I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.
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I strongly disagree that the systems can be used to tell all the same stories. The general design ethos swung hard from simulationist to gamist. The balance and math changed radically. Swaths of characters can't be ported because of the system's aggressive niche protection, even if we only restrict ourselves to non-splatbooks with 2E equivalents. All of this adds up.
I also think you're already sort of looking at narrative in a 2E-friendly way. Most of the people I know who are still attached to 1E take every action in the game to literally be a part of the narrative. The fact you can't hold down the caster and keep them from casting does, in fact, mean you can't tell the same story to them. Most people who disagree sound more like they think that entire way of viewing game narrative is wrong.
On a larger scale, 2E is also just pretty bad at some game types and narratives 1E had no issue with. Hexcrawls are probably the most prominent example. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower leveled areas are a staple of hexcrawls, but tightly bound range of acceptable encounters in 2E makes those a deathtrap. The travel system isn't terribly functional for hexcrawls, and you're better off making a unique subsystem to handle how much you can explore in a day, ala some APs. Survival gameplay also isn't terribly interesting in 2E, nor is it well-supported—especially resource management. But 1E handles these things fine.
I think the thing that makes differences most obvious is trying to port APs in either direction. In every AP, there are loads of underlying assumptions about what characters, NPC allies, and enemies can and cannot do; how players will approach problems and spend their in-game time; the kinds of encounters that're acceptable to present and those that aren't; and even something as basic as the reliability of a skill check. There's a reason the worst 2E APs and modules, mechanically, are the earlier ones made with a 1E design ethos; they're grueling, overly lethal, and don't take great advantage of the things the system has to offer.
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N.B. For what it's worth, there are narratives that 2E is better at than 1E, as well. I'd rather try to simulate a JRPG-styled game with 2E (though, admittedly, I'd prefer to go out of the DnD lineage entirely if I wanted to do that).
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PF1 is not a good system for telling the story of level 1 monks and paladins wrestling a higher level caster into submission. The PF1 grappling flow chart of actions was not easy for players with low level characters with no dedicated feats for it to navigate and if the caster creature was a custom monster, it probably hit hard enough with its attack of opportunity to make paladins dropping their weapons to try to grab way more difficult than just beating the creature down into unconsciousness.
In fact, as a GM, getting such an encounter to be a fun challenge and not just an overwhelming beatdown one way or another was very, very difficult. I would also argue that there was nothing simulationist about PF1 grappling.
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I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.
I suppose that depends on how you look at it.
You yourself just admitted it can absolutely be told byrunning lower level enemies against the party.
PF1 was never intended to be the cakewalk that optimized players turned it into. What you see in PF2 is a system that you (as a player) pretty much can't do that at all, but the GM can adjust if that's the story they want to tell.
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I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.I suppose that depends on how you look at it.
You yourself just admitted it can absolutely be told byrunning lower level enemies against the party.
PF1 was never intended to be the cakewalk that optimized players turned it into. What you see in PF2 is a system that you (as a player) pretty much can't do that at all, but the GM can adjust if that's the story they want to tell.
Yeah, frankly, A LOT of issues can be laid at the feet of a refusal to recognize that many groups played PF1 on extreme easy-mode with hyper optimization, and PF2 has easy-mode options built right in, but people don't want to use them.
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Breakable systems are fine if the group has a good consensus about what power level to play at and the ability to achieve it. That's a huge ask, and too much of the work of getting to this point will come from the GM. But the payoff is being able to play at a wide variety of powerlevels and play a wide variety of builds.
I mean, that's always the theory but it's rarely how I see such systems work in practice.
The trouble with broken systems is they don't break evenly, so while there may be a wide variety of builds across a wide variety of power levels (which inherently doesn't actually say much) at any given band of power a certain number of builds more or less cease to exist. Many builds just don't scale up or down well enough.
Even if people hate me for saying this, if a game needs to ask players to adjust their expectations, it indicates underlying issues with the game itself.
Then every game ever made is flawed because all of them are going to ask the players to tailor their expectations in certain ways. Even the most generic and general purpose systems in the world will still go about things in certain ways that the group will have to work with.
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I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.
Those fights were easy in PF1 as well, otherwise they couldn't do that. Throw stuff that's tossing Ability Damage/Drain around and see how many fights in a row the PCs want to do before they are just done for the day. The number will be roughly around "right up until we run out of Restoration castings".
Because PF1 recovery was basically all magic/item related, you could do it quickly until you are low on resources, and then you're just done. That's why the 15 minute adventure day is a thing.
A PF2 group can handle similar numbers of encounters in a day than a typical PF1 group at similar encounter difficulty, they just get spaced out over a much longer period of time. In some ways they can handle more, because a lot of resources are infinitely renewable and that wasn't a thing in PF1.
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I strongly disagree that the systems can be used to tell all the same stories. The general design ethos swung hard from simulationist to gamist. The balance and math changed radically. Swaths of characters can't be ported because of the system's aggressive niche protection, even if we only restrict ourselves to non-splatbooks with 2E equivalents. All of this adds up.
I also think you're already sort of looking at narrative in a 2E-friendly way. Most of the people I know who are still attached to 1E take every action in the game to literally be a part of the narrative. The fact you can't hold down the caster and keep them from casting does, in fact, mean you can't tell the same story to them. Most people who disagree sound more like they think that entire way of viewing game narrative is wrong.
On a larger scale, 2E is also just pretty bad at some game types and narratives 1E had no issue with. Hexcrawls are probably the most prominent example. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower leveled areas are a staple of hexcrawls, but tightly bound range of acceptable encounters in 2E makes those a deathtrap. The travel system isn't terribly functional for hexcrawls, and you're better off making a unique subsystem to handle how much you can explore in a day, ala some APs. Survival gameplay also isn't terribly interesting in 2E, nor is it well-supported—especially resource management. But 1E handles these things fine.
I think the thing that makes differences most obvious is trying to port APs in either direction. In every AP, there are loads of underlying assumptions about what characters, NPC allies, and enemies can and cannot do; how players will approach problems and spend their in-game time; the kinds of encounters that're acceptable to present and those that aren't; and even something as basic as the reliability of a skill check. There's a reason the worst 2E APs and modules, mechanically, are the earlier ones made with a 1E design ethos; they're grueling, overly lethal, and don't take great advantage of the things the system has to offer.
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N.B. For what it's worth, there are narratives that 2E is better at than 1E, as well. I'd rather try to simulate a JRPG-styled game with 2E (though, admittedly, I'd prefer to go out of the DnD lineage entirely if I wanted to do that).
