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Now, look at my 4th level fighter in 5e. As a base fighter, he has two independent resources to manage: action surge (take a second action on his turn), and second wind (moderate self-heal as a bonus action, very strong at low levels but rapidly losing oomph at higher levels). In addition, I have chosen the Battlemaster subclass, which gives me a number of special moves I can do, usually retroactively (I hit, and then I decide if I want to use one). I have three of those, in my case: Disarming Attack (deal +d8 damage and target must make a save or drop their weapon), Maneuvering Attack (deal +d8 damage and one of my buddies get to move a bit, not provoking reactions when doing so), and Riposte (when someone misses me in melee, I can make a counter-attack and if I hit I deal +d8 damage). I can do these things a total of four times per short rest.
Are you serious? Did you look at the fighter options in PF2? You are really missing out, man. You can build some crazy characters in PF2 that will make your Battlemaster options feel pretty stale.
I'll give a few examples.
Champion:
1. Champion has Champion's Reaction. This allows him to defend an ally within the 15 foot range to block damage and apply some other effect. Champion can eventually use Champion's reaction as a Redeemer to shield the group from AoE attacks and do good damage to evil targets that strike his allies.
2. Champion has shield block which can build into quite a potent ability. He can build this up so he's able to block a very high amount of damage on a fairly often basis.
3. Champion's AC is the highest in the game and can be built to absolutely nutty levels from a PF2 perspective. I think we had a Champion's average lvl 20 AC to 49 without status bonuses.
4. Champion have a feat that makes it difficult terrain to move around them with their shield.
5. Champion's get lay on hands so they can heal.
6. They get a smite ability which does surprisingly great damage because of the way they did creatures. It's like a sneaky way to make them great at smiting.
7. They eventually get a winged form.
8. Champions and martials in general who build up charisma can use intimidate quite well.
This is a handful of what they do not including skill and ancestry feats which can add options. They can also build up their athletics so they can engage in maneuvers like the ones you listed above such as moving people or disarming. Our champion often charges into a room using the Shove action driving a path in, then allows everyone to follow in while they plant around the door covering our entrance with Champion's Reaction (He bought a second reaction to use this twice) while avoiding getting hit due to high AC.
Then there's the rogue. You can build a strength or dexterity based rogue.
1. Unmatched in skills. You are absolutely the best at skills in the game bar none.
2. Sneak attack pretty standard for these games.
3. You have feats to help you set up sneak attack very easily even without someone flanking.
4. Debilitations: This is where things get interesting. You can apply debilitations that help the group or help your damage or both. Surprisingly the strength-based rogue has interesting debilitations has more interesting damage boosting debilitations than the dex-based rogue for helping the group. They can rip a nice hole in their opponent applying a damage weakness to piercing, bludgeoning, and the like damage.
5. If you want to be Mr. Sneaky, you can buy a feat which makes you immune to magical detection, while at the same time buy a skill feat which makes it so you are sneaking all the time.
And have you investigated the Marshall Archetype? Adds a bit of warlord type of abilities in the game.
I get the feeling you haven't taken PF2 for a very deep test drive if you think Action Surge, Second Wind, and the Battlemaster abilities are awesome abilities. My buddy played a Battlemaster in 5E. He enjoyed it within the 5E paradigm, but he much prefers the option of doing things like Battlemaster all the time as a skill versus a finite ability that can only be used per short rest. Short Rest abilities for a skilled fighter don't really make sense.
PF2 is a very involved game. You really have to get a feel for how things work to see their value in time. Fighters have some really cool fear builds that do some good damage. They have some reach AoO builds. They have defensive builds. Archer builds. And you can mix and match these builds as needed.
It took our group a while after moving from 5E to PF2 to learn to build PF2 characters. PF2 is built with different ideas in mind of how a group should work. But the synergies can be really cool once you see how things work together.
There's a lot of synergistic play that makes you feel awesome as a character and a group. You have to read things carefully to see how they work together.
These things make me feel awesome in a fight. It lets me add that extra oomph just where I need it. That's generally not a thing martials do in PF2. They have lots of ability to adjust to the situation, but they don't have any particular reserves to call upon. And fighter feats tend to be on all the time, which means they are generally a bit meh, because you can't have awesome things all the time. Either meh things all the time, or awesome things some of the time. I prefer the latter.
