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The cowardly trope is not "anti-team"
Has no one played at a table where a player has their character run from fights because "it's what my character would do", then has surprised pikachu face when the party ditches them in the next town, and the player is asked to make a replacement character?
Why would any group of adventurers keep taking along a person who never has the party's back?
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Why are you hung up on the idea that commoners literally can't do anything?Why should they have PC class levels and combat ability greater than the town guard?Who says they have to exclusively pick those combat heavy option? Or start with said weapons? Those are choices at creation.
That said, why can't said commoner(fighter) be okay at providing game for their family, and as such have the Point blank shot feat? They might be a better marksmen then the guard. That could legit be a thing!
Actually, commoners are really easy to build. They get an Ancestry and a Background. No class and no 4 free bonuses. They get their ancestral and heritage abilities and HP, and background skills and feat. That's a commoner. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
I was in a PF1 game a few years ago where we all started as commoners, and the first couple of sessions set us on our path. When we got to 1st level we became the class we were going for. The same game would work perfectly well in PF2.| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I love (/s) how the argument is "how dare you not play the way I want, this is a team game you are not allowed personal story arcs and motivations" vs "this game doesn't have support for many of the ways a player can be part of the team and have story arcs".
The cowardly trope is not "anti-team" its usually done as a plot hook where the cowardly member eventually grows the courage to fight despite their fear. Similar to the clown trope where character jokes too much, but eventually becomes incredibly serious as the party adventures.
Has no one played at a table where a player has their character run from fights because "it's what my character would do", then has surprised pikachu face when the party ditches them in the next town, and the player is asked to make a replacement character?
Why would any group of adventurers keep taking along a person who never has the party's back?
I asked my wife, the grandmaster player who loves character development arcs, about this.
She says the problem is not the character. The problem is the player. When a player intends for a character to have a major flaw and grow out of it, the player needs to get the approval of the other players. If the player makes an apparently useless character with the intention of the character becomes fully useful later and DOES NOT TELL the other players, then all the other players see is a useless character. And for a fun game, the GM and the players ought to know how effective each party member will be, so they know what challenges the party can handle.
She pointed out a popular character in modern fantasy literature who had the coward arc: Samwell Tarly in the Song of Fire and Ice series by George R. R. Martin, also known as Game of Thrones. Samwell was up front about being a coward who could not fight. He tried hard to be useful to the Night's Watch at the Wall in other ways. His insight and scholarship were useful outside of combat. He did not become overcome his cowardice until the third book in the series, A Storm of Swords. That would be a very long wait in a combat-based roleplaying game.
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Actually, commoners are really easy to build. They get an Ancestry and a Background. No class and no 4 free bonuses. They get their ancestral and heritage abilities and HP, and background skills and feat. That's a commoner. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
I was in a PF1 game a few years ago where we all started as commoners, and the first couple of sessions set us on our path. When we got to 1st level we became the class we were going for. The same game would work perfectly well in PF2.
I think this is an important observation. You can absolutely start out the campaign playing an especially low-powered character, but since this entire family of games is predicated on continuous improvement, you're not going to want to play that character for six continuous months without becoming an exceptional person along the way.
The same is true of any power level, since "Make a level 6 character and never level up" is going to get dull after a while.
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Smaller proficiency bonus. This ideia isn't mine I saw this in a Michael Sayre post here in a topic in the forum. With smaller proficiency bonus (+1,+2,+3,+4) instead os currently one the difference of some classes proficiency would be smaller, the difference between a "martial" caster like warpriest or a MC martial with caster dedication will be way lower than they are currently making such different build more viable. Also this would diminish the critical chance of some classes (fighters and gunslingers) and monsters but they will still be interesting and strong classes.
There are tons of players out there who think that if you don't have an 18 in your attack stat, you're a lost cause just weighing the party down.
Shrinking the range in the proficiency bonus is just going to make every +1 matter more, exacerbate the existing issue, and make those playersright.
I fear that is the path to cookie-cutter characters.
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.
I still remember the commoner farmer that used their vast starting funds exclusively on cattle, then stampeded elder demigods to death.
*shudders*
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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.
That sounds so incredibly toxic.
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.I still remember the commoner farmer that used their vast starting funds exclusively on cattle, then stampeded elder demigods to death.
*shudders*
Yeah yeah, cattlegeddon, we've all seen it
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You know it!Why are you hung up on the idea that commoners literally can't do anything?Why should they have PC class levels and combat ability greater than the town guard?Who says they have to exclusively pick those combat heavy option? Or start with said weapons? Those are choices at creation.
That said, why can't said commoner(fighter) be okay at providing game for their family, and as such have the Point blank shot feat? They might be a better marksmen then the guard. That could legit be a thing!
Actually, commoners are really easy to build. They get an Ancestry and a Background. No class and no 4 free bonuses. They get their ancestral and heritage abilities and HP, and background skills and feat. That's a commoner. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
I was in a PF1 game a few years ago where we all started as commoners, and the first couple of sessions set us on our path. When we got to 1st level we became the class we were going for. The same game would work perfectly well in PF2.
