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I'm looking forward to the Bestiary. Running the Playtest was much more fun than playing first edition, largely due to some of the unique abilities the party's foes had. Watching my players' reactions as I describe some neat thing that was done to them was priceless. Second to that was watching them slowly adapt to not everything having attacks of opportunity. The battles were much more dynamic that those in the past, which made running encounters more engaging.
I'm looking forward to the Bestiary. Running the Playtest was much more fun than playing first edition, largely due to some of the unique abilities the party's foes had. Watching my players' reactions as I describe some neat thing that was done to them was priceless. Second to that was watching them slowly adapt to not everything having attacks of opportunity. The battles were much more dynamic that those in the past, which made running encounters more engaging.
+1
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I'm looking forward to the Bestiary. Running the Playtest was much more fun than playing first edition, largely due to some of the unique abilities the party's foes had. Watching my players' reactions as I describe some neat thing that was done to them was priceless. Second to that was watching them slowly adapt to not everything having attacks of opportunity. The battles were much more dynamic that those in the past, which made running encounters more engaging.
I am simultaneously looking forward to the bestiary and dreading it. Things like the marrilith's attacks are really, really off putting. But I worry such is life with the new edition. Might be a good reason not to play it unfortunately.
Why exactly is that off putting to you?
I personally think those monster special actions are really cool and add a lot of flavor
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Actually after reading the mechanic rather than relying on an extreme,y brief description (no fault to Deadmanwalking there), the attack is absolutely fine. I was expecting to see a disconnect between flavour and mechanics, but in this case the mechanics 100% reinforce the flavour.
I’m looking forward to seeing more stuff like the marrilith :D
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Actually after reading the mechanic rather than relying on an extreme,y brief description (no fault to Deadmanwalking there), the attack is absolutely fine. I was expecting to see a disconnect between flavour and mechanics, but in this case the mechanics 100% reinforce the flavour.
I’m looking forward to seeing more stuff like the marrilith :D
Wait, did you just pull off a:
JL106: I dread something about PF2 as it's horrible!
Forum: Err, what exactly do you dread?
JL106: Oh, well, tee hee, I just actually read the thing I was dreading of and whoops it's actually really great! Carry on, nothing to see here!
Just how many of your opinions about PF2 are actually based on hearsay, "someone mentioned that on some forum" and not reading the source material?
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Honestly one of my favorite minor things in this edition is "having extra limbs or lots of natural attacks does not grant you extra attacks by default."
Since lets face it, your natural attack builds got silly and everybody dreaded "I want to play a Kasatha gunslinger".
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Norrath could be a very fun game world, with both familiar races (elves, dwarves, halflings) and some funky additions of their own (iksar, erudites, etc.).
Trolls and Ogres are another! I also liked how the races in EQRPG were very powerful. But I love the flavor and the abilities of the Iksar, and so I definitely have considered running stuff in that setting.
One thing the EQRPG did that won't be done here, though I am hoping someone comes up with rules for it, is that it used a magic points system. But I don't think that's absolutely necessary.
About the only quibble I've got with the setting is how many of it's evil gods are gods of stuff that nobody would worship, like fear or hate or disease. (Nobody names a day or month or planet after a Greek or Roman or Norse god of those things! Give me sun gods or war gods or love gods or gods of fate. Some of those can be evil, not gods of bad childish sith lord 'these feelings are bad' reductionist psychology!)
Maybe not, but seeing what some folks "worship" (both literally and figuratively) in our world, I'm not so sure it's that unbelievable. However, this is an easy thing to fix, I think.
One huge bonus to off-line play is having a GM who can skip you past the boring parts and zip right to the fun bits!
Absolutely! Though one thing I am looking forward to doing is making the exploration parts fun and engaging, both mechanically and narratively. My Breath of the Wild-inspired game very much has exploration and survival stuff as a focus, and I think it'll work out very well.
Something cool about various video games and MMOs is that certain monsters have built in mechanics, that make fighting them a mini-game of it's own, and it would be cool to see more of that. Not just 'these orcs have scales and spiky bits,' but something really mechanically different, even if it's an environmental hazard in which they commonly live, or something like that.
No need to hunt down a specific spell, for instance, to create a monster who is 'shielded' by something being done by sub-monsters that have to be killed first to 'render it vulnerable' to attack. Just 'bang,' new monster ability and run with it. Kill the 'firebringer imps' or their healy flames will keep healing the big bad demon faster than you can damage it. (Or make it chanting cultists and a gateway full of Cthulhu-tentacles, and you can chop away at the tentacles all day, but the cultists chants are keeping the gate open and pulling through more, so the party has to kill the cultists first, and only then can deal with the no-longer-replenishing tentacle beasties. Same mechanic/tactics, different flavor.)
Chrono Trigger (the greatest CRPG of all time!) does this a lot, and yes. I love love LOVE things that are engaging and dynamic in terms of environments and layered rules and setpieces. So, goblin archers standing atop a crumbling cliff that you can collapse with some well-placed shots. Part of the floor having given way to lava, and the smoke elementals keep weaving in and out of the noxious fumes. Giant spiders keep dropping down from the ceilings and stringing webs across the room, restricting movement—or you can cut the creatures struggling in their webs free (accidentally or intentionally!), introducing more chaos into the fight! Heck, you could roll on a small random table to see just WHAT you let free!
This game can't come out soon enough. Wish they could bump up the release date! I want to get into a PBP, and I want to start mine!
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Actually after reading the mechanic rather than relying on an extreme,y brief description (no fault to Deadmanwalking there), the attack is absolutely fine. I was expecting to see a disconnect between flavour and mechanics, but in this case the mechanics 100% reinforce the flavour.
I’m looking forward to seeing more stuff like the marrilith :D
Wait, did you just pull off a:
JL106: I dread something about PF2 as it's horrible!
Forum: Err, what exactly do you dread?
