Interesting topic over on reddit.


General Discussion

51 to 100 of 169 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Kalindlara wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
Couldn't she have multiclassed Cleric? That seems totally in line with that character backstory. But to take that as a general complaint rather than a specific complaint, that is an issue of content not mechanics. When PF1 came out, there were many concepts you couldn't exactly replicate as well, even with its feat structure. In fact I don't think I know of any game that truly allows you to model every concept.
I would be very impressed with a PF2 paladin who could afford the 16 starting Wisdom necessary to multiclass into cleric at 2nd level while maintaining combat competence and the paladin class's needs.

Wisdom is the ability flaw on goblins. Harvey the goblin paladin has Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 16. He won't qualify for Cleric Dedication until 10th level.

Harvey is not without paladin feats to play a protector of the weak. The 4th level paladin feats include Channel Life and Mercy. The 8th level feats offer Greater Mercy. Meanwhile, Harvey will gain a wolf mount through a combination of goblin ancestry feat Rough Rider and paladin class feature Righteous Ally and will also take feats for his wolf companion. The character will largely be characterized by lay on hands with mercy, a wolf companion, and Diplomacy skills. (By the way, fast diplomacy is houseruled for everyone, but I did that houserule in PF1, too.)

By the way, hello Kalindlara. I haven't seen many of your posts since you used to comment about my Jade Regent postings 3 years ago.

Belisar wrote:
You have to excuse me, I had to grin widely when reading this. I immediately thought of an adventure path around a horticultural show, where a cast of diverse gardeners compete to raise the biggest pumpkin.

My players would love that.

Belisar wrote:
But jokes aside, the town council should just have sent them back after chastising them why they did not return with the villain's secret loot like a loyal citizen would have done. Easy solution there! XD

The town council could have sent a group of 1st-level teenagers to battle thugs and steal from a respected citizen. Or they could have sent the captain of the town guard with some trained soldiers and make a formal request of that respected citizen to help them investigate strange circumstances at one of his warehouses.

I did have to stop the game session that week, Iron Gods Among Scientists, to think about the town council's response. However, a roleplaying game where a responsible town council would ask unruly adventurers to start fights in town while they are trying to avoid the attention of Technic League informants is not a believeable game. It is not a direction that I want to see Pathfinder Adventure Paths go.

In The Lost Star, I explained to the players that Varisia has a strong adventurer tradition of finders keepers, so Keleri Deverin asked her friends to find the lost star for her rather than some professionals--including the town guard--who would have charged an enormous finders' fee. Sometimes plot hooks need a little more flavor to be easily swallowed.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Something I saw in a Reddit thread that really made me think: Pathfinder 2 is a good basis to build a Dark Souls tabletop game with. The monsters are always tougher than you, an enemy crit can end you easily, self healing is both rare and limited per day, your struggles result in little statistical improvement & what you do get is already accounted for by the system scaling, even the active shield/shield block system is more souls like (absent the shield fragility). The only things missing are a dodge roll and a hollow/humanity system.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
The Blue Fairy wrote:
Andy Brown wrote:
The Blue Fairy wrote:
Things like Resonance make way more sense as optional-for-home-play, but mandatory-for-Society-play rules rather than being hard-coded into the entire balance of the game.

Just my opinion:

Resonance (for consumables) is terrible for PFS. The current setup for healing really needs a Cleric in the party, and you can't guarantee that for PFS.

That really just brings us back around to "Resonance is a terrible mechanic". You can't force home-games to bring a heal-battery Cleric every time, either.

I'd, personally, like to see Resonance done away with entirely.

But if the devs feel they simply must include the Resonance mechanic for "balance reasons" then I think it should explicitly be limited to a required-for-Society-play and optional-for-home-games mechanic.

I think this should be true of most of the systems, and the ways in which you can adjust them should have a chapter all of their own to help GMs/Players find the style of game that suits them built into the game from the very start so that it is compatible going forward unlike some stuff later in PFs lifespan (I love the Wounds system in Ultimate Combat, except it is a massive ball ache for many interactions.) This was a pretty unpopular idea before the book dropped though.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
D@rK-SePHiRoTH- wrote:

I assume most of Pathfinder's playerbase want to play the "optimize character to shine in play" game, that is why they play Pathfinder instead of 5E

This is also evident in online communities due to the sheer amount of optimization and math-related threads.

That's assuming that the people on any given Internet forum are a representative sample of the people playing the game. That's probably not a good assumption. I'd wager that there's a great deal of "If I don't get to play the game, at least I'll have fun exploring the nooks and crannies of CharOp and engage the game on that level." Certainly not all of it, but there's definitely a portion of that going on. That's what I was doing back in the days when I didn't have a good game group, that and reading a bunch of lore stuff.

However, I'll grant that these days the Pathfinder crowd probably skews math-heavy, if only because the rest moved to 5e.


Mathmuse wrote:
The town council could have sent a group of 1st-level teenagers to battle thugs and steal from a respected citizen. Or they could have sent the captain of the town guard with some trained soldiers and make a formal request of that respected citizen to help them investigate strange circumstances at one of his warehouses.

But unfortunately the town militia suffered from food poisoning. Time to shine for the youngsters and they have to take haste, because the respected citizen is targeting the families of the teenagers. Will they be able to save their beloved or will the hesitant dwarf rather sit amongst his slaughtered kin?

But even if the dwarf keeps subverting expectations, the rest of the group could still go on adventure. She could make sandwiches in the meantime and thus earn Hero Points. XD


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Vic Ferrari wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
I asked my wife, and she says her goal as a player is "to be unpredicable." She has a reputation for derailing adventure paths, even among other GMs than me.
Yeah, I am not so keen on that approach, whenever a player says something like "I am somewhat of a spanner in the works...", I just groan and note the red flag of a potential problem player. Regardless of being a DM or player.

