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Disclaimer: I have been a PF subscriber for over 10 years and believe in supporting Paizo by purchasing as much content as possible.
Now, as the title says I am wondering if anyone can help me out. I find that having so many options for players to choose from has caused some issues in my games. I'd really like to pare down to as few books as possible to get away from all the choice bloat (and power creep) that comes when there are just so many books. I am not trying to gimp the players into unplayable characters by limiting choices, but rather keep the choices to ones that I can still enjoy running a campaign for.
Example: A few posts down I see one titled "Help me make a Teddy Bear Warrior". While I'm sure there are tons of players and GMs who would be thrilled to have that in their game, I am not interested in telling that story.
Another problem I have run into is having a character that is so complicated that each turn we struggle to figure out what even happens when all of their abilities are activated at different times (Magus - bow wiedlder, Starlit Span, Expansive Spellstrike, etc.) After a while I just kinda took their word for the 40+ damage and where their spell that was delivered by the arrow began and who it hit just so we could move on to the next players turn.
HERE IS THE CRUX OF MY QUESTION: Which books could I limit player access to that would make for a still fun (subjective i know), competitive yet much more simple game?
I am currently thinking Core books, plus maybe a couple others. If anyone who loves making lists is thinking of responding, please do. Maybe something like...
Suggested
Player Core
Player Core 2
Any book related to the AP, adventure or region
Book X, Y and Z
Maybe add with caution
Book A
Book B (to add some more choices without the bloat)
Skip (because now you've got warrior teddy bears)
Book Q
Book R
Thanks everyone!
I hope this is making sense.
EJ
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My picks would be PC, PC2, RoE, maybe TV.
The first two are no-brainers.
I like kineticists and while they can be a bit complicated to build, I think they are quite learnable especially if you start from 1. And I certainly don't think they're op.
I like treasure items. You might even just use it yourself to add extra loot, but forbid general item purchases from it if you're worried.
If you run an AP, you have full control over which, if any, AP content becomes available to players.
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I took too long trying to edit the above.
Lotta people take issue with the Thaumaturge, so ban DA. Psychic won't be missed. Plus it stops op Magus stuff.
Could ban starlit span anyway, but the rest of SoM is fine.
HotW has Awakened Animals, so that's probably out thematically for you.
GaG is a toss up. Do you like guns in your fantasy? Allow or ban as you will. No tears will be shed for the inventor
Exemplar is kinda silly. YMMV. The Animist seems fine.
Mythic is right out.
If you're overly concerned about Main Character Syndrome that a session 0 won't fix, ban WoI. Otherwise the actual class balance and play patterns are fine. Though I've heard Exemplar Dedication is busted.
In most games, I think you're totally fine banning all manner of BotD ancestries and undead archetypes. I'm personally more forgiving towards undead companions.
The Oracle is, imo, the only class that maybe warrants being built using premaster rules.
The LO books tend to have sillier options than core books. Plus they're less directly player-focused and, imo, a little more fast and loose, rules and design-wise. Could ban the lot, unless someone clears something with you.
(Yes, core can be silly and LO serious, but we're dealing in generalities here).
For real tho, a LOT of potential grief is prevented by a good talk with the group about tone and expectations before anyone puts pencil to paper.
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As far as I can tell, there really isn't any actual power creep in PF2. Most of what I hear about on these forums being called power creep is when something in B-tier gets buffed to A-tier. And things are sometimes nerfed to keep things in line (see recent errata and changes to Sure Strike, Live Wire, and Inner Radiance Torrent).
So if the problem is campaign theme, that is something that you need to talk to the other players about so that they don't come to the table expecting to play a teddy bear.
If instead the problem is game balance, the rules pretty much already have you covered on that (much to the dismay of many PF1 fans). Stick to the common options and you should be fine. And even most uncommon or rare things are fine too. Beware of some things that come from particular campaigns rather than being part of the general rulebooks.
Also, for reference: Poppet (the base ancestry for the teddy bear warrior) is in Grand Bazaar. And that book is also full of a lot of other really nice and useful items and other things.
So if the intent is to not have Poppet characters, it may be better to request the players to not create Poppet characters rather than ban the entirety of Grand Bazaar.
Thanks very much everyone! I'm trying not to be an old curmudgeon, but sometimes I was getting lost in the mega high fantasy of it all and I felt that for me the story was really suffering. I will communicate with my players as we prepare to play our next campaign and see what they think of the choice array. I'm sure some things could be worked out for the odd request.
