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I feel most posters above have not read the quotes from player D.
Granted they are in one of the answers and nested within a wall of text, but they really changed my opinion about who was the pushy one.
I read it, but Player B also said this:
My point, my only point, was why do we need a full role team?... My original point, which in reality was more about the game, and not player D, was why is any of this needed? A group of fighters should be able to have fun going through this adventure just as much as a group of cleric.
So my post wasn't about B vs D. It was trying to address the original question: why the Pathfinder playerbase feels like they need to coordinate builds and strategies to cover all the roles. Which has been answered: PF2 is harder than similar systems and rewards this tactical mindset.
I'll add that there have been so many people who bounced off PF2 because of its difficulty that vet players seeing new players enter the hobby are probably trying to avoid the players getting frustrated and quitting. And that while a GM could also put training wheels on the campaign to lower difficulty, that would be a bad way to LEARN the game since other GMs will not give you training wheels. And learning the game was player B's stated intention.
Honestly, I don't think what this thread needed was not more context but less. The basic question could have been answered without the real life example, which made the responders take sides and the players feel attacked.
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its one thing to advise people to play the game they want to play and suggest they talk about it as a group and another to demand proof from them that what they are asking advice on actually happened isn't it?I didn't 'demand' anything.
I responded exactly to the content they provided and quoted the things that they literally typed themselves that I think are problematic. From the limited Player D quotes I pointed out that they would not lead me to derive the end state conclusions/motives of Player D that they are suggesting. Thus the implication is that [IF] they want to be more convincing, they need can provide more context.
Do you disagree that someone saying 'Third time best advise I can give is forget 5e/masterminds/ect..' doesn't imply that 1.) someone asked for advice (which is not what is being presented) AND that there are at least two other times of advice being given that may have been more politely (or not) delivered/addressing more specific asks, etc. If someone asked me the same thing three times I know I would start getting more and more direct lol. Knowing if they solicited their advice (multiple times) or if it was forced upon them is important. Also showing us that they have digital records of statements, shows they could just throw it all into a google doc for people to look at and be 'read into the context'. So why didn't they do it?
You can conclude various pro/con things BECAUSE the context isn't provided. Its an internet post written by a human. It can be filled with errors (intentional or not) and from the evidence they provided my gut feeling is that it has unintentional errors.
The problem with this entire thread is that it has been presented as a game design discussion. But from the presented materials from the GM and Player B it actually sounds more like this is a player social contract issue or a problem player issue (player B or D depending on your gut feeling). That is pretty typical for any TTRPG (is it the game or is it...
(I am saying this with a calm expression. Not always conveyable with text.)
Not everyone coming to these boards is looking to be audited.I aim to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had the issue they say they had and that what they experienced and shared happened as they said it it did with the meaning they say it had when it happened.
From what i saw all they wanted was assurance they can play the game with a party that was made organically based on each players preferences and be able to get through an AP rather than have to make preset "good" classes and team comps. Instead they got a lot of finger pointing at player B as being somehow wrong and saying player D is just right. I felt the right and wronging here was inappropriate.
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The solution I usually opt for is not telling players what others are building unless someone explicitly derives joy from "filling" (they exist..I'm one of them). If their choices create redundancies or deficiencies on the mechanical side I take care of it on my side of the screen with appropriate tweaks to the adventure. I haven't had to change much.
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I think someone for got to mention that expecting internet forum posters to solve an interpersonal dynamic issues without bringing in all of their own personal baggage and 0 knowledge of the people and situation being discussed is an almost certain recipe for hurt feelings and misplaced assumptions.
The best thing to do is to talk things through with the players and remember that supporting your friends and fostering a fun environment for the people that inspired you to play the game in the first place should take priority over any assumed "meta" (I am assuming meta-analysis) of play styles or approaches to character building.
Pf2 is a perfectly robust system capable of being fun and exciting for parties of all different compositions, regardless of how focused the group is mechanical game efficiency. I still hold that it is probably better to see if you can solve issues like "how much healing do we need" better by controlling the game pacing and encounter difficulty as the GM than it is to create house rules to cover issues, because if there is ever a shift in efficiency from play, it is harder to dial back the house rules than it is to shift the game balance as a GM, but even that is a gentle suggestion from experience and not a command or a rule.
