Bryon, that's one of the first things you've said that I agree with completely and unreservedly. Have my upvote.
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I don't really see how PF2 is limiting choice, though, beyond just not being complete yet and not yet having a wealth of feats for specializing in grappling.
Like, it has more feats every time you level up, more combat relevant feats, more opportunities to pick feats for utility rather than raw killing power, and much reduced great taxes. Presumably it's not hard to make grappling feats for PF2 - but when you take them, they don't then hamstring your ability to sometimes not grapple. In PF1, if you took all the feats necessary to grapple, you had no feats left over to do much of anything else.
And that's why I love PF2's approach, it no longer mechanically rewards you for making the game unfun for yourself by over-specializing. Originally untrained getting +1/level meant that even if you try to really pump a skill up high, it didn't come at the expense of your basic motor functions. If the situation doesn't call for your sordid l specialization, you have tools still to participate.
And even the nature of specialization is more interesting in PF2. There's no more flat numerical bonuses, no removal of penalties, so to become specialized you instead gain more versatility in your specialization. You can invest as much or as little into that aspect of your character and they'll still function and be relevant (beyond the specific examples that brought up for tweaking, like Sneak Attacker being a bit s+&!).
Hell, you could even have a universal Grappler archetype to specialize in. Turn any class into a luchador, spending your muscle wizard's class feats on new moves that combo into one another and enable you to magically pin people. It's so easy to just use Archetypes, or just reprinting the same feat in any class where it makes thematic sense.
And it does this without requiring you to knowingly gimp yourself. There's no systemically enforced Stormwind Fallacy where anyone trying to optimize and be effective is a Bad Roleplayer with boring character concepts. It's so easy to make a character that's actually good at what they do (barring the obvious balance issues with the Alchemist), so long you're not picking a 14 in STR and complaining you miss too much with melee weapons or otherwise actively avoid training in skills you know your character will need to do their job, you'll be fine. You're not going to do amazing if you don't actually use the feats you picked, and there's still some feat chains that should not exist, but it's liberating to be able to do more than one thing and still have all my numbers be where they should. It means we can have fun building what we want without having to fell guilty that we might be over-optimized for the group we're playing with.
PF1 just can't do the same thing, since everything has to be numerical somehow. If you split you focus, you diminish your ability to meet DC's. If you multiclass, it better be in service of some serious cheese because you're going to be a level behind forever in your main class. If you commit a little to something, anything less than devoting ask your resources to it is suboptimal.
So it's like, where are these builds in PF1 that could never exist in PF2? Ia that based purely on the current absence of your favorite third party psionics supplement? I'm sure there's plenty of people who could quickly b&*+*&%@ some feats into existence to make the concept work. If its a specific missing class, I bet a lot of those can work as archetypes or class feats, and if not then it's just a task of making a new homebrew class. The underlying system makes it very easy to create content without necessarily disrupting the balance of the entire system.
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The common theme in all of the PF1 build complaints has nothing to do with choice and everything to do with the fact you can make super specialized characters that break the game (while other less knowledgable people have a hard time doing the same).
I think one of the greatest strengths is the ability to super specialize and take an awful/sub-optimal tactic and make it viable. For every game breaking character I've seen I've seen many more of this type.
I don't really see how PF2 is limiting choice, though, beyond just not being complete yet and not yet having a wealth of feats for specializing in grappling.
For me it is a combination of things. You focus on the amount of feats you get as you level but each one has such a limited effect it's like PF1 handing out traits every level and not the feats we're used to. Secondly, you find yourself with only one feat at the level you get a choice that seems worth it... Or is you branch out to an archetype, you find yourself locking yourself into 3 of those feats before you can shag another of that type.
If you disagree, please tell me how a feat like improvised snares fits it's level or provides a viable option... I'd be thrilled if the final game rebalances feats and ups their power along with making each choice a meaningful one but I only have the playtest to base things on.
And that's why I love PF2's approach, it no longer mechanically rewards you for making the game unfun for yourself by over-specializing.