JL106: Oh, well, tee hee, I just actually read the thing I was dreading of and whoops it's actually really great! Carry on, nothing to see here!Just how many of your opinions about PF2 are actually based on hearsay, "someone mentioned that on some forum" and not reading the source material?
I don't normally bother commenting on Gorbacz, as that's usually not necessary or useful (Gorbacz is sort of mockery sarcasm incarnate and generally to be viewed as such, kinda like a one-man Statler and Waldorf for the forums), but I've just gotta chime in here.
I've disagreed with JohnLynch106 on a number of things, including his tone and general pessimism, but calling people out when they actually admit they made an error and correct themselves is just not cool.
That's rare behavior from anyone, and always to be encouraged. He made an error, then checked the source material (which is way more of a specific niche thing than most of his complaints...I only knew about it due to a very specific previous discussion on this forum), and changed his position in the face of new data. That's behavior to be emulated, not mocked.
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Not much. It seems like a pretty straight downgrade from 1e across the board, and it's completely incompatible with my homebrew setting.
Just going to reply to my own post to explain in more detail.
Ways I feel it's a downgrade:
1. Greatly reduced granularity/math. Overall, the new edition has far fewer bonus types, and very little stacks anymore (can only get around 4 bonuses, compared to easily 7 or 8 in 1e). This makes the game too simple and is boring.
2. Overall, everyone's to-hit and AC (or DC, Save, or skill check) will keep pace with the average obstacle. You can't specialize to hit 95-100% success rates for certain actions anymore. If I succeeded only 50-75% of the time at my job, at a task reasonable for my tenure, I'd be fired.
3. Bulk. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's incredibly ill-advised. The bulk of various items is nonsensical, and overall the system only divorces items from any sense of the real world. If I can carry 5 bulk, how do I know intuitively how much that is? Knowing I can carry 50 pounds/22 kilos, on the other hand, is something that anyone can easily grasp. It also makes calculating the mass of large objects, such as houses and wagons, difficult, not to mention impossible to relate to the character's actual capabilities. You can't easily convert an object to bulk, given the wide variance - after all, a dagger and a shield are the same encumbrance. It's so much easier to work with weight and volume. If I need to know the size of an object based on mass, it takes 2 seconds to look up a density.
4. Size doesn't matter. Has no inherent relevance in stats/skills/etc.
5. Virtually no AoOs. Another ill-advised choice. You can't punish for bad positioning or restrict movement with good positioning unless you're one of the select few who took that coveted training in "how to hit a dude who's walking past wide open". It will be impossible to protect the caster (who can't protect himself anymore, because his spells are trash), and any enemy with an ounce of sense is going to fully capitalize on that. Even if there is one fighter, the handful of kobolds will just run right past him, secure in the knowledge that he can only possibly hit one of them (because that's the way the world works).
6. No half-casters. These were some of the most enjoyable classes to play, but they all got thrown out.
7. Spells are terrible now. Mostly reduced effects, increased in level, nerfed durations, etc. Often don't stack anymore. NO LONGER SCALE WITH CL. This makes low level spells completely useless at high levels, because to get anything out of them, you have to use a higher-level slot, and then you might as well just cast a higher-level spell. Many of the useful ones are rare, so kiss them goodbye - the average GM is going to say 'common and what your class grants only'. I know they said some are going to be buffed, but I have little confidence that they will be acceptable in the final print.
8. Cumulatively, these mean that you can't determine the outcome of a fight before it starts with good builds and planning.
9. Variable damage bonuses. Extra weapon damage dice grind my gears. Give me a flat number over a variable one any day. I can actually rely on it instead of hoping I don't roll a handful of 1s and 2s. At high levels, my damage should be 85-95% static.
10. NPCs aren't people anymore. They're monsters, built with separate rules from PCs. This makes them feel alien and bizarre, and often they have weird unique abilities that can't be learned by others (this is a bad thing - virtually every ability that an NPC can learn should be learnable by a PC, so long as they're the same species - even if they have to sell their soul too or something). I also don't like that monsters are built with separate rules, but whatever. At the very least, all humanoids should follow the same rules.
11. The game has little reward for system mastery. A veteran player who studies the CRB twice and pores over the book for four hours will not have a much better character than someone new who slaps something together in 45 minutes without even skimming the full rules once. System mastery needs to be rewarded - if you put in the time, you should reap the reward. If you are unwilling to, then you should not perform as well.
12. Not very many items that passively increase stats/attacks/etc. Passive abilities are the most fun abilities (IMO), and this edition has trodden them into the dirt compared to 1e.
13. Companions/minions are basically worthless. They're incredibly weak now, and eat up the owner's actions. You'd be better off just hitting the target yourself. They were done very well in 1e, I never once had a problem with an eidolon/compaion/undead minion, either as a player or a GM. I even had a player who was a synthesist summoner. It wasn't bad at all.
14. No touch or flatfooted AC. How in the world am I supposed to model the interaction of different types of attacks with armor and mobility without these two statistics? This is just lazy design. The penalty to AC when flatfooted should be much steeper for someone who doesn't wear heavy armor. There's a reason armor existed.
15. In 2e, the average person don't know how to run really fast at somebody and then hit them.
16.Switching grips isn't completely free. It takes less than half a second to change grips on a weapon in reality. In this game, it takes no time to let go, but a whole two seconds to grab again (for example, if you're changing between a one and two handed grip on a longsword).
17. Many of these come together to make the whole thing feel a lot more gamey, like balancing and simplifying were prioritized over making sense at all.
18. Raising a shield is an action (maybe they didn't keep this one). This makes no sense in the context of how you'd actually fight with a shield. You hold it in front of you. You don't keep lowering it and bringing it back up every few seconds.
19. Can't do anything longer than 3 actions in combat. If the evil wizard is doing his ritual and has 30 seconds left, and doesn't have the supplies to do it again, all you have to do to save the world is slap one of his nearby minions. Boom, he's now been dragged into encounter mode, can't do anything that takes longer than 6 seconds, and his ritual fails. So much for timed battles like this.
