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The reason why I like that most magical effects are spells, is that it makes it easier to talk about them in the rules. Focus powers being spells means that they act like spells and magic most often interacts with the word through spells and items. For me it makes things feel a little more narratively consistent.
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Barbarians are magical In big flashy ways this edition and it's great
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Barbarians are magical In big flashy ways this edition and it's great
"Gah! That makes me so angry that I could turn into a dragon!"
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"I see you don't have a bow, I will just fly out of your reach. Bwahahaha!"
*Fighter/Monk/Barbarian jumps 50 feet in the air and powerslams you into the ground. Then lands on their feet taking no damage*
In 3.x I let players play level-appropriate dragons, so getting minor dragon ability flavoured buffs as a Barbarian just feels meh to me. Let the Barbarian get his freak on and become an abomination from beyond our reality with tentacle attacks and the ability to make enemies (and maybe his own party) the kind of insane that it takes a quest to fully fix. Fantasy needs to have room to do more than play a Final Fantasy 1 party and save the kingdom and PF2e literally can't support this.
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In 3.x I let players play level-appropriate dragons, so getting minor dragon ability flavoured buffs as a Barbarian just feels meh to me. Let the Barbarian get his freak on and become an abomination from beyond our reality with tentacle attacks and the ability to make enemies (and maybe his own party) the kind of insane that it takes a quest to fully fix. Fantasy needs to have room to do more than play a Final Fantasy 1 party and save the kingdom and PF2e literally can't support this.
You could do that in PF2 just as easily. Monsters and PCs are close enough in power level in PF2 that a player who just wants to be a dragon for a little while can absolutely play a dragon monster at the appropriate level and it is not going to wreck the game.
PF2 scales to over the top/ super power fantasy highs, it just happens as you level up. You might be more interested in modules or the New AP that just start at higher level. The Player vs Player stuff is also something you can do with PF2. The lead developer of PF2 has a battle arena live stream that they do with a friend, and I think you could even have a party of a primary PC and several NPC monsters that 1 person could run and not overwhelm themselves if you wanted to do more of that. Homebrewing content and adventures for PF2 is much, much easier than it was in PF1. The formulas to balance things are much cleaner and less involved, so you can throw content together on the fly very easily.
Maybe you don't like the system, but it is very, very mod-able.
You could do that in PF2 just as easily. Monsters and PCs are close enough in power level in PF2 that a player who just wants to be a dragon for a little while can absolutely play a dragon monster at the appropriate level and it is not going to wreck the game.
How would that character level? Does it even have feats that it is allowed to take?
PF2 scales to over the top/ super power fantasy highs, it just happens as you level up.
It really doesn't, not like the old system did anyway. I liked that 3.x/PF1e could represent anything from playing a commoner to creating Pun-Pun and the Omnicifier. PF2e literally doesn't have that kind of range and I'm not convinced that what it gains in terms of party balance - if balance is an issue sit down and talk to your group if MtG nerds can do it for Commander you can do it for a game that will span months/years - and ease of encounter building - I can't argue this one - makes up for the design space the system gives up.
You might be more interested in modules or the New AP that just start at higher level.
It won't suit my needs I'm afraid. The first game I ever ran had a half-dragon in it, I've run gestalt one-shots, let players use content from the BoVD. In 3.x there were still barriers to making mechanically cools stuff, as there will be in any class-based system, but they were much further away than they are for PF2e. If I just wanted tight tactical combat with a solid level of balance I have Gloomhaven for that and it does it with even less fuss than PF2e.
The Player vs Player stuff is also something you can do with PF2.
My evil parties were rarely ever set for open PvP combat, but they'd certainly leave a character for dead or fail to help somebody in a fight that went wrong. Given how much teamwork PF2e requires I feel like as the DM I'd need to really pull my punches to let that kind of dysfunctional group fight anything even near their level. With 3.x/PF1e I could just design an encounter around one party member's strengths and let them gloat for a while before taking them down a peg with an encounter that makes them feel weak while elevating another PC. Given that a well-made PC can solo mid-level encounters in the old system this gave me an out to needing a team to work like a well-oiled machine.