Why would a limited weak ability make you feel awesome? Always on fighter feats show your fighter has learned a skill, not some artificially limited ability that isn't even very powerful within the 5E game. Fighters in PF2 are powerful against every other class in the game. Fighters in 5E are just ok. Action Surge is probably their best ability which some multiclass into just to do a 5E nova.
I played 5E. We allowed multiclassing. If you weren't some kind of paladin with a caster mix in my group, you were going to look like a gimp. Paladins were vastly superior to every other martial in the game in 5E that scaled far better than fighters. The ability to choose to smite after critting as well as smite's ability to syngergize with caster multiclassing made it a no brainer for power gaming.
Everyone stopped making fighters other than to multiclass for action surge after our first campaign in the game.
In PF2 people make whatever they want and feel like they can compete for the spotlight. In 5E you were either some kind of paladin or praying no one else in the group made some kind of multiclass paladin so your character didn't look pathetic. Or an archer. Archery was really good in 5E if you allowed feats. Overshadowingly powerful with a feat.
But that's just my character. For another example, look at bards. For one thing, Pathfinder bards don't have Vicious Mockery, which is just sad. I'd mock them for it, but that would be unfair of me. For another, look at their inspiration mechanics. The PF bard has Inspire Courage, which gives +1 to attacks, damage, and saves vs fear. In order to help your allies do other things than fight, you need to take the Inspire Competence feat, which is only available to a subset of bards, and it doesn't really let you do anything you couldn't have done without helping them in some other way. 5e, on the other hand, have Bardic Inspiration which lets the bard hand out bonus dice for later use. They can be used for whatever check you need, and most sub-classes also let you use them for other things.
Are you serious? Bards are sick and just get sicker.
Bards have Inspire Heroics and Harmonize which lets them mix and match offense and defense as needed for the fight.
Bards have dirge of doom which also synergizes with Harmonize for making enemies easier to kill.
Bards have true target and synesthesia as a combined casting ability which makes Vicious Mockery and the like look pretty sad.
I'm not even going to try to list all the different ways bards can be built. Bards are every bit as good and interesting as 5E.
Bards aren't my cup of tea. They weren't in 5E either. But you can build a very powerful, interesting, and unbelievable cool bard.
It's probably the best caster class in PF2 and at the very least the best support caster class in the game.
The sub-class system also lets you give out cool abilities earlier. A 5e monk can choose the Way of Shadow at 3rd level, and cast minor illusion as a cantrip, or darkvision, darkness, pass without trace, or silence for a few ki points. At 6th level, you get to teleport a short distance from shadow to shadow. In PF2, you can't even start becoming a Shadowdancer until 8th level, and that only gives you (greater) darkvision and a stealth bonus. You don't get any magic until 10th level, and that magic is IMO not as good as a 6th level 5e monk's. Because the 5e subclass is treated as a package, it can be balanced as a whole, instead of having each individual ability being a thing you can pick from a menu. So you have significantly fewer choices, but each choice has a BIG impact.
PF2 builds slower, but you are really underselling what PF2 characters can do.
Each choice in 5E has a big impact? I did not feel that impact. My group reached a point where our group consisted of the following:
1. Multiclass paladins for the smite and maybe up to 6th level for the charisma bonus to saves.
2. Archers with the ultimate archery feat.
3. Sorcerer multiclasses with eldritch blast.
If you weren't building around these concepts and someone else in your group was building around those concepts, you were going to feel like you weren't as good as that player.
5E is imbalanced. There are absolutely optimal choices that are far superior to other choices. This creates powergaming and feelings of inferiority within player groups as they are vastly overshadowed by another player making more optimal choices.
In PF2 that really hasn't happened. Every class is viable, though some more fun than others according to personal preference. Some people even like playing PF2 wizards as much as others complain about them.
But in 5E power is very unequally distributed. Power gamers can rip that game apart and my players did. They took the best options available showing clearly that certain classes are vastly superior to other classes.