20. Races (I'll never call them them "Ancestries") have been ripped apart and spread across the leveling table. Used to be that you got the effects of your race at level 1. Now, dwarves aren't truly dwarfy until they get their final racial feat. Same for elves or humans. Racial feats should have just been rolled into general or skill feats, and all the things that make a halfling a halfling should just be things a halfling has (mechanically, I'll make my own fluff thank you very much).
I have more beef with this edition, but 20 things seems like a good number.
In terms of why it won't fit my homebrew setting, the biggest issue is that I spent hundreds of hours designing, porting, or rewriting new classes, archetypes, races, gear, and feats for my setting. Very little of that is compatible with the new stuff. Doing it all over from scratch is crappy.
There are some other things, like PF2 being a lot less system-agnostic than PF1 (I seriously don't care about Golarion, I wish they'd stop worming it into everything). I just want the basic flavor and class, not "how this particular things fits into this specific world you'll never use".
Hope that clarifies my original response.
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Look, there's "well shoot me, Fumblous Canterducker actually is worded the way that you can't use it with sanguine slippers, my bad!" and there's "Marilith's attacks are horribly designed // oh, I've actually bothered to read them, they're not!". And they are not the same.
The latter, given that's not the first time JL106 has been caught going on about something without apparently reading it, makes you just what are his all points based on. And that might be a professional quirk, but I really prefer people I fight argue against me to be based on facts, not some second-hand reference they took for granted because their "PF2 is crap" confirmation bias is at the point where they won't check the source.
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Gorbacz I had read the marrilith during the playtest which was a year ago now. I didn’t remember it and went off something someone else said.
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One thing I am looking forward to is the removal of Cure Light Wounds wands. I forgot about this but have just been prompted by one showing up in an actual play podcast
I don't know all the healing replacements. I just don't like the mandatory heal stick in 1E
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Gorbacz I had read the marrilith during the playtest which was a year ago now. I didn’t remember it and went off something someone else said.
So, how about you do less of "going off something someone else said", because as a general rule this planet needs less people who base their opinions on second-hand unreliable sources on anything, be it attacks of a demon in a silly game or climate change or vaccines or sex or whatever? Appreciated, honestly and sarcasm-lessly.
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Obviously everyone is entitled to like what they like but a few of these really stood out to me.
If I succeeded only 50-75% of the time at my job, at a task reasonable for my tenure, I'd be fired.
CR appropriate challenges aren't average, mundane tasks for your ability though. They're challenges. It's in the name.
Moreover this seems like a self defeating argument. Because by insisting you should succeed 95-100% of the time, you're at the same time suggesting your opponent should only successfully be able to resist you 0-5% of the time, but this character is supposed to be your peer. A challenge equal to you. I don't know how you can rationalize a 75% success rate as unacceptably low but a 5% success rate as reasonable for someone who's supposed to be, broadly speaking, your equal.
Finally, being able to succeed 100% of the time at your specialty doesn't seem like it would make for a very engaging tabletop, at least to me.
Spells are terrible now.
This one is simply untrue. Spells are less oppressively powerful than they are in 1e, certainly, but calling them terrible is more than a little bit silly.
This makes low level spells completely useless at high levels
This is generally only true for damage spells, which scaled terribly in 1e anyways so this isn't really something new. I certainly wish damage spells scaled better in 2e and I'm not convinced 2e solved the blasting problems 1e had, but you're overstating the issue. Especially given that DCs now scale universally, which means low level debuffs are significantly more useful across the life of the campaign than they ever were in 1e.
Cumulatively, these mean that you can't determine the outcome of a fight before it starts with good builds and planning.
Is a game where the outcome of every fight is preordained by the sheer weight of numeric advantages even a good game? I mean, again, to each their own but this seems like an incredibly positive thing.
The game has little reward for system mastery.
This is more or less just a repeat of your previous couple points but again I don't really get this one. A new player is less likely to make a broken character under the naive assumption the designers presented reasonable options for them to take and the game is less likely to collapse under heavy optimization, but that's not "little reward for system mastery"... that's just a system that's better balanced.
Companions/minions are basically worthless...They were done very well in 1e
I feel like I've been teleported to an alternate dimension now. Companions were some of the worst bits of balancing PF1 had, though admittedly that might not be true in the sorts of games you seem to run where players are expected to min-max to the point that they can never fail.
No touch or flatfooted AC. How in the world am I supposed to model the interaction of different types of attacks with armor and mobility without these two statistics?
So you want some way to test an attack without factoring in the armor they're wearing. That makes sense. Only their innate ability to dodge. Some way to test their reflexes. It's a shame Pathfinder doesn't have some sort of... Reflex mechanic that would cover this.
Can't do anything longer than 3 actions in combat. If the evil wizard is doing his ritual and has 30 seconds left, and doesn't have the supplies to do it again, all you have to do to save the world is slap one of his nearby minions. Boom, he's now been dragged into encounter mode, can't do anything that takes longer than 6 seconds, and his ritual fails. So much for timed battles like this.
So in 1e your GM was comfortable handwaving the wizard as taking 5 consecutive full round actions to complete their dread spell to destroy the world or whatever, but for some reason you feel you can't handwave the same way in 2e? This seems like an entirely manufactured problem.
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Not much. It seems like a pretty straight downgrade from 1e across the board, and it's completely incompatible with my homebrew setting.Just going to reply to my own post to explain in more detail.
Ways I feel it's a downgrade:
Wow. Almost literally every single item you mention and every detail is the opposite of how I feel, and in fact all of these things are why I'm excited for 2E. You'll definitely be better off with 1E, and thankfully so, because if 2E was that much like 1E, I wouldn't be playing it.
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This is more or less just a repeat of your previous couple points but again I don't really get this one. A new player is less likely to make a broken character under the naive assumption the designers presented reasonable options for them to take and the game is less likely to collapse under heavy optimization, but that's not "little reward for system mastery"... that's just a system that's better balanced.
