I mean, it's true that my PF2 characters are less defined by a specific combination of choices that allow me to do the specific neat trick I decided I wanted my character to do than my PF1 characters were.
That is you have less build freedom
In fact, a surprisingly workable way to build a PF2 character is "have absolutely no plan for what choices you will take at any future level before you are actually given those choices."
That is picking a character rather than building one.
Thing Mark Seifter said over and over again during the PF2 Playtest was something like "complexity is the currency through which we buy depth" and the very good thing about PF2 is that they didn't take very many bad deals here.
There's nothing wrong with LIKING the trade off but it's -we are not at war with east asia. We are just sending our armies to east asia where a lot of our people will shoot at a lot of their people and vice versa- to tell people that tradeoff hasn't been made and then admit to the trade off under different words.
Several of us have explained why PF2 was designed that way and why it makes for a very flexible and fun game to play.
I don't have a problem with the liking it part or the fun part. What I have a problem with is the idea that it's more flexible than SF or PF1 because it's fun. That just does not follow.
The game does not let you pick/assign your stats. It is absurd to claim that that is flexibility and build freedom because it keeps you from picking the wrong stat. A nose guard on the end of a chainsaw might be a good idea but it still limits the cuts you can do.
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BNW, your Starfinder character isn't great.
It just isn't.
It's a caster built for melee in a game where everybody carries a gun. Its melee damage is mediocre, taking away the biggest advantage SF1 melee has over ranged (which is: more damage to compensate for range). Its AC is nonexistent, which isn't great for melee characters to say mildly, and it can't do anything serious on turns when it's not fighting in melee or casting one of its few spells. It's not built around being effective; it's built around fulfilling your fantasy of "I wanna play a big cosmic dwagon".
You're enjoying that regardless of how effective the character is, but for every you, there will be 10 people who will try to take those SF1/PF1 Lego bricks and build their fantasy, but they'll end up with a dysfunctional character that will be overshadowed by PCs built by people who know the game well. And the experience of those people at the table will be s&!%ty, and I know that because I've seen people build such characters in either game and then discover that the 3ed D&D engine they run on rewards system mastery and punishes the lack of it.
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Battlezoo Dragons are soooo much better than dragonkin it's not even close.
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You're enjoying that regardless of how effective the character is
Rather effective.
I would LIKE to say that your inability to tell that is because of the weird synergies going on that demonstrate the effectiveness of starfinder's more freeform box of leggos, but the issue appears to be you're just not that familiar with starfinder.
If pathfinder is ostensibly a game about people with swords where the gatlin bow is king, starfinder is ostensibly a game about people going pew pew with lasers where the real damage is from people running up and stabbing you with sharp pointy metal. Or at least sharp pointy solid energy swords.
With jet packs, flying critters, movement enhancers, and at 8th level haste circuits melee has no trouble closing the distance and going to town. Melee with reach against spellcasters and people with laser guns forces them to either switch to a non prefered tactic or soak up AOOs. It's VERY rare that any of my melee cannot move up and whack someone every round. They make up for more in AOO's than they lose to that.
Its AC is nonexistent, which isn't great for melee characters to say mildly
In starfinder you can take a 10 minute coffee break to get back all your stamina for a resolve point. So if you're missing 20% you might spend it. if you take 50% you're going to spend it. If you take 100% you're going to spend it.
So as long as you stay in stamina there is very little difference between some of it and all of it. I've done this effectively with a number of characters.
This isn't a very common meta but I'm not the only one using it.
It's not built around being effective; it's built around fulfilling your fantasy of "I wanna play a big cosmic dwagon".
It's not built around effectiveness but it is still very effective. You're trying to say it isn't, but experimental evidence trumps baseless hypothesizing.
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Battlezoo Dragons are soooo much better than dragonkin it's not even close.
So much this. PF2 lets you play an actual dragon. And it works, without making everyone else irrelevant. Sure it's technically 3rd party, but eh?
