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PF2 is the definition of if everybody is Superman nobody is.Pf1 is a superhero game, while pf2 is more akin to something like the Die Hard movies.PF2 is very much a high-fantasy, superheroic game. If a creature is just 3 or 4 levels higher than another, the lower level creature might as well be fighting Superman. In 2E. level determines power.
In 1E, character creation and system mastery determined power. It was fun figuring out how to beat the system and break the game, but that was only possible if the underlying system math was weak to begin with.
Individual play experience of course varies, but unless you're playing a homebrew in which your GM wants you to roflstomp enemies, you generally only face at level encounters. So the actual play experience is of your character not being any stronger then the enemies, and frequently of the enemies being stronger than your character. It is not uncommon to take four of you to take down one enemy, leading to the feeling that you (the pcs) are weaker then everyone else. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it creates a story of striving against overwhelming odds to succeed through sheer grit and determination, which is not at all what pf1 is. This is due to the heavy balancing that pf2 has, where it takes all of the party to succeed, while in pf1 experienced players can take turns soloing encounters due to their op superpowers. PF1 is the opposite of pf2, requiring heavy homebrew to make encounters that require all the players to work together to succeed.
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Think about the roleplaying afterwards, "You ran away and left us to die when the tank went down. You are out of the party!"
Maybe that happens or maybe the player has played up this fear well enough that the party was just waiting for it to happen so the character could progress their character growth.
"I saw the fighter go down and went running for help." Is a valid counterpoint.
What would have happened if Rand ditched Matt when the dagger started to make him a liability to be around?
Because those vaster numbers of stories are about a teammate being a jerk to the team. The other players hate those stories.
I've run entire evil campaigns and Cyberpunk games where everybody was just waiting for who would betray the group first. Where dying party members were stabilized and sold for parts so the rest of the group could be combat-ready faster. Those were fun and memorable games that PF1 could support but that PF2 seems unable to support.
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It demonstrably cannot. You cannot play as a commoner as happened in a hilarious thread on the old D&D forums or the story of a troll blessed with a ring of sustenance that enabled him to pursue pursuits other than sating his hunger.I am confused. I regularly play commoners.
Sure, PF2E Cannot pull the same RULE Interactions as 1st Edition, That is not the same as being able to tell the same stories?
There was a rather memorable thread back on the old D&D forums where a player used the commoner NPC class and the rules for the game to play a fully supported campaign where they just did daily commoner tasks. Deciding where your 2+int skill points went at each level was interesting because you should probably level up your profession but a couple of points in craft could save you some coppers in the future. PF2 can't do this without major house rules, 3.x and PF1 could handle it from the outset.
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There was a rather memorable thread back on the old D&D forums where a player used the commoner NPC class and the rules for the game to play a fully supported campaign where they just did daily commoner tasks. Deciding where your 2+int skill points went at each level was interesting because you should probably level up your profession but a couple of points in craft could save you some coppers in the future. PF2 can't do this without major house rules, 3.x and PF1 could handle it from the outset.It demonstrably cannot. You cannot play as a commoner as happened in a hilarious thread on the old D&D forums or the story of a troll blessed with a ring of sustenance that enabled him to pursue pursuits other than sating his hunger.I am confused. I regularly play commoners.
Sure, PF2E Cannot pull the same RULE Interactions as 1st Edition, That is not the same as being able to tell the same stories?
Or maybe your brawly fighter is a great at the plough, maybe your alchemist is working their trade at a tavern? If you don't get hung up on the lack of mechanics telling you that you are a commoner, you might be able to get on with being a commoner. They're not lesser people. They're people. Some of them are skilled enough to be PC leveled. If you don't like that.. ask your GM if you can take less skill trainings or ability bonuses.
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Like I remember book 6 of Hell's Rebels featured a series of negotiations with the Chellish ambasadors where the DCs were something fully half the party could not fail at even if they rolled a 1, and the rest of the party could not succeed at even if they rolled a 20. If nothing else that this could happen organically because people figured out "this is a social AP" and decided to roll up characters who were socially adept makes it the adventure designer's job significantly more difficult.