This is a big one for me. "System mastery" should never be a thing. New groups shouldn't go to a book, pick stuff that looks cool and fun, only to find out that they made such a suboptimal choice the game is breaking around them. The idea of min-maxing every last +1 and that the game SHOULD have trap choices is, to me, so adversarial, and so antithetical to what I enjoy when playing with the rules, that if it disappeared entirely tomorrow the RPG world would be better for it.
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Not much. It seems like a pretty straight downgrade from 1e across the board, and it's completely incompatible with my homebrew setting.Just going to reply to my own post to explain in more detail.
Thanks for the reply (no sarcasm). I may not agree but appreciate the views. I have had to just copy your post for some thoughts because I am don't fully understand how to break up quotes (so have used ">>"). I may revise if I can work it out:
1. Greatly reduced granularity/math. Overall, the new edition has far fewer bonus types, and very little stacks anymore (can only get around 4 bonuses, compared to easily 7 or 8 in 1e). This makes the game too simple and is boring.
>> First is an area we have differing opinions. I have had players give up on a long term AP because they found all the stacking and overlapping bonuses too tough to deal with. t least a couple we dyslexic which didn't help. So I am pleased about this change. I can see why you would like complexity but "boring" is arguably a bit of jump. Opinions though
2. Overall, everyone's to-hit and AC (or DC, Save, or skill check) will keep pace with the average obstacle. You can't specialize to hit 95-100% success rates for certain actions anymore. If I succeeded only 50-75% of the time at my job, at a task reasonable for my tenure, I'd be fired.
>> You talk about "boring" above. But hitting your main challenges 100% of the time would be boring from my opinion. Where is the challenge if you always hit. I guess in resistances and things? Players need a chance of failure otherwise shouldn't you also remove HP and dying rules as well?
Also I don't think the intention of 1E was to be able to build to hit at that high a percentage. The fact that you *could* is not disputable and is clearly what you like.
3. Bulk. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's incredibly ill-advised. The bulk of various items is nonsensical, and overall the system only divorces items from any sense of the real world. If I can carry 5 bulk, how do I know intuitively how much that is? Knowing I can carry 50 pounds/22 kilos, on the other hand, is something that anyone can easily grasp. It also makes calculating the mass of large objects, such as houses and wagons, difficult, not to mention impossible to relate to the character's actual capabilities. You can't easily convert an object to bulk, given the wide variance - after all, a dagger and a shield are the same encumbrance. It's so much easier to work with weight and volume. If I need to know the size of an object based on mass, it takes 2 seconds to look up a density.
>> Not everyone can easily grasp carrying capacities in real weights. Maybe if you do lots of hiking where that is important (or have been a soldier). But to many it is just as abstract and harder to track
I also assume your objections are based on playtest bulk figures - some of which may have been changed
4. Size doesn't matter. Has no inherent relevance in stats/skills/etc.
>> It seems like small playable races are no longer penalised for being so. This was in the interest of increasing character options. But are we certain that size doesn't matter for larger creatures?
5. Virtually no AoOs. Another ill-advised choice. You can't punish for bad positioning or restrict movement with good positioning unless you're one of the select few who took that coveted training in "how to hit a dude who's walking past wide open". It will be impossible to protect the caster (who can't protect himself anymore, because his spells are trash), and any enemy with an ounce of sense is going to fully capitalize on that. Even if there is one fighter, the handful of kobolds will just run right past him, secure in the knowledge that he can only possibly hit one of them (because that's the way the world works).
>> "Punish" is the key word here. Too many new players were punished early on and it is quite off-putting. But I get that you are more experienced and appreciate the tactical nuance.
Also protecting the casters is not something I had thought about and is fair. I didn't play the playtest so I don't know how it worked with regards to critters hunting wizards
However one point to note is that i am sure spells have been improved since the playtest due to negative feedback (and lots of your assumptions seem based on the playtest)
6. No half-casters. These were some of the most enjoyable classes to play, but they all got thrown out.
>> If you mean 6 level casters, only one was every core and it is still there but it just plays differently. I haven't played a 1E or 2E Bard so I don't know if one is more or less fun
7. Spells are terrible now. Mostly reduced effects, increased in level, nerfed durations, etc. Often don't stack anymore. NO LONGER SCALE WITH CL. This makes low level spells completely useless at high levels, because to get anything out of them, you have to use a higher-level slot, and then you might as well just cast a higher-level spell. Many of the useful ones are rare, so kiss them goodbye - the average GM is going to say 'common and what your class grants only'. I know they said some are going to be buffed, but I have little confidence that they will be acceptable in the final print.
>> They improved them (notably the durations) from what I understand. The scaling point is fair but some scaled too effectively (e.g. magus and shocking grasp resulting in one of the most repetitive class combos ever). But I can see how going a long way in the other direction is jarring
8. Cumulatively, these mean that you can't determine the outcome of a fight before it starts with good builds and planning.
>> Again, you talked about "boring" earlier. Clearly different opinions on what is boring but knowing the outcome in advance seems not very exciting. Why bother rolling dice? You have already mentioned wanting to build to hit 95% of the time and then know the outcome of the fight. Fair enough you are playing this as a very tactical scientific war game but many do not.
9. Variable damage bonuses. Extra weapon damage dice grind my gears. Give me a flat number over a variable one any day. I can actually rely on it instead of hoping I don't roll a handful of 1s and 2s. At high levels, my damage should be 85-95% static.
>> This kind of links to the above but I there isn't really much to add on this
10. NPCs aren't people anymore. They're monsters, built with separate rules from PCs. This makes them feel alien and bizarre, and often they have weird unique abilities that can't be learned by others (this is a bad thing - virtually every ability that an NPC can learn should be learnable by a PC, so long as they're the same species - even if they have to sell their soul too or something). I also don't like that monsters are built with separate rules, but whatever. At the very least, all humanoids should follow the same rules.
