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Magnuskn I really, really want you to play through the playtest. Work through some of the material in the book and give your feedback. If people like you aren't willing to give your input into the design of PF2e, then I'm going to struggle to get what I want achieved pushed through.
Also, the more I read and the more I play with it the more I realise PF2e might not be as far away from a good system as it initially appears.
Take the "Difficulty Classes" section in Chapter 10. This has to be the most 4th ed chapter of the entire book. It's so bad I copied the entire section into a word document and started rewriting it to make it less like 4th ed and more like PF1e. Doing so involved me studying the math and how the game works and translating the PF1e DCs into the new playtest and the more I did it the more I realised it wasn't so bad. In fact, there's only a few items in the presentation of the rules I'd change (I'd leave the actual rules as is which I'm surprised to say).
The multiclassing rules have also surprised me in being much less 4th ed-ish then I thought when actually played with. Instead I'm getting PF1e characters translate relatively easily into PF2e. Something I could not achieve with PF1e and D&D 4th ed.
These were the two biggest red flags for me with the new edition. So I'd implore you to actually playtest and provide your feedback. Because there's definitely room for improvement. But only if people like you participate.
How many encounters a day do you expect on average?Well, if you've kept up with the board where they post their playtest impressions, so far the party endurance seems really swingy, where some parties breeze through everything and others suffer 10 downed characters throughout the 1st level adventure and had to rest a ton between fights.
So, no idea. But realistically casters will run out of spells after two or three fights, maximum, unless they completely rely on their cantrips, and won't *that* be fun to just plink away with 1d6+nothing attacks all the time.
helpful tip: Stop theory crafting with me it doesn't do anything to convince me. I need numbers so would 5 encounters a day be about right for you? (also if you talking first level wizard if they still have things to go after the 2nd encounter they are beating pathfinder out on 1st level wizard.)
Frankly the cantrip thing beats the old carry a crossbow after you use one of your 3 spells or use a complelty useless 0 level spell.
But lets say your right and they run out of resources around encounter 3 (which at 1st level seems about the same to me but) Then that would be good feed back on how to improve. Which is the entire point of the play test.
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Indeed. If that lvl 16 goblin, instead of "a goblin" is Globerg The Dragonkiller, Son of Grafgh, heir of Magluybyet, the Widowmaker, Blood of Fiends, then slaughtering 20 low level guards isn't surprising. He is the goblin equivalent of Achilles. That is why he is lvl 16, a legendary level.
Sure. But you know what would happen to Globerg in PF1E if he'd try that stunt? He'd get his naked goblin ass spanked by the level 1 dwarf fighters, that would happen. And to me that is what should realistically happen, because Globergs shtick is lobbing fireballs, not beating up armored people with his bare hands.
Everybody has a different taste in how he wants his fantasy to work. Given how we all got here, i.e. we didn't want a too gamey Dungeons & Dragons and preferred the more simulationist approach of 3.X over 4E, I'm really surprised how many people are now demanding that we shed the approach which made Paizo's continued existance possible in the first place.
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Yea. It's a playtest. So the devs are looking to see what works great, and what is clunky. So, saying you're quitting the game forever because the first week of a year-long playtest didn't strike your fancy... Did you never eat your wife's cooking again after the first time she made a recipe she was trying out?
Give your feedback and see how the product develops.
First impressions can make or break a product.
Any company that does not understand this is doomed to failure.
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helpful tip: Stop theory crafting with me it doesn't do anything to convince me. I need numbers so would 5 encounters a day be about right for you? (also if you talking first level wizard if they still have things to go after the 2nd encounter they are beating pathfinder out on 1st level wizard.)
Five encounters at 1st level in PF2E is a bad joke. That won't happen, unless everybody rolls a 15+ all the time on the players side.
And if you are only good for one encounter with your first level Wizard in PF1E, you are doing it wrong. Being a specialist (like everybody else), a decent intelligence and a good spell selection (i.e. Color Spray and/or Sleep) will probably trivialize the first three encounters of the day, after which you can fall back on using acid splash or your crossbow, while the rest of the party does some work. If we go by what Paizo has published as AP's over the years, I'd expect six encounters per day at first level to be a good median for PF1E.
