I would love to hear how you define 'wheeeee factor'.
I'm a geek not a poet. If you don't know what I'm describing from that description I won't be able to explain it to you. It's the feeling you get when your character is doing something crazy like hopping on a rocket or jumping out of a window or wrapping an anvil in a roast pig chucking it down the dragons gulllet and then going for a ride.
Starfinder lets characters do things at lower levels , ie, the levels you will get to AND the levels where you will spend most of your time even if you DO get the higher levels. Ysoki can have scurry and swift action cheekpouches right our of the gate whereas you need to be level 10 as a ratfolk and still don't have all the goodies that come with those feats.
Your options are meaningful and powerful and can interact oddly with the plot. You can toss someone in a bag of holding with an oxygen candle or your spare gym armor if need be for example.
'Power curve too low' is always a bizarre complaint against PF2.
It's not really, when critters that are supposed to be an appropriate encounter can just walk up and crit in a 12 and 15 and turn you into a fine mist (I'm looking at YOU agents of edgewatch) and low level characters spend a fair bit of time horizontal.
'Power curve too tight' is a much more meaningful complaint. Yes, PF2 has tight balance. Options are options, but any of the various options are not better than other ones.
Well that's not true. there are plenty of crapitalistically niche options. (Pack rat anyone?*) the class guides didn't give up a color coding system.
What the big change was is the lack of synergy. In PF 1 you could take the various parts and synergize them together so that they're greater or weirder than the sum of their parts. Fox form and the Vexing dodger (climb on giants like Kratos) are both ok, but they work great together. (everything is a giant to you!)
Another one is that your class sets 90% + of your power level and you can only fill up from there.
And that is where the 'subjective' part comes in. Some players really don't like that all of the characters possible are roughly equivalent in power level.
Which is true. But that's not the only complaint. Leveling the power curve also took out the synergy of building and the sheer variety of builds. While its THEORETICALLY possible to have lots of incomparable options that aren't better or worse, that alone is exceedingly difficult. When the parts start synergizing in unexpected ways it's almost inhumanely difficult to maintain that balance.
Reductive breakdown: there are people other than munchkins who do not like the constraints. But yes, it is functionally subjective whether you'd have a balanced system or one where you can use your own box of leggos to build something from the ground up.
So the way that I describe it is that with PF2 system mastery, you can pick exactly the flavor of ice cream that you want
As I see it there are 32 flavors and you can PICK one. yes there are a lot of them. But if you want to make your own you're out of luck. They don't let you sit at the mixer pouring in chemicals and ice cream because doing that lets people get a bigger bowl.
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I play both SF and PF2 and like both but they do feel different. At least for me, it is not related to making individual characters, I play crazy heavily under-optimized characters specialized in non-combat themes of play and they work fine in both systems. I could build a healer in PF2e that is close to my Mystic healer in Starfinder, but the way I sometimes play my mystic in Starfinder could get a tank in PF2e killed in one round.
The difference to me despite the tighter math in PF2e, PF2e feels much more swingy because of the 3 action economy and 10 over = crit rule. If all the PCs go after the opponent's turn this is even worse, where half the party's martial characters could easily be reduced to 0 hp before the PCs act. This is even worse at 1st level in PF2e. Even more so in organized play where the party is often split-level. Play by post where batch or semi-batch initiatives are frequently used so you don't waste an entire week of play waiting for each PC to post in initiative order, means there is a greater chance all or most of the opponents go first.
Like I said I like both games but they do feel different. Personally, I'd like 2e better if the 10 over = crit rule was optional and not the default.
NOTE on character death if I want to play a game where my character is likely to die more frequently, I'd rather play a game where making a character is quicker. For the record, I love all the character options in Paizo games. Also, character death feels bad at the first level when you just spent all your Achievement Points on a species or ancestors, and die in the first game only to realize it will take 10 months to get to play a less common species again. Especially in Pathfinder, because after 46 years of playing D&D I'm not interested in playing any of the original D&D races.
The times I almost died in Starfinder felt really epic. Any time I've almost died in PF2e was a near TPK that started with the opponents going first and getting lots of crits. Sure it was good we survived somehow when someone finally got lucky and saved us, but for most of the party it was just sitting out until someone could heal them or the fight was over.
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I'm a geek not a poet. If you don't know what I'm describing from that description I won't be able to explain it to you. It's the feeling you get when your character is doing something crazy like hopping on a rocket or jumping out of a window or wrapping an anvil in a roast pig chucking it down the dragons gulllet and then going for a ride.
I would love to hear how you define 'wheeeee factor'.
That is something that is created by the players, not the game rules.
Maybe by the setting - but the SF2 setting is going to be the same.
So you can absolutely have a wheeeee in SF2 if you choose to. Nothing stopping you.
For example:
Your options are meaningful and powerful and can interact oddly with the plot. You can toss someone in a bag of holding with an oxygen candle or your spare gym armor if need be for example.
None of that involves rolling anything. So the game balance argument doesn't apply.
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I also have to mention that this:
It's not really, when critters that are supposed to be an appropriate encounter can just walk up and crit in a 12 and 15 and turn you into a fine mist (I'm looking at YOU agents of edgewatch) and low level characters spend a fair bit of time horizontal.
is not typical.
An actual level appropriate encounter doesn't do that.
Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Fall of Plaguestone are known - and acknowledged by the game devs - to be too difficult. The writers 1) didn't have the full finalized rules available while they were designing the encounters, and 2) were still in the mindset of PF1 where the party regularly fights things at the extreme end of the book's printed difficulty recommendations without problems.