I do agree that people who are attached to PF1 tend to view the game engine as a more literal description of reality - the classic argument I saw back in the day was "does falling damage actually only increase in-universe every 10ft, or is that just an abstraction made for easier play? do people in the universe know there's something special about a 10ft fall that means you're no longer immune to any damage?" Which is a position that I seriously doubt would have substantial support from the PF2 player base. However, to say that means that Paizo gave a commitment to those details being the same in PF2 is just not a reasonable reading of the sorts of statements Paizo made at the time. If one requires that level of detail be maintained, PF1 wouldn't be able to tell the same stories as D&D 3.5 - why are people now automatically equally well-trained at spotting and listening?
I think it's very clear that when a game company that routinely publishes adventures says "the same sort of stories can be told in the new edition", they mean that there won't be a meaningful change in the capability of the engine to tell the sorts of stories available in the adventures they're publishing. I do think that was very true on PF2's release - as evidenced by the vast majority of PF1 APs that people liked being converted to PF2, and even some people converting PF2 APs back into PF1. With the presence of the Remaster, that's no longer as true - it's still true that the vast majority of adventures Paizo published for PF1 work fine in the PF2 Remaster, but there is a meaningful chunk of stories which are now complicated to tell. I've been GMing PF2 since its release and always had at least one converted PF1 adventure going since then, and never had any issue with the narratives being incompatible.
On the topic of Hexcrawls, I think you've provided a description of both systems being bad at the sort of stories you're trying to tell. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower level areas are put there with the intent of giving you something to get back to - initially you find the evil temple that's too scary for you, so you back off and come back when you can deal with it. PF1 is arguably worse at that - barring your party having some magical options for escape, it's so swingy that you might well be dead before you get a turn. But neither PF1 nor PF2 are good at giving you the opportunity to escape from a situation where you're clearly out of your depth - you can choose to initiate the Chase rules in both, but it's really up to GM fiat. What PF1 allows with these hexes and that PF2 does not is being so optimized that you can overcome an area that you weren't intended to be able to overcome. That's not engaging with the story element of "temple in the centre of the forest that's too scary for you to fight, so you must come back later"; that's engaging with the story element of "there's a very difficult fight in the centre of the forest at this temple", which is entirely a narrative you can tell in PF2.
PF1 is not a good system for telling the story of level 1 monks and paladins wrestling a higher level caster into submission. The PF1 grappling flow chart of actions was not easy for players with low level characters with no dedicated feats for it to navigate and if the caster creature was a custom monster, it probably hit hard enough with its attack of opportunity to make paladins dropping their weapons to try to grab way more difficult than just beating the creature down into unconsciousness.
In fact, as a GM, getting such an encounter to be a fun challenge and not just an overwhelming beatdown one way or another was very, very difficult. I would also argue that there was nothing simulationist about PF1 grappling.
I was just using things already described in the thread. (I would assume you /wouldn't/ try this at level 1, unless you had a character clearly set up to do it from the getgo; perhaps a brawler would be the best choice, since you wouldn't have to lock yourself into improved grapple do it.) I agree PF1 grappling rules aren't the greatest or most intuitive.
The point isn't so much in that one specific example, anyways; it's not load-bearing. I could've used something like slumber>coup de grace instead, or anything else that works very differently in 2E.
PF1E is a harder game to tailor and balance to your group, wouldn't dare argue otherwise.
PF1 was never intended to be the cakewalk that optimized players turned it into. What you see in PF2 is a system that you (as a player) pretty much can't do that at all, but the GM can adjust if that's the story they want to tell.
Yeah, frankly, A LOT of issues can be laid at the feet of a refusal to recognize that many groups played PF1 on extreme easy-mode with hyper optimization, and PF2 has easy-mode options built right in, but people don't want to use them.
A lot of games I've sat through have not been cakewalks, even running AP material; the amount of times we would've TPK'd without hero points is probably a modest double digit count by now. My typical Saturday game group (where I'm a player) isn't optimization-oriented, though, and I'd rather make a build that reflects my character concept mechanically or just does something kind of funny.
This isn't pick up and play, though. It's a pretty stable group that's been going more than a while and has gotten through multiple campaigns with the same GM, and the GM and I (who are the more mechanics-oriented people at the table these days) tend to try to help the other players get their characters to be able to do what they want them to be able to. We have a decent idea of the powerlevel of everyone's character. That setup is more of the exception than the rule. I acknowledge it's pretty different than a full group of powergamers rolling up to the GM's basic, by the book Rise campaign.
I mean, that's always the theory but it's rarely how I see such systems work in practice.
The trouble with broken systems is they don't break evenly, so while there may be a wide variety of builds across a wide variety of power levels (which inherently doesn't actually say much) at any given band of power a certain number of builds more or less cease to exist. Many builds just don't scale up or down well enough.
I've just... generally not had this problem. I'll admit my GMs have been better than most and we've had a dearth of powergamers, though.
Those fights were easy in PF1 as well, otherwise they couldn't do that. Throw stuff that's tossing Ability Damage/Drain around and see how many fights in a row the PCs want to do before they are just done for the day. The number will be roughly around "right up until we run out of Restoration castings".
Because PF1 recovery was basically all magic/item related, you could do it quickly until you are low on resources, and then you're just done. That's why the 15 minute adventure day is a thing.
A PF2 group can handle similar numbers of encounters in a day than a typical PF1 group at similar encounter difficulty, they just get spaced out over a much longer period of time. In some ways they can handle more, because a lot of resources are infinitely renewable and that wasn't a thing in PF1.
Everything you've said is correct, but I think their point is probably supposed to be about the impact on narrative pacing—the typical "but we're taking so many ten minute breaks while storming the castle!" thing. (Anecdotally, I have seen players struggle with taking breaks to heal when they feel there's narrative pressure to be fast. They usually need the GM to kind of coax them into it with some reassurances and an explanation about the game balance.)
It's absolutely true, and very interesting as a point of contrast, that a subset of PF2E parties (i.e, ones that don't rely heavily on spell slots to win fights) can go literally until the time in the day runs out, and PF1E doesn't support that at all. Your CLW straw will eventually run out. Attrition is very different across the two systems.
I think it's very clear that when a game company that routinely publishes adventures says "the same sort of stories can be told in the new edition", they mean that there won't be a meaningful change in the capability of the engine to tell the sorts of stories available in the adventures they're publishing. I do think that was very true on PF2's release - as evidenced by the vast majority of PF1 APs that people liked being converted to PF2, and even some people converting PF2 APs back into PF1. With the presence of the Remaster, that's no longer as true - it's still true that the vast majority of adventures Paizo published for PF1 work fine in the PF2 Remaster, but there is a meaningful chunk of stories which are now complicated to tell. I've been GMing PF2 since its release and always had at least one converted PF1 adventure going since then, and never had any issue with the narratives being incompatible.
