The Gleeful Grognard |
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Munchkins is an condescending term - so you are not off to a good start. I'd normally go with optimiser or min/maxer. There are a lot of them around, especially with PF1 gamers. Its a spectrum. I play with several.
Yes the orginal poster could have been more diplomatic, especially towards the game developers. Ultimately he is complaining about a design decision made by them.
Quite frankly I agree with his complaint. For sure the designer need to change things. I just don't like it when the designers ignore the conventions of the genre and the history of the game. Even the pseudo logic of fantasy. I also don't agree that there weren't better solutions out there. This is a further unnatural abstraction that we don't need. A little bit of rebalancing the numbers would have been better. The problem was PF1 had size modifiers from +2 STR to +8 STR and it clearly was a balance problem. I just don't like sacrificing all the flavour of the game for balance. Flavour is more important.
It is the designers game. I'll probably resort to a house rule here.
Munchkin is a better descriptive term than minmaxer or optimiser in this case though, it isn't really optimisation if someone is looking for power a system doesn't grant. And certainly not minmaxing. (btw I would consider myself both these things in PF1e and have to carefully reign myself in when playing PF1e)
As for verisimilitude trumping balance, the answer is sometimes in my opinion, in this case the flavour makes perfect sense for the mechanics of the game imo. Bigger creatures get bigger damage. Large weapons in medium sized player character hands don't do any extra damage because, well... I will do more damage with a baseball bat than with a fence post, sure velocity and how suitable it is to wield both impact how much damage I can do with it and how effectively someone can move out of the way or partially block damage.
There are exceptions to this rule, and areas where it could get silly (like tiny sized maul in the hands of a medium sized creature) but there is something to argue that the rules don't actually cover anything other than small and medium characters wielding medium or large weapons, and thus anything else needs to be treated as an improvised weapon. -shrugs-
Malk_Content |
I'll also say that pf2 does cling to genrebconvention in this regard. Anytime I've seen someone use an oversized weapon in media it's a big deal and normally revolves around some special character ability with other people trying unable to do so, which is how pf2 handles it.
Gorbacz |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
For the record, weapon damage dice increasing with size isn't tradition of the game. Gary would just say "son, that giant sword is just too heavy and unbalanced for you, forget about it", it was 3.5e that enabled the whole "my two kukri are Tiny but they're really Gargantuan because you see, I've combined 6 feats and 3 abilities nobody wrote with munchkins in mind towards the situation where one does 27d4+95 damage with one" madness.
HumbleGamer |
Munchkin is a better descriptive term than minmaxer or optimiser in this case though, it isn't really optimisation if someone is looking for power a system doesn't grant.
That was my intention.
Also, I was referring to the build, not the user ( "he tried to make a munckin build" is different from "He's a munckin who tried to make an overpowered build" ).
Claxon |
It is the designers game. I'll probably resort to a house rule here.
You see, this is a big difference in tone. You recognize why the designers did it, even if you disagree. And you recognize that it works within the context of the game.
You just don't happen to like it, and while I don't have a problem with this particular rule there is a lot about PF2 that I don't like.
It's actually quite funny, PF2 has a lot of stuff I really like, but a lot of stuff I really don't like.
PF1 had a lot of innocuous stuff I didn't notice or care about, until I contrasted it with PF2. Then there was stuff I really loved. I feel there are a smaller number of more specific issues in PF1 that I didn't car for.
I guess what I'm saying is the whole of the PF2 system is more polarizing for me.
WatersLethe |
It's actually quite funny, PF2 has a lot of stuff I really like, but a lot of stuff I really don't like.
I agree, but what sold me on PF2 was how easy it was to house rule and how confident I could be in doing so. Like, I felt locked in by the number of class feats, so I gave everyone double and the game continued just fine.
That's one of the true strengths of the system, I think.
Taja the Barbarian |
For the record, weapon damage dice increasing with size isn't tradition of the game. Gary would just say "son, that giant sword is just too heavy and unbalanced for you, forget about it", it was 3.5e that enabled the whole "my two kukri are Tiny but they're really Gargantuan because you see, I've combined 6 feats and 3 abilities nobody wrote with munchkins in mind towards the situation where one does 27d4+95 damage with one" madness.
Earlier editions had oversized weapons as well, but they usually involved being or getting larger yourself (back in D&D2.0, Giant-kin two-handed swords in 'The Complete Book of Humanoids' did double the damage dice of a normal two-handed sword).