So using any of those APs as your example of why "Pathfinder2e has too low of a character power curve" is invalid.
edit: Addendum that I almost forgot.
Pathfinder2 takes different core strategies than PF1 does (and I expect Starfinder, though I don't have as much experience with it). PF1 values "attack, attack, attack, the only defense is dead enemies". PF2 doesn't. Doing that tactic will almost certainly land you horizontal.
So in addition to the extra-hard difficulty of those early APs, there is also a learning curve to PF2 that is especially difficult for players coming from PF1.
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The rest of your post sounds like I would agree with it. It is spun to sound better to those on the other side of the preference scale, but it looks pretty accurate.
The short version is that no single game is able to tell me that I can pick whatever options I want and end up with a character that meets the standards of effectiveness needed, and can tell you that you can synergize various options together in order to create something that is more than the sum of its parts.
That isn't a false dichotomy. Those two design styles are mutually exclusive. Because if the game is designed expecting that players will synergize extra-powerful options for their characters, and then I don't do that - then my character will be below the power expectations that the game is designed for.
That is something that is created by the players, not the game rules.
The game rules absolutely help it. When you have buckets full of gear and options to pull from they enable convos and cleverness. When you can go off model and not die you can have some unusual builds. When you're not at the edge of death all the time you can try to do something silly.
So you can absolutely have a wheeeee in SF2 if you choose to.
It's not binary. Sf2's stamina system for examples enables it. Do something and take 40 points of damage? alright needed to rest anyway....
For example:
None of that involves rolling anything. So the game balance argument doesn't apply.
This objectively does not follow. The game is not merely rolling. There is effects, conditions, positioning. There's no roll for flight for example, but that is an investment heavy option in pf2 and just walking accross the street in starfinder.
Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Fall of Plaguestone are known - and acknowledged by the game devs - to be too difficult.
When you make things too difficult once in error I believe you. When you do it 4 times, no. That's setting the bar and the complaint is perfectly valid.
Pathfinder2 takes different core strategies than PF1 does (and I expect Starfinder, though I don't have as much experience with it). PF1 values "attack, attack, attack, the only defense is dead enemies". PF2 doesn't. Doing that tactic will almost certainly land you horizontal.
Every time I see someone say there's another level to the strategy in PF2 that isn't attack attack attack, or hide behind the tank with the raised shield, I don't ever see what its allegedly supposed to be.
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As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box.
I've made a Rogue for SoT and an Operative for the BB, and I feel like my Rogue has had a tremendously more expressive start. I made them with a 16 in their attack stat in PF 2e, and I have felt less punished than I do in SF 1e playing a 17 in my dex.
I have all these skills but nothing feels like it matters right now because I literally have nothing to do with them outside of Acrobatics. Trick attack lands 25% of the time I use it because I either fail the DC 21 checks or I fail to land the hit with my +3 to hit against KC.
Our engineer seems to be having a ton of fun hacking cause they've done stuff like shut off gravity or vent areas into space, but for the rest of us the enemies hit so hard and moving is so punishing, our only real engagement has been make an attack, miss, and than wait to get hit.
In PF 2e my Rogue was a Ruffian Rogue, so they focus on strength. I've felt like I'm able to actually rp my character in more inventive ways in PF 2e. My character got Survey Wildlife at level 1, and I feel like i've been able to rp with that and my strength to make a Steve Irwin esque person whose thrilled to wrestle and learn about dangerous animals. I've felt my character develop more and more into a vetrenarian who also applies their healing arts to their comrades by focusing on medicine.
So I guess from my POV, I feel like SF 1e doesn't have this facilitating freedom that I see priased as a selling point above PF 2e. To me it feels like the opposite, where I didn't pick the correct flavor of Operative, or didn't build them right, and now I get punished for it in-game vs PF 2e where I can make a less optimal build but still feel like I'm contributing to the game and having fun.
As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box.
you're playing level 1, just learning to play, playing the beginner box rules not the actual starfinder rules, and haven't had the chance to max out your credits going through the Sears Santa Catalog goodie list of gear for stuff yet.
That makes it a very hard reference point from which to see any real differences.
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The game rules absolutely help it. When you have buckets full of gear and options to pull from they enable convos and cleverness. When you can go off model and not die you can have some unusual builds. When you're not at the edge of death all the time you can try to do something silly.
That is something that is created by the players, not the game rules.
Those arguments don't make a whole lot of sense when trying to compare SF1 to PF2, at least not in favour of SF1. Because those are two areas where PF2 wins, easily.
I'm pretty sure that PF2 has far more options than SF1 for anything besides number of ancestries and class archetypes.
I also find it hard to believe that SF1 is better at allowing you to run unusual builds than PF2. From everything I've seen, it's much like any other DnD3.5 variant in that the number of simply non-viable builds is staggering. Anything you build in PF2 that isn't intentionally anti-synergistic will allow you to play most of the game. If anything, despite what reddit suggests is happening, I'm seeing more silly builds than normal ones in person.
So you can absolutely have a wheeeee in SF2 if you choose to.It's not binary. Sf2's stamina system for examples enables it. Do something and take 40 points of damage? alright needed to rest anyway....
Or just Medicine it away in PF2. Or use the Stamina variant rule. The outcome is the same.
