|
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm testing out all sorts of stuff in the character creator via herolab and having a blast.
I made an elf barbarian who was a gladiator in an underground arena hundreds of years ago who went into hiding after a bunch of other adventurers burned the thing to the ground.
I made a charlatan diviner whose whole shtick is to whip up towns into a frenzy of intrigue just to see what happens.
I made a ranger of Gozreh who protects the wilderness from gentrification.
Also a former bounty hunter turned liberator, who's fighting to free the people she unjustly handed over to corrupt lawmen.
A lawful necromancer, follower of Nethys, who in her spare time consults as a private investigator, mainly because of her expertise at keeping her own privacy.
And the best part is each of them is so easy to start up because it's little more than picking a background and a class and just going hog wild.
I'm trying to figure out a way to make a detective barbarian. But I can't stop giggling at the idea of Conan looking around him and cursing at the black and white and shades of grey.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yes. The backgrounds (and Starfinder themes) are fantastic for injecting a bit of role-playing into even the most gamist of players. Even if the background was chosen only because of the mechanics benefits that it gives, it does a least provide adventure hooks for the GM to use. The character does still have that background.
And for creating cool and interesting characters, the part that I love the best about it is that all of those characters that you created are most likely playable. They may not be completely optimal mechanically, but not so much that it will cause major problems during the game.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd much rather that page-count was replaced by "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."
Today, we're shackled by the specific backgrounds the writers have come up with. Five years from now there'll be a background for every variety. Why not skip the time delay?
Organized Play Developer
|
| 18 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd much rather that page-count was replaced by "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."
Today, we're shackled by the specific backgrounds the writers have come up with. Five years from now there'll be a background for every variety. Why not skip the time delay?
One reason is that having the background blocks means that we could, for example, create a background in an AP that diverges a bit more notably from a standard background than you'd see in a CRB.
You could also potentially use backgrounds as a tool for running "level 0" adventures, where you add a few extra blocks on there for basic proficiencies that get overwritten when you add a level.
There's a really marked modularity to how PF2 is set up that I find very interesting; for example the number of skills that you're trained in and whether you get more for having a high Intelligence isn't a general rule, it's a class-specific rule. Because it's set up that way, you could have a class that gets more skills via a different method, or which gets a fixed number of skills that isn't affected by Intelligence because you've got another dial elsewhere in the system that you want to toggle to affect how the class gains skills and proficiency levels.
There's a lot of things that could be done differently without it necessarily being true that they should be done differently. As someone who's a big fan of writing, designing, and playing with weird 3pp classes and subsystems, I really like the modularity and structure of PF2. It's malleable enough that I could even have a class that eats backgrounds entirely and replaces them with something similar but more specific (while looking at converting my battle lord class I actually seriously considered having their scout/medic/soldier paths start in the background space, though I ultimately scrapped that idea).
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'd much rather that page-count was replaced by "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."
Today, we're shackled by the specific backgrounds the writers have come up with. Five years from now there'll be a background for every variety. Why not skip the time delay?
It is printed for people who need a kick-start on their creativity. It fixes the 'blank page' problem and gets things going - even if ultimately the player and GM come up with their own unique background to use for the character.
And since the backgrounds follow the same general pattern, it is easy to come up with unique ones that still fit with the game and don't feel underpowered or overpowered.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One reason is that having the background blocks means that we could, for example, create a background in an AP that diverges a bit more notably from a standard background than you'd see in a CRB.
You could also potentially use backgrounds as a tool for running "level 0" adventures, where you add a few extra blocks on there for basic proficiencies that get overwritten when you add a level.
<<And more useful stuff>
I hear you, and those are good arguments. My issue - as it stands - really is that it's currently a straightjacket. I get it that we can ask for DM deviation, but that hasn't been a thing in 15 years. If the book doesn't have our backstory, then... we're stuck filing off the serial numbers.
But - again - your arguments are good. I just would've used the wordcount differently, personally.
One reason is that having the background blocks means that we could, for example, create a background in an AP that diverges a bit more notably from a standard background than you'd see in a CRB.I'd much rather that page-count was replaced by "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."
Today, we're shackled by the specific backgrounds the writers have come up with. Five years from now there'll be a background for every variety. Why not skip the time delay?
I'm not seeing a reason that you couldn't do both: what would stop an AP background from replacing the generic "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."? Just add 'Instead of this, some AP's may offer other options that may be used instead of this standard option.' that way standard offers versatility while the AP way offers 'divergent' options.