Homebrewing content and adventures for PF2 is much, much easier than it was in PF1. The formulas to balance things are much cleaner and less involved, so you can throw content together on the fly very easily.
I never had an issue prepping on the fly for 3.x. I knew what my players liked to play, read their sheets, and ran fun hack and slash location style sessions for a bunch of people who were as interested in having a mechanically unique character as they were in RP.
Maybe you don't like the system, but it is very, very mod-able.
But it will never let a player character permanently steal skills and feats from captured NPCs because they ate the captive's brain and it can never do that because even an extra +1 to a skill over what's expected breaks PF2e's math.
EDIT: Let me be clear, I want to like PF2e, I was excited when I read the rules and think the 3-action system makes a lot of sense. I like that it made skills in combat useful and gave martial characters a battlefield roll aside from dealing damage. I just don't like the constraints and the system's desire to keep the math at exactly 50/50 from level to level. I'd like to let characters feel more and more epic as they level, not say, "This rock face is a level 7 complex obstacle, you couldn't have cleared this even just a few short levels ago." That just feels lame to me.
Describing a rock face as a level 7 complex obstacle does sound really boring. Describing the difference in climbing up a loose scree slope on a sunny day though vs the difference in trying to climb a frozen ice sheet crumbling in the wind also requires some mechanical language if you want it to be different in the game, but that mechanical language is for making sense of the mechanics, not the story.
Also boosting your Players abilities is super easy in PF2. Give them additional treasure or feats as a reward. Give them the free archetype variant or even the dual class variant option. Give them an extra free level against the difficulty of the adventure that you are using or creating. All of these options take minutes of your time and give players tons of extra options and opportunities to feel super powered.
You could do that in PF2 just as easily. Monsters and PCs are close enough in power level in PF2 that a player who just wants to be a dragon for a little while can absolutely play a dragon monster at the appropriate level and it is not going to wreck the game.How would that character level? Does it even have feats that it is allowed to take?
Step 1: Pick creature and class. Note the level of the creature.
Step 2: Give creature any automatic abilities and proficiencies granted by the class. If necessary, recalculate statistics based on this, but you can just go with what you have. The creature does not gain any feats granted by the class of any type.Step 3: When creature gains enough XP to level, they level as a normal member of that class, gaining access to feats and abilities as normal for a creature of its new level. They still do not retroactively gain the lower level feats normally granted to a class; they only gain the new feats from their new level on up. This may mean they need to select a lower level feat in order to pick up a feat that they by level would qualify for.
I wouldn't call this process balanced, but it doesn't seem like that's a priority for you, so it should work well enough.
Like this point here:
But it will never let a player character permanently steal skills and feats from captured NPCs because they ate the captive's brain and it can never do that because even an extra +1 to a skill over what's expected breaks PF2e's math.
If balance doesn't matter, why worry about breaking the game's math? Another way of doing this is to find a treasure item or feat that gives the bonus you'd like, and give it to the player as a slotless treasure item or bonus feat.
Describing a rock face as a level 7 complex obstacle does sound really boring. Describing the difference in climbing up a loose scree slope on a sunny day though vs the difference in trying to climb a frozen ice sheet crumbling in the wind also requires some mechanical language if you want it to be different in the game, but that mechanical language is for making sense of the mechanics, not the story.
Or the mage casts fly on the party or somebody has a climb speed. It can be fun to present players with a big intimidating description and then have them use their spells and class features to trivialize it without so much as a skill check. That feels way more like a progression than just being able to climb more difficult mountains at each level.
One thing, I liked about 3.x is that it gave the PCs access to their version of the traditional FF airship. At a certain point trudging through forests and fighting random monsters loses its charm and you'd like to be able to go where you please or rush right to the threat and progress the story. I don't know why PF2e is designed around never doing this.