None of that involves rolling anything. So the game balance argument doesn't apply.This objectively does not follow. The game is not merely rolling. There is effects, conditions, positioning. There's no roll for flight for example, but that is an investment heavy option in pf2 and just walking accross the street in starfinder.
And again, that has nothing to do with the core system and everything to do with the expectations and balance of the PF2 style. SF2 would have no more problem with it than SF1.
Age of Ashes, Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Fall of Plaguestone are known - and acknowledged by the game devs - to be too difficult.When you make things too difficult once in error I believe you. When you do it 4 times, no. That's setting the bar and the complaint is perfectly valid.
That's a really weird take. Most of those were developed alongside the rules to be ready for release, so the people working on it didn't have time to adjust. Once people had that time, then things ran smoothly, so it clearly wasn't a system problem. We have 10 more examples that prove this particular point.
Pathfinder2 takes different core strategies than PF1 does (and I expect Starfinder, though I don't have as much experience with it). PF1 values "attack, attack, attack, the only defense is dead enemies". PF2 doesn't. Doing that tactic will almost certainly land you horizontal.Every time I see someone say there's another level to the strategy in PF2 that isn't attack attack attack, or hide behind the tank with the raised shield, I don't ever see what its allegedly supposed to be.
Those aspects are called /among other things) "you actually have to employ teamplay", movement/positioning (sine not everyone and their mother has AoO) and actually having skill actions besides Athletics stuff that do anything. Any team who can only apply those strategies you mentioned will do poorly when seriously challenged.
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It's exactly as I've said before - there is nothing here the PF2 core cannot replicate, especially once you adjust for SF expectations.
I'm not sure I'd agree with the first statement. Even with the number of weapons PF2E has, I'm pretty sure SF has more of them. Granted, many of them are some flavor of "crit, and you do a thing," but there are lots and lots of weapons in SF; it's something I'm really looking forward to making the jump.Those arguments don't make a whole lot of sense when trying to compare SF1 to PF2, at least not in favour of SF1. Because those are two areas where PF2 wins, easily.
I'm pretty sure that PF2 has far more options than SF1 for anything besides number of ancestries and class archetypes.
I also find it hard to believe that SF1 is better at allowing you to run unusual builds than PF2. From everything I've seen, it's much like any other DnD3.5 variant in that the number of simply non-viable builds is staggering. Anything you build in PF2 that isn't intentionally anti-synergistic will allow you to play most of the game. If anything, despite what reddit suggests is happening, I'm seeing more silly builds than normal ones in person.
With 3-5 upgraded versions of the same weapon, I'm not sure how many weapons SF1 has exactly. There are still a lot, no doubt, but I don't think there are 285. More like ~200 by my estimate. I'd like to give more concrete numbers, but the SF1 AoN stuff isn't exactly searchable and I'm not counting myself XD
I was going to say SF has lots more techno gadgety things too, nonmagical gear, but PF2E has got alchemicals and other stuff. I'm genuinely kind of interested now in which system's got more stuff in each item category.
It's kind of hard to directly compare, as both systems have plenty of categories that don't have a real mirror in the other system. But PF2 has 271 items in the adventuring gear section alone and 455 in the worn items one. Though again, the problem of higher level duplicates. But it's pretty hard to compete with PF2's insane release schedule XD
Oh, and armor. Pretty sure SF would smash PF2E on armor types, though that's not really saying much. Most SF armors are aesthetic, with maybe a point or two shift in EAC/KAC or mod slots, which is where your armor really gets customized.
Fair enough, that's definitely true ^^
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I think the better question here might be how much of all this is actually usable by a reasonable build. Because that is what counts in the end. Most of PF2's stuff should be halfway decent with the right build, but there are plenty of stinkers regardless. Any idea how SF1 is in that regard?
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Those arguments don't make a whole lot of sense when trying to compare SF1 to PF2, at least not in favour of SF1. Because those are two areas where PF2 wins, easily.
Absolutely not. I don't just disagree I cannot take this seriously.
Starfinder characters have roughly twice the HP pool and don't need to worry about crits happening 3 times per round. Then they can resolve tank to an absurd degree, particularly if anyone in the party has ANY healing at all, including an injector gun full of cheap healing serums.
The sheer number of tech goodies a starfinder character has access to , which are cheap, effective, and scale well, is absurdly high. Because your income scales so fast, you can pick up buckets of low level equipment for pocket change.
When I shop for a starfinder character I just lag the weapons and armor that that doesn't hurt me one bit- that would get me killed in pf2- and pick up buckets of cheap effective. In PF2 i Update my armor update my weapon aaaand. Yup. the christmas tree is back....
And again, that has nothing to do with the core system and everything to do with the expectations and balance of the PF2 style.
The core system expects and demands balance. Balance requires items NOT tip that balance around. A jetpack in pathfinder would be game breaking for example.
It's entirely POSSIBLE starfinder could be the lab for "lets see how far this goes before it breaks" but that doesn't seem to be the idea.
Those aspects are called /among other things) "you actually have to employ teamplay", movement/positioning (sine not everyone and their mother has AoO) and actually having skill actions besides Athletics stuff that do anything. Any team who can only apply those strategies you mentioned will do poorly when seriously challenged.
This is corporate execuspeak, not a viable road to something different.
I have found the lack of AOOs to simply remove a lot of the strategic movement. Yo simply move where you want and do you thing without regard to positioning because nothing can stop you or even disincentivise you from getting there.