I have been playing roleplaying games beside her since 1980. She is not a problem player. She stabilizes games and keeps problem players focused on sensible roleplaying. She adds to the story.

For example in one Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings, 3rd Edition) campaign the four-member party had left Rokugan (fantasy pseudo-China) and traveled to the pseudo-Roman Empire tracking down some treasonous Tortoise Clan witches. My wife and I played a husband and wife pair. My ronin was an explosives expert (dishonorable combat style) adopted into the Raven Clan as a samurai, his one chance at honor. Her wild-magic shugenja (spellcaster) was a madwoman who saw the spirit world more clearly than the real world. The party had to kill a Tortoise Clan couple with a baby, and when her character arrived, she immediately claimed the orphaned baby as her own--not as an adoption but as her own child newly born. This put a big twist on the plot, but it was in character. And thus we ended up enacting our own version of Lone Wolf and Cub, a classic Japanese story where a samurai travels and battles while tending his toddler in a baby carriage.

To her, murderhoboing and min-maxing are lazy ways to play roleplaying games and she shuns them. Unpredictable to her means stepping into the character's shoes and deciding what the character would do for his or her own reasons rather than following the path that offers the best loot and the best chance of winning at combat.

When a writer writes a module, they cannot cover every branch in the story. They cover the obvious branches, such as if the party decided on a hack-and-slash campaign or if they follow the trail of breadcrumbs that the writer laid down. Highly thought-out characters take their own path rather than an obvious path, so they leave the written material. Fortunately, Paizo modules also make excellent sourcebooks for when I have to write a new adventure in the same place.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Mathmuse wrote:
When a writer writes a module, they cannot cover every branch in the story. They cover the obvious branches, such as if the party decided on a hack-and-slash campaign or if they follow the trail of breadcrumbs that the writer laid down. Highly thought-out characters take their own path rather than an obvious path, so they leave the written material. Fortunately, Paizo modules also make excellent sourcebooks for when I have to write a new adventure in the same place.

In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

It is wise to have the group chose character concepts which connects them to the campaign. Otherwise you will always have trouble with such players who draw fun from undermining adventures instead of cooperating with the other players to solve any given challenge.


Staffan Johansson wrote:
I'd wager that there's a great deal of "If I don't get to play the game, at least I'll have fun exploring the nooks and crannies of CharOp and engage the game on that level."

I know I would fall into that category.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Belisar wrote:
In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

So ... I am supposed to buy fewer Paizo products?

Belisar wrote:
It is wise to have the group chose character concepts which connects them to the campaign. Otherwise you will always have trouble with such players who draw fun from undermining adventures instead of cooperating with the other players to solve any given challenge.

We held a session zero to ensure the characters fit the setting. They fit the setting better than standard adventurers. They simply preferred to solve challenges with conversation and investigation rather than combat, and the module was not written for that level of peaceful cooperation. The players cooperated with each other so well that cooperating with the town council was a clear next step. Councillor Dolga Freddert was the dwarf's second cousin, twice removed.

Powergamers undermine adventures more than those characters did. That is why so many people complain about powergamers. I worry that some mechanics in PF2 will bake the powergaming right in.

I would dismiss this as a side conversation that should not clutter this thread, but it raises an important point about Pathfinder 2nd Edition. If the focus of Pathfinder adventuring is narrowed, will I have to narrow the side branches my game takes because PF2 cannot handle people would would rather talk than fight?

Look at what we did in the Iron Gods adventure path that defied expectations. The final boss of Fires of Creation said to the party in confusion, "You are just townsfolk. This does not concern you. Go home." The party skald held a concert in the middle of a technological junkyard in Lords of Rust. The party flew around in a spaceship in The Choking Tower because I don't mind letting them earn overpowered items. They worried about the health of the friendly mad druid in Valley of the Brain Collectors and healed him. They boldly walked into the city of Starfall under their own names in Palace of Fallen Stars because they were so ordinary that the Technic League could not recognize them. They entered Silver Mount in The Divinity Drive by getting hired by the bad guy rather than fighting their way in (that one caught me by surprise but the players loved the technological jobs I gave their characters). We have done that in Iron Gods, and we will have stories just as amazing in our next campaign.

Silver Crusade Contributor

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Scythia wrote:
Something I saw in a Reddit thread that really made me think: Pathfinder 2 is a good basis to build a Dark Souls tabletop game with. The monsters are always tougher than you, an enemy crit can end you easily, self healing is both rare and limited per day, your struggles result in little statistical improvement & what you do get is already accounted for by the system scaling, even the active shield/shield block system is more souls like (absent the shield fragility). The only things missing are a dodge roll and a hollow/humanity system.

This is a pretty cool idea, actually, and I wouldn't mind seeing someone develop it further. ^_^


Skeld wrote:

I liked Paizo's decision-making better when they said they weren't trying to compete with WotC/D&D. They made decisions that made sense for them and their fanbase. Things seem like they took a turn they tried to spin-off an MMO. Maybe Paizo is becoming a victim of their own success.

-Skeld

I think this is a bit unfair though. I don't think it's so much trying to compete with WotC as trying to SURVIVE WotC. 5E is pulling Pathfinder Players who are bored/dislike the system away, and at least some of the current folks who still love the system don't buy paizo products or at least not at a sustainable level. Something had to be done, and a slight retool of Pathfinder for a second edition was probably not sustainable.

And Adventurers League certainly seems to be a powerful recruiting tool. PFS is nonexistent where I live, but I can check out the former at multiple game shops in my area.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Belisar wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
When a writer writes a module, they cannot cover every branch in the story. They cover the obvious branches, such as if the party decided on a hack-and-slash campaign or if they follow the trail of breadcrumbs that the writer laid down. Highly thought-out characters take their own path rather than an obvious path, so they leave the written material. Fortunately, Paizo modules also make excellent sourcebooks for when I have to write a new adventure in the same place.