EJ
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Core has some of the most broken options in the game, so I'm not sure focusing there would help much.
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Thanks very much everyone! I'm trying not to be an old curmudgeon, but sometimes I was getting lost in the mega high fantasy of it all and I felt that for me the story was really suffering. I will communicate with my players as we prepare to play our next campaign and see what they think of the choice array. I'm sure some things could be worked out for the odd request.
EJ
My personal take would be to use PFS restrictions. And assess which Common Ancestries or Classes do not fit my game.
And if a player wants something Uncommon or Rare, we see together if it fits my setting and the mood of the story.
Core has some of the most broken options in the game, so I'm not sure focusing there would help much.
I'm going to second this. Aside from a few targeted bans (Starlit span and/or spellstriking with focus spells, exemplar dedication), most of the game's most powerful options (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric) will come from the Core rules. But coming at things from other angles...
In terms of reducing choice paralysis, there's nothing wrong with restricting yourself to just Core.
If you're thinking of theme on the other hand, that depends on what you're going for. Going by rulebook,
-Secrets of Magic is somewhat generic. The classes will probably lean a bit more high magic, of course.
-Guns and Gears leans more towards a Renaissance/Industrial theme. Firearms did show up in the late Medeival period, but some players may not like them and the gunslinger does feel somewhat western themed
-Book of the Dead is laser focused on the undead. A not insignificant portion of that is on killing them, mind you, but if undead are an afterthought you can leave it out.
-Dark Archive deals with ocultism, cryptids, and the like. It may not be a good fit in a cheerier high fantasy.
-Treasure Vault has a bit of everything, but if you're really concerned with "purity" for lack of a better word you either need to go over it with a fine comb or trust your players to choose on theme stuff since the book references a bunch of earlier works and large swaths of the world.
-Rage of the Elements is inherently somewhat wuxia by nature. If you're going for pure Tolkien or Conan it isn't a good fit.
-How of the Wild is deceptively high magic. It's very much rooted in wonder at the natural world and how widespread magic would turn everything up to 11.
-War of the Immortals, sans-Mythic, is a bit all over the place. The Animist is at home in many campaigns outside stock standard European fantasy, while the Exemplar draws on earlier myths and legends like Cu Chulain, Heracles, Achilles, and Thor (I also spotted some Sun Wukong who's a good bit more recent, though). The archetypes are mixed: Avenger and Vindicator are just a natural part of an organized fantasy religion, while Blood Rager and Warrior of Legend are a very specific fantasy, and the Seneschals could just be anywhere there are witches.
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most of the game's most powerful options (Fighter, Rogue, Cleric) will come from the Core rules.
Personally I would go with Fighter, Rogue, and Bard as being the top three power classes. Cleric is definitely in my top 5 though.
Now, as the title says I am wondering if anyone can help me out. I find that having so many options for players to choose from has caused some issues in my games. I'd really like to pare down to as few books as possible to get away from all the choice bloat (and power creep) that comes when there are just so many books. I am not trying to gimp the players into unplayable characters by limiting choices, but rather keep the choices to ones that I can still enjoy running a campaign for.
There might be choice bloat, but the system math allows rather little actual power creep, as mentioned before
I usually find that my players have little problems to choose - at least once they have settled for a theme for their characterWhich might be your way to help them - let them decide on a theme and then narrow down the options
Example: A few posts down I see one titled "Help me make a Teddy Bear Warrior". While I'm sure there are tons of players and GMs who would be thrilled to have that in their game, I am not interested in telling that story.
That has little to do with choice paralysis nor with power creep, thats a personal preference, of course if you are gm you can do what you want
Another problem I have run into is having a character that is so complicated that each turn we struggle to figure out what even happens when all of their abilities are activated at different times (Magus - bow wiedlder, Starlit Span, Expansive Spellstrike, etc.) After a while I just kinda took their word for the 40+ damage and where their spell that was delivered by the arrow began and who it hit just so we could move on to the next players turn.
