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It depends.
For the most part, rule changes don't bother me much (unless I find the changes themselves problematic). That's because the rules serve a secondary purpose in the game, as I see it, and that purpose is to operationalize what the players want their character to do. How exactly they do so can vary - so the specific rules aren't necessarily that important.
But when a new edition comes along, I'm looking for there to be substantial continuity in the lore and the niches classes, items, and monsters fill. Exactly how they do so may be flexible or they may have more options, but I don't want the old ones closed off. Too much re-imagining and I'll be re-imagining myself playing another game.
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Point of fact, something did change in the world, in the story, and thus an explanation is needed wherether or not it is provided.Not actually a fact. No character is actually going to notice this.
My Wizard I'm still playing, who takes detailed notes, does notice it. So now that we've moved past this excuse, what is the explanation for the differences? Since the measurements taken physically can not match the measurements from a decade ago. This is a fact, whether you like or care about it.
This is entirely a non-issue unless every game takes place in the same world and is reliant on the previous campaigns from years ago to inform the new one.
This is exactly the situation I am in. So we are in agreement that this is an issue.
The characters don't know the rules exist. They can have no cognizance that things have changed, because in-universe, nothing has changed. Only the rules have changed
Blatently false. Goodberry could feed a minimum of 2 people with one 6 second casting and now can only feed 1 person with an hour casting. This is an in universe change that requires 0 meta knowledge. Can my druid not count or tell the passage of time?
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My Wizard I'm still playing, who takes detailed notes, does notice it.Point of fact, something did change in the world, in the story, and thus an explanation is needed wherether or not it is provided.Not actually a fact. No character is actually going to notice this.
That's your failing. There's no reason the historical data wouldn't change to match as well, Butterfly Effect style.
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Yeah, this is entirely an issue of your own making. If you changed from 1E to 2E, why not just have your notes match up to 2E spell info if you're that fussed about it? There are several supremely easy solutions to this non-problem. You're just kind of leaning on the fourth wall yourself and then declaring the fourth wall's presence to be an issue.
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yeah there are a lot of things that got no explanations if you look
This isn't actually true, since these things aren't necessarily even a thing in-universe.
For casters things that used to last one amount now last either considerably shorter or take considerably longer to cast.
This assumes that the durations were always and universally correct in-universe without any variation. That's a pretty unwarranted assumption.
The rules of RPGs are, pretty definitionally, an approximation of the world the game occurs in. A simplification that is inevitably somewhat inaccurate.
I play a lot of RPGs that are designed to reflect the real world. None do so perfectly, and I sort of assume that likewise neither PF1 nor PF2 are perfect reflections of the setting of Golarion. Spell durations in-universe probably vary quite a bit, with the numbers listed being approximations that may have high-balled the average in PF1 and low-balled it in PF2.
Rangers must have noticed how their companions became weaker.
Must they? Why? Rangers actually have level -3 companions in PF1. I'm not sure that's actually any more powerful than PF2 animal companions. I'd argue it's often less powerful, really.
There was a Feat to fix that, but not in the corebook, and who's to say there won't be a way to power them up in PF2 eventually as well?
A huge number of Clerics and Paladins lost their powers because of the alignment and deity restriction changing.
Nope. If you look at published NPCs the number of people who would violate the new Alignment restrictions is vanishingly small. Verging on nonexistent with the exception of two or three CG devotees of Gorum.
PCs did this a bit more commonly, but the number of PCs in any individual GM's world is always tiny.
Also, why did you mention Paladins? They always had to be LG, and all NG, LN, and LG deities allow LG followers. So there's absolutely no change at all there.
Bards mysteriously expanded their spellcasting from 6th to full casting.
How would they notice this in-universe? They had access to what were 9th level spells for other people as 6th level spells in PF1. The whole 6-level caster structure is a metamechanic, not something that existed in-universe.
And their is the entire question of what happens to characters that had rule options that are now uncommon or rarer. Given how its "default deny" I can see many characters trying to get their tools or spells or used an obscure feat and suddenly finding it gone or unusable.
This doesn't even make sense. A GM who does this when converting characters without some explanation is an idiot, to start with, but more importantly it certainly doesn't effect anyone but PCs (NPCs have Uncommon or rarer stuff whenever the GM or writers decide they do), and once again PCs are maybe 5 people in the whole world in most games.
