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My take is that there's a lot of pertinent information about the applicable resource economies that we (out here) simply do not know. Also, for the most part? It's not our resources. Getting all "rabble rabble rabble" about how they should totally do *this* thing because of back-of-the-envelope estimates that you've made based on vague guessing of how much things cost? That sounds more like an excuse to argue than about any sort of actual attempt to make things better.
Now, suggesting other ways of doing things isn't terrible, but it's worth bearing in mind that any estimates of cost that might go along with those suggestions are intensely speculative at best. We shouldn't be arguing "They should do this. Why don't they do this?" because we simply do not know enough to make those assessments, and that's not going to change. At best, we can suggest things like "oh, hey - if they do *this* then it might work better for these reasons".
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Like, I'll toss one out there. It might be worth trying to set up a final "unintended consequences" pass. Once you've basically got the thing balanced and built from the first playtest, toss it out there for people to look at just to see if they catch something that you didn't - like a point where the rules are super-unclear, or the issues with spellstrike provoking opportunity attacks, or whatever. It isn't running an entire new playtest, and it isn't looking to make any balance changes. It's just checking to see if there's something that you missed - the sort of thing that might otherwise get hit with an errata - Basically, crowdsource a final editing pass.
Now there's a downside to this. In particular, things like new classes are one of the most hotly anticipated parts of a book release, and Paizo wants to be careful about which bits of info they release when. Further, the internet has made it very, very hard to spot who's leaking things if there are leaks. So I'm not actually sure how to handle that without incurring *that* cost, but it strikes me as a potentially useful thing that could be done relatively cheaply if that particular issue could be managed one way or another, and therefore worth at least a bit of consideration.
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One interesting thing I was watching a video on recently, is the fact that people tend to accept that something is true the more often it is repeated-- essentially the feeling of recognition can become the feeling of credibility.
They've done studies where information people either aren't sure is true, or know is false, is repeated across a couple of days-- and all kinds of information, including both the information the people knew wasn't true, and the information that they aren't sure is true, became accepted as true more easily through repeated exposure.
One knock on effect is that if someone has a strongly held belief, say about a given class being over or under powered, and they repeat it, people are going to start believing it, even if the evidence wasn't sufficient to convince them when they first heard it and hasn't actually increased in the intervening time, it can serve to manufacture support and consensus where none exists.
Which in turn can lead to people sort of compromising with it that something must be done, because well, people believe it. They start looking for explanations to try and reconcile it "this isn't really true, but I mean, maybe if you look at it from this angle we can see why people think that..."
Watching the perception of class balance in this game change over time has been really interesting.
I believe more open playtests wouldn't help that much, honestly.
Most of us aren't analysts, most of us don't even bother with spreadsheets, compiling data or anything the devs would possibly need to actually tune things.
We are a community an as such we are good at catching if something feels good or feels bad, if we collectively find something fun or not. I think this is what they are mainly looking for and I don't think more playtests would them help that much in knowing how we feel about a bunch of rules and numbers.
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Yes, is more about feeling than analysis.
When the complains about magus AoO begins the people aren't considering the AoO monsters rate. This came after.
When the complains about witch begins the people wasn't considering it compared to other classes this came after some players noticed that they characters aren't performing well.
When the complains about alchemist (I know alchemist is a special case due it be a CRB class) they aren't considering MAD and the lack of weapon mastery and greater weapon specialization. They simply noted that the class aren't performing well.
Only after that other players appear analyzing the why and others (usually powerplayers) that already avoided the class due they noticed since the beginning these flaws begins to talk about it.
When I suggest in add more playtest phases is to give these people more chances to say "hey, designer! This class still have some mechanics that are breaking the fun, please can you review this?".
And when I suggested this I know this may interfere in time and even the cost of new books but as classes are so central part for any D20 system taking some more careful are always a good thing.
Yet even if this suggestion not being complied by Paizo I know and expect that new classes will probably better than first APG ones not only because there's less classes per book but also due the designer have gathered more experience due what was good accepted and what was not so good at same time that us players that attend the forums are more experienced with the playtests that came before and their results to give better feedbacks to the designers.
For example. During the Dark Archive playtests many players including myself responded the test pointing the psychic's flaws and at same time considering the results of design choices was made for older classes like witch (many time I warned that the psychic need better cantrips and amps but that also important to take care to avoid to do what was done to the witch hexes due the complains that the changes wasn't compensate the nerfs).
