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I abandoned 4e because Pathfinder existed and had APs which blew the competition out of the water. If the stories are there and they stay good, they will keep my business.
Pathfinder 1 has started to lose by business recently because their mechanics actively get in the way of high level storytelling. The adventures that they write cannot keep up with what players can do and require so much GM fiat that books 4-6 become free form/GM writing their own adventure to keep up with what the players can do.
PF2 had issues with expectations being directed one direction on game play and then not living up to those expectations, but as long as the system works to tell the stories, it will keep me interested even if I would have designed the game differently (especially if my issues can easily be house ruled.)
My story of embracing Pathfinder is similar to Unicore's. I switched from D&D 3.5 to D&D 4th Edition without complaint. The one character I played, a dwarf paladin Gardain, did not quite gel as a character for a few levels, he seemed more like a collection of abilities until I had some stories under his belt. Other people at the game store had heard about Pathfinder and one GM started a short introductory game. That game was enough to persuade us to buy the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. My wife borrowed the D&D 3.5 Rise of the Runelords modules from a friend and we began a Pathfinder campaign at the game store.
My players proactively avoid selecting Pathfinder abilities that disrupt the high-level storytelling. The story is their main goal, and they realize that powergaming simply causes me to increase the challenge level. This means that my table is an exception, except that I am bewildered that three groups of players, with only one player (my wife) and the GM (me) overlapping all three groups, are all an exception in the same way. Do the GM and the GM's lovely assistant influence player style that much? My players do derail the modules, both at low level and high level, so I have to freeform the games like Unicore using the modules as sourcebooks, yet the derailments are for story-based reasons.
- The turn structure is, IMO, not a problem in PF1E. I know my guys are very experienced with the system by now, hence of course I am having a somewhat skewed perspective on it. But "swift action, move action, standard action, immediate action" (the latter of which is very seldomly used) is not an inherently difficult concept. The "three action economy" of PF2E is simpler, but unnecessarily so. I got about four players between my ten friends I share between two groups, who sometimes run into questions what they can do in a round, but that is always resolved in about five seconds.
Most of the people on these forums sound positive about the three-action system. The PF1 system was not a showstopper, but it was more complicated than necessary and funneled actions too strictly. Dire Ursus and Tarik Blackhands point out that combat in PF2 is more tactical and the three-action system is part of the reason.
- Skill ranks were totally fine in PF1E and gave characters actual options at what they wanted to be good at.
When I had to build high-level NPCs for my campaigns, necessary due to the derailments, the main slowdowns were studying the classes and archetypes to find the best one and assigning the skills. Often for a generic high-level NPC, I would search the NPC Codex or the Rival Guide for an NPC of the right theme and class and add a few levels. In that case, updating the skills and the spell list were the hardest parts and took two hours.
- Base attack bonus does not exceed armor class per se. A player who builds his character to have a good AC is very difficult to hit by monsters at high levels. The problem is instead that there are too many buff types for attack bonuses being readily available. Morale bonuses, luck bonuses, competence bonuses and quite a lot of unnamed bonuses all stack and make accounting what your actual attack roll is too complicated. I can't count the times players forgot to add this or that bonus to their attack (or armor class) during combat.
Yes, PF1 has a problem with too many little bonuses. The tight math in PF2 is an attempt to fix that. Oddly, PF2's other practice of offering only item, circumstance, and conditional bonuses that don't stack seems a more direct and effective solution.
- Caster versatility being higher than martials should have been solved the other way around, IMO, by buffing martial versatility.
I agree.
- Before update 1.3 magical healing was also completely required in PF2E. We'll see if non-magical healing being so ubiquitous survives to the final product.
I wondered why Paizo seemed to think resonance was the solution when the ubiquitous wands of Cure Light Wounds were only a symptom. Treat Wounds has a very mechanical design with little story worth, so I doubt it will be the final answer.
I wondered why Paizo seemed to think resonance was the solution when the ubiquitous wands of Cure Light Wounds were only a symptom. Treat Wounds has a very mechanical design with little story worth, so I doubt it will be the final answer.
I only agree with this if you're playing in a game where time is not an issue.
Try running Chapter 3 or 5 of Doomsday Dawn with 1.3 rules. Or even just look at how it would work. That's VERY much a hard choice of if you want to try Treating Wounds. The 10 minutes do mean something if your GM makes it mean something.