To be fair, that can be solved by the GM looking at the stats of the characters and adjusting the DC's, which is what I did just a few months ago. The players still crushed it, but mostly because the Mesmerist, who was the party face, kept rolling 15+ rolls, thus acing every check but one single concession they did not get.
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Isn't the way to run a "less than special commoners" game the official "proficiency without level" variant that is ensconced in the core rulebook?
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@magnuskn: Check out this post by breithauptclan that addresses some of the design paradigms that might be preventing some of that bloat…I'm not sure how the post addresses the issue of bloat in any form. Bloat happens by new options (classes, feat, magic items, etc.) being released constantly, until newer players are overwhelmed by the amount of rules available and often perceived as necessary to fully enjoy the system. I myself am starting to play Anno 1800, a city building PC game with a ton of DLC, so I can currently relate very well to the feeling.
Paizo has already released eight new classes in the last about four years, is about to release its ninth and presumably also released a ton of feats, spells and new game systems to boot. I am not saying the system is bloated yet, but the fond wishes of some people during the playtest that Paizo would slow down on their systemic expansion with 2E seem to not have borne themselves out.
Just to reply, my error, I did conflate Power Creep and Bloat-which-leads-to-decision-paralysis-and-possibly-trap/crap-options. I’ve never had much of a problem with Bloat in terms of decision paralysis, though trap options could be a thing.
Personally I’m not sure any reasonable player who likes options would be concerned about 9 new classes in almost four years.
Given PF1e had a bunch of classes at its finish, and I still wanted moar and it has taken this long, so far to still not have the same amount while still not really presenting anything particularly “new” apart from the Inventor and Thaumaturge (both only just) I feel quite the opposite of seeing “Bloat”. I can’t imagine what folx who want an Inquisitor must be feeling. The rate is glacial just to get to where PF1e was, and the threat of yet another edition to reset the Core and build up from that is maddening. To me.
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I also just wanted to say one lil thing. I absolutely loved the action economy in PF1e when playing the odd inquisitor. Through slightly clever use of Swift, Standard and Move actions (because I’m not really smart enough nor have system mastery to optimise/copy paste munchkin builds) the narrative power was incredibly fun. It felt tactical, dynamic, strategic and active. There was considered choice and there was informed change. It wasn’t particularly impressive from a DPR perspective. It wasn’t masterful battlefield control. It did engage with the other players and was wrapped in narrative and descriptive flourishes. Admittedly it was mostly low-level and was basically effective but it was engaging.
I do see that the three action economy from Unchained has been polished, however I read a lot of posts saying that in principle it is a great idea, but in practice it has been hobbled. I am yet to play enough PF2e to have a grasp of this. I hope that I can at the very least do as much as I did, at times in PF1e.
I understand Freehold DM’s lament. I want to love PF2, but after the engagement of PF1, however unbalanced and broken it might have been I am left hoping for the same engagement with PF2e.
To be honest, the amount of leaps and bounds required to do certain things completely put me off. I have to do what with a shield to get what? And then the shield…whats? Explain that again?!!
I was late to 3.0/3.5. (I started with Basic and ADnD. Left not long after ADnD2e) But it made a while lot of internally consistent sense to me. Missing the odd Key Term or two (*cough OSW cough*) didn’t harm me. PF1 made the same sense. PF2 really doesn’t. Yet. I don’t understand magic items and runes at all, though I haven’t really looked at them. I see bunches of posts telling people their players should have x this and x that that I at this stage basically don’t understand. I have no local group to play with, played in one PF2e PbP where my beloved Hobgoblin Druid basically felt like the Druid in one of the two early 5e games I played. Same zappy spell, every time. Jab with spear and miss. Try the hell to understand what the paladin just did with their retroactive thingummy that PbP really gels terribly with. Blah blah blah.
So my point is, rambling aside is that I am a classic PF1 exile who did enjoy it, could completely understand the problems with it and agreed with most of them, and has no horse in any race and just wants to have fun. And all that pitiful PF1 mastery I didn’t even have is still enough to bork any understanding of PF2 becoz “old assumptions”. I dearly want someone to make a top down play through of PF2 combats that doesn’t take a million years of pointless exposition and simply explains some basic combat tenets.
