When Did Your Character "Feel" Awesome During the Playtest

[Cheburn]

So the formal Pathfinder 2.0 Playtest has largely been completed at this point, and Paizo is sitting on a bunch of data from playtest surveys and other sources. Data is great. I love data! But right now, I'm more interested in personal anecdotes. Specifically, I'm hoping people are willing to discuss the following question:

When in the playtest did your character pull off a victory or accomplish a feat and think: "This is awesome! My character is a total badass!"?

How many of these moments did you have? And did you feel that the PF2 ruleset did anything to enable them, or would you have been able to do it just as well (or better) in PF1?

I've created a sister thread for this one, for negative experiences in the playtest (linked), so I hope you will please focus this thread on positive experiences (if any) you had in the playtest.

I myself have gotten very little chance to try out the playtest (though I've read the rules fairly extensively) because of real-life scheduling commitments and the lack of a group that wanted to do so. The one adventure I got to play (The Rose Street Revenge) I really enjoyed. But that's low level, and fairly limited in scope. So I'm really curious to hear from those with more direct experience.

[MER-c]

When my Strength Monk almost soloed a second level encounter at level one. It was Skeletons that were modified for higher AC.

Turns out it doesn't matter if you have a lot of AC when Weakness 5 meets 1d6+4 resulting in the double one shots turn one then a third one shot on a bigger skeleton.

Flurry of Blows is a troll ability sometimes.

:)

[pauljathome]

Not once did I ever feel like a total badass. Not once in the over 10 games that I played.

Oh, I often felt that my character more than contributed. On several occassions I was probably the MVP at the table for an encounter.

But not once did I one shot a significant enemy. Not once did I manage to defuse a fight that was obviously intended to occur. Not once did my spell essentially turn a combat into a ROTFLstomp.

That may be a good thing, of course. One persons moment of total badassery can easily be another players yawn fest as an encounter is ended quickly and trivially. But I miss those moments.

[Dire Ursus]

I was a GM for my party but I'll state the first that comes to mind for one of my players. During Heroes of Undarin when the demilich comes out there is a horde of corpses (mummy retainers) that do as well. They immediately surrounded the paladin and over the course of 6 or 7 rounds he was slashing through them over and over. After he finally cleared them basically single handedly as the rest of the party battled the demilich. the demilich looks down at him and blasts him with a Polar Ray. He finally uses his Orc Ferocity racial feat and stays standing despite the massive amount of damage suffered to his already wounded body and just yells at the demilich. Just a real bad ass moment.

[MaxAstro]

Speaking for my players:

While none of them were individual badasses, the way my party completely slaughtered the first minotaur encounter in Raiders of Shrieking Peak was awe-inspiring. You can head over to my report of that adventure if you want the full story, but the short version is that fear + critically failed reflex saves + persistent damage turned a dangerous encounter into a laughingstock.

I also imagine the party cleric felt pretty awesome crippling the ghoul encounter with channeled energy, and then sniping the fleeing harpy with a fireball from 200 feet away. :)

[Nettah]

This is mostly just about being lucky but two turns in a row my paladin used retributive strike to crit and kill some greater shadows preventing some nasty hits on my teammates.

Also alchemist overall felt quite powerful in the pale mountain scenario, especially against the mummies where I could hit several with splash and activate their weakness.

[Canta]

I made a fighter for a low level adventure. Human, heavy armor, two handed axe reskinned as a bardiche. Slow as a turtle but once i was in the front line against a tide of giant spiders and a drider, not only did she hold the line but slaughtered the giant spiders that tried to get past her.

Turns out that swipe attacks are really good with axes and power attack is not too bad either for a single powerful attack against a creature above your level. The fact that i had toughness and almost maxed con gave her really good staying power and when the first drider started biting and bludgeon her, the poisoned crits and normal attacks didn't took her down. Two flanking monks with different stances jumping around just threshed anything i could hold in line and any poor thing that slipped by and rushed to fight them alone.

Really made her feel a tide of steel, and with intimidation trained, she was a fearsome tide of steel.

[Edge93]

I've definitely got plenty to put on here later but for now, a big one for my party:

Beating Heroes of Undarin. Just in general and overall.

There were several specific moments but possibly the biggest ones were:

Dragon Style Monk just rip-and-tearing (Yes he was based on Doomguy) all over the place on various foes, including going toe-to-toe with a level 13 Glabrezu for a few rounds.

Wizard Critting a Lich (Turning his save into a crit fail) with Disintegrate and dealing damage in excess of his max HP (this was BEFORE the 1.5 spell damage boost!)

Shemhazian shows up, Wizard wins init (Only because the Shem used Stealth instead of Perception, LOL), has See Invisibility, calls out to the party that there's something really frickin' big here, uses True Strike and Enervation from her dual-wielded wands (Wand of True Strike and Spell Duelist's Wand). One of the dice is a Nat 20, and True Strike ignores miss chance. The dangerous level +4 boss is now Enervated 2 and proceeds to get shut down very quickly. To copy what MaxAstro said above, it basically turned a dangerous encounter into a laughingstock. So many attacks landed and so many saves against enfeeblement or paralysis were made because of that -2 and everyone loved it.