For me, getting a background that fits the stat I want, a skill I can use and a feat I'd want is quite hard and this is without me taking the actual background 'theme' into account. It mostly works against me if I pick a theme first then as often there is nothing there to work with past the single free boost...
| 12 people marked this as a favorite. |
As someone currently getting ready to run Age of Ashes, I have to say the AP-specific Backgrounds have been wonderful for getting my players' characters invested in the campaign.
I don't have a strong opinion about the core Backgrounds, but the AP-specific ones are one of my favorite new AP features.
|
Organized Play Developer
|
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
One reason is that having the background blocks means that we could, for example, create a background in an AP that diverges a bit more notably from a standard background than you'd see in a CRB.I'd much rather that page-count was replaced by "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."
Today, we're shackled by the specific backgrounds the writers have come up with. Five years from now there'll be a background for every variety. Why not skip the time delay?
I'm not seeing a reason that you couldn't do both: what would stop an AP background from replacing the generic "pick two boosts, one of which must fit your backstory's theme, plus one thematic skill to become trained in, and a skill feat for that skill."? Just add 'Instead of this, some AP's may offer other options that may be used instead of this standard option.' that way standard offers versatility while the AP way offers 'divergent' options.
Future word count and accessibility. It's easier to replace or alter "background" than it is to call out a specific list of general rules, and it's easier for most people to grasp quickly and intuitively.
A "block" of mechanics that all fall under a single header are a lot easier to manipulate and drop in or out of a game, but when those mechanics lose their identity and bleed into each other as just a bunch of general rules, it becomes much more cumbersome and word intensive to manipulate them after the fact. And the bigger the string of related but unconnected things one tries to manipulate becomes, the less accessible and intuitive they become for newer or more casual players.
Lack of accessibility becomes particularly relevant when you look at something like an adventure path, where the writers and developer(s) might want to apply multiple tools to customize the story. Imagine for a minute that Paizo decided to do a "Test of the Starstone" AP where the backgrounds were big, mythic, destined for greatness blocks of mechanics whose benefits advanced as you grew into your destiny. Under the current paradigm, that's super easy to just say "take one of these unique backgrounds that offers these expanded benefits." Under the model where backgrounds are a bunch of separate steps in the general character-building rules, we'd have to write essentially a whole new subsystem that calls out everything it modifies and everything it adds in a way that requires significantly more explanation and eats up significantly more word count.
Accessibility also plays in at a more fundamental level; we need to be able to call the step where you apply all those things something so that people know when to do it and what they should be doing. If we don't have a specific delineation for it, then people are going to be more likely to be confused about how it interacts with other steps. We also build boxes and walls for ourselves, because then instead of giving backgrounds we have to give rules for backgrounds, and that hamstrings us down the road. There is no rule that says "a background is two ability bumps, a Lore skill, another skill, and a skill feat" (just a callout that that's how they typically function); just because that's the model we used in the CRB doesn't mean it's the model we'll always use for every background, but if we replaced the background "block" with a bunch of general steps that said that's what backgrounds are, then we'd have to create a bunch of rules later to explain how and why we're deviating from those rules instead of just making a different kind of background that does whatever it says it does and slots in to the same place in character creation that all backgrounds do.
Future word count and accessibility.
I have to say, this leaves me scratching my head: the generic background can be set up in the same "block"* way as a set background. The "Test of the Starstone" AP seems like you'd be adding new steps either way. We're clearly seeing different things here and at this point, it's kind of moot as we already have the book out. I guess the best I can hope for is an optional rule in the gamemastery guide.
Thanks for the reply though. It always interesting to get a 'behind the scenes' look at the thought processes that goes into the game. ;)
*Background block: [looks just the existing blocks]
Background Name [write name here]
Background Description: [write a line or two describing your background]
Choose two free ability boost. One should be the ability score for your free trained skill below.
You're trained a skill and the Lore skill. You gain skill feat. [pick skills and a feat that match your background]
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I read through the backgrounds and thought "Oh, that's nice for a new player." Then I immediately made custom backgrounds for every single character from then on.
I don't mind them being an "I don't know enough to make my own decisions" tool, and certainly campaign specific backgrounds are interesting, but by and large they are not necessary for anyone with a character already in mind and a decent grasp of the rules.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I read through the backgrounds and thought "Oh, that's nice for a new player." Then I immediately made custom backgrounds for every single character from then on.
I don't mind them being an "I don't know enough to make my own decisions" tool, and certainly campaign specific backgrounds are interesting, but by and large they are not necessary for anyone with a character already in mind and a decent grasp of the rules.
I think this might actually be another reason Paizo did them this way.
