Is "Pathfinder 2nd Edition" a better game then "Pathfinder 1st Edition"?


Pathfinder Second Edition General Discussion

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Malk_Content wrote:
Baby Samurai wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:

Conditions in 5e that give either advantage or disadvantage:

Blinded, Charmed, Frightened, Invisible, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Stunned, Unconscious (not really counting this one of course but for completion's sake), and Exhaustion.

That's not all they do, at all, this just confirms the dishonesty I suspected.
Yes some do more than the base, but many don't. And the core freedom of 5e is to let GMs apply disadvantage/advantage as the situation allows without needing explicit rules for it. But that freedom is largely meaningless because dis/adv is probably already in play.

Can I ask if you’ve played much 5E? It’s rare to already have advantage/disadvantage since generally you fight more enemies than in PF1. Standup fights with a single enemy are rare - “it’s probably already in play” doesn’t really gel with the games I’ve seen or run.

The problem of advantage compressing all the various modifiers bugged me a lot about 5E at first but it doesn’t really impact on play significantly. It largely comes up in skill challenges (where buffing your ally often becomes a matter of which is the cheapest way to gain advantage).

Also (just as an aside) the DM’s friend of a casual +2 is another quick and easy way to adjudicate out-of-the-ordinary tactics.


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Alright guys lets move away from the 5E adv vrs dis stuff.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Steve Geddes wrote:
Malk_Content wrote:
Baby Samurai wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:

Conditions in 5e that give either advantage or disadvantage:

Blinded, Charmed, Frightened, Invisible, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained, Stunned, Unconscious (not really counting this one of course but for completion's sake), and Exhaustion.

That's not all they do, at all, this just confirms the dishonesty I suspected.
Yes some do more than the base, but many don't. And the core freedom of 5e is to let GMs apply disadvantage/advantage as the situation allows without needing explicit rules for it. But that freedom is largely meaningless because dis/adv is probably already in play.
Can I ask if you’ve played much 5e

Not a collossal amount, somewhere around 40 hours at the table. I don't necessarily mean each encounter starts with dis/adv in play (although my playstyle of scout and setup often led to that) but it was very quickly established early each encounter.

Once its in play that was that though. I will say we quite quickly started avoiding combat as much as possible and the quick and simple resolutions of 5e did make for fairly enjoyable out of combat shenanigans.


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Cheers. Fwiw, I agree with the view that 5E is more liberating than PF1 in play and more constrained in character generation, largely due to the reliance on DM fiat over codification and the paucity of character generation choices.

I’m hoping PF2 swings back towards letting you do stuff without needing to specifically build for it - that was always my problem with trying to improvise in PF1 - once there’s PC options to let you do things, it’s harder to allow people just doing them on a whim.


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I haven't had a chance to review the newly published rules yet to see how its changed from the play test.

However, my experience from the play test left me...unsatisfied. I will give it another try, on a one shot type experience to see how the modified rule set feels. But I will admit I am not predisposed to having warm feelies about the new edition at this juncture.

Liberty's Edge

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Claxon wrote:

I haven't had a chance to review the newly published rules yet to see how its changed from the play test.

However, my experience from the play test left me...unsatisfied. I will give it another try, on a one shot type experience to see how the modified rule set feels. But I will admit I am not predisposed to having warm feelies about the new edition at this juncture.

It's really changed pretty drastically from the playtest in several important ways. The three action stuff and a lot of the fundamental structure is the same, but many of the details (including the specific math) are very different indeed.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Claxon wrote:

I haven't had a chance to review the newly published rules yet to see how its changed from the play test.

However, my experience from the play test left me...unsatisfied. I will give it another try, on a one shot type experience to see how the modified rule set feels. But I will admit I am not predisposed to having warm feelies about the new edition at this juncture.

It's really changed pretty drastically from the playtest in several important ways. The three action stuff and a lot of the fundamental structure is the same, but many of the details (including the specific math) are very different indeed.

Still uses Bulk though. A lot of changes I dislike subjectively, but Bulk is an objectively bad system that inherently prevents effective adjudication of items not on a table already, and leads to some rather nonsensical outcomes.

Incapacitation trait means that a lot of spells and abilities are useless against higher level creatures (I don't know why they even made this trait, higher level enemies save most of the time anyway).