[Raylyeh]

My group is not quite done with DD7, I think we are nearing the final fight. Over all I’d say each person in my group has had their “I’m the baddest mofo in the room” moments. In DD3 our reach paladin was MVP by a large margin. In DD5 our evocation wizard more or less murdered the demilich and mutilation demon by himself. In DD6 our monk multiclass fighter for AoO and our anti caster build sorcerer pulled a 2 round beat down on Necerion.

For me, it’s been my DD1/4/7 rogue particularly in 4 and 7. I went the dex build, the others didn’t exist at the time but I’d have gone that route anyway, and went dread striker to the hilt. In DD1 I held my own but nothing spectacular happened, there wasn’t really an MVP for that chapter but if I had to pick it’d be our cleric. DD4 was great, I really focused on abusing consumables and for the boss fight I was for all intents and purposes an invulnerable, invisible, flying machine of death.
DD7 is were I currently hold true MVP. The dread stricker build has completely paid off. I can demoralize at the start of initiative, every time I hit and every time I kill something and I haven’t attacked a single foe that I haven’t gotten my sneak attack dice on except the shoggoth which I scared to death in the 1st round of combat. Scare to death is pretty broken in the funnest way even when you don’t kill them outright. Forcing an enemy to waste 2 turns on movement as it’s base effect really lets you focus fire enemies down.

All in all, I’ve had a good time with the playtest. From what I’ve seen on the forum my group has been having a better time than most sadly.

[DM_Blake]

My cleric. On the day we were meant to play I had to cancel for reasons. Our party rule is that if one player cancels, we still play. That day, with my cleric being awol, everyone else decided to cancel too.

I'm a badass. The game goes on if anybody else cancels, but nobody wants to play unless my cleric is there.

[MerlinCross]

I never felt awesome. Part of that was die rolls yes but when crits were far more common my brain just turned off being hyped for seeing one roll out. My alchemist was too busy juggling his own resources to really do much, My monk was just... okay, and the cleric I made was a walking heal bot that could do other things. And oh the crits from the enemy that laid me out or made me retreat.

On the flip side; I never felt absolutely useless. I never felt that I wasn't unneeded or that an NPC could do my job better. Or a couple wands or a summon or just replace me. My characters could keep up with others even if it was only in the ballpark, we were on average around the same level of power..

PF1 had a problem for me of being rather easy to be awesome and at the same time, be dead weight. PF2 from my experience, looks to narrow that gap. But in doing so makes it feel more... average? At least to me.

This might change after the game is finalized, players understand the game more, and splats come out; but for now it kinda felt..., okay for me.

[Previloc]

DM_Blake wrote:

My cleric. On the day we were meant to play I had to cancel for reasons. Our party rule is that if one player cancels, we still play. That day, with my cleric being awol, everyone else decided to cancel too.

I'm a badass. The game goes on if anybody else cancels, but nobody wants to play unless my cleric is there.

LOL - and they say Clerics are not keeping up. I had the same experience.

From 1st level, being able to heal "level" d8 and still get in a hit or two. Being useful with a Polearm (range 1 and 2) for 2d8+4, 2d12+4 with a Bastard Sword, getting an AoO, and tossing off Burning Hands and later Fireball (12d6 at 9th level)...and in every significant fight, turning the party IV drip on to rotate saving those PCs that bravely stepped up.

The main thing that enhanced 'heroism', in my opinion and experience, is the progression and heightening on Heal, weapons, and damaging spells - all available to a Cleric.

[Claxon]

Throughout the entirety of the play test I never once felt my character was "awesome".

Hell, I never once even felt my character was particularly competent.

In fact I spent most of the play test sessions praying to RNJesus.

[Joey Cote]

Alchemist hitting a bunch of mummies with Alchemical Fire.

Cleric hitting a group of 3 invisible mobs (2 also with mirror image) with one dose of dust of visibility.

Dwarf Paladin stomping across the ceiling swinging thanks to my boots of spider climbing (no slippers for me!) with a reach weapon. Baddie had to deal with me or move down into melee range of rest of party.

Every time I cast a heal on a badly damaged friend at something other then "touch" range thanks to the ability to make heals ranged.

[perception check]

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

[Tridus]

My Cleric when Channel Healing. During Pale Mountain, it sometimes felt like I was carrying the entire group through encounters by keeping people alive for the extra rounds it took to win fights.

It's by far the best part of the class, which is why the nerf hurt the whole class so hard (there isn't really anything else going for it).

DM_Blake wrote:

My cleric. On the day we were meant to play I had to cancel for reasons. Our party rule is that if one player cancels, we still play. That day, with my cleric being awol, everyone else decided to cancel too.

I'm a badass. The game goes on if anybody else cancels, but nobody wants to play unless my cleric is there.

I had that happen in my current PF1 campaign. If someone else can't make it, someone plays their character and we keep going. One week I couldn't make it and they cancelled instead. It's nice to be loved. :D

[Darksol the Painbringer]

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

[Doktor Weasel]

I think Part 3 was the only one where I ever felt close to heroic. Smacking down undead left and right. Although my party members were even more so, because they all had access to the Heal spell and were blasting groups of them. Heal is a great spell, and it's use against undead is very satisfying. Considering that most of the monsters were well under our level, this is kind of to be expected.