A lot of PF2e seems to be designed with ease of house rules in mind, and from that point of view starting with specific backgrounds makes sense.
In other words, with the version we have now it's very little work to house rule in Graystone's version. However, if we started with Graystone's version, it would be a lot more work to house rule in specific backgrounds.
Also, HeroLab has custom backgrounds as a built in option, which is nice.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I read through the backgrounds and thought "Oh, that's nice for a new player." Then I immediately made custom backgrounds for every single character from then on.
I don't mind them being an "I don't know enough to make my own decisions" tool, and certainly campaign specific backgrounds are interesting, but by and large they are not necessary for anyone with a character already in mind and a decent grasp of the rules.
I think this might actually be another reason Paizo did them this way.
A lot of PF2e seems to be designed with ease of house rules in mind, and from that point of view starting with specific backgrounds makes sense.
In other words, with the version we have now it's very little work to house rule in Graystone's version. However, if we started with Graystone's version, it would be a lot more work to house rule in specific backgrounds.
I believe they've outright stated as such was one of the reasons for backgrounds, easy to homebrew.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I read through the backgrounds and thought "Oh, that's nice for a new player." Then I immediately made custom backgrounds for every single character from then on.
I don't mind them being an "I don't know enough to make my own decisions" tool, and certainly campaign specific backgrounds are interesting, but by and large they are not necessary for anyone with a character already in mind and a decent grasp of the rules.
I don't consider myself new to RPGs, but with the way I build characters the backgrounds in the CRB are a great tool for me. I usually start with a build in mind, like "smart Fighter who fights unconventionally", and from that idea adding a background can take the character in many interesting directions. I would not have thought to make the fighter an ex-detective myself, so I find them useful.
I like them as they are. If a player has more they want to do I just work with them on it.
It is better than the 5e implementation or the pf1e traits and flaws which were meant to fill a similar role.
I am a fan of putting some restrictions on a player though and having every player just choose two extra free score increases, one free skill, one free lore and one free skill feat... is less interesting.
Same reason I like the new god alignments. They make more thematic sense and bring the god back into the picture rather than it just being what powers they grant.
That way a chaotic evil god doesn't have to grant power to chaotic neutral character.
Same reason I like the new god alignments. They make more thematic sense and bring the god back into the picture rather than it just being what powers they grant.
That way a chaotic evil god doesn't have to grant power to chaotic neutral character.
What's this about? Please explain.
What's this about? Please explain.Same reason I like the new god alignments. They make more thematic sense and bring the god back into the picture rather than it just being what powers they grant.
That way a chaotic evil god doesn't have to grant power to chaotic neutral character.
The Religion section (pages 437-441) of The Age of Lost Omens chapter of the PF2 Core Rulebook has the alignments of the followers of the gods. It says, "Each deity below has their alignment listed in parentheses after their name, followed by a short description and their edicts, anathemas, and the alignments permitted for followers."
Examples:
Abadar LN; Follower Alignments LG, LN, LE
Asmodeus LE; Follower Alignments LE
Calistria CN; Follower Alignments CG, CN, CE
Cayden Cailean CG; Follower Alignments NG, CG, CN
...
Jumping down to the chaotic evil dieties:
Lamashtu CE; Follower Alignments CE
Rovagug CE; Follower Alignments NE, CE
Thus, the two chaotic evil gods do not want chaotic neutral followers. They won't have chaotic neutral clerics and other empowered minions.
Nice! Makes tons more sense!
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Put me in the group that would have preferred a base system that was more flexible with suggested backgrounds instead of a finite list. As it is, I find the backgrounds incredibly limiting for PFS. I created a dwarven rogue. Another player independently created a dwarven rogue. We both ended up Criminals. Throw in the limited ancestry options and class feats, and despite some variations in the builds, things seem to push specific types of characters down very similar paths.
If the base system were pick two boosts, a skill, and a skill feat, absolutely nothing would prevent Paizo from publishing suggested campaign backgrounds the same way they published campaign traits in the past. Nothing would have prevented them from publishing the backgrounds that are in the core rulebook as examples.
For a home game where you can just create your own backgrounds, it's fine as is. For PFS, this very much feels like it's going to turn into hunting through various books for the right option the same way that traits were in 1E, and wanting to reskin a background the same way people wanted to with traits. Only the backgrounds affect a lot more than the traits did in 1E. We had enough things like every Magus wielding a scimitar with Magical Lineage and Wayang Spellhunter, every Warpriest being Fate's Favored, and every multi classed caster having a Magical Knack. It's disappointing to see that mistake repeated in a new system.