Persistent damage and some of the knowledge feats are also going to be a massive pain for GMs, if playtest experience holds true on those.


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sherlock1701 wrote:


Still uses Bulk though. A lot of changes I dislike subjectively, but Bulk is an objectively bad system that inherently prevents effective adjudication of items not on a table already, and leads to some rather nonsensical outcomes.

I prefer the bulk system by far. My group actually uses bulk, where we used to simply ignore the old encumbrance system. It is not 'objectively worse', you simply don't like it.

Quote:
Incapacitation trait means that a lot of spells and abilities are useless against higher level creatures (I don't know why they even made this trait, higher level enemies save most of the time anyway).
They made the trait because surprise round BBEG kills were a common complaint about wizards and save or suck spells.


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Translucent Wolf wrote:


Paizo saw this coming a while back, and determined to cater to a customer who was interested in a simpler experience in chargen and play. A customer who needed to be guided through the experience and then have assistance with 'well, what should my character do now' from 1 to 20.

And so, we now have PF2, which caters to a customer who enjoys having many of their decisions made for them. Pick a given path in a class, and then at each level, there's only a couple of things to choose from, rather than the massive number of options available in PF1.

<snip>

As things stand today, however, I will not be transitioning the players at my table over to 2e.

Frankly, with the level of disdain you seem to have for the players you think Paizo is catering to, I'm not sure why anybody'd want to play PF2 with you. You certainly did load your language here.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Baby Samurai wrote:
That is absurd, which leads me to believe you are either totally ignorant of the rules of the game, or are deliberately spreading propaganda (an agenda). It's fine not to like a game, but to completely misrepresent it, is just not cricket.

I have played 5e extensively. I have enjoyed it a lot, it's a good game. I'm going to a game tonight. But I agree that the Advantage/Disadvantage system discourages a lot of tactics that at first glance seem good. If you play without flanking, I think this is mitigated.


Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.

Silver Crusade

sherlock1701 wrote:
Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle.

Go reread how Create Undead actually works.


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

For me it is a better game. I think it was time to move on from the 3.0/3.5/PF1 engine/rule set. Fractional math caused some problems. I think PF2 is good in that the classes get meaningful choices from class and ancestry. It has influences from 5e and 4th edition D&D. If you are short on cash and want physical copy you could try Amazon.


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Rysky wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle.
Go reread how Create Undead actually works.

Yep, looks like you get control over 4 undead (only if they're much weaker than you), all of which have the minion trait, and the others all do their own thing (intelligent ones are friendly, but that's it). I don't see an army you could actually do anything with coming out of that ritual.

One uncontrolled undead per day. So threatening, how will the world survive?


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sherlock1701 wrote:
Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle.

Also gone are the days where a level 5 cleric could have a skeleton T-rex under their control at the low low price of a desecrate spell before animating it.

I'm not a fan of how far PC minion controller type necromancers have fallen, but that was another set of rules that got hit with a well deserved nerf bat.

Silver Crusade

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sherlock1701 wrote:
Rysky wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle.
Go reread how Create Undead actually works.

Yep, looks like you get control over 4 undead (only if they're much weaker than you), all of which have the minion trait, and the others all do their own thing (intelligent ones are friendly, but that's it). I don't see an army you could actually do anything with coming out of that ritual.

One uncontrolled undead per day. So threatening, how will the world survive?

You don't see how having hundreds of friendly undead could be useful in any way?


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Garretmander wrote:
I prefer the bulk system by far. My group actually uses bulk, where we used to simply ignore the old encumbrance system. It is not 'objectively worse', you simply don't like it.

No, it's definitely worse. How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table? What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation? How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.

On top of that, how can it possibly be harder to carry one falchion than 19 hatchets? What about the fact that a longbow is just as hard to carry as an un-worn suit of studded leather strapped to your back? 9 daggers have no mass until you throw a 10th one into the pile. None of this makes sense.

Quote:
They made the trait because surprise round BBEG kills were a common complaint about wizards and save or suck spells.

I rarely saw this happen in actual play, but when it did it was always an amazing and cool moment (regardless of which side of the screen I was on). A couple other points on this:

-The enemies you most want to disable are going to be ones that are stronger than you. Weaker ones don't matter, you just kill them. This means that significantly reducing the incap effect on stronger enemies makes the ability nigh-pointless.