[Tridus]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

A side effect of Rocket Tag is that your actions feel impactful and powerful. Some of that is buffs, sure, but some of it is also having actions and builds that can quickly take enemies out.

When nothing you do can decisively end a combat and you just have to whittle everything down while they do the same to you, that feeling of power is missing. The playtest has a lot of that "blah" feeling where you're not capable of quickly ending anything.

It's also an issue with skills where you can't get good enough at something to not have significant risk of failure on an even level challenge, and nothing makes a "specialist" build in something feel medicore than failing 40% of the time they roll.

[Cyouni]

Avoiding the thread diversion even though I have things to say regarding it, using my 1/day Retributive Strike to save the 3-action Heal from being disrupted was pretty great, especially since it was against ~6 undead, with 6 effective heal targets. Was worth about 330 HP value.

[Scythia]

When my Cleric channeled a single-target Heal. It almost always topped off or overhealed the target.

[RealAlchemy]

L5 playtest, elven paladin of Sarenrae with the ancestry feat that gives a cantrip.

Pregen fighter had just been hit hard by trolls. I cast shield, attack with a bastard sword, and use heal to get the fighter back up to reasonable health. Troll then goes for the fighter again, so naturally I retributive strike, like you do :) No single action made me feel like a badass, but that combination of multiple actions was pretty nice.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Tridus wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

A side effect of Rocket Tag is that your actions feel impactful and powerful. Some of that is buffs, sure, but some of it is also having actions and builds that can quickly take enemies out.

When nothing you do can decisively end a combat and you just have to whittle everything down while they do the same to you, that feeling of power is missing. The playtest has a lot of that "blah" feeling where you're not capable of quickly ending anything.

It's also an issue with skills where you can't get good enough at something to not have significant risk of failure on an even level challenge, and nothing makes a "specialist" build in something feel medicore than failing 40% of the time they roll.

Oh, sure. Schrodinger's Wizard broke the game. That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring? I suppose some people aren't happy unless they break stuff. Which might be fine for them, but I'd prefer to not use the GM as a bouncer to keep the unwieldy in line and more as a referee to actually facilitate the game instead.

The only problem I can see with the whole "whittle away" thing is that combat becomes stale or drawn out. I've had this issue with a couple combats, but at least one of them was because I made an enemy Elite when I maybe shouldn't have, or employed tactics that might make more sense for the enemy but as a result made the combat take longer to resolve. This could have an impact, but only if the PCs aren't doing anything valuable or productive on their turns, but if they are (or being as effective as they can be), then I'm not seeing a problem here.

What, to you, would be the acceptable percentage for a "specialist" to fail his rolls? 25%? 10%? 0%? A bar has to be drawn somewhere. Being a specialist shouldn't mean "I automatically succeed," because you might as well then throw out dice, since conversely, a non-"specialist" means "I automatically fail." In addition, stuff happens. People make mistakes, specialist or not, or something goes awry that normally doesn't, and the dice help simulate that.

It should at best mean "I have a good chance to succeed," and being at 60% success rate, while not "good" in my opinion, is certainly favorable than if the percentages were reversed, "coin flip" arguments aside. However, difficulty and risks even for specialists should still be present (though be rarer as a result of their investment).

[pauljathome]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring?

For some people, yes.

For me, I didn't say it was boring or bad. I said that I miss those moments of awesomeness.

I don't yet know what my long term reaction to PF2 will be. I know that my short term reaction to the playtest was "not fun enough to find out what my long term reaction would be". But I expect the released product to be substantially different from the playtest (in both good and bad ways).

IF (and its a HUGE IF) the final product is as grindy as the playtest of Doomsday Dawn felt to me THEN I'll rapidly lose interest in PF2.

I'll parenthetically note that 4th edition had some similar issues. Especially at higher levels combat became a grind, sufficiently so that WOTC reduced all hit points in one of its revisions. Balanced but lengthy combats CAN be a problem.

[perception check]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

Please don't straw-man my comment. Nowhere did I say -- or even intimate -- that I want the "ROFLstomp" potential of first edition.

And, since you asked, if anything is going to make me leave the playtest, it's this exact type of "so you're saying" behavior from the community. You folks are providing it in spades.

[John Lynch 106]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Tridus wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

A side effect of Rocket Tag is that your actions feel impactful and powerful. Some of that is buffs, sure, but some of it is also having actions and builds that can quickly take enemies out.

When nothing you do can decisively end a combat and you just have to whittle everything down while they do the same to you, that feeling of power is missing. The playtest has a lot of that "blah" feeling where you're not capable of quickly ending anything.

It's also an issue with skills where you can't get good enough at something to not have significant risk of failure on an even level challenge, and nothing makes a "specialist" build in something feel medicore than failing 40% of the time they roll.

Oh, sure. Schrodinger's Wizard broke the game. That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring? I suppose some people aren't happy unless they break stuff. Which might be fine for them, but I'd prefer to not use the GM as a bouncer to keep the unwieldy in line and more as a referee to actually facilitate the game instead.

The only problem I can see with the whole "whittle away" thing is that combat becomes stale or drawn out. I've had this issue with a couple combats, but at least one of them was because I made an enemy Elite...

Lots of people came to Pathfinder because they tried the game where everything was balanced and found it boring.

Feel free to judge people all you want, but it seems strange to come to the Pathfinder forum and mock people for enjoying Pathfinder.