>> I can appreciate this. You are not the first person I have seen that likes the idea of everything following the same rules. There may well be rules added for NPC classes down the line, who knows.
The monster building is supposed to be easier for GMs but you sound particularly dedicated and not too concerned about putting loads of work in so it makes sense that this doesn't appeal so much
11. The game has little reward for system mastery. A veteran player who studies the CRB twice and pores over the book for four hours will not have a much better character than someone new who slaps something together in 45 minutes without even skimming the full rules once. System mastery needs to be rewarded - if you put in the time, you should reap the reward. If you are unwilling to, then you should not perform as well.
>> This is fair enough but only if you are lucky enough to be in a group where everyone has that level of buy in. Otherwise wide variations due to system mastery can create intra-group strife (I have seen it happen)
Also inadvertently making really weak characters that are shown up is not appealing to new players and ultimately this is a business
12. Not very many items that passively increase stats/attacks/etc. Passive abilities are the most fun abilities (IMO), and this edition has trodden them into the dirt compared to 1e.
>> Isn't that because the maths has been changed so they are no longer absolutely required to be functional?
Stat increase bonuses are gone but you get loads more at level up
13. Companions/minions are basically worthless. They're incredibly weak now, and eat up the owner's actions. You'd be better off just hitting the target yourself. They were done very well in 1e, I never once had a problem with an eidolon/compaion/undead minion, either as a player or a GM. I even had a player who was a synthesist summoner. It wasn't bad at all.
>> I have no idea on what the playtest companion rules are so can't comment. I also don't know what the actual 2E rules are (and neither do you I presume). So it might have been improved
14. No touch or flatfooted AC. How in the world am I supposed to model the interaction of different types of attacks with armor and mobility without these two statistics? This is just lazy design. The penalty to AC when flatfooted should be much steeper for someone who doesn't wear heavy armor. There's a reason armor existed.
>> I agree on flat footed. Removing it arguably makes Dex too strong but I haven't seen it in action. Touch was always problematic once they brought in full BAB classes that could target it. But I would have preferred it scaling rather than being eliminated
15. In 2e, the average person don't know how to run really fast at somebody and then hit them.
>> Yes they do - two move actions and attack. That is the same as the old charge but doesn't have to be in a straight line. Or have I missed something?
16.Switching grips isn't completely free. It takes less than half a second to change grips on a weapon in reality. In this game, it takes no time to let go, but a whole two seconds to grab again (for example, if you're changing between a one and two handed grip on a longsword).
>> No idea on this one (playtest or if it has stayed in final)
17. Many of these come together to make the whole thing feel a lot more gamey, like balancing and simplifying were prioritized over making sense at all.
>> "Gamey" seems like a vague term. Although I admit I used it to describe 4E. But you also talk about wanting to auto hit and be able to know you can win a combat before it starts and any dice are rolled. Is that not also "gamey" but in a different way (in a chess grandmaster kind of way...?)
18. Raising a shield is an action (maybe they didn't keep this one). This makes no sense in the context of how you'd actually fight with a shield. You hold it in front of you. You don't keep lowering it and bringing it back up every few seconds.
>> The idea is supposed to be that shield are heavy and keeping them up the whole time is not realistic. I can buy this but haven't tried wielding a shield in practice so don't know for certain. I think it depends on how you view the abstract of a turn and your three actions but I really disagree that it doesn't make sense
19. Can't do anything longer than 3 actions in combat. If the evil wizard is doing his ritual and has 30 seconds left, and doesn't have the supplies to do it again, all you have to do to save the world is slap one of his nearby minions. Boom, he's now been dragged into encounter mode, can't do anything that takes longer than 6 seconds, and his ritual fails. So much for timed battles like this.
>> I am not sure I really understand but this is really abstract. I also don't know what the ritual rules are like and how they link with encounter mode. Was this actually written into the playtest?
How does this work better in 1E? Surely the same thing is true once initiative is rolled? (Legit question here as i am confused about this one)
20. Races (I'll never call them them "Ancestries") have been ripped apart and spread across the leveling table. Used to be that you got the effects of your race at level 1. Now, dwarves aren't truly dwarfy until they get their final racial feat. Same for elves or humans. Racial feats should have just been rolled into general or skill feats, and all the things that make a halfling a halfling should just be things a halfling has (mechanically, I'll make my own fluff thank you very much).
>> I agree and hated this in the playtest and posted about it. I think this has been partially changed and more has been added to the starting package. Still not as much they originally started with I don't think. But this was more of a nice idea and poor execution
I have more beef with this edition, but 20 things seems like a good number.
In terms of why it won't fit my homebrew setting, the biggest issue is that I spent hundreds of hours designing, porting, or rewriting new classes, archetypes, races, gear, and feats for my setting. Very little of that is compatible with the new stuff. Doing it all over from scratch is crappy.
>> Can't argue with that. And although it may seem like I am arguing above I just was intrigued with your objections (which are a mix of completely reasonable to massive assumptions based on playtest material).
There are some other things, like PF2 being a lot less system-agnostic than PF1 (I seriously don't care about Golarion, I wish they'd stop worming it into everything). I just want the basic flavor and class, not "how this particular things fits into this specific world you'll never use".
>> Well there is nothing that can be said about this.
Hope that clarifies my original response.
>> So an awful lot of your points are based on the playtest and could well have been changed. But there is enough still there that won't have changed so you won't be swayed. But I appreciate your insights and I am sure others do as well. They may have been better placed elsewhere but they are here now!
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Obviously everyone is entitled to like what they like but a few of these really stood out to me.
If I succeeded only 50-75% of the time at my job, at a task reasonable for my tenure, I'd be fired.CR appropriate challenges aren't average, mundane tasks for your ability though. They're challenges. It's in the name.