I also find it hard to believe that SF1 is better at allowing you to run unusual builds than PF2. From everything I've seen, it's much like any other DnD3.5 variant in that the number of simply non-viable builds is staggering
Foolproof is not the definition of better. The number of non viable builds is simply irrelevant. Starfinder has a larger number of different builds and they're further apart from each other than most pf characters. Starfinder's math is loser, being 1 or 2 off of max isn't the disaster that it is in PF2. There are also more synergistic options.
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With 3-5 upgraded versions of the same weapon, I'm not sure how many weapons SF1 has exactly. There are still a lot, no doubt, but I don't think there are 285. More like ~200 by my estimate. I'd like to give more concrete numbers, but the SF1 AoN stuff isn't exactly searchable and I'm not counting myself XD
Just in the Armory book for Starfinder, there are around 750 to 800 weapons. I didn't do an exact count I counted how many fit on one page then counted pages. That includes variations of weapons by level.
Starfinder Enhanced adds another 25 new types of grenades with over 80 when counting level variations.
Around 300 weapons with variations in the Core rule book.
A lot of the APs and other books have a few weapons in them too, so well over 1000+
It's not just the massive amount of weapon options, but also how easy they are to get if you are at the right level, and using a 3D printer is easer then crafting.
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When I shop for a starfinder character I just lag the weapons and armor that that doesn't hurt me one bit- that would get me killed in pf2- and pick up buckets of cheap effective. In PF2 i Update my armor update my weapon aaaand. Yup. the christmas tree is back....
I totally agree.
Here's the other big difference from how I play Starfinder vs. PF2e.
When I play Starfinder I play whatever character I feel like. I collect concert T-shirts and have creature companions I spent boons to get that I only bring to social events and never on combat missions. Once I donated all my earned income to an NPC that had their starship blown up during our mission.
When I go to a PF2e game I bring 2 or 3 characters I made, that are equally fun to play as any of my SF characters, but I don't decide which character to play until I know what the party needs to have a better chance to survive, and if one of my characters is not a good fit I play the pre-gen that would help the party the most. I don't do this because I'm afraid my character might die, I do this because I would feel bad if I were the cause of a TPK.
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Rather a lot of this back and forth comes down to table variation and expectations. I found Starfinder to be a whole lot more punishing for stepping outside of a narrow optimization band than PF2. Feat taxes, required math options, and punishing skill DC progression meant I felt like SF1 was playing me instead of the other way around.
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A lot of it is also strictly vanilla PF2 (or in some cases a perceived version of how things work there) and not something that SF2 has any reason to care about.
Fundamental runes setting the wrong incentives? ABP is an existing solution that has proven to fix that.
Don't like the PF2 economy in general? SF2 can and will just get its own.
Fixed item DCs? Everybody hates them, so those are clearly not the way.
Low-level flight? No longer a massive advantage, so there is no reason to heavily restrict it via feats or level. Get a bunch of money from your first jobs and buy a jetpack. Or just play a flying ancestry. This was literally told to us multiple times even.
Want to go hard without much rest? The stamina system works just as well over here. Or just make Medicine more of what it actually is.
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I'm missing a few of the newer AP's, but I'm counting 1277 non-consumable weapons. The weapon fusion enchantment system is also WAY better than PF2's runes.
Even if they let us fly at level one like they promised... the rule on having to spend an action to stay in the air every turn is garbage.
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So... there *are* some things that are true about PF2.
First,"wacky" is a lot harder to get, and a lot more limited, and often feels choked. This is part of trying to retain that tight balance. If you want to build a character that goes way outside the norm in their powers, your options are limited and the results are likely to be disappointing. This is the one I'm honestly most worried about, because a lot of the aliens out there are *supposed* to be wacky. Playing a character who technically has six arms, but practically plays like someone with two arms plus a low-level feat? The thrill is limited.
Thankfully, they have been getting better. At its most basic level, every rules book with classes that has come out since I started really paying attention has pushed the envelope, as the devs have gotten more comfortable with the *real* limits that PF2 balance depends on... and SF2 is going to be the beneficiary of all of that. They keep coming out with archetypes that... well, they're trying. In many cases, they still feel a bit choked and constrained, like the concept was reaching further than the rules were prepared to follow, but they've been trying. Again, I suspect that SF2 is going to benefit. So we'll see. I'm still somewhat concerned, but I'm also hopeful.
Second, they've carved out basically all of he shenanigans. The open-ended world-shaping abilities that let you do crazy things like build a fortress out of iron in a week and then just leave it there? That's (almost) all gone. There's a reason for that, because pretty much all of those could be abused terribly in one way or another that would make the people who did abuse them more powerful than the people who did not. So we can see why they did it... but it also means that there are entire areas of "awesome things that I could do" that you just cant' do anymore. Now, the lid has been coming up off of that stuff to a degree too... slowly. They're being very careful with it, and it almost certainly won't come up all that far, but there has been a little loosening. Still, it's a thing.
Third, they've carved out a lot of the epic. Permaflight in PF2 is hard. Permahaste is harder. At-will teleport is (to my knowledge) basically not a thing, unless you're a particular kind of kineticist at a decently high level, and even then it has real limits. If you start out mostly hitting your enemies with a sword and blocking with a shield at level 1, there's a good chance you'll still be hitting with a sword and blocking with a shield at level 20. This will shift and adjust along the way, sure, but the gameplay changes a lot less as you level up than it did in 3.x - and in a lot of ways, that's a good thing. Like, the fact that you can take a party from level 1 to level 20 with the general assumption that the campaign won't just shatter entirely in the middle as your players get world-breaker powers. Original 3.x would generally have hit "unplayable" somewhere in there. Still, even if it eventually wound up unplayable, it was cool, and people miss it.