It is, put simply, giving us less flexibility in a system that claims to be more flexible.
Given the backgrounds all have a free boost that you can assign to any stat, I'm not sure it's as big of an issue as you suggest.
Assuming you need to boost two specific stats, there's a 56% chance that a background will fit. If you're looking for the skill/feat, that does limit your options a lot more.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's an accepted liability of PFS that there's less flexibility. The whole point of PFS is to remove inter-GM variability and house rules.
If you let people custom make their own backgrounds, you might as well formally create a background called Murderhobo where the skill is Murder, the feat is Gnome Flickmace Familiarity, the Lore is Monster Identification Lore, and the bonus is to Con.
I'm all in favor of custom backgrounds in home games. I'd also give a super wide berth to modifications, like if someone wants to create a character with a law enforcement background, I'd be fine with renaming "Criminal" to "Undercover Agent" and using the skill/feat/lore from Criminal imstead of forcing them to take Detective.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It’s less the stats and more the skills and feats that are an issue. Why do you have to take stealth as a criminal just to get experienced smuggler? There are no criminals who aren’t good at sneaking around? It’s just limiting unnecessarily.
Re: PFS, if you don’t let people create their own backgrounds, then they will find the one that equates to Murderhobo, and everyone will take that. Also, 2E is supposed to be more balanced. You can already pretty much get any stat combination that you want out of the background. Is any skill, lore skill, and skill feat combination really going to be broken if you allow it to be chosen instead of assigned?
Backgrounds are useful for helping people who don’t have a character idea come up with a character idea. If you do have a character idea already and you want to make it, backgrounds just seem to get in the way.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It’s less the stats and more the skills and feats that are an issue. Why do you have to take stealth as a criminal just to get experienced smuggler? There are no criminals who aren’t good at sneaking around? It’s just limiting unnecessarily.
Re: PFS, if you don’t let people create their own backgrounds, then they will find the one that equates to Murderhobo, and everyone will take that. Also, 2E is supposed to be more balanced. You can already pretty much get any stat combination that you want out of the background. Is any skill, lore skill, and skill feat combination really going to be broken if you allow it to be chosen instead of assigned?
Backgrounds are useful for helping people who don’t have a character idea come up with a character idea. If you do have a character idea already and you want to make it, backgrounds just seem to get in the way.
Because Experienced Smuggler requires you to be trained in Stealth?
|
|
I forgot there’s no more sleight of hand. But some of the skills that were combined also don’t make a lot of sense. Why must you be good at sneaking to be good at concealing something?
The point being, why is all of that tied to “Criminal?” Why can’t you have a criminal who is strong and intimidating but clumsy and not intelligent? Bonuses to strength, charisma, trained in intimidate, underworld lore, and with the Group Coercion feat?
The answer is because they haven’t published that option yet, and that’s actively working against creating a character concept. It’s combining the character’s backstory and the way the character is built mechanically in a way that limits options instead of letting the player pick options that are appropriate to their backstory.
EDIT: To follow up, you can get close to those options, by being a "Guard," which would give you STR, CHA, Intimidate, and Quick Coercion, but Legal Lore or Warfare Lore.
So where does the heavy for the Sczarni fit in? They aren't exactly a bodyguard, and there's no reason they'd know anything about warfare or even the law. But they'd know who runs things in the underworld. And maybe they were terrorizing a villager instead of a single shopkeeper.
Again, in a home game, you just make that background with the combination you want. GM says ok, and you move on. But it's restricted in PFS, because that particular combination hasn't been published yet. So you have to spend a skill feat elsewhere and select the lore skill elsewhere, leaving you with at least one lore skill that doesn't make sense for the character. Or, you adapt your character to the background so that the unwanted lore skill makes sense, instead of having a background that fits the character you want to make.
I am okay with the idea of it being an optional rule for GMs to create backgrounds for players or players to create/modify backgrounds and the get okay from a GM (I wouldn't be surprised if we see this in the GMG). But having pure player empowerment means it might as well not be a separate character creation option in the first place, just make it something like the four free boosts and be done.
