RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: In addition, simplifying it to "mature adults who want the same things from the experience" also places all the weight of any moment of lack of fun on the players themselves, even when they are simply trying to have fun. Imbalance affects everyone, both players who simply want to optimize and those who just want to make a character archetype to have fun, because it not only creates a significant difference between players who focus on having fun while being efficient, but also puts pressure on players who just make a character of an interesting archetype without worrying about optimization. Both are affected, the first one often trivializes the game or, if the game is balanced based on it, makes the experience difficult for others, both for those who are building a character just to create the archetype they want and end up being extremely punished for not seeking efficiency. This entire argument has you attempting to put players who want different things from their characters into the same game. To make that work, you need to have a detailed session 0, let the flavor first players build their characters first and then tell the optimizers that these characters are their power ceiling so they should focus on building characters that optimize things that wouldn't normally make the cut in a full power anything goes campaign.
And do you understand that in the end you are either forcing players to limit themselves or to seek optimization in order to play? Or even that you are doing what PF2e already does by default, only worse, seeking balance by limiting what players can and cannot do? In addition to having everyone, and especially the GM, now have to deal with the responsibility of balancing the game?
Not to mention that this does not solve the problem, inefficient things will continue to be inefficient and will be sidelined from the game or players will be forced to be weaker because they want to choose them and even the opposite is true. You still won't change the fact that the shield is super-efficient for example, or you will end up having to prohibit or restrict its use, all of this becoming a fair play inspector. It's terrible!
YuriP wrote: Spending actions on the shield prevents it from becoming over-efficient. In D&D, the shield is so efficient that it becomes part of the armor, where you are punished for not having one, leading to a situation where the player only doesn't have a shield if it gets in the way of using something better than it. For me, it was a simple, elegant and even realistic solution by PF2e to spend actions to keep the shield up, demonstrating the focus on defending oneself with it. You can easily solve this issue by making it so shields can only raise your AC to a certain level. This way, you'd see characters in plate armor stop using shields in the same way it happened in history.
Quote: The Volley trait of the longbow is a legacy from D&D 3.x/PF1, where the Point Blank Shot gave a hit and damage bonus on shots less than 30 feet away (practically being a +1 weapon in addition to its normal benefit). In PF2e, the designers had the idea of making it more interesting by giving a penalty to shots made with it at close range as a way to compensate for the fact that it does more damage than a shortbow, while at the same time making the Point Blank Shot simply nullify this penalty and give a higher damage bonus to shortbows, thus avoiding the problem of the shortbow's devaluation while also giving a tactical use to both weapons. Not to mention that the concept of only using 2 hands to attack was added to it, allowing the use of a free hand for anything else without having to change grips. Why bother with that bit of legacy support when you could have used that page space to do something interesting instead?
Quote: Fighting with 2 weapons has always been a difficult technique to master to the point that most melee weapons focused on fighting with 2 hands. Shouldn't our heroic characters be able to express superhuman levels of skill, which enable otherwise inefficient fighting styles to flourish?
Quote: So having the benefit of a second weapon with different traits is already an interesting advantage in itself, there is no need to resort to the extra attack and also as already pointed out by colleagues here on the forum, this is a fantasy, it does not necessarily need to be realistic, additionally the fact that you use feats to fight well with 2 weapons reflects the additional training with this type of fighting. A fantasy game should be reality+, while all too often, PF2 is reality-.
Quote: But these games try to be balanced all the time! They seek balance, not the other way around. The issue is that balancing an asymmetrical game is a complex process that requires constant adjustments as serious balance flaws are found. This even applies to PF2e and D&D, which receive errata and adjustments between versions.
If they let go of balance, the game would end up being abandoned.
D&D publishes errata for rules clarity issues. Can you show me examples of things errated for power level reasons?
TCGs are power creep, the genre, and rely heavily on ivory tower game design as a core pillar of their design. They are far closer to a 3.x/PF1 than they are to PF2 in terms of their focus on balance.
The same goes for wargames that often want to sell plastic first and rules second and thus will wildly shift the power level of units from edition to edition to force players to keep buying to stay meta-relevant. If PF2 did this, their errata would wildly shift class balance, and you'd see power creep in every new release.
Most game designers are not focused on balance first or even second. They focus on fun, design uniqueness, and monetization and place all of these factors far ahead of balance in terms of how they approach game design.
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Most of the games you mentioned use their balancing to drive sales, and lots of people who play those games complain about balance.
Many people who play PF2 do so because they dislike how unbalanced 5e is.
I know people who laugh at the idea of the ranger not being one of the most powerful classes in 5e.
PF2 has its design goals and makes enough money to continue to grow, so maybe your just looking for something else.
RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: In fact, this is one of the points that my players praise PF2e for, the fact that they can build their characters however they want without worrying about whether they will be super-efficient or not, because they know that it is very difficult to create a weak and useless character even when they do not seek optimization. At the same time, the optimizing players still have fun looking for the most effective ways to use their resources and I, as a GM, can make the story progress without worrying about whether the fight will be trivialized or fatal for my players regardless of how they built their builds. The fraction of TTRPG players who have tried and enjoyed PF2 tend to be self-selected as people who care about balance and a specific flow of tactical combat. The vast majority of people who play and run TTRPGs clearly don't care about balance enough to make the switch to PF2. Yes, and if it were the same as D&D, why would people come to Pathfinder?