You make it sound like the Battlemaster or Monk are good classes in 5E. In my experience, they were not, at least not with the base book. Not good at dealing damage. Not good at PvE compared to other classes. My players stopped playing them very quickly once they saw where the power was in 5E.
It's like they've been liberated from the previous paradigms of D&D in PF2. You can finally play any class you want and not feel like you gimped yourself. You can build a worthwhile, fun, and effective character using any class you want (save for perhaps the wizard is kind of boring).
Suffice it to say our experiences differ greatly. 5E seemed cool at the start, but man, give 5E to a group of optimizers and you see all its ugly warts. So far my optimizer players have literally not been able to break PF2 while still building fun, interesting, and effective characters using whatever class or mix they feel like.
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Yes I still play a lot of other game systems. Including wierd mix of things like Fate, ACKS, D&D5, PF1 and PF2. I prefer to GM and play PF2 but I'll play almost anything. It all depends on who wants to run what sort of game, and opinions in my local groups are wildy divergent.
Has anyone else, after playing Pathfinder 2E, gone back to older games, such as Pathfinder 1E, Starfinder, or D&D 3/4/5? If so, what was it like for you?
I've had my head buried in 2E for what seems like two years now, and a friend just invited me to join his Starfinder campaign. I played a lot of Starfinder when it first released (as evidenced by my many characters), but now I find I'm struggling to re-remember rules and having to re-read the combat chapter to get reoriented again. It all seems so clunky now that I'm looking at them from a eye-opened 2E perspective.
Though I'm sure my brain will snap back into place and I'll once again grasp the rules in short order, I don't think it's ever going to feel the same again. It's like driving a Maserati, then going back to a Toyota for a pleasure cruise. It's just not the same after "the Maserati experience."
Have an of you experienced anything similar?
About to. I've been running PF2e for a little over a year now and in the next few weeks we're playing a high level 3.5 game. I'm having a hard time getting excited about it.
Suffice it to say our experiences differ greatly. 5E seemed cool at the start, but man, give 5E to a group of optimizers and you see all its ugly warts. So far my optimizer players have literally not been able to break PF2 while still building fun, interesting, and effective characters using whatever class or mix they feel like.
Yep big balance problems.
So easy to get advantage in attack - and it is so strong.
Spamming the Shield spell works far too well.
Some classes have awesome bonus and even free actions and others just don't.
Saving throws and Armour class have scaling problems.
Then there are the stupid things like being able to run around enemies without an AoO
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[Bizarre ranting omitted.]Hmm... been thinking about it, and what I would love to see is a system with:
[Irrelevant parts omitted.]
• PF2's depth: While its heavily reliance on feat chains is one of the more troublesome things to have inherited from 3.5e/PF1, it does a wonderful job of making you feel like you're really good at one thing. It can really flesh a character out; two, e.g., archers will play significantly differently depending on which chain they choose (class feats, Archer archetype, Eldritch Archer archetype), and even if they take the same chain, there'll be noticeable differences depending on how deeply they go into it. PF2 may have trouble with characters that don't follow their class' & Lv.1 class option's core concept exactly, but it is extremely good at fleshing out characters that do adhere to those concepts.
Okay, first, why are you white-knighting, ranting, and railing against compliments to the system? That seems... kinda absurd; even for one of PF2's most ardent defenders, I can't see why you would want to defend the system against someone stating that part of its design is a strong point, in terms of developing character depth. (It's a weak point in terms of character width, admittedly, but that's mostly because it draws attention to flaws in other design choices, not because of the feat chains themselves. 3.5e/PF1-style standard chains are significantly worse for width than PF2's lax chains, if looking solely at the chains themselves and no other factors.)
Now, to respond more specifically...
Why do you say PF2 has feat chains?
Because it does. Something which you also acknowledge.
Feat chains are usually 2 feats with some additional optional feats you may not need. Many of the feats work with a variety of weapons, so no specialization required.
---
What's an example of a PF2 feat chain?
Gee, it's almost like I didn't mention three distinct chains in my post already. So, the three I mentioned were archer chains: Class feats, Archer archetype, and Eldritch Archer archetype. They're relatively well-designed, in that they're set up as collections of short chains with multiple entry points rather than the standard single chain with a single entry point, with Eldritch Archer's casting package being the longest standard chain out of them, and Multishot Stance being the longest archery-specific standard chain. This makes for better feat chain design than older versions, but does still present chains; the key difference is that PF2 chains don't like to be feat taxes, too.
