Types of Balance“, but the short version is that in order to achieve this faux-ideal of “every single choice is just as good as every other choice, no matter what combination of choices you make” you need to severely limit either (a) the flexibility of character creation, (b) the scope of gameplay, or (c) both. As a goal, it’s not only without value, but it will significantly cripple your game design. It’s like demanding that a2-a3 and the King’s Gambit both be equally valid openings in Chess."
And you can see why things ended up as they did...
Granted, there are some stupid ones that slipped by the editor, like the aforementioned Monkey Lunge and Prone Shooter. But their "intended" use would have actually been sorta decent (for niche builds) if they were written properly.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So here's a thought experiment.
Suppose two-weapon fighting in Pathfinder 2 is simply not very good. Not a terrible option, but about as strong as that Dwarf fighter with all the cleave feats was in PF1 but with less investment needed.
Paizo can have all sorts of valid reasons for this, like "there's no reason twf has to be the best dpr, really" or "historical two weapon fighting styles were about reactions, not actions, and we've chosen to model this in the game in order to showcase reactions" but people are still going to want to build two-weapon characters because in their minds, from other games, they will envision twfers as whirling balls of death that do the most damage.
Is two-weapon fighting then "a trap"?
Since I've played d20 games where two weapon combat is not mechanically strong, and it worked out fine. People whose fantasy for their character was "uses two weapons" might have had fun with that, but people after a lot of damage were best suited to focus on anything else. I find this is a tolerable state to be in, but I can't discount the impact of preconceptions. Like in PF1 power attack was good with a rapier if you could swing the 13 str, in PF2 it looks like it will not be.
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This would become less likely with fewer options and more balanced and rounded out-of-the-box base classes.Very few game designers create deliberately crappy options -- but many do turn out that way after they have been published.
I would think that having more options is rather the whole point most pathfinder players play pathfinder over d&d.
i know its a major reason i prefer pathfinder
So you don't care if the options are worthless or not, as long as there are a lot of them?
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There are many Spells for each of the 8 Schools, but for each Spell Level the different Spells from each of the 8 Schools are usually assumed to be roughly of the same value. As such, it's very easy to see that,
Making all options balanced makes it all samey.
...is flat out wrong; you can have wildly different working abilities gauged on an arbitrary power scale be done, just like Spells.
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Thats a bit of a stretch I feel and i'm not just talking about the tar.
Your post makes me feel like your missing the point. Is it easier to explain hey I'm only using the term trap options because im referring to tar trap options and tar traps aren't always malicious or to just say hey can feats be a bit closer together in power?
I am saying they do feats, spells and magic items with VERY different level of power on purpose. I don't think they do that because they want to deceive newbies and casual players, but because they have other reasons to do it. However, the collateral effect of that, is newbies and casual players often pick stuff that is pretty subpar, sometimes even actively harmful. When you pick a subpar option knowing it is subpar, because you don't care and it fits your concept, that is cool. When you pick it because you are a casual player, just want to pick something for your character, and you don't realize it is subpar because you don't want to spend hours in forums looking for options and guides, then it becomes a problem
"One man's trap is another man's treasure."So i'm assuming that the first thing you do when building a character is to make sure to get Prone Shooter?
Prone Shooter is best described as "a mistake" and if we're saying to Paizo "Hey, in PF2 make sure to not make any mistakes" I don't think that is helpful.
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There are way too many things in PF are "Neat ability... PSYCH! You need VERY narrow conditions, it's a standard action, doesn't scale in the slightest, and/or 1 per day!" for a situation other than "the devs are really bad at balancing" and/or "the devs are intentionally making bad options" to be true. Though stuff published after Seifter joined seems to be better at avoiding the ridiculously bad stuff like that I.
On that note abilities stuck at 1 per day are rarely useful and exciting if they're not save reroll or remove status conditions (and only because both will mean the difference between life and death repeatedly)
While I don't think the writers set out to make feats awful, I think some kind of standard (like with creating news spells) would go a long way. Such as anything that takes an action should scale with level (since each action becomes more valuable over time). Also compare it to the tried and true feats. If you compare power attack with some goofy teamwork feat and say to yourself "I'd have to be crazy to NOT take power attack, then beef it up."
As I've said in other places, I'd much rather see a few well tested and balanced feats per book than page after page of space fillers. And lets be honest, sometimes that's all those feats are intended to be.
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I think there should be a distinction between sub-optimal options like Cleave, and trap options like the Powerful Sneak rogue talent. Trap options, in my mind, advertise that they will let you do a thing, but then don't deliver or deliver the opposite.
For example, powerful sneak actually reduces your damage output in every situation. Heavy Crossbows can't be made into a real weapon. Monkey Lunge does nothing, etc...
There's also the fact that feats and class options don't really exist in a vacuum. Options that are less than ideal on a certain character or in a certain type of game may be markedly more valuable in a different type of game, and Pathfinder has traditionally tried to support the widest number of playstyles possible. Feats like Skilled/Expert Driver could end up being absolutely terrible if you only get one vehicle chase scene in an entire campaign (or none), or they could be awesome if you're in an adventure where you're having chariot races and wild escapes every session. This is one of the reasons that GMs have a responsibility to talk to their players about the kind of game they'll be running and to help provide some insight into what kind of choices would be particularly good or particularly bad, much like Paizo does in the player's guides for their APs.
There are also feats that are purpose-oriented, like teamwork feats. Teamwork feats can be very awkward and less than ideal, unless you're taking them on a class that has a class feature specifically built to utilize them, like the cavalier, inquisitor, or hunter. On any of those frameworks teamwork feats are actually excellent, and that's actually because teamwork feats were designed as a kind of "stealth class feature" that could be applied to many different classes instead of needing to be rewritten or called out with every new team-oriented class option.
Because of the way the current edition of Pathfinder is structured, there are a lot of "situational" options, which is distinctly different than a "trap" option; if your GM is going to go out of their way to make sure you can't Cleave, that's a variation from the game's base expectations and it's the kind of thing where the GM should probably make their players aware of the variance, or offer a retraining to an option that meshes better with the game they intend to run, IMO. Which is not to say that there aren't some genuine trap options still lurking here and there, but they are generally few and far between. I strongly suspect that the structure of the upcoming edition is going to make such options even more scarce.
"One man's trap is another man's treasure."
Is another great way to say what I just said. There are actually very few options in Pathfinder that are true traps (especially considering the sheer amount of content out there), and the ones that are just genuinely non-functional usually get fixed.
So i'm assuming that the first thing you do when building a character is to make sure to get Prone Shooter?
I actually took Prone Shooter on a firearm-wielding hunter just recently, because they had a strong and mobile pet wolf with abilities like Intercept Charge and Combat Patrol that made the hunter taking a -2 penalty to AC against melee attacks in exchange for a +6 against ranged attacks a pretty solid deal.
Jingasa being nerfed because it was more powerful than intended does not mean the intention was not to make Jingasa a good (ie, above average) magic item, just like plenty of other items are built to fill other niches (including the "this is expensive trash you sell for gp" niche)
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"One man's trap is another man's treasure."
Only if they beat the trap and not fall into the 30ft pit wherein lies the high level encounter.
Trap options are unfortunately inevitable. What is optimal one day may be relatively suboptimal another as books, strategies, and groups evolve.
So I tend to hope more that they avoid writing objectively horrible options that are literally dead space regardless of how your GM runs. There are relatively few of those even in the entire run of Pathfinder.
More than anything I just want the editing to tighten up a bit to keep things like that, and to keep the real need for errata to a minimum.