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I cannot wait for class archetypes. There's already so many cool ideas for them.
That said, "melee bard" is so ingrained in the rpg history that i'm sure than when (if?) we get class archetypes, a more martial focused bard will surely be one of those.
Bard Dedication is a thing, and a Fighter (or other Martial) can absolutely pick up Inspire Courage and Heroics with time left in their career to make use of them. I dont know that there's a lot of need for a more fighty Bard, myself.
What I COULD imagine would be a Skald, which would be a Martial proficiency character with Compositions and no spellcasting beyond Focus Spells, plus some more Skald themed compositions as well.
Without the occult casting to stack with inspire, the result would probably be more balanced as well...
Edit: I suppose "Skald" could be a Bard class archetype, as well.
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Fighter would be ahead by +6 and probably any other +4 martial would deal way better damage on a second strike. Just for completeness.-4 is absolutely massive in this system. Flat disagree. We are not playing pf1e math here.That's better than a fighter's second attack. Unless you think it is never worth attacking twice as a martial?
Otherwise, Krispy's cast once/strike once formula is pretty dang solid. And honestly seems like a fine balance point. Yes, this might not meet everyone's expectations, but "casters should probably cast spells instead of only swinging a sword" is not a big jump to make.
No, it is +4 for bards and +2 for other martials. Most martials are only one proficiency grade over casters and they are even with each other for a quarter of the levels as well. Casters might be lag behind another single point at times due to key ability scores, but not for very long.
Also, I challenge the "way better damage" assumption. No, they don't get Rage, but they can tack on a lot of extra damage through feats and features before even factoring in spells. A war priest can get 1d6 from divine weapon and another from Emblazon Energy. Multiclassing to pick up bespell is another 1d6. Battle Oracles get a whopping +6 to damage at higher curse levels.
Bards may not have many feats like this, but can dip rogue to get dreadstriker which is huge and pick up sneak attacker while they are there.
Bards may not have many feats like this, but can dip rogue to get dreadstriker which is huge and pick up sneak attacker while they are there.
A Bard should probably get credit for the extra damage granted through enhanced accuracy provided by the Synesthesia, Phantasmal Killer, or Uncontrollable Dance (or other hypothetical debuff) he tagged his target with the same turn he's making his hypothetical Strike.
All of which serve to also reduce damage coming back at them.
Yeah, the Bard could have done that from not on the front lines, but thats not the goal here - its identifying synergies for a melee bard, and they absolutely exist.
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Bards may not have many feats like this, but can dip rogue to get dreadstriker which is huge and pick up sneak attacker while they are there.A Bard should probably get credit for the extra damage granted through enhanced accuracy provided by the Synesthesia, Phantasmal Killer, or Uncontrollable Dance (or other hypothetical debuff) he tagged his target with the same turn he's making his hypothetical Strike.
All of which serve to also reduce damage coming back at them.
Yeah, the Bard could have done that from not on the front lines, but thats not the goal here - its identifying synergies for a melee bard, and they absolutely exist.
True, and I'm now seeing some uses for Hideous Laughter as well. Attack of opportunity is the worst danger as a melee caster.
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Yeah, the Bard could have done that from not on the front lines, but thats not the goal here - its identifying synergies for a melee bard, and they absolutely exist.True, and I'm now seeing some uses for Hideous Laughter as well. Attack of opportunity is the worst danger as a melee caster.
My magus absolutely had a weapon with a hideous laughter scroll affixed, just in case.
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It would be best if people compared to-hit values against some standard, rather than class to class.It would be best if all class evaluations were done this way, as opposed to class to class.
Way too many conclusions are reached because one class is less good than another, while forgetting this isnt a competitive game.
A class is viable so long as its a meaningful contributor with enough potency to help a party overcome obstacles designed according to the standards laid out in the rules.
Even an alchemist hits that benchmark - as does, I suspect, something like a sorcerer built to live on the front lines and use the occasional third action making a weapon or unarmed strike.
