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I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.
That's a joke with my group to this day.
"Stand back! I'm going to cast...The Spell!"
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I think part of the 'swingy' issue with the d20 is the skill system, where you have to be so careful which ones you invest in, and at level up the Chosen Skill gets what can feel like an underwhelming +5% boost ... especially if the DCs go up more than that. At least that's how it's seemed to me, although that's also a side effect of cold dice too (yay, my total skill rolls on a d20 ADD UP to twenty for the session ... )
There's not much you can do for truly cold dice, except switch to a different random medium, like drawing numbered cards from a deck with each number equally present in the deck. Even then, you could draw the good cards for the unimportant rolls.
(Other approaches include various dice superstitions, and maybe there's some psychedelic compounds that can swing around confirmation bias? Some players are convinced their dice hate them while an objective tally probably shows nothing out of the ordinary.)
But about target numbers - DCs go up by about 1.25 per level while your level to proficiency is only 1 per level. However, ability increases, proficiency increases and item bonuses will usually make your total bonus go up faster than the DCs in the things you care about most.
I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.
This problem is largely solved now, if you just make sure to select a combination of attack cantrips that cover different damage types. You don't do as much damage as a fighter with your cantrips, but you have better flexibility of damage type to exploit weaknesses and dodge resistances. I think this is one of the best editions in which to be that low-level wizard.
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I think part of the 'swingy' issue with the d20 is the skill system, where you have to be so careful which ones you invest in, and at level up the Chosen Skill gets what can feel like an underwhelming +5% boost ... especially if the DCs go up more than that. At least that's how it's seemed to me, although that's also a side effect of cold dice too (yay, my total skill rolls on a d20 ADD UP to twenty for the session ... )There's not much you can do for truly cold dice, except switch to a different random medium, like drawing numbered cards from a deck with each number equally present in the deck. Even then, you could draw the good cards for the unimportant rolls.
(Other approaches include various dice superstitions, and maybe there's some psychedelic compounds that can swing around confirmation bias? Some players are convinced their dice hate them while an objective tally probably shows nothing out of the ordinary.)
But about target numbers - DCs go up by about 1.25 per level while your level to proficiency is only 1 per level. However, ability increases, proficiency increases and item bonuses will usually make your total bonus go up faster than the DCs in the things you care about most.
I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.This problem is largely solved now, if you just make sure to select a combination of attack cantrips that cover different damage types. You don't do as much damage as a fighter with your cantrips, but you have better flexibility of damage type to exploit weaknesses and dodge resistances. I think this is one of the best editions in which to be that low-level wizard.
Cantrips actually do rather respectable damage for being ranged attacks at low levels. Adding +4 from an ability score modifier makes their damage much more consistent than bows are. And they don't fall behind the proficiency curve yet compared to non-fighters as they do at later levels. An archer will do more damage on a deadly high roll crit, but that doesn't matter much when you are fighting goblins with 6 hit points. And that's without touching on Electric Arc letting you target two enemies at once.
Cantrips damage doesn't keep up with great sword damage, but then again it really shouldn't. Ranged damage is a trade off.
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@lawrencelot: The global reach of dice purveyors hawking polyhedral dice is legion. I see polyhedrons, dodecahedrons etc in many aspects of popular culture. Sure, not perhaps as ubiquitous as the ol’ six-sider found in a backgammon set found in a thrift store, but doesn’t backgammon also have a six-sider that has not 1-6 but...other numbers including 64? Somewhere in my past someone gifted me a pair of eight-siders (one red, one white) that as well as having the numbers 1-8 also have the eight corresponding glyphs of the i-ching - I’ve had those since the mid-80’s.
I don’t have an “argument” here, because you did ask for opinions and feedback, and I don’t really know what I’m getting, because I often feel my way through statements and conversations by/while expressing them....I guess quite apart from bell-curves and stats (and now that I understand them a little better, I too am a long-time fan of the “swing”) the odd little platonic solids are...odd. And interesting. I’ve see columnar d4’s that were rolled, I stepped on a d4 and it hurt like a caltrop. And they are ancient shapes that mean things I don’t fully grok. But I love them. They...mean...fun. And so does a six sider. But here, the diversity and richness far surpasses any need I see to “attract newcomers”. If the goal was just to attract newcomers by simplifying you’d do far better handing someone a one-sheet lite rules game and let your imagination do the talking.