The same value could them be applied to class features, feats, spell traditions, type of casting and so on. Now I am not saying you are asking for that level of freedom, I am saying that in a restrictive class based system there are going to be limitations. PFS even more so
Back to alignments, it also means that a chaotic neutral god of prolonged conflict can now RAW have LG, CG, LE, CE as their followers :). I am not expecting paizo to release such an extreme edge case, but it is making my old houserule for a home brewed world standard :)
|
|
Character background was previously not restricted. That’s my point. Tying published backgrounds to mechanical choices is more restrictive than things were in PFS 1E. Instead of having traits that were relatively minor things, this is now a major part of your character, not just mechanically, but in determining who they were before becoming an adventurer. In a system based on classes, your background should be the thing that is not restricted, so that there is some variety to the characters. Instead every rogue will have been a criminal, prisoner, acrobat, or one of a few other options. We’re limited to the 36 backgrounds until they publish more. So there are only 36 things you could have been before you were an adventurer. They have decided to limit backstory in the same way they limit classes, and to me that’s a step in the wrong direction.
While 2E is claiming to have more flexibility, in this respect it actually has less.
But don’t get me wrong, it’s more of an annoyance or inconvenience than an actual hinderance. You can always just basically ignore that backstory once you get in game. Provided PFS doesn’t start doing things like tying events in the scenarios to the background someone has selected (if anyone was a criminal, the party gets a -2 on all checks vs the Hellknights, for example). Michael, if you’re still following the thread, please don’t do that.
|
|
Because PFS is where the base rules apply, and a home game GM can just ignore them. Because at one point, one of the PFS developers was posting in this thread, so he might look at it again. And because the discussion had already restarted before I posted.
Backgrounds should have been an optional rule in the base system. Nothing would have had to change about how the APs use them. Instead, they are part of the base rules. I wish that hadn't been the case, as I find that it is ultimately a bad thing for encouraging more interesting backstories.
PFS has a few backgrounds in the guide, which serve as campaign backgrounds in a similar way to how the faction traits served as campaign traits. But they can't really publish a background for a specific scenario, as you're not supposed to know anything about the scenarios before you play them, and you're certainly not supposed to design a character for a specific scenario.
I keep coming back to the comparison to traits. Backgrounds give you a collection of things from the already existing standard options. All that having a background does is tie story to a set of existing options. There shouldn't be any concern about a background being overpowered mechanically, because backgrounds aren't giving you anything that you can't already get. They are just deciding which things you can take with that part of your character creation.
Traits, on the other hand, often gave things that weren't possible to get through the normal options. They needed to be limited by category so that you couldn't select two powerful Magic traits, for example. You could also select two of them, so even though it was a limited list (that was still longer than the list of available backgrounds, even in the initial options from the pdf/APG), you could combine them to create many, many more variations. They were often vaguer in terms of the story element (though often also far more specific, too).
Despite that increased flexibility in design, story, and combinations, traits came with a lot of problems. Namely that everyone tended to choose from the more powerful options, meaning there were a lot of Reactionary people out there, or whatever one you want to focus on.
Backgrounds make that problem worse, because there are fewer choices, no possibility of combining them, and they provide a larger benefit than traits.
By making them part of the base rules, we can expect that Paizo will be including a "Backgrounds" section in many of the books that they publish from now on. Meaning if we want new options, we have to pay for the books that they are in. Meaning that page count will be taken up publishing the Sczarni Enforcer background, just so you can get the combination I described earlier. Which means we won't get something else that could have been included in the book instead.
So it's more of an issue than just ignore the rules if you don't like them. Including the backgrounds as part of the base system is something that will impact PF2E for the entire life of the system and ultimately mean that we get less content for our money when we purchase books going forward. Or if they don't plan on publishing backgrounds anywhere but in APs, we're going to be stuck with the same 36 limited options forever.
The things Michael points out in his post above about swapping out the "Background" section of character creation are good points. The thing is, they work just as well if you say for your "Background" select two stat boosts, a skill, a lore skill, and a skill feat as they do by having specific, defined combinations of those things. Future page count, that he's worried about, is worse off, because now to get other combinations, other backgrounds have to be published. Calling it the "Background" step of character creation, wherein you make those choices that are supposed to represent the character's life before they became an adventurer works just as well and can be swapped out just as easily for every future positive that he mentions as having a finite list of defined backgrounds does.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Back to alignments, it also means that a chaotic neutral god of prolonged conflict can now RAW have LG, CG, LE, CE as their followers :). I am not expecting paizo to release such an extreme edge case, but it is making my old houserule for a home brewed world standard :)
The freedom for alignment in PF2 has only resulted in less choices than PF1 as far as the CRB's deities are concerned. I hope we will get more diversity for other deities, but missing this opportunity for the Core 20 makes me sad.
Even moreso as many PF1 PCs, including PFS ones, are now forbidden in PF2.
|
|
So where does the heavy for the Sczarni fit in? They aren't exactly a bodyguard, and there's no reason they'd know anything about warfare or even the law. But they'd know who runs things in the underworld. And maybe they were terrorizing a villager instead of a single shopkeeper.