This game is competitive. A non-competitive person might play in a different manner, but if this game weren't competitive class balance would be unnecessary. People would choose the peasant class or the local store owner class and role-play it. But people want to have relatively equal contributions to success in measurable terms, which is why balance becomes so important to class and encounter design.
If a player chooses a class and feels like they aren't able to contribute in a relatively equal way in some fashion that has a measurable effect on the game, then the class is poorly designed. That's not to say some player might not have fun playing it, but it will definitely end up a very niche class rarely played due to it's weaknesses and lack of ability to compete for the spotlight aka measurable effect in the key area known as combat.
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I very much stand against the idea that Pathfinder is (or ever was) a competitive game. It is a collaborative game at its core and it's never been about dealing the most damage in a round or ending combat faster than another group or player at the table. Now, you could run games that are competitive or combative, but that is intrinsically not at the core of Pathfinder.
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Yeah, if you run games where people feel like they're competing against one another then you're running very nonstandard games.
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Pathfinder has never been intended as competitive between the players, but any game with multiple players will inevitably have some small competition over spotlight time. It's one of the reasons so many games have niche protection of one sort or another.
Additionally, as compared to PF1, PF2 is a lot more competitive in the sense of the dangers presented in official material being real threats. From that perspective, a character who is less powerful can be a problem for a whole PC group as they can lead to the whole group failing and even dying.
A GM can theoretically adjust for that sort of thing, but that shouldn't generally be necessary, is more work, and requires the GM to notice they're a problem. The GM adjusting things can theoretically solve any problem with a game, but the necessity of them doing so highlights that there is indeed a problem.
So how powerful Classes are in comparison to each other remains very relevant indeed even if the game is not competitive in any traditional sense.
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Yeah, it's definitely *not* a competitive game. At all.
But, I do dislike that some classes are just allowed to be and remain better than others (I assume for fear of swinging the pendulum back the other way.) It does the game a huge disservice to never correct these odd quirks. In mild cases it's fine but sometimes gaps can get relatively large.
Of course, some people feel like because a certain class is viable, it's fine if it's not as useful or mechanically interesting as another class. Essentially, it's playable and contributes, and you know- game of imagination and all- so who cares?
I just fundamentally disagree with the philosophy. In my very subjective and personal experience (before any one yells at me because I don't have a 100,000 surveys sourced lol) players can often get disappointed with a class they previously enjoyed just watching how much another class in the same arena can outshine them. Sometimes they really just should have been playing another class, or they played "poorly" as people love to say here, or the other players just got lucky etc. But sometimes, no matter how hard it can be to believe, it really can just be the game.
Of course, some people like bland classes so they can imagine and play them however they want (which is completely valid) so it's probably more down to taste than anything. To say nothing of how utterly subjective "bland" can also be.
I guess (again, I, personally- merely myself) have never been able to sell a player on what amounts to "Eh, it can't do or have any of the extra things the bard can do or have, but it does one of the bard's things well enough that after level 5 you might not notice, and the party will succeed so that should be fun enough for you of course." No matter how beautifully worded.
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I very much stand against the idea that Pathfinder is (or ever was) a competitive game. It is a collaborative game at its core and it's never been about dealing the most damage in a round or ending combat faster than another group or player at the table. Now, you could run games that are competitive or combative, but that is intrinsically not at the core of Pathfinder.
I very much disagree. If PF or role-playing games were not competitive, the need for class balance would be moot.
For example, in PF1 a player could have played a commoner class next to a beast totem barbarian next to a control wizard next to a monster cleric and no one would care. But that isn't what happens.
Players instead look at their contributions competitively. Which is why they even had to adjust for caster-martial disparity in PF1. If players weren't competitive, then no one would care. People would role-play their part in the group story and ignore that the wizard just decimated the army while their character was Frodo to the wizard players Gandalf.
It's a hard idea to understand or accept by people who want to view RPGs as games they just have fun playing with their buddies. But game designers very much understand the competition for spotlight, which is why when severe balance problems rear their ugly heads they have to try to fix it.