-The abilities that are tagged as incap are often not even that severe. For example, Critical Debilitation does the following:

Critical Success: The target is unaffected.
Success: The target is slowed 1 until the end of your next turn.
Failure: The target is slowed 2 until the end of your next turn.
Critical Failure: The target is paralyzed until the end of your
next turn.

A boss might be slowed 1-2 for 1 turn or paralyzed 1 turn. So OP, better make it so they can only be slowed 1-2 for 1 turn, and then it's not likely to happen because they'll save anyway.

Or Stunning Fist, which only does Stunned 1 on a fail and Stunned 3 on a crit fail. Against a stronger enemy, it does nothing unless they crit fail, and even then only Stun 1.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
It's far less flexible in play. A lack of codified options/listed rules for actions means that often you simply can't do things you could do in PF1, or that they'll be very subject to DM fiat.

Fiat is what makes a game flexible.

With few codified rules, and a good GM, you can do anything you can imagine.

With overly codified rules (like the playtest's "these are the eleven things you're allowed to do while exploring") the game become rigid.

GMs are usually more willing to invent rules to cover gaps than they are to rewrite rules that are intended to be comprehensive.


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Matthew Downie wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
It's far less flexible in play. A lack of codified options/listed rules for actions means that often you simply can't do things you could do in PF1, or that they'll be very subject to DM fiat.

Fiat is what makes a game flexible.

With few codified rules, and a good GM, you can do anything you can imagine.

With overly codified rules (like the playtest's "these are the eleven things you're allowed to do while exploring") the game become rigid.

GMs are usually more willing to invent rules to cover gaps than they are to rewrite rules that are intended to be comprehensive.

No, lack of rules often leads to 'you can't do that', or getting a very lackluster/unsatisfying ruling. Codified rules as they are in PF1 are excellent, and provide mechanical context for doing just about anything at any time.

Fiat just means the game is played at the GM's whim (more than usual anyway).


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sherlock1701 wrote:
Garretmander wrote:
I prefer the bulk system by far. My group actually uses bulk, where we used to simply ignore the old encumbrance system. It is not 'objectively worse', you simply don't like it.
No, it's definitely worse. How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table? What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation? How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.
Quote:
How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table?

The GM makes a call with player input, and play moves along.

Quote:
What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation?

Too much for a character to drag, partially due to said foundation, so you really don't need a number. For odd cases, see the above answer.

Quote:
How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.

If these issues come up frequently at your table, PF2 is not the system for you. I'm pretty sure PF1 is also not the system for you if you're doing this. Maybe an exercise from a physics textbook, or an architectural plan is more your group's cup of tea.

Quote:
Quote:
They made the trait because surprise round BBEG kills were a common complaint about wizards and save or suck spells.
I rarely saw this happen in actual play, but when it did it was always an amazing and cool moment (regardless of which side of the screen I was on).

Then you and I played very different games. The wizard throwing suffocation spells left and right stopped memorizing that spell after a day's adventuring because it just killed all the fun. That's not even one of the worst save or suck spells.


Garretmander wrote:
Then you and I played very different games. The wizard throwing suffocation spells left and right stopped memorizing that spell after a day's adventuring because it just killed all the fun. That's not even one of the worst save or suck spells.

If the enemies have terrible Fort saves it might be a threat, otherwise it's pretty ineffective. If you make the initial save you're only staggered one round. After that, you get a Fort save every round to stave off the effects, for only 3 rounds.

Fort saves tend to be pretty high though.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
Garretmander wrote:
Then you and I played very different games. The wizard throwing suffocation spells left and right stopped memorizing that spell after a day's adventuring because it just killed all the fun. That's not even one of the worst save or suck spells.
If the enemies have terrible Fort saves it might be a threat, otherwise it's pretty ineffective. If you make the initial save you're only staggered one round. After that, you get a Fort save every round to stave off the effects, for only 3 rounds.

I know you're familiar enough with PF1 to realize you can get a wizard's save DC so astronomically high it will land regularly on 'level appropriate' creature's good saves. But yes, in that case they were the enemy's low saves. At that level there are save or sucks targeting the other saves as well, that was just a personal example.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Claxon wrote:

I haven't had a chance to review the newly published rules yet to see how its changed from the play test.