Order of the Stick is great. I liked how candid they were with the edition change, but it was 3 to 3.5 so it wasn't much difference.
OotS is very specifically a universe where the 3.0/3.5 rules are the laws of physics in the most direct way possible. Golarion is not such a world.
In Golarion, old people do in fact lose their hearing, rather than it sharpening due to a rules interaction, just to pick an example. Comparing the two is not a good idea as they are not very equivalent.
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That's your failing. There's no reason the historical data wouldn't change to match as well, Butterfly Effect style.
That would fall under the Gap explanation, which I mentioned and would accept. However "things changed but the gods have kept that hidden from the world" has not been presented as the canon explanation. The official explanation is that things always worked this way. But of course, that is impossible. 1 berry per hour does not feed the same amount of people that 2d4 per 6 seconds feeds. Especially when the 1 berry only last 24 hours and the 2d4 berries last 1 day/lv. This is directly observable and measurable without any meta knowledge. This is a physical change in the way magic operates.
Yeah, this is entirely an issue of your own making. If you changed from 1E to 2E, why not just have your notes match up to 2E spell info if you're that fussed about it? There are several supremely easy solutions to this non-problem. You're just kind of leaning on the fourth wall yourself and then declaring the fourth wall's presence to be an issue.
Because the spells physically function differently, to an extent that the changes negate events in past stories. It is not a problem of my own making to note that things have changed and those changes would be noticeable by characters, both PCs and NPCs. The rule changes actively prevent the same stories from being told, and not just because some rules haven't been released yet. Since the changes negate past stories, things can't have always been this way, thus requiring an explanation. Paizo opted to make these changes and Paizo opted to claim nothing changed in universe, thus it is a problem of Paizo's making. But please, keep repeating that this isn't any issue over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. It will probably be convincing the 11th time.
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Just finish your current campaign playing first edition and make new characters in second (assuming you want to change editions, which I assume you do if you're posting about switching in the PF2 boards) if you insist your character must remember the exact details of last edition and must do something in-character about it.
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That's your failing. There's no reason the historical data wouldn't change to match as well, Butterfly Effect style.That would fall under the Gap explanation, which I mentioned and would accept. However "things changed but the gods have kept that hidden from the world" has not been presented as the canon explanation. The official explanation is that things always worked this way. But of course, that is impossible. 1 berry per hour does not feed the same amount of people that 2d4 per 6 seconds feeds. Especially when the 1 berry only last 24 hours and the 2d4 berries last 1 day/lv. This is directly observable and measurable without any meta knowledge. This is a physical change in the way magic operates.
Where was this official explanation mentioned?
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Just finish your current campaign playing first edition and make new characters in second (assuming you want to change editions, which I assume you do if you're posting about switching in the PF2 boards) if you insist your character must remember the exact details of last edition and must do something in-character about it.
I'm not posting about switching, I'm responding to a thread asking if continuity is important to you. I'm responding further because people tell me nothing changed, then when I pointed out that things did, in fact, change, they continued to insist it doesn't matter.
Where was this official explanation mentioned?
Numerous times by the Devs in the playtest forums and James Jacobs mentioned in the Lost Omens discussion. I'm out of town so I'll have to find them later. I have not completely read the Lost Omens World Guide yet so if it has an explanation I'll be having crow for dinner.
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The first 2 can at least be explained with "the gods brainwashed everyone" and it would make sense. But that last one is effectively telling me that before boiling water used 100 °C and now it takes 200 °C, but they are the same. Its physically impossible for them to be the same.
But the game rules were never the laws of physics. There were no real indications that they were, honestly. Not most of them, anyway.
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That's kind of the problem their explanation is that it's always been this way. Its effectively a decade long retcon of how everything in Golarion worked.
I see people keep repeating "your character doesn't remember it", "your character didn't see it that way", and the worst one: "just because the literal laws of physics & magic changed doesn't mean they dont behave the same".
The first 2 can at least be explained with "the gods brainwashed everyone" and it would make sense. But that last one is effectively telling me that before boiling water used 100 °C and now it takes 200 °C, but they are the same. Its physically impossible for them to be the same.
You cant have your cake and eat it too.