Frankly the cantrip thing beats the old carry a crossbow after you use one of your 3 spells or use a complelty useless 0 level spell.
My experiences as a GM are obviously way different than yours.
But lets say your right and they run out of resources around encounter 3 (which at 1st level seems about the same to me but) Then that would be good feed back on how to improve. Which is the entire point of the play test.
Sure. That's what I've been doing since Thursday.
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In terms of referencing, the thing that made PF1 worth it for my group was the combination of resources like the PRD and d20pfsrd. Especially the latter, with the hyperlinks built into the site, so that, for example, you could very quickly and very easily navigate to lay on hands, or manipulate, and no searching / flipping through was necessary. This streamlined the complex and in depth system to a point where playing it was easy and fun. I think the problem with PF2 is its young age. Once the rules are finalized, and once 3rd party sites start to compile all of the new stuff, I think the game is going to be a much better (and clearer) for everybody.
Indeed. If that lvl 16 goblin, instead of "a goblin" is Globerg The Dragonkiller, Son of Grafgh, heir of Magluybyet, the Widowmaker, Blood of Fiends, then slaughtering 20 low level guards isn't surprising. He is the goblin equivalent of Achilles. That is why he is lvl 16, a legendary level.Sure. But you know what would happen to Globerg in PF1E if he'd try that stunt? He'd get his naked goblin ass spanked by the level 1 dwarf fighters, that would happen. And to me that is what should realistically happen, because Globergs shtick is lobbing fireballs, not beating up armored people with his bare hands.
Everybody has a different taste in how he wants his fantasy to work. Given how we all got here, i.e. we didn't want a too gamey Dungeons & Dragons and preferred the more simulationist approach of 3.X over 4E, I'm really surprised how many people are now demanding that we shed the approach which made Paizo's continued existance possible in the first place.
What do you mean by "gamism" and "simulationism"? I see the words tossed around but I don't know that everyone agrees on what those terms mean.
Personally, I use Ron Edwards' GNS Theory definitions.
I think it would really help these discussions if people were more clear about what definitions they are using.
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Just because some of us don't want to see the merger of RPG tabletops and videogamesAnd how is that occurring, exactly?
Question open to all.
It isn't, at least insofar as game mechanics are a thing shared by all things reasonably called games.
And if you are only good for one encounter with your first level Wizard in PF1E, you are doing it wrong. Being a specialist (like everybody else), a decent intelligence and a good spell selection (i.e. Color Spray and/or Sleep) will probably trivialize the first three encounters of the day, after which you can fall back on using acid splash or your crossbow, while the rest of the party does some work.
Thid is true. But I don't think it is a good idea
Contributor
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Yea. It's a playtest. So the devs are looking to see what works great, and what is clunky. So, saying you're quitting the game forever because the first week of a year-long playtest didn't strike your fancy... Did you never eat your wife's cooking again after the first time she made a recipe she was trying out?
Give your feedback and see how the product develops.First impressions can make or break a product.
Any company that does not understand this is doomed to failure.
This seems to be an argument in favor of not having a playtest at all. Similar to video games being released in early access, you gain the opportunity to build and improve at the cost of that vital first impression. Maybe better for them to spend another year polishing the system, then drop the final product at Gen Con 2019? (Obviously it's too late for that now. I'm just intrigued by this line of thinking.)
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Basically I brought my kids into role playing after a long hiatus from it myself (old AD&D player) with the pathfinder beginner box.
We played through the entirety of Rise of the Runelords, started Kingmaker, and the finished with Wrath of the Righteous where my son “broke” the system and we stopped PF1.
My kids have learnt and played D&D 5e, Iron Kingdoms RPG, fantasy flights Star Wars RPG, Cypher system, and even a couple of OSR games.
We are bowing out. Good luck Paizo, we love your APs and will keep playing them for years to come, but PF is not for us.