However, my experience from the play test left me...unsatisfied. I will give it another try, on a one shot type experience to see how the modified rule set feels. But I will admit I am not predisposed to having warm feelies about the new edition at this juncture.

It's really changed pretty drastically from the playtest in several important ways. The three action stuff and a lot of the fundamental structure is the same, but many of the details (including the specific math) are very different indeed.

That the math has changed drastically is why I'm willing to give it a shot at all.

The biggest reason I disliked the play test was that at the end of it I just felt my character was incompetent no matter how hard I tried to optimize, and I felt like everything was completely subject to the whim of the die. Which I understand probably sounds silly, so let me restate it in a slightly different way.

I ultimate felt like I didn't need a character at all, I just needed to roll a die and if it was better than 10 I succeeded and if it was less I failed. That was what everything felt like, if I attempted to optimize with that thing. Everything else felt like it wasn't worth attempting because I was going to fail.

Hopefully that's not true anymore. But that was basically my experience with the play test. It ultimately felt like my choices didn't really matter and weren't rewarded. I had to optimize just to stay relevant at something.


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sherlock1701 wrote:

No, it's definitely worse. How do you determine the bulk for something not on the table? What's the bulk of a building? How does that interact with the support of its foundation? How are we supposed to calculate volumes from specific gravity with only Bulk as a guideline? These are all things that come up frequently at my tables.

I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.

sherlock1701 wrote:

On top of that, how can it possibly be harder to carry one falchion than 19 hatchets? What about the fact that a longbow is just as hard to carry as an un-worn suit of studded leather strapped to your back? 9 daggers have no mass until you throw a 10th one into the pile. None of this makes sense.

It's called making abstractions and I'm glad Paizo went this way because I find this rather intuitive and allows for easier judgement calls at the table, as it is less granular than having to google weights of whatever wasn't listed in the books. Simplifying this whole weight and encumbrance thing was also necessary so that people would actually use it, as I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of all games would never look at this again after character creation.

sherlock1701 wrote:

No, lack of rules often leads to 'you can't do that', or getting a very lackluster/unsatisfying ruling. Codified rules as they are in PF1 are excellent, and provide mechanical context for doing just about anything at any time.

I think this explains why you are in opposition to most people on the boards here because most more narrative-focused, rules-light systems, like let's say Fate, actively encourage the GMs to say yes. If that isn't your experience than I think that differs from most other people here, which why many people are wishing to put back more power in the hands of the GM, as most of us have realised since the days of 3.X that the GM/player relationship isn't an adversarial one, but a collaborative one and that saying yes leads to more fun for everyone. I think the whole idea of "Yes and..." has spread a lot and has changed ttrpgs significantly.


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Gratz wrote:
I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.

Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

Quote:


It's called making abstractions and I'm glad Paizo went this way because I find this rather intuitive and allows for easier judgement calls at the table, as it is less granular than having to google weights of whatever wasn't listed in the books. Simplifying this whole weight and encumbrance thing was also necessary so that people would actually use it, as I'm willing to bet that less than 10% of all games would never look at this again after character creation.

It was always used in every game I've played in without issues, across several groups in the past 8 years.

And no, it doesn't allow for easier judgement calls. Without any correlation between Bulk and reality, you have no way of knowing what hte Bulk of something should reasonably be. In reality a longsword was similar in size and slightly heavier (2 lb vs 2.5 lb) than a falchion, yet here a falchion has twice as much Bulk as a longsword. Then consider than an unconscious person has about 8 bulk. They're really only 16-20 lb?

Mind you, I rewrote the equipment tables for PF1 to use more realistic weights and item names (not to mention making the terrible weapons useful), but this seems rather difficult for PF2 (for the weights, obviously names are easy enough).

Quote:


I think this explains why you are in opposition to most people on the boards here because most more narrative-focused, rules-light systems, like let's say Fate, actively encourage the GMs to say yes. If that isn't your experience than I think that differs from most...

It means I sometimes have no idea how something will work before I attempt it. I am not a fan of uncertainty. Or in 5e as a specific example, there are not very solid rules on crafting magic items, and whether you can do so at all is entirely up to the GM (let alone buying them).