Well, SF2 is likely to loosen up on that some. In particular, I expect that the things that get to count as difficult or rare are going to change, with permaflight being the obvious example. SF2 probably is going to allow for a bit more over-the-top epic than PF2... but even if the walls are pushed out a bit, i'd suspect that we'll still see walls. It's the nature of the beast. Honestly, if I have to choose between a level 20 character who can break the world theoretically, and a level 20 character who might actually see play at a table I could actually play at, I think I prefer the latter.
I'm missing a few of the newer AP's, but I'm counting 1277 non-consumable weapons.
Well, if we count variants, then literally every PF2 weapon has 7, meaning we land just shy of 2000. But those - just like SF2's stronger weapon versions - aren't actually more options, just stronger ones of the same, so there is no point in counting them.
The weapon fusion enchantment system is also WAY better than PF2's runes.
From what I can tell, there really isn't much difference between the two systems. Runes are simpler and have more of an effect, but are also less flexible as you usually only have one or two for most of the game. Meanwhile fusion seals are slightly more flexible (at least it looks like it), but are rather limited in their effect on average (a lot only replace crit effects or are 1/day) and are a more complicated system. Especially to balance, as you can get so many of them.
Even if they let us fly at level one like they promised... the rule on having to spend an action to stay in the air every turn is garbage.
That is designed with the context of (vaguely) biological flight in mind, so I wouldn't be surprised if hover modes that don't require an action were a thing.
I don't know how often this will actually become an issue either. Aerial combat is quite mobile and will be so even in SF2. After all, you being in the air also makes you the juiciest of all targets, so I don't believe you want to sit around up there all that long anyway.
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It's entirely POSSIBLE starfinder could be the lab for "lets see how far this goes before it breaks" but that doesn't seem to be the idea.
That's true... because if you do it that way, you wind up with a broken game. However, they are going to be able to go further because they've already learned a fair bit about how much they can push the system.
Every time I see someone say there's another level to the strategy in PF2 that isn't attack attack attack, or hide behind the tank with the raised shield, I don't ever see what its allegedly supposed to be.
Okay. Let's look at this, then.
- Cooperation is a lot stronger. Applying debuffs that make the enemy more vulnerable to the attacks of your allies is more powerful. Workign together with an ally to stack debuffs is more powerful. Like getting the enemy to the point where they're prone, grappled, and perma-intimidated is possible. It's also quite strong, if you can pull it off. It's a lot easier to pull off if you have multiple characters working on it together. Even more, the kind of debuff it is matters a lot. Bon Mot can be functionally useless or utterly brutal depending entirely on what kinds of attacks your allies can bring to bear.
- If you're dealing with especially strong single enemies, then depriving them of actions can be a big deal. There are some monsters in PF2 that have pretty severe three-action attacks. If you can manage to get them slowed a bit or stunned a bit or put them out of position or whatever you have to do to deprive them of that third action, then their threat level for that round goes down significantly. Tank and spank isn't going to give you that.
- The enemies themselves are written more like puzzles. It is frequently the case when dealing with PF2 enemies that if you can figure out their schtick and play into their vulnerabilities, the fight gets a lot easier. Identify their low and high defenses, identify their vulnerabilities and resists, figure out what it is that they need to make their particular combat strategy o and deprive them of it. Just for a simple example, you might not normally be interested in wielding a kusarigama, but that thing is versatile S/B, and that can be a really big deal if you happen to be facing off against a combination of zombies and skeletons.
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As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box.
you're playing level 1, just learning to play, playing the beginner box rules not the actual starfinder rules, and haven't had the chance to max out your credits going through the Sears Santa Catalog goodie list of gear for stuff yet.
That makes it a very hard reference point from which to see any real differences.
Your statement, word for word, "Starfinder lets characters do things at lower levels , ie, the levels you will get to AND the levels where you will spend most of your time even if you DO get the higher levels. Ysoki can have scurry and swift action cheekpouches right our of the gate whereas you need to be level 10 as a ratfolk and still don't have all the goodies that come with those feats."
I'm at lower levels. I'm at the lowest of the levels you can be. I ain't seeing what the you mean when you talk about this.
Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame? Like, what lower levels is lower levels to you, so perhaps I know when I should expect to encounter this amazing time of expression that is currently lacking in my playthrough?
Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame?
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Your mechanic is already seeing it apparently.
Operatives are a little one note but can be very boring. Trick attack to flat foot is very powerful and its REALLY hard to make another entirely separate action better than doing that.
Dip a level into biohacker and trick attack with an injection gun, buy some medications for different side effects.
Look at the tech items, magic items, augmentations and armor upgrades for build up a toolbox of useful things you can do or problems you can over come. A party with clearsight goggles and smoke bombs for example can be pretty nasty.
Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame?
3-5
Your mechanic is already seeing it apparently.
I'll sure hope so. I don't know if the beginning adventure is just particularly rough or if our GM is just not running it right, but it has been a very deadly and not-encouraging AP.
Like, we flew out to a derelict ship and had to fight like 5 asteroid louses who damn near killed us, and then got told "I removed the other 10 that were supposed to be on the other floors" cause of our near tpk. It's been...rough, to say the least. And it hasn't given me a lot of glowing praise for Starfinder as a system.