If RPGs weren't competitive, this would be completely unnecessary. Whether in video games or table top, there is a natural competition for the spotlight that a majority of players feel. They rate this competition by in game measurables like damage, amount heal, demonstrable effect on the game like good buffing, and the like.
It's not head to head competition, but it's competition for effectiveness. It's why I harp so much on balance between classes. I've had to deal with this as a DM for years.
A bunch of players going, "I'm not competitive. I just want to be effective." Or other such claims, while they are busy looking at the damage the other guy does. Often those who heal don't care about competition because there are no other healers competing in the group. And a Champion type of class doesn't care either because mitigate and control in other ways. If your character's main schtick is to deal damage and you're dealing half or 3/4 what someone else is doing, many players will let you know.
When I first started I thought we were playing this collaborative story and you would have players who enjoy being the Frodo or the Sam in the group. Or some other character type you see in stories. But no, everyone wants to Launcelot or Merlin or Gandalf or Aragorn or Legolas. Very few like being the sidekick type of character.
They don't admit it, but it's because of a sense of internal competition. They don't like playing second fiddle to others. It's why balance threads and complaints about capability are some of the longest, most back and forth threads on these types of games and even video games that are supposed to be "collaborative."
I would love to see how many DMs could make someone's characters and hand them out going, "Hey, you're the Frodo level of power. In the end you're going to make everything worthwhile, but you're a terrible combatant and have to hide all the time. Hey you're Gandalf, you're one of the most powerful people in the entire world. You get to the councilor for everyone and the mover of all. You can fight a balor alone. Hey you're Aragorn, you get to be king of the most powerful kingdom, marry the most beautiful woman alive, and are one of the most badass warriors and rangers in history." And so on. Hand those characters out to players, see how that goes for most groups.
Man, I think I need to read Lord of the Rings for umpteenth time. I haven't done my yearly reading and now I want to get to it.
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Because something is a collaborative game does not mean its not competitive. All team sports are "collaborative" and they are all based on "competing".
Pathfinder can be seen as a collaborative game where the players compete against creatures for survival.
The players are not competing with each other, but with other creatures in the world. Creatures that have more or less the same stats as the players.
Not to mention that Pathfinder is a game that is about making different stories. That includes stories where different players fight each other, stories where previous PCs might fight new PCs, stories where campaigns can crossover or be directly in opposition (Hell's Rebels and Vengeance).
To say Pathfinder is not a "competitive" game because "collaboration" misses a lot of what makes Pathfinder "Pathfinder".
Right, but how often are people actually competing against other people? At no point as a GM have I ever felt that I've been 'competing' with my players. The creatures are trying to kill them, but I'm certainly not.
It's a hard idea to understand or accept by people who want to view RPGs as games they just have fun playing with their buddies. But game designers very much understand the competition for spotlight, which is why when severe balance problems rear their ugly heads they have to try to fix it.
If RPGs weren't competitive, this would be completely unnecessary. Whether in video games or table top, there is a natural competition for the spotlight that a majority of players feel. They rate this competition by in game measurables like damage, amount heal, demonstrable effect on the game like good buffing, and the like.
It's not head to head competition, but it's competition for effectiveness. It's why I harp so much on balance between classes. I've had to deal with this as a DM for years.
Balance is important so everyone is able to contribute, but players shouldn't be competing for spotlight with each other. Your job as both a GM as well as a fellow player is to make sure everyone gets a chance to shine. As an example, say I'm playing a character that has a decent Thievery score, good chance of disabling a trap. If I feel like I've been in the spotlight a lot already that session, I'll invite another player who I know is trained or better in it to do it instead.
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I very much stand against the idea that Pathfinder is (or ever was) a competitive game. It is a collaborative game at its core and it's never been about dealing the most damage in a round or ending combat faster than another group or player at the table. Now, you could run games that are competitive or combative, but that is intrinsically not at the core of Pathfinder.I very much disagree. If PF or role-playing games were not competitive, the need for class balance would be moot.