In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

It is wise to have the group chose character concepts which connects them to the campaign. Otherwise you will always have trouble with such players who draw fun from undermining adventures instead of cooperating with the other players to solve any given challenge.

Mathmuse isn't presenting any outlandish character concepts or tactics, is he? Are characters expected to be myopic and mercenary without inductive reasoning, personal motivations or anything like that?

I started sarcastic, but now I'm seriously wondering. What are the character expectations for modules and such?


10 people marked this as a favorite.
Belisar wrote:
PF1 appeals to a group of 3.5 fans that didn't want to follow WotC on its path to 4e.

To be fair, that overly simplifies the matter. PF1 appeals to people PF1 appeals to. It's not just 3.5e vs 4e. It's more 3.5e versus everything else.

There are other game systems. Sure, not as popular or well-known as "Dungeons & Dragons", but if enjoyment of 3.5e for its inherent nature wasn't a major factor, when that system was discontinued, players could have and would have moved to some other system. That we didn't tells you that for all its flaws, a large number of people had found the system they wanted to play.

Discontinuing PF1 gives that sort of person the drive to find another system. It's 100% in the air if that other system will be PF2, because PF2 is clearly not PF1 in any meaningful way.

Grand Lodge

7 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
MMCJawa wrote:
Skeld wrote:

I liked Paizo's decision-making better when they said they weren't trying to compete with WotC/D&D. They made decisions that made sense for them and their fanbase. Things seem like they took a turn they tried to spin-off an MMO. Maybe Paizo is becoming a victim of their own success.

-Skeld

I think this is a bit unfair though. I don't think it's so much trying to compete with WotC as trying to SURVIVE WotC. 5E is pulling Pathfinder Players who are bored/dislike the system away, and at least some of the current folks who still love the system don't buy paizo products or at least not at a sustainable level. Something had to be done, and a slight retool of Pathfinder for a second edition was probably not sustainable.

Paizo trying to come up with a new PF2 game in an attempt to entice people to come back to PF from 5e would be the definition of "competing with."

It remains to be seen whether a slight retool would be better than a complete redesign. There's a lot of space between what we have in PF1 and what we've gotten so far in the playtest. We'll probably never know if a retool would've worked since PF seems to be headed firmly into redesign territory, especially if the survey questions and wording are any indication.

All of those high-fantasy tropes and quirks are built into the DNA of Pathfinder AND Golarion. If that DNA changes too much, Paizo is going to lose a bunch of customers and it remains to be seen whether they'll pick up new ones to replace them.

-Skeld

Grand Lodge

10 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Anguish wrote:
I honestly feel for Jason in particular. Spending nearly a decade and a half writing for someone else's system has got to be frustrating. I imagine he's really eager to spread his wings and create an edition that is his.

I don't know. For years now, players have been complaining that the rules content is the weakest segment of PF (compared to setting content and adventure content). It could be that being constrained by the Core rules of the 3.5/PF system has hamstrung Bulmahn for the past few years and that letting him out of the box to design a game unconstrained is exactly what Paizo needs. But, based on a lot of the feedback, a wholly new and different system isn't what's needed.

Personally, I somewhat like about half of it, and really, strongly dislike the other half. There isn't much in the middle. That really leaves me questionable as a continued customer.

-Skeld


I think the inherent issue of a "slight retool", is that its not going to provide you with a lot of new design space, and you will have a large segment of the population that even then won't want to move on or buy into a slightly tweaked system.

I don't like everything in the new edition, but I do see it changing quite a bit prior to release.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:

It could be that being constrained by the Core rules of the 3.5/PF system has hamstrung Bulmahn for the past few years and that letting him out of the box to design a game unconstrained is exactly what Paizo needs. But, based on a lot of the feedback, a wholly new and different system isn't what's needed.

Personally, I somewhat like about half of it, and really, strongly dislike the other half. There isn't much in the middle. That really leaves me questionable as a continued customer.

-Skeld

I find it very interesting that after 3X was hugely successful for WotC and PF (aka "3.5 thrives") was hugely successful for Paizo, they both made very similar design changes (+level / + 0.5 * level).

Now, clearly both systems were ready to move on for their companies, I'm not challenging that.

And, clearly, there are a ton of differences between 2E here and 4E in terms of overall design.

But the core point remains, both design teams (both staffed with top end folks) made a virtually identical choice.

And I think that aligns, at least mostly, with your point. You spend years working with a system, the things that become more and more obvious to you are the things that bug you and the things that people complain about. You could assume that 99.9% was ideal. It is that 0.1% that would just gnaw at you. And that gets a reaction.

Obviously there is a lot of resistance. (not saying no support, but I am saying way to much resistance to brush off) And WotC learned the lesson the hard way. But nobody went around saying "by the way, all those cool things, they are still really cool". But they DID complain about the warts. So the warts get an overreaction.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
ErichAD wrote:
Belisar wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
When a writer writes a module, they cannot cover every branch in the story. They cover the obvious branches, such as if the party decided on a hack-and-slash campaign or if they follow the trail of breadcrumbs that the writer laid down. Highly thought-out characters take their own path rather than an obvious path, so they leave the written material. Fortunately, Paizo modules also make excellent sourcebooks for when I have to write a new adventure in the same place.

In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

It is wise to have the group chose character concepts which connects them to the campaign. Otherwise you will always have trouble with such players who draw fun from undermining adventures instead of cooperating with the other players to solve any given challenge.

Mathmuse isn't presenting any outlandish character concepts or tactics, is he? Are characters expected to be myopic and mercenary without inductive reasoning, personal motivations or anything like that?

I started sarcastic, but now I'm seriously wondering. What are the character expectations for modules and such?

