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I hope the people who are excited about these changes get what they're expecting and can have fun with the system.
Thank you!
As for my personal opinion, SF as it stands is overly complicated - I like that, but I know it doesn't suit many - and they should definitely make the system more accommodating in some way. Hell, I don't even really object to the 3-action system being introduced, but they could have accomplished these things without turning it into a PF clone. This is lazy design.
I will no longer be investing in SF or suggesting SF to any of my groups or friends, and I will be dropping it entirely. Since I was the primary advocate amongst my gaming circles, it will see no joy on our discord server and live groups.
So... what would you wish for from SF2 that you are now certain you will not get? If they somehow manage to give you that thing anyway, would it be enough to bring you back?
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One, PF2 does that with Skill Feats. You want to be a stealth expert that literally cannot be spotted as you scout an enemy camp?
That is feat is beyond niche. It wouldn't let you stealth your way through the entire forest to scout unless you had a continual blackberry thicket from one town to the other, a cave/mountain unless its all talus slope. I guess snow works...
but even then it runs in the continual problem I'm seeing here that the PF2 supporters seem to think the entire game is being run above level 10. You need that feat THREE times on top of whatever other feats you want to take.
As much as PF1 got problematic after level 10 PF2 doesn't seem to take off until then.
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To try and cater to a fantasy market with a sci-fi system is marketing suicide.As for my personal opinion, SF as it stands is overly complicated - I like that, but I know it doesn't suit many - and they should definitely make the system more accommodating in some way. Hell, I don't even really object to the 3-action system being introduced, but they could have accomplished these things without turning it into a PF clone. This is lazy design.
All the excitement in the forums about adding things from Starfinder to a Pathfinder game is coming from Pathfinder players, not Paizo.
One of the advantages of Starfder 2e using Pathfinder 2e core is it's less complicated. May not simple as games made by other companies but it's a move in that direction.
Pathfinder 2e has a MUCH larger player base the Stafinder does, many of whom stopped playing Starfinder because they like the PF2e rules better. using the PFe2 rules is also great with to deal with the changes needed because of the OGL mess Wotc made, It will so so increase VTT support of Starfinder because VTT developers won't have to make separate systems now. Everything Paizo is doing with Starfinder 2e is a smart move, and not being lazy.
Stafinder 2e won't fade into obscurity. It will grow the game. Paizo announced Starfinder 2e the first day of Gen con and then sold a huge amount of Starfinder 1e books at Gen Con.
It simply doesn't make a lot of sense for Paizo to publish two different games where players of one game need to learn a lot of new stuff to play the other one.
Like it was weird transitioning back and forth between "a game where everybody has AoO" and "a game where like 1/8 of things have AoO."
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It simply doesn't make a lot of sense for Paizo to publish two different games where players of one game need to learn a lot of new stuff to play the other one.
Like it was weird transitioning back and forth between "a game where everybody has AoO" and "a game where like 1/8 of things have AoO."
The AOO triggers are different too that's the part that confused the most me going between the two games.
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Feels immensely unfair and rude to call it lazy design.
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First edition isn't going away. You can still play it and have fun.
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You may feel that this is PF2 players taking your game from you, but to our group, SF1 players trying to keep the rules as-is are akin to squatters keeping a fantastic game from reaching its potential.
TIL that I, the person who's bought every single SF product is a squatter whereas you who haven't played it in years "just wants it to reach its full potential". I can't imagine where the OP got the impression that he was playing second chair to PF2e fans with that kind of attitude. And shame on Johnathan Morgantini for tolerating it around here.
I agree with the OP. The playtest was ill-marketed towards its core audience. Respect them or you'll lose the people who kept SF going when Pathfinder players were ditching it. The window-shoppers aren't going to sustain the product line any more than they did 5 years ago. You should be convincing us to move editions, not trying to sell us on bards in space or pew pew lasers in Numeria while slyly winking at the PF2e audience. This game deserves more than the Spelljammer 5e treatment.
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The S1 players aren't enough to sustain the product line either, looking at the production schedule.