While this is true to an extent, I tend to feel a good chunk of what's lost in translation is what was never on the page: how the players end up playing out scenarios and interacting with the narrative. The stories can be adapted with some work, even if some things are quite clunky to port in either direction. But the way it plays out and feels changes quite a bit IME.
On the topic of Hexcrawls, I think you've provided a description of both systems being bad at the sort of stories you're trying to tell. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower level areas are put there with the intent of giving you something to get back to - initially you find the evil temple that's too scary for you, so you back off and come back when you can deal with it. PF1 is arguably worse at that - barring your party having some magical options for escape, it's so swingy that you might well be dead before you get a turn. But neither PF1 nor PF2 are good at giving you the opportunity to escape from a situation where you're clearly out of your depth - you can choose to initiate the Chase rules in both, but it's really up to GM fiat. What PF1 allows with these hexes and that PF2 does not is being so optimized that you can overcome an area that you weren't intended to be able to overcome. That's not engaging with the story element of "temple in the centre of the forest that's too scary for you to fight, so you must come back later"; that's engaging with the story element of "there's a very difficult fight in the centre of the forest at this temple", which is entirely a narrative you can tell in PF2.
IME, PL+3/4 is far more consistently terrifying in 2E than 1E (where it can be terrifying, but largely depends on the monster). In 2E, basically every PL+3/4 creature is difficult at baseline due to the system math.
I don't think you're wrong about part of why PF1E does the higher level hex in low level thing zone "better:" it's true you have a shot due to the game balance, and that mollifies the issue. But I don't see that as negatively. I think it's more interesting if players can choose to press their luck entering the hex, and maybe get away with it. And I think it's substantially harder to fit an encounter into that same difficulty zone in 2E, because I find encounter difficulty levers coarser.
This also doesn't address the other aspects too much, though. PF2E just doesn't have the same kind of attrition or resource management out of combat (which is an important part of hexcrawling, usually). The math trivializes places you go to late and makes places you go to early nightmarish; there's much less soft gating in PF2E. Hexcrawls would do better with PWoL... but PWoL isn't terribly well supported. And so on.
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I mean it's not like PF1 is very simulationist anyways. Or attritional, for that matter outside very low levels before you gain access to infinite healing and ways to stretch spell slots.
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I strongly disagree that the systems can be used to tell all the same stories.
I wouldn't say that. Just that some systems are a more natural fit for certain types of stories. But there is remarable variety in the variant rules for PF2. EG No Limit Stamina.
The general design ethos swung hard from simulationist to gamist. The balance and math changed radically.
Agreed. Not really my choice. Eventually I'll go my own way because of it. I would have prefered more simulationist.
Swaths of characters can't be ported because of the system's aggressive niche protection, even if we only restrict ourselves to non-splatbooks with 2E equivalents. All of this adds up.
It is kind of necessary though. I do prefer to be less gamist, but protecting a class niche so they can't be completely invalidated by another class is important.
I also think you're already sort of looking at narrative in a 2E-friendly way. Most of the people I know who are still attached to 1E take every action in the game to literally be a part of the narrative. The fact you can't hold down the caster and keep them from casting does, in fact, mean you can't tell the same story to them.
Grappled just gives you a failure chance, however Restrained does stop most casting.
Most people who disagree sound more like they think that entire way of viewing game narrative is wrong.
Which is a people problem not a game problem.
On a larger scale, 2E is also just pretty bad at some game types and narratives 1E had no issue with. Hexcrawls are probably the most prominent example. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower leveled areas are a staple of hexcrawls, but tightly bound range of acceptable encounters in 2E makes those a deathtrap. The travel system isn't terribly functional for hexcrawls, and you're better off making a unique subsystem to handle how much you can explore in a day, ala some APs. Survival gameplay also isn't terribly interesting in 2E, nor is it well-supported—especially resource management. But 1E handles these things fine.
In what way? By making the players stupidly over powered?
It is a premise of the game genre that the GM will only put you up against appropriate encounters, and provide warnings or allow escape versus deadly encounters. I don't see that that has changed except that encounter balance is much easier to predict. Yes some GMs play a more deadly game but if you walked into the wrong area in PF1 the random encounter tables can still be fatal.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
For the hexcrawl bit, you can use dragons against level 1 parties still just don’t railroad them into fighting with no other options. Use infiltrations(sleeping dragon), chase scenes(escape as it flies by each round tearing the terrain up to get at them)social encounters(the classic I taste horrible), or let them die if they choose to actually fight it.
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I would say it is pretty important to stay focused on the low level monk wrestling example since that is the original purpose of the thread. I have never seen any game approach grappling successfully from a simulationist perspective. Instead it is a player looking for a similar level of dominance as was available in another game, but that game doesn’t even offer that dominance at level 1, nor is it fun or easy for a GM to accommodate. But it actually is pretty easy to do in PF2. The first, easiest way is to stop think of HP as pure physical health, since things like mental damage still take away HP, so the stamina necessary to resist grappling is a perfectly fine thing to also throw in there.
The second is throwing together a VP system, which I did in about 15 minutes earlier in the thread. I recommend only using that for special boss encounters and to prep it in advance if you know your players of martial characters would like a non-striking way to resolve such an encounter.
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I have Gm-ed PF1 games where the players can blitz through a multi-encounter dungeon and still have time remaining on their minutes/level buff spells. There's no way to tell those stories in PF2 unless the dungeon is stocked with level-4 and below enemies.
I mean, that is, for me, an absolute reason why I now think 2E is superior to 1E. I've been GM'ing 3.5/1E for about 20 years at this point and have reached the end of my rope dealing with overbuffed parties and players still discovering hidden buffs which stack in some dark corner of the 1E splatbooks even now. That you cannot trivialize encounters way above your CR because you have stacked five different buffs on top of each other and there are several unnamed bonuses on top of that which also all stack with each other is a great positive, because I might as well not run the encounters where an overbuffed party just smashes through them and save everybody time.
With 2E, you can be pretty sure that the encounter difficulty does what it says on the can and for someone who wants to keep challenging the player characters even at high levels, this is a great advantage of the new system over its predecessor. I'll take the more gamist approach in stride, it still feels much closer to the old D&D/Pathfinder 1E to me than D&D 4E did.
PF1 was never intended to be the cakewalk that optimized players turned it into. What you see in PF2 is a system that you (as a player) pretty much can't do that at all, but the GM can adjust if that's the story they want to tell.Yeah, frankly, A LOT of issues can be laid at the feet of a refusal to recognize that many groups played PF1 on extreme easy-mode with hyper optimization, and PF2 has easy-mode options built right in, but people don't want to use them.A lot of games I've sat through have not been cakewalks, even running AP material; the amount of times we would've TPK'd without hero points is probably a modest double digit count by now. My typical Saturday game group (where I'm a player) isn't optimization-oriented, though, and I'd rather make a build that reflects my character concept mechanically or just does something kind of funny.