Moreover this seems like a self defeating argument. Because by insisting you should succeed 95-100% of the time, you're at the same time suggesting your opponent should only successfully be able to resist you 0-5% of the time, but this character is supposed to be your peer. A challenge equal to you. I don't know how you can rationalize a 75% success rate as unacceptably low but a 5% success rate as reasonable for someone who's supposed to be, broadly speaking, your equal.
Finally, being able to succeed 100% of the time at your specialty doesn't seem like it would make for a very engaging tabletop, at least to me.
Spells are terrible now.This one is simply untrue. Spells are less oppressively powerful than they are in 1e, certainly, but calling them terrible is more than a little bit silly.
This makes low level spells completely useless at high levelsThis is generally only true for damage spells, which scaled terribly in 1e anyways so this isn't really something new. I certainly wish damage spells scaled better in 2e and I'm not convinced 2e solved the blasting problems 1e had, but you're overstating the issue. Especially given that DCs now scale universally, which means low level debuffs are significantly more useful across the life of the campaign than they ever were in 1e.
Cumulatively, these mean that you can't determine the outcome of a fight before it starts with good builds and planning.Is a game where the outcome of every fight is preordained by the sheer weight of numeric advantages even a good game? I mean, again, to each their own but this seems like an incredibly positive thing....
Ok you broadly ninj'd me in a much better written way!
Although I tried to comment on some points that are arguably more validBut the stuff on 100% success, pre-ordained fight results and system mastery point to Sherlock having very different ideas of what good game is than many on this subforum at least
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This is more or less just a repeat of your previous couple points but again I don't really get this one. A new player is less likely to make a broken character under the naive assumption the designers presented reasonable options for them to take and the game is less likely to collapse under heavy optimization, but that's not "little reward for system mastery"... that's just a system that's better balanced.This is a big one for me. "System mastery" should never be a thing. New groups shouldn't go to a book, pick stuff that looks cool and fun, only to find out that they made such a suboptimal choice the game is breaking around them. The idea of min-maxing every last +1 and that the game SHOULD have trap choices is, to me, so adversarial, and so antithetical to what I enjoy when playing with the rules, that if it disappeared entirely tomorrow the RPG world would be better for it.
Agreed. I never want another situation where I have a new player playing a fighter paralyzed with indecision about what feats to pick because it is all they get and they are terrified that they will pick wrong and be useless
Or a situation where someone number crunches an entire character to the point where all theme and backstory choices are jettisoned in favour of exactly the right boosts (right down to ignoring a thematic familiar in favour of the one that gives the best bonuses)
I can understand why people would want to feel rewarded for the time spent reading the rules and 3.5 does foster that. But it should not be necessary and definitely not a design aim for a new edition.
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@Sherlock -
1) This is a fair personal opinion. There are some that find the shrinkage in numbers to track as a bonus rather than a downgrade.
2) This is just outdated information that was true to the PT but has since been said and shown have changed. The 50-75% success rate is now not a regular occurance to those that specialize in the task.
3) There are other that don’t like the bulk system as well, so you aren’t alone in this.
4) I don’t think this is entirely true, but it is for small and medium. Size also had issues tied with it as well so while size bonuses left; size penalties left as well.
5) No AoO is somewhat more complicated. AoO no longer being as common as the pennies in your average couch has actually shown players tend to make more bold actions and more more in general.
6) It’s rather early to say that half-casters got thrown out altogether. With the buff to Bard and the change to Paladin/Champion. It’s a reasonable assumption for the time being.
7) I mean, 1e low level spells became useless at some point as well even with scaling CL; also this meant that the same spell had to be printed multiple times with slightly different names for a better version. Everything else has been addressed elsewhere a number of times including Damage and Duration. As for rarity, if a GM is going to limit things based on rarity they’re gonna limit spells either way. That said others have asked for rarity guidelines rather than arbitrary rarities that new players may not understand the reasoning for.
8) Would need actual examples of this that aren’t using PT numbers to understand your reasoning for this. Even with PT numbers there are certainly ways to plan and build around combats before hand, but it did limit the choices significantly.
9) The problem with static bonuses was it lead to some builds and damage where the die was meaningless. Contrast that with casters that literally just got bonus die with higher spells and issues start to arise way too quickly. The adding of damage die actually allows Casters and Martials to be closer in balance without trivializing either. i.e. it’s a reasonable solution to minimize the linear vs quadratic dynamic between Martials and Casters.
10) This was true in 1e. 1eCRB had NPC classes, just compare and contrast that with PC classes. Also many people had a tendency to increase Monsters stats by giving them class levels. Even in 2e you can still treat NPC’s as PC’s. This issue is more hyperbolic than an actual issue.
11) This is purely untrue. Higher system mastery just doesn’t have such a contrasting difference as 1e. System mastery still allows for better and more intricate builds; this is actually a rather rash claim at best.
12) You would have to give examples of this. The item bonuses was lessened, but they even gave an item preview that specifically addresses this idea in the way of ‘uniqueness’ of magical items w/o giving massive numbers.
13) Animal Companions are definitely in an awkward spot from what we know. This is fairly true.
14) Calling this ‘Lazy Design’ is a very steep claim. Especially when they included it to start with and decided to do away with it. Flat-foot is still valuable and more commonly possible to do now that was in 1eCRB.
15) I assume you’re talking about charge here? Use two actions to move and one to strike. Charge was previously a Full-Round action; now the Fighter can Charge and Strike twice in a turn with a two handed weapon. Clearly an upgrade from 1e.
16) Honestly bringing reality into defining mechanics gets old after awhile. Switching from 1-h to 2-h grip is simple, but also includes adjusting your stance since people will attack differently with 1-h as they will with 2-h. Otherwise, yes, this is a mechanic and one that others have complained about as well.
17) This seems more gamey than 1e that dealt so much with numbers that people can pirerce a heavy armored target with a bow at 90% accuracy in the heat of battle every 6 seconds? To each their own.