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One interesting thing I was watching a video on recently, is the fact that people tend to accept that something is true the more often it is repeated-- essentially the feeling of recognition can become the feeling of credibility.
They've done studies where information people either aren't sure is true, or know is false, is repeated across a couple of days-- and all kinds of information, including both the information the people knew wasn't true, and the information that they aren't sure is true, became accepted as true more easily through repeated exposure.
One knock on effect is that if someone has a strongly held belief, say about a given class being over or under powered, and they repeat it, people are going to start believing it, even if the evidence wasn't sufficient to convince them when they first heard it and hasn't actually increased in the intervening time, it can serve to manufacture support and consensus where none exists.
Shouldn't that also be the case about people claiming a class is fine and needs no changes then? Or maybe we could leave the ambiguous pop psychology that completely dismisses the validity of the opinions of those we disagree with out of the discussion unless it has specific relevance?
I've seen plenty of posts, usually from the same people, about how the Alchemist is fine and needs (or needed, before it got Errata'd) no changes, but I've also seen plenty of posts from entirely new players asking for Alchemist advice because they hate it.
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Witch and alchemist are the only things I think need a second pass. If the price of being a versatile support is also being a wet noodle.....I think the alchemist should have been more narrow and less supporty. For the witch...I just don't think the familiar and hex cantrips currently pull the weight of a fourth spell slot.
One interesting thing I was watching a video on recently, is the fact that people tend to accept that something is true the more often it is repeated-- essentially the feeling of recognition can become the feeling of credibility.
They've done studies where information people either aren't sure is true, or know is false, is repeated across a couple of days-- and all kinds of information, including both the information the people knew wasn't true, and the information that they aren't sure is true, became accepted as true more easily through repeated exposure.
One knock on effect is that if someone has a strongly held belief, say about a given class being over or under powered, and they repeat it, people are going to start believing it, even if the evidence wasn't sufficient to convince them when they first heard it and hasn't actually increased in the intervening time, it can serve to manufacture support and consensus where none exists.
Shouldn't that also be the case about people claiming a class is fine and needs no changes then? Or maybe we could leave the ambiguous pop psychology that completely dismisses the validity of the opinions of those we disagree with out of the discussion unless it has specific relevance?
I've seen plenty of posts, usually from the same people, about how the Alchemist is fine and needs (or needed, before it got Errata'd) no changes, but I've also seen plenty of posts from entirely new players asking for Alchemist advice because they hate it.
I think he/she is talking about the parallel discussion that James Case commented. Is unrelated to the topic.
I don't think more playtests are needed. Generally the solution to getting good results/feedback is derived by the quality and application of a test.
I think the process could be enhanced, and that can definitely be done without much additional work (especially if you say, outsource running a playtest event to another party with preset adventures for consistent results across defined levels).
As for the statements on errata, once paizo starts leaning into digital distribution a little more, I think errata will start to breath a lot better. Being shackled to print devalues books when errata consistently makes previous versions less appetizing.
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I don't disagree that errata needs more love but as I said earlier the errada have limit of what that can do. They can fix edge cases and even do minor balances but if something needs a chassis change this will be too much for errata.
But IMO some cases like alchemists, magus and even witch could be done by errata because they are already can be workarounded by homebrew rules (alchemists becomes way better just adding same weapon progression of investigator, magus fixes ignoring AoO triggers during spellstrike and witch can be improved adding 1 more spellslot per level).
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So, what's stopping folks from house ruling the changes themselves?
*Ding ding ding* And we have a winner!
The Devs try hard to keep the game balanced, because once the Power Creep Genie is out of its bottle, it won't get back inside ever.
Fighters set the Gold Standard for, you guessed it, fighting, and no class that gets to do anything in addition to fighting gets to get to fight as well as that guy. Get over it.
But if there are things that make things 'unfun' for you, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: 'Which niche is this rule protecting?'
If you have that figured out, the next question is: 'Is this particular niche represented at our table?'
If, for example, you have a Fighter and Magus in the same party, do not let the Magus Spellstrike without provoking. If, on the other hand, the Magus is the chief martial in the party, no toes are being stepped on when you handwave AoOs for Spellstriking away.