This isn't pick up and play, though. It's a pretty stable group that's been going more than a while and has gotten through multiple campaigns with the same GM, and the GM and I (who are the more mechanics-oriented people at the table these days) tend to try to help the other players get their characters to be able to do what they want them to be able to. We have a decent idea of the powerlevel of everyone's character. That setup is more of the exception than the rule. I acknowledge it's pretty different than a full group of powergamers rolling up to the GM's basic, by the book Rise campaign.
That's the kind of experience you're supposed to have. But if you play with a group of optimizers you go from what is intended to be a (sometimes) challenging (and sometimes easy) experiencing to a cakewalk.
You freely admitted in your post your not playing with a group of optimizers.
The experience you have in PF1, is probably close to their play experience you have in PF2. In PF1, optimizers could "win" the game before any dice were ever rolled, because their characters were so above the expected power curve. In PF1 things were decided based on your character selection alone for the most part (with an optimized group). You could look at the PC stats and the enemy stats and know with a pretty high level of certainty what players were going to do, and how the enemy would be able to cope with it. Often it was severely one sided, with either the players shtick working (such as a grapple focused character completely shutting down a two-handed weapon based enemy, and then tying them up) or failing (the enemy has Freedom of Movement). PF2 changed that dynamic so that there are degrees of success, and critical failures and successes are relatively rare, but when they do happen they have those same kind of intense effects.
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I think these respond to a lot of the other comments indirectly, as well.
I would say it is pretty important to stay focused on the low level monk wrestling example since that is the original purpose of the thread.
I read that as an instance of a common general complaint, and read the general complaint as the thing to address. My read on the situation is that a player that complains about this will complain about a whole lot of other related things, so it's better to address where it looks like it's going than just hew closely to the single example about grappling.
Also, yeah, grappling is just one of those things that no system I can think of has done in a way that a wide variety of people have found satisfying.
I mean it's not like PF1 is very simulationist anyways. Or attritional, for that matter outside very low levels before you gain access to infinite healing and ways to stretch spell slots.
Not very simulationist in what way? There are absolutely more simulationist games than it, but I feel like saying the system isn't at least on the simulationist side of the simulationist/gamist spectrum is a stretch. What would you say makes you feel the game isn't very simulationist?
Spell slots /are/ significant attrition for the most common ranges of play, even with pearls of power and scrolls and whatever else at your disposal. And a lot of classes do have rounds per day or n per day resources, like bard song and rage, or paladin smite and inquisitor judgment and so on. Even the ones that become generous as you gain levels, like bard song, can run dry; aggressive use of inspire competence can suck down rounds very quickly out of combat, particularly if used to help with things like climbing or swimming.
That's the kind of experience you're supposed to have. But if you play with a group of optimizers you go from what is intended to be a (sometimes) challenging (and sometimes easy) experiencing to a cakewalk.
You freely admitted in your post your not playing with a group of optimizers.
The experience you have in PF1, is probably close to their play experience you have in PF2. In PF1, optimizers could "win" the game before any dice were ever rolled, because their characters were so above the expected power curve. In PF1 things were decided based on your character selection alone for the most part (with an optimized group). You could look at the PC stats and the enemy stats and know with a pretty high level of certainty what players were going to do, and how the enemy would be able to cope with it. Often it was severely one sided, with either the players shtick working (such as a grapple focused character completely shutting down a two-handed weapon based enemy, and then tying them up) or failing (the enemy has Freedom of Movement).
I know exactly how broken the game was and can be. I've had a party newer to the game that, around level 10+, agreed to poke at things with my permission as GM: they bought wands of buff spells or pearls of power instead of permanent items where appropriate to cheat gp value, sucked down their juiceboxes at the beginning of the day, and cleared out dungeons chaining encounters like mad. And this party wasn't even built anywhere near optimally—they just wanted to see what would happen if the broke the gp economy by abusing how underpriced consumables are.
Personally, I know a good chunk of optimized caster tricks and cheese, which is ultimately around the ceiling of the issues with the game. (lol exploiter wizard, lol Emergency Force Sphere, lol magic trick fireball doing more damage than anything has HP, lol... a lot of things, this barely scratches the surface, we haven't even talked about more complex strategies.) I've seen synthesist summoner in play—though funnily enough, that character died more often than anyone else. I've seen how fast the game can rip itself apart and what kind of arms race it can require to set it half-right.
We just... don't play this way. Yeah, PF2E makes it simple to never have this issue for the most part; Free Archetype is popular and does have combinations worth avoiding, sure, but sticking to "common options unless you ask" is enough to avoid most trouble at most tables. And that is probably the system's biggest virtue! It's very good for newer players mixed with older players, or pickup tables. (The second biggest virtue is the 3-action economy, which I desperately wish I could backport to 1E without rewriting the whole game—the unchained rules for it don't do nearly enough or work cleanly enough.)
It does require a lot of system knowledge and a solid social contract to keep people in-bounds in 1E. But if you already have that, PF2E's virtues matter a lot less. I personally think its biggest benefit is that it, in effect, negotiates a social contract for you; you kind of agree to one by agreeing to play 2E, teamwork-oriented and power-constrained game that it is. I think that's extremely valuable for the wider TTRPG audience, and priceless for society-style play. But it just isn't that valuable for the environment I typically play in.
PF2 changed that dynamic so that there are degrees of success, and critical failures and successes are relatively rare, but when they do happen they have those same kind of intense effects.
This is a very personal take, but I generally think the DC+/-10 threshold does nothing to solve the issues with PF1E. Instead, it
-makes the math in 2E only work in an extremely tight range
-borks any sense of simulationism in conjunction with the level scaling
-ruins single-enemy encounters in conjunction with the level scaling, and severely limits the scope of acceptable encounters and skill challenges in general
-makes the game feel swingy in play, albeit much moreso at low level (which is the most critical level range for real play, unfortunately)
-makes it difficult to make numeric buffs feel satisfying without also being broken
-makes characters feel and appear bizarrely incompetent with only mild bouts of poor luck
-makes casters feel very bad without extensive system knowledge
It exacerbates a lot of general playfeel issues that I think 2E has. The people who made the system are skilled enough at the mathematical design that I personally believe they could've made an equally balanced system without it.
Few other things in the vicinity:
-A lot of GMs already used a more flexible degrees of success system behind the screen for skill checks. Codifying +/-10 actually removed some GM agency in that regard, because the system codified expectations about how results should change based on how well you rolled.
-I find that critical failures add terribly little to the game; most of them are just player-antagonistic gutpunches that don't progress the game in any meaningful manner, particularly on skill checks, and their inclusion makes failing forward feel more difficult. One of the best design trends I've seen while running Season of Ghosts is how it gives players levers to avoid critical failures on out-of-combat checks. I do like this, but I don't like it much more than just having those levers add an amount to the roll and not having disastrous critical failures to begin with.