If that isn't proof of how much freedom you have in this system, then I don't know what is.
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I'm gonna come out and say it: I don't care about organized play at all and using it as a cudgel to limit game design is dumb. Also, Battlezoo content is written by Mark Seifter, one of the design leads of PF2, making it some of the best 3rd party content available, and even if it wasn't maligning 3rd party content is a trash stance to take. A vibrant 3rd party content scene is fantastic for a game to have, and PF2's engine is much easier to consistently design for.
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PF2s power curve is so low and tight that it can't handle the stress.Several of us have explained why PF2 was designed that way and why it makes for a very flexible and fun game to play. Saying that you don't like it doesn't change that. No game system is right for everyone. I can barely tolerate playing PF1. I liked SF1 well enough, but not enough to put more time into it after PF2 came out.
And several of us liked the middle ground that starfinder took or even (gasp) liked the high ground of pf1. And now we're having the low ground of pf2 shoved down our throats and being told to like it.
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I mean, it's true that my PF2 characters are less defined by a specific combination of choices that allow me to do the specific neat trick I decided I wanted my character to do than my PF1 characters were. But the long and short of it is if you can't get unlimited, all day flight at a sufficiently low level for it to "define your character" then you don't define your character with unlimited, all-day flight in mind. In fact, a surprisingly workable way to build a PF2 character is "have absolutely no plan for what choices you will take at any future level before you are actually given those choices."
Sure, that's why ancestries like Sprites and Strix with wings and cultures centered around being able to fly make TOTAL sense that as soon as they become PCs their wings get clipped until level 13.
I'm gonna come out and say it: I don't care about organized play at all and using it as a cudgel to limit game design is dumb. Also, Battlezoo content is written by Mark Seifter, one of the design leads of PF2, making it some of the best 3rd party content available, and even if it wasn't maligning 3rd party content is a trash stance to take. A vibrant 3rd party content scene is fantastic for a game to have, and PF2's engine is much easier to consistently design for.
Any game can have 3rd party content. Lots of games have had amazing 3rd party content. It is not much of an argument in support of a system. And if it is, then stop playing PF/SF and go play a PBtA hack. If adding dragons to a fantasy game wows you, you've not gonna believe what they get up to in that system.
And several of us liked the middle ground that starfinder took or even (gasp) liked the high ground of pf1. And now we're having the low ground of pf2 shoved down our throats and being told to like it.
But no one is setting SF1 on fire!
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Sure, that's why ancestries like Sprites and Strix with wings and cultures centered around being able to fly make TOTAL sense that as soon as they become PCs their wings get clipped until level 13.
This seems like a bad faith reading since the book straight up tells you that this is for balance reasons (and diagetically part of the cost of having the potential to be a PC) and gives you the option and rules to ignore this by giving those people flight at level 1 if the GM wants, with the warning that this runs the risk of trivializing certain encounters and the GM needs to account for this.
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"Folks can fly easily" works entirely differently in a game with a medieval tech level and in a game with a sci-fi tech level.
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"Folks can fly easily" works entirely differently in a game with a medieval tech level and in a game with a sci-fi tech level.
Yeah, a Pathfinder game potentially would need a GM to adjust things when someone shows up with a Strix instead of an Elf, because challenges like "fight the bear" or "get across the river" or "find your way out of the jungle" are no longer interesting if one character can fly.
I assume Starfinder adventures will just fundamentally be less interested in these sorts of challenges. Like in most combats in Starfinder *cover* is a lot more advantageous than *elevation*, whereas in Pathfinder the character with unlimited flight and one offensive cantrip can never be damaged by bears.
Pretty much any other system with decently complicated combat rules? I'd agree with you. This one is different.
Hmm. Let me take another whack at making my point.
PF2 does not have what I consider sufficient build freedom for me to really like the system (starfinder is kind of on the low end of that but got a bit better as it added options), so PF2 being very well balanced doesn't undermine my point.