Well, we have very different experiences with the game (3rd Ed and PF1), and I find yours unfortunate, which is a shame. Also, what you are claiming sounds like classic edition warring rhetoric from 2008 (often from people that didn't even play 3rd Ed).Never used the unchained RAE but will entirely concur that there wasn't much strategy at work beyond blitzkreiging the bad guy with some permutation of booting in the door or something like dimension door for 95% of engagements.Not really, short term tactics is not strategy, and again, I do not agree with your run in and kill them in two turns of full attacking, assertion (especially if one uses the Unchained RAE).Well that pours over into strategy too. You do feel like you need to plan stuff out. While in PF1e: "eh let's just run in and hopefully kill them in a turn or two of full attacking."Ah, that is not my experience, and it would seem you are referring to tactics, not strategy.Because every single martial in PF1e plays the exact same. 5foot step full attack. In PF2e you have a lot more options during your turn, and it's not always obvious what is 100% the best.I think our favorite part is that it actually feels like a strategy game now (we are avid wargamers). PF1e combat was way too shallow.What in particular about the PF2 ruleset makes it feel more strategic to you (a strategy game, now), than PF1, and why would you say that PF1 combat is way too shallow?
From playing 3.5 and PF for years this is the strategy we found the most effective for martials. Killing the opponent as fast as possible. Usually with a two handed sword and power attack with a high critical threat range, or with a bowman firing off as many arrows as possible.
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- Base attack bonus does not exceed armor class per se. A player who builds his character to have a good AC is very difficult to hit by monsters at high levels. The problem is instead that there are too many buff types for attack bonuses being readily available. Morale bonuses, luck bonuses, competence bonuses and quite a lot of unnamed bonuses all stack and make accounting what your actual attack roll is too complicated. I can't count the times players forgot to add this or that bonus to their attack (or armor class) during combat.Yes, PF1 has a problem with too many little bonuses. The tight math in PF2 is an attempt to fix that. Oddly, PF2's other practice of offering only item, circumstance, and conditional bonuses that don't stack seems a more direct and effective solution.
The "tight math" in PF2 is actually intended to fix two problems, and the "many little bonuses" thing is only one of them. The other problem the tight math wants to fix is the possibility, which comes online at surprisingly low levels in PF1, that the same challenge, the same DC, can be an auto-fail - mathematically impossible, regardless of the die roll - for one character and an auto-sucess - mathematically guaranteed, regardless of the die roll - for another of the same level.
Right now, at the point of maximum divergence, the best possible character and the worst possible character attempting the same skill roll can have a difference of +20 between them (barring some truly weird choices with regard to armor). That's a character with a 22 stat, bumped to 24 with a potent item, who is Legendary at the skill, and has a +5 item bonus (+7, +3, +5 = +15) vs a character with an 8 stat who is untrained (-1, -4, = -5). That range covers exactly the range of one d20. That means that, while the first character is going to be much, much, much better than the second one, they can both actually participate in the same set of challenges, which means that the game as a whole is easier to design stories for and to engage all the players in.
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You'll never get better tactics than using PF1's RAE with the vast variety of characters and viable combat styles, along with the lack of superfluous action taxes that eat away over half your turn just to hold your weapon correctly and use a class feature.
The new action economy has a good framework, but they're micro-managing too much and the game doesn't play well. My players got sick of me telling them "no you can't do that" over and over and over and over again when they're just trying to move, use class feature, and attack.
Character creation is difficult because you have 4 different boxes of feats to track and you get no freedom with them. That means you have to read all four sections and figure out what the best combos are, instead of picking one feat that you want for 1st level, plus maybe a bonus feat that your class gives you.
Character creation is the longest process of this play test.
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Let's be clear, Pogie's first statement is true, or at least, it's been asserted repeatedly, even by Paizo itself, that this was the case. Pathfinder exists because 4e failed.Give me a break. Of course I didn’t fund a scientific study on this. The reason Pathfinder exists is because a large percentage of the D&D playerbase rejected the gamist design of 4E. The same type of design Paizo is presenting with Pathfinder 2E. It’s a logical inference that those same players will not be happy with this type of game again.How do you know what much of core fan base wants? Do you have any empirical data on this? A poll of at least five digits of people reporting? An analysis based upon a reliable sample group?....ad nauseum......
Ah, damn, no data once again. *kicks tumbleweed*
But that's not the claim that Pogie made. They said that "a large percentage of the D&D playerbase rejected the gamist design of 4E." The fact that a large portion of the playerbase rejected 4E doesn't mean that it was because of 4E's gamist design. That was undoubtedly one reason, probably the primary reason for many, but for many others, it was either only part of the reason or had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Some of those latter people have already posted in this thread. It also doesn't necessarily mean that 4E failed due to "gamist design" writ large, as opposed to simply 4E's particular expression of that design.
