Justification about Cantripis

[pauljathome]

3-Body Problem wrote:

The real question at the heart of things is, "Why does PF2 fight so hard to avoid giving characters single specific unique strengths that define them ... I'm talking about a mechanically satisfying answer to the question, "What is your character's unique ability

If that was the question you were trying to get answered then you REALLY need to work on your communication skills. To say that intent was inobvious would be a massive understatement.

But to answer your question, why on earth
1) would you expect every character to have a unique ability? Almost all of my characters do NOT have a unique ability.
2) would you expect a unique ability to be expressed in rules?

In 13th Age every character has One Unique Thing but the suggestion is this NOT be a mechanical thing. My current character is the only character (mostly) trusted by the High Druid and Archmage. Absolutely no game mechanics (my character IS a multiclassed wizard/druid to reflect that but that is NOT their unique thing.

How can a game possibly give you rules to mechanically make your character unique? At best, there would be some kind of vague guidelines
(Eg, spend a class feat to come up with some sort of cool power in line with the characters power)

[Easl]

3-Body Problem wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

You literally insisted that skill simplification made the game objectively less interesting...

It is. FATAL is objectively an interesting game even if it isn't a good game or a game people should support financially.

One of the most interesting rpg campaigns I ever played was Amber DRPG. Incredibly simple system (4 stats. No dice. A handful of descriptive powers). Now, I'm not hear to convince you to like it. I'm pointing out that 'interesting system' is not objective, it's subjective. Insisting it's objective comes off as either hyperbole (i.e. you want to footstomp the value of your opinion, so you add "objectively" to give it more oomph), or as tautological (you define interesting = complex rules set, leading to the circular conclusion that games with complex rules sets are more interesting).

Quote:

I was opening up a wider discussion about why cantrips have to be weak by showing how an outrageously overpowered feat still has trouble keeping up with a pretty basic fighter build.

Cantrips aren't supposed to keep up with maximized martial melee combat. First because caster dpr is generally designed as "lower but hits more targets" and second because within the 'caster' concept, it's the rank spells that are supposed to be used for top tier damage. You are comparing best attack of one set of classes to the worst attack from another and not understanding why "not equal" is a perfectly fine result of the comparison.

You ask: why should cantrips be this way? Well, my answers would be: because if they kept up with top tier melee damage, (a) there would be no need for higher rank damage spells, (b) everyone would use them, relegating melee fighters back to second tier because who wants to risk being hit when you can ping an enemy from 30-120' away for top tier damage, and (c) because the classes given combat cantrips are also given tons of utility spells, and so making them top tier single-target dpr machines is not needed to make the class overall valuable in the game. And yes, I *do* get that for players who value combat scenes above all other scenes, that third 'because' is not valid and they'd rather see every class be designed to be equally good at dpr.

Quote:

The real question at the heart of things is, "Why does PF2 fight so hard to avoid giving characters single specific unique strengths that define them?"

I disagree that it fights this. Where I think you've gone wrong is demanding that the single specific unique strength you used as an example must come out of a single specific unique class.

Quote:

I'm not talking about Niche protection or the Fighter's +2 to hit. I'm talking about a mechanically satisfying answer to the question, "What is your character's unique ability?"

But you clearly ARE talking about the fighter's +2 to hit. You said giving up the Fighter class was a nonstarter for your concept. If I misread that, I'm sorry, but then I'll repeat an earlier suggestion: it is easy to create a firebreathing samurai *with* competitive fire-to-strike damage *and* competitive fire-to-strike attack DC for its firebreathing...by building your samurai as a Dragon Bar. Or Magus. Or kineticist. If you are not talking about the Fighter's +2 to hit, then why do you reject these ways of realizing the concept?

[TriOmegaZero]

Unicore wrote:

Subjectively, it seems like everyone’s questions about cantrips and why they are balanced where they are has been thoroughly, and subjectively, answered. Yes?

Pretty sure the OP was satisfied back on the 5th.

[GameDesignerDM]

What are you talking about, man? That's just not true at all.

Most of the people I regularly hang out with don't base their feelings of what is interesting based on how complex it is, but like a million other things, most of which have to do with what good feelings it gives them.

And speaking specifically about TTRPGs, most of them don't care about mechanics - it's always about the lore and narrative first.

It really does feel like every time you make a claim about something, my group is a stark example of that NOT being true.

[TriOmegaZero]

Yeah no, some of the simplest designs have been the most interesting to many people.

[Pronate11]

3-Body Problem wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

What is interesting varies from individual to individual, objectively making it subjective.

What is specifically interesting to any given person is subjective however for a given intellectual capacity anything insufficiently complex will cease to be interesting. Look at the progression of complexity of children's toys or play behavior in animals and we can see that complexity scales with intellectual ability. There is a ceiling on this as any given intellect will also reach a point where something with too much complexity ceases to be interesting.

With that said, if we scale the intellectual capacity to infinity we should invariably see a correlated rise in the threshold of complexity required for something yo be regarded as interesting. Hence complexity = interesting.

So why is PF2 selling better then PF1 ever did? Why is 5e way more popular than 3.5? Why are PBTA games and their derivatives the hot thing in TTRPGs now? There are so many examples contrary to your point in TTRPGs alone, let alone video and other games, that clearly more complex games are not objectively more interesting, but subjectively more interesting.