-Assurance requires a feat slot and is also no substitute for take 10/take 20, which adds to the swinginess. It's miserable and bogs down play when someone is in front of a lock with no time pressure of /any/ sort and you tell them, "sorry, you've gotta roll this one out because you can crit fail and break your tools."
...Well, that was a tangent. Anyways.
Even without allowing splatbooks I had a level 12 party where a monk did 700 damage to a single target in one round, a vivisectionist who had 3 attacks at full AB and 6 more at -2 AB (all with Sneak Attack), and an Inquisitor who had 38 AB (for comparison, CR 12 creatures were "expected" to have 27 AC).
I believe that was just Core Rulebook, Advanced Player's Guide, and Advanced Class Guide.
And trying to adapt to that group caused a TPK for another campaign who weren't doing things like pre-buffing (minutes per level buffs or longer, just to be clear) even when warned about incoming threats.
Now a better group may get through the content more easily but one group isn't six times as strong as the other or something.
Ah, vivisectionist. I am so, so, so glad that one is knocked out by saying "PFS legal only." What a funny archetype (derogatory, mean, keep it away from my table)
I know exactly how broken the game was and can be. I've had a party newer to the game that, around level 10+, agreed to poke at things with my permission as GM: they bought wands of buff spells or pearls of power instead of permanent items where appropriate to cheat gp value, sucked down their juiceboxes at the beginning of the day, and cleared out dungeons chaining encounters like mad. And this party wasn't even built anywhere near optimally—they just wanted to see what would happen if the broke the gp economy by abusing how underpriced consumables are.
Personally, I know a good chunk of optimized caster tricks and cheese, which is ultimately around the ceiling of the issues with the game. (lol exploiter wizard, lol Emergency Force Sphere, lol magic trick fireball doing more damage than anything has HP, lol... a lot of things, this barely scratches the surface, we haven't even talked about more complex strategies.) I've seen synthesist summoner in play—though funnily enough, that character died more often than anyone else. I've seen how fast the game can rip itself apart and what kind of arms race it can require to set it half-right.
We just... don't play this way. Yeah, PF2E makes it simple to never have this issue for the most part; Free Archetype is popular and does have combinations worth avoiding, sure, but sticking to "common options unless you ask" is enough to avoid most trouble at most tables. And that is probably the system's biggest virtue! It's very good for newer players mixed with older players, or pickup tables. (The second biggest virtue is the 3-action economy, which I desperately wish I could backport to 1E without rewriting the whole game—the unchained rules for it don't do nearly enough or work cleanly enough.)
It does require a lot of system knowledge and a solid social contract to keep people in-bounds in 1E. But if you already have that, PF2E's virtues matter a lot less. I personally think its biggest benefit is that it, in effect, negotiates a social contract for you; you kind of agree to one by agreeing to play 2E, teamwork-oriented and power-constrained game that it is. I think that's extremely valuable for the wider TTRPG audience, and priceless for society-style play. But it just isn't that valuable for the environment I typically play in.
I understand and agree with you, and am slightly envious of you that you have a group that can play PF1 without going crazy on their power level.
The party monk wanted to try to grapple the caster to interfere with his summons (and casting in general) and was really disappointed that the result was only making the boss flat-footed, unable to move, and have a 20% chance to lose a spell (which incidentally never even happened in the 5ish spells the boss cast while grappled).
I remember Pathfinder 1 characters able to grapple and tie up basically anything in one round
Any thoughts on this topic?
Grapple is 'over powered'. It's not... but yeah, it is.
It is so effective that you really almost want to ensure someone in any group is built for it.
Locking enemy's down with off-guard, casting penalties, and more is very useful.
However yeah - it's not an instant 'win in one round'. It's more of a 'win in 2 rounds'.
Don't just grapple and then go "AFK", do something with it. Trip, disarm, reposition, attack, etc.
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The downside of a tightly balanced system focused on combat is a lack of the build creativity available in other systems.
I have a nearly exactly opposite opinion on that.
It's the tight math that allows for build creativity and diverse options in play.
The tight math works to ensure all the choices are balanced, and thus remain valid options.
That's maybe starting to break down in newer books - but for most of PF2E's history it's held and has as a result allowed for more and more different options to be in play without game disruption.
When you lack tight math leading to balanced options, everyone is just on a quest to find the 'meta' and play it. You can see this in some video games where everyone seeks out 'the one true way' to play the game. MMOs where there might be a thousand choices but everyone brings the same build, solo games like Skyrim where you can play anything as long as it's a wood elf stamina based stealth archer... etc.
People who play games rooted in the 3.x era of D&D all know there builds you bring to the game session and builds you don't and the difference is worth a pile of levels.
I'm hesitant over the new exemplar for PF2E - but that's over what's a minor imbalance compared to past systems.
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... Don't just grapple and then go "AFK", do something with it. Trip, disarm, reposition, attack, etc.
My favorite Monk character very rarely used strikes. His main schtick was Flurry of Maneuvers (Grab + Trip) and then Whirling Throw. The ability to launch enemies out of flanking positions, off my squishier teammates, or into our front line beaters was insane.
... Don't just grapple and then go "AFK", do something with it. Trip, disarm, reposition, attack, etc.My favorite Monk character very rarely used strikes. His main schtick was Flurry of Maneuvers (Grab + Trip) and then Whirling Throw. The ability to launch enemies out of flanking positions, off my squishier teammates, or into the front line monsters was insane.
Yeah that.
People underestimate things like that until you're the GM running that "this encounter will finally challenge these guys" moment and the new grappler PC gets their turn for the first time. ;)
I have a nearly exactly opposite opinion on that.
It's the tight math that allows for build creativity and diverse options in play.
For me, the problem is that it makes it hard to reward players for ideas that sound like they should be particularly effective on paper. In the end, my knowledge of the math and system balance means that they're probably not getting anything above a +1 or +2 typed bonus (probably circumstance) in combat. This also means that there's not much point in using creative options, because they're going to give similar results to bog standard, system-provided options.
Out of combat, I can be a bit more lenient, and do things like remove the possibility of critical failures or somesuch.
I guess I'd say the entire system "feel" rails against OSR-style calvinball tactics, so I don't feel right enabling them when I run it.
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-makes the math in 2E only work in an extremely tight range
-borks any sense of simulationism in conjunction with the level scaling
I’m currently running Kingmaker 2E, and the “tight range” is very frustrating in the context of a hex-crawling sandbox, but I still probably appreciate it more than the wild power level variance in PF1.