And it's very unlikely that "PF players" ditch SF at this rate since it won't be so much SF and PF players and SF and PF options, it'll just be options, tribalism serves no purpose here. The joys of compatibility ^w^
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It just doesn't make sense for Paizo to sell two different games that don't work well together. Not only are you likely to sell more books by getting people playing one game to grab a book for the other game because they think it's interesting and something they could use, but it's also a better sell to people playing neither a la "learn this one set of rules, and you can use it for several different games" (i.e. the original reason the OGL was made, and also one of the reasons the ORC exists.)
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As long as we're tossing out personal anecdotes and pretending it's solid polling data, I've been running SF1 exclusively and frequently for years, and the move to PF2 compatibility is the best news I've heard since Starfinder was first announced.
As long as we're tossing out personal anecdotes and pretending it's solid polling data, I've been running SF1 exclusively and frequently for years, and the move to PF2 compatibility is the best news I've heard since Starfinder was first announced.
By and large, what I'm seeing is that people who play PF2 are happy they can try the cool setting without keeping a new ruleset in their brain. Or dipping into the 3.5 engine and associated munchkinry.
Sola (solar?) star finder players are VERY unhappy with the idea. It's rather unlikely you play starfinder and haven't had a bunch of exposure by osmosis to PF2. I don't think there are a lot of "I only do science fiction not fantasy but I'll do science fantasy"* geeks out there. So if someone plays one and not the other they don't like the game itself. Science fiction and fantasy aren't so different that reskinning PF2 into a science fantasy genre is going to matter.
*i'm not saying bob doesn't exist. I just don't think there are a lot of bobs
By and large, what I'm seeing is that people who play PF2 are happy they can try the cool setting without keeping a new ruleset in their brain. Or dipping into the 3.5 engine and associated munchkinry.
Pretty much that exactly. Especially that second part.
PF2 is designed for people who don't have tons of spare time to scour and analyze multiple rulebooks or online compendiums like AoN looking for and analyzing which feats and combinations are the most powerful, or read/watch other people who have done so.
Instead PF2 players can just pick what matches their character concept that they want to play and let the game math take care of itself under the hood. They can skip the hours of research and analysis and trying to find a powerful build that roughly matches the character that they want, and go straight to the part about playing the game and having fun with their friends.
The group of people who have the biggest problem adopting PF2 are people who were experts in PF1. They get annoyed by the power ceiling (not understanding that it is necessary in order for the power floor to exist), and wonder why their 4-player level 6 party is getting steamrolled by one measly level 10 enemy.
PF2 and now SF2 are built for casual play. And I think that is going to be absolutely fantastic for the adoption rates of Starfinder2e.
PF2 is designed for people who don't have tons of spare time to scour and analyze multiple rulebooks or online compendiums like AoN looking for and analyzing which feats and combinations are the most powerful, or read/watch other people who have done so.
Hey now, it doesn't take tons of time. My just brain regrew parts to do that quickly. It probably didn't repurpose anything I'll need....
3.x players are aware of the floor ceiling disparity. To some it's a necessary evil of game design, to some it's a feature not a bug. To other's it's a variety of places the game can go but you have to have a word about your group going there together.
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You may feel that this is PF2 players taking your game from you, but to our group, SF1 players trying to keep the rules as-is are akin to squatters keeping a fantastic game from reaching its potential.
Next time you see a squatter, thank them for keeping the game alive long enough for Paizo to decide to make a 2e of it. If everyone had left Starfinder when Pathfinder 2e came out Paizo likely would have just given up on Starfinder altogether.
There's also a group of us that play and like both Starfidner and Pathfinder 2e. For many of us Were excited for Starfinder 2e not because it will use 2e rules but for the compatibility will make going back and forth between games easier, and allow mixing of the systems if we chose. But that would have been true with any edition of the rules being compatible.
There is also nothing stopping people from squatting on both editions of Starfinder once 2e comes out, except for the use of chairs.
There is also nothing stopping people from squatting on both editions of Starfinder once 2e comes out, except for the use of chairs.
The thing is RPGs are a group game. If i decide that Mario 1.0 is the best game ever I can play it on my Nintendo all day long.
But to play an RPG you need a gaming group into that RPG. An edition dying has a very strong tendency to cause enough people to switch out that you don't have a sustainable group anymore. Previous experience has shown it's a very likely outcome
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There is also nothing stopping people from squatting on both editions of Starfinder once 2e comes out, except for the use of chairs.The thing is RPGs are a group game. If i decide that Mario 1.0 is the best game ever I can play it on my Nintendo all day long.
