I definitely like the 3 action economy of PF2. It allows you to try some of those secondary abilities and actions and if they fail its less of a lost turn bummer. I think the wall im hitting is, I find anything not specifically linked to your primary or secondary stat plus skill proficiency is a waste of time. Which is something I greatly disliked in 4E. In 3E/PF1, you had spells to boost your stats, items to boost your stats, and skill points every level. This allowed you to dabble in things and do something about the chance of success. PF2 is in lock down so far in my experience. You really need focus at chargen because you only get so many chances to get good at things. YMMV
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I definitely like the 3 action economy of PF2. It allows you to try some of those secondary abilities and actions and if they fail its less of a lost turn bummer. I think the wall im hitting is, I find anything not specifically linked to your primary or secondary stat plus skill proficiency is a waste of time. Which is something I greatly disliked in 4E. In 3E/PF1, you had spells to boost your stats, items to boost your stats, and skill points every level. This allowed you to dabble in things and do something about the chance of success. PF2 is in lock down so far in my experience. You really need focus at chargen because you only get so many chances to get good at things. YMMV
I played PF2 for about six months, playing through the first two books of the "Age of Ashes" adventure path. I did like the 3-action economy, but I really did bristle at the resolution mechanics. While PF2 includes a "degrees of success" mechanic, it's still "pass/fail": the four resolutions are "Great success/success/failure/spectacular failure." There's no "success with complication" option or "fail forward" mechanic built into the game... and those are what I find by far the most interesting results in story-games.
I had the same experience with Pan with PF2: while you usually had many options at your character's disposal, there was nearly always a clear "best option" for a given situation. I felt that you as a player were penalized for not always taking the clear "best option" whenever you possibly could. And that really frustrated me and made gameplay feel prescribed and very limiting.
I think I like 5E and PF1 about equally, and I like both of them more than PF2. But I'll still say that my favorite of the d20/OGL fantasy RPGs would be Pelgrane Press' 13th Age.
In 3E/PF1, you had spells to boost your stats, items to boost your stats, and skill points every level. This allowed you to dabble in things and do something about the chance of success. PF2 is in lock down so far in my experience. You really need focus at chargen because you only get so many chances to get good at things.
I'm not sure I agree with this idea of a locked down experience. Yes, you're not getting a small pool of skill ranks to allocate at each level, but you are boosting abilities every 5 levels, gaining skill increases and general feats on every odd level starting at level three, gaining class and general feats on every even level, and getting ancestry feats at 5, 9, 13 and 17. That's not counting spells, class features, and items.
It isn't that you have less chances to get good at things, it's that getting good at things presents differently than it did in PF1.
I had the same experience with Pan with PF2: while you usually had many options at your character's disposal, there was nearly always a clear "best option" for a given situation. I felt that you as a player were penalized for not always taking the clear "best option" whenever you possibly could. And that really frustrated me and made gameplay feel prescribed and very limiting.
Frankly that was how I felt about PF1.
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I don't think those options work well in non-story-games. I don't find "success with complication" or "fail forward" work well with "did I hit him".
They might well work better with some skill uses - as I hinted at above, since those are often one roll to decide a larger issue than one action in combat, a more nuanced resolution is more useful.
At this stage of my RPG career, I find combat to be the least interesting part of a role-playing game. [This is a very big reason why I've mostly moved away from the D&D family of games.]
With a small number of exceptions (e.g. Swords of the Serpentine), I prefer my RPGs to resolve a combat very quickly: Maybe 5-10 minutes of real time at the table, and then we deal with the aftermath of the fight.
Most of the games I play do this by greatly reducing the number of rolls in a given combat. This gives each individual roll a LOT more mechanical and narrative weight.
Common way many games do that include...
* Resolving a tactical exchange between a PC and GM-controlled characters with a single player-facing roll (e.g. Apocalypse World, Mörk Borg)
* Resolving an entire round of combat for all combatants with a single die roll (e.g. Trophy Gold, Inspectres)
* Resolving an individual character's role in the combat with a single die roll (e.g. Night Witches, Rapscallion)
* Resolving the entire combat at once with a single die roll (e.g. Hearts of Wulin).
And I play a lot of RPGs that don't have a combat system at all (e.g. Brindlewood Bay, Wanderhome, Trophy Dark).