Basically, in PF1, I have more freedom because I know the rules for everything, so I can do everything. In 5e, I have to constantly ask the GM if I can do something, and how it will work in their game. This is a huge problem, especially when the action was well documented in Pathfinder.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

I think most people don't care how many people it takes to build a house or whatever, which is why there were more abstractions being used for this in the kingdom-building rules.

sherlock1701 wrote:

It was always used in every game I've played in without issues, across several groups in the past 8 years.

And no, it doesn't allow for easier judgement calls. Without any correlation between Bulk and reality, you have no way of knowing what hte Bulk of something should reasonably be. In reality a longsword was similar in size and slightly heavier (2 lb vs 2.5 lb) than a falchion, yet here a falchion has twice as much Bulk as a longsword. Then consider than an unconscious person has about 8 bulk. They're really only 16-20 lb?

Mind you, I rewrote the equipment tables for PF1 to use more realistic weights and item names (not to mention making the terrible weapons useful), but this seems rather difficult for PF2 (for the weights, obviously names are easy enough).

I'm sorry, but again I think less than 1% of this player base cares about the rather pedantic difference of 1/2 lb. being falsely represented by bulk. Most people will probably just ask themselves: "Is it about as heavy or unwieldy as X from the chart?" If, yes then it's about the same as on the chart. That's good enough for most people who don't take the time to rewrite all of the item tables for realism because most people don't care that much about realism. If it doesn't break the verisimilitude of the world then most people won't care.

sherlock1701 wrote:
It means I sometimes have no idea how something will work before I attempt it. I am not a fan of uncertainty. Or in 5e as a specific case, there are not very solid rules on crafting magic items, and whether you can do so at all is entirely up to the GM (let alone buying them)

Yes, the crafting rules of 5e are lacking, to say the least, because magic items aren't integrated well into 5e. But we are playing a game of rolling dice to determine outcomes, so not liking uncertainty in your games feels rather bizarre to me.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
Gratz wrote:
I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.
Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

Why would you even bother to use rules in this situation...? Pathfinder (1 or 2), DnD... none of these systems even attempts to tell you to adjudicate weights and design architectural structures.

This is just so far outside what the rules are attempting to simulate, I can't even comprehend why you're upset that items have bulk instead of weight. What you're describing is outside the bounds of the weight system, not just the bulk system.


Gratz wrote:


I'm sorry, but again I think less than 1% of this player base cares about the rather pedantic difference of 1/2 lb. being falsely represented by bulk. Most people will probably just ask themselves: "Is it about as heavy or unwieldy as X from the chart?" If, yes then it's about the same as on the chart. That's good enough for most people who don't take the time to rewrite all of the item tables for realism because most people don't care that much about realism. If it doesn't break the verisimilitude of the world then most people won't care.

Most might not, but I and many I play with do, and PF1 supported that. It would have been minimal effort to add in rules for weight-based encumbrance, just one extra column in the equipment tables and a formula for calculating load from Strength.

Quote:


But we are playing a game of rolling dice to determine outcomes, so not liking uncertainty in your games feels rather bizarre to me.

There's a reason I advocated so strongly for being able to stack bonuses enough to succeed 95-100% of the time in your area of specialization. My PT input got mostly ignored, however (except item HP, that's the one thing that actually got changed), and the game's going to be less enjoyable for it.


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I've ALWAYS hated encumbrance, I'm glad to see it go!

I'd dance on it's grave if it had one.


Garretmander wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Gratz wrote:
I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.
Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

Why would you even bother to use rules in this situation...? Pathfinder (1 or 2), DnD... none of these systems even attempts to tell you to adjudicate weights and design architectural structures.

This is just so far outside what the rules are attempting to simulate, I can't even comprehend why you're upset that items have bulk instead of weight. What you're describing is outside the bounds of the weight system, not just the bulk system.

I would love to see proper rules for this and other engineering concepts, but until that happens we need some way to do this, and weight provides more of a usable baseline than bulk does.

I'm still upset they didn't make an Engineering skill for this edition, it's just part of Crafting. They're not the same at all.


sherlock1701 wrote:
Garretmander wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Gratz wrote:
I'm not sure that I've ever heard before needing the weight of a house or its foundation, but I'm quite sure PF1 didn't provide weights for houses or foundations either. Now I'm rather interested to hear in what context these things came up frequently in your campaigns because at this point I'm not sure I was playing the same game as you.
Transporting a building from one location to another or determining the number of casts needed to build structures, to name a couple.