For example, in PF1 a player could have played a commoner class next to a beast totem barbarian next to a control wizard next to a monster cleric and no one would care. But that isn't what happens.
Players instead look at their contributions competitively.
No, they look for their contributions to be equitible. No one wants a team where everyone is supposed to be peers but one person is obviously better than the rest. Some people might enjoy a specific instance of one player being the hero and the rest being his loyal retainers, especially if the roles are traded between instances. But no one wants to be forced to hold another’s golf bag while they do the real work all the time.
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People look at the word competitive and take it to the black and white illogical extreme. It's pretty funny.
Even in a collaborative game. I'd your doing poorly in comparison to everyone else chances are your not going to be having as much fun.
I played a part apocalyptic game where we rolled stats and I got unlucky and rolled uniformly poor. Named him dish rag and he was a running joke they eventually became an NPC.
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You mean like Alchemist just hold the parties alchemical bags.
Or how most casters are semi-forced to become buffers or debuffers because "why wouldn't you just prep fear and haste?"
Actually, my alchemist won a number of fights in Plaguestone by forcing the enemy to hold his tanglefoot bags until they couldn’t move. Then the Druid lightning arced them to death from outside their range.
Not that I ever claimed 2E achieved equitable contributions.
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I am not saying competition is right or should be the focus of the game. I came into RPGs wanting to emulate fantasy stories I read as a child. I figured people would enjoy that. But what I found is due to the competitive nature of people, no one wanted to play anyone but the star. No one wanted to be Little John or Frodo and Sam or Sir Kay.
Suddenly this balance equation entered the game due to this strange competitive mindset of players. If some class was under-performing or hogging all the spotlight, players were unhappy.
The barbarian player was not cheering when the wizard unleashed a super nuke to destroy an army.
Basically, game designers have to design each class like they are the star of the show. Many players don't like being the co-star, lesser character, or sidekick due to sense of internal competition.
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I am not saying competition is right or should be the focus of the game. I came into RPGs wanting to emulate fantasy stories I read as a child. I figured people would enjoy that. But what I found is due to the competitive nature of people, no one wanted to play anyone but the star. No one wanted to be Little John or Frodo and Sam or Sir Kay.
There's a simple reason for this. In a book, or movie, characters like this can be focused on and get equal spotlight time and chances to be the one to save the day than with those with more objective power and it works fine.
In a traditional RPG like Pathfinder, that's much harder to achieve without some equality in capability since we're not writers and can't just have the weaker character happen to be in the right place at the right time. Some more narrative games can handle this sort of thing a lot better, with characters with weaker traditional statistics having much better metagame resources, particularly those that allow actual plot changes (ie: spend a Plot Point to have just the gear you need, spend a Plot Point to just show up in a scene, etc.), but PF2 lacks the infrastructure for that sort of thing...at least at the moment.
Actually, it now occurs to me that a 'Heroic Commoner' type Class with Class Feats and Features giving new uses for Hero Points and a free Hero Point every turn (or more!) in combat and every so often outside it but bad Proficiencies compared to other martial Classes might actually be really neat. I'd be interested in seeing something like that.
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Yeah, my players definitely cheer on the others at the table when they do something awesome or circumvent a dangerous situation. They're a team. Competition seems to imply that someone will win.
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Not sure where we’re getting this idea that everyone wants to be the star (or even the hero). Now for this forum yes because people who post so passionately about the game also tend to want to be good at it. But that is not the majority of players from what I’ve played with. Many players just like to hang out with friends, or just RP their character and make suboptimal builds/decisions, some want to be oddballs, some just want to support and not be in the limelight. I have no idea where this claim that everyone wants to be the best comes from. I’m guessing because the people posting that are some of the most vehement minmaxers on these boards.