-ruins single-enemy encounters in conjunction with the level scaling, and severely limits the scope of acceptable encounters and skill challenges in general
I don’t find that I have that problem with single-enemy encounters, so long as they’re in the appropriate admittedly-tight level range
-makes casters feel very bad without extensive system knowledge
I’ve never really been a caster guy in F20 gaming, so I can’t speak to this one as a player, but as a GM I sometimes get frustrated when running casting-focused stat blocks. I’ve always figured that was mostly my own discomfort with casting, but it could be systemic.
-A lot of GMs already used a more flexible degrees of success system behind the screen for skill checks. Codifying +/-10 actually removed some GM agency in that regard, because the system codified expectations about how results should change based on how well you rolled.
I’m not sure I buy that an official rule contradicting what was already a house rule “remove[s] GM agency.” You were already house ruling; continue to house rule.
-Assurance requires a feat slot and is also no substitute for take 10/take 20, which adds to the swinginess. It's miserable and bogs down play when someone is in front of a lock with no time pressure of /any/ sort and you tell them, "sorry, you've gotta roll this one out because you can crit fail and break your tools."
I am absolutely with you on this one. I hate the loss of Take 10 (Take 20 didn’t do a s much for me, honestly), and I don’t particularly care for the implementation of Assurance.
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The tight math works to ensure all the choices are balanced, and thus remain valid options.
I think it cuts both ways, to a degree, though. As Ronald, the Rules Lawyer says, “Every +1 counts,” which I think creates a fair bit of pressure to enter play with a +4 on whatever your operative ability is. I just built a bomber Alchemist, for instance, and I am genuinely wondering how painful it will be making my attach rolls with my +3 Dex while nearly everyone else will be making at least some of their attack rolls with their +4 primary ability. Needing to chase both a +4 Int to maximize my supply of bombs, and a +3 Dex to be able to hit with them doesn’t leave me all that much room to play around in terms of ability scores.
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I’m currently running Kingmaker 2E, and the “tight range” is very frustrating in the context of a hex-crawling sandbox, but I still probably appreciate it more than the wild power level variance in PF1.
I'm sorry, but as someone who ran Kingmaker in PF1E for a while (got too frustrated with some aspects of it and dropped the campaign, the only one to ever get dropped in my group), it's extremely funny to me that people hail Kingmaker 1E for being more balanced. The random encounter table in the first module gave you the chance to meet a werewolf or 1d3 troll at first level. My group progressed into a hex from the third module early and a player character died to a random encounter pit trap which had something ridiculous like a 200 ft. drop. Kingmaker 1E was just as bad for meeting higher level threats (at low levels, at least) than any 2E "outside of the -4/+4 bounds" encounter would be for the other side of that equation.
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I'm sorry, but as someone who ran Kingmaker in PF1E for a while (got too frustrated with some aspects of it and dropped the campaign, the only one to ever get dropped in my group), it's extremely funny to me that people hail Kingmaker 1E for being more balanced.
I ran about 2/3 of Kingmaker 1E before that group disintegrated for non-game reasons, and I definitely think PF1 was a better match for that play style than PF2, though that's not to say that I think the 1E version was "more balanced."
The downside of a tightly balanced system focused on combat is a lack of the build creativity available in other systems.I have a nearly exactly opposite opinion on that.
It's the tight math that allows for build creativity and diverse options in play.
The tight math works to ensure all the choices are balanced, and thus remain valid options.
That's maybe starting to break down in newer books - but for most of PF2E's history it's held and has as a result allowed for more and more different options to be in play without game disruption.
When you lack tight math leading to balanced options, everyone is just on a quest to find the 'meta' and play it. You can see this in some video games where everyone seeks out 'the one true way' to play the game. MMOs where there might be a thousand choices but everyone brings the same build, solo games like Skyrim where you can play anything as long as it's a wood elf stamina based stealth archer... etc.
People who play games rooted in the 3.x era of D&D all know there builds you bring to the game session and builds you don't and the difference is worth a pile of levels.
I'm hesitant over the new exemplar for PF2E - but that's over what's a minor imbalance compared to past systems.
I cant play skyrim if im not using a 1hander and a shield. It just doesnt feel right not being able to block.
I cant play skyrim if im not using a 1hander and a shield. It just doesnt feel right not being able to block.
Interesting, I can't play Skyrim without turning into a stealth archer.
Start as a mage, by the end I'm a stealth archer.
Start as a 2 handed weapon user, stealth archer.
Doesn't matter what I do. I end up a stealth archer.
This makes me wonder: if so many people go out of their way to remove difficulty from the game, why is there an underlying assumption that difficulty is supposed to be fun? Judging by how many people do everything in their power to eliminate it, one would assume it's something really bad.
Illusion of challenge vs actual challenge.
We (in the generic sense) have real life for actual challenge. In our gameplay we want the illusion of challenge married to the dopamine hit of the reward for success that felt earned but which we do know was handed to us if we stop and think about it.
This makes me wonder: if so many people go out of their way to remove difficulty from the game, why is there an underlying assumption that difficulty is supposed to be fun? Judging by how many people do everything in their power to eliminate it, one would assume it's something really bad.
Illusion of challenge vs actual challenge.
We (in the generic sense) have real life for actual challenge. In our gameplay we want the illusion of challenge married to the dopamine hit of the reward for success that felt earned but which we do know was handed to us if we stop and think about it.
This just... isn't correct for a large amount of people, myself included. Overcoming genuine difficulty is fun. Personally, I find the illusion of difficulty tends to leave me dissatisfied unless there are other enjoyable aspects to the experience. (And difficulty isn't very meaningful by itself, either—the difficult thing needs to be fun to do!)
And on that subject, there's a ton of different ways to have fun, which is a topic discussed extensively in game design and development. Overcoming challenge is one way, but there's also things like socializing in a game, having novel experiences and exploring, etc. There's a lot of literature on this subject.
I cant play skyrim if im not using a 1hander and a shield. It just doesnt feel right not being able to block.Interesting, I can't play Skyrim without turning into a stealth archer.
Start as a mage, by the end I'm a stealth archer.
Start as a 2 handed weapon user, stealth archer.Doesn't matter what I do. I end up a stealth archer.
It's because humans have a tendency to dislike putting in pointless effort. It can be fun to go around a level chasing enemies, repeatedly staggering them with fireballs, and chugging potions. However, by the 100th time, you will lose patience and take the easier route, which is the sneak archer. This makes me wonder: if so many people go out of their way to remove difficulty from the game, why is there an underlying assumption that difficulty is supposed to be fun? Judging by how many people do everything in their power to eliminate it, one would assume it's something really bad.
The fun of playing for me was in becoming good at blocking perfectly so doing other things wasnt as fun for me.
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Not very simulationist in what way? There are absolutely more simulationist games than it, but I feel like saying the system isn't at least on the simulationist side of the simulationist/gamist spectrum is a stretch. What would you say makes you feel the game isn't very simulationist?