I rail against many of PF2’s inconsistencies, esotericas and strange corner cases. It frustrates me no end, in many parts because it took me a while to get PF fully, then they up and changed it, and now I am worse off than a novice because I have to unlearn hard-won PF1 rituals and concepts.
(breaking this up due to meandering from topic to topic)
Just modifiers for stats, while streamlined, feels weird. I admit it makes no sense to some newcomers. I always look strangely at games that list their stats as a modifier, even though the end result is the same.
I also like rolling for stats, so that may be a huge, huge part of it.
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The cure/fix for Vancian casting is pretty straightforward. You need a sharp or otherwise cruel weapon such as a hatstand, sap or bec de corbin, a firm resolve and a pike or sharpened femur on which to display the caster’s head. There, fixed.
Spellcasters are boring crapsters only one step removed from ranged attack characters. Filthy dirty things that ought not be suffered.
Clearly I’m jealous, and wish I could work out how to play one. To combat this, in PF2 I actually made a sorceror for a very short lived game, and am now playing a Hobgoblin druid, a cowardly “scout” who was attached to a war-party and ran from a battle that slaughtered his comrades. I find the spell system...arcane and hard to understand. But I’ll get there...
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The cure/fix for Vancian casting is pretty straightforward. You need a sharp or otherwise cruel weapon such as a hatstand, sap or bec de corbin, a firm resolve and a pike or sharpened femur on which to display the caster’s head. There, fixed.
Spellcasters are boring crapsters only one step removed from ranged attack characters. Filthy dirty things that ought not be suffered.
Clearly I’m jealous, and wish I could work out how to play one. To combat this, in PF2 I actually made a sorceror for a very short lived game, and am now playing a Hobgoblin druid, a cowardly “scout” who was attached to a war-party and ran from a battle that slaughtered his comrades. I find the spell system...arcane and hard to understand. But I’ll get there...
That's the problem. You should find the spell system primal. That'll fit your theme better.
Bad puns aside, I do want to try a wizard. Even have one specced up for something fun.
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I actually agree as well. I'm down for replacing Vancian, but I honestly don't know what a better system would be.I might be the only person on the internet, but I like Vancian casting. I have poor opinions of 5e's and Arcanist pseudo Vancian.You're not alone by a long shot. I have yet to see a proper evolution or replacement for it that fixes more problems than it actually creates.
Ditto. I don't like Vancian, but it works well, and I've played magic-users in tons of non-Vancian games like GURPS and Mutants & Masterminds and Vampire: the Masquerade, so I've seen plenty of other systems.
There's a part of me that wants to play a caster like from pretty much any novel or comic or fantasy show or video game *other* than those 40 year old books by Jack Vance, who just casts spells, but the Vancian system has a workable way of balancing things for a game in which the 'magical protagonist' isn't limited in what they can do by storyteller fiat and narrative contrivance.
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I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.That's a joke with my group to this day.
"Stand back! I'm going to cast...The Spell!"
[tangent] I read a Vancian style short story where spells were the physical manifestation of 'daemons' from another universe, and the 'magic-user' was summoning and binding them into her body, only to unleash them (and the attendant 'magical spell') later in a burst of power. She could only contain one at a time, so, not quite like a Vancian spellcaster who could have as many as (gasp!) seven spells memorized, but still, it was a neat concept.
So she wasn't 'casting fireball' so much as summoning an elemental spirit of fire and binding it within her flesh for the day (and had some visible side-effects of that 'possession' warning others that she was 'holding'), and then, when stuff got real, would unleash the spirit who would cause the usual 'explosion of fire' before returning to it's fiery home realm. [/tangent]
And that's my rambling bit of irrelevance for the day. :)
I might be the only person on the internet, but I like Vancian casting. I have poor opinions of 5e's and Arcanist pseudo Vancian.Rabble, rabble, rabble!!! String him up!!! ;P
Seriously though, as much as I really, really hate 5e, I'll take even 5e's casting over normal Vancian: ever since 1st edition d&d, I've thought there had to be a better way...