Moreover, many of the arguments against both 4E and PF2 conceptually - high-level complaints, not specific element issues - can be boiled down to some variant of "we didn't need a complete re-design, we just needed an edition that fixed [blank]!" Somehow, "fixing [blank]" is assumed to be something relatively easily done, that for some reason the developers just ignored and instead did this whole other thing that is both much more difficult and much more controversial. Oh, and let's not forget that two more-or-less completely independent sets of game developers both made this decision, seemingly flying in the face logic twice.
You'll never get better tactics than using PF1's RAE with the vast variety of characters and viable combat styles, along with the lack of superfluous action taxes that eat away over half your turn just to hold your weapon correctly and use a class feature.
The new action economy has a good framework, but they're micro-managing too much and the game doesn't play well. My players got sick of me telling them "no you can't do that" over and over and over and over again when they're just trying to move, use class feature, and attack.
Character creation is difficult because you have 4 different boxes of feats to track and you get no freedom with them. That means you have to read all four sections and figure out what the best combos are, instead of picking one feat that you want for 1st level, plus maybe a bonus feat that your class gives you.
Character creation is the longest process of this play test.
We took less than an hour to create our characters in the first adventure. It's usually sat at around 2 hours for each chapter thereafter. What is your group getting hung up on?
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We took less than an hour to create our characters in the first adventure. It's usually sat at around 2 hours for each chapter thereafter. What is your group getting hung up on?You'll never get better tactics than using PF1's RAE with the vast variety of characters and viable combat styles, along with the lack of superfluous action taxes that eat away over half your turn just to hold your weapon correctly and use a class feature.
The new action economy has a good framework, but they're micro-managing too much and the game doesn't play well. My players got sick of me telling them "no you can't do that" over and over and over and over again when they're just trying to move, use class feature, and attack.
Character creation is difficult because you have 4 different boxes of feats to track and you get no freedom with them. That means you have to read all four sections and figure out what the best combos are, instead of picking one feat that you want for 1st level, plus maybe a bonus feat that your class gives you.
Character creation is the longest process of this play test.
At first it was about realizing which Skill feats we wanted, but could not qualify for with signature skills, but it got much harder to do builds once we started looking at how to do items and how to distribute wealth.
The alchemist never actually finished his character, we decided to wing it and start playing because we had all been sitting there for an extra hour waiting for him to get done.
Then there's the problems that come from needing to constantly flip back and forth in the book to reference what all your abilities could do and it makes it much harder than having say, the domain powers' descriptions actually listed with the cleric to compare the options, instead we have to sift through all the spells to find them, or turn the page back and forth over and over again.
Then there's the reading that comes into figuring out which feats exist to fulfill a concept, and I have had players flat out turn a 180 on a build after realizing their concept is not possible in the book as written because of how restrictive it is.
I think Ancestry feats need to go, I don;t like how they stagnate an complicate the character creation process, and it feels like I'm forced to take them because the devs want to make sure I take them lest they be wasted ink, which they feel like when I compare them to being able to just take the feats I want in PF1.
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Moreover, many of the arguments against both 4E and PF2 conceptually - high-level complaints, not specific element issues - can be boiled down to some variant of "we didn't need a complete re-design, we just needed an edition that fixed [blank]!" Somehow, "fixing [blank]" is assumed to be something relatively easily done, that for some reason the developers just ignored and instead did this whole other thing that is both much more difficult and much more controversial. Oh, and let's not forget that two more-or-less completely independent sets of game developers both made this decision, seemingly flying in the face logic twice.
Well, *thrice*, since while designing 5E, instead of "slightly tweaking 3.5" - which, according to some, would be the best thing since sliced bread and would sell like hot cupcakes - WotC decided to make an entirely new ruleset.
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Keep beating on that strawman instead of discussing the actual issues raised... You go!Moreover, many of the arguments against both 4E and PF2 conceptually - high-level complaints, not specific element issues - can be boiled down to some variant of "we didn't need a complete re-design, we just needed an edition that fixed [blank]!" Somehow, "fixing [blank]" is assumed to be something relatively easily done, that for some reason the developers just ignored and instead did this whole other thing that is both much more difficult and much more controversial. Oh, and let's not forget that two more-or-less completely independent sets of game developers both made this decision, seemingly flying in the face logic twice.Well, *thrice*, since while designing 5E, instead of "slightly tweaking 3.5" - which, according to some, would be the best thing since sliced bread and would sell like hot cupcakes - WotC decided to make an entirely new ruleset.