18) This is still a thing. Part of the ‘Raise a Shield’ action is you ‘bracing’ for an impact. In 1e it is shown as just an AC boost; in 2e it is represented as a way to mitigate damage. Personally i’d Say preventing damage is more immersive than equip shield and forget it exists.
19) This is the exact same in 1e. Not sure where you’re going with this one.
20) This one has a point. it does allow Races to have access to better abilities later on that before were racial specific feats that took from your general feats; but it does make for certain racial choices such as stryx to seem much more complicated than they are in 1e. Otherwise the Race/Ancestry terminology isn’t a discussion to really bring up. I’m sure everyone here know what you mean if you use Race rather than Ancestry.
With your last responses it’s fairly obvious that the system, setting, and Edition in general are not to your interests. Sorry to hear and nothing wrong with liking other systems, but why post it here?
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I got to be honest some of those posts are a bit lengthy for me. I demand more TLDR's!!
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So I put some thought into this and I think the thing I look forward to or maybe most hopeful about is options that are all valueable and lend themselves to making a character concept that is unique but still useful. I'm thinking of things like say the vigilante hulk one which had great flavor but was terrible mechanically. I hope and am looking forward to flavorful options that are also good mechanically.
While I do not agree entirely with sherlock1701 completely, I firmly agree with them on their Point #10 (quantifiable NPCs). Guess I love having every single thing in (any) universe as quantifiable (thus why I like GURPS, as every power in that game is at least attempted to be quantified in CP) and predictable. Although I totally can compromise with critters not meant for PC playability, potentially playable ones are better off future-proofed (Goblin Scuttle as a Goblin 1 feat, for example).
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For the main topic, I look forward to see most of the dynamic martial combat styles imagined in the 3rd party Spheres of Might, including stuff from the Guardian and Warleader spheres, right from the start.
I am looking forward to seeing how much of the exploration mode mechanics from the Play test have changed in PF2 and whether the game is going to have inherently more interesting ways of handling things like overland travel, tracking, and other aspects of the "journey" adventure than D20 games have handled in the past.
On the AoO and tactics things. My players had to use MORE tactics because "just stand in the way" wasn't automatically enough anymore. If they wanted to stop enemies getting to the backline they had to use chokepoints, grappling, wall spells, mobile fighting etc. It was way more tactical without the assumption of a perfect disincentive for everyone from level 1.
PF1 wasn't tactical. It was strategic. You leveraged as many resources outside the fight as possible to make the fight effortless. Pure logistics. Once you were in the fight the only "tactics" was hit hardest and fastest.
Can you give examples of how this was able to be accomplished? I did not see my groups doing this, but it was probably because they were PF1 players and hadn't adjusted.
It might have come down to me as a GM not creating a diverse enough battlefield for them to employ tactics, but either way it was not my experience.
We ran homebrew, so DD may have had more elements/terrain in this case to support it.
On the AoO and tactics things. My players had to use MORE tactics because "just stand in the way" wasn't automatically enough anymore. If they wanted to stop enemies getting to the backline they had to use chokepoints, grappling, wall spells, mobile fighting etc. It was way more tactical without the assumption of a perfect disincentive for everyone from level 1.
PF1 wasn't tactical. It was strategic. You leveraged as many resources outside the fight as possible to make the fight effortless. Pure logistics. Once you were in the fight the only "tactics" was hit hardest and fastest.
Can you give examples of how this was able to be accomplished? I did not see my groups doing this, but it was probably because they were PF1 players and hadn't adjusted.
It might have come down to me as a GM not creating a diverse enough battlefield for them to employ tactics, but either way it was not my experience.
We ran homebrew, so DD may have had more elements/terrain in this case to support it.
I saw my own players pay more attention to where everyone one was standing, and make more effort to shield the back line casters.
Less of a consideration in a tight hallway or passage, much more of a consideration in more open terrain with more enemies.
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On the AoO and tactics things. My players had to use MORE tactics because "just stand in the way" wasn't automatically enough anymore. If they wanted to stop enemies getting to the backline they had to use chokepoints, grappling, wall spells, mobile fighting etc. It was way more tactical without the assumption of a perfect disincentive for everyone from level 1.
PF1 wasn't tactical. It was strategic. You leveraged as many resources outside the fight as possible to make the fight effortless. Pure logistics. Once you were in the fight the only "tactics" was hit hardest and fastest.
Can you give examples of how this was able to be accomplished? I did not see my groups doing this, but it was probably because they were PF1 players and hadn't adjusted.
It might have come down to me as a GM not creating a diverse enough battlefield for them to employ tactics, but either way it was not my experience.
We ran homebrew, so DD may have had more elements/terrain in this case to support it.
a big part of battle field tactics (at my table) had to do with the 3 action economy more so than AoO specifically. If a party member could attack 2 times, and move once into a position where most of the enemies had to move 2 times to get one attack, it was worth doing. On the flip side, it was easier for both monsters and party members to move around defensive terrain, but that felt more cinematic and fun for us than for movement to become something to avoid in combat at all costs.
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While I do not agree entirely with sherlock1701 completely, I firmly agree with them on their Point #10 (quantifiable NPCs). Guess I love having every single thing in (any) universe as quantifiable (thus why I like GURPS, as every power in that game is at least attempted to be quantified in CP) and predictable.
I hope people understand that in 2e NPCs can be built the same as PCs, it's just that they no longer have to be built that way. As someone who GMs, I find this option for simplification of stats blocks to be immensely beneficial.
early levels the fighter used grapple and trips to eat into enemy action economy, which also happened to help allies target those enemies.
Interesting. Was he spec'd for it or was it a spur of the moment decision?
The wizard invested in indimdate to at least debuff enemies that approached or even better sent them packing for a turn.
I didn't run anyone on the True arcane spell list, out of curiosity, which ones was he having success with given the state of Playtest BFC/SoS spells? I found these extremely lacking.
Were adjustments made here?
The ranged characters forsook that -10 third attack to instead maintain optimal distance from the fight.
Neat. Love that.