Sure you can. You erase the letter and rewrite it.
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I think 99% of the rule changes are perfectly fine from a continuity perspective. Numbers are different, that sort of thing. Even the details of how smite evil works can be explained away by the fact the paladin does good damage, thereby harming evil creatures.
There's a small portion of the rules that are really breaking continuity, however. The example of the Goodberry spell is clear: A low level druid used to be able to feed a large family in times of famine, this is no longer possible. Another example is Wild Shape: The druid used to be able to change into an eagle for hours, and so explore a large expanse of land from the air with ease. This is now out of the question. It doesn't take lab notes to notice these things, they're obvious.
I don't think it's the end of the world, but if I change editions mid-campaign (and I really would like to), I'll need to come up with a few fixes to explain away the most glaring problems.
If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself "It's just a show,
I should really just relax..."
Somewhere in the Starfinder universe is a Gizmonic Institute equivalent.
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I think 99% of the rule changes are perfectly fine from a continuity perspective. Numbers are different, that sort of thing. Even the details of how smite evil works can be explained away by the fact the paladin does good damage, thereby harming evil creatures.
There's a small portion of the rules that are really breaking continuity, however. The example of the Goodberry spell is clear: A low level druid used to be able to feed a large family in times of famine, this is no longer possible.
Uh...yes it is. A 3rd level Druid can get 16 meals in a day with Goodberry by spending about 9 hours. They can probably get up to an easy 27 if that's all they do all day.
The mechanism and how much time/resources it takes certainly differ, but feeding people via goodberry (the important bit in-universe) remains very doable.
Another example is Wild Shape: The druid used to be able to change into an eagle for hours, and so explore a large expanse of land from the air with ease. This is now out of the question. It doesn't take lab notes to notice these things, they're obvious.
Actually, this is still completely doable. It does require being a much higher level Druid at the moment (11th level, to be specific), but it remains an option for Druids in-universe. Specifically, Form Control allows you to Wild Shape for an hour, and effectively stay in that form pretty much indefinitely (or, at the very least, only need to come out of it for a few seconds every hour), and can use Pest Form to have a Fly Speed while doing so. Soaring Shape also helps with this, improving the fly speed dramatically.
Now, that's certainly much higher level, but how often in the world lore (as opposed to 'how often do PCs do this') have we heard about low level Druids doing this?
I'm not actually thinking of a single example of a low level Druid doing this in any Golarion content. And even if there is, that just implies the existence of a Feat we haven't seen yet, not the world somehow breaking. I could easily see a 6th or 8th level Feat building off Form Control and allowing Form Control to work with on-level Wild Shape.
That'd drop the required level for this trick to around 7 or so.
The example of the Goodberry spell is clear: A low level druid used to be able to feed a large family in times of famine, this is no longer possible.Uh...yes it is. A 3rd level Druid can get 16 meals in a day with Goodberry by spending about 9 hours. They can probably get up to an easy 27 if that's all they do all day.
The mechanism and how much time/resources it takes certainly differ, but feeding people via goodberry (the important bit in-universe) remains very doable.
OK, but then the druid has to be level 3 for this. More importantly, they can't travel at the same pace as other characters. Bit of a problem if the idea is for the group to cross a desert. OK, maybe they wouldn't find fresh berries in the desert anyway, so this is possibly a moot point. Still, the story definitely changes.
Another example is Wild Shape: The druid used to be able to change into an eagle for hours, and so explore a large expanse of land from the air with ease. This is now out of the question. It doesn't take lab notes to notice these things, they're obvious.Actually, this is still completely doable. It does require being a much higher level Druid at the moment (11th level, to be specific), but it remains an option for Druids in-universe. Specifically, Form Control allows you to Wild Shape for an hour, and effectively stay in that form pretty much indefinitely (or, at the very least, only need to come out of it for a few seconds every hour), and can use Pest Form to have a Fly Speed while doing so. Soaring Shape also helps with this, improving the fly speed dramatically.
Now, that's certainly much higher level, but how often in the world lore (as opposed to 'how often do PCs do this') have we heard about low level Druids doing this?
I'm not actually thinking of a single example of a low level Druid doing this in any Golarion content.