Like, not even Age of Ashes was this rough at level 1, and that ones notoriously rough.
The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.
One of the explicit goals of the system was to not have the game be won or lost in the character creation/advancement phase. So synergies were limited internally and many of the components distributed so that you would have to work together to achieve them. Hence the higher emphasis on teamwork is far from "corporate execuspeak".
And I don't see SF2 deviating much from this line, because that sacrifice helps solve a couple of very important problems. Those extreme synergies are one of the main reasons why characters don't fit into the same party. They are far too often either too strong or too weak for that level of play. It is also a core reason of why games like this break tend to break down long before the theoretical maximum level. Past a certain point it becomes a matter of trading super-attacks (aka "rocket tag"), as the monsters have to keep pace to still provide a challenge. Combat stops being fun, so people stop playing.
In my experience this sacrifice was absolutely worth it. On the other hand, if that is a main part of your fun playing games like this, then yeah that sucks.
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The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.
One of the explicit goals of the system was to not have the game be won or lost in the character creation/advancement phase. So synergies were limited internally and many of the components distributed so that you would have to work together to achieve them. Hence the higher emphasis on teamwork is far from "corporate execuspeak".
And I don't see SF2 deviating much from this line, because that sacrifice helps solve a couple of very important problems. Those extreme synergies are one of the main reasons why characters don't fit into the same party. They are far too often either too strong or too weak for that level of play. It is also a core reason of why games like this break tend to break down long before the theoretical maximum level. Past a certain point it becomes a matter of trading super-attacks (aka "rocket tag"), as the monsters have to keep pace to still provide a challenge. Combat stops being fun, so people stop playing.
In my experience this sacrifice was absolutely worth it. On the other hand, if that is a main part of your fun playing games like this, then yeah that sucks.
I definitely am looking forward to a retooled CR system. Getting to experience old school CR has given me a reinvigorated appreciation to how good the PL XP based system for PF 2e is.
Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame?
3-5
Your mechanic is already seeing it apparently.
I'll sure hope so. I don't know if the beginning adventure is just particularly rough or if our GM is just not running it right, but it has been a very deadly and not-encouraging AP.
The begginers box isn't even the full starfinder rules. So I can't tell you how far they're off from what they have.
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The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.
It is in no way , shape, or form "ridiculous", munchkining, or any of the other aspersions you're casting on other players to want a character with four arms to act like they have four arms and have it be SOMEHOW different than just slinging things in your pack.
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The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.
Oooh, yeah. Good point. That is another thing that they mostly got rid of. I actually miss it, kind of. It means that I can't seriously get my CharOp on as a form of recreational solo play. If I'm going to run serious character optimization in PF2, I need to know who my fellow party members are - both what their rough intended builds are as characters and what kinds of strategies I can expect them to support as players.
Even weird little detail stuff like "how many of my fellow players can be generally expected to have empty hands at any given time" can make a notable difference. Questions like "Can I trust my allies to hold back and wait for the enemy to come to us when appropriate rather than just charging in immediately every time?" are a much bigger deal.
It is in no way , shape, or form "ridiculous", munchkining, or any of the other aspersions you're casting on other players to want a character with four arms to act like they have four arms and have it be SOMEHOW different than just slinging things in your pack.
That's true, and we're all hopeful that the four-arms thing will work out well an feel satisfying. That's not what they're talking about.
I've never actually played PF1 or SF1, but I have played 3.x, and I understand that the issue was somewhat improved by the Paizo follow-ons but not by any stretch eliminated. I once put together a spiked chain specialist who could opportunity-attack basically everyone who did anything in his absurd-tier reach, and then trip them after he hit them... where "standing up", "crawling", "casting spells", and "making ranged attacks" all counted as "things I can punish you for". He was great at level 6, and would likely have been largely obsolete by level 10. I built a character who was able to consistently pretend to be two different races (neither of which he was) to two different magical items as part of a build that gave him punch damage of slightly over twice that of a level 20 colossal monk, plus the warmind schtick of getting two hits for the price of one, all at level 10. I once built a character whose animal companion was able to fight as well as the rest of the party combined. (My character rode around on him and mostly played personal healer/buffer for the "Chosen one of the goddess." He had an... interesting worldview.) I was able to do these things by stacking synergy on synergy until it hit places that the designers never intended. That's what they're talking about - the fact that if you want to be a certain class, there are races that are just better at being that class, and you can find ways to stack feats on racial features on class features on implants on gear that will make you enormously stronger than if you come in just knowing that you want to play a ysoki with a laser rifle.
...and it's not ridiculous - or, at least, not in a bad way. It's a fun kind of ridiculous, and this is a game, which means that "fun" is an entirely reasonable goal to pursue. The problem is that it breaks so many other things.
That's true, and we're all hopeful that the four-arms thing will work out well an feel satisfying. That's not what they're talking about.
It really is. Or rather, its the consequence of keeping the sacred balance.
I've never actually played PF1 or SF1, but I have played 3.x
Starfinder has toned down and paired away a LOT of the excesses while still being 3.5 and allowing a lot of customization. Turning almost everything into an insight bonus narrows the gap quite a bit.
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The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.Oooh, yeah. Good point. That is another thing that they mostly got rid of. I actually miss it, kind of. It means that I can't seriously get my CharOp on as a form of recreational solo play. If I'm going to run serious character optimization in PF2, I need to know who my fellow party members are - both what their rough intended builds are as characters and what kinds of strategies I can expect them to support as players.