So instead of complaining about a class having certain limitations, ask yourself what these limitations are meant to protect. If the thing supposed to be protected is absent from your table, houserule away.
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Not speaking for other people, but I personally have the mentality that homebrewing changes, or even just using alternate rules, is like putting in cheat codes or lowering difficulty in a video game. Both of those are fine to some people, if they enjoy that style of play then more power to them. I feel that homebrewing class buffs cheapens victories, myself. Not to mention things like PFS or bringing your character to another friends game.
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I don't think we need more playtests, I think we need Paizo to take the errata process a lot more seriously as a platform to make changes that support the overall health of this game. Granted, I think the reason they don't do this has a lot to do with their kind of behind the times business model. We live in a digital age where digital is the primary form of interaction with the game even at the physical table and yet their entire business is still built around physical products. They bind errata to reprints and they limit the scale of their changes because they don't consider books as living products that contribute to the game's overall ecosystem. Luckily they seem to have noticed at least a little bit that they've fallen behind or they wouldn't have started making premium modules for Foundry with fully remade maps (since they create their PDFs with the assumption that they'll be used only by GMs who reference them to draw onto a battlemap and not with the assumption that they'll be used as backgrounds for VTT), but I'm still hoping they recognize that that isn't far enough yet. That they should take a holistic approach to supporting their products and consider all of the game's content to be important instead of simply abandoning it. Yes there's no immediate financial return for doing that, but the health of a game is important to its perception and bringing new people in to buy those products is itself a way to make money. Every MMO ever can attest to that. And the fact that every rule and character option is freely available online means that visibility and use for all of it is pretty high, making it even more important for all of that content to be well-maintained.
This might happen once brick and mortar sales become significantly smaller than digital sales. We do not have the numbers, but I am not sure we're close to it.
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To be fair, I buy the books as a formality at this point.
I'd happily spend book prices for a PDF, foundry integration, and a digital asset pack combined as the standard if it was as easy to consume the PDF virtually as it is to consume a book physically.
But would require digital getting the priority in terms of the document design, which is probably not viable until that threshold is at least close.
One interesting thing I was watching a video on recently, is the fact that people tend to accept that something is true the more often it is repeated-- essentially the feeling of recognition can become the feeling of credibility.
They've done studies where information people either aren't sure is true, or know is false, is repeated across a couple of days-- and all kinds of information, including both the information the people knew wasn't true, and the information that they aren't sure is true, became accepted as true more easily through repeated exposure.
One knock on effect is that if someone has a strongly held belief, say about a given class being over or under powered, and they repeat it, people are going to start believing it, even if the evidence wasn't sufficient to convince them when they first heard it and hasn't actually increased in the intervening time, it can serve to manufacture support and consensus where none exists.
Shouldn't that also be the case about people claiming a class is fine and needs no changes then? Or maybe we could leave the ambiguous pop psychology that completely dismisses the validity of the opinions of those we disagree with out of the discussion unless it has specific relevance?
I've seen plenty of posts, usually from the same people, about how the Alchemist is fine and needs (or needed, before it got Errata'd) no changes, but I've also seen plenty of posts from entirely new players asking for Alchemist advice because they hate it.
It could be, in theory, but the momentum of the evidence largely goes in the other direction, the substance matters more than the structure-- in other words, you can figure it out based on the presentation of actual evidence, rather than simply accepting the idea that the trope can mirrored uncritically.
I don't get invested in other people's levels of personal validation in the context of debates like this-- if the best you can say for your opinion is that literally no one can force you not to have it, that isn't worth a lot to me, so that part of your post is kind of orthogonal to the discussion of whether there's a problem and whether additional playtests can fix it. Its not about the person who holds the view and their right to hold it, its about the Validity and Soundness of their arguments, as supporting the truth of the arguments they're trying to advance.
Alchemists probably did, and probably still do need some help (even after the errata), and there IS an illusory truth element to the 'you just don't understand the Alchemist' mindset, it largely followed the same patterns that 5e Ranger discussions did, where adherents mostly used it as a proxy for pushing back on power gaming mindsets and claimed some nebulous roleplaying benefit while claiming that their own experiences with the Alchemist were fantastic, essentially most of their substance was redirection and an appeal to a kind of intangible effectiveness that can only exist in some games (the 'right' kind of games) and if it reflected anything real, was probably the low char op level of the rest of their parties. You can math the alchemist to identify its problems, and any 'real play' mitigation of that math, should be identifiable, like "here's how you use it" and then we can quantify that.