None of these games focus on simulation: The dice mechanics dictate outcome and it's the job of the GM and players to tell us how we get there.
In 3E/PF1, you had spells to boost your stats, items to boost your stats, and skill points every level. This allowed you to dabble in things and do something about the chance of success. PF2 is in lock down so far in my experience. You really need focus at chargen because you only get so many chances to get good at things.I'm not sure I agree with this idea of a locked down experience. Yes, you're not getting a small pool of skill ranks to allocate at each level, but you are boosting abilities every 5 levels, gaining skill increases and general feats on every odd level starting at level three, gaining class and general feats on every even level, and getting ancestry feats at 5, 9, 13 and 17. That's not counting spells, class features, and items.
It isn't that you have less chances to get good at things, it's that getting good at things presents differently than it did in PF1.
Actually, those boosts just keep you in the game from the +1/lvl system treadmill. Its getting the proficiency gating up (which if the PC aint a rogue isn't very often) that helps you get ahead.
Yeap, they cut up ancestry and class (to be fair added background) into slim feat packages to protect against front loading and dipping (on top of forcing hybrid multi-classing...) and spread it out across the life of the character. It feels, locked down to me in comparison to PF1. YMMV.
I had the same experience with Pan with PF2: while you usually had many options at your character's disposal, there was nearly always a clear "best option" for a given situation. I felt that you as a player were penalized for not always taking the clear "best option" whenever you possibly could. And that really frustrated me and made gameplay feel prescribed and very limiting.Frankly that was how I felt about PF1.
That was indeed a problem with PF1, and my (admittedly limited) experience with PF2 is that the designers doubled-down on that aspect.
My general meta-comment on this whole discussion:
I strongly recommend trying out indie and small-press RPGs.
With a few exceptions, indie games are MUCH easier to learn than D&D/Pathfinder. They're also generally less expensive, so you're not out too much money if you buy a game, try it out, and find that it's not your cup of tea.
I've learned so many new techniques and approaches from indie RPGs that have greatly improved my GMing ability, play style, and general enjoyment of this hobby.
(And if anyone is interested in giving an indie RPG a spin as a one-shot or short series: Private Message me. I'd be happy to run something over Zoom!}
That was indeed a problem with PF1, and my (admittedly limited) experience with PF2 is that the designers doubled-down on that aspect.
Completely disagree. The “trap options” in PF1 left someone who took them mechanically sub-optimal. It made it an optimizers game, and when a casual player who wanted a simple fantasy RP experience instead of playing Mathfinder they couldn’t do so at the same table as an optimizer. Optimal and “Sub-Optimal” builds could not coexist at the same table.
PF2 keeps everyone at the table in relative parity so that those hunting out optimized characters have a few additional pluses without ruining the non optimizers experience.
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The “trap options” in PF1 left someone who took them mechanically sub-optimal. It made it an optimizers game, and when a casual player who wanted a simple fantasy RP experience instead of playing Mathfinder they couldn’t do so at the same table as an optimizer. Optimal and “Sub-Optimal” builds could not coexist at the same table.
No argument from me on that point. It's a holdover from D&D 3.5.
Your point is as much a table culture issue as a rules issue. As long as everyone is on the same page about what kind of game they're playing, PF1 works pretty well.
The people I tend to play PF1 with were/are themselves mostly casual players that aren't invested enough in the system to want to take the time to figure out how to optimize/min-max their characters. Consequently, this issue wasn't really a problem in play as I experienced it in my home games.
Your point, however, is the primary reason why I found Pathfinder Society play not to be my cup of tea at all. I tend to prefer to play generalist/support characters that are decently competent at a lot of things, but don't go all-in on one trick. (My favorite PF1 classes to play are cleric, bard, and rogue.) All the PFS games I showed up for had characters that were min-maxed to the hilt, which relegated my generalist character to the sidelines... and most of the time, made my play experience less than fun, as I never felt that my character had a lot to contribute.
I found PF1 much more fun with casual players who hadn't carefully built their characters around one thing. This gave each character a suite of options that were more-or-less equally effective. This provided what I found to be more dynamic play at the table.
PF2 pretty much forces your hand to pick one thing to be good at, which means your character will be less effective at everything else. I found that sort of play to be far less interesting.