Also boosting your Players abilities is super easy in PF2. Give them additional treasure or feats as a reward. Give them the free archetype variant or even the dual class variant option. Give them an extra free level against the difficulty of the adventure that you are using or creating. All of these options take minutes of your time and give players tons of extra options and opportunities to feel super powered.
That's just no as cool as letting them build some crazy templated monstrosity and see if they've found a neat corner-case where they've exploited the LA system to build something more powerful than they should have access to. Like our large-sized skeletal dwarf with a reach weapon who liked to wade under the surface of ponds and rivers and pull enemies under. Or our literal dragon PC who decided to short circuit the entire published adventure by using his fly speed to warning the king of impending danger so they could raise an army to face the threat. Or our Marshall who used much of his starting wealth to hire a several hundred man mercenary bands with details down to the number of cooks and remounts for the cavaliers.
PF2e was designed with the idea that these builds are undesirable.
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It sounds like most of your enjoyment of 3.5 was taking options that were never meant to be for players and giving them to your players anyways... in which case, yeah, PF2 probably isn't for you. Don't think that's a bad thing personally.
Step 1: Pick creature and class. Note the level of the creature.
Step 2: Give creature any automatic abilities and proficiencies granted by the class. If necessary, recalculate statistics based on this, but you can just go with what you have. The creature does not gain any feats granted by the class of any type.
Step 3: When creature gains enough XP to level, they level as a normal member of that class, gaining access to feats and abilities as normal for a creature of its new level. They still do not retroactively gain the lower level feats normally granted to a class; they only gain the new feats from their new level on up. This may mean they need to select a lower level feat in order to pick up a feat that they by level would qualify for.I wouldn't call this process balanced, but it doesn't seem like that's a priority for you, so it should work well enough.
Why shouldn't a dragon just become better at being a dragon as they level, which was possible in 3.x, rather than needing to advance as a PC class? Like RAR I'm a dragon, now watch me take these class feats and fight like a subpar fighter just isn't fun.
If balance doesn't matter, why worry about breaking the game's math? Another way of doing this is to find a treasure item or feat that gives the bonus you'd like, and give it to the player as a slotless treasure item or bonus feat.
I want the players to have agency in how they interact with the game and not need to offer them handouts to realize their goals. 3.x let a player's build blossom naturally over time getting better and better at what it does and sometimes (or always in the case of full casters) let them just completely overcome an obstacle with those skills. That never happens in PF2e, no spell lasts long enough and no skill can rank high enough to manage that. I dislike this type of design.
It sounds like most of your enjoyment of 3.5 was taking options that were never meant to be for players and giving them to your players anyways... in which case, yeah, PF2 probably isn't for you. Don't think that's a bad thing personally.
I'm pretty sure that Savage Species, the book that let players play as monsters, was specifically for player characters. The same thing goes for any template that had a Level Adjustment which specifically told you how many character levels they were - very roughly - supposed to be worth.
Almost everything else they used came from the various books that came out for 3.x and were designed to be fair game for players. The most corner case would be the Book of Vile Darkness but even then it wasn't that it couldn't be used by PCs, it was just that a typical good adventuring party would never want to use anything from it.
I also don't see why limiting your design space for the sake of balance is desirable. The game has a DM, after all, and they can decide which bits to use and which they'd rather not see at their table. Paizo didn't need to decide that for me.
I want the players to have agency in how they interact with the game and not need to offer them handouts to realize their goals. 3.x let a player's build blossom naturally over time getting better and better at what it does and sometimes (or always in the case of full casters) let them just completely overcome an obstacle with those skills. That never happens in PF2e, no spell lasts long enough and no skill can rank high enough to manage that. I dislike this type of design.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, because you can absolutely do all that, so I assume I'm just not parsing your metaphor to what you actually mean. In any case, no, this doesn't sound like the game for you. Not for any particular mechanical reason, but because what you're looking for in a game is directly against the design of the game (specifically, that PCs are tightly defined, but NPCs are more loosely set in what they can do, since NPCs are innately simpler than PCs of the same level). As Archnofiend said, that's not a bad thing.