I would prefer more build freedom in the game, and then deal with the resulting power imbalance by letting each individual group decide where people want to be on the power curve and self police the individuals.
PF2 has what I feel is a lot of illusion of build freedom. The math is so tight that anything that just makes you worse is right out: you need that 18 for the +1 to hit and more chances to crit. Anything outside that lane is right out. While there are theoretically a large number of feats, many of them are incredibly situational, are required for basic functionality, or go into a tree. If the standard tree progression is meh ok awesome you're not really making 3 choices to pick 3 feats you're making 1 choice to follow that tree. It's like the first two years of college. Sure you can pick your classes after all the requirements.. oh wait that's all your classes
Many abilities were just taken out of the old classes/races and then are trickled back in as special abilities and choices. On my more cynical days it looks like they designed the system to have X amount of power and then decided to let people have window dressing so it LOOKED like they were building the place.
If I'm trusting the group to self police as a DM I'll be running us through a mechanically leaner system like shadow of the demon lord or blades in the dark. Good faith that the optimizers and the stargazers are gonna play hand in hand is not something I want when playing with a chunky game engine. Too much room for feels bad and table tension.
Free Archetype isn't allowed in organized play. If your argument requires the use of it, it's already failed.
Plenty of people love free archetype, but that's no surprise bc many people love getting extra. For my part I don't really workshop characters with it in mind bc it's not a general assumption between different tables; I have plenty of fun making characters (many still multiclassed or archetyped) with 10 class feat slots. Working within those 10 choices has you picking the things that are important to defining your character instead of doing that AND layering a bunch of cheese (more casting slots, potent healing archetypes that weren't in original concept, choicest focus spells, or weapon archetypes providing choicest action compression not in original concept) on top. With the pf2 engine baseline functionality comes from your chassis, feats can only make your toolbox wider. SF2 will work just fine without free archetype.
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Free Archetype isn't allowed in organized play. If your argument requires the use of it, it's already failed.Plenty of people love free archetype, but that's no surprise bc many people love getting extra. For my part I don't really workshop characters with it in mind bc it's not a general assumption between different tables; I have plenty of fun making characters (many still multiclassed or archetyped) with 10 class feat slots. Working within those 10 choices has you picking the things that are important to defining your character instead of doing that AND layering a bunch of cheese (more casting slots, potent healing archetypes that weren't in original concept, choicest focus spells, or weapon archetypes providing choicest action compression not in original concept) on top. With the pf2 engine baseline functionality comes from your chassis, feats can only make your toolbox wider. SF2 will work just fine without free archetype.
I don't disagree. I LIKE the way PF2 builds characters and runs combat. And there's plenty of room in that to make fun characters. I actually do look forward to starfinder moving to that system. My objections are the specific balance points PF2 uses (flight, immunities, likelyhood of success on a roll, etc..) that I don't want to see brought over to the new system. And coming back to the title of this thread... I really like the Stamina system and want it to continue. I also like the EAC / KAC split, but I'm not THAT attached to it.
I'm also upset about loosing my progress on my existing starfinder characters, but that's inherent to any edition change.
Free Archetype isn't allowed in organized play. If your argument requires the use of it, it's already failed.Plenty of people love free archetype, but that's no surprise bc many people love getting extra. For my part I don't really workshop characters with it in mind bc it's not a general assumption between different tables; I have plenty of fun making characters (many still multiclassed or archetyped) with 10 class feat slots. Working within those 10 choices has you picking the things that are important to defining your character instead of doing that AND layering a bunch of cheese (more casting slots, potent healing archetypes that weren't in original concept, choicest focus spells, or weapon archetypes providing choicest action compression not in original concept) on top. With the pf2 engine baseline functionality comes from your chassis, feats can only make your toolbox wider. SF2 will work just fine without free archetype.I don't disagree. I LIKE the way PF2 builds characters and runs combat. And there's plenty of room in that to make fun characters. I actually do look forward to starfinder moving to that system. My objections are the specific balance points PF2 uses (flight, immunities, likelyhood of success on a roll, etc..) that I don't want to see brought over to the new system. And coming back to the title of this thread... I really like the Stamina system and want it to continue. I also like the EAC / KAC split, but I'm not THAT attached to it.