Well, there's an important NPC ally of my group in my current Kingmaker campaign and she's a level 6 druid, so that single case is enough to change the story in a major way. I can't recast her as level 11 without causing other, deeper continuity issues.
And even if there is, that just implies the existence of a Feat we haven't seen yet, not the world...
Yep. My plan is to make a feat up, or a ritual. If there aren't too many issues like this, I'll be able to handle them.
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OK, but then the druid has to be level 3 for this. More importantly, they can't travel at the same pace as other characters. Bit of a problem if the idea is for the group to cross a desert. OK, maybe they wouldn't find fresh berries in the desert anyway, so this is possibly a moot point. Still, the story definitely changes.
You can feed a few people even pre 3rd level, but I'm not sure requiring 3rd level to do this is a big world change. And you generally can't travel more than 8 hours a day, so a 3rd level Druid can probably manage 14 meals or so easily enough even traveling at a normal pace.
Well, there's an important NPC ally of my group in my current Kingmaker campaign and she's a level 6 druid, so that single case is enough to change the story in a major way. I can't recast her as level 11 without causing other, deeper continuity issues.
That's fair.
Yep. My plan is to make a feat up, or a ritual. If there aren't too many issues like this, I'll be able to handle them.
Yeah, that definitely seems the solution to what issues there are with this sort of thing. It's certainly something I hope gets done officially by the folks at Paizo as well.
Btw I always found it weird that:
Spoiler:The solution to the problem people come up with is almost always make more feats/spells; and by the nature of PF2 being having nerfed magic and some other things getting those abilities would be power creep.
Which people would then complain about because "why are you ruining my games with your splatbooks".
But in the end it's still a fix to Paizo's choices.I still remember the huge "swashbuckler are just fighters we dont need a new class or archetype" discussion. Which would cut out an entire class nd all its lore from the setting.
Not saying it's bad, just kind of weird human behavior.
Well, this is a specific solution to this specific issue with the transition to PF2 in the context of my game. I don't need to see it in a splatbook, nor do I need to make it available to my players in this or another campaign. Not only that, but PF2 even provides a nifty rule that makes it 100% legit: I can label it as rare.
Power creep is pretty much inevitable, since even if all you're doing is adding purely situational options, the overall power level is going to be higher since those options are going to be better in the situations they are tailored for than previous options.
Plus, it's not necessarily a bad thing, since it helps the lower end of the power curve more than the higher end. Like the Fighter gained significantly more from the Player's Companion line than the Wizard did.
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I think making Create Water not be a cantrip actually fixes a lot of things for exactly the reason you point out.
Not only in that scenario but also in places where water is scare, why isn't that being spammed? So no world breakage there.
"Spells are just missing" yes, hundreds if not a thousands of spells are currently missing since we only have 3 books. As for DF and DP the explanation is the book hasn't put out yet most likely, I haven't seen any posts from the Designers saying any specific spells are gone forever.
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Golarion1 has changed to Golarion2 with the edition change. BUT Golarion2 is closer to what James Jacobs had in mind from the beginning. So the story that Paizo told in their many books is not only the same but in fact better supported by the new edition.
Sadly that is likely not true for any PF1 player or GM's past stories. And some people will not care very much and others will care a lot and everything in between.
C'est la vie.
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It's a shame that most of the Internet from circa. 2000 has evaporated, since it would be sure as hell relevant to link here a discussion where somebody complains that whoever wrote this new 3rd edition of D&D was on drugs because now a low-level PC has a chance of surviving a fireball, something what was quite not the case for 22 years and that between this and all the other changes the narrative paradigm of the game was destroyed with ongoing campaigns and existing adventures being impossible to convert (bonus points if there's any mention of "catering to video game kids" thrown in there).
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Admittedly, I have no love for pretending that Pathfinder is a survival game in any fashion
Did anyone say that?
The issue is less that Pathfinder should be a survival game and more that spells that trivialize access to basic resources from a narrative standpoint should fundamentally redefine the entire game world in a way that's wholly inconsistent with the stories that settings like Golarion, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, et al. try to tell.
People keep talking about changing spells breaking the setting, but the hard mechanics of spells never lined up with the setting. The setting willfully ignores the mechanics of the game whenever necessary in order to preserve the narrative being told.