Let's go back to the beginning: Pathfinder Adventure Path #1, Burnt Offerings, first of six in Rise of the Runelords, written for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 by James Jacobs, released August 2007.

In Part One, Festival and Fire, pages 10 to 14, the player characters are visiting the Swallowtail Festival in Sandpoint, Varisia, when goblins raid. They encounter groups of Goblin Warriors, CR 1/3 each. There is also a Goblin Warchanter CR 1, and a Goblin Commando CR 1 riding a Goblin Dog CR 1. The encounter has many similiarities with the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest chapter The Lost Star, which is set nearby in space and time.

And then Part Two, Local Heroes, pages 14 to 20 has a lot of social interaction. The PCs are heroes for their help in the goblin raid and asked to help with many small problems. Part Three, pages 20 to 31, is more a dungeon delve, more exploration and room-by-room combat. Part Four, pages 31 to 56, is a bigger dungeon delve with more planning required.

The requirements for the party are combat, both short-burst open field combat and high-stakes dungeon combat, social interaction, exploration, and investigation. The short-burst combat does not require healing, because they have the aid of the town immediately afterwards. The dungeon combat is against a wide variety of creatures, not just goblins. Part Four definitely requires healing, but at 3rd level, the PCs could afford potions of cure light wounds if they lack a character that can cast cure light wounds. Cleric channeling did not exist in D&D 3.5.

I played a gnome ranger. Other party members were a dwarf fighter, elf rogue, half-elf bard/wizard, and human cleric. My wife was the GM. The elf rogue was the weak point, because she was purely a thief with no motivation. She had spent the goblin raid robbing merchant cashboxes and then stepped beside the rest of the party and made her alibi, "I was fighting goblins with them." The player left due to schedule problems and a new player brought in a half-elf rogue with a treasure-hunter theme. The cleric was played as a glory hound, who wanted fame so that he could gather a congregation. The bard/wizard was a scholar of ancient Thassilonian history who lived in Sandpoint to study its ruins. The fighter and the ranger just wanted to help. We had the classic fighter, cleric, rogue, and wizard, with ranger thrown in as an extra.

The emphasis does not seem to be on what roles needed to be filled to avoid a Total Party Kill. The emphasis seemed to be to keep the game moving, to provide a plot hook why the player characters had to be the heroes to save the day. They repeatedly ended up in the right place at the right time.

Just add PCs who would do the right thing in the right place at the right time.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:
Anguish wrote:
I honestly feel for Jason in particular. Spending nearly a decade and a half writing for someone else's system has got to be frustrating. I imagine he's really eager to spread his wings and create an edition that is his.

I don't know. For years now, players have been complaining that the rules content is the weakest segment of PF (compared to setting content and adventure content). It could be that being constrained by the Core rules of the 3.5/PF system has hamstrung Bulmahn for the past few years and that letting him out of the box to design a game unconstrained is exactly what Paizo needs. But, based on a lot of the feedback, a wholly new and different system isn't what's needed.

Personally, I somewhat like about half of it, and really, strongly dislike the other half. There isn't much in the middle. That really leaves me questionable as a continued customer.

-Skeld

Thinking back to the 2007 Pathfinder Adventure Path #1 reminded me of the histories that Paizo wrote for the 10th anniversary of their business.

Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 0 (2002) The Thrill of Starting Something New
Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 5 (2007) The Year Everything Changed (Pathfinder Adventure Paths begun)
Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 6 (2008) Forging Our Own Path
Paizo Publishing's 10th Anniversary Retrospective—Year 7 (2009) Launching Our Own RPG

Year 6, 2008, was the invention of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Jason Bulmahn started it, so Pathfinder 1st Edition is his. But a line by Lisa Stevens seems to give their biggest reason for Pathfinder, and perhaps the reason for Pathfinder 2nd Edition:

Lisa Stevens wrote:
When Jason returned from D&D Experience, he laid out all the information that he had gleaned. From the moment that 4th Edition had been announced, we had trepidations about many of the changes we were hearing about. Jason's report confirmed our fears—4th Edition didn't look like the system we wanted to make products for. Whether a license for 4E was forthcoming or not, we were going to create our own game system based on the 3.5 SRD: The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. And we were already WAY behind schedule.

Paizo wants a roleplaying system that they want to make products for.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:
Anguish wrote:
I honestly feel for Jason in particular. Spending nearly a decade and a half writing for someone else's system has got to be frustrating. I imagine he's really eager to spread his wings and create an edition that is his.

I don't know. For years now, players have been complaining that the rules content is the weakest segment of PF (compared to setting content and adventure content). It could be that being constrained by the Core rules of the 3.5/PF system has hamstrung Bulmahn for the past few years and that letting him out of the box to design a game unconstrained is exactly what Paizo needs. But, based on a lot of the feedback, a wholly new and different system isn't what's needed.

Personally, I somewhat like about half of it, and really, strongly dislike the other half. There isn't much in the middle. That really leaves me questionable as a continued customer.

-Skeld

I'm feeling that way, too. Some of it is an iterative improvement over PF1. Other parts are... honestly just terrible with no redeeming features (and that sadly includes ancestries, skill feats as a concept, roughly half the classes, plus or minus a handful of feats, and lots of spells, where the 'minor failure' inflicting a trivial penalty for a round is basically the best you can hope for).

The parts that get to me, though, and really make me wonder are the parts that are simply incompatible with Golarion as written. Either Return of the Runelords is a terrible meta-adventure that changes the nature of the universe like the 'Time of Troubles/Fate of Istus' things that happened to AD&D, or some of the ways the world operates and its defaults assumptions just get flushed for no explicable reason.

MMCJawa wrote:


I don't like everything in the new edition, but I do see it changing quite a bit prior to release.