[Cintra Bristol]

During the fight with the sea serpent, we all felt hopelessly outclassed. Then my Rogue got swallowed whole, and suddenly I could hit for some real damage.

Not sure if it was really feeling my character was Awesome - more "Awesome. The best place to be to fight gargantuan snake-things is still from inside them."

Followed immediately by, "I cut an opening, but do I have to exit or can I stay in here til it's dead. Nope, rules say if you do that much damage, you exit the critter. I've escaped from inside it now, so I'm not awesome anymore."

[Jeven]

Cintra Bristol wrote:

Followed immediately by, "I cut an opening, but do I have to exit or can I stay in here til it's dead. Nope, rules say if you do that much damage, you exit the critter. I've escaped from inside it now, so I'm not awesome anymore."

lol. The game where you want to be eaten by the big monster!

[Darksol the Painbringer]

pauljathome wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring?

For some people, yes.

For me, I didn't say it was boring or bad. I said that I miss those moments of awesomeness.

I don't yet know what my long term reaction to PF2 will be. I know that my short term reaction to the playtest was "not fun enough to find out what my long term reaction would be". But I expect the released product to be substantially different from the playtest (in both good and bad ways).

IF (and its a HUGE IF) the final product is as grindy as the playtest of Doomsday Dawn felt to me THEN I'll rapidly lose interest in PF2.

I'll parenthetically note that 4th edition had some similar issues. Especially at higher levels combat became a grind, sufficiently so that WOTC reduced all hit points in one of its revisions. Balanced but lengthy combats CAN be a problem.

You also run into the issue that combats are the same in terms of time. 1st level combats? 3 rounds. Higher level combats? 3 rounds. End game combats? You guessed it, 3 rounds. If I want that, I'd play a Street Fighter or some other board game with a set "time" limit. The fact that combats have a varied amount of time due to (un)fortunate luck is a result of the D20 system and basic probability logic. If you wanna fix that, then make Pathfinder no longer be based on probability. Which means removing the D20 rules. Which means you want a vastly different game genre.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

perception check wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

perception check wrote:

Never. My characters never felt particularly powerful; nor did they ever feel underwhelming. They were thoroughly mediocre -- just like the rest of the group's characters. Woo.

All the excitement generated was through role-playing and artificially playing up the importance of actions. I got that in first edition, which had the additional benefit of supporting powerful-feeling characters.

Because you could stack buffs and ROFLstomp encounters, which wasn't (and should never be) a guarantee.

Not so provident here between the nerf to availability of buffs and spells as a whole.

So...gonna go back to Bufffinder?

Please don't straw-man my comment. Nowhere did I say -- or even intimate -- that I want the "ROFLstomp" potential of first edition.

And, since you asked, if anything is going to make me leave the playtest, it's this exact type of "so you're saying" behavior from the community. You folks are providing it in spades.

Then do everyone a favor and explain, in depth, how you feel like the game is boring and the characters are uninteresting or mediocre. Simply saying they are helps nobody, least of all the people whom are designing the game and are looking for feedback.

I also find it interesting that, when I posed the question of what are acceptable ratios for specialists (aka optimized characters) to succeed/fail, nobody gave a response, which is a key concept of making sure the characters feel "powerful".

[Darksol the Painbringer]

John Lynch 106 wrote:

...

You misunderstand my point.

People have played PF1 to death. They're bored with it, dislike the unnecessary complexity, and find it extremely unbalanced.

So, Paizo decides that, with PF2, they try to do new things, cut down on complexity, and rebalance everything so nothing is broken.

And everyone is now saying they don't like it, it's too much like 4E, or some other such nonsense, even though before, they disliked PF1 over the course of its runtime for the same reasons that Paizo is trying to fix.

Either we run it rebalanced, or we run it broken as before. There's a middle ground, but 5E already copywrote it, so Paizo can't do that. And people would complain about that too. Paizo just can't win (everyone over).

[Jeven]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

People have played PF1 to death. They're bored with it, dislike the unnecessary complexity, and find it extremely unbalanced.

So, Paizo decides that, with PF2, they try to do new things, cut down on complexity, and rebalance everything so nothing is broken.
And everyone is now saying they don't like it, it's too much like 4E, or some other such nonsense, even though before, they disliked PF1 over the course of its runtime for the same reasons that Paizo is trying to fix.
Either we run it rebalanced, or we run it broken as before. There's a middle ground, but 5E already copywrote it, so Paizo can't do that. And people would complain about that too. Paizo just can't win (everyone over).

Those are valid points but the gist of the complaints seems to be (I haven't read the playtest but glanced at feedback *) that PF2 is an over-correction of the faults of PF1.

In other words, yes, PF1 is unbalanced, but that introduces some really chaotic-fun elements to the game, PF2 is balanced, but it neuters that element.
It's a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears ... PF1 is too hot, PF1 is too cold, so they should aim for just right, somewhere in-between.

* Of course, I'll decide to buy or not buy PF2 based on reviews after it's released. However playtest feedback is a good way for a company to identify issues and avoid bad reviews when that time comes!

[Mary Yamato]

In Pale Mountain, the water elemental stood back and used some kind of ranged attack on us. It looked like we'd have to retreat in disarray. But I was, frankly, really fed up with the scenario, and my dwarf cleric had Hold Breath as his general feat. So--

"I walk into the water."