Even weird little detail stuff like "how many of my fellow players can be generally expected to have empty hands at any given time" can make a notable difference. Questions like "Can I trust my allies to hold back and wait for the enemy to come to us when appropriate rather than just charging in immediately every time?" are a much bigger deal.
It is in no way , shape, or form "ridiculous", munchkining, or any of the other aspersions you're casting on other players to want a character with four arms to act like they have four arms and have it be SOMEHOW different than just slinging things in your pack.That's true, and we're all hopeful that the four-arms thing will work out well an feel satisfying. That's not what they're talking about.
I've never actually played PF1 or SF1, but I have played 3.x, and I understand that the results were toned down but not by any stretch eliminated. I once put together a spiked chain specialist who could opportunity-attack basically everyone who did anything in his absurd-tier reach, and then trip them after he hit them... where "standing up", "crawling", "casting spells", and "making ranged attacks" all counted as "things I can punish you for". He was great at level 6, and would likely have been largely obsolete by level 10. I built a character who was able to consistently pretend to be four different races to four different magical items in order to punch... well,...
Sometimes I miss the combing through PFSRD or Nethys for every feat, looking up info on forums or reddit, cross referencing bonuses and what stacks with what, trying to backtrack through splatbooks to find out the wording on specific archetype abilities. I remember the first time I discovered stupid combination of things like Crane Stance and Swashbuckler nonsense because Dodge bonuses all stack, or when I found out the Power Attack + Furious Focus and trying to get Vital Strike to work with it on a Unchained Barbarian.
I've had other friends who made absolute beasts with stuff like grappling enemies or absolutely cracking magics, and it is fun...at first, for me. But the novelty has worn off as I have aged. Perhaps it's because I work as an accountant, or perhaps just having a job vs having more free time from when I was a full time college student. I have found my love of combing through all this infromation to build a character has turned from joy to dread, and turns a hobby I use to relax into one of tedium that I dread.
Even now I still get a lump in my stomatch when I realize I need to bust out the Excel spreadsheet to calculate what's happening with my character in PF 1e. Starfinder 1e doesn't have as much bloat, but I can see it now that I've played a more streamlined experience. I can see how Starfinder was written to be easier than Pathfinder in terms of what you need to make a good character. But it was done in the lense of someone whose favorite program is excel and who loves nothing but to dedicate a weekend to researching and theory crafting the highest bonuses one can get for a character to succeed.
It's not surprising, that audience was the cornerstone for pathfinder 1e, why wouldn't that audience also eventually move over to try starfinder out and bring that same energy with them. But building and trying to find out if I'm building a good character has dredged up those old negative feelings of needing to comb through Nethys to find out what I need to not make my character fall behind an invisible curve of game expectation, while also trying to not over-shoot it so that I end up overly dominating the game and cause the difficulty to raise for my less optimized party members. I do not enjoy this tightrope and it is why I am looking forward to SF 2e, so I can just pick up the game, make my character in 15 minutes, and be ready to just go knowing whatever I pick, as long as my stats are decent and I'm playing what my class is designed to do, that I'm going to be a-okay no matter what I pick.
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That's true, and we're all hopeful that the four-arms thing will work out well an feel satisfying. That's not what they're talking about.It really is. Or rather, its the consequence of keeping the sacred balance.
I've never actually played PF1 or SF1, but I have played 3.xStarfinder has toned down and paired away a LOT of the excesses while still being 3.5 and allowing a lot of customization. Turning almost everything into an insight bonus narrows the gap quite a bit.
For the first, it may be that that's how it turns out... but I'm pretty sure that they're at least trying to come up with ways to make it satisfying... where you can legit have four arms and have it work in a satisfying way but not be Just Plan Better than your buddy next to you that does not have four arms. I'll admit that it's a challenge, but I wouldn't call it failed just yet. Let's at least see the initial-pass barely-a-first-draft version that comes with the field test before we throw our hands up inthe air and declare defeat.
For the second... honestly, PF2 has a lot of customization too. It's got a lot of customization. Here's the thing. If you go into it saying "I want to be an X that does Y and Z", you'll walk out of there with a viable, playable character that is an X that does Y and Z. You can customize to your heart's content... and that's really cool for the people who walk in with an image in their head that they just want to bring to life. They can have whatever crazy thing it is, and it'll basically work. Are you imagining yourself as a crazed dwarf that connects to their psychic abilities by consuming lots of drugs that they refine from the bugs in their beard? You can do that. Psychic, archetype into alchemist. It'll work, it'll be viable, and you'll be able to get real advantages from your side gig without crippling your mainline abilities. If you want those same bugs to come out of your beard and fight for you? Well, we're waiting on HotW for that one, but it's coming.
The thing it doesn't have is the ability to chase significant advantages with that customization. You can't find two or three crazy things from radically different places that look like they might work together and derive your character from the combo. I mean... it's not early 5th ed or anything. It's not that there are no advantages to chase... but the power you can extract from them all by yourself is pretty thin. The power you can manage in combo with a buddy is a lot more robust.
The thing it doesn't have is the ability to chase significant advantages with that customization
PF has a lot of and but doesn't have much.. any? with. Ability to do with as opposed to and. You can be a dwarf and have psycic abilities AND enjoy your mushrooms but they will be three seperate pools abilities with 3 separate actions and no synergy. Yes on the one hand that does prevent synergizing the numbers too high, but it also prevents a large number of possible combinations. If something in PF2 has 5 parts then its 5 options. If something in Starfinder or pathfinder has 5 parts its 5* 4* 3 *2 *1 120 possible actions.