I will stick around to offer my playtest feedback, but based upon this initial draft, I am inclined to agree with you. However, I am not dealing with children but with adults who love roleplaying but hate wading through . They don't care for game philosophy or 90 percent of the internet debates I read about here on tabletop game theory or design theory. They just want to play. They (mostly) enjoyed the Cypher System, Fate, D&D 5e, 7th Sea (1e), Index Card RPG, and Fantasy Age's Titansgrave. Several are playing Warhammer RPG. We have Blades in the Dark on our to-play docket.
I shudder thinking about their reactions if I ever handed them this playtest pdf as a hardcopy book. Yet, I would feel confident with handing them a copy of D&D 3e, Pathfinder 1, or D&D 4e. This games does not explain itself well. It's a problem of layout. It's a problem of jargon. It's a problem of the writing style.
I hope that Paizo considers adopting clearer language and making another pass at the layout.
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Can we pick lower level class or racial feats if we dont like the options higher levels give?
Yes.
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How many encounters a day do you expect on average?Well, if you've kept up with the board where they post their playtest impressions, so far the party endurance seems really swingy, where some parties breeze through everything and others suffer 10 downed characters throughout the 1st level adventure and had to rest a ton between fights.
So, no idea. But realistically casters will run out of spells after two or three fights, maximum, unless they completely rely on their cantrips, and won't *that* be fun to just plink away with 1d6+nothing attacks all the time.
helpful tip: Stop theory crafting with me it doesn't do anything to convince me. I need numbers so would 5 encounters a day be about right for you? (also if you talking first level wizard if they still have things to go after the 2nd encounter they are beating pathfinder out on 1st level wizard.)
Frankly the cantrip thing beats the old carry a crossbow after you use one of your 3 spells or use a complelty useless 0 level spell.
But lets say your right and they run out of resources around encounter 3 (which at 1st level seems about the same to me but) Then that would be good feed back on how to improve. Which is the entire point of the play test.
Good point and I'll join you in that call. If I went purely with my first impression it would be to never play or even look at this system again. However, we are going to play it, and provide feedback.
I get the frustration as the classes and races themselves don't provide a lot of the traditional things you expect those classes and races to have from the beginning.
So yes I'm going to test, and urge others to as well. Because if we provide feedback we either get a game more to our liking, or we can move on knowing our voices were not sufficient to get the changes we'd like to see. I too would urge others to see this through, and provide good feedback, not just I don't like it.
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This seems to be an argument in favor of not having a playtest at all. Similar to video games being released in early access, you gain the opportunity to build and improve at the cost of that vital first impression. Maybe better for them to spend another year polishing the system, then drop the final product at Gen Con 2019? (Obviously it's too late for that now. I'm just intrigued by this line of thinking.)Yea. It's a playtest. So the devs are looking to see what works great, and what is clunky. So, saying you're quitting the game forever because the first week of a year-long playtest didn't strike your fancy... Did you never eat your wife's cooking again after the first time she made a recipe she was trying out?
Give your feedback and see how the product develops.First impressions can make or break a product.
Any company that does not understand this is doomed to failure.
I've been saying this elsewhere, but I think there's a middle ground here. None of us expected a complete and bug-free system from the playtest (I think...). But we did expect the playtest product to be a good representation in terms of how the game feels. While the action system shines in this respect, the build diversity and character options are *really* lacking, the manual feels like a programming reference manual rather than something that's easy to read, and certain areas of the rules are extremely obtuse.
To me, that kinda makes it a huge marketing fail, initially. Can Paizo overcome this and put out a really solid finished product? Sure. Did they also just shoot themselves in the foot and likely lose market share due to what they've initially put forward? Probably.
The Pathfinder Beta, 2008, was a clunky half-complete book with several major elements (such as, ironically, the skill system) that never made it into the final release. Yet, Paizo did not shoot itself in the foot by putting it out, did not lose market share and did not die in flames and got its assets bought by some "serious" company.
Thread has been locked so mods can catch up.
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We've unlocked this thread. Keep the conversation focused on the playtest, not edition wars (see this thread for more info here.).
Please be cognizant and civil when talking about others' game preferences and GM'ing styles.
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Thanks Virginia!