LOL For me that's what I hate as it penalizes you for trying to do something suboptimal because you can no longer use "over-specializing" to make yourself viable: it punishes you for trying something fun.
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For me it is a combination of things. You focus on the amount of feats you get as you level but each one has such a limited effect it's like PF1 handing out traits every level and not the feats we're used to.Looks at PF1 feat that gives +1 to something. Looks at PF2 feat that lets you super charge your weapon when casting a spell/move so fast you get concealment/ gain a swim speed/turn into an elemental. Hrm which were more like traits again?
So you found some feats in PF2 that can do some of the things you can do in PF1... Good for you? And are these things ANYONE can do or just one class? If not, it's a multiclass feat first before those feats. Or are they abilities you got just from your class but now have to buy back? For instance, the spell power abilities are worth less than a trait because they are thing you could do before at no cost and not you have to buy them again... :P
PS: You also have to look at what class abilities got you in the old game to compare to the new feats? Do the new feats allow for resurrection? Eternal life? Cha to ac AND ref? Int to str checks? that's how high the 'feat' bar goes.
As to traits, some like assurance, ride, sign languages, multilingual and other are are things you just got or were only PART of a trait... the bar is a lot lower here too.
Let me ask... Are you happy with the general power of feats? Do you find yourself having a difficult time picking your feats for whatever class you take because there is always good and meaningful ones to take? I can't say that.
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None of the above. Unless I forgot all the Class Features Fighters had in PF1. Oh no I didn't, you aren't buying back class features.
You must not have looked at a PF1 fighter lately I guess. Bravery, Armor Training, Weapon Training, Armor Master, Weapon Mastery, Adv. Armor Training, Adv. Weapon Training. There are plenty of cool things to do IN CLASS. Weapon damage as per favored weapon, max skills, free attacks, giving weapon bonuses to others, make a weapon magical, item mastery feats like casting invisibility, dispel magic, fly, lightning bolt, mirror image, telekinesis and a bunch of others. ALL in class
As to 'but you can multiclass'... That goes both ways. : Arcane strike, wildshape and other things can be gotten with multiclassing too.
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I mean, are we talking Fighter feats? Sure. Playtest Fighter feats are generally pretty cool. Lots of them do interesting things. I found more than one I might want to have at some levels. They're an improvement over a lot of feats from PF1 for Fighters.
But that isn't true for all classes. Cleric feats are... not that. So much so that it often makes sense to dump them into getting Paladin feats instead. Because yes, you can make the case that Channel Life is better than all the Cleric feats it costs to get.
Skill feats were all over the map, general feats were largely uninteresting even if they are good (the "add +1 to a thing" feat did exist, it just bumped your proficiency in a save, and Fleet with it's +5 movement was certainly useful but not what I'd call inspired).
I kind of feel like you two are talking past each other simply because you're talking about something so broad that you can both be right at the same time depending on what specific subset you're looking at. :)
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I think the hyperspecialized builds, while interesting, were ultimately not good the game. I'd rather move away from the "builds" of PF1 and have more broadly skilled characters.
I would like less fears building directly on top of each other to encourage some more diverse characters. I think PF2 with fewer feat chains is actually a really good move for the system as a whole.
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I kind of feel like you two are talking past each other simply because you're talking about something so broad that you can both be right at the same time depending on what specific subset you're looking at. :)
Maybe a bit: I wholeheartedly think that the overall level of feats is far, far lower in PF2 but I will agree with you that there are some outliers that actually do do some cool things.
I think the hyperspecialized builds, while interesting, were ultimately not good the game. I'd rather move away from the "builds" of PF1 and have more broadly skilled characters.
I would like less fears building directly on top of each other to encourage some more diverse characters. I think PF2 with fewer feat chains is actually a really good move for the system as a whole.
If they keep with needing magic/skill items for each and every skill you're still going to have hyper specialized builds, it's just that you'll have to do that if you want a better than a coin flip chance to make rolls.
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It's very easy to move away from "builds" in Pathfinder. Just move away from them.
The system won't break down if you don't follow what someone has told you to do on the internet.