Your issues (or OP's issues, or Vic Ferrari's issues or etc. etc.) aren't my issues, so apart from saying that, there's little to discuss apart from filling the surveys, since that's the most relevant mode of feedback.
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The second part of the statement here is the part that can come reasonably under fire, but there is evidence that 4e concepts were included in 2e, and I'll present it here:
* "Level to everything": It was half-level in 4e, but same concept.
* Skill challenges: These were largely loathed in 4e. The concept exists when it comes to traps/locks in 2e, with much the same loathing.
* Class roles: 4e had a notion of combat roles. In 4e, each class could be one of 4(?) roles, and each had a specific combat purpose. While each class can't do this in 2e, the notion of roles is pretty prevalent on a per-class basis.
* Multiclassing: Yep, they're pretty much the same systems, or at least, extremely close. You give up feats to get some minor feats/abilities from the other class...
* "Powers": Here, while the concept is the same (you have various things you can do that cost a number of actions on your turn) the issue people had with 4e powers is they felt homogenous. In 2e, at least, I don't think this is the case.So, you want evidence, there's 5 things that were taken from 4e, intentionally or not. I don't think 2e is a clone of 4e, by any means, but I do think it borrowed heavily from it, and to propose that people will reject it in a similar manner is not an unreasonable assumption.
If I may add some more bullet points:
* Skills being trained or untrained only: Yes there's different levels of teml in PF2, but it's still basically the same boolean system instead of the more versatile skill ranks.
* Item levels: I don't know about anyone else, but it's rather immersion-breaking for me to find something described as a "Level X item" when levels are, in-setting, not a known or quantified factor.
* Monsters using different creation rules than PCs: Thankfully not using 4e's minion/standard/elite/solo ranks, but the opponents in PF2 are still merely presented as stat blocks with numbers meeting benchmarks with no explanation (# of hit dice, BAB, saves, etc) why they're achieving those numbers. Similarly, opponents get to do things that PCs aren't allowed to do because they're not using the same rules.
Casters and Alchemists do take longer to create in PF2, especially if you are trying to build a character concept from scratch instead of just plugging in a recommended spell list. But that will be something that can be improved by having more item kits, and good spell lists for a couple of different types of builds. There also isn't a bunch of character building guides for the PF2 classes out there, so the time reading through general feats available to a starting character is not being factored in to building a PF1 character so a lot of power gamers are underestimating how much time it would take to walk in to PF1 and try to make a hyper optimized character.
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I think we should tone down the venom a bit ALL of us ...
Let'splay nice:-)
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I am.
I want enemy/ PC parallelism, it would fix the math, but require a complete rewrite of the entire game where giving some classes a little boost here and there might be substantially less work.
Which is kinda where I'm at with this, why advocate for the game I want when the devs have a different path in mind?
Jason says it's not built for organized play, but I want to know what aspects of this aren't directly influenced by it here. It's been a criticism of Paizo for literally years that they care about the PFS crowd more than home games, and despite what they're telling us here, they aren't showing it in their actions or their products.
I doubt Jason will come back here for the conversation, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to look forward to next week. My players have given up on the play test as of yesterday. They do seem interested in what I'm working on as an aside tho.
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I am.
I want enemy/ PC parallelism, it would fix the math, but require a complete rewrite of the entire game where giving some classes a little boost here and there might be substantially less work.
Which is kinda where I'm at with this, why advocate for the game I want when the devs have a different path in mind?
Jason says it's not built for organized play, but I want to know what aspects of this aren't directly influenced by it here. It's been a criticism of Paizo for literally years that they care about the PFS crowd more than home games, and despite what they're telling us here, they aren't showing it in their actions or their products.
I doubt Jason will come back here for the conversation, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to look forward to next week. My players have given up on the play test as of yesterday. They do seem interested in what I'm working on as an aside tho.
If PF was designed around PFS, there would be no processes sanctioning the material and highlighting what's PFS-approved and what is not, simply because why have that process if the game is designed around PFS?
Your position makes no sense and begins to sound like a conspiracy theory with you desperately trying to fit everything into your narrative which, at this point, looks increasingly like if kicked puppies and hurt feelings are a central part of it.