"Make a Swim check."

"You misunderstand. I am a dwarf in medium armor. I sink to the bottom and walk along it."

"How will you get out again?"

"First things first."

So my dwarf went mano-a-mano on the water elemental, which promptly rolled rather poorly--perhaps it was bewildered. We asked the GM whether there were penalties for using a battleaxe underwater, but he couldn't find any, so we went with it. The rest of the PCs took out the earth elemental and Roark managed, barely, to deal with the water elemental. He did not have to use even a small fraction of the 108 rounds he can hold his breath!

It was far and away the best moment of the playtest, until we found out that in fact he should have been at minuses to hit and doing half damage, and of course would have died. But still, it was fun.

[Edge93]

Mary Yamato wrote:

In Pale Mountain, the water elemental stood back and used some kind of ranged attack on us. It looked like we'd have to retreat in disarray. But I was, frankly, really fed up with the scenario, and my dwarf cleric had Hold Breath as his general feat. So--

"I walk into the water."

"Make a Swim check."

"You misunderstand. I am a dwarf in medium armor. I sink to the bottom and walk along it."

"How will you get out again?"

"First things first."

So my dwarf went mano-a-mano on the water elemental, which promptly rolled rather poorly--perhaps it was bewildered. We asked the GM whether there were penalties for using a battleaxe underwater, but he couldn't find any, so we went with it. The rest of the PCs took out the earth elemental and Roark managed, barely, to deal with the water elemental. He did not have to use even a small fraction of the 108 rounds he can hold his breath!

It was far and away the best moment of the playtest, until we found out that in fact he should have been at minuses to hit and doing half damage, and of course would have died. But still, it was fun.

First of all, that's freaking awesome.

Second of all, FWIW I just checked aquatic combat on Page 315 and you don't halve your damage for slashing and bludgeoning underwater, looks like that was PF1 only. You just take a -2 circumstance penalty to hit, which is harsh but much less painful than half damage.

[pauljathome]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring?

For some people, yes.

For me, I didn't say it was boring or bad. I said that I miss those moments of awesomeness.

I don't yet know what my long term reaction to PF2 will be. I know that my short term reaction to the playtest was "not fun enough to find out what my long term reaction would be". But I expect the released product to be substantially different from the playtest (in both good and bad ways).

IF (and its a HUGE IF) the final product is as grindy as the playtest of Doomsday Dawn felt to me THEN I'll rapidly lose interest in PF2.

I'll parenthetically note that 4th edition had some similar issues. Especially at higher levels combat became a grind, sufficiently so that WOTC reduced all hit points in one of its revisions. Balanced but lengthy combats CAN be a problem.

You also run into the issue that combats are the same in terms of time. 1st level combats? 3 rounds. Higher level combats? 3 rounds. End game combats? You guessed it, 3 rounds. If I want that, I'd play a Street Fighter or some other board game with a set "time" limit. The fact that combats have a varied amount of time due to (un)fortunate luck is a result of the D20 system and basic probability logic. If you wanna fix that, then make Pathfinder no longer be based on probability. Which means removing the D20 rules. Which means you want a vastly different game genre.

I do not at all understand how your point has ANY relevance at all to what I said. In fact, I don't understand at all what you are trying to say.

Perhaps if you dialed back the rhetoric and calmly expressed your point we could have a discussion?

[pauljathome]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

. dislike the unnecessary complexity, and find it extremely unbalanced.

That is a fair summary of my opinion of PF1

Quote:

So, Paizo decides that, with PF2, they try to do new things, cut down on complexity, and rebalance everything so nothing is broken.

And everyone is now saying they don't like it, it's too much like 4E, or some other such nonsense, even though before, they disliked PF1 over the course of its runtime for the same reasons that Paizo is trying to fix.

Either we run it rebalanced, or we run it broken as before. There's a middle ground, but 5E already copywrote it, so Paizo can't do that. And people would complain about that too. Paizo just can't win (everyone over).

Hopefully you're wrong and there IS a middle ground and Paizo can find it. If not, they lose some of us as customers.

I do NOT want a perfectly balanced game. I want one that is a lot more balanced and simpler than PF1 but one where my choices are still rewarded, where my Bard is still both a very good diplomancer AND noticeably better than the Cha 14 fighter who dabbled a bit.

The play test is NOT that game. I am still somewhat hopeful that PF2 may be but I won't know until August.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

pauljathome wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring?

For some people, yes.

For me, I didn't say it was boring or bad. I said that I miss those moments of awesomeness.

I don't yet know what my long term reaction to PF2 will be. I know that my short term reaction to the playtest was "not fun enough to find out what my long term reaction would be". But I expect the released product to be substantially different from the playtest (in both good and bad ways).

IF (and its a HUGE IF) the final product is as grindy as the playtest of Doomsday Dawn felt to me THEN I'll rapidly lose interest in PF2.

I'll parenthetically note that 4th edition had some similar issues. Especially at higher levels combat became a grind, sufficiently so that WOTC reduced all hit points in one of its revisions. Balanced but lengthy combats CAN be a problem.