Compare to something like Martial vs. Caster discussion, where it was a massive back and forth with very little math, a lot of falling back on personal feelings tainted by other games, dismissing major sources of effectiveness that have been mathematically demonstrated as valid, and a lot of being debunked and then circling back around a few pages of discussion later. You have a lot of "X beats Y by a couple of points so Y doesn't deserve to exist" in class balance discussions as well, even when that effectiveness difference isn't situationally 'even' in ways that benefit Y.
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So, what's stopping folks from house ruling the changes themselves?*Ding ding ding* And we have a winner!
The Devs try hard to keep the game balanced, because once the Power Creep Genie is out of its bottle, it won't get back inside ever.
Fighters set the Gold Standard for, you guessed it, fighting, and no class that gets to do anything in addition to fighting gets to get to fight as well as that guy. Get over it.
But if there are things that make things 'unfun' for you, the first thing you need to ask yourself is: 'Which niche is this rule protecting?'
If you have that figured out, the next question is: 'Is this particular niche represented at our table?'
If, for example, you have a Fighter and Magus in the same party, do not let the Magus Spellstrike without provoking. If, on the other hand, the Magus is the chief martial in the party, no toes are being stepped on when you handwave AoOs for Spellstriking away.
So instead of complaining about a class having certain limitations, ask yourself what these limitations are meant to protect. If the thing supposed to be protected is absent from your table, houserule away.
Actually, Fighters are not better at combat as a design niche, they just happen to lead the very tight pack because in any game with asymmetrical mechanics, someone has to, and the accuracy is just really potent mathematically, so it worked out that way.
Their 'thing' is that they do the fighting in the most direct way possible, e.g. the fighter is just that good, the rogue has to use sneak attack, the barbarian has to use rage, the Magus has to use Spellstrike, Champions and Monks defend themselves better-- but those things are all special techniques buying back the value of a fighter's raw prowess with a weapon.
Like, the Investigator can make the best case for having an off combat focus, but even then I'm not sure that's true-- I think they designed every class around the idea that combat is too core to the game to be bad at.
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Not speaking for other people, but I personally have the mentality that homebrewing changes, or even just using alternate rules, is like putting in cheat codes or lowering difficulty in a video game. Both of those are fine to some people, if they enjoy that style of play then more power to them. I feel that homebrewing class buffs cheapens victories, myself. Not to mention things like PFS or bringing your character to another friends game.
Then don't homebrew? And live with how things are? I suppose that I am not sure what the relevance of your point is.
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Not speaking for other people, but I personally have the mentality that homebrewing changes, or even just using alternate rules, is like putting in cheat codes or lowering difficulty in a video game. Both of those are fine to some people, if they enjoy that style of play then more power to them. I feel that homebrewing class buffs cheapens victories, myself. Not to mention things like PFS or bringing your character to another friends game.Then don't homebrew? And live with how things are? I suppose that I am not sure what the relevance of your point is.
My point is, there is some merit to some posts wishing certain classes were a little stronger. That is a major talking point of the whole thread, that some playtest classes could possibly have used more time being playtested. The only two options aren't 'change the things you don't like' or 'accept things as they are', there is also talk about issues you have with the game with the community, and see how things might change. Maybe we'll get more attention to classes that need it, maybe not. But thats what the point of the thread is. If you only see your two options as the only choices this isn't the thread for you, I would say
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?
...the whole post that I... just wrote...?
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It could be, in theory, but the momentum of the evidence largely goes in the other direction, the substance matters more than the structure-- in other words, you can figure it out based on the presentation of actual evidence, rather than simply accepting the idea that the trope can mirrored uncritically.
I don't get invested in other people's levels of personal validation in the context of debates like this-- if the best you can say for your opinion is that literally no one can force you not to have it, that isn't worth a lot to me, so that part of your post is kind of orthogonal to the discussion of whether there's a problem and whether additional playtests can fix it. Its not about the person who holds the view and their right to hold it, its about the Validity and Soundness of their arguments, as supporting the truth of the arguments they're trying to advance.