It might be that this is an issue of background bleeding into the space where class actually takes over, because to me that character is a ruffian-racket rogue, who starts out trained in Intimidation and gets a skill feat for Group Coercion right out of the gate. (And then maybe a criminal background to go with it, because it's not like they won't want Stealth too.)
|
|
So where does the heavy for the Sczarni fit in? They aren't exactly a bodyguard, and there's no reason they'd know anything about warfare or even the law. But they'd know who runs things in the underworld. And maybe they were terrorizing a villager instead of a single shopkeeper.It might be that this is an issue of background bleeding into the space where class actually takes over, because to me that character is a ruffian-racket rogue, who starts out trained in Intimidation and gets a skill feat for Group Coercion right out of the gate. (And then maybe a criminal background to go with it, because it's not like they won't want Stealth too.)
Then let me say former heavy for the Sczarni turned Champion when he found faith. Backgrounds are supposed to represent what you did before you became an adventurer/gained a class.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
They are?
A character’s ancestry and their experiences prior to their life as an adventurer—represented by a background—might be key parts of their identity, shape how they see the world, and help them find their place in it.
emphasis added
But the "/gained a class" bit seems to be homebrew
Back to alignments, it also means that a chaotic neutral god of prolonged conflict can now RAW have LG, CG, LE, CE as their followers :). I am not expecting paizo to release such an extreme edge case, but it is making my old houserule for a home brewed world standard :)The freedom for alignment in PF2 has only resulted in less choices than PF1 as far as the CRB's deities are concerned. I hope we will get more diversity for other deities, but missing this opportunity for the Core 20 makes me sad.
Even moreso as many PF1 PCs, including PFS ones, are now forbidden in PF2.
Yeah I know, I just don't care that peoples choices are reduced as long as it makes for better deity connections in this case. We are getting a book filled with gods soon enough.
Gorum is an example I have seen people complain about... But True Neutral or Chaotic Good never made sense with the lore of who Gorum is and what they represent. Not who worships him, just the people who he would actually give power to in return for the worship.
|
|
They are?A character’s ancestry and their experiences prior to their life as an adventurer—represented by a background—might be key parts of their identity, shape how they see the world, and help them find their place in it.emphasis added
But the "/gained a class" bit seems to be homebrew
I mean, selecting a Background comes before selecting a class in character creation, and classes say things like if you are already trained in a skill (most likely from your background) then you can select another skill. So mechanically backgrounds come first. It certainly seems that backgrounds are meant to be, you know, your character’s background.
I mean, selecting a Background comes before selecting a class in character creation, and classes say things like if you are already trained in a skill (most likely from your background) then you can select another skill. So mechanically backgrounds come first. It certainly seems that backgrounds are meant to be, you know, your character’s background.
You can gain a new class long after character creation, but I don't know of any rule that allows you to add a background when you do. Or even switch to a different background when you gain a class.
That seems to be a completely homebrew rule.
|
|
Back to alignments, it also means that a chaotic neutral god of prolonged conflict can now RAW have LG, CG, LE, CE as their followers :). I am not expecting paizo to release such an extreme edge case, but it is making my old houserule for a home brewed world standard :)The freedom for alignment in PF2 has only resulted in less choices than PF1 as far as the CRB's deities are concerned. I hope we will get more diversity for other deities, but missing this opportunity for the Core 20 makes me sad.
Even moreso as many PF1 PCs, including PFS ones, are now forbidden in PF2.
Yeah I know, I just don't care that peoples choices are reduced as long as it makes for better deity connections in this case. We are getting a book filled with gods soon enough.
Gorum is an example I have seen people complain about... But True Neutral or Chaotic Good never made sense with the lore of who Gorum is and what they represent. Not who worships him, just the people who he would actually give power to in return for the worship.
It certainly made sense to those who created these characters.
And now I am wondering about a CG Oracle of Battle who would worship Gorum. Because they would both worship Gorum AND get power from him.
But CG Cleric of Gorum is forbidden now.
|
|
I mean, selecting a Background comes before selecting a class in character creation, and classes say things like if you are already trained in a skill (most likely from your background) then you can select another skill. So mechanically backgrounds come first. It certainly seems that backgrounds are meant to be, you know, your character’s background.You can gain a new class long after character creation, but I don't know of any rule that allows you to add a background when you do. Or even switch to a different background when you gain a class.
That seems to be a completely homebrew rule.