But to play an RPG you need a gaming group into that RPG. An edition dying has a very strong tendency to cause enough people to switch out that you don't have a sustainable group anymore. Previous experience has shown it's a very likely outcome
I don't know about you, but I have problems finding a sustainable group anyway, for anything.
That said... from what I've seen around my area, the limitation is always the GMs. I knew a guy who was running games of 3.x well after 5e started. He put general all-call solicitations on meetup and got back quite a lot of interest. Like, "twice as many players as he was looking for" levels of interest.
So if your problem is that you can't find anyone to GM your preferred edition anymore... well, that's kind of a thing that happens. You can't play what no one wants to GM. If they make a new game, and the GMs want to run that instead... well, maybe they were doing something right when they made the new edition.
Now, if you are a GM, and you have a specific group that you like, and the members of that specific group don't want to keep playing the game that you love with you because there's a new edition... well, you have some sympathy from me on that one. That sucks. Still... I'd bet you could find another group that would be interested, if you wanted to.
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There is also nothing stopping people from squatting on both editions of Starfinder once 2e comes out, except for the use of chairs.The thing is RPGs are a group game. If i decide that Mario 1.0 is the best game ever I can play it on my Nintendo all day long.
But to play an RPG you need a gaming group into that RPG. An edition dying has a very strong tendency to cause enough people to switch out that you don't have a sustainable group anymore. Previous experience has shown it's a very likely outcome
I don't know about you, but I have problems finding a sustainable group anyway, for anything.
The only reason I play Pathfinder 2e is I can't find anyone locally to play Starfinder. The local Pathfinder PFS group varies each week from 3 to 6 players out of a slightly larger pool of players, where right at the point where we don't have enough for a second table, so some players get left out if the table is full. Our Venture captain says that the group lost 75% of it's players when 2e came out. And this is in a small town with 5 million people.
For Starfidner I've been playing Play by Post to keep in the game. I just recently finally found enough people interested in Starfinder on an LGS's Discord to start a local SFS group, but some local GM snagged 1/2 the people for their home game, and the rest stopped posting after that.
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There is also nothing stopping people from squatting on both editions of Starfinder once 2e comes out, except for the use of chairs.The thing is RPGs are a group game. If i decide that Mario 1.0 is the best game ever I can play it on my Nintendo all day long.
But to play an RPG you need a gaming group into that RPG. An edition dying has a very strong tendency to cause enough people to switch out that you don't have a sustainable group anymore. Previous experience has shown it's a very likely outcome
This is why it's a good time to make connections with people who still want to play the old edition before the even harder to find. It's not just an edition issue it's a platform issue to(live Play, VTTs, or Play by Post,)combine with an edition change too that really fragments the player base. With VTTs, you also have a split between different VTTs.
We got lot's of new people coming to Starfinder from 5e after the OGL mess, but I think it doesn't feel like it to the rest of us. From what I've seen on Reddit of 5e GMs asking for help it's an entire table switching over, their not needing or looking for new players.
The biggest thing keeping me from using VTTs is the cost of rebuying books I own already, to use them in a VTT, and that my computer died and I only have a cheap Chrome book with horrible sound without options for external mics or speakers.
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The other thing about having two products that work together is that we know that many of the ideas for the PF2 playtest came from Starfinder; not just things they playtested for SF but also things that were learned once it was out. So SF2 is learning from PF2 not just from the playtest, but also from the actual experience of people playing it.
I don't doubt that PF3 will learn from SF2, not just the playtest but also peoples actual experience with the game. Likely SF3 will also learn from PF3, and on down the road.
Having every product be able to learn from every other product simply makes too much sense not to do.
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I'll push back on that, edition changes alter enough rules that it doesn't really count as engineering type refinement towards an ever more superior product. It just changes what the problems are and from known problems to initially unknown problems.
Well, it depends on how the edition changes doesn't it? Pathfinder to starfinder was a refinement. Pathfinder 1 to pathfinder 2 was clearing the rubble and rebuilding.
Likewise Vampire the masquerade had a few editions with refinements but the new world of darkness was starting over.