I don't care if you want to invalidate people's opinions, I'm just suggesting that you do it based on more than 'they disagree with you' and 'some people who have opinions about things formed them uncritically'.
If you disagree with someone because they have nothing supporting their opinion then say that, don't say "I've found this study that says when people repeat an argument a lot it can cause people to agree with it uncritically. Hey people I argue with have an argument and I KNOW they're wrong, they must have accepted it uncritically!" Not saying that's your intention, but you sound like you're trying to dismiss any consensus of a class being weak when it suits you, an "I'll know it when I see it" approach.
You mentioned the "presentation of actual evidence" as something you can use to identify cases where the people who disagree with you have opinions that were formed uncritically, do you have any examples of a consensus formed around a class's balance that has fallen prey to this bias? I'd like to see the arguments that you're suggesting we ought to dismiss as uncredible (and instead recognise as simply familiar) based on this psychological phenomena.
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So, what's stopping folks from house ruling the changes themselves?
It's simple. Imagine a smartv due some mistake, bad design decision or even because it was forgotten to implement something that every time you press power-off button this TV show a dialog asking "Do you want to do shutdown?" with a yes and no button with no button pre-selected.
And when this TV power-on it always instantly back to the same exact part, options, config, etc. where it was when turned off and in the end this dialog was just an annoying function that just mess up and nothing more.
But you can go to configure and disable this dialog window by yourself. But all TVs of this model comes with this function enable by default. Do you think that is better and correct to just give up the complain about that useless function because anyone with patience can go to setting and disable it or think that's better to ask to the developer to do a better check when it develops updates the TV software to avoid such things in the future/next versions and fix this problem at all to everyone?
That's the base of homebrew 2e to just "fix" something that's clearly bad developed because mostly people vary between "I won't play this class because of this" and "I also don't like this but I don't care too much" but both agree that it's not fun or don't make sense.
The fact that 2e is IMO the best edition to homebrew because how easily it is to understand it's balance, rules and chassis is not a free pass to just ignore the flaws just because I can workaround it.
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I would just fix the issue via the settings and move on with my life.
The issues that I have run into in PF2 are minor and easily homebrew fixed. Even if they are not fixed, the things that have the minor issues are not unplayable. As such, I do not consider it a worthy expenditure of developers time to remedy the minor issues. Devs may disagree, I don't know. But I'd rather they move forward.
I voice these opinions to let it be known that it is not a unanimous opinion that these things need change. The game is fine (not perfect) as is.
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There's other point. I forgot in TV example. You still risky to appear a concurrent that saw this problem but avoided it. Seeing this the costumers over time they start to change from 3.5 to pathfinder due it's better in these little things and...ops I mixed the things! kkk
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Totally, that's a valid viewpoint. And I think it's very fair to bring up in a thread like this one, to play devils advocate. Just know there's always going to be a good chunk of people who like rules, who like challenge, even if they wish for changes at the same time. It might seem a bit paradoxical (if that's the right term) but it's true. It's a lot like videogames, to relate it to something people might be more familiar with (I know I am). Things like dark souls - people wish for buffs for certain builds. A good chunk of them could mod it themselves, and I'm sure a lot do, but there are those who fall in the center of the 'buff this style of play plz' and 'im not going to mod the game to make my playstyle work' Venn diagram.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?
The latter is considered more "official" and "default"; which means the majority of anonymous GMs will accept it way easier than an unreliable homebrew.
To be blunt, a sizeable number of players have this mental hierarchy of rules acceptance; starting with the printed default rules on the top, official variants (some of them like Free Archetypes considered good enough to be almost treated as default for some groups), 3rd party splat, then finally plain homebrew on the bedrock...
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I play in 3 every other week, 2e APs as well as society fairly regularly. Every single one of those has at least one houserule and rarely are any of them the same. The system is made to be molded.
I suppose I see it as, if I can make a more than viable character with the class it isn't in need of errata fix. Though I do have a habit of building characters with a focus on what the class is good at.
Actually, Fighters are not better at combat as a design niche, they just happen to lead the very tight pack because in any game with asymmetrical mechanics, someone has to, and the accuracy is just really potent mathematically, so it worked out that way.