You say that, but that leads to "I really don't know why I'm in this party because [Cyouni's moderately optimized kineticist] can take things out without me needing to contribute". Now, while that wasn't strictly true, it was close enough. Anything that was enough of a problem to threaten me through my safeguards would have a passable chance at threatening a TPK as a result, simply because the other players wouldn't spend as much time preparing in advance.
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If they keep with needing magic/skill items for each and every skill you're still going to have hyper specialized builds, it's just that you'll have to do that if you want a better than a coin flip chance to make rolls.
Hopefully this coin-flip math is fixed. The math is changing, but to what, we don't really know. But ultimately, it was possibly the biggest problem of the playtest, and behind many of the other problems. Like needing optimization, including skill items to be barely competent, or many feats being bad, inability to actually be good at anything and instead just having to spend all your effort to not being terrible and even the alchemist, many of it's problems come down to not being able to succeed at anything with any regularity, it can't hit, can't deliver injury poisons, monsters don't fail the poison DCs, mutagen bonuses too minor etc (although it has many more besides. Hrm, I talk about the alchemist so much, maybe it's time for a Big Thread of Everything Wrong with the Alchemist and How to Fix it. It's kind of odd that there really isn't one as far as I've seen). Fixing the math and chance of success would go a good way to solving, or at least reducing, many of the other problems with the game. And if it's not fixed, then most everything else that can be done is pretty futile.
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It's very easy to move away from "builds" in Pathfinder. Just move away from them.
The system won't break down if you don't follow what someone has told you to do on the internet.
And to tackle this from a different perspective than Cyouni, it's deeply unsatisfying for someone that enjoys optimization to have to knowingly gimp yourself to keep the system from breaking or to play anything interesting.
If optimization is no longer disruptive, I can then optimize freely and have fun, guilt-free. There might be very specific forms of cheese, but it's easier to ban a select few cheese builds that go too far outside the norm for optimization than it is to have to tell yourself you can't actually be as strong and effective as you know you can be because the system is inherently broken and you have to build around that.
Which goes back to PF1 style builds being extremely narrowly focused things, where they either do nothing or do too much depending on the situation. It's not very fun to actually play despite being effective, and for someone like me that's extremely frustrating.
"Optimal" means something very different in PF2, it's not a dirty word anymore and players should by default make characters that wound be considered "minmaxed" at first glance for those used to PF1. Everyone can and should get an 18 in their most important stat, if not then at least 16. In PF1, getting those high stats with point buy meant all your other stats were 8 or lower, you could do your one thing really well but nothing else, optimization made you boring. In PF2, you will generally have two high stats, two middling stats, two weak stats - optimal means varied now.
A lot of what before required a feat chain and thus intense specialization to pull off now is just part of most characters. Optimization does not improve your to-hit, so optimization does not mean breaking the game. The GM will still know your odds to land a hit; instead, optimization means finding synergies between abilities, often active abilities, so that you're doing things like taking Fighter Dedication as a Rogue to pick up Combat Grab and Opportunist to grant yourself sneak attacks and AoO sneak attacks. You're not breaking the math, you're increasing your damage in more situations or gaining new abilities to handle different scenarios. Optimization means making your character more tactically interesting in play, not reducing them to a one trick pony.
At least in the Playtest itself, skills enforce a broad skillset. It is not possible to sacrifice your skill in everything but Diplomacy to make Diplomacy OP. Optimization no longer means sitting on your hands doing nothing when faced with scenarios outside your specialization, you can now participate in what the group is doing or even try new things altogether. For the final version, I suspect untrained +0 isn't going to revert to the hot mess that was PF1's skill system, I think there's going to be something to prevent over-specialization.
That fundamental difference in the attitude towards optimization is what makes it a system truly built to be crunchy in my eyes. It does not give you a bunch of toys only to make your friends hate you if you try to play with them. You can play as much as you want and your toys aren't going to turn into a Tier 1 Druid casting all the fun out of the game for your friend who picked a Tier 5 fighter and used a cool exotic weapon they liked even though it's not even better than a greatsword.