[The Raven Black]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Yeah no, some of the simplest designs have been the most interesting to many people.

Very true.

- Chess
- Go
- Many card games
- ...

[PossibleCabbage]

Ravingdork wrote:

You even got PossibleCabbage, Kelseus, and Cyouni doing it.

I used it correctly! A fighter cannot have +4 in a non Str/Dex stat at level 1, so their cantrip (e.g. Telekinetic Projectile) is going to do more damage- we're going from an average of 3.5+StatMod to an average of 7, and 7 is greater than 6.5 and all numbers smaller than 6.5. Note that this is a statement about averages since sure, you could roll 2 on 2d6 and do less than the minimum you could before, but your average damage will be higher.

A fighter is also getting an automatic proficiency bump for their cantrip at level 12 (IIRC) which they did not get before, so their accuracy with their cantrip is going to be either the same or 2 higher ceteris paribus than their accuracy pre-remaster.

Cantrips are objectively better for fighters than they were pre-remaster!

[Finoan]

3-Body Problem wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

If that was the question you were trying to get answered then you REALLY need to work on your communication skills. To say that intent was inobvious would be a massive understatement.

Oh no. If I were more straightforward I wouldn't accomplish my goals at all. Before all else I aim to create engagement.

So basically you are like the class clown that thinks that negative attention is still attention...

Because confusion, conflict, tension, and frustration are very much different than engagement.

[The Raven Black]

3-Body Problem wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

If that was the question you were trying to get answered then you REALLY need to work on your communication skills. To say that intent was inobvious would be a massive understatement.

Oh no. If I were more straightforward I wouldn't accomplish my goals at all. Before all else I aim to create engagement.

Quote:

But to answer your question, why on earth

1) would you expect every character to have a unique ability? Almost all of my characters do NOT have a unique ability.

Because it's interesting. I like to concept so much I gave a mechanically unique ability to every PC in the game I currently GM.

Quote:

2) would you expect a unique ability to be expressed in rules?

It should be easy to do just that in any sufficiently flexible TTRPG.

Quote:

In 13th Age every character has One Unique Thing but the suggestion is this NOT be a mechanical thing.

Funny that 13th age explicitly gives advice on mechanical things tat could be tied to a character's one unique thing. I don't have the book with me but I recall the example of clockwork heart stopping an otherwise lethal (or should I say FATAL) blow.

Quote:

How can a game possibly give you rules to mechanically make your character unique? At best, there would be some kind of vague guidelines

(Eg, spend a class feat to come up with some sort of cool power in line with the characters power)

Point buy systems tend to allow for neatly unique characters as it is. FATE by tying mechanics to unique tags does this perfectly. Yes, the result isn't mechanically unique but the trigger can be.

A more rules heavy game like PF2 will tend to struggle with this but could come up with a set of constraints, things that cannot or at least should not be allowed and level ranges where certain concepts best fit. Once you have that done you step back and leave the one unique thing up the each table to make their own.

I think I get it.

You would like PF2 to give precise formulas / constraints that say what each stat (attack, damage ...) should be and then let the players freely express how they skin that stat, like some superheroes TTRPGs I vaguely remember. Your PC deals x damage and they decide if it's with thrown knives, lightning bolts, magical energies ... and this choice has no real mechanical impact.

From the way PF2 classes are designed, and especially what we see during playtests, I feel such formulas/constraints do not exist in PF2, or at least not as precisely / mathematically as you seem to wish for.

I feel the game engine just is not designed that way.

[Easl]

3-Body Problem wrote:

What is specifically interesting to any given person is subjective however for a given intellectual capacity anything insufficiently complex will cease to be interesting.

That must be why the world has given up Chess. And Texas Hold'em. Their rules set is too simple to make for interesting games. /s

A complex rules set does not necessarily correlate with an interesting game. How the players utilize a limited set of options is often what creates interesting play. Very much the same is true for ttrpgs. And in fact the sort of system you seem to want - any mechanics linked to any conceptual expression of them - can be built with a much simpler rules set than PF2E.

[Easl]

3-Body Problem wrote:

Point buy systems tend to allow for neatly unique characters as it is. FATE by tying mechanics to unique tags does this perfectly. Yes, the result isn't mechanically unique but the trigger can be.

A more rules heavy game like PF2 will tend to struggle with this but could come up with a set of constraints, things that cannot or at least should not be allowed and level ranges where certain concepts best fit. Once you have that done you step back and leave the one unique thing up the each table to make their own.

It really sounds like you should spend your time developing a homebrew variant and publishing it for people to try, rather than pointing out that because the system doesn't let you create a level 1 Fighter with a firebreathing feat that starts out doing d12+4 and grows in damage and proficiency over levels, therefore the system is flawed. Your illustrative example didn't really convince anyone of anything, other than maybe that you just like other ttrpg systems better. As one of my coworkers used to say, when you do analysis, know the difference between doing analysis that is in-site-ful with a c vs. in-site-ful with an s (an adage that makes much more sense spoken than written, I'll admit...)

[Jonathan Morgantini]

This thread devolved too fast into specific all out and name calling. Ive cleared the flags from it and am going to lock it.