Why would you even bother to use rules in this situation...? Pathfinder (1 or 2), DnD... none of these systems even attempts to tell you to adjudicate weights and design architectural structures.

This is just so far outside what the rules are attempting to simulate, I can't even comprehend why you're upset that items have bulk instead of weight. What you're describing is outside the bounds of the weight system, not just the bulk system.

I would love to see proper rules for this and other engineering concepts, but until that happens we need some way to do this, and weight provides more of a usable baseline than bulk does.

Yeah, that's a whole other game you're looking for.

What you want is an engineering manual, you could probably find some at a used bookstore on a university.


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Umm, it was quite possible for a character that wanted to carry absurd amount of stuff to get more than 1 ton carry capacity. At which point carrying a house on your back becomes very possible. As for its weight, it was easy to determine (basic algebra) since you have the dimensions of the building and usually a description of what it's made off, which can be used to approximate a weight value.

As for ease of play vs realism, the best is always a mix of both, and bulk frankly fails due to not being granular enough. A 20lb (8 bulk) adult human is a limb less mummy (a head alone weights 10lbs, ~4 bulk).


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I honestly like coming up with bulk numbers for random objects, there's less pressure to not be wrong because bulk is an abstraction. So I can say the sofa is 25 bulk and not worry about it.


Baby Samurai wrote:
It's fine not to like a game, but to completely misrepresent it, is just not cricket.

Kind of an ironic statement for you here.


Temperans wrote:

Umm, it was quite possible for a character that wanted to carry absurd amount of stuff to get more than 1 ton carry capacity. At which point carrying a house on your back becomes very possible. As for its weight, it was easy to determine (basic algebra) since you have the dimensions of the building and usually a description of what it's made off, which can be used to approximate a weight value.

Ok, I love how far off track this thread is,

But cars on average are 2 tons. Good luck carrying a house of any size.

Sovereign Court

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If you want a system that works hard to help hold your hand to make a character and background or if you want a game where most things are balanced to keep you from making an overly powerful character or a weak one than P2 is fine for you.

It is a bit to "every thing must be balanced" for me; somethings in life are just not like that and I like having that in my game for good or ill- I find it more challenging to make a powerful character using what is given i P1 or making a flawed against type character and trying to survive.

Both are fine games on their own check them both out and pick what you like - there is plenty of P1 material out there for years of play and more P2 stuff will soon be coming.

Liberty's Edge

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sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.

You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.


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IceniQueen wrote:

...

In the past you had fast, medium, and slow progression. Now you have 1000XP and you just went from level 3 to 4. Anther 1000 xp you are now 5.

I also do not like that by X levels you need to have X permanant magic items (This is not potions or things that you use up) If you run light magic worlds, that is not good. And players may complain saying... well the rules say this and that. Yes, you as a DM can control this, but it just adds more for the DM to manage in rules.

PF2 seems like it is designed for Paizo's world and it's not for outside of that world. It may not be that way, just seems this way to me.

It's possible I'm misinterpreting you, but fast, medium, and slow progression are things outlined in the rules, where you change the XP per level value to e.g. 800 or 1200. Personally I like experience always being proportionate to the relative challenge, but it's fair enough to prefer raw numbers.


The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...


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Lord Fyre wrote:


I think the real problems end up being:
3 - Poor balancing of the later material.

I keep seeing this idea thrown around. There's no basis, unless one is referring to material so poorly written it's useless (Shifter).

The most broken stuff in 3.5 and PF is in the core book(s). Wizard, Cleric, Druid and Sorcerer are all core classes. Most of the staple broken spells from Grease to Wish are all core spells. The two handed power attacker everything's damage is compared to? Core. Even past core most of the really good things are variants of core stuff (Burst of Radiance is a really good spell, but it's a variant Glitterdust, Oracle is a variant Sorcerer.).


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Rysky wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Rysky wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle.
Go reread how Create Undead actually works.

Yep, looks like you get control over 4 undead (only if they're much weaker than you), all of which have the minion trait, and the others all do their own thing (intelligent ones are friendly, but that's it). I don't see an army you could actually do anything with coming out of that ritual.

One uncontrolled undead per day. So threatening, how will the world survive?

You don't see how having hundreds of friendly undead could be useful in any way?