And this entire line of reasoning is a big factor on why I've come to prefer indie RPGs and story-games over math-heavy/rules-complex RPGs.
The people I tend to play PF1 with were/are themselves mostly casual players that aren't invested enough in the system to want to take the time to figure out how to optimize/min-max their characters. Consequently, this issue wasn't really a problem in play as I experienced it in my home games.
That's great that this wasn't a problem in a game you played. I've had a long running group I've played with for 15 years, but when PF1 came up it became a constant struggle because no matter what our group of decade long friends couldn't get beyond the idea that three of them cared about optimization and two of us didn't. In PF1 the choice was to either make three play unoptimized, make two play optimized, or have constant conversations where the optimizers tell the unoptomizers how they "should" have built their character.
In PF2 the three optimizers and the two who could care less about optimization can play side by side and remain equally as effective across the main modes of play.
PF2 pretty much forces your hand to pick one thing to be good at, which means your character will be less effective at everything else. I found that sort of play to be far less interesting.
I just haven't seen that to be the case in the two years I've been playing the game.
PF2 pretty much forces your hand to pick one thing to be good at, which means your character will be less effective at everything else. I found that sort of play to be far less interesting.I just haven't seen that to be the case in the two years I've been playing the game.
I saw it in the playtest and it drove me away. I came back for a second look, and im finding it's still an issue for me.
Thats the fun thing about systems as a journey because look at were we are. Im leaning on systems of the past and my homerules to get the experience I want, Haladir has moved onto entirely different systems like story telling, and Dirtypool is set with PF2.
I wouldn't say I'm "set" with PF2. It's the iteration of the D20 system I enjoy the most, but I'd play a Chronicles of Darkness game or something in Genesys any day of the week.
I wouldnt mind getting another shot at Genesys, I did recently pick up the Android supplements.
I also, just picked up more Battletech gear and I have never played the damn thing on tabletop...
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Which reinforces the point that different systems do different things and work best for different people. I can live with PF or PF2 (or 5E for that matter), they're all good compromises that scratch different itches and annoy me in different ways. Easy to find players too.
Absolutely agree with this. Note every game is for everyone. We are all looking for different things out of our games. Some of us don't have the itches that some games scratch.
I know that there are many well-loved RPGs I've tried that I bounced off real hard. Vampire: The Masquerade and Savage Worlds come immediately to mind.
The bad thing about being a story-gamer is that there are far fewer of us than gamers who want to play D&D or Pathfinder, and it can be hard to find other people to play with. That's one reason I so very much appreciate some of the other online communities I've joined in the past few years.
Thats the fun thing about systems as a journey because look at were we are. Im leaning on systems of the past and my homerules to get the experience I want, Haladir has moved onto entirely different systems like story telling, and Dirtypool is set with PF2.
It really is a journey!
I've been playing a diverse array of TTRPGs the past few years.
To date, in 2021, I've played or GMed 43 TTRPG sessions. This includes at least one session of...
Pathfinder 1e (d20/OGL)
Mörk Borg (OSR)
Brindlewood Bay ("Powered by the Apocalypse")
Naked City Blues (PbtA)
Back Again from the Broken Land (PbtA)
Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars ("No Dice No Masters")
Best Left Buried (neo-OSR)
Rapscallion (PbtA)
Escape From Dino Island (PbtA)
The Final Girl (unique story-game)
Swords of the Serpentine (GUMSHOE)
Monster of the Week (PbtA)
Once More Into the Void (Firebrands)
iHunt (Fate Core)
The Burning Wheel (Burning Wheel)
Dungeons & Dragons 5e (d20/OGL)
Spirit of '77 (PbtA)
Mothership (neo-OSR)
Trophy Gold ("Rooted in Trophy")
Scum & Villainy ("Forged in the Dark")
Trophy Dark (RiT)
Dungeon World (PbtA)
Masks: A New Generation (PbtA)
I wouldnt mind getting another shot at Genesys, I did recently pick up the Android supplements.
I also, just picked up more Battletech gear and I have never played the damn thing on tabletop...
I've still never played Genesys. I've skimmed the book at our FLGS and it sure looks pretty. The weird dice turn me off a little, but that's hypocritical of me, because I play Fate, which also uses weird dice. Nobody is playing this game in the indie RPG circiles I kick in these days, but I'd love to sit in a game at some point.