Last night we sat down with the rules and worked out playtest characters. My wife got so frustrated we went to Hero Lab Online to have a guide. Usability of the CRB will be an important point, as she nearly threw up her hands at the skills section. Once we had that handled, I knocked out a monk in about 20 minutes.
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This seems to be an argument in favor of not having a playtest at all. Similar to video games being released in early access, you gain the opportunity to build and improve at the cost of that vital first impression. Maybe better for them to spend another year polishing the system, then drop the final product at Gen Con 2019? (Obviously it's too late for that now. I'm just intrigued by this line of thinking.)Yea. It's a playtest. So the devs are looking to see what works great, and what is clunky. So, saying you're quitting the game forever because the first week of a year-long playtest didn't strike your fancy... Did you never eat your wife's cooking again after the first time she made a recipe she was trying out?
Give your feedback and see how the product develops.First impressions can make or break a product.
Any company that does not understand this is doomed to failure.
I've kind of thought this for a while. I get that having thousands of eyes on the thing is very useful for some things. I just don't think that many people are actually very good at playtesting or providing playtest feedback.
By this point in Paizo's existence, I would imagine they have a pretty good idea of people in the community who can approach a playtest properly, whether they like the mechanics or not. Build private beta groups like that. DMW being the High King of Analysis and PMA would be a good fit, but others are good, too. Seems like that would get the large majority of the feedback that an open playtest would with a small fraction of the headache.
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While some individual posters might be great at analysis (and DMW certainly is) , they are pretty much worse than the community as a whole at knowing what the community, as a whole, wants.
I don't think Paizo does the playtest to get analysis, or counterproposals, although they surely will take adventage of those if the opportunity arise. The real value here is the survey. Not what people "think" about, say, resonance, or what long winded posts writing how much they hate it they write. But how does people who play with it feel, if it is too much or too little, etc. That is the real value, yo have the pulse of the community. And for that,an open beta is invaluable and unbeatable
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Thanks Virginia!
Last night we sat down with the rules and worked out playtest characters. My wife got so frustrated we went to Hero Lab Online to have a guide. Usability of the CRB will be an important point, as she nearly threw up her hands at the skills section. Once we had that handled, I knocked out a monk in about 20 minutes.
This is kind of funny - the only person I know who was excited to make more characters, after talking about it for a while and expressing my frustration at making a character and book layout - says to me "Oh yeah, way too much flipping, I went to Hero Lab online and just paid for access because I couldn't figure it out".
I'll be honest - I love Hero Lab - but the reason I haven't given up is because I felt that the feedback was important - that is about layout and how frustrating it has been.
The good news is - so far everyone who has gotten to play it (Gen Con - wheeee) loves it at the table (which matches what I keep hearing from the devs).
I have to wonder how the 'initial impressions' phase would have gone had the book not felt like an ikea manual written in Finnish?
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Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Slide into oblivion. What's an argument among geeks without some solid melodrama!
Given how much the tabletop RPG market has dwindled in recent years, that's hardly validation. That's like being the second-best restaurant in a town with only three restaurants, and the third one has a sewer leak.
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Given how much the tabletop RPG market has dwindled in recent years, that's hardly validation. That's like being the second-best restaurant in a town with only three restaurants, and the third one has a sewer leak.
I'd actually heard the industry as a whole has been doing quite well. What I personally find more telling is Starfinder outselling Pathfinder...
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Given how much the tabletop RPG market has dwindled in recent years, that's hardly validation. That's like being the second-best restaurant in a town with only three restaurants, and the third one has a sewer leak.Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Slide into oblivion. What's an argument among geeks without some solid melodrama!
Do you have any data on this? Because all other sources I have read point out that 5e has increased the total rpg market by a significant margin
Thanks Virginia!
Last night we sat down with the rules and worked out playtest characters. My wife got so frustrated we went to Hero Lab Online to have a guide. Usability of the CRB will be an important point, as she nearly threw up her hands at the skills section. Once we had that handled, I knocked out a monk in about 20 minutes.
The core book leaves much to be desired from a character-creation usability perspective.
However, after developing some familiarity, I think the current book works much better as a reference work than it does an instruction manual (not that it couldn't use some improvement there, either). I think that might actually be OK, at least once they get the Beginner Box out the door.