You also run into the issue that combats are the same in terms of time. 1st level combats? 3 rounds. Higher level combats? 3 rounds. End game combats? You guessed it, 3 rounds. If I want that, I'd play a Street Fighter or some other board game with a set "time" limit. The fact that combats have a varied amount of time due to (un)fortunate luck is a result of the D20 system and basic probability logic. If you wanna fix that, then make Pathfinder no longer be based on probability. Which means removing the D20 rules. Which means you want a vastly different game genre.

I do not at all understand how your point has ANY relevance at all to what I said. In fact, I don't understand at all what you are trying to say.

Perhaps if you dialed back the rhetoric and calmly expressed your point we could have a discussion?

Okay.

You have said that combats in PF2 can be lengthy, and as a result problematic, because of its balanced system. PF1's rocket tag had as-is combats ranged anywhere from 1 round to 3 rounds of actual combat (with any other time after that being the "wind down" or out-of-combat CLW shenanigans), the risks being slim to none depending on BBEG fights. IMO, that's too short to make anything exciting out of it, and at higher levels this problem became exacerbated, because "Rocket Tag." Initiative being the most important end-game statistic meant whoever went first won. Yawn, boring, no excitement to be had outside of finding out who has the higher statistic to go first.

A lot of people, myself included, did not (and still do not) find that fun.

Now, we change up how combat works to make combat not so volatile. And people are saying it's still bad. So naturally, I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

[Matthew Downie]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Initiative being the most important end-game statistic meant whoever went first won.

If that was true high-level PF1 parties would TPK every time they lost initiative or got ambushed.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

Some people disliked short combats and complained about rocket tag. Others were fine with them (and did not complain on the forums). Some people wanted longer combats in theory, but find them boring in practise. Doesn't seem that surprising to me.

[Jeven]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Now, we change up how combat works to make combat not so volatile. And people are saying it's still bad. So naturally, I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

Think of it as a dial rather than a switch. So, if the volume in PF1 is too high and PF2 too low, move the dial to somewhere in-between.

Some volatility and unpredictability in a game makes it fun.
Like the board-game Snakes & Ladders -- it's the long snakes and ladders that make for a memorable game, reducing them all to short ones would be rather dull!
Or Monopoly, where the most fun sessions are the most unbalanced -- while the balanced ones are just a bore and drag on forever.

[gwynfrid]

In Pale Mountain's Shadow, our rogue used Battle Assessment to look at the mummies and told us they were vulnerable to fire. So my druid summoned one, then a second mephit elemental, then sent in his bear companion. The effect was pretty impressive.

Then of course a week later I read the summon nature's ally spell a bit more attentively, and found out it's 3 actions to cast, so you can't have more than one ally at a time. Ah well. Embarrassing, but still, the second mephit was mostly cherry on the cake. My druid is pretty badass anyway!

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Initiative being the most important end-game statistic meant whoever went first won.

If that was true high-level PF1 parties would TPK every time they lost initiative or got ambushed.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

Some people disliked short combats and complained about rocket tag. Others were fine with them (and did not complain on the forums). Some people wanted longer combats in theory, but find them boring in practise. Doesn't seem that surprising to me.

If the enemies were just as optimized as the PCs, yes. And some BBEGs in published APs actually relatively are. Our group hasn't had a party live past 15th level (from 1st level beginnings) because of the rocket tag shenanigans, and any time we do the higher level games, they are one-shots that still go up against tough enemies and end up being a loss more often than not simply because of Initiative and rocket tag.

While I learned optimization, the rest of my party doesn't and loses as a result. Not a complaint, but an observation, that rocket tag is real and Initiative is king. I just don't have fun realizing you lose simply because you didn't go first.

[pauljathome]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Okay.

You have said that combats in PF2 can be lengthy, and as a result problematic, because of its balanced system. PF1's rocket tag had as-is combats ranged anywhere from 1 round to 3 rounds of actual combat (with any other time after that being the "wind down" or out-of-combat CLW shenanigans), the risks being slim to none depending on BBEG fights. IMO, that's too short to make anything exciting out of it, and at higher levels this problem became exacerbated, because "Rocket Tag." Initiative being the most important end-game statistic meant whoever went first won. Yawn, boring, no excitement to be had outside of finding out who has the higher statistic to go first.

A lot of people, myself included, did not (and still do not) find that fun.

Now, we change up how combat works to make combat not so volatile. And people are saying it's still bad. So naturally, I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

Thank you.

So, I think you're conflating several things.

1) Various individuals are going to want different things. So it is totally impossible to please everybody. Speaking only for myself, I want combats to last 2-5 rounds or so where my choices (both in character build and tactical choices I make in the combat) actually matter. I want the combat to be a challenge but I want to win at least almost all of the time.

2) There is a middle ground between Rocket Tag and a long grind. I want Pathfinder to find that middle ground.

3) I want spell casting to be useful. I don't want it to dominate the game but I want control to be a viable combat tactic. Again, I'm looking for a middle ground.

4) I want different character builds to function very differently in combat. I want to be surprised by the way that another character contributes. Heck, on occasion I want to be surprised by the way that MY character contributes.

PF2 seems to me to have the potential to find that middle ground. But, as of the current playtest, it most certainly has NOT found it. Things have been over nerfed, over balanced, over homegenized At least for my tastes.

