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I'm enjoying quite a few things about the new system (action economy, especially). That said, I'm concerned about some major downsides of the heavy emphasis on balance and making non-magical classes more attractive.
For me, it'll be hard to get really excited about the system until a couple of issues are resolved:
1) LOW LEVEL CHARACTERS HAVE TOO LITTLE DIFFERENTIATION
I was playing the season opener this last week. Lots of skill checks throughout the evening, but no one really stood out much in any given direction.
With a first level spread of bonuses that are generally between +5 to +8, it was hard for any 1st level character to shine distinctly in any given area.
One solution, I think, would be to allow first level characters to get 2-3 skills up to Expert level. Creating from first level the ability to spread out a bit more statistically.
Without this, low level play is just going to feel a lot like oatmeal. More bland than it needs to be.
2) DON'T MAKE MAGIC SUFFER — JUST MAKE MUNDANE ABILITIES BETTER
I get that we want to balance magic effects against the abilities of rogues and fighters. But to do that, we've made it impossible to create many beloved character concepts.
For example: the PC with a thousand faces.
many of my fellow 1E players have a real fondness for characters who are able to do pretty weird things at low levels.
There are disguise lovers who loved the kitsune's Realistic Likeness feat or psychic's spirit channeler discipline. These all allowed PCS to assume alternate identities for full scenarios from day one.
This kind of ability could be a bit of a challenge for judges at times, but in general contributed to more fun at the table (and some good plot twists that didn't need to break any particular scenario).
As it stands, there aren't really any low level abilities that allow constant magical effects like this. A druid has to wait until 4th level to take a Thousand Faces, and that ability's duration maxes out at one hour many levels later.
There are probably other concepts out there that face similar challenges.
It'd be great if future books could address this issue with the 1 minute / 10 minute / 1 hour duration limits, and find balanced ways to do cool things 24 hours a day.
Most folks who play this kind of concept aren't interested in breaking the game — they just understandably want to create characters that have a certain fantasy panache.
I wish we could address the problem of casters v. rogues + fighters by just making the latter more fantastic (I LOVE the new rogue), rather than nerfing magic and wonder.
At level 1 you should be seeing a spread on skills that's more like -1 to +8. Did you end up with a party of people who had made similar builds in the first place (and thus avoided having any untrained skills that mattered)? Did people with untrained not try and you didn't notice?
The season opener didn't have as much skill diversity as I would like built-in, some of that is solved by the randomization aspects of the repeatable, but if the rolls align its possible to stay relatively focused on a small number of skills. I don't think its a flaw in the level 1 customization though. (I've GM'd that scenario 8 times now and its felt relatively good in terms of character differentiation) party)
I was playing a rogue with a high Int, who had bonuses on almost every skill we checked between +5 and +7. There was an alchemist with some overlapping skills in the same general bonus range.
The issue is, skill-focused characters like this will have a hard time standing out from each other in any 1st level party. Having something akin to Skill Focus (i.e., the ability to select a skill or two as Expert) would make it possible to really shine in one area.
It wasn't possible to do the thousand faces thing from level 1 in PF1 core, either. Neither the kitsune nor the psychic were core options, the psychic coming quite late in PF1's life cycle.
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Who are you asking? Paizo?
Perhaps you meant this for the Homebrew section?
I disagree w/ both of your premises, having seen PC differentiation and excellent mundane abilities starting at 1st.
The difference between +5 & +8 (or most 3-point spreads in PF2), is usually 50%! (Assuming crit success=x2 and such)
There was an example in the playtest forum where two good climbers were trying to escape pursuit up a cliff.
The 1st climber would nearly always escape. The 2nd climber, not that many skill points behind (3-5), was at great risk.
This is due to the crit success/fail system. That 3-point PF2 difference is akin to a +6 difference in PF1. That seems like plenty to me.
It's because the differences are so severe that the math's so tight.
As Arachnofiend pointed out, you couldn't do anything like 1000 Faces early on until many years into the game.
And maybe you shouldn't, being as your PC's a rookie. Some concepts are too advanced to mesh with being a rookie.
PF2 has also recognized the value of noncombat magic like Scrying & spells which detect things. As a general rule, the spells are 1 level higher, as is transportation magic despite those being weaker.
So getting 1000 Faces at 4th (instead of 13th!) is pretty significant.
You could be an Expert at Deception by then and do some crazy stuff, or even go w/ 1st level Illusory Disguise (+4 & counts as 10 minute disguise) which lasts an hour.
It seems you actually can come out of the gates pretty early as a PC of many faces. And most anybody can get Illusory Disguise by 4th as well (via MCD Bard/Sorc/Wiz).
Anyway, you do your game to what creates the most fun for y'all.
I just don't think the base game needs any adjustment. (At least not on this topic.)