The savage species stuff wasn't possible in PF1 either. Notably, Level adjustment did not exist. Closest you could get was a Synthecist summoner, I suppose.
Can agree with the OP that this definitely feels like a gap in PF2's mechanics right now. Hopefully something that can be improved upon later.
I'm hoping Secrets of Magic has some cool, flavorful, flashy magical options for a lot of classes.
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It sounds like most of your enjoyment of 3.5 was taking options that were never meant to be for players and giving them to your players anyways... in which case, yeah, PF2 probably isn't for you. Don't think that's a bad thing personally.I'm pretty sure that Savage Species, the book that let players play as monsters, was specifically for player characters. The same thing goes for any template that had a Level Adjustment which specifically told you how many character levels they were - very roughly - supposed to be worth.
Almost everything else they used came from the various books that came out for 3.x and were designed to be fair game for players. The most corner case would be the Book of Vile Darkness but even then it wasn't that it couldn't be used by PCs, it was just that a typical good adventuring party would never want to use anything from it.
I also don't see why limiting your design space for the sake of balance is desirable. The game has a DM, after all, and they can decide which bits to use and which they'd rather not see at their table. Paizo didn't need to decide that for me.
It definitely sounds like this game isn't for you, as it's designed to place balance in a place of primacy. This is a good thing, but it's also clearly not something you want. That's fine. 3.x is still there, afterall.
I mean if you are breaking the rules to make characters in PF1, how is that any different than breaking the rules to make characters in PF2?
Nobody broke any rules at my table. They used the fun rules from 3.x books and, when it launched, we mixed them with features we liked from PF1 to make some really neat stuff. My players, and me as a DM, liked that everything I used against them followed the same rules they did even if it would take some work and negotiation to let them make a cool monster into a series of level progressions so they could play, for example, a displacer beast at the table.
You could do this is PF2, but there's no direct rules support for it.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, because you can absolutely do all that, so I assume I'm just not parsing your metaphor to what you actually mean. In any case, no, this doesn't sound like the game for you. Not for any particular mechanical reason, but because what you're looking for in a game is directly against the design of the game (specifically, that PCs are tightly defined, but NPCs are more loosely set in what they can do, since NPCs are innately simpler than PCs of the same level). As Archnofiend said, that's not a bad thing.
The savage species stuff wasn't possible in PF1 either. Notably, Level adjustment did not exist. Closest you could get was a Synthecist summoner, I suppose.
I never ran straight PF1, I always allowed 3.x material except in cases where that material was superseded by an updated PF1 class that was at least as good as the 3.x material. The two systems were so closely compatible that things rarely failed to combine smoothly and when things didn't fit we all agreed not to use them unless they could be rebuilt to work.
As for builds blossoming, PF2 characters never get to where they feel like they can reshape the world. Heck they barely reach the kinds of power that a mid-level 3.x character might have with things like all-day flight and permanent invisibility. Beyond that, I rather like some of the more absurd things that a high-level character in 3.x can do even if my group rarely played at those levels.
I even see on these boards that classes like Alchemist, Gunslinger, and Magus are having trouble being fully realized as the classes they were in PF1. Doesn't it make you worry about how much this system can accommodate when it has troubles with signature classes from the first edition?
It definitely sounds like this game isn't for you, as it's designed to place balance in a place of primacy. This is a good thing, but it's also clearly not something you want. That's fine. 3.x is still there, afterall.
*sigh* Yeah, it seems that way. I was hoping that PF2 would be like 3.x/PF1+ and it's basically a halfway point between 4th and 5th edition D&D with Paizo's lore on top. That's no terrible thing and I do like what the system does with actions and making martial classes feel cool with skill checks in combat... I just wish it excited me in play as much as it did when I was first reading the rules and seeing the 4 degrees of success system laid out in front of me.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, because you can absolutely do all that, so I assume I'm just not parsing your metaphor to what you actually mean. In any case, no, this doesn't sound like the game for you. Not for any particular mechanical reason, but because what you're looking for in a game is directly against the design of the game (specifically, that PCs are tightly defined, but NPCs are more loosely set in what they can do, since NPCs are innately simpler than PCs of the same level). As Archnofiend said, that's not a bad thing.