I suspect that, in a perfect world, they'd like to get both the CRB and the new BB out at the same time, though that may not be possible due to resource constraints. On the other hand, it might also be the case that the design of the new BB will be informed by CRB feedback.
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Thanks Virginia!
Last night we sat down with the rules and worked out playtest characters. My wife got so frustrated we went to Hero Lab Online to have a guide. Usability of the CRB will be an important point, as she nearly threw up her hands at the skills section. Once we had that handled, I knocked out a monk in about 20 minutes.
I don't have a group to playtest with, but I do have a good friend in another state who does, and this weekend they started building PF2 characters. He likes most of the character building, but as a Rogue his biggest complaint was it took forever to figure out skill feats, since they were mixed in with general feats and organized alphabetically, rather than by level.
His biggest suggestion was to split up the feats more, and to provide some table at least that listed feats by level.
Can we pick lower level class or racial feats if we dont like the options higher levels give?Yes.
Thank you for the clarification.
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Do you have any data on this? Because all other sources I have read point out that 5e has increased the total rpg market by a significant marginGiven how much the tabletop RPG market has dwindled in recent years, that's hardly validation. That's like being the second-best restaurant in a town with only three restaurants, and the third one has a sewer leak.Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Slide into oblivion. What's an argument among geeks without some solid melodrama!
A lot of the older games have been steadily petering out in both popularity and sales, including games like World of Darkness and Call of Cthulu. Most newer games that have cropped up (such as things like Capharnaum, Pugmire and Z-Land) are so incredibly niche as to have very little market appeal. The lion's share of the market is 5E, with a fair tick going to Warhammer (that game is just immortal), some for the newer Star Wars RPG (though that's starting to falter quite a bit).
I mean, the Starfinder bestiary is currently being outsold by the 20th anniversary edition of Vampire the Masquerade and the hyper-generic game D100 Dungeon, and that's pretty sad. Starfinder is not that popular. It's not in the top 5, and it's not high in sales. I don't know where people keep getting the idea of what a "great success" Starfinder is.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-based-on-sales-stats-the-most-popular-tablet op-RPGs
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Indeed. If that lvl 16 goblin, instead of "a goblin" is Globerg The Dragonkiller, Son of Grafgh, heir of Magluybyet, the Widowmaker, Blood of Fiends, then slaughtering 20 low level guards isn't surprising. He is the goblin equivalent of Achilles. That is why he is lvl 16, a legendary level.Sure. But you know what would happen to Globerg in PF1E if he'd try that stunt? He'd get his naked goblin ass spanked by the level 1 dwarf fighters, that would happen. And to me that is what should realistically happen, because Globergs shtick is lobbing fireballs, not beating up armored people with his bare hands.
Everybody has a different taste in how he wants his fantasy to work. Given how we all got here, i.e. we didn't want a too gamey Dungeons & Dragons and preferred the more simulationist approach of 3.X over 4E, I'm really surprised how many people are now demanding that we shed the approach which made Paizo's continued existance possible in the first place.
What do you mean by "gamism" and "simulationism"? I see the words tossed around but I don't know that everyone agrees on what those terms mean.
Personally, I use Ron Edwards' GNS Theory definitions.
I think it would really help these discussions if people were more clear about what definitions they are using.
Basically it's about what Gustavo and I have been talking about earlier. Globerg the Naked, a level 16 goblin Wizard with low strength walks into a bar with (reducing the number here a bit) 10 level 1 dwarf fighters in breastplates and with warhammers and shields. He plans to kill them all with his bare hands, with no spells involved.
In PF1E, he'd get his naked ass handed to him, because he has poor attacks, poor damage and poor armor class. That's simulationist, ergo something which makes sense from a realistic viewpoint.
In PF2E, there's an excellent chance Globerg would slowly but surely kill those ten dwarven fighters, because they got level 1 stats and he has a +16 to everything but damage. That's gamism, because the game rules trump realism.
And you could argue that magic makes that all irrelevant, because it's not realistic. My opinion on that is "it's magic, it can break the rules of reality".