I just can't think of any aspect of the system I'd call particularly simulationist. It's a dungeon crawling combat game that mostly handwaves everything else in the name of that (including the complications that would arrive from a more simulationist approach to dungeon crawling and combat).
When I think simulationist I think a game that dives deep into.. well, simulating some mechanic or idea. Games with complex economic systems or deep social interaction or complex damage mechanics or action systems or elaborate gearing systems.
d20 really has none of that. That's not a complaint mind you, simulationism isn't inherently good (or bad)... it's just clearly not something Pathfinder has ever tried to do.
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I cant play skyrim if im not using a 1hander and a shield. It just doesnt feel right not being able to block.Interesting, I can't play Skyrim without turning into a stealth archer.
Start as a mage, by the end I'm a stealth archer.
Start as a 2 handed weapon user, stealth archer.Doesn't matter what I do. I end up a stealth archer.
The struggle is real.
When I think simulationist I think a game that dives deep into.. well, simulating some mechanic or idea. Games with complex economic systems or deep social interaction or complex damage mechanics or action systems or elaborate gearing systems.
d20 really has none of that.
I mean, this system, which is a D20 system, has Social Encounters, Victory Points systems, Chase Encounters, Complex Hazards, etc., so I don't understand how this system doesn't have a fair level of simulationist design to it. At best we can say that they aren't commonly used or that they are abstract, but just because something isn't used every 3 encounters or so doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it doesn't count, and abstraction is just a necessary part of game design so as to both keep pace and not bog down the game with minutiae.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NQLJ6Yp_C0Interesting, I can't play Skyrim without turning into a stealth archer.
Start as a mage, by the end I'm a stealth archer.
Start as a 2 handed weapon user, stealth archer.Doesn't matter what I do. I end up a stealth archer.
To be honest, I was thinking of exactly this video as I wrote out my post
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I mean, this system, which is a D20 system, has Social Encounters, Victory Points systems, Chase Encounters, Complex Hazards, etc., so I don't understand how this system doesn't have a fair level of simulationist design to it. At best we can say that they aren't commonly used or that they are abstract, but just because something isn't used every 3 encounters or so doesn't mean that it doesn't exist or that it doesn't count, and abstraction is just a necessary part of game design so as to both keep pace and not bog down the game with minutiae.When I think simulationist I think a game that dives deep into.. well, simulating some mechanic or idea. Games with complex economic systems or deep social interaction or complex damage mechanics or action systems or elaborate gearing systems.
d20 really has none of that.
I think the argument here, isn't that those things don't exist (they obviously do) it's that they're not particularly robust or detailed, nor are they trying to SIMULATE reality to closely. Simulation isn't a yes or no, it's a scale. If we were to put it on a scale of 1 to 10, I would say Pathfinder is maybe a 4. It tries a little and doesn't completely ignore things like chases and social encounters, but it doesn't try to make them super realistic because super realism tends to get very complex and unwieldy for a pen and paper game. Even if a computer game where you can have the computer handle all the heavy work of keeping track of things, it tends to not be fun for most people because it becomes too difficult because of complexity.
snip
I do understand all this. But I think to say "this is not simulationist" is a bit of No True Scotsman fallacy; real simulationism, in the way a lot of people describe it in this thread, is not present in almost any TTRPG. (Perhaps only some of the wildest wargames would qualify, by these standards.) Some level of abstraction is always occurring so that the game can be written and run in real time at a table. And the amount of abstraction occurs on a sliding scale. Yeah, the most important, basic mechanical tropes of a d20 game—levels, quantized "luck" and result outcomes via d20 rolls and DCs, and so on—are not extremely detailed models with an excess of fiddly pieces. That doesn't prevent a game from having a simulationist bent.
This is to say: yes, there are more simulationist games than PF1E, but to say that PF1E doesn't (accidentally or on purpose) have more of a simulationist bent than other major games around it seems odd.
Besides, those things you said of World of Darkness aren't without parallels in a game like 1E.
• Part of simulating a heroic narrative and a world where those make sense is ensuring characters get stronger through combat and adventure; the system does do this. The main reason you can't just farm random encounters for XP to train by fighting bears is that your GM will stop you from wasting everyone's time, not that it wouldn't work with the rules as described. And such a narrative wouldn't exactly be out of place in the system.
• Likewise, PF1E is notoriously imbalanced, and it's also true that not all ways to spend XP are equal; class levels in wizard are comedically better than class levels in rogue. This is further reflected in many narratives: there are a whole lot of dangerous wizard BBEGs, but not so many rogues, because they just don't inspire the same kind of fear and literally aren't as powerful or dangerous. We don't really know if this disparity was intentional or not, but we can certainly say it ends up being simulationist of the world as described (the runelords aren't runerogues, after all).
Poking at this more, I feel like you're making an assumption that a system's mechanics must actually spit out a correct representation of the world they intend to describe for it to be simulationist. That... doesn't make much sense to me. "Simulationist," as a sort of TTRPG genre tag, is not a success term. People are often wrong about how rules shake out in practice, make errors in design, and so on. The most detailed wargame doesn't stop being simulationist if they forget (by honest mistake) to account for airplane refueling in plane arrival times or something. Yes, PF1E is only designed to model things very locally; that's why things like the peasant railgun exist. Yes, PF1E's simulations can often fail to do what they're intended to do. But I don't think that makes them less of an attempt at some level of simulation.
Again, to me, rules can still be an abstraction and remain simulationist; after all, every simulation you will ever run in an actual game is still an abstraction. Only something like Laplace's demon could do simulation without abstraction! So, this is a sliding scale, from not simulationist to simulationist. That scale starts at free-floating and ungrounded on one end (e.g., a hypothetical game that determinined combat outcomes by letting loose a squirrel and seeing which direction it ran) and goes to simulationist and chained down to rules-as-perfect-physics with as many tether points as you can stuff into the rulebook on the other end (e.g., a hypothetical wargame that counted the amount of fuel planes were consuming, and needed to know the weight of everything in the plane to calculate the plane's fuel economy). To me, it's all about the amount of "tether points" to the simulated world, and how well the mechanics and the world "click together."
I personally consider something to have simulationist intent when there's an effort made to attempt to sort of "ground" the system math and mechanics in something and make the math map representationally onto the world presented. There should be an internal, representational logic, and it shouldn't break down too quickly. It will break down eventually, but how soon it breaks down it is what counts. And there is a sense that even the abstracted numbers have representational meanings—communicate something diegetic, in their own way—once you get used to them.
Putting all this together, and applying it to TTRPGs: The consistency of the internal logic of a game with how you would narratively describe the world and events that occur in play... that is really what marks simulationist approaches from gamist approaches, for me. The question is how well play and the systems map onto what they represent. Or to put it succinctly: Simulation is about making mechanics align with diegetics.