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Okay, this is actually a lot more than I thought would be sparked by this post. Hi everyone, I'm player B, OP told me about the forum post and I thought I'd check things, and try to clarify the situation.
For context, I am trying to learn how to play pathfinder and OP is helping me understand the game. We've run a solo run of KM before this, and I barely got out of the first encounter even after it was balanced for one character. I expressed to OP that maybe we should try to get a group together so that I can try learning in a group and OP wouldn't have to balance down so much.
My original intention was for us to get a group of new players together because I know that experienced players have a "defined" way of playing the game. I wanted to learn the game at a pace I'm comfortable with and I figured playing with new players would allow for all of us to do that at the same time. Also allowing for all of us to just play comfortably and without worrying about the more advanced things.
Getting a group together was going too slowly, so by the time we had player A and C, we had already picked out our characters long before player D came in. For some additional context, when I played the solo game, I didn't really feel anything when playing my character and the roleplaying side started to lack because my character was just a blank state, damage output machine. So this time around, I made more fleshed out characters, the trade being their "optimization" for flavor. I planned out my Wizard, a magical item merchant, who was not really a combatant but I did find some good debuff, control, and utility spells that I felt fit the flavor while still providing something to the team. I also made a backup Ranger character, but that one is a bit more normalized.
Player A was still deciding between their Barbarian, Champion, or Warpriest, and player C was set on Sorcerer or Wizard, leaning Sorcerer as that is a class they were more familiar with. Eventually, I told OP to just grab a 4th player, as they had expressed...
I think you're getting too wrapped up putting your point of view on a pedestal and trying to diagnose from the perspective that your normal is the acceptable normal and that other normals are deviant.
The teamwork experience niche protection and role diversity in the game is one of the core appeals of a fantasy roleplaying game of this kind, its genetic to the hobby, and most especially this lineage of game, and Pathfinder 2e is fairly flexible for all that.
It's ok if you feel differently for yourself, but its still on you to respect that other people feel differently-- it sounds more like your other friends realized they wanted to plan and talk about it once D made them feel like it was permitted, they have agency too.
I remember TheRulesLawyer on YouTube talking about a simulation he did with Fighters and Wizards to see who was stronger. He set up one all Fighter team and one all Wizard team and pit them both against some dragon, one at a time.
Both parties wiped. The Fighters could not hit the dragon consistently. The Wizards could lower the dragon's defenses and hurt it, but they didn't have enough DPR to capitalize on it.
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As someone who's group TPKd in Kingmaker, I'll tell you something important. The more you sink below the mid ground of optimization in PF2, such as filling roles and having correct stats, the more work the GM has to do to make victory possible. For most things this is fine, but in combat, APs tend to be on the higher end of difficulty and so you can easily find yourself in a downward spiral to death.
My group was a Magus(me), a bard, a thaumaturge and a cleric MC life oracle(massive healbot). I led us into an encounter, rushing in as we had crushed every fight to that point, but by round 3 I realized the healer could not keep up with the damage I was taking but then I was surrounded and by round 4 two of us were down.
Things in PF2 can get rough fast, and if you don't have the tools to deal with it, then either your going to die or your GM needs to have the experience and willingness to adjust things.
So you need to include in your session zero that the GM is willing to adjust for the party composition, not just making things easier but tailoring things to your strengths and weaknesses. That's not something that can be assumed so make sure everyone is good with that. Plenty of GMs like APs so they don't have to change things, that means you either have what it takes or you don't.
I had told the GM to adjust combats because we were steam rolling the kind of combats that KM presents, but after months of us wrecking everything it was still easy. I don't know if he adjusted that last figbt, but it was just the thing to put us in our place, and since I had been conditioned to think it was going to be easy, I was over confident and dropped into the middle of the enemy group without really assessing the situation.
So be open with your players on the experience you want them to have, if your going to change things and your general ideology for the way you'll change things. Also that if something isn't working, let them know things are going to change a bit.