I'm not as convinced of that. I've seen too many 'got to stick to our release schedule' posts from upper Paizo folks. To me that says, no matter what the problems are, or how bad they are, the timer wins over quality. If the changes can't be made in time, they won't change.


6 people marked this as a favorite.
Belisar wrote:
In this case prewritten adventures are not suited for her, rather a sandbox survival kind of setting with miniature plots and no grand story arcs.

I don't agree. If a player is engaged with the plot in an unusual but creative way...the GM just needs to put in a bit more improv work to tie things back together. It's different when the player is indifferent to the plot and just mucking about but creative problem solving thats character based (like going to the authorities) shouldn't be seen as a problem (really it's an opportunity). Granted, I rarely run published materials (Doomsday Dawn reminds me why I don't - feels so confining) so I'm hardly an expert on how to run them "properly" but most of the ones I've read/run seem to provide a fine baseline to improv from and return to.

Grand Lodge

10 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
MMCJawa wrote:
I think the inherent issue of a "slight retool", is that its not going to provide you with a lot of new design space, and you will have a large segment of the population that even then won't want to move on or buy into a slightly tweaked system.

Can you provide an example of new design space that will be opened up?

Voss wrote:
The parts that get to me, though, and really make me wonder are the parts that are simply incompatible with Golarion as written. Either Return of the Runelords is a terrible meta-adventure that changes the nature of the universe like the 'Time of Troubles/Fate of Istus' things that happened to AD&D, or some of the ways the world operates and its defaults assumptions just get flushed for no explicable reason.

I really hope that isn't the case. Back in the day, there were three things that drove the original surge of people from D&D to PF:

1) The cancellation of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine,
2) The poor marketing lead-up to 4th edition (where they told people that edition you like and we've been selling you is crap; you'll like the next one much better)
3) "Realms Changing Events," ie. blowing up the game world to make game edition changes seem more "natural."
Players/fans really hated that spell plague stuff and the "points of light" was ridiculed too.

Mathmuse wrote:
Thinking back...

I was pretty active here back then. I remember all that, especially the fallout from Jason's trip to D&D Experience because we were all very eager to hear what Paizo's plans for 4e were. It's ironic how the devs didn't want to make products for 4e then, but now their beta test edition is very gamey like 4e was.

-Skeld


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:
2) The poor marketing lead-up to 4th edition (where they told people that edition you like and we've been selling you is crap; you'll like the next one much better)

Yeah, I remember that, and the obnoxious overuse of the words "cool" and "robust" (4th Ed turned out to be neither, for me, unfortunately), plus, and this one makes me rage against the machine a little bit: "Ze game remains ze same.".

...aaaaaaaaaagh! I mean, you can just imagine/hear the smug delivery on that one...

4th Ed was sort of like curing the headache by cutting off the head, let's hope nothing so extreme happens with PF2.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:
Voss wrote:
The parts that get to me, though, and really make me wonder are the parts that are simply incompatible with Golarion as written. Either Return of the Runelords is a terrible meta-adventure that changes the nature of the universe like the 'Time of Troubles/Fate of Istus' things that happened to AD&D, or some of the ways the world operates and its defaults assumptions just get flushed for no explicable reason.
I really hope that isn't the case.

They’ve explicitly ruled out “realms shattering events” a number of times.

I think people are going to argue (surprise) about whether or not PF2-Golarion lore is compatible with PF1-Golarion. It’s not going to be at the “God’s are dead, returning abeir” type stuff though. It depends whether you consider the inclusion of “domesticated” goblins as a bridge too far.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:
Skeld wrote:
Voss wrote:
The parts that get to me, though, and really make me wonder are the parts that are simply incompatible with Golarion as written. Either Return of the Runelords is a terrible meta-adventure that changes the nature of the universe like the 'Time of Troubles/Fate of Istus' things that happened to AD&D, or some of the ways the world operates and its defaults assumptions just get flushed for no explicable reason.
I really hope that isn't the case.

They’ve explicitly ruled out “realms shattering events” a number of times.

I think people are going to argue (surprise) about whether or not PF2-Golarion lore is compatible with PF1-Golarion. It’s not going to be at the “God’s are dead, returning abeir” type stuff though. It depends whether you consider the inclusion of “domesticated” goblins as a bridge too far.

I mean, I have 2 sentient skeleton NPCs that are quite civil running around in my games. And even a CN Gnoll running around.

I can probably stand goblins not being stab kill burn all the time. Giving them to players, well....


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Personally, I’ve always taken Golarion lore as a starting point. I don’t really care if something new pops up. I’d be more concerned if Pharasma was no longer a thing or if Absalom was now just a village.

To me, discovering something new doesn’t jar with what’s gone before. I can take changes of that nature in my stride. It’s harder to accomodate the other way around.


12 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yep, the 4E-ish vibe I've been getting from PF2E is really off-putting to me as well. It's actually quite ironic that the guys who still have jobs due to explicitly offering a 3.X-ish alternative to 4E now seem to be making the same mistake ten years later.

Liberty's Edge

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Superscriber
MMCJawa wrote:

I think the inherent issue of a "slight retool", is that its not going to provide you with a lot of new design space, and you will have a large segment of the population that even then won't want to move on or buy into a slightly tweaked system.

I don't like everything in the new edition, but I do see it changing quite a bit prior to release.

A large segment of the population that won't move on is a bigger risk with a whole new game system, as PF2e is. It's just less likely to appeal to as many of the same people. On the flip side, it could potentially bring in new people.

Remember that slightly (often barely) tweaked new versions worked for Call of Cthulhu for decades. Yes, that's a much smaller, niche-market game, although it is critically extremely well-regarded.


24 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
rknop wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:

I think the inherent issue of a "slight retool", is that its not going to provide you with a lot of new design space, and you will have a large segment of the population that even then won't want to move on or buy into a slightly tweaked system.