You should be able to take the word of your players anyway
It is a cooperative storytelling game - the gm is not the enemy or an obstacle to overcome and your players should also be fully aware of itthat being said, when the players have settled on a concept and you see the copy of their character sheets, it is certainly not wrong to look at what they can do now and potentially later
Nobody expects you to have a full rule encyclopedia in your head
but players should also strive to not unneccessarily stretch turns
HERE IS THE CRUX OF MY QUESTION: Which books could I limit player access to that would make for a still fun (subjective i know), competitive yet much more simple game?
if you want to keep it simple keep to the core books
one step more would be allowing lost omens books
the ones I would most likely ban are the adventure paths (that you are not currently playing) since their content *can* (but does not have to) be a bit swingy
I am personally of the opinion players should enjoy maximum freedom for most campaigns
if they are experiences they'll figure it out, if they are beginners you should be helping anyway
that said, for some campaigns it makes sense to make a curated list or set some limiters so the theme of the story sticks
(easy example - no undead archetypes in a campaign where you are supposed to be the heroes - then again, that could also be interesting in its own way)
I really don't get why you would ban poppets, but I don't get why some people ban gnomes from their table
Even core can have some very... call them "zany" options, maybe?
Folks have given some good advice here following your request, so I don't have anything more to contribute on that front. One suggestion I have is laying out the feeling you're going for in the game to players. Set the mood, set the scene, give a feeling for it. Then, have players come to you with their ideas and have them tell you how they think they'll work well with it. If you're describing some adventurous dungeon delving followed by the members of the group unwinding at a tavern discussing how to spend their riches, you probably won't get a lot of teddy bear warrior builds. If somebody comes to you with a Magus build, you can say honestly that tracking that class is tough for you, and you'd prefer something a little less burst-y.
You can definitely go with the approach your initial post suggests! This is just a way to go about it in more of a session 0 style.
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Talk to your (prospective) players and be concise about your planned "HED" (Humans, Elves, Dwarves) Fantasy.
Pathfinder has a lot of options, it's okay to limit them, just get your players on board.
If you try to be a DM for a group of players that dream of undead conrasu android poppet vampires, banning things won't get you far.
Thanks very much everyone! I'm trying not to be an old curmudgeon, but sometimes I was getting lost in the mega high fantasy of it all and I felt that for me the story was really suffering. I will communicate with my players as we prepare to play our next campaign and see what they think of the choice array. I'm sure some things could be worked out for the odd request.
EJ
My personal take would be to use PFS restrictions. And assess which Common Ancestries or Classes do not fit my game.
And if a player wants something Uncommon or Rare, we see together if it fits my setting and the mood of the story.
This is how I'd handle it as well. PFS is already doing a bunch of the heavy lifting on finding the "this will be difficult to work with at the table" options, and some of the really out there ones go with it. Between that and the rare tag on things like Starlit Sentinel (I definitely want Sailor Moon in my campaign but you may not) and you're most of the way there already.
Don't allow Free Archetype, either, if you want to avoid a complex game. As it adds more character abilities, it adds more "stuff players can do" and you don't want that here.
Besides that, you need to have a talk with your players. If you can get everyone on the same page about the level of complexity you want to avoid and the theme of the campaign world you want to run, that in itself will do a lot of the rest of the work because you won't have to try to preemptively ban things.
Generally speaking if you can understand the core of what a character is doing regularly, you're probably fine. And if people know that want you want is a "traditional fantasy feel" game, they know which ancestry options fit that. This is a case where a conversation about expectations with everyone will be way more effective than trying to create a list of what's allowed/banned will be.
I'd avoid doing it "by books", because that doesn't work that well. For example: Alchemist is more complicated to play than a Weapon/Amulet Thaumaturge is because you know exactly what the Thaumaturge can do (hit things/reduce damage/recall knowledge). The Alchemist can do a huge variety of things and can pull them out of nowhere, their options are only really constrained by the size of of their formula book.
(That said: ban Exemplar Dedication. That is completely busted. Exemplar the class itself is fine.)
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I think Core 1+2 would be fine. You might want to restrict to only common races though*, if you're not interested in the more wacky and out there ones. IMO i think player core 2 doesn't have any races you'd brush up against, but I know some people do just prefer sticking to "standard" fantasy races.
Otherwise, the only other book i can think that meets your criteria would be rage of elements. Kineticists are more involved to set up than say, fighter, but they have a limited amount of options in combat.
I think that you might get more insight out of your players though - they'll certainly know what's beyond the scope of what they want to do.
*Leshy might be too out there for you, animate plants and animate toys are pretty similar.