This is why PF2E is less simulationist. It just doesn't try as hard as PF1E to match its mechanics to the narrative of what's happening. Other games try harder than either, but I think it's clear PF2E emphasized game design and balance over making mechanics and diegetics align.
I just can't think of any aspect of the system I'd call particularly simulationist. It's a dungeon crawling combat game that mostly handwaves everything else in the name of that (including the complications that would arrive from a more simulationist approach to dungeon crawling and combat).
When I think simulationist I think a game that dives deep into.. well, simulating some mechanic or idea. Games with complex economic systems or deep social interaction or complex damage mechanics or action systems or elaborate gearing systems.
d20 really has none of that. That's not a complaint mind you, simulationism isn't inherently good (or bad)... it's just clearly not something Pathfinder has ever tried to do.
I feel like this comment undersells the crunch level of both Pathfinder games to a rather large degree. The fact pathfinder even cares what kinds of armor you wear, cares about the difference between a breastplate and half-plate, and can tell you how much damage armor takes and whether or not it's broken after (if something somehow has a way to damage it on purpose) is more simulationist than a whole lot of games out there. The floor here is "we don't care about armor at all" or "armors are interchangeable stat sticks."
This just... isn't correct for a large amount of people, myself included. Overcoming genuine difficulty is fun.This makes me wonder: if so many people go out of their way to remove difficulty from the game, why is there an underlying assumption that difficulty is supposed to be fun? Judging by how many people do everything in their power to eliminate it, one would assume it's something really bad.
Illusion of challenge vs actual challenge.
We (in the generic sense) have real life for actual challenge. In our gameplay we want the illusion of challenge married to the dopamine hit of the reward for success that felt earned but which we do know was handed to us if we stop and think about it.
Maybe not you.
But most people will give up after "slamming their head against a wall" and play something gives a hit of "look at how amazing you are".
People pretend they want challenge, but then as the person we're replying to noted - they take steps to remove the difficulty.
Otherwise the logical answer becomes to state that the OP is wrong and people do not in fact remove difficulty / play at easier settings / etc.
.
Maybe not you.
But most people will give up after "slamming their head against a wall" and play something gives a hit of "look at how amazing you are".
People pretend they want challenge, but then as the person we're replying to noted - they take steps to remove the difficulty.
.
Frankly, this is so disparaging of people as a whole that I don't even know what to say. The idea that people never truly challenge themselves because it's unpleasant is awful and doesn't align with reality.
Besides, it's a gross oversimplification of the phenomenon in question. Getting 100% chameleon in Elder Scrolls games is fun precisely because it enables a power fantasy of trivially overcoming things that used to be hard. It's the same thing as going back to a starting area in an RPG for a sidequest and seeing that you're oneshotting everything. It's about power growth. There's no reward if the difficulty never existed to begin with.
And also, at whoever asked: yes, in my opinion, Dark Souls is one of the best games of the past two decades. (Dark Souls isn't nearly as hard as it's made out to be, though, and the difficulty is nearly irrelevant to why I like the game. Much of the difficulty stems from being made with an older design ethos of not telling the player anything and leaving them figure it out themselves.) I think being a rhythm game enjoyer is more relevant to the conversation, though: it's an activity that is largely fun because it feels good to do hard things in time with the music, an activity that has a reward largely contingent on overcoming difficulty. The same goes for playing fighting games semi-competitively.
EDIT: To be extra clear, the thing that's truly amazing about Dark Souls is the level design. I'm a big fan of kicking ladders.
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snipThis is why PF2E is less simulationist. It just doesn't try as hard as PF1E to match its mechanics to the narrative of what's happening. Other games try harder than either, but I think it's clear PF2E emphasized game design and balance over making mechanics and diegetics align.
It's a lesson learned from online group based game formats like MMOs.
You need the game part to work.
15 years ago MMOs like WoW and Everquest 1 were perfectly happy having massive amounts of imbalance in groups. Characters that had no purpose but to cast one buff, characters that did extreme damage, characters that could heal and do nothing else. And so on. Ancestries, classes, and builds that were purposefully better than others.
This made gameplay very problematic - people only wanted the good options in their groups, people would give up if they learned the option they picked was not 'viable' enough, the game would be very hard to play if you didn't bring 'the right comp', and so on.
About 10 years ago Blizzard put out the slogan of 'bring the player, not the class' (or something like that) - and since that point has tried to balance things. Other games have their own similar stories.
Pathfinder 2E recognizes that we're not 'the local drama club' where it's perfectly fine that one guy gets to be Hamlet. We're playing a group game. Everyone wants to be relevant at the table.
Game comes first. At least from the POV of the game designer. If you want story or simulation to come first do that on your end.
But they want the game to work first.
So tight balance. And like Blizzard tried a decade ago with it's game - make as many options as possible as close to equally good to play as possible - so you can 'bring the player' and let them play what they want, rather than 'bring the build' and force a player to use it.
That's why I say PF2E allows for more build diversity.
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snipThis is why PF2E is less simulationist. It just doesn't try as hard as PF1E to match its mechanics to the narrative of what's happening. Other games try harder than either, but I think it's clear PF2E emphasized game design and balance over making mechanics and diegetics align.It's a lesson learned from online group based game formats like MMOs.
You need the game part to work.
15 years ago MMOs like WoW and Everquest 1 were perfectly happy having massive amounts of imbalance in groups. Characters that had no purpose but to cast one buff, characters that did extreme damage, characters that could heal and do nothing else. And so on. Ancestries, classes, and builds that were purposefully better than others.
This made gameplay very problematic - people only wanted the good options in their groups, people would give up if they learned the option they picked was not 'viable' enough, the game would be very hard to play if you didn't bring 'the right comp', and so on.
About 10 years ago Blizzard put out the slogan of 'bring the player, not the class' (or something like that) - and since that point has tried to balance things. Other games have their own similar stories.
Pathfinder 2E recognizes that we're not 'the local drama club' where it's perfectly fine that one guy gets to be Hamlet. We're playing a group game. Everyone wants to be relevant at the table.
Game comes first. At least from the POV of the game designer. If you want story or simulation to come first do that on your end.
But they want the game to work first.
So tight balance. And like Blizzard tried a decade ago with it's game - make as many options as possible as close to equally good to play as possible - so you can 'bring the player' and let them play what they want, rather than 'bring the build' and force a player to use it.
That's why I say PF2E allows for more build diversity.
Wow, I philosophically despise pretty much everything you have described here. That's really impressive. (I also pretty much loath playing MMOs, so it tracks.)
I'm not saying you are wrong, mind you. I think you're mostly right.
But ewww!