I've never been much of a fan of mecha anime, so I've not ever investigated Battletech.
I wouldnt mind getting another shot at Genesys, I did recently pick up the Android supplements.
I also, just picked up more Battletech gear and I have never played the damn thing on tabletop...
I've still never played Genesys. I've skimmed the book at our FLGS and it sure looks pretty. The weird dice turn me off a little, but that's hypocritical of me, because I play Fate, which also uses weird dice. Nobody is playing this game in the indie RPG circiles I kick in these days, but I'd love to sit in a game at some point.
I've never been much of a fan of mecha anime, so I've not ever investigated Battletech.
I did a one shot of the Star Wars game. I too was a little annoyed by the dice. The symbols remind me of board games, which can be a little off putting for an RPG, IMO. Though, once we were rolling it wasnt too bad. I did like the degrees of success it offered. I'd certainly try the system out again, and hopefully in a longer lived experience.
I am more into the militarized walking tanks of Mechwarrior, than the anime gundam mecha side of Battletech. Not sure if im going to get this going tho, my long time gaming group hates VTT, and they all have impossible schedules it seems.
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I’ll be the first to admit that at first blush the idea of the custom dice feels burdensome, but it takes almost no time before it becomes almost second nature and then the system really begins to sing.
Resolution becomes incredibly quick because it is just comparing three sets of icons and tallying up how many remain of any given one after its opposite cancels it out.
The dice in Warhammer FRP 3rd were similar I think? Not too slow to tally, but it was near-impossible to figure your odds of success or of any particular result. One of our group insisted that adding more dice generally made things worse. I think he was wrong, but I couldn't prove it.
The Warhammer dice were identical to the current Genesys version of the dice.
L5R and Star Wars use custom icons so their dice look different but function the same.
One of the main ideas of the narrative dice was to take numerical values of success out of it. It is still possible to figure the odds of any one roll, but you have to have a DC and situational modifiers set before you can work it out, and the game generally leaves those up to the GM's discretion at the table.
As the dice scale upward they do add additional success or failures, so your groups view is half correct. In play you have positive d6, d8 and d12 dice and negative d6, d8 and d12 dice. The d12s are the only ones that have triumph and despair, they also have additional successes for positives and failures for negatives.
Adding positive dice skews things in the players favor and adding negative dice skews things in the GM's favor.
Having an equal number of dice makes an almost 50/50 chance.
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From the outside, it seems like an overly complex dice mechanic that more-or-less accomplishes the same thing that most "Powered by the Apocalpyse" games do with 2d6+Stat. The cynic in me says it's a mechanic to drive up dice sales.
But I will reserve judgement until I actually play the game. Speaking from experience, many RPGs in reality work far better at the table than they would seem to from just reading the rules.
From the outside, it seems like an overly complex dice mechanic that more-or-less accomplishes the same thing that most "Powered by the Apocalpyse" games do with 2d6+Stat.
If I understand PbtA based on my outside perspective. It's 2d6 with three result thresholds: pure success on 10+, compromise success on 7-9 and GM complications on a 6 and below.
Genesys allows for success with complications and failures with advantages. So while the former has three thresholds, Genesys has six regular thresholds (Success with advantage, flat success, success with disadvantages, failure with advantage, flat failure, failure with disadvantages) and two critical.
As for complexity - it is just rolling two dice, canceling out opposed symbols and seeing what remains.
The cynic in me says it's a mechanic to drive up dice sales
Sure they want to sell you dice, but the first chapter of the book includes a chart explaining how to use standard dice instead of the custom dice - and links to various dice roller apps. Some of which are free.
What about game systems that dont use dice? I know some games use decks of cards instead. Dread uses a Jenga tower, lol. So what has your experience away from dice been, if any?
I'm all over the place.
Got a copy of Razor Coast recently so I'm going to mix that up with Skull and Shackles (again), so that's Pathfinder Classic.
I'm going to be running a Call of Cthulhu game this summer (using the Mansions of Madness book).
We have Abomination Vaults going, so that's Pathfinder 2.
We also have a Starfinder game going periodically (Fly Free or Die!).