I'm not saying you can't have fun as an optimizer making characters for actual play in PF1, I know I did, but it's a very different and less exciting feeling when you have to constantly hound yourself to remember you're playing with a group that won't be able to keep up.
I'm also not saying every single feat in PF2 is worth taking. Improvised Snare seems awful on paper even as a level 1 class feat, that it's a level 18 ranger feat that gives you snares with worse DC's when by that point it should be trivial to always have supplies. I would argue that PF1 has way more trap options, like every single trait that isn't Reactionary because having a loose relation with a mildly important NPC in Rise of the Runelords is nothing in the face of +1 init. But I think the Playtest feedback and the inevitable expansion of content will address that.
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It's very easy to move away from "builds" in Pathfinder. Just move away from them.
The system won't break down if you don't follow what someone has told you to do on the internet.
This will never be a satisfying way to solve the problem for anyone. Believe me, I got a lot of blow back from telling people that wanted CLW wands back in the game to just house rule that you gain full hp after every encounter. People don't like being told to change the rules if they don't like how something works. And honestly I agree, Not making "builds" in PF1 isn't as easy as just telling your players "Hey guys let's not make builds! Let's just play and see how your characters develop" some will flat out drop out of the game, and others will just make builds anyways because that's a huge part of pathfinder 1e.
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Helmic, as someone who has had to drop out of a campaign because my optimized character was hugely derailing it, I can't upvote your comment enough.
I desperately want PF2e to be a system where the mastery gap is narrow enough that I can play hyper-optimized characters and people playing with me that don't have enough experience to do that can still have fun.
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I never fail to be amazed by people who say that optimization is baaad, this isn't a video game, balance is an artificial concept conjured up by ADHD GameBoy-addicted anime kids these days and one should just rule 0 all problems away AND at the same time play the most gamist-ey, twink-ready, number-heavy, system mastery-dependent iteration of D&D. I mean, you can do it, but it makes about as much sense as trying to run grimdark Warhammer setting using rules of Toon or Big Eyes Small Mouth.
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...I totally want to run Warhammer using BESM now. Big Ears Small Mouse, specifically, to get my Hello Kitty Warhammer fix. :P
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I don't think the game has the issue with optimization. Whatever game system you take there are better and worse ways to make up characters. What needs to happen is everyone has to be on the same page. If you're playing a casual game, you know you're a jerk if you hyperspecilize. If you know you're playing a tooth and nail epic fight for the universe, you as much a jerk for bringing in a casual character. If you build a character to actually fit your group, it's not an issue. I don't really understand the desire for the game itself to force the issue: it just requires a meeting of the minds at the start of the game.
PS: that said, I guess there might need to be guidelines for games line PFS that accept players without the normal startup but that's not really an issue with the game itself.
Yeah, that was definitely what I was referencing. :)
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What needs to happen is everyone has to be on the same page. If you're playing a casual game, you know you're a jerk if you hyperspecilize. If you know you're playing a tooth and nail epic fight for the universe, you as much a jerk for bringing in a casual character. If you build a character to actually fit your group, it's not an issue.
So what do you do if, in a party of 4, you have 2 people are only experienced enough for the casual game and 2 are highly experienced and want to do the tooth-and-nail epic? If the GM sides with the casuals, the experienced pair are going to be having distinctly less fun being forced to gimp themselves, where if he sides with the experienced players the casuals are going to get steam-rolled (which is only very rarely fun.)
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This will never be a satisfying way to solve the problem for anyone. Believe me, I got a lot of blow back from telling people that wanted CLW wands back in the game to just house rule that you gain full hp after every encounter. People don't like being told to change the rules if they don't like how something works. And honestly I agree, Not making "builds" in PF1 isn't as easy as just telling your players "Hey guys let's not make builds! Let's just play and see how your characters develop" some will flat out drop out of the game, and others will just make builds anyways because that's a huge part of pathfinder 1e.It's very easy to move away from "builds" in Pathfinder. Just move away from them.
The system won't break down if you don't follow what someone has told you to do on the internet.