---
You don't need strong feat chain investment in PF2. You can go a lot of different directions and do a few things well. Or just be a generalist easier than any other edition.
I didn't say you do, that was something you seem to have decided to assume I was thinking even though it wasn't stated or implied anywhere in my message. Rather, I explicitly stated that the way PF2's feat chains are designed is extremely good for developing character depth, because you can go as deeply into them as you want, and don't need to go all the way to the end of each chain just to keep up. The way they're designed allows you to differentiate characters by how deeply they go into their chosen chain(s)... a claim which you proceeded to first attack, then directly prove in your own message.
---
In conclusion, your message comes off as if you decided to construct a straw man of my message, and then attacked that straw man. It's really, really weird, and doesn't feel like it follows from what I said, at all.
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Suffice it to say our experiences differ greatly. 5E seemed cool at the start, but man, give 5E to a group of optimizers and you see all its ugly warts. So far my optimizer players have literally not been able to break PF2 while still building fun, interesting, and effective characters using whatever class or mix they feel like.Yep big balance problems.
So easy to get advantage in attack - and it is so strong.
Spamming the Shield spell works far too well.
Some classes have awesome bonus and even free actions and others just don't.
Saving throws and Armour class have scaling problems.
Then there are the stupid things like being able to run around enemies without an AoO
The last 5E game I played was one where one player made a dedicated paladin. He wanted to give the class a run. Then this other guy made a paladin wizard with a whip for reach. Another guy made a paladin/sorcerer/warlock with eldritch blast.
Dedicated paladin player felt terrible. Both the multiclass paladins could smite more often and for more damage than he could. They had incredible support casting. They had more ranged power than he did.
Given the high premium on mobility in 5E flying is extremely powerful and gives you a huge advantage over non-flying classes. That means casters are mostly king.
We found out the melee fighter or rogue was an absolutely terrible option for trying to attack mobile and flying monsters. Then with concentration you can only have fly on a few players. Which means the caster had to choose to fly himself or cast fly on the poor martial so they could attack the flying monster in 5E.
I was running a group through Out of the Abyss and I about threw that book into the garbage. They fought their first demon lord. Kited it around. It had no real casting ability to stop them. It was just a big, simple melee creatures with high stats. The group was set up for ranged attacks while mobile. They ripped it apart and it could barely do anything. They cast bless which is way too powerful in 5E. Then went to town with ranged attacks with some martial attacks. The martials were the only ones getting hit for damage and it they weren't even the ones doing the most damage.
I quit 5E that sessions. I said all done. I'm not playing a game where Demon Lords are built like gimps by designers who decided feats and multiclassing were optional because they utterly break the game in favor of the players. Dumped the campaign and DMing 5E right there. I'd still play 5E if someone wanted to run it as I don't care as a player an easy, fun enough game where I get to crush the enemy. As a DM if the game isn't a challenge unless I have to do a lot of extra work, I don't want to DM it any more.
PF1 and 3E burned me out on spending hours designing enemies hoping they can challenge insanely powered PCs that vastly outclass what they fight.
5E looks great when Matt Mercer and his band of merry voice actors is running it, none of them pushing the limits of optimization. But that's not my group.
Though I don't look at PF2 as perfect, I still consider it about one of the best games I've ever seen constructed for providing a DM and players enough of each of what they want to make it a very good game. PF1 and 3E is really skewed towards players. 5E is really skewed towards players, though not as a bad as 3E and PF1. PF2 is skewed towards DMs, but maybe like 55 DM/45 players. Whereas 3E and PF1 was like 90% players and maybe 10% DMs at its peak levels. 5E is like 75 to 80% players and 20 to 25% DM depending on what you do or do not allow.
I've been playing PF2 for must be over a year now through multiple campaigns with my group of optimizers doing their best to break the game. They haven't been able to do it. First time that has happened pretty much since maybe the Basic Edition of D&D. I am absolutely shocked by this. I keep thinking at some point the worm is going to turn and we're going to hit a point where the players start ripping everything apart in a trivial. Never happened.