As someone upthread said, PF2 is what Paizo is making now. I made a conscious decision to leave PF1e behind for now because PF2 is the new game. I like the concepts. I think it has a lot going for it. I think it has some strange, not rough edges. I do think the basic math is elegant, but that is a belief and gut feeling, not experiential/lived. And it is its own thing, just as able to tell any kind of story as any other system in the hands of particular referees/groups. So to Freehold I say: I hear you, but I’m going to play it anyway. Well, run it more likely.
If anyone made it to the end of this, my apologies and sincerest thanks.
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Umm, that wasn’t “little”.
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Or maybe your brawly fighter is a great at the plough, maybe your alchemist is working their trade at a tavern? If you don't get hung up on the lack of mechanics telling you that you are a commoner, you might be able to get on with being a commoner. They're not lesser people. They're people. Some of them are skilled enough to be PC leveled. If you don't like that.. ask your GM if you can take less skill trainings or ability bonuses.There's zero mechanical support for this though. You'd have to ignore stat generation to get the commoner average +0 stat bonus. Then you'd have to ignore your class feats and features.
...as opposed to ignoring all the player character creation rules to play an NPC class instead?
I'm not sure you're really doing a lot more arbitrary adjustment by just not taking a couple feats and ability boosts.
And as the Inheritor said, why are you so obsessed with the idea of commoners being completely incompetent.
The commoner NPC class exists to make vulnerable NPCs in need of saving. Not to make the hero of the story. Rand killed his first trolloc only moments after getting his hand on a sword, yeah it was more luck than skill, but he managed it. In a game like pathfinder, 1 or 2e that story would have ended right there if he actually was a level 1 all 10s in ability scores NPC class commoner.
Having a signature spell that is your character's bread and butter is basically a fantasy staple.
PF2 literally has a "Signature Spell" feature for spontaneous casters that lets you upcast that spell at any spell level you need. And prepared casters just get to prepare the spell in a higher slot.
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Sidenote, I was shown this cute tutorial comic and I adore it
I'm increasingly confused about development of thread since I haven't really seen that many people miss npc only classes
"The cowardly rogue probably can't escape the enemy patrol" is a weird complaint. A patrol implies multiple enemies, and PF2 made that easier by ditching opposed checks. In PF1, the more enemies there were, the higher the odds one would roll a nat 20 for their opposed perception check. In PF2 you just make one roll no matter how many guards are in the patrol. Also, in practice, a multi-enemy patrol which can raise the alarm and bring in back up will probably be below the rogue's level, which further improves their odds.
Also not sure why "I can't build a commoner" is a valid complaint when commoners in both systems used NPC rules and PF2 gave you backgrounds like Farmer and Barkeep which let you get story driven lores without mechanical sacrifice. Just roll up a monk if you don't want weapons, armor, or magic.
If what you want is an incompetent character there are plenty of ways to do that, like using voluntary flaws or not boosting your key ability score.
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In the end this topic turned again into a "I don't like PF2 because it's different from PF1". With half basically arguing their nostalgic while others defending that PF2 isn't perfect but have many things better.
So let's trying to turn this in something more useful.
IMO the PF2 is an evolution of what we have when compared to PF1 but it isn't perfect there's somethings that I think maybe better addressed but I think tha many fixes probably would only come in a next edition. Things I think that may change, not all ideas are mine but I basically agree with them:
I think that's my currently critics to PF2e until now. Yet it's still an excellent game. It's not the perfect one because this don't exist but it's the best D20 system available currently IMO.
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Given PF1e had a bunch of classes at its finish, and I still wanted moar and it has taken this long, so far to still not have the same amount while still not really presenting anything particularly “new” apart from the Inventor and Thaumaturge (both only just) I feel quite the opposite of seeing “Bloat”. I can’t imagine what folx who want an Inquisitor must be feeling. The rate is glacial just to get to where PF1e was, and the threat of yet another edition to reset the Core and build up from that is maddening. To me.
This isn't paizo's fault, that's how this market works. People who are willing to switch from d&d are willing to keep switching to the new shiny thing. New techniques make better games. We've seen very clear evidence that an edition is only profitable for about ten years. It's very weird to me that so many people blame Paizo for changing things and not the players who moved on or stopped buying books.