I don't like everything in the new edition, but I do see it changing quite a bit prior to release.

A large segment of the population that won't move on is a bigger risk with a whole new game system, as PF2e is. It's just less likely to appeal to as many of the same people. On the flip side, it could potentially bring in new people.

Remember that slightly (often barely) tweaked new versions worked for Call of Cthulhu for decades. Yes, that's a much smaller, niche-market game, although it is critically extremely well-regarded.

An upgraded version for the 3.X skeleton worked twice already, with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E. If the writers would have removed many of the kinks and artifacts which still are in PF1E (infinite money loops and so on, hyper-optimization), implemented the good stuff from Pathfinder Unleashed (automatic bonus progression, new action economy) as baseline and beefed up high-level monsters to be sturdier against the rocket tag-ish damage output PC's simply have there, I would have been very happy to buy that new edition.


16 people marked this as a favorite.
magnuskn wrote:
An upgraded version for the 3.X skeleton worked twice already, with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E. If the writers would have removed many of the kinks and artifacts which still are in PF1E (infinite money loops and so on, hyper-optimization), implemented the good stuff from Pathfinder Unleashed (automatic bonus progression, new action economy) as baseline and beefed up high-level monsters to be sturdier against the rocket tag-ish damage output PC's simply have there, I would have been very happy to buy that new edition.

This is pretty much identical to my thoughts. I was hoping for a 2e that really built on the PF1e/3.5 system, not something that departed from it so radically.


10 people marked this as a favorite.
pjrogers wrote:
magnuskn wrote:
An upgraded version for the 3.X skeleton worked twice already, with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E. If the writers would have removed many of the kinks and artifacts which still are in PF1E (infinite money loops and so on, hyper-optimization), implemented the good stuff from Pathfinder Unleashed (automatic bonus progression, new action economy) as baseline and beefed up high-level monsters to be sturdier against the rocket tag-ish damage output PC's simply have there, I would have been very happy to buy that new edition.
This is pretty much identical to my thoughts. I was hoping for a 2e that really built on the PF1e/3.5 system, not something that departed from it so radically.

I too was hoping for something a little more evolutionary, not so revolutionary.


6 people marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:
It depends whether you consider the inclusion of “domesticated” goblins as a bridge too far.

It would help if Goblins were a bit more transitional. Right now they've gone from book burning, dog killing, little murderhobos to Paladins and Wizards. A negative ancestral feature that they have to overcome - like illiteracy or distrusted - would help ease them into the fold. It could be fun to see a Goblin called to be a Paladin but who is rejected by the organized religion, for instance.

That's just me - I don't care deeply about Goblins' inclusion but it does feel a bit jarring. Granted, Edition shifts usually are.


Skeld wrote:
I really hope that isn't the case. Back in the day, there were three things that drove the original surge of people from D&D to PF:

Without getting into it - I'd add the shift from OGL to the much more restrictive GSL.

Skeld wrote:
3) "Realms Changing Events," ie. blowing up the game world to make game edition changes seem more "natural." Players/fans really hated that spell plague stuff and the "points of light" was ridiculed too.

It wasn't necessarily that world changing events are innately bad...classic World of Darkness fans may disagree...but it's that WOTC destroyed much, much more than they added, needlessly and with complete disregard to the fanbase. I'm about to go on the same rant I do every time this comes up which wouldn't really add anything helpful to this thread's topic. But, needless to say, YES - people were and are still upset about this.

Points of Light would have been fine for Dark Sun...or even certain ages of Dragonlance.... Terrible for Forgotten Realms.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
pjrogers wrote:
magnuskn wrote:
An upgraded version for the 3.X skeleton worked twice already, with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E. If the writers would have removed many of the kinks and artifacts which still are in PF1E (infinite money loops and so on, hyper-optimization), implemented the good stuff from Pathfinder Unleashed (automatic bonus progression, new action economy) as baseline and beefed up high-level monsters to be sturdier against the rocket tag-ish damage output PC's simply have there, I would have been very happy to buy that new edition.
This is pretty much identical to my thoughts. I was hoping for a 2e that really built on the PF1e/3.5 system, not something that departed from it so radically.

This is how I feel as well. Plus, include the good stuff from Starfinder.


9 people marked this as a favorite.

People have made comparisons between PF 2E and 4e. I feel that Paizo is in the midst of alienating its core player base with this more gamey design and unlike D&D is not backed by a huge corporation with deep pockets. If 2E falls on its face it could take a Paizo down with it.


6 people marked this as a favorite.
D@rK-SePHiRoTH- wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
Forgetting of course that what Paizo wants is also what a lot of customers want. But it is easier to think that your needs and likes are representative of the whole customer base.

I assume most of Pathfinder's playerbase want to play the "optimize character to shine in play" game, that is why they play Pathfinder instead of 5E

This is also evident in online communities due to the sheer amount of optimization and math-related threads.

There are, of course, exceptions.
However, it seems to me that all the signs indicate toward my assumption being mostly correct.

That is the true spirit of PF1. Character optimization. PF2 fails by that standard. PF2 requires optimization to be average. If you optimize in PF2 you tend to get average results not spectacular results. If you choose not to optimize you fall behind the curve rather quickly and that is a big failure of PF2 playtest so far


8 people marked this as a favorite.
pogie wrote:
People have made comparisons between PF 2E and 4e. I feel that Paizo is in the midst of alienating its core player base with this more gamey design and unlike D&D is not backed by a huge corporation with deep pockets. If 2E falls on its face it could take a Paizo down with it.

I agree and this is very sad. Its like PF developers completely misunderstood their customer base. It was made up of people who largely rejected 4E. So what does Paizo do? Create a game that largely mimics 4E with the super tight math, feats every level, nerfed casters and monsters on steroids. Its been a very disappointing playtest so far


4 people marked this as a favorite.
pogie wrote:
OP asks, as has been done here, what problem is 2E trying to solve. Many people seem to feel that the answer is that 5E is exponentially outselling PF.