Yeah, it's just not an option for most of us who aren't power gamers. We'll create a character that we like, but the power levels vary considerably. You don't have to bend the rules much PF1 to have this happen. Well meaning players can unknowingly walk into OP builds almost as easily as they walk into trap builds.
I've been at tables with no power gamers but because PF1 balance is so wonky we end up with a completely unbalanced team by happenstance. Now we have to artificially limit ourselves because we accidentally stumbled upon an overpowered build. That's no fun for someone who wants to play a balanced character.
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I don't think the game has the issue with optimization. Whatever game system you take there are better and worse ways to make up characters. What needs to happen is everyone has to be on the same page. If you're playing a casual game, you know you're a jerk if you hyperspecilize. If you know you're playing a tooth and nail epic fight for the universe, you as much a jerk for bringing in a casual character. If you build a character to actually fit your group, it's not an issue. I don't really understand the desire for the game itself to force the issue: it just requires a meeting of the minds at the start of the game.
PS: that said, I guess there might need to be guidelines for games line PFS that accept players without the normal startup but that's not really an issue with the game itself.
That's only really true if you're playing a system where the disparity between optimized and non-optimized characters is problematic, though. There's so many other RPG's where this has never been an issue.
PF2 is fundamentally different, you don't have to have a social contract necessarily. If everyone makes a reasonable effort to not gimp their character deliberately, if you're not being obtuse about your attributes, none of that is necessary.
That entire truism evolved out of a need to cope with the inherent brokenness of many crunchy systems. It might be optimistic to say that that could never become necessary for PF2, Paizo is fully capable of putting out a stinker of a class, some third party is going to have a very dumb feat, but structurally the issues that have misled you to believe that sort of arrangement is necessary in eveitself have been largely addressed.
There's still combat itself, there's still lots of room for an experienced player to set up combos and position themselves way better than someone pissing away actions using ghost sound and failing to actually distract anyone. But as that's not a locked in thing it's much easier for a newer player to learn by watching and figuring out for themselves that spending all three actions attacking over and over is a bad idea.
Like if you don't feel the same thing, it's hard to get across why PF1 was so frustrating and why PF2 and other more modern RPG's feel so damn good. It's not something you can just throw PF1 logic at and expect it to still hold true. It's such a fundamental goal of the new edition that I really don't think anyone who sees that as problematic can ever really enjoy the system, no matter what gets changed. It's just not going to go away.
Wouldn't be the first time someone's done that trick. There's definitely a Hello Kitty dreadnought lurking around and may have expanded to a full army if my memory hasn't failed me yet.
There’s a few out there. I saw an entire 2k+ point Hello Kitty space marine army the last time I was in Reno. Though that was almost 15 years ago now.
The owner was a pretty good painter as well.
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What needs to happen is everyone has to be on the same page. If you're playing a casual game, you know you're a jerk if you hyperspecilize. If you know you're playing a tooth and nail epic fight for the universe, you as much a jerk for bringing in a casual character. If you build a character to actually fit your group, it's not an issue.
In order to know that you're going into a tooth and nail epic fight for the universe and that you shouldn't bring in a "casual character", you need to know that much about the game, and also need enough system mastery to know what a "casual character" is, and how to avoid it.
Anyone relatively new to the game or with low system mastery is incapable of doing that. And that's where the whole mess gets going and the DM has a bunch of extra work to do.
The system mastery power gap in PF1 is massive. It's so huge that it necessitates groups figuring out this stuff in advance, sometimes with players who have no understanding of what the problem even is or what they're supposed to do about it.
It seems to me that a better solution is to reduce the size of the system mastery power gap so that groups don't have to do this, because there's no lack of systems where it isn't necessary but there are still differences between character power. They simply don't allow one person to build Superman while another builds "Varkon the mall cop" and expect them to be in the same group battling the same foes.
The playtest did go a long way to alleviating that.
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Different games make different levels of optimization possible though.
True, but every game will allow optimization if it offers the least bit of customization so it's an inevitable part of games themselves.