That is why I, personally, am criticizing BOTH PF1 AND the Playtest. I want something better than either. I hope PF2 can be that better game

[pauljathome]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

but an observation, that rocket tag is real and Initiative is king. I just don't have fun realizing you lose simply because you didn't go first.

One thing to point out is that Pathfinder 1 supports a great many different gaming styles. In some games, you are absolutely right. Rocket tag can be very, very, very real.

In other games it is far, far less an issue. Non optimized groups see the problem far, far less. The bad guys make their relatively feeble attacks, the good guys make their relatively feeble attacks. Eventually one side wins,

In fact, especially at higher levels, I personally PREFER the game where people do NOT over optimize. Less rocket tag, less combats on a knife edge between ROTFLstomp and TPK. But others really like the adrenaline rush of Rocket Tag.

[Edge93]

pauljathome wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Okay.

You have said that combats in PF2 can be lengthy, and as a result problematic, because of its balanced system. PF1's rocket tag had as-is combats ranged anywhere from 1 round to 3 rounds of actual combat (with any other time after that being the "wind down" or out-of-combat CLW shenanigans), the risks being slim to none depending on BBEG fights. IMO, that's too short to make anything exciting out of it, and at higher levels this problem became exacerbated, because "Rocket Tag." Initiative being the most important end-game statistic meant whoever went first won. Yawn, boring, no excitement to be had outside of finding out who has the higher statistic to go first.

A lot of people, myself included, did not (and still do not) find that fun.

Now, we change up how combat works to make combat not so volatile. And people are saying it's still bad. So naturally, I'm dumbfounded about this apparent paradox of desires from a gaming system.

Thank you.

So, I think you're conflating several things.

1) Various individuals are going to want different things. So it is totally impossible to please everybody. Speaking only for myself, I want combats to last 2-5 rounds or so where my choices (both in character build and tactical choices I make in the combat) actually matter. I want the combat to be a challenge but I want to win at least almost all of the time.

2) There is a middle ground between Rocket Tag and a long grind. I want Pathfinder to find that middle ground.

3) I want spell casting to be useful. I don't want it to dominate the game but I want control to be a viable combat tactic. Again, I'm looking for a middle ground.

4) I want different character builds to function very differently in combat. I want to be surprised by the way that another character contributes. Heck, on occasion I want to be surprised by the way that MY character contributes.

PF2 seems to me to have the potential to find that middle ground. But, as of the current playtest,...

I am very curious what the difference is between your table and mine, because really I've found PF2 filling all of these points. (Note, I am the GM for my group. IDK if you are for yours or not)

1) Aside from Heroes of Undarin I think every or almost every fight my group has had in the Playtest was 2-5 rounds. My group has found combat quite challenging but yet we have had 0 character deaths and only 3 times someone dropped to 0 (We have done Parts 1-6 and are near the end of 7)

2) Similarly PF2 has felt middle-ground-y to us. Again aside from Heroes of Undarin we have felt fights go at a good pace but aren't too quick.

3) Spellcasters have contributes greatly in my group. Even if enemies make their saves a little more often than might be ideal, targeting the weak saves of enemies has given good enough spell success for my players and even the successful save effects of spells have made notable differences.

4) There has been little feeling of similarity between characters in my groups, save perhaps for Affair at Sombrefell Hall with everyone being healers, but even then everyone felt unique. And there've been a few cases of players having an idea and pulling something unexpected for sure, like our 12 Cha Druid going all wrath of Gozreh on the Cyclopes in The Mirrored Moon with Stormwind Flight (And some thrown Bottled Lightning from the Alchemist to play it up) and scaring them into repenting of their logging ways. And plenty of other clever ideas or decisions and, again, much diversity between the characters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say my experiences are more valid or anything, I'm just very curious what difference at the table leads to you finding PF2 to fall short in these areas or to over-correct from PF1 while I find it to fill these criteria quite nicely.

[EberronHoward]

Played as an Elf Monk for Arclord's Envy. My speed was so high, I felt very special. Played as a Half-Elf Paladin for Pale Mountain. Felt special how I held my ground against the toughest monsters and was able to lead the way for my party.

Watching my party play, I felt the level 1 Dwarf Fighter was pretty amazing how she held her ground against dozens of goblins. The spellcasters for Mirrored Moon made the victory possible, with some pretty impressive spell combos.

[Tridus]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

John Lynch 106 wrote:

...

You misunderstand my point.

People have played PF1 to death. They're bored with it, dislike the unnecessary complexity, and find it extremely unbalanced.

What people? Sounds like you're projecting. PF1 is plenty popular at my table. If it wasn't, we'd play something else. You seem to be taking your opinion and projecting it onto everyone.

Quote:

So, Paizo decides that, with PF2, they try to do new things, cut down on complexity, and rebalance everything so nothing is broken.

And yet strangely, it's still quite complicated, just for different reasons. There's still things that are clearly vastly superior to other things, there's still absolute right and wrong build choices, and a well made party is still far stronger than a poorly made one.

Aside from my character feeling far weaker than before when I'm not casting Heal, not a whole lot on that front has actually changed.

Quote:

And everyone is now saying they don't like it, it's too much like 4E, or some other such nonsense, even though before, they disliked PF1 over the course of its runtime for the same reasons that Paizo is trying to fix.