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[Bizarre ranting omitted.]Hmm... been thinking about it, and what I would love to see is a system with:
[Irrelevant parts omitted.]
• PF2's depth: While its heavily reliance on feat chains is one of the more troublesome things to have inherited from 3.5e/PF1, it does a wonderful job of making you feel like you're really good at one thing. It can really flesh a character out; two, e.g., archers will play significantly differently depending on which chain they choose (class feats, Archer archetype, Eldritch Archer archetype), and even if they take the same chain, there'll be noticeable differences depending on how deeply they go into it. PF2 may have trouble with characters that don't follow their class' & Lv.1 class option's core concept exactly, but it is extremely good at fleshing out characters that do adhere to those concepts.
Okay, first, why are you white-knighting, ranting, and railing against compliments to the system? That seems... kinda absurd; even for one of PF2's most ardent defenders, I can't see why you would want to defend the system against someone stating that part of its design is a strong point, in terms of developing character depth. (It's a weak point in terms of character width, admittedly, but that's mostly because it draws attention to flaws in other design choices, not because of the feat chains themselves. 3.5e/PF1-style standard chains are significantly worse for width than PF2's lax chains, if looking solely at the chains themselves and no other factors.)
Now, to respond more specifically...
Why do you say PF2 has feat chains?Because it does. Something which you also acknowledge.
Feat chains are usually 2 feats with some additional optional feats you may not need. Many of the feats work with a variety of weapons, so no specialization required.---
What's an example of a PF2 feat chain?Gee, it's almost...
I reread your post. I don't see what you wrote as even applying to PF2. I don't know what point you were trying to make to be honest. You didn't address the insane problems of challenging players in PF1 and 5E due to inherent systemic issues that greatly favor players to the point of trivializing the game as you level.
I can only surmise that you are more of a player than a DM. From a DM standpoint, 5E and PF1/3E had issues that made it unplayable without an excess of work by a DM to make it challenging. Work that isn't fun to put in. PF2 does not have that problem.
The majority of critics seem to me to be players who don't like that they can't easily beat the challenges of the game any longer. That they in essences cannot pour over every book finding every optimal option and make DMing miserable.
As a person who DMs 80 to 90% of the time, I can't help but exclaim thank you to Paizo for getting rid of the god wizard, CODzilla, rocket tag, pre-buffing, the magic item christmas tree, and the like. I don't want it back.
PF2 is one of the easiest games to run and challenge players from 1 to 20. I don't think that is appreciated by anyone that doesn't DM quite often.
I don't know about D&D 5E but in my time lurking these forums there is a word that haven't been mentioned... yet: Munchkin.
And I can imagine a big comfy room with the head of Pun-Pun hanging on a wall and the Paizo staff having a toast to a job well done.
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I don't know about D&D 5E but in my time lurking these forums there is a word that haven't been mentioned... yet: Munchkin.
And I can imagine a big comfy room with the head of Pun-Pun hanging on a wall and the Paizo staff having a toast to a job well done.
I'd much rather a vast game with room for almost anything than one that could be played by rolling a d4 and assigning each number to mean one of the 4 degrees of success. Heck, that would be even more balanced than PF2 as they could remove pesky things like stats (they don't even let you roll for them anymore) and create a lot more room for freeform interaction where any class gets to feel good.
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I think that 2e isn't a bad fit for Timmy in absolute terms, if my buddy's Goblin Fighter/Assassin, Light Pick Build that adds deadly dice to his already fatal light picks is anything to go off of.
It even has the aspect of 'Timmy doesn't really care about trade offs, he just wants those epic moments, even if his win rate isn't actually that high' in the fact that he's getting that impressive sounding combo play that the system quietly balances to not be disruptive.
I think its just that 1e and 5e are kind of like Timmy on a bender, the broken combo isn't quietly balanced the way its supposed to be in MTG, its just ACTUALLY way the hell too powerful, which means there's no reason for Spike and Timmy not to be the same player, at the expense of them having conspired to murder Johnny in his sleep.
Although PF2e is probably still better for Spike because the tactical emphasis, over the pure unstoppable character building emphasis of 1e, will let him feel like he actually had to play well, he won't get bored after character creation as he executes his winning combo over and over.