So what do you do if, in a party of 4, you have 2 people are only experienced enough for the casual game and 2 are highly experienced and want to do the tooth-and-nail epic?
From my experience, the DM and/or the experienced players help the casual players make characters that can compete. I've personaly done it more times than I can count.
The system mastery power gap in PF1 is massive.
And? Any game with actual options and meaningful choices is going to have a learning curve. When you "reduce the size of the system mastery power gap", you also directly reduce the options and customization of said game. If you have various ways to build something, there are ALWAYS going to be better or worse ways to do so. For a lot of people, most of the fun is in the construction and seeing how various parts fit together and when you remove that to reduce the "power gap", the also reduce their fun.
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I'd rather have 200 choices and have a 180 of them work over a 1000 choices in which only 300 work.
That's more a clean-up than fix in the "system mastery power gap". I'm all for axing the vestigial options [or just not making them in the first place]. For me it's really a separate issue from "system mastery". If the people here have been advocating for less options like those, I'd be agreeing with them but I don't think that's what they mean by "system mastery".
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People here who don't like that the difference between the "Worst possible PC" and "Perfectly Optimized PC" are coming closer together need to get this strait: This was a UNIVERSALLY BAD thing that it inherited from the basic underlying principles of the 3.X system.
If you're mad that you feel the ceiling is being lowered, it's probably because you're the type who only wants to play on the bleeding edge and demolish encounters they have no business dealing with. You worry that the ceiling being lowered will make you bump your head, ala. Your playstyle is being attacked, but let me be clear. Your "playstyle" IS under attack, because it's destructive and anti-social.
If you feel that's an unfair... too bad, you might want to get your malignant narcissism checked, Munchkins are only ever good for one thing, One-Shots with a table packed full of players with a high degree of system mastery. As many here have attested personally, "optimizers" more often than not simply wreak havoc in an actual game balanced for a given level by either trivializing combat (Lets be honest, this is all they're interested in), or by forcing the GM to invent nonsense and inject CR +5 encounters in order to simply threaten 1 PC.
Just because the gap is closing in NOW WAY means that customization will be cut back, you just can't "customize" your PC to simply get a million+1 little numerical bonuses that made you feel like you were driving a giant truck. With the number of new ways to customize your Ancestry, Background, Class, Skills, and Feats, there are more than DOUBLE the number of choices a Character makes when leveling up over what options were available for PF1. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that by removing all the numerical bonuses that can be "Chosen" (Though to be fair, most of these were considered Feat Taxes such as Power Attack, Weapon Finesse), they are opening up TRUE customization like a window on the first day of spring. No more stale recycled air, new smells, interesting noises, and maybe even a surprise waiting for you.
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Different games make different levels of optimization possible though.True, but every game will allow optimization if it offers the least bit of customization so it's an inevitable part of games themselves.
So what do you do if, in a party of 4, you have 2 people are only experienced enough for the casual game and 2 are highly experienced and want to do the tooth-and-nail epic?From my experience, the DM and/or the experienced players help the casual players make characters than can compete. I've personaly done it more times than I can count.
The system mastery power gap in PF1 is massive.And? Any game with actual options and meaningful choices is going to have a learning curve. When you "reduce the size of the system mastery power gap", you also directly reduce the options and customization of said game. If you have various ways to build something, there are ALWAYS going to be better or worse ways to do so. For a lot of people, most of the fun is in the construction and seeing how various parts fit together and when you remove that to reduce the "power gap", the also reduce their fun.
I'm not sure how the removal of feat chains and +1's removes actual customization and depth, though. A massive chunk of feats in PF1 are of the "in for a penny, in for a pound" variety, they collectively were all one choice to anyone who knew the system. Different flavors of +1 are meaningless.
And in their place, an absolute assload more feats. Your class features are feats, your skills are feats, your race is feats. Every class is getting feats every level, often several. We're back at square one here, like we seem to just fundamentally disagree that bundling stuff you had to take together anyways and removing penalties that were themselves removed by feats is less deep than taking 14 feats before you can wipe your own ass without assistance.