And I'm trying to talk some people into playing Dead Reign (a Palladium RPG) after we're all vaccinated (one shot down, one to go).
Plus we must try Bunnies and Burrows one of these days.
Now that I'm in working shape this year I should have enough energy to pull it off.
Various LARP's I've played in have replaced dice with cards or systems like rock, paper, scissors for resolution. I didn't feel that any of this replicated the same roleplaying feel as dice versions do.
Beyond that, the furthest I've strayed is systems that employ alternate methods alongside the dice - like Deadlands that employed a hand of poker to cast spells. The novelty of things like that can wear off quickly if they aren't streamlined enough to not get in the way.
What about game systems that dont use dice? I know some games use decks of cards instead. Dread uses a Jenga tower, lol. So what has your experience away from dice been, if any?
I've played a few!
Dread (horror) and Star-Crossed (doomed romance) both use a Jenga tower for resolution. They're both really interesting games that utilize the inherent tension in playing Jenga to inform what's going on in the game. Both games are very emotionally rich, and play with "bleed" between what your character is feeling and what you as a player are feeling. I've only played each a couple of times. Dread requires quite a bit of prep on the GM's part, although that's not in designing the scenario: The GM is involved with creating the characters by writing a bunch of leading questions for the character to answer. (e.g. "What was it that scared you awake at night when you were a kid, and why didn't your parents believe you?") The GM writes a specific set of questions for each individual character, partially defining who they are by the questions they ask.
They're not nearly as common as games that use dice, but I've played a few games that use cards. The Final Girl is a story-game about something that's killing off a large cast of characters. In a scene where the killer tries to kill of the characters, you basically play "War" with regular playing cards, with a few mechanics that allow other players to replace cards in play. It's a really fun game. (I've also played a variation of that game where the victims are all villains from Batman's "Rogue's Gallery," and the killer is Batman.)
Another game with card-based resolution is Alas Vegas, where resolution is a hand of blackjack, but using a Rider-Waite Tarot deck. I've not actually played this game yet, but it's high on my "Want to play" list.
Zombie World is a PbtA game that foregoes dice in favor of sets of special cards. The game is really about the enclave rather than individual characters: Characters tend to have short lifespans. You are dealt you character from a "Character Deck." When you try to do something risky, you draw from the "Challenge" deck... unless you're dealing with zombies, in which case you draw from the "Bite" deck. This game is of a very interesting format: It's an RPG but has board-game elements that make it a bit more appealing to people who don't normally play TTRPGs. I ran it a PAX Unplugged in 2019, and my table was entirely people who were board gamers and "Walking Dead" fans. They had a blast, as did I!
Once More Into the Void is a story-game based (unofficially) on Star Trek: Picard and Mass Effect 2. The party is the former crew of a starship who's assembled one last time for one final mission. The game uses the Firebrands Framework, which is usually diceless, but this one uses cards and a token economy for some of the to determine how each phase of the game turns out. I've only played it once, and it was an intense emotional experience.
And then there are RPGs that don't use randomizers at all.
An older one is the Amber Diceless Role-Playing Game. It's out-of-print, but Rite Publishing's Lords of Gossamer and Shadow uses the same core system. In these games: In a contest between two characters, whoever has the highest relevant stat wins. I played a fair amount of ADRPG back in the '90s, but I think its star has faded: It's an early story-game that I think it puts the GM in too much of an adversarial position against the players.
A more modern take take on a diceless RPG are games that use the "No Dice No Masters" system, originally developed for Dream Askew by Avery Alder (who also wrote the PbtA game Monsterhearts). IN a NDNM game, characters have a set of "weak moves" that generally cause trouble for the character, and "strong moves" that allow the player to take narrative control over a scene and dictate an outcome. To use a Strong Move, you have to spend a token, and you only gain tokens by performing Weak Moves. NDMN games are also GM-less; the rules themselves take on some of the GM's role, while the rest of the responsibility is shared among the players. NDNM games aren't for everyone. I've enjoyed the ones I've played, but I think they are much stronger in collective world-building than in playing in the world you've created.