I think that 2e isn't a bad fit for Timmy in absolute terms, if my buddy's Goblin Fighter/Assassin, Light Pick Build that adds deadly dice to his already fatal light picks is anything to go off of.
It even has the aspect of 'Timmy doesn't really care about trade offs, he just wants those epic moments, even if his win rate isn't actually that high' in the fact that he's getting that impressive sounding combo play that the system quietly balances to not be disruptive.
I think its just that 1e and 5e are kind of like Timmy on a bender, the broken combo isn't quietly balanced the way its supposed to be in MTG, its just ACTUALLY way the hell too powerful, which means there's no reason for Spike and Timmy not to be the same player, at the expense of them having conspired to murder Johnny in his sleep.
As something of a Johnny/Spike myself, PF1 also very much allowed for Johnny and Spike to be the same player too.
PF1 was really just a good Spike environment in general.
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I think that 2e isn't a bad fit for Timmy in absolute terms, if my buddy's Goblin Fighter/Assassin, Light Pick Build that adds deadly dice to his already fatal light picks is anything to go off of.
It even has the aspect of 'Timmy doesn't really care about trade offs, he just wants those epic moments, even if his win rate isn't actually that high' in the fact that he's getting that impressive sounding combo play that the system quietly balances to not be disruptive.
I think its just that 1e and 5e are kind of like Timmy on a bender, the broken combo isn't quietly balanced the way its supposed to be in MTG, its just ACTUALLY way the hell too powerful, which means there's no reason for Spike and Timmy not to be the same player, at the expense of them having conspired to murder Johnny in his sleep.
Although PF2e is probably still better for Spike because the tactical emphasis, over the pure unstoppable character building emphasis of 1e, will let him feel like he actually had to play well, he won't get bored after character creation as he executes his winning combo over and over.
I wish PF2 had the depth that MtG does. I could play MtG a few times a week and never be bored because it has something for everybody. Drafting, commander, cubes, plane chase, 1v1, 2-headed giant, multiplayer, casual, competitive, and every other format and deck building style it promotes. It also, much as PF1 and 3.x have, requires communication between players to get a good experience. A cEDH deck showing up in a pod of themed decks won't be much fun for anybody.
I favor this level of sprawling play space far more than I'll ever favor tight mechanical balance.
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Uuh Page 20 of the Core Rulebook says otherwise.
They have severely deprecated its role in the chargen process and it wouldn't be allowed in PFS play. So effectively it exists but is unsupported and unlikely to see support adopted in the future.
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What support would it need in the future? You have the rules, you can use them at your tables. That they can't be used in PFS play is counter to your whole set of arguments, as most of the stuff you praise PF1 on openness, also isn't allowed in PFS play.
PFS in PF1 allowed for a far larger range of options than PF2 even has currently.
Even accounting for the age of each system PF1 launched with more content than PF2. It also had a massive pool of stuff just waiting to be ported over to your home table. PF2 is working with a far smaller starting pool, releasing new content fairly slowly with a massive focus on APs, and has tight math that might not even let certain concepts work.
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Uuh Page 20 of the Core Rulebook says otherwise.They have severely deprecated its role in the chargen process and it wouldn't be allowed in PFS play. So effectively it exists but is unsupported and unlikely to see support adopted in the future.
Did...I miss when stat rolling was allowed in PFS at any point?
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Did...I miss when stat rolling was allowed in PFS at any point?Uuh Page 20 of the Core Rulebook says otherwise.They have severely deprecated its role in the chargen process and it wouldn't be allowed in PFS play. So effectively it exists but is unsupported and unlikely to see support adopted in the future.
Probably not, but there has been a distinct movement towards fixed values for stats since around the start of PF1 that I dislike. Rolling some number of d6s and taking your lot should be the way to make a character. It adds far more texture to a game rather than expecting every character to have one stat at max, another at near max, two or three other stats that get some focus, and a dump stat. If every maneuver based fighter starts with 18 strength, it doesn't leave a lot of room to have your character feel special.
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Every time rolling for stats comes up, there are always rules on how to mitigate crappy rolls. It makes me think that rolling ain't that great.