Their 'thing' is that they do the fighting in the most direct way possible, e.g. the fighter is just that good, the rogue has to use sneak attack, the barbarian has to use rage, the Magus has to use Spellstrike, Champions and Monks defend themselves better-- but those things are all special techniques buying back the value of a fighter's raw prowess with a weapon.
Like, the Investigator can make the best case for having an off combat focus, but even then I'm not sure that's true-- I think they designed every class around the idea that combat is too core to the game to be bad at.
Uhm... yes. Fighters get 'hit gud' as their class feature basically. That's the point. It is always on (if only for one weapon type starting lv. 5, oh and they also only get crit effects with that one weapon before lv. 13), while other classes have to work for their damage boosts.
They will not always succeed at getting their damage boosts to work though. In return, they get things Fighters don't. Usually more out-of-combat utility. As usual, it is a trade-off.
Fighters just work, nothing to it. Some people love this simplicity, others hate it. People who want a more 'fiddly' class get to play other martials that do have 'fiddly' mechanics. They just don't get to complain about that, even if their damage boosters work, they don't get to out-damage the Fighter. No reward for system mastery at chargen.
But if you feel that a certain class gets unfairly hampered by this or that class mechanic (and a Magus needing be mindful of AoOs might fall under that for your table), house rule it away at your table. Again, nothing to it.
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If you refuse to houserule, you are already playing the game in a way that is different from how the developers of the game intend it to be played. Every table has houserules whether you recognize them as such or not. It isn't cheating. Humans arbitrating the rules is the thing that distinguishes TTRPGs from CRPGs.
The stakes aren't that high. Mod the game to make it sing for you or play something else that better fits your sensibilities out of the box.
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Being inexperienced at houseruling isn't the same as being unwilling. Likewise, you don't need to do a bunch of testing and number crunching. Just make a change for your table and adjust over time as needed.
You want to play a mass market TTRPG. There will be things that it is better at than others or places where it is better or worse for your table. There will be rules that don't get the editing pass they need.
So. If you are playing a game, the rules aren't working for you, you refuse to mod the rules to something better, and you refuse to play a different game that is better suited to what you want to play, I just don't have that much in the way of sympathy.
If after all that you continue to play Pathfinder (or any game) and continue to complain about it not working, I guess yeah. You are doing something wrong. I know people around here get angy when you tell them maybe they aren't playing things in the healthiest manner or that change may be helpful but that's just how it be sometimes. Deal or don't. Doesn't bother me.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?
To some extent, validation.
I think a developer response that justified no errata with some reasoning would be accepted almost as well as errata would be.
But in both cases, errata or no, there will be people who are upset (I was downright salty AF about the whole finesse change admittedly).
Feeling like not only your voice was heard, even if the answer is "no", helps.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?To some extent, validation.
I think a developer response that justified no errata with some reasoning would be accepted almost as well as errata would be.
But in both cases, errata or no, there will be people who are upset (I was downright salty AF about the whole finesse change admittedly).
Feeling like not only your voice was heard, even if the answer is "no", helps.
From my PF1 experience, people's reactions to errata, dev's answers and FAQ going in the "No answer needed" status were so often a toxic cesspool of vitriolic nerdrage that Paizo decided not to waste time, energy and mental health on it anymore. Hence the end of the FAQ button.
We collectively brought it on ourselves.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?
The former is not allowed in PFS, the latter is. IE there's a certain level of "officialness" to it.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?To some extent, validation.
I think a developer response that justified no errata with some reasoning would be accepted almost as well as errata would be.
But in both cases, errata or no, there will be people who are upset (I was downright salty AF about the whole finesse change admittedly).
Feeling like not only your voice was heard, even if the answer is "no", helps.
From my PF1 experience, people's reactions to errata, dev's answers and FAQ going in the "No answer needed" status were so often a toxic cesspool of vitriolic nerdrage that Paizo decided not to waste time, energy and mental health on it anymore. Hence the end of the FAQ button.
We collectively brought it on ourselves.
Absolutely. For all my own belly aching I definitely understand paizo keeping the community at an arm's length when it comes to communication.