There is a lot more reasons for people to play, and my guess is Paizo has a lot better idea how their player base falls in what drives them to play than anyone here. Even among the players who care about balance and competition that much PF2 is in a far better place than PF1. My Sacred Huntmaster Inquisitor equaled the 2 other martials in my party and I was a caster with the most number of skills in the party on top of it. Nothing in PF2 even comes close to the imbalance PF1 presented with optimizers vs what looks fun or even just vanilla straight classes.
Paizo does have a good idea about their player base. That's why they tried to make a game as balanced as possible where fighters weren't the sidekick of wizards. Because that ain't fun for a majority of players.
When I say the barbarian ain't cheering, I don't mean one big nuke. I mean watching it as the wizard's standard ability while the barbarian player is swinging his axe for less damage and just kind of along for no reason. What's he supposed to do? "You are powerful, Raiden the wizard. I am so happy to be in your presence and but witness your great deeds." C'mon now, few people want to do that.
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Yeah, my players definitely cheer on the others at the table when they do something awesome or circumvent a dangerous situation. They're a team. Competition seems to imply that someone will win.
It's not really someone will win, but rather they don't want to lose to someone else. It's a very weird sort of competitiveness I noted early on gaming. I had to adjust my DMing style and character creation process to account for it.
Even with stats people don't like playing a guy with far lower stats. I've even had players who would try to get their character killed if they rolled substantially lower stats to another player. I imagine that's why point buy has become more popular as it takes that concern off the table.
I even have to account for it with magic items. If I handed out Excalibur to a single character making him the King Arthur type of character, the other players would be like, "where's my super item? Why does he get that sword and I get this trash?" So I have to make a super item for each character.
It's a weird reality. Not every player is this way though. I had one guy who liked playing his character like he was real life person who viewed adventuring dangers like some real person would often choosing the path of extreme carefulness and cowardice. It was amusing to DM as someone else would sometimes run his character in a highly effective manner when he was gone, but he would move into combat slowly and cower when he was there. He always played strange characters in every game system. Made for lots of funny stories.
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And yet Pathfinder 1 went for years and years like that. So did 3 and 3.5 which it was based off of. Despite being wildly imbalanced those games were also very popular. 5e is also massively unbalanced and super popular. So I think there is not a lot to support that making a balanced game makes a game popular. I think it’s more likely that this is the type of game that the designers of PF1 want to make. Some of it might also just be the 4e influences from some of the lead designers. It’s not like the balance of PF2 changed meaningfully from playtest to release.
PF2 was done after listening to the player base. One of the biggest complaints about 3rd edition and the d20 system was caster-martial imbalance. Why would this matter if what you say about players worrying about capability in a game didn't matter?
3rd edition was the widest caster martial disparity in the history of D&D.
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Class imbalance can also make it very hard for authors to write stories and for GM's to provide challenges, especially if the setting allows for huge gaps in power level. A couple of years back while playing RIFTS I deliberately made a "hobo with a shotgun (vagabond)" type character while everyone else was playing X-men type superheroes or power armor pilots. And though it was a very fun experience for everybody involved it really stressed the GM's ability to enble shared spotlight for everyone and to provide credible challenges that did not kill off my character as collateral damage.
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I feel sad for those who see the game as nothing more than stat blocks smashing into each other. If that's the game you want you'd probably be better served playing a wargame. RPGs have so much more potential than that.
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One thing that may be challenging to see for people who tend to play PF2 as PCs instead of GMs, is that PF2 was designed from the ground up to support GMs and make telling a story as easy as possible, within the context of set of RPG rules. Unlike many other games that came before it, you have a very clear sense of when your players are going to be capable of doing different kinds of things, from how balanced a fighting party you have, to when the party is going to be able to solve environmental challenges with flight or skill feats that make great leaps and falls trivial.
Mechanically and narratively, the power balance of PF2 is very tight, and that is of much greater importance to GMs (and adventure writers) than it really is for players. That it also helps players feel like their character has contributions to make to the party may be a benefit as well, but I believe it was secondary to making PF2 one of the easiest RPGs to pick up and run fun, interesting and well-balanced encounters for. It does this while still allowing PCs an ever growing brick-ton of player options for molding their character into something unique and interesting.