I just play a sorcerer and ignore the difference.
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But Pathfinder has a lot of the more traditional players who didn't like the changes in D&D. So moving the game too far is going to lose people.
Some of us like the complexity.
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I just play a sorcerer and ignore the difference.I might be the only person on the internet, but I like Vancian casting. I have poor opinions of 5e's and Arcanist pseudo Vancian.Rabble, rabble, rabble!!! String him up!!! ;P
Seriously though, as much as I really, really hate 5e, I'll take even 5e's casting over normal Vancian: ever since 1st edition d&d, I've thought there had to be a better way...
Sure, but I can still feel those book carriers silently judging me for my lack of studying... And have you ever tried to explain how your family tree managed to have Unicorn blood in it when you're in polite company? ;)
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Mages only having a limited reservoir of magic or having magic cost something are pretty common in fiction/fantasy. I'd say Harry Potter is actually a bit of an outlier in the fact that it has neither of those things. It's really just the rigidness of what spells can be cast that's unique to Vance's works, and by extension D&D and Pathfinder.
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Mages only having a limited reservoir of magic or having magic cost something are pretty common in fiction/fantasy. I'd say Harry Potter is actually a bit of an outlier in the fact that it has neither of those things. It's really just the rigidness of what spells can be cast that's unique to Vance's works, and by extension D&D and Pathfinder.what fiction have you been reading most of the fiction i watch every spell caster can just spam magic like its as easy as punching?
I've seen various systems (primarily games) with a mana/fatigue system, where big magic takes something out of the user, but Vance (and Zelazny, IIRC) seems to be the only fantasy writer where someone prepares / memorizes a specific spell, and can cast it once and then it's gone, expended or forgotten, until they re-prepare it.
Even wizards like Gandalf seem to use their magic conservatively. He did a big blinding flash on an orc army once, but he doesn't just lead off in every battle with a flash-blindness spell, the way a more gamist wizard would.
I definitely prefer a more modern approach, with some 'at will' spells, and then some longer ritual stuff that isn't meant for combat (and am fine with stuff like teleportation or major healing or plane calling or divination whatever being more ritualistic and less in-combat / at will).
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...Whaaaaaaaaaaa?
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...Whaaaaaaaaaaa?
I'm still a bit salty there where no steaks... :P
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[snip]
(Other approaches include various dice superstitions, and maybe there's some psychedelic compounds that can swing around confirmation bias? Some players are convinced their dice hate them while an objective tally probably shows nothing out of the ordinary.)
[snip]
I have seen a player saying that and coming with a chart of all roll they made in the last session, showing a perfectly random homogenous spread of results, and arguing it was all wrong because the results looked "too messy"... Like, they hade made around 25 rolls, and only 5 results were not hit. It was actually a bit frightening how neat it was IMHO. It was also one session they whined the most about bad rolls.
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Mages only having a limited reservoir of magic or having magic cost something are pretty common in fiction/fantasy. I'd say Harry Potter is actually a bit of an outlier in the fact that it has neither of those things. It's really just the rigidness of what spells can be cast that's unique to Vance's works, and by extension D&D and Pathfinder.what fiction have you been reading most of the fiction i watch every spell caster can just spam magic like its as easy as punching?
Discworld, Game of Thrones, the King Killer Chronicles, the Belgariad, and Lord of the Rings spring to mind. But the thing is that even when casting is as easy is punching... Punching uses up energy and stamina too. Lots of settings have sustained magic use take a toll. Even Doctor Strange has limits, albeit absurdly high ones.
Harry Potter is a pretty unusual magic system in that it barely is one. Not a lot of explanation was put into how it works beyond "it is magic." Which is fine for some, but is one of my bigger gripes with the series compared to most fantasy.
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Mages only having a limited reservoir of magic or having magic cost something are pretty common in fiction/fantasy. I'd say Harry Potter is actually a bit of an outlier in the fact that it has neither of those things. It's really just the rigidness of what spells can be cast that's unique to Vance's works, and by extension D&D and Pathfinder.what fiction have you been reading most of the fiction i watch every spell caster can just spam magic like its as easy as punching?I've seen various systems (primarily games) with a mana/fatigue system, where big magic takes something out of the user, but Vance (and Zelazny, IIRC) seems to be the only fantasy writer where someone prepares / memorizes a specific spell, and can cast it once and then it's gone, expended or forgotten, until they re-prepare it.