I'm also upset about loosing my progress on my existing starfinder characters, but that's inherent to any edition change.
Fair enough. I'll be interested to see what stays and what sets it apart from its fantasy sibling
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Free Archetype isn't allowed in organized play. If your argument requires the use of it, it's already failed.
With Paizo making Starfinder and Pathfinder fully compatible, I'd love to see organized play become more compatible with more of the options available within each game. I'm not talking about mixing options between the two games that's a different debate.
As much as I as like organized play, it's also the only option I Have to play currently. If an opportunity comes up to play the full game I'd sadly just walk away from organized play.
If I'm trusting the group to self police as a DM I'll be running us through a mechanically leaner system like shadow of the demon lord or blades in the dark. Good faith that the optimizers and the stargazers are gonna play hand in hand is not something I want when playing with a chunky game engine. Too much room for feels bad and table...
It's very easy in a home group. There are a lot of other solutions, not the least of which is simply playing in different niches. Quizinorc the barbarian being optimized to the hilt doesn't affect Brother Augustus de tonnerre de Brest's healing or Reynards scouting and sneaking. power imbalances only really matter if you're stepping on someone's toes. You can also have a word with someone to tone it down, or have the optimizer help the stargazer with their build.
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If I'm trusting the group to self police as a DM I'll be running us through a mechanically leaner system like shadow of the demon lord or blades in the dark. Good faith that the optimizers and the stargazers are gonna play hand in hand is not something I want when playing with a chunky game engine. Too much room for feels bad and table...It's very easy in a home group. There are a lot of other solutions, not the least of which is simply playing in different niches. Quizinorc the barbarian being optimized to the hilt doesn't affect Brother Augustus de tonnerre de Brest's healing or Reynards scouting and sneaking. power imbalances only really matter if you're stepping on someone's toes. You can also have a word with someone to tone it down, or have the optimizer help the stargazer with their build.
Absolutely those things can help, my preference is just a system that is balanced to not require it. P2E has been great for me in that regard, a playground of lego bricks for my players coupled with peace of mind that all of their creations will play nice with each other as well as the session Ive prepped. No other system has this ratio of crunch to DM accessibility.
Absolutely those things can help, my preference is just a system that is balanced to not require it. P2E has been great for me in that regard, a playground of lego bricks for my players coupled with peace of mind that all of their creations will play nice with each other as well as the session Ive prepped. No other system has this ratio of crunch to DM accessibility.
I got into a conflagration discussion with a friend over this and I think I see what the differences is now.
With pathfinder 2 you have a bunch of leggos. If you have 10 leggos you have 10 leggos.
With patfhinder 1 and to a lesser extent starfinder those legos combine. You may only have 5 legos but they combine 120 different ways.
Things don't do that in pathfinder 2. They're their own action. There are a fixed number of things that go into the action and they don't result in many surprises.
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Absolutely those things can help, my preference is just a system that is balanced to not require it. P2E has been great for me in that regard, a playground of lego bricks for my players coupled with peace of mind that all of their creations will play nice with each other as well as the session Ive prepped. No other system has this ratio of crunch to DM accessibility.
I got into a
conflagrationdiscussion with a friend over this and I think I see what the differences is now.With pathfinder 2 you have a bunch of leggos. If you have 10 leggos you have 10 leggos.
With patfhinder 1 and to a lesser extent starfinder those legos combine. You may only have 5 legos but they combine 120 different ways.
Things don't do that in pathfinder 2. They're their own action. There are a fixed number of things that go into the action and they don't result in many surprises.
