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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.
Are there OP archetypes that came in the books that gave us new classes ? Right now, I cannot think of one.
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One of the issues is, is that current class archetypes re almost designed to be strictly worse than the base class on purpose rather than equal. I think if we playtested class archetypes, we might be able to assist in making sure they aren't just strictly better options rather than strictly worse options like they are now.Are there OP archetypes that came in the books that gave us new classes ? Right now, I cannot think of one.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.
I do not see how we can playtest Class archetypes when the Class itself evolves based on the playtest results.
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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.IMHO, the issue with that design philosophy that it requires system mastery. A new player might not even realize that Shadow Signet was an option.
It is like having a recipe for fruit cheesecake on volume 1 of a cooking book and a note on the middle volume 2 that mentions that passion fruit is to sour so a little extra sugar might be better on passion fruit cheesecake.
It is Ivory Tower design all over again.
That's going to happen as you add new items and equipment regardless of how tight the balance is. The only way to prevent it is to make all new items strictly worse than core items and to never add equipment with new functionality over the life of a game. I don't expect that either option will help Paizo to sell new books once people realize that everything in them is just CRB but weaker.
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What they are talking about is the, "everything is fine because there is this one thing in one book that is helpful if you know it exists." Not the availability of new items of equal power.
I get that's where it started, but that narrow example actually one that will tend to expand to touch more and more classes as time goes on. A weapon or magic item enables a class (or smoothes over an issue) in such a way that the class with the item is above where it is without it. For an example look at what the flickmace does for characters who can use it effectively and what the next best replacement looks like compared to that.
Unless we expect perfectly safe and boring item design, even more so than we already get, this will always happen to some extent, and when it does any buff to the class that has access to whatever the item is becomes untenable in the face of that specific combination. Given that you can't predict when such a combination might arise with any real accuracy it may be that Paizo doesn't want to risk errata that might balance something now and break it later.
It's not the approach I would take, but Paizo won't commit to monthly errata and Q&A so it's likely the best approach for them to take.
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?
Much as it is with bugs, there will be some issues that are obvious; printing issues, typographical errors, etc. For these kinds of issues, we should always expect correctio via errata as soon as possible.
Then you get things working other than intended. These are more of a grey area and can be harder to spot but these are the kinds of things that can be discovered via user feedback and by having staff read these forums as part of the errata building process. The team can then decide which of these issues are bugs and which are unintended features and it would be excellent if they gave us documentation about which are which and what the distinctions are.
Finally, you get balance changes. These are always tricky and even games that get bi-weekly updates can struggle with this. For a PnP game, you have far fewer data points to work with but can and should look at what players think of as the strongest and weakest options. Then you do your job as game designers and try to figure out if the players are correct and if so if an elegant fix can be implemented. Give the players some feedback about this process and most will accept that you've given it a go and fixed what you can.
This is a lot of work, perhaps more than Paizo is capable of but it's important work. It's also the kind of thing that I could see WotC doing going forward as a way to crush smaller games that are gnawing at their market share. They can do what large studios have done in the video game space and simply set the bar for a certain quality of life changes so high that you either match them, go out of business, or restructure to live within the indy sphere.
That's going to happen as you add new items and equipment regardless of how tight the balance is. The only way to prevent it is to make all new items strictly worse than core items and to never add equipment with new functionality over the life of a game. I don't expect that either option will help Paizo to sell new books once people realize that everything in them is just CRB but weaker.
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.IMHO, the issue with that design philosophy that it requires system mastery. A new player might not even realize that Shadow Signet was an option.
It is like having a recipe for fruit cheesecake on volume 1 of a cooking book and a note on the middle volume 2 that mentions that passion fruit is to sour so a little extra sugar might be better on passion fruit cheesecake.
It is Ivory Tower design all over again.
That's going to happen as you add new items and equipment regardless of how tight the balance is. The only way to prevent it is to make all new items strictly worse than core items and to never add equipment with new functionality over the life of a game. I don't expect that either option will help Paizo to sell new books once people realize that everything in them is just CRB but weaker.
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.IMHO, the issue with that design philosophy that it requires system mastery. A new player might not even realize that Shadow Signet was an option.
It is like having a recipe for fruit cheesecake on volume 1 of a cooking book and a note on the middle volume 2 that mentions that passion fruit is to sour so a little extra sugar might be better on passion fruit cheesecake.
It is Ivory Tower design all over again.
I'm perfectly fine with use itens as solution to solve some class weakness and even flaws. It's like how Returning rune can allow a player to thrown whatever weapon he want's at cost of one property rune, or like Shadow Signet was placed as a solution to help magic attacks to circumvent the lack of rune attack bonus but requires an intelligent usage (but may also fall to metagame over time while the players begins to collect knowledge about monsters).
They are an interesting way to add a later "fix" while balance them with costs and item level with freedom to affect many different classes (for example, an magical item that protects from AoO or changes the somatic components to verbal will useful to many spellcasters not only the Magus).
But needs to take care to not make this a common solution to solve any flaws. The Shadow Signet for example is so useful that can esilly become a mandatory item to any caster who wants to use at least 1 attack spell.