I see people say things like this. "Exponentially" is a word with a lot of meaning. I also see quotes similar to "Because Wizards is killing Paizo in marketshare..."

For people who say these things like this, I ask: Where do you get this insider information? When I asked one guy (the guy who made the marketshare comment), his response was that it was because in his little town in Iowa, D&D was displayed way more prominently on the shelves.
So, anytime I see a post like this, I instantly barely care. Because there's no way the average person could know who is "exponentially" outselling whom. Or what part of marketshare is 5E, and what part is MtG.
76% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Grand Lodge

5 people marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Steve Geddes wrote:
They’ve explicitly ruled out “realms shattering events” a number of times.

Yes, they've said that many times over the years and now it's time for them to actually follow-through with it. That aside, setting incompatibility is one of my dealbreakers. i don't want Golarion to be changed on some fundamental level.

The Once and Future Kai wrote:
Skeld wrote:
I really hope that isn't the case. Back in the day, there were three things that drove the original surge of people from D&D to PF:
Without getting into it - I'd add the shift from OGL to the much more restrictive GSL.

To the average player, i don't think the OGL vs. GSL was that big of a thing, but it was a huge deal to publishers (like Paizo). I think what was the bigger deal to players was learning, after the fact, how much 3.5e material was hidden behind the IP wall and specifically wasn't included in the OGL(Beholders, Midflayers, Book of Nine Swords, etc.).

rknop wrote:
Remember that slightly (often barely) tweaked new versions worked for Call of Cthulhu for decades. Yes, that's a much smaller, niche-market game, although it is critically extremely well-regarded.

There are a lot of games out there, CoC is a great example, that tweak instead of revise and they remain popular and keep customers around between edition changes.

Vic Ferrari wrote:
I too was hoping for something a little more evolutionary, not so revolutionary.

This is my new mantra.

pogie wrote:
I feel that Paizo is in the midst of alienating its core player base with this more gamey design and unlike D&D is not backed by a huge corporation with deep pockets. If 2E falls on its face it could take a Paizo down with it.

I've said this exact same thing in other threads.

-Skeld


magnuskn wrote:
rknop wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:

I think the inherent issue of a "slight retool", is that its not going to provide you with a lot of new design space, and you will have a large segment of the population that even then won't want to move on or buy into a slightly tweaked system.

I don't like everything in the new edition, but I do see it changing quite a bit prior to release.

A large segment of the population that won't move on is a bigger risk with a whole new game system, as PF2e is. It's just less likely to appeal to as many of the same people. On the flip side, it could potentially bring in new people.

Remember that slightly (often barely) tweaked new versions worked for Call of Cthulhu for decades. Yes, that's a much smaller, niche-market game, although it is critically extremely well-regarded.

An upgraded version for the 3.X skeleton worked twice already, with D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1E. If the writers would have removed many of the kinks and artifacts which still are in PF1E (infinite money loops and so on, hyper-optimization), implemented the good stuff from Pathfinder Unleashed (automatic bonus progression, new action economy) as baseline and beefed up high-level monsters to be sturdier against the rocket tag-ish damage output PC's simply have there, I would have been very happy to buy that new edition.

I still think they should go all-in on automatic bonus progression and ditch +x magic weapons and armor entirely. However, I do think that leaving behind 3.x is an overall better choice. The absolutely monstrous amount of different rules for things that are very similar (Intimidate functioning off of an entirely different DC than something like 10+willsave; CMB vs. attack roll vs. acrobatics and which thing you're rolling against). Though I also don't feel like the new game is as different from PFU as most seem to anyway. The biggest issue for me right now is resonance and that's only because it seems like it's terribly implemented with the alchemist.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
'Barnabas' wrote:

I see people say things like this. "Exponentially" is a word with a lot of meaning. I also see quotes similar to "Because Wizards is killing Paizo in marketshare..."
For people who say these things like this, I ask: Where do you get this insider information? When I asked one guy (the guy who made the marketshare comment), his response was that it was because in his little town in Iowa, D&D was displayed way more prominently on the shelves.
So, anytime I see a post like this, I instantly barely care. Because there's no way the average person could know who is "exponentially" outselling whom. Or what part of marketshare is 5E, and what part is MtG.

2 big thumbs up.

Quote:


76% of statistics are made up on the spot.

I thought it was closer to 68%, but that's just me quibbling.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Skeld wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
They’ve explicitly ruled out “realms shattering events” a number of times.
Yes, they've said that many times over the years and now it's time for them to actually follow-through with it.

I meant they’ve said it several times since announcing PF2.

Silver Crusade

7 people marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:

Personally, I’ve always taken Golarion lore as a starting point. I don’t really care if something new pops up. I’d be more concerned if Pharasma was no longer a thing or if Absalom was now just a village.

To me, discovering something new doesn’t jar with what’s gone before. I can take changes of that nature in my stride. It’s harder to accomodate the other way around.

I have little problems with changes that are made for a reason.

I do NOT like totally gratuitous changes. For example, changing an Ankheg to an Ankhrav just seems really, really, really silly to me. As does changing the language that giants speak from Giant to Jotun (What, Norse is better than English? :-)).

That just adds to the burden for those of us moving from PF1 to PF2, ESPECIALLY for those of us who may be running/playing both games simultaneously.

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Ronnam wrote:
This is how I feel as well. Plus, include the good stuff from Starfinder.

There was good stuff in Starfinder? :-).

That joke is intended to make a serious point. I personally didn't find all that much to like in the Starfinder mechanics. I prefer PF1 (in general) to Starfinder.