You can mix and match a lot of things, they just all lie within tightly bounded rules made with a lot of forethought. You're numbers can't break beyond the dice and the dice roll difficulties can be finely tuned by the DM with readily expectable outcomes. It's an amazing balance of providing ample expression for players while providing a smooth running, logical, cohesive engine for DMs.
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You can mix and match a lot of things, they just all lie within tightly bounded rules made with a lot of forethought.Absolutely those things can help, my preference is just a system that is balanced to not require it. P2E has been great for me in that regard, a playground of lego bricks for my players coupled with peace of mind that all of their creations will play nice with each other as well as the session Ive prepped. No other system has this ratio of crunch to DM accessibility.
I got into a
conflagrationdiscussion with a friend over this and I think I see what the differences is now.With pathfinder 2 you have a bunch of leggos. If you have 10 leggos you have 10 leggos.
With patfhinder 1 and to a lesser extent starfinder those legos combine. You may only have 5 legos but they combine 120 different ways.
Things don't do that in pathfinder 2. They're their own action. There are a fixed number of things that go into the action and they don't result in many surprises.
Exactly. In PF2 10 legos rarely ever equal 10 legos. It's just that you aren't always stacking 10 mostly passive things, but a combination of actives and passives. For example, Power Attack is a very "meh" feat on the Fighter. But on a character who only has one really good shot per turn, e.g. the Champion, it is an attractive option. Or the Rogue grabbing things off the Monk and Ranger. Quite a few things are surprisingly great when used by other characters instead. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of combinations like this that are good optimization. There are also thousands more that are more in the "ok" or "mostly for roleplay" range.
The only thing that happens rarely is that you combine 3 things and end up with something that completely breaks the game. Which is fun for a bit, but really only for a bit in most cases. And if you want to break PF2, all you need to do is mess with a few numbers or play dual-class characters.
You can mix and match a lot of things, they just all lie within tightly bounded rules made with a lot of forethought.
Can you give me an example of abilities on the same character from different places synergizing ? Like on the tiny mouser/rogue, fox/Songbird shape for tiny size lets you move into squares, the mouser lets you flank from inside the square, to get rogue sneak attack.
You can mix and match a lot of things, they just all lie within tightly bounded rules made with a lot of forethought.
Can you give me an example of abilities on the same character from different places synergizing ? Like on the tiny mouser/rogue, fox/Songbird shape for tiny size lets you move into squares, the mouser lets you flank from inside the square, to get rogue sneak attack.
Im not sure any P2E build is going to satisfy you but I will share one of my favorite characters I play right now: D'vargen Ironson is an inexorable iron magus with the witch dedication. He's a dwarf with mountain stoutness and the tough feat to essentislly make him a d10 class instead of a d8 class. Going whole hog on the witch dedication gave me a load of spell slots to use. Inexorable iron gains temp hp while in cascade and sustaining steal heals double the spell level of spent spell slots while in cascade. Life boost focus spell from witch also gives me double spell level in fast healing for 4 turns. It's not some crazy pf1 level of unintended interaction but it is a nice little build for making a magus with more staying power on the front line
It's not some crazy pf1 level of unintended interaction but it is a nice little build for making a magus with more staying power on the front line
No. But it does let me state what I feel is missing about the Pf2 system and let me state it without sounding QUITE so bad. "Part synergy" or "unintended chemical reactions" is closer to the idea and less off putting than saying there's no freedom.
And hopefully results in a few less accusations of being a powergaming munchkin. (I mean, none at all would be unrealistic, lets not go crazy here)
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It's not some crazy pf1 level of unintended interaction but it is a nice little build for making a magus with more staying power on the front lineNo. But it does let me state what I feel is missing about the Pf2 system and let me state it without sounding QUITE so bad. "Part synergy" or "unintended chemical reactions" is closer to the idea and less off putting than saying there's no freedom.