Anyway, I could never get into pf1e because it was too similar to 3.5. Paizo had to do something different to gain me as a customer, and now I've even gone back and played a little first edition.
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I think a huge amount of the above translates to
In PF1 you could build sufficiently broken characters that they could play in a seriously sub par way (abandon team mates, play commoners, use bad items, etc) and the group would still be viable.
It IS true that if you try to do this in PF2 against expected opponents you'll lose. Big.
But the solution is trivial in PF2. You run the group against opponents 1 or 2 levels below where they "should" be. Suddenly your cowardly rogue, your wizard who only ever uses one of his highest level spells, etc can combine into a viable group.
The side argument that some people like to play PVP campaigns is just that. A side argument. You can do that in PF2. Just please make clear that is what you're doing so those of us who absolutely detest that kind of play can avoid you.
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For some reason, even though the internet tells me they are playing it wrong, every game I am in seems to have wizards or sorcerers in it who can’t wait to start summoning dragons. The strangest part is they keep doing it in every encounter they can, and for some reason this terrible strategy keeps working out pretty well for them when the summoned dragon can target an elemental weakness with a basic reflex save breath weapon.
summoning spells in PF2 are still incredibly flexible, and better yet, they don’t slow down encounters nearly as much as they did in PF1. I don’t think a lot of arm chair critics appreciate how much lower level creatures complicate higher level encounters for both sides. HP goes up faster than damage for everyone. A summoned creature that takes up space on the battlefield, has reach, and will take multiple attacks to take out changes the tactical situation immensely. Heroism has to be cast as a 6th level spell to give an ally a +2 to hit. A summon does this immediately, even when cast from a low level slot.
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For some reason, even though the internet tells me they are playing it wrong, every game I am in seems to have wizards or sorcerers in it who can’t wait to start summoning dragons. The strangest part is they keep doing it in every encounter they can, and for some reason this terrible strategy keeps working out pretty well for them when the summoned dragon can target an elemental weakness with a basic reflex save breath weapon.
summoning spells in PF2 are still incredibly flexible, and better yet, they don’t slow down encounters nearly as much as they did in PF1. I don’t think a lot of arm chair critics appreciate how much lower level creatures complicate higher level encounters for both sides. HP goes up faster than damage for everyone. A summoned creature that takes up space on the battlefield, has reach, and will take multiple attacks to take out changes the tactical situation immensely. Heroism has to be cast as a 6th level spell to give an ally a +2 to hit. A summon does this immediately, even when cast from a low level slot.
In fairness, quite a few things greatly affect how useful summons are. Adding extra creatures can help or hurt the PCs ( they get in THEIR way too). Elemental weaknesses only work against some creatures and you need knowledge checks to know which. Flanking or flat footed may be easy to obtain. Etc.
And the PLAYER has to do a lot of work. They need to narrow their choices down ahead of time, have the stat blocks at hand, probably create a token in a VTT.
I think they're a viable weapon to have in your arsenal if you're willing to put in the work. But I don't think they should be the only (or even primary) weapon in your arsenal in general (with some exceptions based primarily on the rest of the group)
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My second Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game in 1980 had my monk dropped into an existing campaign where the six-member party was working together to escape a deadly jungle. When we finally reached a safe beach, some PCs offered to stand night watch. They were the evil PCs in a mixed group of good, neutral, and evil PCs and they slit everyone else's throat during the night. The Dungeon Master did not offer any saving throws. It was memorable, but not at all fun for me.
That's a bit of a dick move but the DM should have run it in such a way that the evil party had a risk of being stopped and discovered unless they really laid a well-crafted plan to pull off the double cross. If the evil characters had to sneak off to gather ingredients for a sleeping potion to ensure the party stayed asleep or socially engineer the party into letting them take watch together that could have been interesting. I'd also not have run a game where that would have accomplished that much for those characters, even in a sandbox game you need to force the evil members to stay somewhat in line. A bloody fight is fine, murder tends to be a campaign ender.
That sounds incredibly stupid. What exactly did they get out of it?
Whenever I played evil characters, I generally played them intelligently. Murdering people creates all kinds of problems, so I rarely did it unless there were significant gains that outweighed the risk. Furthermore, I never threw away useful pawns and protectors unless I had to. They're great for achieving one's goals.