Then there are games that use dice, but not as a resolution mechanic. An example is Swords Without Master by Epidiah Rovochol (who also wrote Dread). In SWM, the dice set the tone of the story: "Jovial" or "Glum". The GM uses the dice to set an "Overtone" for the Act, and introduces a challenge to the players (called 'Bringing the Storm'). The GM keeps narrating until one of the player takes narrative control by picking up and rolling the dice. This sets the tone of that character's scene, and interacts with the Overtone in interesting ways. Also, if doubles come up on the dice, that can add other complications to the story; players can also attempt to incorporate parallels to others' stories into their own scenes to create Motifs. Once every character has a Motif in play, the GM and players attempt to resolve all of those Motifs in a finale, which then triggers the end-game. It's a really interesting game that is very much unlike other RPGs I've played.
The frustration, for me, in 3E/PF1 trap options is that you never have 4 newbs or 4 power gamers but a mix. It's very difficult for even the best GMs to adjust for that dynamic. Despite that, i've had the best RPG experiences with this system along with the growing pains that come along with them.
4E/PF2 went with a tight (I consider locked down) system to make it work. You have choices, but they are few and far between to keep the system on track. For example, you can be a sneak thief rogue or you can be a robber thug rogue, but not both. You can multi-class a feat or two into your set up, but it wont take you very far away from those initial few choices. The futher you attempt to go form the original conceits, the worst your character will be. All this is to keep a baseline balanced game in place. Balance achieved, and traps are gone, but so is versatility and diversification of skills and abilities.
5E is the great compromise edition. It's perfect for casuals, which is why its such a huge hit. It tries to walk a fine line between 3E and 4E. Bounded Accuracy (so so great) gives the system that tighter math for the balanced approach without the need for wonky leveling maths. However, the reins were loosened up on chargen and multi-classing so you get some of that versatility back. It does play like easy mode in comparison to the other editions, another notch in the casual box. The best thing going for 5E is, unlike 3E and 4E, the design decisions are easy to adapt, remove, or improve. While 5E might not be great out of the box, its design doesnt put roadblocks in the way of a combat as war or combat as sport playstyle. The modular supplements were abandoned, but folks have figured out what 5E was meant to do.
Its easy to laugh off under-optimization when thinking about 1/4 CR kobolds, but it matters greatly with other types of enemies that have resistances and other abilities the CR system does a poor job of measuring.
I was in a game once where a player wanted to make a halfling ninja that used this sandtube thing for a weapon. We encountered some undead and this character was less than useless against them. Tactics would only help so much. The bottom line was our party was essentially 3 members instead of 4 facing the same challenges that were likely above our level already.
Im in the combat as war camp (tuckers kolbolds), but I also believe the system cant be too unwieldy that you have vastly different capabilities in the same party. It just doesn't work out to be fun for everyone. A group of experienced players will be able to find their footing, but its hell for newbs. Which is why 5E is the cat's meow right now.
For Amber (or for LoGaS), I don't think it's really a story game necessarily. It's got no narrative mechanics or anything to support that. It's in many ways a very traditional RPG - except for the lack of dice. (And the non-party nature, which is in many ways even more radical.) All the mechanics are built around traditional "what are the characters abilities" and "how do we resolve what happens" approaches.
It's not what I'd go for if I was looking for a story game and the lack of randomizers turns off a lot of more traditional gamers. Plus it's been out of print for 20 years. :)
I'd love to get into another game though. I don't have the time or creative energy to run one though. Or frankly, a suitable local group.
I shouldn't have called ADRPG a story-game, but it is an indie RPG with a narrative focus. Story-games and narrativist RPGs very much bleed into each other, and there's no hard line that separates them. Most story-games hard-frame what the game is about and provide specific narrative prompts for the players, while narrative-focused RPGs are more about genre conventions and collaborative narration rather than providing specific story-prompts.
ADRPG is a 30-year-old game: It came out in 1991, long before the term "story game" was coined. It is very much structured like a traditional RPG, but it does throw a LOT of narrative control at the players... much more so than any RPG I'd played before. I do know that it served as a major inspiration for many of the early narrativist story-games that came out of The Forge era of the early aughts (such as My Life With Master, Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, or Prime Time Adventures.)
That said, it is a 30-year-old game, and it shows its age in many ways. Its mechanical/spiritual successor LoGAS has incorporated a few more modern story-game elements but remains more-or-less true to the original (stripped of the Zelazny IP, of course). It's not a great intro to narrative-focused RPGs these days: There are many other games that I think do a better job, even if many of those share a good amount of DNA with ADRPG.