And hopefully results in a few less accusations of being a powergaming munchkin. (I mean, none at all would be unrealistic, lets not go crazy here)
Unintended interactions break games and make the barrier to entry for dming your game higher leading to less DMs leading to a slowly dying game. It also makes the barrier to entry to play higher bc of reasons stated up thread. All this to say that kind of ivory tower design has dwindled over the years explicitly bc it's not conducive to an accessable game. I do sympathize with wanting to sacrifice accessibility for the sake of fun...but I think accessibility leads to a greater "average" of fun across the table for all parties involved while also creating a healthier ecosystem for growth
Unintended interactions break games and make the barrier to entry for dming your game higher leading to less DMs leading to a slowly dying game.
I don't see any reason to think that's true. At your table you're only going to see the characters from the group. As a dm you learn and grow with them.
In terms of organized play burn out is a thing and I'm sure the ease of destruction was A factor but hardly the only one.
They also vastly increase diversity. If you have 10 non interacting parts you have 10 parts. If you have 10 interacting parts you have 3.6 million combos.
It also makes the barrier to entry to play higher bc of reasons stated up thread. All this to say that kind of ivory tower design should be buried
Or it could come with an instruction manual.
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I understand that people have strong feelings one way or the other about the SF2 announcement. No one is stopping you from continuing to play the game how you choose to play it. Please engage with each other without getting snippy.
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I understand that people have strong feelings one way or the other about the SF2 announcement. No one is stopping you from continuing to play the game how you choose to play it. Please engage with each other without getting snippy.
NOTE to self: No padawan Ahsoka Tano impersonations.
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I really enjoyed Starship Chases they worked out a way to make Starship Roles matter equally and make skill challenges that don't go on forever.
some version of the chase mechanic needs to be in the core rules.
i've used them twice in my current AP - one to do a proper chase, and after my players positive feedback, i used them to run a "heist" plot. it gets everyone involved, lets all the PCs have their "moment" and can be used to resolve a situation where the conventional rules might come up a bit short for what the DM wants to run
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I am hopeful about augmentations and grafts and whatnot. Transsophontism FTW!
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Sure, that's why ancestries like Sprites and Strix with wings and cultures centered around being able to fly make TOTAL sense that as soon as they become PCs their wings get clipped until level 13.
I know, right?
Last week, a friend asked me about running our group's 2e game since our GM right now is swamped with life stuff. I said yes. I had never really thought about running any 2e games myself, but I'll do what I must.
I thought about the absolute ridiculousness of a situation where a player decides they want to play a Strix character. The character grows up flying around with their Strix friends and they eventually decide to become an adventurer. As soon as they meet the other members of their party, they completely forgot how to fly or even unfold their wings until level 9.
I know there are optional rules for allowing your winged players to fly early(along with a strongly worded warning telling you not to do it). Still, the notion of "no no no, you're not allowed until..." is just so funny to me. Every NPC member of your ancestry can do this thing. This ONE thing. Its what your ancestry is known for. Its what you have giant wings for.
This PC meets a whole group of their Strix people, who happily greet them in the Strix language. "Come and fly down to the shore with us friend! We fish at dawn's first light." But for some reason, this one Strix just can't manage to get their wings to unfold.
If any of my players want to be Strix or anything else with flight, I'm not even using the optional rules for it. You start with 15 feet and you get faster at 5th, 9th, and eventually 13th level. No feats needed. The feats will just let you do cool things while you fly and/or give you a bonus to Maneuver in Flight checks.
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That silliness did unfortunately exist in 1e starfinder as well tbh.
Haan PCs could not survive on their home planet because they lost their flight abilities.
Vehicles were finally approaching a measure of useful and I agree that vehicles are a real treat in a SF game.
The dinky battle maps keep shaping encounters though, so the vehicles are reduced to the speed of a stroll which comes off as naff.
Would love to see them back.