Like it's really word to see complaints like "it's just one feat." That's good! It means you can spend your next feat on doing something wider that you would have to dedicate an entire build to in PF1! You can do two, three PF1 builds at once, and then retrain them when you level up RAW! There's more than one feat relevant to your interests if you want to dual wield, for example, but since none of them give you a +1 or remove a penalty necessary for it to be viable, you don't have to take them all. You can swap between dual wielding and bow feats and have a fun switch hitter build. Or you can dedicate as many feats as possible to one style and be more versatile with it, but not necessarily numerically stronger unless you have a plan for a cool combo.
I just don't see your typical PF1 build as really customized. Most of its feats are things that have to be spent to make it viable, won't come online at a basic level until level 8, and it'll involve a lot of feat chains - count all those chains as one choice and the penalty removals as no choice and you might get why folk are bewildered at your assertion that customization was removed. To us, it was added, we just hardly counted what you considered customization as anything more than an illusion.
Especially traits. God, traits were horrid. Apparently the best way to add flavor and detail to a character is to tour those choices to mechanics so that every single PC is a reactionary. You get two because the system wants you to spend five hours before you confirm that yes, really, nothing listed is going to be more generally helpful than a +1 to initiative so all that time was spent just to realize you never really had a choice. No wonder netbuilds were so popular, you can look at a guide and immediately be told the effect number of choices you should even bitter considering.
Think that last bit is my favorite part of class feats, it filters it to just the feats a sane person would take, that have something to do with your class so you don't waste time reading about sneak attacking people while they're looking straight at you when you're a wizard and can't use that nonsense anyways.
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People here who don't like that the difference between the "Worst possible PC" and "Perfectly Optimized PC" are coming closer together need to get this strait: This was a UNIVERSALLY BAD thing that it inherited from the basic underlying principles of the 3.X system.
I 100% disagree. What you also remove if the ability to take a normally suboptimal build and make it workable: optimization isn't a dirty work used by vile powergamers, isn't a bad thing and WILL be done in the new game... :P
By going for the cap and raising the floor PF2 hopes to reduce this problem whilst still being able to print new material, and it allows players to take flavourful options that don't completely remove their relevance to the game.
Oh, I understand what they are going for but if the current playtest feats are a preview of the 'level' of flavor and usefulness we can expect, I'm not seeing a lot of the 'fun' in making a character. Themetricsystem points out there are technically more options but most don't seem like true customization points but digging for the least worst options. :P
PS: Helmic, the formatting of your last post is messed up and it's hard for he to tell where your new post starts.
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As someone who loves optimizing, and loves finding weird builds and breaking them, and who has been asked to leave campaigns because my twink build was derailing them, I think narrowing the skill gap can only be a good thing.
If the gap between crazy twink build and "I took both wizard and fighter because I want to do magic and swords!" is narrow enough that both those people can play at the same table without the GM having to do gymnastics or tell people how to build their characters, then I think everyone has a better time.
As someone who loves optimizing, and loves finding weird builds and breaking them, and who has been asked to leave campaigns because my twink build was derailing them, I think narrowing the skill gap can only be a good thing.
If the gap between crazy twink build and "I took both wizard and fighter because I want to do magic and swords!" is narrow enough that both those people can play at the same table without the GM having to do gymnastics or tell people how to build their characters, then I think everyone has a better time.
IMO, it has nothing to do with the how wide the gap is: You're ALWAYS going to have one big enough to cause an issue if you try and it'll just get worse as more options come out. If people ignore the social contract and knowingly make characters that don't fit in with the rest of the group, it isn't a game issue...
Maybe you should try 'twinking' out a normally bad/sub-optimal character to make it workable so you can work on na wierd build AND not put out other people as the total power level isn't blown.
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I do find the argument that dedications limit customization odd because they are one of the places where valid customization has so obviously increased.
In PF1e, Fighter 6/Wizard 6 is an invalid character concept. Full stop. You are a bad character, you are not going to contribute as meaningfully as other characters.