I think you miss a big part of PF2s potential if you only look at the balance question from the side of the players.
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I think you miss a big part of PF2s potential if you only look at the balance question from the side of the players.
So many times this.
While the system isn't perfect (Grikkitogs), both knowing approximately what players are capable of and being able to line up predictably difficult encounters in front of players and then run them in a fun and fair way makes PF2 an amazing system to GM.
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One thing that may be challenging to see for people who tend to play PF2 as PCs instead of GMs, is that PF2 was designed from the ground up to support GMs and make telling a story as easy as possible, within the context of set of RPG rules. Unlike many other games that came before it, you have a very clear sense of when your players are going to be capable of doing different kinds of things, from how balanced a fighting party you have, to when the party is going to be able to solve environmental challenges with flight or skill feats that make great leaps and falls trivial.
Mechanically and narratively, the power balance of PF2 is very tight, and that is of much greater importance to GMs (and adventure writers) than it really is for players. That it also helps players feel like their character has contributions to make to the party may be a benefit as well, but I believe it was secondary to making PF2 one of the easiest RPGs to pick up and run fun, interesting and well-balanced encounters for. It does this while still allowing PCs an ever growing brick-ton of player options for molding their character into something unique and interesting.
I think you miss a big part of PF2s potential if you only look at the balance question from the side of the players.
Maybe this is why my group is overall so happy with PF2. Most groups just have one dedicated GM, while 3/5 people in my group haves GMed PF2 at this point, so we have a lot more people who have experienced the behind the screen balance compared to most groups.
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I think when we're discussing 'competitive' what we really mean is that its a 'Roleplaying Game' as opposed to a 'Storytelling Game' which is an important distinction.
A Storytelling Game that had a bunch of character building choices, would have choices related to mechanics that create certain kinds of stories-- often defined by flaws, and mechanics that require you to do dramatic things (I invite you to look at the Playbooks in a game like Masks: A New Generation.) In my example, you are frequently encouraged to do things at the detriment of your team, the game encourages the players to create drama and twists and resentments, or yields narrative control to players in ways that invalidate the idea of problem-solving as a game play element.
A Roleplaying Game has options that will specifically let you tailor how well, and in what ways a character can solve specific problems, problems ranging from monsters you might need to defeat, to chasms you might have to cross, or doors you might need to open.
That makes Roleplaying Games competitive in the sense that you're acting the part of you character who is 'trying to win' by overcoming the obstacles between them and their goal (which you'll notice is actually a perfect summary of the Dungeon-Crawling 'get-treasure' adventures that defined classic Dungeons and Dragons.) The story is an emergent property of your goals, and how you try to overcome them, and what complications the environment throws at you a long the way.
For anyone who might get hung up on the distinction, there are extensive articles and blog posts about this idea, but bear in mind that games tend to have elements of both of them. Hero Points and Inspiration for instance, are storytelling mechanics meant to reward you for making heroic/funny/daring things in a game that normally would reward overt caution.
It's also true that we can partition and sometimes add 'Storytelling Game Style' complications, but the reason its often such a fraught subject and requires mature and cooperative players, is because the game is normally built for goal-striving. So you need people who are socially deft enough to navigate that without letting the two parts of the game ruin one another.
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A Roleplaying Game has options that will specifically let you tailor how well, and in what ways a character can solve specific problems, problems ranging from monsters you might need to defeat, to chasms you might have to cross, or doors you might need to open.
That makes Roleplaying Games competitive in the sense that you're acting the part of you character who is 'trying to win' by overcoming the obstacles between them and their goal (which you'll notice is actually a perfect summary of the Dungeon-Crawling 'get-treasure' adventures that defined classic Dungeons and Dragons.)
And then, for me, where this intersects with PF2's design and balance it basically falls out like this:
(1) Certain challenges require everyone "be able to succeed on average" (eg. crossing a chasm) because not-succeeding will result in Larger Issues ("Oh you rolled low? Um... *flips pages* Yeah, your character is just dead.")