And geez, lots of long winded stuff here. Hard to keep up with. I will say that I would rather my character feels special on actual abilities than just numbers. Stats fade into the background pretty quickly for me.
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It's hard to say that a die roll is the best mechanic for stat generation, when as early as the very first DMG players were presented with as many as five different methods to choose from.
It's always been presented that you should use what works best for your table whether that be rolling, standard array, point buy, or ability boosts derived from the ABC's
A little tweak we made at our table was to add all the rolled results to a 'common pool' and then decide what numbers to pick.
This allows a sense of uniqueness in our characters while softening the possible unfairness of random results.
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This thread is about rolling stats now? Talk about going backwards!
That sounds like more of a lateral move.
D&D came out in the 70s and MtG didn't start until the early 90s. That's a considerable leap forward. ;P
Two different types of games. It's just a jump to the left.
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Two different types of games. It's just a jump to the left.
You'll note that I was saying that I wish PF2 had the same scope of gameplay as MtG. Not that it should copy the format and start releasing each new class as a deck of cards or something.
PF1/3.x, for all of its flaws, had something approaching that level of depth within its builds. It could lead to gross imbalance and headaches for the DM, but that should be solved by having a chat with your players to figure out some builds that fulfill character fantasies and work for that particular table.
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Two different types of games. It's just a jump to the left.You'll note that I was saying that I wish PF2 had the same scope of gameplay as MtG. Not that it should copy the format and start releasing each new class as a deck of cards or something.
PF1/3.x, for all of its flaws, had something approaching that level of depth within its builds. It could lead to gross imbalance and headaches for the DM, but that should be solved by having a chat with your players to figure out some builds that fulfill character fantasies and work for that particular table.
I was just taking the opportunity to be light hearted and post a joke about directional movement (backward, forward, laterally,) followed by a Rocky Horror joke.
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As a DM the PF2 design space for appearances is very wide. I can make the world look the way I want it to look and act in a much more controlled manner.
I can simulate scenes in a story easier in PF2 than I can in any other version of D&D I can recall. The level based math allows a DM to really manipulate the environment to get the effect you want for a battle or scene.
Everything still looks fantastical in PF2. You still have immense magical effects. You still have powerful warriors who can go toe to toe with a mythical monsters. You still have rogues that can climb up sheer walls to invade a cloud giant castle on top of a mountain. All this still exists.
The degree of control a DM has over the game to make a scene work as they want it to work is much more precise. In PF1, 3E, and 5E the player has an outsized degree of control in the default game to trivialize the challenges within the game world. There are systemic issues within each system that eventually become so slanted in the favor of the players to an excess. Yet these abilities are so intrinsic to the game that to modify them would be to create an entirely new game or set of house rules that makes the work put into DMing not worth the payoff.
But with PF2 you can set the scene up using monsters and challenges right out of the book and have it run without concern a player using a feat, spell, or ability that trivializes the game will destroy the scene ruining the game not only for the DM who put in all the work but for all the players that do not have access to the powerful abilities that particular player has chosen specifically to exploit the system to trivialize content.
That's why I believe PF2 is very much a DM's edition. It gives the DM a level of control over the game he has never had before. He can make the game very easy if he wants to simulate a mythical warrior cutting down hordes of enemies. Or he can ramp it up if he wants to put the players in a situation where they feel like they are fighting some unstoppable god being. Or anything along the spectrum.
PF2 is a really interesting game. I'm still not sure I have more fun playing it than I did 1E. But I do know I enjoy DMing it way more than any previous edition of D&D.
I also like some of the paradigm shifts. PF2 finally made the game playable without the following:
1. No dedicated magical healer or need for magical healing past a certain point. All you need is the medicine skill and a spot healer. Your group is good.
2. No need for any particular class role. No tanks needed. No casters needed. No martials needed. You can literally make any group composition you want and be successful. Anyone can make any class in any way they want and still contribute to victory. It may not be perfectly optimal, but who cares. You don't need optimal to succeed in PF2 and the difference between optimal and suboptimal is not very wide.
3. No magic item Christmas tree, while still making magic items worth having. The only magic items you should have now are magic armor and a magic weapon. Everything else is pretty optional.