Tastes vary. A lot.

I'm glad that they're making some major changes. If they made the changes that I want them to make to PF2 it would be a great game (for me :-)). I actually don't want any HUGE changes (except maybe to resonance). Just LOTS of reasonably minor tweaking.

Oh, and I REALLY want to see Automatic Bonus Progression. I really don't see why they don't do it. It works wonderfully with all of their professed design goals (makes creating characters a LOT easier, reduces disparity between characters, leaves design space for cool magic items)

Silver Crusade

6 people marked this as a favorite.
Alyran wrote:


I still think they should go all-in on automatic bonus progression and ditch +x magic weapons and armor entirely.

This. So much this. It is such an obvious fit with so many of their professed design goals


pogie wrote:
People have made comparisons between PF 2E and 4e. I feel that Paizo is in the midst of alienating its core player base with this more gamey design and unlike D&D is not backed by a huge corporation with deep pockets. If 2E falls on its face it could take a Paizo down with it.

While I agree the PF2 represents a risk, I think that Starfinder acts as an "insurance policy". If PF2 flops, there is considerable design space for SF, and it doesn't seem impossible to imagine Paizo reallocating resources to it.

This does by no means make me want to see that happen.

Liberty's Edge

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Superscriber

"Exponentially" is a word that is misused all the time, and it drives me a little bit nuts. Expoential does NOT mean "a lot".

If something is increasing exponentially, it means that after each given interval of time, the amount increases by some factor. Exponentially increasing sales would mean that one month you sell 1 item, the next month 2, the next month 4, the next month 8, the next month 16... up to 2048 items in the last month of the year. Each month, you sell twice as much as the previous month.

Only, it doesn't have to be double. It can be *anything*. Your savings account (assuming no deposits or withdrawals) is increasing exponentially. Every year, it gets 1% bigger. Not very impressive, but it *is* exponential.

Exponential increases don't have to be with time, although usually when not specified that's what you mean. You could say that the time it takes to run combat increases exponentially with the number of players at the table. So, a combat that would take 5 minutes with one player takes 7.5 minutes with two players, 11 minutes with 3 players, 17 minutes with 4 players, 25 minutes with 5 players, and 38 minutes with 6 players. In this straw-man example, I increased the time by a factor of 1.5 when you added each player. What makes the exponential powerful is that the difference in time between 5 and 6 players is way more than the difference in time between 2 and 3... but the factor is the same.

If you are just comparing two things, "exponentially" isn't meaningful. D&D5e's sales can't be exponentially more than Pathfinder's, because if you only have two numbers, there's no way to establish an exponential trend. You could say that the difference between D&D and Pathfinder sales is increasing exponentially with time. But when you say one thing is "exponentially more" than another, you are musing the word "exponentially". Just say "a lot" if that's what you mean. Or, if you need emphasis, say "a tremendous amount" or "a gigantic amount".

Exponential does not mean a lot.

Liberty's Edge

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Starfinder Superscriber
pauljathome wrote:
[Oh, and I REALLY want to see Automatic Bonus Progression. I really don't see why they don't do it. It works wonderfully with all of their professed design goals (makes creating characters a LOT easier, reduces disparity between characters, leaves design space for cool magic items)

At Paizocon a year-plus ago, I asked Mark Seifert (I assuredly just got his name wrong) why they didn't include that in Starfiner, since I agree with you that it's a great system and a great house rule for Pathfinder. It fixed so many problems, why not include for Pathfinder?

He told me that they tried it with some focus/playtest groups, and by and large people didn't like it. The reason they gave is that they wanted to have control over how they were getting and allocating their bonuses, so they preferred buying the bonus items rather than it just happening at a pre-specified level.

Me, I'm completely the other way. The fact that the "big 6" use up slots that you then can't justify using for other flavorful things because the ability bonuses are basically required just makes me sad. Starfinder fixed it a bit by having your bonus increase not use slots, but still limiting how many you can take and how expensive they are.

Silver Crusade Contributor

6 people marked this as a favorite.
pauljathome wrote:

I have little problems with changes that are made for a reason.

I do NOT like totally gratuitous changes. For example, changing an Ankheg to an Ankhrav just seems really, really, really silly to me.

Admittedly, this change was made for a reason, just not a readily apparent one. "Ankheg" is part of WotC's intellectual property, where "ankhrav" is entirely Paizo's. So they can use the term across their non-RPG products without it dragging the Open Game License text with it like a ball and chain. (The totally-not-an-ankheg miniature was called an Ankhrav well before the PF2 announcement, for example.)

Liberty's Edge

3 people marked this as a favorite.
rknop wrote:
pauljathome wrote:
[Oh, and I REALLY want to see Automatic Bonus Progression. I really don't see why they don't do it. It works wonderfully with all of their professed design goals (makes creating characters a LOT easier, reduces disparity between characters, leaves design space for cool magic items)

At Paizocon a year-plus ago, I asked Mark Seifert (I assuredly just got his name wrong) why they didn't include that in Starfiner, since I agree with you that it's a great system and a great house rule for Pathfinder. It fixed so many problems, why not include for Pathfinder?

He told me that they tried it with some focus/playtest groups, and by and large people didn't like it. The reason they gave is that they wanted to have control over how they were getting and allocating their bonuses, so they preferred buying the bonus items rather than it just happening at a pre-specified level.

I've heard the same, but I'm really not sure how condensing the items and reducing the number of bonuses is supposed to fix all this. By coupling saves with AC, and removing the option for multiple stat boosts, what they've really done is remove the choice of when and on what you want to spend your money on, and made the big 3 practically mandatory at the levels they first become available. If you're doing that, you might as well get the bonus for free and remove it from the WBL scale.

51 to 100 of 169 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Pathfinder Playtest General Discussion / Interesting topic over on reddit. All Messageboards