I get that some people might not like that, but to paint it as something PF2 caused is misleading. PF1 was inconsistent with itself to begin with. So was 3.5, for that matter.
Which is why for some of us it's hard to really buy into the argument that the numbers on a specific spell changing fundamentally breaks the setting, because the specifics have never added up and never will.
It's a shame that most of the Internet from circa. 2000 has evaporated, since it would be sure as hell relevant to link here a discussion where somebody complains that whoever wrote this new 3rd edition of D&D was on drugs because now a low-level PC has a chance of surviving a fireball, something what was quite not the case for 22 years and that between this and all the other changes the narrative paradigm of the game was destroyed with ongoing campaigns and existing adventures being impossible to convert (bonus points if there's any mention of "catering to video game kids" thrown in there).
Hmmmm. Am I misremembering? I thought you were a member of the "4E kobolds have thirty hit points, lol" school?
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It's a shame that most of the Internet from circa. 2000 has evaporated, since it would be sure as hell relevant to link here a discussion where somebody complains that whoever wrote this new 3rd edition of D&D was on drugs because now a low-level PC has a chance of surviving a fireball, something what was quite not the case for 22 years and that between this and all the other changes the narrative paradigm of the game was destroyed with ongoing campaigns and existing adventures being impossible to convert (bonus points if there's any mention of "catering to video game kids" thrown in there).Hmmmm. Am I misremembering? I thought you were a member of the "4E kobolds have thirty hit points, lol" school?
They have? And we're talking about vanilla 4e kobolds, post-errata 4e kobolds, Essentials 4e kobolds or some 'bolds that I missed?
And I don't remember myself going on anything about how many hp 4e kobolds have. My issues with 4e were about how it was marketed (sup here's your D&D MMO! You can even disenchant magic items! It's like offline World of Warcraft, only better! It's no longer Kobold Fighters and Kobold Clerics, you have Kobold Doomslashers and Kobold Fellstrikers now!). But the fact that magic missile was auto-hit in previous editions and became a roll-to-hit spell in 4e never bothered me.
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I'm not bothered by stuff like "this spell now takes 10 minute longer to cast" or such, but I'm little bothered by big visual design changes like "gelugons are now quadruped". Mostly because old design was super cool to me, but also because it means retroactively all gelugon npcs in 1e aps actually were quadruped instead of bipeds.
Minor design changes like kobolds being even cuter, hobgoblins looking more like goblins or creature being differently colored doesn't really bother me, but having their whole posture and skeletal structure change just feels weird because it changes their whole demeanor in the imagination of the scene.
(also they make me worried about whether future artists will remember that 2e bone devils are now quadruped as well(gelugons at least have centaur like upper torso, bone devils just walk on all their limbs now) and then there will be one art of them looking like 1e bone devils which will annoy me :P Also weird to imagine certain archivist bone devil from 1e walking now on four legs)
(the design changes like create water not being cantrip anymore is just plus for me since it makes lore and rules be more in line. 1e Golarion was never treated as high magic setting where super weak spells solve issues people would normally have, heck Ironfang Invasion most of challenge is supposed to be from wilderness survival so good berry negates most of it instantly...)
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I'm not bothered by stuff like "this spell now takes 10 minute longer to cast" or such, but I'm little bothered by big visual design changes like "gelugons are now quadruped". Mostly because old design was super cool to me, but also because it means retroactively all gelugon npcs in 1e aps actually were quadruped instead of bipeds.
Nobody will admit to that publicly, but my lawyer-sense tells me that somebody in the business got a letter from WotC saying "look, we know OGL and blah blah, but if you keep making things that look the same as our things and keep aggressively building your business around IP, we'll sue. Sure, we might lose. But you won't survive financially long enough to see it. So, let's meet and see how we can work this out, preferably with you drifting a bit away from our IP."
Between that and Paizo wanting to actually use the stuff beyond pen and paper RPGs where it's safe under OGL, I would rather prepare for more disappointments along these lines.
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I'm not bothered by stuff like "this spell now takes 10 minute longer to cast" or such, but I'm little bothered by big visual design changes like "gelugons are now quadruped". Mostly because old design was super cool to me, but also because it means retroactively all gelugon npcs in 1e aps actually were quadruped instead of bipeds.