Cheers
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This is general feedback to Paizo developers for future releases. Unfortunately I didn’t have a chance to participate in the play test, but I did play 1E and have weathered many other edition changes over forty years of gaming.
It wasn't possible to do the thousand faces thing from level 1 in PF1 core, either. Neither the kitsune nor the psychic were core options, the psychic coming quite late in PF1's life cycle.
I hear you. Though the 1E CRB at least made this possible eventually. The new limits on spell duration make this sort of concept difficult at the core of the game.
I don’t want to wait three or eight years to have the range of options that kept me with PF1. That’s why I want to give feedback now.
about Option 2
I do generally agree on buffing up non-spellcasters to be superheroic, but I think that in a d20 System (and any derivative rulesets), the problem is the "number" and "exclusiveness" of problem solving "skeleton keys"; in the case of spellcasters, spells tailor made for specific problems (like from water breathing to teleport).
If those I call "magocrats (those who want strong casters to overlord over non-casters in both power and versatility in campaign)" won't compromise, then drastic measures were necessary to fix balance necessary for a RPG... (yes, Pathfinder is not only some sort of freeform drama activity, but a GAME foremost!)
My particular case this week was with a rogue. That is, the new base class that is really defined by skills.
At first level, with Int 16, Dex 18, and Wis 14, there wasn’t much that distinguished the rogue in a scenario where the skills that were used were mainly medicine and knowledge checks.
Fighters get Expert weapon proficiency at level one, but there’s no equivalent way for a rogue to truly stand out. Sneak attack *is* good, but I’d like to see them have (from level one) a more clear edge with skills.
I’m all for balancing the importance of magic. That said, the worst kinds of min-maxing I’ve seen at the PFS table in 1E had to do with martial characters whose players were obsessed with maximizing DPR. By 11th level, few spellcasters could compete with an optimized barbarian or kineticist.
PFS skews the perception of caster power a great deal because it's the most railroaded way to play the game by a significant margin. That's not a bad thing - it's what you need for the kind of game organized play is - but each scenario having a defined beginning and end that doesn't seriously affect a larger campaign makes it far more difficult for casters to completely take control of the narrative than in other styles. Teleport can't negate an entire arc about traveling through a dangerous cave when you don't have arcs, just individual sessions.
Of course that doesn't change save or dies, but that's not the type of "casters are op" that's being discussed here.
My particular case this week was with a rogue. That is, the new base class that is really defined by skills.
At first level, with Int 16, Dex 18, and Wis 14, there wasn’t much that distinguished the rogue in a scenario where the skills that were used were mainly medicine and knowledge checks.
Fighters get Expert weapon proficiency at level one, but there’s no equivalent way for a rogue to truly stand out. Sneak attack *is* good, but I’d like to see them have (from level one) a more clear edge with skills.
I’m all for balancing the importance of magic. That said, the worst kinds of min-maxing I’ve seen at the PFS table in 1E had to do with martial characters whose players were obsessed with maximizing DPR. By 11th level, few spellcasters could compete with an optimized barbarian or kineticist.
Perhaps what you are saying is that with Rogue's being the current 'skill monkey' class, you wished that your rogue could have been able to select one skill to be expert, even at first level.
I remember wishing that myself. However, I sort of missed that option for more than just rogue. As you mentioned, before Pathfinder had several different 'tiers' of ability with skills starting out at first level. Unskilled, Ranked but not Class, Ranked and class or focused, and Class Ranked, and Focused. which gave relatively wide range of proficiency starting out at first level. Traits and feats would even sometimes tweak this even further by a small amount as a side benefit.
I miss that a little with second edition. Now you have Untrained, Trained, and Trained with a feat that lets you do something specific extra. You don't have a generally better than your trained peers option any longer.
I haven't gotten to play enough to really decide if it is something I'll miss long term, however. But is that the sort of thing you are talking about with differentiation?
Class skills were bad and I'm glad they're gone.
I do think that TEML might not have enough granularity in it though. Being able to hit the 'half steps' between them might be a way to differentiate certain options and character builds.
Likewise I'm kind of disappointed that there's no longer tiers to skillfulness in classes.
I'm very glad Fighters are no longer trash at skills for no good reason, but right now PF2 is essentially binary when it comes to skills. You're either a rogue, or you're anyone else.
PF1 Rangers were only one step behind Rogues in terms of skills, now they're at the same general level as everyone else. Alchemists and Wizards used to get tons of skills by virtue of their int focused, but with TEML progression being on a separate track, they only get a lot of trained skills, which don't really necessarily keep up.
These aren't necessarily terrible things, but between that and other changes it feels a lot harder to make someone more skillful and the only real answer is to MC rogue and I'm not a huge fan of that.