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I don't think the talk about sub-optimal and trap options was proceeding from a place of "putting down" PF1. My personal reference to it was coming from a place of my experience with the system. There were a lot of posts on these forums, and a lot of late night conversations between the players at my table where one player was explaining to another why they should have avoided the "trap option" that made that player mechanically inferior to other members in the party.
The "Trap Option"/Sub-optimal builds narrative has been a part of the fandoms conversation about the game since the 3.X days.
It's easy to see optimized and unoptimized as two different tiers of play and place the onus of adjusting to meet that onto the GM, but how do you scale the threat level of the adventure when you have players from both of those constituencies at your table? What is balanced for the optimizer could be deadly for the bog standard player, and what is balanced for the bog standard player could be a cake walk for the optimizer. The imbalance can make encounters very swingy
More to the point, presenting it as a binary choice between optimization or "entry level" play excludes a lot of players who don't care to chase down the best plusses but still engage heavily with the system options presented as the game grew to its full size.
I absolutely see your point that it isn't hard for you as a GM to create encounters that work for a mixed group. Other GM's have found it hard, there are threads in the PF1 forum that showcase that.
My point is that while PF1 requires extra effort from you to make an encounter that is balanced for two different types of players, PF2 keeps them in relative enough parity numerically that it should still by and large work out of the box.
No one in this thread was discussing all encounters being balanced against each other, nor did anyone advocate that all encounters should have the same difficulty.
In fact, in 21 years of 3.X iterative games, I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever even seen such a thing suggested.
What was being discussed here was each encounter being fairly balanced against the party so that you don’t have a case where a monster tooled to be a challenge against the most optimized player smokes the less optimized players because the players went after the wrong targets - or the case where the high HP challenge becomes a time sink for the entire party while the highly optimized player runs the table on the less robust monsters.
It isn’t an argument for consistent balance in all things, but an internal balance to each encounter to prevent it from being a swingy morass that frustrates anyone at the table.
Here is my question,
Why does anyone only want "perfectly balanced" encounters?
And by thism I mean, if CR 8 emcounters are considered perfectly balanced for a given player, why would they want all their encounters to be CR 8?
This is something that not only seems like a strange thing to want, but also is a source of a lot of problems.
Even when I play games like 4e (a minitures combat tactics game in my opinion) or Mechwarrior Dark Age (unquestionably a minitures combat game), I still would prefer a variety of encounters (various tactics, forms, and difficulties) to test any given "build" against.
So why do so many talk about game balance as though it must be this way? I mean, even if you prefer it this way, doesn't mean it has to be this way, but nearly everyone talks about it as though there is something fundamentally wrong with a variety of difficulties, and it just makes no sense. Why?
Folks are missing the main complaint about balance in 3E. Its not the encounter balance at issue, its the intra-party balance that folks dislike. The prime example is being Hoover's example above of the DPR monster optimizer in the same party as mr. pass as human with only 12s for stats. The gap between these players could fit the grand canyon and its an issue, for many, but obviously not all. Any encounter challenge thats going to push DPR monster is going to be suicide for mr pass as human. On the flip side, the GM now as to add social encounters to make the game interesting for mr pass as human that will put DPR monster to sleep.
Some will argue, "well thats just the spotlight moving around and everybody gets turn." That can be an issue as well if the GM is inexperienced or not very good. Also, some folks prefer that there are no parts of the game that the entire party cant at least participate in.
One response was the design decisions of 4E and PF2. Thats to narrow the gap so greatly that encounter balance is tight and works out the book for even the first timer GM. A lot of the social and exploration encounter pillars were left to the table and GM to make up. The argument against this is that obviously some folks like social and exploration options for their characters. Leaving it out gives the impression these things are not important to the game. Lastly, and also importantly, that combat is totally expected and is not a state to avoid or to manipulate. You need to be careful about punching above your weight because the encounters are designed to be challenging in a narrow band. This is the point folks in this thread are really sensitive too (myself included).