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The thing it doesn't have is the ability to chase significant advantages with that customizationPF has a lot of and but doesn't have much.. any? with. Ability to do with as opposed to and. You can be a dwarf and have psycic abilities AND enjoy your mushrooms but they will be three seperate pools abilities with 3 separate actions and no synergy. Yes on the one hand that does prevent synergizing the numbers too high, but it also prevents a large number of possible combinations. If something in PF2 has 5 parts then its 5 options. If something in Starfinder or pathfinder has 5 parts its 5* 4* 3 *2 *1 120 possible actions.
That's just blatantly untrue. There are plenty of options that don't synergize in SF1/PF1 and there are still plenty of synergies in PF2. There are just fewer. That statement is entirely dependent on what those 5 options are.
It is in no way , shape, or form "ridiculous", munchkining, or any of the other aspersions you're casting on other players to want a character with four arms to act like they have four arms and have it be SOMEHOW different than just slinging things in your pack.
And I never stated any such thing. That was a general statement for a good reason, so please stop reading things into it and attacking me for things I haven't even said or alluded to.
If you don't want to kill opponents, you have to use nonlethal weapons because if the last hit is with a lethal weapon or a spell that does lethal damage, they just die when they reach zero hit points
Most monsters and NPCs don’t have Resolve Points, so injury and death work differently for them. A monster or NPC reduced to 0 HP is dead, unless the last bit of damage it took was nonlethal damage (see page 252), in which case it is knocked unconscious. If it is ever important to know exactly when a monster dies, such as if you want to capture the creature alive, the GM can decide that a monster reduced to 0 or fewer Hit Points with lethal damage dies in 3 rounds unless it takes any additional damage or receives healing. If a monster or NPC has Resolve Points, the GM can choose whether the monster dies at 0 HP or if it uses the normal rules for dying and death.
3 rounds is enough time to get off a stabalize or shoot them with a healing serum.
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One problem with surrender for encounter design is what do the PCs do with captives. This could distract or completely side-rail an adventure. This is even more of a problem in organized play where all the scenarios are one-shots. I think it's a good option to have, but needs lots of support both in encounter design and equipment to deal with it.
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I've been thinking about classes a bit more recently and once they've rounded out the core, I'd like to see a dedicated "magical gunner" class. Not the big bang or actual spellcasting of the Magus, but just a class that makes guns do things they really shouldn't be capable of. Replace mags via teleportation, wallhacks, aimbots, accelerate projectiles way past their muzzle velocity, create custom ammo on the fly or even summon weapons out of thin air.
One problem with surrender for encounter design is what do the PCs do with captives. This could distract or completely side-rail an adventure. This is even more of a problem in organized play where all the scenarios are one-shots. I think it's a good option to have, but needs lots of support both in encounter design and equipment to deal with it.
The equipment is definitely there past first level. Merciful is a level 2 fusion and its pretty easy to keep that on a weapon, you can get a snowgarden manufacturer weapon for 10% of the price and ranks in perform dance, a fair number of weapons are non lethal and can be good for a backup, a regular old fist isn't an operative weapon so does str + 1d3+ level damage (hurts more than a knife at some point) unarmed strike isn't a bad weapon, just lose a few points of damage off of your natural attack
they'll be ko'd till you come back and collect them.
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One problem with surrender for encounter design is what do the PCs do with captives. This could distract or completely side-rail an adventure. This is even more of a problem in organized play where all the scenarios are one-shots. I think it's a good option to have, but needs lots of support both in encounter design and equipment to deal with it.The equipment is definitely there past first level. Merciful is a level 2 fusion and its pretty easy to keep that on a weapon, you can get a snowgarden manufacturer weapon for 10% of the price and ranks in perform dance, a fair number of weapons are non lethal and can be good for a backup, a regular old fist isn't an operative weapon so does str + 1d3+ level damage (hurts more than a knife at some point) unarmed strike isn't a bad weapon, just lose a few points of damage off of your natural attack
they'll be ko'd till you come back and collect them.
The equipment is less of a problem, the real one is the story and pacing.
Because as an immediate consequence, if you leave unsecured enemies behind, there is always the danger that backup will arrive and pick them back up. And in the aftermath, there won't always be a convenient prison a few doors down.
All of that requires quite a bit of space to resolve and often cannot be resolved at all without completely derail a storyline. For an option that is without a doubt the road far less traveled, that's simply not viable. That's why it is usually not given much consideration and left to the individual tables to figure out. I'd love to see that dynamic change more and get further away from killing being the first, second and third option for almost everything, but that's how it is.
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Equipment-wise I'm thinking of things that could put someone to sleep with no way to wake them for 8 hours during combat would be OP but something like that that can only be used after they have been defeated wouldn't mess with combat balance. Or Manacles with a tracking device that called security for a pickup could help in cities. In general, things that let you deal with someone who surrenders once and have a good chance of continuing the adventure without delay or unplanned complications that are not part of the adventure.
MOST of my characters KO people instead of killing them one way or another (Stabalize spells, Merciful weapons, sedatives, bonking people with his tail) Even the murder mouse CAN stab people in areas without arteries with the snowgarden productions dagger. (When she feels like it. Usually if its a fellow ysoki)
I've never seen anyone get back up or had it be an issue besides someone having binders (cuffs) or titanium cable. It's not really an area of the game that needs a lot of support.