And, yes, a lot of stuff in PF1E is not realistic at all, like some level 15 fighter jumping off a mountain and taking 20d6 of damage, meaning he'll probably just stand up and dust himself off after leaving a big crater upon his impact. But the game overall comes much nearer the simulationist point of things than PF2E does. And, as I said in another post, that scratches very hard at the edges of my suspension of disbelief.
Do I really need to point out how far 3.5/Pathfinder are from a "theatre of the mind" system? It's an incredibly gamist system to begin with.
Emphasis on how far they "are" from a theater of the mind system. But the magic of playtesting is the hope that a game can become more than what it is. I haven't played Pathfinder consistently since...what? Rise of the Runelords era? A game or two here and there and always got furious and eventually had to throw my hands up. But now the folks at Paizo are looking for input and hopefully at the end of this we can have a game that's as friendly to new players and other playstyles as the previous edition has, at times, been hostile.
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Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Is it? The two local FLGS I frequent still have the same Starfinder hardcover on the shelf from May according to the staff and they claim their 5e monthly sales numbers are outrageous.
Amazon has tons of 5e, Zelda, Warcraft, etc stuff ahead of the Starfinder book.
I'm in one of the most active TTRPG OP markets (pop 16 million) that used to field over 100 tables of PFS each month (packed at 6 players a piece). We're clocking in around 14 SFS players each month over 2 locations, and those same players are mostly folks that are so into TTRPGs that they are also playing 5e every week too.
Most of the folks who are running stores or gaming are operating on the belief that Pathfinder/Starfinder "are dead" (their words, not mine, I'm trying to make the argument that a comeback is about to happen...)
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She looked at me and asked “what the hell does that even mean?”. No idea, probably something related to attacks of opportunity was my guess. I wasn’t even sure where to go looking.
She lost interest immediately.
We spent nearly an hour trying to do this, jumping around to look things up, using the PDF (our books haven’t arrived).
We discussed the whole thing with my son, and he basically rolled his eyes. This is the one who breaks the game with clever, essentially min maxing, so he loves systems and he said “sounds like too much work for the fun after”.
We are bowing out. Good luck Paizo, we love your APs and will keep playing them for years to come, but PF is not for us.
I get it. I really do, but the problem lies in the fact that not one of those games you've listed has a decent book. Not one!
D&D's editors have gotten so bad over the years that the first thing I do when I get a new book is go through and make my own index. White Wolf's World of Darkness doesn't even know what an index is and has no concept of a proper table of contents. Iron Kingdom, Star Wars - no better. The worst of it is, we're talking about finished concept works here. I could make a mint if just one of these companies would let me write their index and/or tables of contents.
I'm having issues with the playtest book as well, and it sounds like we're not alone, but that's no reason to quit. Muscle up, give it a good try, and if your stuck, well, you obviously know where to come for answers.
I will be adding quite a few questions as well as ssuggestions myself. I'm sure, (ok, granted, sure is a bit loose here) that next year's release edition will have more of these things worked out. That's what the PT version is for, pointing out the bonehead stuff.
I have been wondering about these claims, SF doesn't seem to be the success they were hoping for, as far I have read.Do you have any data on this? Because all other sources I have read point out that 5e has increased the total rpg market by a significant marginGiven how much the tabletop RPG market has dwindled in recent years, that's hardly validation. That's like being the second-best restaurant in a town with only three restaurants, and the third one has a sewer leak.Aaaand Starfinder is the second best selling RPG currently, giving D&D 5e a run for its money. So chances are that Paizo will follow the route that made them bounce back, rather the one that makes them slide into oblivion.
Slide into oblivion. What's an argument among geeks without some solid melodrama!
A lot of the older games have been steadily petering out in both popularity and sales, including games like World of Darkness and Call of Cthulu. Most newer games that have cropped up (such as things like Capharnaum, Pugmire and Z-Land) are so incredibly niche as to have very little market appeal. The lion's share of the market is 5E, with a fair tick going to Warhammer (that game is just immortal), some for the newer Star Wars RPG (though that's starting to falter quite a bit).