Wow, that was fast. They took my idea, made a few adjustments, and retroactively got it into books and AoN! These folks are absolute Wiza...-ly amazing!
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I just find it interesting that the original post cited the thaumaturge as being the example for a class being broken because their primary stat is not their attack stat.
Meanwhile, when looking at that class all I can think is "damn, Mark (and others ofc) was really cooking with fire when he made this". Of all of the classes that suffer this problem, this is the only one where I really don't care.
It is so easy to accidentally make a weak PF1 character even if you know what you're doing. There are so many testimonies on this thread alone about players having a bad time, either because they were new and didn't know there were mandatory feats or they took a bad archetype like Sandman.
I don't think I can maintain my presence in this thread, because I just... gosh, edition warring drains me. I like third edition and its variations, and I respect people who've assembled their own little list of house rules and allowed content and have gotten PF1 to a place they really enjoy, but I see PF2 as a third edition that checked its numbers.
interesting. I can't say I agree. But the mindset is interesting.
I mean a central problem in PF1 was that it was impossible to make an obstacle that was a challenge for someone who specialized in a thing while not being literally impossible for someone who dabbled, or to make a challenge being accessible to a dabbler but not trivial for a specialist. This is a problem with addressing.
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.
It's also a good idea to make "the rules for skills, saves, armor class, difficulty class, and combat are all basically different applications of the same rules."
mm. Interesting.
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"I saw the fighter go down and went running for help." Is a valid counterpoint.No it's moving the goalposts.Playing a lying weasely coward who eventually finds their courage is moving goalposts now?
You're claiming due to "balance" that P2 can't tell the same stories that P1 did when your example your hanging on is a story of one party member screwing over others and has absolutely nothing to do with balance.For a different example, you can't pull a Princess Bride and fight with your off-hand as a handicap because every character in PF2 is ambidextrous. You can't cast a favored spell at higher levels because there's no way to keep a lower-level spell effective in the same way you could in older editions. You can't, effectively, play a character who uses summons to fight for them unless you want an eidolon because the summon monster spells are awful. You can't send your familiar back to town with a message or evidence because you have to give it orders every few seconds much less develop it as it's own intelligent independent being.
... you absolutely can. What?PF2 literally doesn't have commoner as a class nor does it have Troll as a player option. So I fail to see how it can possibly tell those same stories from the party's point of view.
I've had no issues running sandbox PF1 games where some sessions moved the plot forward and others were a bit of PvP.I have ACTUALLY XD
Being evil =/= intentionally screwing each over. Again, neither version of Pathfinder is built around doing that.
The best games I have been in have involved evil party members.
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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.The party got used to deadweight in the group?
"I saw the fighter go down and went running for help." Is a valid counterpoint.Help was just around the corner? I suppose that that could happen in an in-town adventure. But bringing in the constable doesn't fit the cowardly-rogue trope.
What would have happened if Rand ditched Matt when the dagger started to make him a liability to be around?I had to look that up. The Internet suggests Rand al'Thor and Mat Cauthon of Wheel of Time. I have not read that series.
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.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.
some interesting experiences here. But they all seem to rely heavily upon accepted tropes, and they don't work well when you are gaming with- or even discussing issues with- people you don't know personally.
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The cowardly trope is not "anti-team"Has no one played at a table where a player has their character run from fights because "it's what my character would do", then has surprised pikachu face when the party ditches them in the next town, and the player is asked to make a replacement character?
Why would any group of adventurers keep taking along a person who never has the party's back?
its a trope. And tropes have never been accepted with universal amounts of...well, acceptance.
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Smaller proficiency bonus. This ideia isn't mine I saw this in a Michael Sayre post here in a topic in the forum. With smaller proficiency bonus (+1,+2,+3,+4) instead os currently one the difference of some classes proficiency would be smaller, the difference between a "martial" caster like warpriest or a MC martial with caster dedication will be way lower than they are currently making such different build more viable. Also this would diminish the critical chance of some classes (fighters and gunslingers) and monsters but they will still be interesting and strong classes.There are tons of players out there who think that if you don't have an 18 in your attack stat, you're a lost cause just weighing the party down.
Shrinking the range in the proficiency bonus is just going to make every +1 matter more, exacerbate the existing issue, and make those playersright.
I fear that is the path to cookie-cutter characters.
That's why I also propose a flexible key stat. Instead of fixed class key stat it's works like the new free boosts for ancestry, the class key stat would be just a suggestion instead.
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Dunno. Samwell Tarly isn’t the best example. He was steward and meister in training. It would be unreasonable to assume he’d be involved in combat. Also, not an adventurer .
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I'd have gone with Apocowlypse, myself, but it'd be a boring ol' world if we were all the same.Yeah yeah, cattlegeddon, we've all seen itIn 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.I still remember the commoner farmer that used their vast starting funds exclusively on cattle, then stampeded elder demigods to death.
*shudders*
Dangit. That's good.
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You don't like rolling dice or you don't like it when dice rolls matter?
The decision to make damage primarily a function of high amounts of dice instead of static modifiers didn't please me...
I have met people in both camps.