In the playtest, a 12 level Fighter who takes as many Wizard feats as possible is a completely viable character, and probably gives up less than a fighter in PF1e loses from giving up six levels.
@graystone: Mm...kay. That was some nice... I want to say "mansplaining" but that's not quite the right term. Of course I know/have learned how to fit in with a group.
That doesn't eliminate my desire for a system where I don't have to hold back.
And of course such a system can exist. The playtest is such a system. The open question is whether such a system can be expanded on without breaking; that's Paizo's real challenge IMO.
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IMO, it has nothing to do with the how wide the gap is: You're ALWAYS going to have one big enough to cause an issue if you try and it'll just get worse as more options come out.
No you won't. You will always have a gap, because if people can make choices some people will make better ones than others. It is in no way set in stone that said gap will be big enough to cause issues. It was just that wain PF1 and it's ancestors because those systems had wild power disparity between options, or even classes.
Hell, we had a guy in the PF1 game I'm in remake a character because his first one was just ineffective in our group. His new, far more effective one? A ranged Slayer with the "standard archery feats everybody has to take to make archery work". Not exactly some broken or OP build. That's how ineffective his first character was. Same guy, no particular attempt to break the game. Wild disparity.
There's all kinds of room to close that up without them being equal. It's not that big a deal if one character is better than another so long as both feel useful and contribute to the group. It is a problem when one character so totally eclipses another that there's a question as to why the second one is even there.
(The d20 system is riddled with those kinds of issues, which is why we need all these social conventions about trying to match power levels to each other in a party.)
quote]If people ignore the social contract and knowingly make characters that don't fit in with the rest of the group, it isn't a game issue...
If the game requires a social contract or it fundamentally breaks because people use the same rules and come up with characters that can't form a functional group due to one being a sword waving guy and the other being a demigod... then that is absolutely a game issue. It's a failure of the game to make such a situation even happen as a standard outcome of following the rules normally.
Maybe you should try 'twinking' out a normally bad/sub-optimal character to make it workable so you can work on na wierd build AND not put out other people as the total power level isn't blown.
That still requires knowing what everyone else is doing, because if he does that and the rest of the table shows up with the most OP things they can make, he's now the one on the wrong end of it. Which isn't better.
You know what I never needed to ask in the playtest? "Hey, are you guys using totally broken builds or low power ones, so I can make something to try and line up?"
That I never had to do that is a huge positive.
I do find the argument that dedications limit customization odd because they are one of the places where valid customization has so obviously increased.
In PF1e, Fighter 6/Wizard 6 is an invalid character concept. Full stop. You are a bad character, you are not going to contribute as meaningfully as other characters.
In the playtest, a 12 level Fighter who takes as many Wizard feats as possible is a completely viable character, and probably gives up less than a fighter in PF1e loses from giving up six levels.
But I'm not talking about multiclassing spellcasters, which was a system flaw that frankly deserved fixing. I'm talking about dipping martials (or even general combat feats), which was viable throughout PF1 and was actually a way to make them interesting. Fighter 1/Rogue 1/Monk 1 was viable as early as level 3. Monk 1 (Scaled Fist), Paladin 2, Gunslinger X (Mysterious Stranger) was viable. Or say something interesting like Fighter 5/Rogue 1/Oracle (Warsighted/Clouded Vision Curse) w/ an interesting play on Blinding Sneak Attack/Racial Heritage(Tiefling). Ooo, Dual-Curse Oracle would work great in that build too...but I digress...
The point is that any of the above builds would not be options in PF2, since anything more than maybe 2 classes is fairly prohibitively not an option (or at least heavily penalized by the system). And even then you're punished for looking outside your class with the Dedication feat tax.
And those restrictions seem needless. If devs had an issue with class dipping to gain powerful low level abilities (say, monk AC bonus), then rebalance the power which should never be a level 1 power. Fix the overpowered ability, don't limit the choices. Hell, look at the way Duelist PrC AC bonus works...people don't dip that as much as they do Monk since the AC bonus is dependent on Duelist levels to get the maximum benefit.
Yeah and archetypes and prestige classes fight for the same resource as MC...