Bit of a tangent but I really like the way starfinder has been slowly addressing issues people have with the game (whether they mean to or not). Items, feats, class features, etc have come out to make things people perceived as problems a little less problematic. Casters have gotten tools to help with things like losing concentration on a spell or not wanting to rely on guns. Backup options for weapons are plentiful if people dislike the economy. All sorts of little puzzle pieces get added on. I would love for 2e to handle balance this way, but the way things are looking I sort of doubt it, with themed books dealing pretty specifically to the theme of the book.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?The former is not allowed in PFS, the latter is. IE there's a certain level of "officialness" to it.
Society play is playing PF2 with houserules. Is playing pfs cheating?
Isn't your argument the exact same as when a game launches full of bugs and fanboys crawl out of the woodwork declaring that mods will fix it? It's on the developers to fix issues in a timely fashion.I play in 3 every other week, 2e APs as well as society fairly regularly. Every single one of those has at least one houserule and rarely are any of them the same. The system is made to be molded.
I suppose I see it as, if I can make a more than viable character with the class it isn't in need of errata fix. Though I do have a habit of building characters with a focus on what the class is good at.
It is not exactly the same. Firstly, not all issues are agreed that they are issues. Bugs in a game are easily identified as bugs. Secondly, video games require a vast amount more expertise to tweak than PF2, a game made to be tweaked.
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It is not exactly the same. Firstly, not all issues are agreed that they are issues. Bugs in a game are easily identified as bugs.
This is complete nonsense.
As an example, is climbing a vine while carrying an item in Super Mario World a bug, a feature, or a harmless glitch? Would patching it improve the game for most players?
Secondly, video games require a vast amount more expertise to tweak than PF2, a game made to be tweaked.
Yes but because of this mods become far more standardized and accepted with communities than house rules for PnP games do. In such a way you end up with foundational mods that only fix bugs and enable other mods to function being almost required for some games.
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What is the difference between houseruling a specific change and an errata making that same change?To some extent, validation.
I think a developer response that justified no errata with some reasoning would be accepted almost as well as errata would be.
But in both cases, errata or no, there will be people who are upset (I was downright salty AF about the whole finesse change admittedly).
Feeling like not only your voice was heard, even if the answer is "no", helps.
From my PF1 experience, people's reactions to errata, dev's answers and FAQ going in the "No answer needed" status were so often a toxic cesspool of vitriolic nerdrage that Paizo decided not to waste time, energy and mental health on it anymore. Hence the end of the FAQ button.
We collectively brought it on ourselves.
Absolutely. For all my own belly aching I definitely understand paizo keeping the community at an arm's length when it comes to communication.
Bit of a tangent but I really like the way starfinder has been slowly addressing issues people have with the game (whether they mean to or not). Items, feats, class features, etc have come out to make things people perceived as problems a little less problematic. Casters have gotten tools to help with things like losing concentration on a spell or not wanting to rely on guns. Backup options for weapons are plentiful if people dislike the economy. All sorts of little puzzle pieces get added on. I would love for 2e to handle balance this way, but the way things are looking I sort of doubt it, with themed books dealing pretty specifically to the theme of the book.
Didn't know about Starfinder working that way, but that is also what they have been doing, very gradually, for PF2. A good example is the Shadow signet to boost spell attacks.
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Selfish request to add on: I'd LOVE to see a dedicated period of new book playtests that release test versions of at least SOME of the Archetypes that will be part of the material since they are FAR more likely to be something that does have unexpected interactions with existing published materials and is more likely to cause issues if history shows anything.
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It is not exactly the same. Firstly, not all issues are agreed that they are issues. Bugs in a game are easily identified as bugs.This is complete nonsense.
As an example, is climbing a vine while carrying an item in Super Mario World a bug, a feature, or a harmless glitch? Would patching it improve the game for most players?
Secondly, video games require a vast amount more expertise to tweak than PF2, a game made to be tweaked.Yes but because of this mods become far more standardized and accepted with communities than house rules for PnP games do. In such a way you end up with foundational mods that only fix bugs and enable other mods to function being almost required for some games.
Maybe I should reword the first part. Even if we agree that issues should be fixed, we still have yet to agree on what constitutes an issue.
I was mistaken in making such a blanket statement. But, your Mario example points back to my previous point in this post. I'd take the side of, it just is a thing you can do and move on.
To say that mods for video games is more prevalent than houserules for PnP games is a very interesting claim. I presume that PnP games with zero houserules are a distinct minority.
Are you claiming that PF2 is a game that is nearly unplayable due to the issues you perceive it has?