Then you misunderstood what I said, which was the opposite of what you're suggesting I said. your background represents who you were and what you did before becoming an adventurer. Before you had any class levels. Before you are a character that is being played in a game. I wasn't suggesting that you can change your background later or get a new background later or that you get a background before gaining any new class at any point in the future.
I'm suggesting that what it represents is who your character was before they were your character. Who were they in the past. Right now, we only have 36 choices for who they were in the past. (Plus a few extras in PFS tied to having played PFS1E, or ones tied to specific APs).
Shishumo suggested that my "Sczarni Enforcer" should be a Rogue who takes Group Coercion. But what if I'm planning to make a Champion who used to be a "Sczarni Enforcer?" If my background is supposed to represent who the character was prior to becoming a Champion, I don't have a background choice available that represents the background I want my character to have. At least not one that represents the actual abilities that I see the character as having as a result of who they were before they became an adventurer.
I can select "Guard" and get close, but that background states that you were part of some formal guard organization. What if I don't want that to be my character's story?
I can ignore it, but if there are going to be future mechanics or story elements that trigger off someone having a Guard background, as has been suggested early in this thread, then that's an issue, because I don't want to actually have that be part of my story.
I could choose "Criminal," which might make more sense from a story standpoint, but gives me a boost to a stat I don't want (Dex or Int), one skill I don't want (Stealth), and one skill feat I don't want (Expert Smuggler). Just so that I can can say he has a background as a member of the Sczarni.
But then in the future, when they release a Sczarni background, I won't actually have it, and my reskinning of "Criminal" to represent that won't be valid anymore.
|
|
Some of the restrictions on retraining make little sense from a character's point of view. But they are consistent with the non-chronological take on Multiclass for example. In PF2 you are building a character you play, so basically a statblock. You are not creating a story.
Then why do Backgrounds exist at all?
your background represents who you were and what you did before becoming an adventurer. Before you had any class levels. Before you are a character that is being played in a game.
It has not worked that way with the characters in my Ironfang Invasion campaign adapted to PF2 rules.
The halfling animal-whisperer rogue works as a stable boy and a goat herder. His background is his current profession. The elf Chernasardo-hopeful ranger is training to become a Chernasardo ranger. Her background is his hope for the future. The herbalism of the gnome herbalist druid is part of her outdoor lifestyle. The goblin artisan alchemist is very focussed on making fireworks, using both his background and class.
Two of the six characters have solidly put their background into their past. The gnome criminal rogue is trying to put her life of crime behind her and work as an honest messenger. The lizardfolk world-weary champion moved to the area to escape from the life of a soldier, little realizing the Ironfang Legion was going to invade.
The Chernasardo Hopeful and World Weary backgrounds are adaptions of Ironfang Invasion campaign traits: Campaign Traits to Campaign Backgrounds: Theorycrafting and Ironfang Invasion.
Now that the invasion occurred, the PCs are going to care for a bunch of refugees hiding in a dangerous forest. Though the halfling animal-whisperer rogue rescued his goats, he will have to let someone else tend them. They are all scouts and foragers now, regardless of ancestry, background, and class.
A background gives ability score boosts in abilities, training in a skill, and a feat that the player expects to use as an adventurer. The story of the background might be in the past, but the uses of it are current.
Some of the restrictions on retraining make little sense from a character's point of view. But they are consistent with the non-chronological take on Multiclass for example. In PF2 you are building a character you play, so basically a statblock. You are not creating a story.Then why do Backgrounds exist at all?
I believe that backgrounds are a replacement for the PF1 traits that Ferious Thune praised in comment #32. A few traits were better than feats (see Tips and Traits: A guide to Pathfinder Traits) and Paizo wanted to stop that. In addition, the bonuses from traits stacked with other bonuses, which made them a valuable part of specialized power builds. Paizo wanted to stop that, too. Also, PF2 reduced bonus stacking, which would have rendered many classic traits useless, and dropped class skills, the other main use of traits.
Furthermore, backgrounds are part of PF2's non-dice system for building a pyramid of ability scores: 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8 or 18, 16, 12, 12, 10, 10. I think that that system is more complicated than it ought to be, but labeling one layer as "background" does make the separation of layers a little clearer.
|
|
I wasn't exactly praising traits in that post. I was pointing out the differences between traits and backgrounds, but traits definitely introduced problems. Instead of addressing those problems, we've gotten an overly complicated and yet somehow more limiting system.
Looking through things again, a few (not all) of the PFS backgrounds give something in addition to the somewhat standard 2 boosts, 1 skill, 1 lore skill, and 1 skill feat. Usually it's access to an additional language or an uncommon character option.