Your friends' butchers sound like evil-in-the-moment characters who are rarely long for the world.
We were all freshman students in the same dormitory at Michigan State University. The DM was inexperienced, so he went along with the murder plan that the players of evil characters had discussed with him out of game, rather than thinking about details such as saving throws to wake up. This was 1980, so no-one had much experience with D&D.
The players were thinking ahead to when the party would reach a city. They wanted an evil campaign of robbery and murder, so they decided to eliminate the goody two-shoes in the party to enable that. The other players could roll up new characters, evil ones, if they wanted to continue in the campaign. In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, PCs died frequently and players were accustomed to having to replace their characters. I myself instead moved to another campaign with a different DM and I do not know what happened afterwards in the original campaign.
The best thing about that campaign was the girl who played an axe-wielding barbarian, another midnight murder victim. I married her five years later. As a sophomore she told me stories of a campaign she was playing in. It had intra-party conflict to the point where two PCs fought each other. The instigator of the fight was knocked unconscious. The other players were angry at the player for interrupting the adventurous mission and increasing the danger, so they tucked his character into an empty pocket of a Robe of Many Pockets, which had a time-freeze effect. Thus, the character was out of the game for the rest of the mission. I believe that the player's motivation for the disruptive fight was that he thought of his character as the main character.
My wife (I am still married to that sweet girl) likes to play her characters with a story arc, often commoners who have to rise to heroism due to circumstances. She does not mind being underpowered: she once played a Terrestrial among Solars in an Exalted campaign (Solars are ten times as powerful as Terrestrials). A lot of Paizo adventure paths start that way. Rise of the Runelords has the PCs attending a local festival when goblins raid the town, so they could be regular townsfolk or visiting adventurers. Ironfang Invasion also started with a raid on a village during a Market Day. My wife plays Sam, a halfling goat herder who had arrived in the village a year and a half ago. That is all the village knew about him. He was secretly an escaped slave with rogue class from Nidal who had been subject to mad-science experiments by his master, so that he would develop Draconic bloodline powers at 2nd level via the Sorcerer Multiclass Dedication feat. Having to protect fellow refugees while hiding in the fey-infested Fangwood Forest inspired him. He stopped hiding as a commoner and became a hero.
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Also, not to put words into Freehold's mouth, but it sounded like they weren't expecting anything? They just said they couldn't get into the system; that's neither an invalid position to have nor does it preface any kind of expectation.
Well.
I mean.
I DO have some expectations...
But I didn't mention them here, no.
For some reason, even though the internet tells me they are playing it wrong, every game I am in seems to have wizards or sorcerers in it who can’t wait to start summoning dragons. The strangest part is they keep doing it in every encounter they can, and for some reason this terrible strategy keeps working out pretty well for them when the summoned dragon can target an elemental weakness with a basic reflex save breath weapon.
summoning spells in PF2 are still incredibly flexible, and better yet, they don’t slow down encounters nearly as much as they did in PF1. I don’t think a lot of arm chair critics appreciate how much lower level creatures complicate higher level encounters for both sides. HP goes up faster than damage for everyone. A summoned creature that takes up space on the battlefield, has reach, and will take multiple attacks to take out changes the tactical situation immensely. Heroism has to be cast as a 6th level spell to give an ally a +2 to hit. A summon does this immediately, even when cast from a low level slot.
In fairness, quite a few things greatly affect how useful summons are. Adding extra creatures can help or hurt the PCs ( they get in THEIR way too). Elemental weaknesses only work against some creatures and you need knowledge checks to know which. Flanking or flat footed may be easy to obtain. Etc.
And the PLAYER has to do a lot of work. They need to narrow their choices down ahead of time, have the stat blocks at hand, probably create a token in a VTT.
I think they're a viable weapon to have in your arsenal if you're willing to put in the work. But I don't think they should be the only (or even primary) weapon in your arsenal in general (with some exceptions based primarily on the rest of the group)
I think everything both of you said is correct. Summons are great in the fight situation, but not every situation, and require a lot of thought to use well. They are certainly less disruptive than they could he in PF1. If someone wants to use a minion as their primary combat platform, spell slots are the wrong route. That's what the summoner is for.