I mean, the Starfinder bestiary is currently being outsold by the 20th anniversary edition of Vampire the Masquerade and the hyper-generic game D100 Dungeon, and that's pretty sad. Starfinder is not that popular. It's not in the top 5, and it's not high in sales. I don't know where people keep getting the idea of what a "great success" Starfinder is.
https://www.quora.com/What-are-based-on-sales-stats-the-most-popular-tablet op-RPGs
From here:
Icv2 reportThe thing about the fastest selling Paizo product ever can be find here
And, yes, a lot of stuff in PF1E is not realistic at all, like some level 15 fighter jumping off a mountain and taking 20d6 of damage, meaning he'll probably just stand up and dust himself off after leaving a big crater upon his impact. But the game overall comes much nearer the simulationist point of things than PF2E does. And, as I said in another post, that scratches very hard at the edges of my suspension of disbelief.
Well, it's not just when he falls from a mountain. When the same fighter survives the fire breath of a dragon that does 20d6, he is surviving something so hot that will instantly melt steel. The equivalent of being completely submerged in molten lava.
In fact, when he survives the strike of a giant, that does 40 points of damage on a hit, he survives a strike which is able to cut through a steel door.
And no, there is no such thing as "it's the fighter dodging, and such, he is not really hit". If the giant put injury poison on his greatsword, the fighter rolls Fortitude, because the blade hit him and cut his flesh and the poison is now on his blood. When the kraken hits him, and then grapple and crush him with enough damage to break an oak by half, the fighter is not somehow dodging the attack and losing "stamina, luck and general abiity to fight". He's struck by the tentacle, and constricted by it, which is why he's grappled.
It happens allll the time. We just dial up and down our ability to discern which things are over the top, based on what we are used to.
.........Basically it's about what Gustavo and I have been talking about earlier. Globerg the Naked, a level 16 goblin Wizard with low strength walks into a bar with (reducing the number here a bit) 10 level 1 dwarf fighters in breastplates and with warhammers and shields. He plans to kill them all with his bare hands, with no spells involved.
In PF1E, he'd get his naked ass handed to him, because he has poor attacks, poor damage and poor armor class. That's simulationist, ergo something which makes sense from a realistic viewpoint.
In PF2E, there's an excellent chance Globerg would...
Cool. Thanks for clarifying!
Honestly, I think this is an issue of what genre you think PF should be trying to emulate. From what you've said, you seem like you want something a little more grounded than what Paizo is trying to put forward. You want Sword and Sorcery-ish, Paizo wants something a little zanier than that. That was true in PF1, like you said.
I hope you stick around for the playtest and can have your wants heard, even if I am largely fine with the genre direction. If it doesn't go the way you want and you are interested, I'd be happy to suggest some incredible games that might meet your wants a little better!
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Well, it's not just when he falls from a mountain. When the same fighter survives the fire breath of a dragon that does 20d6, he is surviving something so hot that will instantly melt steel. The equivalent of being completely submerged in molten lava.
In fact, when he survives the strike of a giant, that does 40 points of damage on a hit, he survives a strike which is able to cut through a steel door.
And no, there is no such thing as "it's the fighter dodging, and such, he is not really hit". If the giant put injury poison on his greatsword, the fighter rolls Fortitude, because the blade hit him and cut his flesh and the poison is now on his blood. When the kraken hits him, and then grapple and crush him with enough damage to break an oak by half, the fighter is not somehow dodging the attack and losing "stamina, luck and general abiity to fight". He's struck by the tentacle, and constricted by it, which is why he's grappled.
It happens allll the time. We just dial up and down our ability to discern which things are over the top, based on what we are used to.
Sure. But it's easier to not think about that stuff with the current system, at least for me.
Cool. Thanks for clarifying!
Honestly, I think this is an issue of what genre you think PF should be trying to emulate. From what you've said, you seem like you want something a little more grounded than what Paizo is trying to put forward. You want Sword and Sorcery-ish, Paizo wants something a little zanier than that. That was true in PF1, like you said.
I hope you stick around for the playtest and can have your wants heard, even if I am largely fine with the genre direction. If it doesn't go the way you want and you are interested, I'd be happy to suggest some incredible games that might meet your wants a little better!