(2) Everyone needs to contribute in a fight (because why else are you here?)
(3) Certain abilities Solve The Problem for Everyone Forever being heavily allocated to one class (cough, wizard, cough)
(4) Adventures require a proper mix of challenges...but some challenges are interesting/time consuming.
(5) The above constraints/imbalances result in a lot of Bland Sameness or Wonky Advancement (e.g. Magus being behind on hit-rate for 4 levels out of 20).
And the result is that if anyone has Stellar Combat Abilities such that they "win the fight for everyone" its unfun for everyone else. But because so many of those abilities were previously allocated to the magic classes (and even then, predominantly the arcane classes) reining in that power made them feel weak and helpless.
At the same time, "AC is irrelevant because everyone has the same AC" achieves the balance from #1 but in so doing meets #5 by being Bland. But the math is so tight that #1 wins out. There've been improvements but it still falls very close to "everyone gets 5 AC from dex and whatever armor they have proficiency in."
Adventures need to have a mix of challenges so that other classes that aren't combat focused get a chance to shine, but other challenges are "roll a skill check. oh you succeeded. have reward, now here's another fight" or "roll a skill check. oh you failed, have another fight." Meaning that most of player's time is going to be spent in combat, so when a class is weak in combat (cough, alchemist, cough) they don't GET any of the limelight.
So the end result is something that is mechanically balanced and functionally broken.
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A Roleplaying Game has options that will specifically let you tailor how well, and in what ways a character can solve specific problems, problems ranging from monsters you might need to defeat, to chasms you might have to cross, or doors you might need to open.
That makes Roleplaying Games competitive in the sense that you're acting the part of you character who is 'trying to win' by overcoming the obstacles between them and their goal (which you'll notice is actually a perfect summary of the Dungeon-Crawling 'get-treasure' adventures that defined classic Dungeons and Dragons.)
And then, for me, where this intersects with PF2's design and balance it basically falls out like this:
(1) Certain challenges require everyone "be able to succeed on average" (eg. crossing a chasm) because not-succeeding will result in Larger Issues ("Oh you rolled low? Um... *flips pages* Yeah, your character is just dead.")
(2) Everyone needs to contribute in a fight (because why else are you here?)
(3) Certain abilities Solve The Problem for Everyone Forever being heavily allocated to one class (cough, wizard, cough)
(4) Adventures require a proper mix of challenges...but some challenges are interesting/time consuming.
(5) The above constraints/imbalances result in a lot of Bland Sameness or Wonky Advancement (e.g. Magus being behind on hit-rate for 4 levels out of 20).And the result is that if anyone has Stellar Combat Abilities such that they "win the fight for everyone" its unfun for everyone else. But because so many of those abilities were previously allocated to the magic classes (and even then, predominantly the arcane classes) reining in that power made them feel weak and helpless.
At the same time, "AC is irrelevant because everyone has the same AC" achieves the balance from #1 but in so doing meets #5 by being Bland. But the math is so tight that #1 wins out. There've been improvements but it still falls very close to "everyone gets 5 AC from dex and...
We've been playing a campaign of it more or less since it came out (we dove into a learning test game for a few weeks first) and that hasn't been my experience at all.
The balance is tight enough that so long as some very basic rules are followed (maxed primary stat / have an AC plan of some kind) everyone is able to contribute without overly large disparities in power, but, and this is key the balance is still loose enough that there are significant differences in power levels, especially across the ability to solve different problems or confront different kinds of foes. in other words, I suspect a character with no class feats would do ok (the situation would be pretty dire at severe difficulty)because the things you need are in the base chassis, but there's no question choosing class feats well is a significant uptick in power.
E.g. My players have varying AC based off what armor they're allowed to wear, shields, and other considerations-- the variation isn't as significant as in 5e or 4e, where my players who didn't know how to get good AC had trash AC, but its there and while the range is numerically small, it has a fairly high impact because of the crit system and the way monster to-hit tends to work.