The more I play it and let go of my preconceived notions of D&D, the more I find I can do with PF2.
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2. No need for any particular class role. No tanks needed. No casters needed. No martials needed. You can literally make any group composition you want and be successful. Anyone can make any class in any way they want and still contribute to victory. It may not be perfectly optimal, but who cares. You don't need optimal to succeed in PF2 and the difference between optimal and suboptimal is not very wide.
I agree with most of the rest, but this is something I really don't. PF2 is the game with the hardest base difficulty for monsters I've ever seen outside of purposefully grimdark/super gritty games, and I've seen plenty of nonoptimized parties getting completely shredded, even with the GM doing sensible encounters according to the book. Of course, the part that you said about difficulty being adaptable is true (and made easier by the encounter building rules... actually working), but I find this very wide difference in experiences kinda interesting.
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2. No need for any particular class role. No tanks needed. No casters needed. No martials needed. You can literally make any group composition you want and be successful. Anyone can make any class in any way they want and still contribute to victory. It may not be perfectly optimal, but who cares. You don't need optimal to succeed in PF2 and the difference between optimal and suboptimal is not very wide.I agree with most of the rest, but this is something I really don't. PF2 is the game with the hardest base difficulty for monsters I've ever seen outside of purposefully grimdark/super gritty games, and I've seen plenty of nonoptimized parties getting completely shredded, even with the GM doing sensible encounters according to the book. Of course, the part that you said about difficulty being adaptable is true (and made easier by the encounter building rules... actually working), but I find this very wide difference in experiences kinda interesting.
I'd say there's a difference between optimal build and optimal play. There is a small difference between optimal and suboptimal build. There is a gigantic difference between optimal and suboptimal play.
I'd say there's a difference between optimal build and optimal play. There is a small difference between optimal and suboptimal build. There is a gigantic difference between optimal and suboptimal play.
I'd have to disagree on "There is a small difference between optimal and suboptimal build." I've seen some pretty big gaps myself.
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A GMs edition? IDK, maybe for some. I have had a hell of a time not slaughtering the PCs and making them look like absolute chumps. Also, with +1/lvl the world makes little sense to me. I dont want to run in PF2 again without significant modifications to the ruleset and world assumptions.
A GMs edition? IDK, maybe for some. I have had a hell of a time not slaughtering the PCs and making them look like absolute chumps. Also, with +1/lvl the world makes little sense to me. I dont want to run in PF2 again without significant modifications to the ruleset and world assumptions.
If you don’t mind my asking - what is it about +1/lvl that you find yourself not clicking with?
I'd say there's a difference between optimal build and optimal play. There is a small difference between optimal and suboptimal build. There is a gigantic difference between optimal and suboptimal play.I'd have to disagree on "There is a small difference between optimal and suboptimal build." I've seen some pretty big gaps myself.
I suppose I have to clarify myself - numerically, there's a small difference.
However, you're definitely right that there can be a massive disparity in what the build is capable of. My resident questionable build-person, for example, currently is playing a level 9 martial weapon druid with 10 Cha who put Diplomacy to master immediately for the sake of Wild Empathy, prepping only utility spells (doesn't even have anything beyond a level 1 heal prepped), with a savage animal companion. Honestly, build is rough by any measure.
And though that may sound bad, it's actually helped save us from a surprising number of fights, and generally pulls its weight. Very narrow, especially with a Wit swashbuckler in the same party invalidating a lot of the Diplomacy investment, but it's been a lot more functional than internet opinion would normally have you think. Definitely think it's worse than it could be, but it's been doing decently well.
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A GMs edition? IDK, maybe for some. I have had a hell of a time not slaughtering the PCs and making them look like absolute chumps. Also, with +1/lvl the world makes little sense to me. I dont want to run in PF2 again without significant modifications to the ruleset and world assumptions.If you don’t mind my asking - what is it about +1/lvl that you find yourself not clicking with?
Its the level 10 being able to take on armies of level 1s. Trying to imagine level 20 beings in a world where thats true makes no sense to me how they co-exist. Thats the setting immersion part. I dont like the number treadmill part of it system from the game part. Bounded accuracy was the one thing 5E knocked out of the park. YMMV.