Well, I am currently playing the game which suits my needs, PF1E. I was hoping PF2E would be an evolution of that, but we'll see if I can help hammer it back to being that.
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Indeed. If that lvl 16 goblin, instead of "a goblin" is Globerg The Dragonkiller, Son of Grafgh, heir of Magluybyet, the Widowmaker, Blood of Fiends, then slaughtering 20 low level guards isn't surprising. He is the goblin equivalent of Achilles. That is why he is lvl 16, a legendary level.Sure. But you know what would happen to Globerg in PF1E if he'd try that stunt? He'd get his naked goblin ass spanked by the level 1 dwarf fighters, that would happen. And to me that is what should realistically happen, because Globergs shtick is lobbing fireballs, not beating up armored people with his bare hands.
Everybody has a different taste in how he wants his fantasy to work. Given how we all got here, i.e. we didn't want a too gamey Dungeons & Dragons and preferred the more simulationist approach of 3.X over 4E, I'm really surprised how many people are now demanding that we shed the approach which made Paizo's continued existance possible in the first place.
What do you mean by "gamism" and "simulationism"? I see the words tossed around but I don't know that everyone agrees on what those terms mean.
Personally, I use Ron Edwards' GNS Theory definitions.
I think it would really help these discussions if people were more clear about what definitions they are using.
Basically it's about what Gustavo and I have been talking about earlier. Globerg the Naked, a level 16 goblin Wizard with low strength walks into a bar with (reducing the number here a bit) 10 level 1 dwarf fighters in breastplates and with warhammers and shields. He plans to kill them all with his bare hands, with no spells involved.
In PF1E, he'd get his naked ass handed to him, because he has poor attacks, poor damage and poor armor class. That's simulationist, ergo something which makes sense from a realistic viewpoint.
In PF2E, there's an excellent chance Globerg would...
Neither of these is any more or less realistic or simulationist than the other.
An incredibly experienced legendary Wizard who has been in 10 times more life or death fights than every level 1 Fighter in the bar combined beats the crap out of a dozen inexperienced rookies with his bare hands is not any more 'gameism' than the other way of doing things. I could easily imagine such a scene playing out in a novel, film, or tv show. You're just bring a different expectation of what being a high level wizard/adventurer entails than what is provided by the rules.
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Neither of these is any more or less realistic or simulationist than the other.
Yes, they are and I explained as such why that is.
An incredibly experienced legendary Wizard who has been in 10 times more life or death fights than every level 1 Fighter in the bar combined beats the crap out of a dozen inexperienced rookies with his bare hands is not any more 'gameism' than the other way of doing things. I could easily imagine such a scene playing out in a novel, film, or tv show. You're just bring a different expectation of what being a high level wizard/adventurer entails than what is provided by the rules.
I heavily disagree.
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Well, I am currently playing the game which suits my needs, PF1E. I was hoping PF2E would be an evolution of that, but we'll see if I can help hammer it back to being that.
Well, after reading a post from Lisa, saying how happy they were about the overwhelming positive reaction among those who heavily playtested the thing in Gen Con, I think you are going to need Mjonir to hammer it back to what it was.
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Neither of these is any more or less realistic or simulationist than the other.Yes, they are and I explained as such why that is.
I'll grant you that it is indeed less 'simulationist' if you're trying to simulate a real life 10 on 1 fight (though in that case a level 16 Fighter should not fare much better against 10 level 1s than the theoretical wizard). What I should have said is that neither is more 'gamist' than the other.
An incredibly experienced legendary Wizard who has been in 10 times more life or death fights than every level 1 Fighter in the bar combined beats the crap out of a dozen inexperienced rookies with his bare hands is not any more 'gameism' than the other way of doing things. I could easily imagine such a scene playing out in a novel, film, or tv show. You're just bring a different expectation of what being a high level wizard/adventurer entails than what is provided by the rules.I heavily disagree.
You disagree that someone could write a story where a fictional wizard who has reached legendary status and been through many battles and all manner of adventure could beat up 10 untested rookies in a bar fight?