The savage species stuff wasn't possible in PF1 either. Notably, Level adjustment did not exist. Closest you could get was a Synthecist summoner, I suppose.
I never ran straight PF1, I always allowed 3.x material except in cases where that material was superseded by an updated PF1 class that was at least as good as the 3.x material. The two systems were so closely compatible that things rarely failed to combine smoothly and when things didn't fit we all agreed not to use them unless they could be rebuilt to work.
As for builds blossoming, PF2 characters never get to where they feel like they can reshape the world. Heck they barely reach the kinds of power that a mid-level 3.x character might have with things like all-day flight and permanent invisibility. Beyond that, I rather like some of the more absurd things that a high-level character in 3.x can do even if my group rarely played at those levels.
I even see on these boards that classes like Alchemist, Gunslinger, and Magus are having trouble being fully realized as the classes they were in PF1. Doesn't it make you worry about how much this system can accommodate when it has troubles with signature classes from the first edition?
...It definitely sounds like this game isn't for you, as it's designed to place balance in a place of primacy. This is a good thing, but it's also clearly not something you want. That's fine. 3.x is still there,
No. If I want a game of fantasy superheroes, PF1 and 3X is there waiting with ten years worth of books.
PF2 is a DM's edition. There to make DMing and running a game from 1 to 20 not such a task. It's focused on being balanced and challenging from 1 to 20.
If can accommodate anything, but it will be done in the PF2 way. Which means if they incorporate a half-demon or what not, it will likely be considered rare with DM's discretion and you will have to pay feats to get their special abilities like all day flight or spellcasting. As far as the PF1 classes, for all intents and purposes they look like their counterparts with more balanced mechanics, though there are a few ideas in the summoner I hope they adjust before release or I think it will be a very bad class.
The fact is the power up is gone. And or those of playing PF2, good riddance. This is a game where you will be challenged from 1 to 20. No rules to allow players to game the system and become Superman. Leave that to PF1 and 3E and superhero games.
No. If I want a game of fantasy superheroes, PF1 and 3X is there waiting with ten years worth of books.
PF2 is a DM's edition. There to make DMing and running a game from 1 to 20 not such a task. It's focused on being balanced and challenging from 1 to 20.
If can accommodate anything, but it will be done in the PF2 way. Which means if they incorporate a half-demon or what not, it will likely be considered rare with DM's discretion and you will have to pay feats to get their special abilities like all day flight or spellcasting. As far as the PF1 classes, for all intents and purposes they look like their counterparts with more balanced mechanics, though there are a few ideas in the summoner I hope they adjust before release or I think it will be a very bad class.
The fact is the power up is gone. And or those of playing PF2, good riddance. This is a game where you will be challenged from 1 to 20. No rules to allow players to game the system and become Superman. Leave that to PF1 and 3E and superhero games.
My take is that if I just wanted balance, ease of play, and mechanical challenge I can play a board game like Gloomhaven and mix in some extra RP between downtimes. Which is exactly what my group does with it.
What niche does PF2 have when there are tactical combat focused boardgames with tighter balance and similar world building on the market?
Is there only a single game allowed to be in that niche?
You don’t like PF2. Cool. A lot of us do. Also cool. Neither of our opinions invalidate the other’s.
Is there only a single game allowed to be in that niche?
You don’t like PF2. Cool. A lot of us do. Also cool. Neither of our opinions invalidate the other’s.
I don't want to dislike PF2 it's just that due to its flaws I like the idea of PF2 and playing with its systems in abstract more than I like the idea of actually playing it. Hence why I'll probably stick to adding to wishlist posts more than I will critiquing the game itself as we move forward.
I just wanted to set out clearly my thoughts on the system as I step into this forum so people can understand my frame of reference for adding to discussions.