Given time to setup they created barricades (borrowed the rules from DD for this.)
That's good thinking on their part. Would have liked to see something like Ranger traps employed for this type of thing, but hey it's definitely something players can do.
At later levels the sorc picked up illusionary Death (or something like that) to save themselves and allies who got engaged with a reaction.
Duly noted. Did you feel like the Sorcerer was happy with this preparation outside of the times the spell paid off in terms of a reaction?
I think my player's concerns here would be not wanting to "hope" for a return on investment. I assume this was Doomsday Dawn? The reactions in the Playtest seemed to be quite potent, but I'm curious if Reactions are going to be deadly and common enough to merit this type of thing in a standard campaign.
The druid made platforms for other characters to attack from elevation and the Monk literally started throwing enemies away.
Was the distance the Monk was able to throw someone really worth it though? With action economy being 3 actions, and a third attack being unlikely, this seems to amount to a light movement tax on the enemy at best (so basically just trading actions) and even that's not guaranteed if they're still in range or have an appropriate action to compensate.
On the topic of the Druid, how were they doing this? I'm not aware of the spell or ability that would allow such consistency.
In conclusion, these are all awesome! Thanks for following up. As mentioned, it's not been my experience, but old habits die hard.
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While I do not agree entirely with sherlock1701 completely, I firmly agree with them on their Point #10 (quantifiable NPCs). Guess I love having every single thing in (any) universe as quantifiable (thus why I like GURPS, as every power in that game is at least attempted to be quantified in CP) and predictable. Although I totally can compromise with critters not meant for PC playability, potentially playable ones are better off future-proofed (Goblin Scuttle as a Goblin 1 feat, for example).
We actually have literally no evidence you can't quantify every single NPC. It's possible Paizo will not do so in their adventures, but with the existence of monster/NPC creation rules in the GMG it seems very possible to do precisely this fairly easily if you want.
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The Whirlwind throw was actually combined with the Druids platform creation, so while the enemy was only thrown 10ft most of the time, the actual travel distance they had to achieve was much greater. The monk was sufficiently mobile that he could get to the top of the platform in one action, grab and throw quite happily. With Catfall he could just step off the platform the next round (or quite often same due to Quickened) to get back to the fight.
The Druid was using Wall of Stone which explicitly state it can be used to create staircases.
This part in particular goes beyond cool to absolutely amazing. Your players certainly adapted some interesting tactics.
Thanks for sharing!
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Was the distance the Monk was able to throw someone really worth it though? With action economy being 3 actions, and a third attack being unlikely, this seems to amount to a light movement tax on the enemy at best (so basically just trading actions) and even...
I also had a monk specializing in throws in my game. Throwing enemies can be useful as it not only can do damage, but it can knock them or other enemies prone. A prone enemy has to spend two actions to get back to where the monk is, pretty damn cost-effective for the monk. Not to mention environmental advantages such as simply throwing enemies off of cliffs. They can also get great benefits from party synergy like when the sorcerer creates a wall of fire and the monk throws foes into it. When my monk player first started doing it I thought it would be way too overpowered, but against much larger enemies it simply doesn't work, so it was powerful, but not overly so.
Was the distance the Monk was able to throw someone really worth it though? With action economy being 3 actions, and a third attack being unlikely, this seems to amount to a light movement tax on the enemy at best (so basically just trading actions) and even...I also had a monk specializing in throws in my game. Throwing enemies can be useful as it not only can do damage, but it can knock them or other enemies prone. A prone enemy has to spend two actions to get back to where the monk is, pretty damn cost-effective for the monk. Not to mention environmental advantages such as simply throwing enemies off of cliffs. They can also get great benefits from party synergy like when the sorcerer creates a wall of fire and the monk throws foes into it. When my monk player first started doing it I thought it would be way too overpowered, but against much larger enemies it simply doesn't work, so it was powerful, but not overly so.
Certainly those are aspects of the move that helps, but I was worried about applicability.
In 3.5 for instance Improved Trip was extremely powerful for similar reasons (PF1 not so much) but the big caveat was lack of use at higher levels of play (or even outright impossible in some cases).
Given retraining is a thing, I imagine they could just as easily unlearn Whirlwind Throw, but it would have it's perks.
The investment and return seems on par, but again it seemed like an action trade in most cases (even less so in the case of high reach or immune to prone enemies) but the bonus of Malk_Content's scenario with two PC's working together to create extremely beneficial outcomes (more than the sum of their parts even) is definitely the types of things I was hoping for.
My groups have had no such luck in stopping mad dash attacks of goblins or the like, since move+move+attack is basically unpunished in the current system, but again that may be a function of stale battlefields and veteran PF1 players.
I'll have to see how things adjust once the dust settles on release rules and players get used to them.
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Well, as a GM, I'm looking forward to the new monster/NPC approach. Monsters in the Playtest were substantially faster and more fun to run than their P1 equivalents.
As a player, being able to really freely trade out features I don't want. Since basically everything is feats, it's really rare to get stuck with an ancestry or class ability I don't want.
For both, the three action economy means a lot more flexibility, but also a lot less pausing the game to re-explain corner cases like 5 foot steps.
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I'm mostly a GM, so am very much looking forward to easy-to-run monsters with more fun and interesting options in combat. I'm also keen to start mixing in some more complex hazards into combat to see how that changes things.
As a player, I'm mostly looking forward to being able to build a cleric that has interesting options beyond which god to worship and which domains to take at first level.
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I'm actually pretty happy about there not being many AoO because it should make not using a board and miniatures quite a bit more simple. Tracking everybody's positions and making gamey tactical decisions instead of trying to roleplay has always been a bit of a mood kill for me.
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I'm actually pretty happy about there not being many AoO because it should make not using a board and miniatures quite a bit more simple. Tracking everybody's positions and making gamey tactical decisions instead of trying to roleplay has always been a bit of a mood kill for me.
I had not thought of this but it is an amazing point. It makes things so much more flexible