Even wizards like Gandalf seem to use their magic conservatively. He did a big blinding flash on an orc army once, but he doesn't just lead off in every battle with a flash-blindness spell, the way a more gamist wizard would.
I definitely prefer a more modern approach, with some 'at will' spells, and then some longer ritual stuff that isn't meant for combat (and am fine with stuff like teleportation or major healing or plane calling or divination whatever being more ritualistic and less in-combat / at will).
One thing I like about 2e is that I think they have done a good job of letting casters have their basic mastered spells be spammable: those are your cantrips. Which actually scale to be solidly functional
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One thing I like about 2e is that I think they have done a good job of letting casters have their basic mastered spells be spammable: those are your cantrips. Which actually scale to be solidly functional
Agreed. It's glorious. Kind of reminds me of Dr. Strange, from the comics, who is throwing generic zaps and shields all day long, and only every now and then 'casts a spell' like Crimson Bands of Cytorrak.
And while he doesn't 'prepare' Crimson Bands, and could certainly 'spam' it all the live-long day, he generally doesn't, and so the system 'feels' like it at least mimics the sort of magic he ends up using on the page.
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The mammoths I'm most concerned about are the ghosts of design issues/paradigms from PF1 emerging every now and then, not the conventions of D&D-esque tabletop games. PF2 was in such a contentious place upon announcement and playtest development already, striking big compromises between old and new, that it wasn't in a position to try innovating to greater extents. Maybe with enough lifetime success, the system can try using itself as a jumping-off point to go further in its next edition, but there's no telling what will happen between now and then, or what sort of balance will let it survive later transitions.
In the meantime there's always homebrew ¯\_('v')_/¯
The mammoths I'm most concerned about are the ghosts of design issues/paradigms from PF1 emerging every now and then,
Could you give some examples?
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The origin for "3-18 stats" is that "you can create them easily with dice, with a reasonable distribution." Which is also the reason we still have them. (Also, stat growth is half as fast after 18 is easier to do when half a stat bonus is 1 point, and you want to avoid fractional math).
But, in a game like this you can basically use any stat creation system you like on it without breaking anything.
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Oh, sorry, I just didn't give examples because I'm always in a vague hurry, it isn't a particularly notable or frequent problem, and it's pretty subjective.
I like PF1 quite a bit, but also associate it with scrabbling for numbers, not understanding what its own action economy amounts to, questionable balance and power creep (this being a more general struggle I won't count as a "ghost", though it's present in much smaller doses), and feats that are way too specific/restrictive or are taxes for much better/more interesting abilities or have social/flavor options compete with combat/practicality options.
In the case of PF2, which mostly fixes or sidesteps these issues, I was referring to things like Alchemist having the most blatant number gathering/feat taxes and action economy crunch, some classes and archetypes (for example, Monk and its mobility options) not getting the memo about skill feats, skill feats themselves falling into some of the same issues as PF1's, the weird ways that proficiency and features related to it work (such as Canny Acumen seeming like a legacy inclusion with bizarre scaling), and other small and vague feelings scattered around this huge system.
Not included but sorta related are big subjective structural things the community is of a divided mind on, like Vancian prepared casting and reliance on equipment for progression by default, or that come from tradition and work but might have been iterated on if not for the need to keep the game recognizable and approachable to past players (such as the six ability scores, which I vaguely remember designers mentioning they'd considered changing at some point). Both of these are more in the realm of the thread, and not what I was alluding to.
As I noted, I don't blame PF2 for not going further away from its predecessors (nor do I think such things would always be improvements), and I don't think the ghosts are a big deal compared to what the system does well. Hopefully that clears things up.
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Thanks Alfa/Polaris, I agree. In some cases PF2 had new design goals compared to PF1 but failed to fully follow those goals. Luckily these are relatively rare and some of them are actually errors that would hopefully be fixed with the next errata. And else they can be easily fixed with houserules or variant rules. The examples I gave are a bit harder to fix, as they are mainly for new players for whom it would be hard to use house rules or variant rules unless the GM is experienced.