Its very easy to build a variety of characters to get at certain problems, but much more difficult to build a character that can solve all problems (and if you did, say on a wizard, you'd really suffer on the front lets say, your blasting ability-- because you're using these slots to solve utility problems all the time) I have a party of 7 people at this point, three of which are hard optimizers, and we still don't have many problems making sure everyone feels like they have a niche and problems they can solve.
Something like crossing a chasm in my game tends to be less of a pass-or-die scenario, and more of a "ok how can we get the group across safely / quickly" depending on the chasm-- rather than having every character try to jump it or something, one or two characters uses their abilities to say, carry/throw e to the other side so the rest of the party can shimmy across-- which is either easy enough for most of the party to just do (its one of those challenges that even +level from training outpaces super fast) or someone has feather fall, or another solution is found (or the chasm isn't deep enough to mean instant death... but might have monsters or whatever at the bottom, allowing them to continue playing but with a major setback or at least have them f$@* up multiple times to actually die.
That whole set of accusations feel more like something the proponents of 'balance is a fools errand' want to be true, rather than anything reflected in the game we currently have.
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Something like crossing a chasm in my game tends to be less of a pass-or-die scenario, and more of a "ok how can we get the group across safely / quickly" depending on the chasm-- rather than having every character try to jump it or something, one or two characters uses their abilities to say, carry/throw e to the other side so the rest of the party can shimmy across
That falls into the #4 bucket. One person rolls one skill check and hooray problem solved. Even when you need to carry other people across a rope its still little more than "a check or two", takes five minutes, and your reward is another hour-long fight.
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(1) Certain challenges require everyone "be able to succeed on average" (eg. crossing a chasm) because not-succeeding will result in Larger Issues ("Oh you rolled low? Um... *flips pages* Yeah, your character is just dead.")
That isn't really how challenges are supposed to work in PF2E. For the most part. Only Critical Failures normally have negative consequences, and Hero Points exist to create tension by having "near misses" if you roll a one.
By default, even if you only have a 30-35% of "Success" the system assumes you'll eventually "succeed" rather than fail, given the time to actually tackle an obstacle.
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Just going to point out I never said PF2 had a 50% chance of death. Heck, the climb skill even details failure as "no progress."
That's what I mean by "success on average."
My point was that a game that is designed as 50% chance of death like that is a bad thing not that PF2 has a 50% chance of death.
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Just going to point out I never said it was a 50% chance of death.
To be fair, as a person who has a career in risk management, I will say it doesn't really matter what the % chance is. Even its 5%, or .25% with a reroll, if the penalty for failure is death its a terrible risk to take.
The stakes in a well designed encounter should never be "Failure or Critical Failure equals death or an inability to continue the adventure", and PF2E is rigged in the players favor when it comes to eventually succeeding at obstacles by moving negative consequences (or 'negative success' in general) to Critical Failures and not normal failures.
Its actually the best die based system I've seen for 'frustrating' players with Failures on skill tests, but which is actually rigged in their favor even if thats not transparent.
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Just going to point out I never said it was a 50% chance of death.To be fair, as a person who has a career in risk management, I will say it doesn't really matter what the % chance is. Even its 5%, or .25% with a reroll, if the penalty for failure is death its a terrible risk to take.
...yes. Yes it is. That's why point 1 is a thing. "Oh you failed? You die." IS A BAD DESIGN.
The stakes in a well designed encounter should never be "Failure or Critical Failure equals death or an inability to continue the adventure", and PF2E is rigged in the players favor when it comes to eventually succeeding at obstacles by moving negative consequences (or 'negative success' in general) to Critical Failures.
Bold: that's kind of my point: PF2 is designed such that players succeed on average and that negative consequences generally do not overly penalize the players.
The reason this is a problem in PF2 is that outside of combat almost no obstacle is overcome by more than 3 rolls. That's way way too few in order to be something that the player is interested in being a character superstar at doing.
Which is why no classes are superstars at specific skills.
Which is why every class is boring at skills.