Nobody will admit to that publicly, but my lawyer-sense tells me that somebody in the business got a letter from WotC saying "look, we know OGL and blah blah, but if you keep making things that look the same as our things and keep aggressively building your business around IP, we'll sue. Sure, we might lose. But you won't survive financially long enough to see it. So, let's meet and see how we can work this out, preferably with you drifting a bit away from our IP."
Between that and Paizo wanting to actually use the stuff beyond pen and paper RPGs where it's safe under OGL, I would rather prepare for more disappointments along these lines.
I just don't really comprehend that if that is the reason, then why only some D&D designs were changed? Like vrocks still look the same and only major difference in Pathfinder glabrezus is that they are green.
(heck, considering that they did glabrezu model for kingmaker which you could see in pre release photos, but it never appeared in game itself outside of tiefling heritage icon, clearly someone agrees that glabrezu design is too similar to the D&D ip)
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I'm not bothered by stuff like "this spell now takes 10 minute longer to cast" or such, but I'm little bothered by big visual design changes like "gelugons are now quadruped". Mostly because old design was super cool to me, but also because it means retroactively all gelugon npcs in 1e aps actually were quadruped instead of bipeds.
Nobody will admit to that publicly, but my lawyer-sense tells me that somebody in the business got a letter from WotC saying "look, we know OGL and blah blah, but if you keep making things that look the same as our things and keep aggressively building your business around IP, we'll sue. Sure, we might lose. But you won't survive financially long enough to see it. So, let's meet and see how we can work this out, preferably with you drifting a bit away from our IP."
Between that and Paizo wanting to actually use the stuff beyond pen and paper RPGs where it's safe under OGL, I would rather prepare for more disappointments along these lines.
I just don't really comprehend that if that is the reason, then why only some D&D designs were changed? Like vrocks still look the same and only major difference in Pathfinder glabrezus is that they are green.
(heck, considering that they did glabrezu model for kingmaker which you could see in pre release photos, but it never appeared in game itself outside of tiefling heritage icon, clearly someone agrees that glabrezu design is too similar to the D&D ip)
There are million of explanations for this one. One is that design team said: we keep the vrock since it looks great like that and is iconic, but we go with ice devil on all fours since it looks cooler that way than it did as a biped.
One is that, just like with ogres, the artist turned in the art with a quadruped and you just roll with it because art costs and deadlines exist. And the team decided that it looks cool anyway, so it sticks.
It's a shame that most of the Internet from circa. 2000 has evaporated, since it would be sure as hell relevant to link here a discussion where somebody complains that whoever wrote this new 3rd edition of D&D was on drugs because now a low-level PC has a chance of surviving a fireball, something what was quite not the case for 22 years and that between this and all the other changes the narrative paradigm of the game was destroyed with ongoing campaigns and existing adventures being impossible to convert (bonus points if there's any mention of "catering to video game kids" thrown in there).Hmmmm. Am I misremembering? I thought you were a member of the "4E kobolds have thirty hit points, lol" school?They have? And we're talking about vanilla 4e kobolds, post-errata 4e kobolds, Essentials 4e kobolds or some 'bolds that I missed?
And I don't remember myself going on anything about how many hp 4e kobolds have. My issues with 4e were about how it was marketed (sup here's your D&D MMO! You can even disenchant magic items! It's like offline World of Warcraft, only better! It's no longer Kobold Fighters and Kobold Clerics, you have Kobold Doomslashers and Kobold Fellstrikers now!). But the fact that magic missile was auto-hit in previous editions and became a roll-to-hit spell in 4e never bothered me.
I must have got you confused with someone else. (It was a while ago, I suppose). Sorry about that.
I think making Create Water not be a cantrip actually fixes a lot of things for exactly the reason you point out.
Not only in that scenario but also in places where water is scare, why isn't that being spammed? So no world breakage there.
See, I don't think it fixes anything, I think it ruins them. Unlimited water was something that wasn't broken.
Admittedly, I have no love for pretending that Pathfinder is a survival game in any fashion, so 'unlimited magic water' cured half of the problem immediately and I think PF1s Create Food and Water was priced too high at 3rd level.
So, yeah. Its in the eye of the beholder and season to taste. I'm not happy about it, but its the new reality and I'm going to play in it, at least I can complain about it on the internet.