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The suggestion that the PF2 Playtest was written with PFS in mind is so laughably and obviously untrue that I honestly have difficulty understanding how anyone could believe it.
Seriously, guys. Hero points are a core mechanic around which dying is based. THEY ARE AN ORG PLAY NIGHTMARE. There's no frickin' way this game was designed for PFS.
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Seriously, guys. Hero points are a core mechanic around which dying is based. THEY ARE AN ORG PLAY NIGHTMARE.
How so? I'm genuinely curious, as I have no PFS experience at all.
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Organized play (PFS) already has a similar concept which grants a reroll once per session if you have Paizo swag. It's not the exact same thing as Hero Points, but it's never created an issue to my knowledge.Seriously, guys. Hero points are a core mechanic around which dying is based. THEY ARE AN ORG PLAY NIGHTMARE.How so? I'm genuinely curious, as I have no PFS experience at all.
The "Hero Points for out-of-game stuff" idea is something that works in home game, but would be an absolute nightmare to adjudicate and enforce in PFS. You'd have "I want a Hero Point because I was on time but what I really mean Mr. Manager, tell this GM to give me a hero point because I've spend 200 USD here last week" situation on day one.
Swag is at least measurable :)
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you just adjust the rules on how you award themLike I said. The game we were given is clearly not intended for PFS play.
If you have to change the rules to make it work, then it's clearly not designed to fit in the first place.
The rules on distribution are up to the GM. The only thing PFS needs is defined rules for distribution.
That isn't so much a "changing" of rules so much as it is giving them definition for organized play.
Not going to lie your argument that they are a "nightmare" for PFS doesn't sound that true, especially since Hero Points used to do a fair amount more (aka petition the GM) and now are pretty commonly relegated to the occasional reroll or avoiding death conditions.
Nothing about them on the surface seems even remotely hostile to PFS play.
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The "Hero Points for out-of-game stuff" idea is something that works in home game, but would be an absolute nightmare to adjudicate and enforce in PFS. You'd have "I want a Hero Point because I was on time but what I really mean Mr. Manager, tell this GM to give me a hero point because I've spend 200 USD here last week" situation on day one.
Swag is at least measurable :)
That makes sense. Personally I'm ambivalent about the "Hero Points for out-of-game stuff" idea. While I like the idea in general, it can too easily be abused and/or devolve into favoritism, even in home games. I'd probably be in favor of dropping this. Even awarding hero points for in-game heroic deeds is difficult to adjudicate.
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The rules on distribution are up to the GM. The only thing PFS needs is defined rules for distribution.you just adjust the rules on how you award themLike I said. The game we were given is clearly not intended for PFS play.
If you have to change the rules to make it work, then it's clearly not designed to fit in the first place.
From this one statement I am just about positive you have never played PFS. You certainly haven't ever spent any time looking at how it's set up.
"Up the GM" is more or less anathema (no pun intended) for PFS. The goal of organized play is to do the best possible job of getting every player, regardless of the table they're sitting at, a comparable experience playing each scenario.
As written, PF2 leaves it entirely up to the GM how many times you can almost die and get to come back. As Mr Bulmahn himself recently noted on his YouTube channel, how your game handles dying is kind of a big deal. A system written to PFS' needs would never even consider using such a subjective mechanic for anything nearly as vital as character death. It would never have made it into the design docs at all.
That isn't so much a "changing" of rules so much as it is giving them definition for organized play.
Trust me: if Hero Points continue to hold a role in PF2 similar to the one they have now by the time the game comes out, PFS is going to have to do a lot more to them than just "give them definition."
Not going to lie your argument that they are a "nightmare" for PFS doesn't sound that true, especially since Hero Points used to do a fair amount more (aka petition the GM) and now are pretty commonly relegated to the occasional reroll or avoiding death conditions.
Nothing about them on the surface seems even remotely hostile to PFS play.
To be clear: their use is not the nightmare issue. It's how they are earned, and what the consequences of earning them or not earning them are.
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I see this got productive. Really appreciate being accused of conspiracy theories and what not when I say that the game plays like it's intended for organized play. If you couldn't tell that I was referring to the limited options and how optimization doesn't actually destroy the encounters anymore but it's instead the assumed norm.
Hero points? Yes they can easily be dealt out for organized play. Organized play is now and will always be about rewarding out of game decisions, hence you need to buy the books to play the class/ archetype/ options.
The game as written would do fine for organized play, you can't make broken characters.