Yes, it's not shocking to learn that lots of people playing PF1 do so because they like it, and that taking away the stuff they like about it will be received poorly.

Again, you are either projecting, or making the false assumption that the people complaining now were the same ones complaining before. Which by and large, they weren't. The people happy with PF1 weren't on here complaining about it. They were busy having fun playing it.

They're now in here having negative things to say about the playtest because for them it's a simply inferior system to the one they already have.

Quote:

Either we run it rebalanced, or we run it broken as before. There's a middle ground, but 5E already copywrote it, so Paizo can't do that. And people would complain about that too. Paizo just can't win (everyone over).

It's interesting how you acknowlege they can't win everyone over after writing so many posts where you claim everyone thinks rocket tag is bad and everyone is sick of PF1 because it's "broken" (you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means).

Not everyone actually thinks those things are true in the first place, so to plenty of people, the playtest is trying to "fix" something that isn't broken in the first place, and actually breaking it by doing so.

For me? Combat isn't even the most interesting part of the game. It's a part of the game, but I don't find a 3+ hour slog fight holds my attention. Rocket tag's underappreciated virtue is that it gets a resolution and lets the story keep moving. That you can feel powerful by oblitterating stuff in a couple of turns is a bonus, and it's those stories that get retold years later (rather than the ones about how on turn 9 I did a strike and the guy finally fell over).

[Tridus]

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Oh, sure. Schrodinger's Wizard broke the game. That's old news. Now that we're trying to play more within the bounds of non-breakable stuff, the game's boring? I suppose some people aren't happy unless they break stuff. Which might be fine for them, but I'd prefer to not use the GM as a bouncer to keep the unwieldy in line and more as a referee to actually facilitate the game instead.

Maybe your problem is with the people you're playing with, because nobody is required to play game breaking stuff. It's not a problem at my table, and we don't have a bouncer banning stuff.

But yes, neutering everything to the point that the most powerful action I have is Heal and the rest of the time I feel like I'm using a wet noodle has not increased the fun factor for me... except when I'm casting Heal (on those turns I feel pretty awesome).

Quote:

The only problem I can see with the whole "whittle away" thing is that combat becomes stale or drawn out. I've had this issue with a couple combats, but at least one of them was because I made an enemy Elite when I maybe shouldn't have, or employed tactics that might make more sense for the enemy but as a result made the combat take longer to resolve. This could have an impact, but only if the PCs aren't doing anything valuable or productive on their turns, but if they are (or being as effective as they can be), then I'm not seeing a problem here.

Then perhaps we simply don't want the same thing out of the game, because I didn't have a problem before and now I have more drawn out combat with less impactful actions during it.

This is worse, not better.

Quote:

What, to you, would be the acceptable percentage for a "specialist" to fail his rolls? 25%? 10%? 0%? A bar has to be drawn somewhere. Being a specialist shouldn't mean "I automatically succeed," because you might as well then throw out dice, since conversely, a non-"specialist" means "I automatically fail." In addition, stuff happens. People make mistakes, specialist or not, or something goes awry that normally doesn't, and the dice help simulate that.

Probably more around 20. If my auto mechanic failed 40% of my car repairs, I sure as hell wouldn't be going there anymore. 40% when sitting at a table with how few rolls you do in a night feels too close to a coin flip, and if the specialist is at that point, the non specialists are wasting their time trying.

That's why Mirrored Moon's exploration sucked so much for my group. We had one person who could succeed on numbers lower than 19 on the dice, and they still needed a 13. The DM got so sick of everyone constantly failing (and the subsequent complaining that rolling at all was a waste of time) that he actually went back to the pre-updated DC values, at which point we actually didn't fail occasionally and everyone had a lot more fun.

If I build a character specifically to do one specialized thing, I should be very good at that thing. The playtest is far, far worse at that than PF1 is. It comes with the trade off that I'm no longer failing DC 10 stealth checks at level 18 the way my PF1 Cleric is, and that's certainly nice, but I sure as hell don't feel like a "Master" at something when I fail to do it half the time.

Quote:

It should at best mean "I have a good chance to succeed," and being at 60% success rate, while not "good" in my opinion, is certainly favorable than if the percentages were reversed, "coin flip" arguments aside. However, difficulty and risks even for specialists should still be present (though be rarer as a result of their investment).

For a true specialist, 80% would feel far better than 60. Then someone who invests in it has somewhere to go that's still above 50 but differentiates the specialist, and someone who dabbles might have a lousy chance, but a chance nontheless.

When the specialist is at 60, everyone else has to be worse than the specialist (otherwise they're not really a specialist at all), and that very quickly slides down into "why are we even bothering to roll for this since we almost always fail?" level of play, which isn't fun whatsoever. Checks like that should be for if you're trying to do something crazy or well above your difficulty, not for common rolls.

[Tsa Vol'rae]

I have not played yet as a player only as a dm. I must say that the party fighter wielding a great axe is a killer. He must feel pretty awesome every couple of swings. I mean he hits like a truck. Also the sorc is pretty epic as well. All at the low level of 1st.

[Barnabas Eckleworth III]

Looks like a lot of people couldn't do like the OP asked, and focus on positive experiences in the thread.
"Don't you straw man me!"

"No, it's you who straw manned me first!"