Now I believe the best choice is to separate combat, utility, and social character ability choices. These things should not compete for the same resource. I think a good background system can help in the social and exploration field. Either way, there needs to be attention paid to keeping them open to all characters and classes. They need to be different to remain interesting, but everyone should still have options. 5E only head fake nods in the direction of out of combat stuff. Thats enough for some folks. PF2 acknowledges the three pillars better, but still makes players choose among options for all three with the same resource. So, here we are again.
*Note; im not completely endorsing the arguments of CaW and CaS, I just think the distinction and the discussion that have sprouted from the points is a great way to understand the difference in edition balance style and player preference.*
The optimization-or-not question in OGL/3.x games really revolves around combat: the optimizers build killing machines, while the non-optimizers barely make a dent in combat situations.
As I stated upthread, these days, I find combat to be the least interesting part of RPGs—at least for me. Consequently, I'm mostly playing RPGs that de-emphasize combat in one way or another.
Another aspect of OGL/3.x gaming that I've never been a huge fan of is the character-building mini-game. Even while I was primarily playing Pathfinder, I found character creation in Pathfinder to be just incredibly tedious and not very much fun at all. I ended up running more-or-less stock characters using options from a small set of sources. And the only way I can get through PF1 character creation at all is to use a paid character-building application, like HeroLab: If I have to do it by hand, I lose interest and get frustrated very quickly.
I'll take a game where character creation is answering a few questions and picking from a handful of options, all of which are fully explained on the character sheet. 5 minutes, and you're ready to play.
Again: I'm not saying that enjoying tactical simulation combat or the character-building mini-game is bad. I am saying they're not to my taste.
And since these aspects are considered the biggest draws of Pathfinder, you can probably see why I've mostly moved to other RPGs.
It's not necessarily just a combat optimization problem - it seems that way mostly because so much of the focus of the game is on combat, but an optimized character can often also dominate social and exploration stuff as well. DPR martials struggle to do anything outside of combat, but properly built casters can handle everything well.
It's not a matter of some being optimized for combat and others optimized for other things, but of some being well built and others not.
Taking 12s for all your stats means you're not going to be good at anything. Pass for human might let you get the focus if you're in a party full of monsters who can't, but if the rest of the party is human then it just lets you tag along without drawing attention.
It's easy to forget how versatile casters are. Early on they dont have the spell selection, or ability to scroll/wand, so they need to decide which pillar to focus on. Later though, they can dominate all of them which isn't something the other classes can do.
There is an expectation from some players that not optimizing equals "playing the game wrong" which can create a swingy and often frustrating game. Either the optimizer is frustrated that the rest of the party is "building bad" or the non optimizer is frustrated with being told they "built bad."
Your mileage may vary on how much of this happened at each of your tables, but at mine it was a constant push and pull between two opposing mindsets. The truth floating just out of reach of both sides was that a.) not all optimized characters are superior in play and b.) not all non-optimized characters are useless.
I can specifically tell you that I had a fellow player who constantly explained why my Musketeer Cavalier was a sub-optimal build and that my feat choices were hindering the entire party. When combat started however, the Barbarian Dwarf and my Musketeer did the lions share of the damage while the optimized caster did very little. He played the character building game and optimized a sheet, I never engaged with the "find the best plus" portion of character building - I just took feats that felt right for my character.
That disparity between those two states, I feel, is lessened in PF2 because the options are there for the optimizer to hunt for - but the optimization bonuses are narrow enough that an optimized character doesn't eclipse someone who doesn't engage with optimizing.
Yes it feels like that is by dint of less options - but I think that's just perception at this point based on the total wealth of options PF1 ended with vs the number of options Pf2 started with. PF2 will eventually be just as full of choices, it just remains to be seen if those choices will have the same effect as it did on PF1 where it creates a huge gulf between a multi book built character and a core book built character.
PS: I don't think martial players will ever forget how versatile casters were in PF1
Yes it feels like that is by dint of less options - but I think that's just perception at this point based on the total wealth of options PF1 ended with vs the number of options Pf2 started with. PF2 will eventually be just as full of choices, it just remains to be seen if those choices will have the same effect as it did on PF1 where it creates a huge gulf between a multi book built character and a core book built character.PS: I don't think martial players will ever forget how versatile casters were in PF1
Amount of options is part of it, though classes do feel like choose a path at level 1 and never look back. I find the free archetype option is huge in making PF2 less suffocating.