Rather than spending a large number of words creating flavor text to go with every possible combination of the basic elements of a background (or 36 possible combinations), we would have been much better off with something like this:
Background
These choices should represent your character's life before becoming an adventurer. The options you choose should reflect that.
Choose 2 stat boosts
Choose 1 skill to be Trained in
Choose 1 lore skill to be trained in
Choose 1 level 1 skill feat that has either no prerequisites or the skill chosen earlier as a prerequisiteAdditional specific backgrounds may be included in APs, modules, or future books, and those backgrounds may provide additional benefits.
That would have saved so much space in the book and so many headaches going forward. All of the possible combinations would be available for anyone who can work them into their backstory. Maybe a few examples could be included so that people could see how they work in practice, but there would be no need to publish endless variations on the same thing just to make another combination available, and there would be no need to publish new backgrounds to include future skill feats.
Instead, Paizo could publish the special ones. The ones that provide an extra benefit, but limit your other options as a trade off. Do you want a background that grants access to Abyssal with your starting languages? Then you have to take Strength or Constitution for one of the boosts, Religion for the skill, Demon Lore, and the Recognize Spell feat. That's the Demon Slayer Background from PFS.
So standard, any base combination that you want, and justify it with your own concept. Paizo can still offer options to replace that, and those options grant a little something extra in exchange for being more limiting.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Then why do Backgrounds exist at all?
I think it is for two reasons. The first is a list of easy to understand concepts is less daunting than "build your own." The other is that if they introduce special backgrounds that have bonus skill feats, general feats or whatever, this mechanism is a bit more future proof. "Here, use this background as-is" doesn't require explaining deviations from the normal rules.
Had I designed PF2, I'm not sure if I would have gone with backgrounds, or just free form choices like you want. But I didn't, and this is fine.
I have used the custom background editor in pathbuilder2 to (re)build a beloved 3.5 character that I never was able to get quite right a decade ago. None of the existing backgrounds were exactly what I wanted, although "noble" was close and would have worked.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
The Paizo developers noticed a paradox in PF1 that they wanted to solve in PF2:
1) Players complained that PF1 had too many options. They had to read through over a hundred feats before selecting one. They called this "bloat."
2) The players still wanted more options.
This is the paradox of Analysis Paralysis, that offering too many choices creates a burden of considering every choice and delays the choice. Pathfinder 2nd Edition tries to resolve this paradox by restricting choices. The rogue has rackets and rogue feats that other classes might be able to use on special builds, but they work best of the rogue, so only the rogue has to read about them. Likewise for every single class. No-one has to look through every single choice to design a character.
Most players design a character to play a certain way. "I want an Errol Flynn swashbuckler." "I want to play Aragorn from Lord of the Rings." "I want to be Batman." Thus, PF1 provided classes such as swashbuckler, ranger, and vigilante. The names are a clue. Likewise, the names and flavor text of PF2 backgrounds are a clue, too.
BARRISTER BACKGROUND
Piles of legal manuals, stern teachers, and experience in the courtroom have instructed you in legal matters. You’re capable of mounting a prosecution or defense in court, and you tend to keep abreast of local laws, as you never can tell when you might need to know them on short notice.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Intelligence or Charisma, and one is a free ability boost.
You’re trained in the Diplomacy skill and the Legal Lore skill.
You gain the Group Impression skill feat.
The Barrister background and its decription tell you that if you want your character to function as a lawyer, this is the background for you. You need Intelligence or Charisma, possibly both. You need Diplomacy. There is a Lore for attorneys named Legal Lore. And look up Group Impression and see if that is a feat you want, because that is the feat that can sway juries.
The Skills chapter lists 31 specific lores and 6 open-ended groups of lores such as, "Lore about a specific deity (Abadar Lore, Iomedae Lore, etc.)" and "Lore about a specific terrain (Mountain Lore, River Lore, etc.)" The Core Rulebook has only 35 backgrounds. What is the advantage of reading through 37 names of lore with no description when the player can read through 35 backgrounds that have a flavorful description that lets them choose matched set of lore, skill, and feat with a suggestion which two ability scores would best help that matched set.
Saying "Choose 2 stat boosts. Choose 1 skill to be Trained in. Choose 1 lore skill to be trained in. Choose 1 level 1 skill feat that has either no prerequisites or the skill chosen earlier as a prerequisite," puts the burden of creating the matched set on the player while offering no clues. The player has to read the 37 lore categories, he has to read all the 1st-level skill feats, he has to check which skill and ability score go with the feat he likes. That is cruel to the newbie player.