Even better: if you get a crit success (necessary for making it a minion to be an option) it’s not only friendly, it’s helpful (if intelligent).

And if unintelligent, it will follow a simple command (like “move in the direction anyone wearing *this* symbol on their clothes points to, and attack anyone they flip-off”). Dress your captains appropriately, and viola! You have your army of skeletons!

EDIT: And given the HD limitations on how many undead you could control
in PF1, you couldn’t really have an *army* of skeletons in PF1. So if anything, it’s *easier* to have an army of skeletons in PF2 than in PF1.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Not this again... I've just looked the Great Wyrm Red Dragon up and I'd like you to point me to the parts in the rules where player characters get 39 natural armour, frightful presence, Manipulate Flames and Melt Stone.

Silver Crusade

3 people marked this as a favorite.
Gratz wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Not this again... I've just looked the Great Wyrm Red Dragon up and I'd like you to point me to the parts in the rules where player characters get 39 natural armour, frightful presence, Manipulate Flames and Melt Stone.

Now now, no one’s arguing that.

It’s more “I would like my Solarion to be able to use a ranged attack like that NPC Solarion.”

Silver Crusade

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PossibleCabbage wrote:
I honestly like coming up with bulk numbers for random objects, there's less pressure to not be wrong because bulk is an abstraction. So I can say the sofa is 25 bulk and not worry about it.

I hate going to Dwarven Ikea.


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Can I make a confession that will reveal me to be a crazy person? I really really liked ultimate campaign, I wanted to manage properties, I loved the idea of putting my hard earned gold into investments and min maxing proffesion skills and magic items that look like things I would be delighted to own in real life like the expedition pavilion and the campfire bead.

My ideal character is one who eventually builds a flying city and is really good at party buffing and right now I am having trouble picturing that character but as material comes out my desires might get realized

The system does however look very interesting and well built, it's just that the first draft had a path to my desires and this one does not have ityet.


sherlock1701 wrote:
The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Hold on, I'm having trouble keeping up with you!

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

deuxhero wrote:
Lord Fyre wrote:

I think the real problems end up being:

3 - Poor balancing of the later material.
I keep seeing this idea thrown around. There's no basis, unless one is referring to material so poorly written it's useless (Shifter).

Given that you have just offered a particularly glaring example, I don't think I need to explain much further.

deuxhero wrote:
The most broken stuff in 3.5 and PF is in the core book(s). Wizard, Cleric, Druid and Sorcerer are all core classes. Most of the staple broken spells from Grease to Wish are all core spells. The two handed power attacker everything's damage is compared to? Core. Even past core most of the really good things are variants of core stuff (Burst of Radiance is a really good spell, but it's a variant Glitterdust, Oracle is a variant Sorcerer.).

See my points 1 & 2 from the list you abbreviated.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Lord Fyre wrote:
deuxhero wrote:
Lord Fyre wrote:

I think the real problems end up being:

3 - Poor balancing of the later material.
I keep seeing this idea thrown around. There's no basis, unless one is referring to material so poorly written it's useless (Shifter).
Given that you have just offered a particularly glaring example, I don't think I need to explain much further.

On the other hand one of the very last publications for PF1 fixed the Eldritch Knight.

There isn't any real correlation between when rules text was released and the quality of it. Other than that if it was in the CRB it was probably imbalanced.


Moving Goalposts wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Hold on, I'm having trouble keeping up with you!

I can't help it if pointing out one flaw brings up another.


sherlock1701 wrote:
Moving Goalposts wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
The_Hanged_Man wrote:
sherlock1701 wrote:
Oh, and the minion trait is chock full of logical holes and means that nobody would fear powerful necromancers anymore, since only 3 of their undead could do anything at a time. Gone are the days of skeletal armies for heroes to battle. Just 3 at a time, and they're always slow and oblivious.
You do realize that monsters don’t need to follow the same build rules as PCs right? The rules exist for PCs to facilitate flow and reasonable balance at the table. Sauron the necromancer can still control all of his ringwraiths just fine.

No, that's unreasonable. If the NPC can do it, the PC should be able to just as well, and vice versa. Otherwise it's unfair to one side.

And you may have missed this, but I'm against separate build rules for monsters, so...

Hold on, I'm having trouble keeping up with you!
I can't help it if pointing out one flaw brings up another.

I don't consider them flaws.

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