I don't think you can say "I don't pretend Pathfinder is a survival game" while citing one of its few survival based scenarios as supporting evidence. Also, as written, Create Water doesn't actually impact the abstraction that is ration points because you still need food. There's like one point you find water that counts as ration points, but it is otherwise largely just food.
And much as Treat Wounds can fill the narrative gap left by CLW wands, the new skill system can help you pick up some of that slack. The Forager feat can do a lot to alleviate the difficulties in ration tracking. One trained or expert survivalist with the feat won't feed the entire group, but you also have lots of ways to assign NPCs the feat. And training a group of refugees to work together and overcome supply based challenges is significantly more in the spirit of that campaign than a single caster spamming a cantrip.
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I think at the heart of this whole discussion is that some people wanted PF2 to be an incremental change from PF1, with a focus on backwards compatibility.
You cannot build a new edition from the ground up while being shackled to having exactly the same spells available at exactly the same levels with exactly the same effects. It's just not possible, you would end up with a half-assed Unchained 2.
It's fine if some people don't want to port their PF1 games forward because the mechanics of PF2 cause some problems for their particular party.
It should be noted that GM discretion is 100% in play. In PF2 the GM can handwave Goodberry to grant you a bushel of berries every 6 seconds if they want to. The GM can also give you a special Goodberry ritual that meets the story requirements.
Refusing to work with the new system to any degree, and then claim it has failed you, is unreasonable.
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I don't have any problem with class changes. "Class" is an artificial rules construct that doesn't exist in world. Different people have different abilities, learn different things. The alteration and removal of class features from the game doesn't bother me at all, because these just exist for making it a playable game.
Create water isn't used to make the deserts green, goodberries aren't used to feed entire villages, and it is physically possible for someone to fall off a ladder and die. Many of the rules exist for gameplay reasons and are ignored by the world narrative. I have no problem with these things changing because they were never treated as the way things are in setting. Now there might be people who built their homebrew settings around some of these game mechanics, who do feel upset by these changes and that is understandable. (Though anything magical is easy enough to just say these people know a ritual of making lots of water, done)
Things that cause more issue are those in universe changes where suddenly the setting is different without explanation. Dwarves being able to use magic from 2nd to 3rd ed for example. No no, it was always like that. That is a retcon. The one paizo did that does bug me a bit is goblins. Though they have made some attempts to explain why they aren't regarded as kill on sight monsters anymore, it's just such a huge flip from what they used to be and so obviously a marketing decision, not a setting decision.
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Infinite water was definitely a player thing
Many modules treated the cantrip, create water, as if it didn't exist.
For example, the entire first and second book of Ironfang Invasion require the PCs to help provide food and shelter for more than 20 people. Having freely available infinite water cuts down on the amount of manpower needed to fulfill that requirement and allows them to assign people to other tasks which impacts the survival rate of survivors and the entire timeline of the campaign. The amount of time tasks take matters in that one, quite a bit.
The one that really stood out to me was the scenario in Skull and Shackles where the PCs had to take their ship down an inland river to restock their fresh water supplies, risking exposure to a warship of pirate hunters who had gone down the very same river before them. For some reason, this was still considered necessary despite the fact that the PC's ship had a prominent NPC cleric ally onboard who could create infinite water for everybody onboard.
So no, infinite water was totally a player thing, and not a setting assumption.
Rangers not having spells and paladins now being spellcastingless champions actually increases options in P2E rather then decreases them. In P1E, if you wanted to play a paladin or ranger, you were stuck with spells whether it fit your mental image or not.
Sure there were patch archetypes that replaced the spels, but those were many years in coming, weren't very good, and required a generous GM that allowed that particular splat material.
But in P2E, if you want a classic spellcasting paladin or ranger, it's as easy as dipping into Cleric Dedication, or divine or primal Sorcerer Dedication. My players positively love this! If you wanted, you could instead make a blasting ranger with arcane spells and a staff, or an occult wild detective ranger with occult spells. Players have far more agency in character choices as a result.
I pretty much played that particular problem as "the officers are a*!#@&#s sending you on a snipe hunt and hope you die".
lol. I thought the PCs had their own ship and were the officers by that point. Am I misremembering?