PF2e's balance and high customization are its attractions, they are the difference that makes people take the trouble to learn how to play it. Trying to be the same as its competitors doesn't give it an attractive advantage to attract new players. We could even say that it could focus on other attractions, but the truth is that these attractions are still a success story considering that Pathfinder is probably still the second largest system for playing medieval fantasy TTRPGs, second only to D&D, and there are plenty of other competitors trying the same thing (I say probably because the last time we had an ORR report was in 2021, where Pathfinder was in second place among the most played fantasy games on Roll20, there were other games like Call of Cthulhu in front, but they were in another genre). For a system from a relatively small company like Paizo, it doesn't seem like a wrong path to follow, the idea is to seek out players who are precisely trying to escape the unfun caused by D&D's brutal imbalance.
YuriP wrote: And do you understand that in the end you are either forcing players to limit themselves or to seek optimization in order to play? Yes, and I don't see an issue with that. A game with wider balance windows allows for a broader selection of characters to be built and a greater selection of stories to be told. The cost is that it takes more effort to learn and that you won't always be able to use 100% of the game's content in every campaign.
The funny thing is that the second cost exists in PF2 as well. Even a game with 8 PCs who take unique classes and try not to overlap skills playing in a game run by a hard-working GM that values variety in encounters still won't ever use more than a fraction of the total available options.
Quote: Or even that you are doing what PF2e already does by default, only worse, seeking balance by limiting what players can and cannot do? In addition to having everyone, and especially the GM, now have to deal with the responsibility of balancing the game? Balancing the game, ensuring that everybody is having fun, and tuning rules to best fit their tables is the GM's job. Removing this from them because people can't be bothered to put in the effort to be a good GM is one of the worst trends in modern TTRPG design.
Quote: Not to mention that this does not solve the problem, inefficient things will continue to be inefficient and will be sidelined from the game or players will be forced to be weaker because they want to choose them and even the opposite is true. You still won't change the fact that the shield is super-efficient for example, or you will end up having to prohibit or restrict its use, all of this becoming a fair play inspector. It's terrible! You keep harping that shields are super efficient, but this was never actually the case. In 3.x and PF1, AC was the weakest of all the defenses, and the best way to approach a fight was to go first and deal so much damage that everything was dead before it got more than a turn or two to act. A character focused on defense will instead invest in a miss chance, temporary HP, and contingency spells to remove them from combat or heal them from certain death. AC and base HP were essentially worthless when you could be stacking buffs and transforming into a dragon if you wanted to enter melee range.
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Last I checked a modern sprinter isn't lugging a damn backpack of loot around with them alongside strapped weapons, layers of magical clothing/armor, and doing so across various amounts of terrain. Add full military gear to a modern sprinter and see how fast their 100m dash is.
Also, a level 20 human Fighter with the Fleet general feet (The LEAST we should be considering if we want a character who is fast) who isn't taking a speed penalty from their armor can, at 30 feet per action and using all three actions to Stride (Which isn't sprinting, by the by, and there are feats that allow you to more efficiently move) can run 300 feet in 3+(1/3) rounds, which is about 20 seconds, by the way. So I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but it ain't PF2.
RPG-Geek wrote: My issue is that even a high-level character in PF2 will be unable to do things a fairly average person can do without issue. That godly 20th-level fighter still only runs a 26.24-second 100 m dash, and even doubling that movement speed to 50 feet per action doesn't get you... I can make a fighter run 60 feet in one easy action at level 20. Plus triple that with Quick Jump + Cloud Jump and I don't need to spend any class feats for that.
OrochiFuror wrote: Most of the games you mentioned use their balancing to drive sales, and lots of people who play those games complain about balance. A loud minority complain, but they rarely stop playing or switch systems, or these games wouldn't be the giants they are.
Quote: Many people who play PF2 do so because they dislike how unbalanced 5e is. Even if 90% of PF2's players play PF2 because they don't like how unbalanced D&D is that's a drop in the bucket next to all the people who play D&D.
Quote: I know people who laugh at the idea of the ranger not being one of the most powerful classes in 5e. Those people are objectively incorrect. A pure Ranger build is only ahead of Rogue, Barbarian, and pre-2024 Monk. Every other class brings more to the table.
Quote: PF2 has its design goals and makes enough money to continue to grow, so maybe your just looking for something else. Is that what you call bleeding experienced developers and being widely lambasted for not paying a living wage for the area in which they're headquartered?
RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: Spending actions on the shield prevents it from becoming over-efficient. In D&D, the shield is so efficient that it becomes part of the armor, where you are punished for not having one, leading to a situation where the player only doesn't have a shield if it gets in the way of using something better than it. For me, it was a simple, elegant and even realistic solution by PF2e to spend actions to keep the shield up, demonstrating the focus on defending oneself with it. You can easily solve this issue by making it so shields can only raise your AC to a certain level. This way, you'd see characters in plate armor stop using shields in the same way it happened in history. Now you have the opposite problem, killing the fantasy of the fully armored knight with shield!
RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: The Volley trait of the longbow is a legacy from D&D 3.x/PF1, where the Point Blank Shot gave a hit and damage bonus on shots less than 30 feet away (practically being a +1 weapon in addition to its normal benefit). In PF2e, the designers had the idea of making it more interesting by giving a penalty to shots made with it at close range as a way to compensate for the fact that it does more damage than a shortbow, while at the same time making the Point Blank Shot simply nullify this penalty and give a higher damage bonus to shortbows, thus avoiding the problem of the shortbow's devaluation while also giving a tactical use to both weapons. Not to mention that the concept of only using 2 hands to attack was added to it, allowing the use of a free hand for anything else without having to change grips. Why bother with that bit of legacy support when you could have used that page space to do something interesting instead? I think you didn't understand when I said that they took an old concept and made a new and interesting idea inspired by it.
BigHatMarisa wrote: Last I checked a modern sprinter isn't lugging a damn backpack of loot around with them alongside strapped weapons, layers of magical clothing/armor, and doing so across various amounts of terrain. Add full military gear to a modern sprinter and see how fast their 100m dash is. A human with no armor is still, without taking feats, slower than an NFL lineman at the 40-yard dash. Unless they invest in enhancing their mobility with magic or feats, the fastest they can run 40 yards is 9.6 seconds, while the *slowest* 40-yard dash at the NFL combine is 6.07 seconds.
Quote: Also, a level 20 human Fighter with the Fleet general feet (The LEAST we should be considering if we want a character who is fast) who isn't taking a speed penalty from their armor can, at 30 feet per action and using all three actions to Stride (Which isn't sprinting, by the by, and there are feats that allow you to more efficiently move) can run 300 feet in 3+(1/3) rounds, which is about 20 seconds, by the way. So I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from, but it ain't PF2. I was using the base 25-feet-per-action speed with no bonuses or penalties as the baseline, which gives their time to run the 328 feet needed to complete a 100-meter dash as 26.4 seconds. Fleet cuts that to 18.7 seconds. Buff them further with a wand of tailwind, and they can still only manage the 100 meters in 14.6 seconds.
To beat Usain Bolt's record, you'd need to hit 70 feet of movement per action. A level 19 human monk with Fleet tops out at 65 feet per round without magical aid. Our literal superhuman loses to a guy without any form of supernatural ability.
YuriP wrote: Now you have the opposite problem, killing the fantasy of the fully armored knight with shield! That kind of knight was fully armored in a chain haubark. Once large, rigid plates were the order of the day shields fell by the wayside. So if you wanted to be a sword and shield user, you'd have the advantage of wearing lighter armor that can be donned and dofted far more swiftly.
RPG-Geek wrote: I think you didn't understand when I said that they took an old concept and made a new and interesting idea inspired by it. Adding a penalty to a weapon and making you pay a feat tax to remove it isn't particularly interesting.
RPG-Geek wrote: Fighting with 2 weapons has always been a difficult technique to master to the point that most melee weapons focused on fighting with 2 hands. Shouldn't our heroic characters be able to express superhuman levels of skill, which enable otherwise inefficient fighting styles to flourish? But they are, and progressively so that they feel the improvement as the levels pass. Initially with the Double Slice, and gradually improving being able to switch both weapons quickly with the Lightning Swap, then improving his defense with the Twin Parry, then improving his sequential attacks with the Agile Grace and extra hits via reactions with the Twin Riposte and even more later with the Improved Twin Riposte, becoming even more precise with Graceful Poise or focusing on a more defensive stance that frees up actions with Twinned Defense until you reach a point where you can even parry and reflect spells with your weapons using Reflecting Riposte
The idea here is that you don't start out heroic, you become heroic!
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RPG-Geek wrote: Is that what you call bleeding experienced developers and being widely lambasted for not paying a living wage for the area in which they're headquartered? Alright, bud, this makes it pretty clear you aren't here to forge an actual debate. I'm not sure what your goal here is, but it's not to have a discussion if this is the kind of shit you're flinging.
You don't like PF2; that's apparent. Not sure why you're here if that's the case. I hope you find a system that does everything you want and more.
I urge everyone else to stop engaging with this person, because it's clearly not worth the effort and they've derailed the thread far past its original discussion.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
RPG-Geek wrote: To beat Usain Bolt's record, you'd need to hit 70 feet of movement per action. A level 19 human monk with Fleet tops out at 65 feet per round without magical aid. That sounds perfectly balanced to me -- an extremely high-level monk can go approximately as fast as the fastest human to ever live.
RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: But these games try to be balanced all the time! They seek balance, not the other way around. The issue is that balancing an asymmetrical game is a complex process that requires constant adjustments as serious balance flaws are found. This even applies to PF2e and D&D, which receive errata and adjustments between versions.
If they let go of balance, the game would end up being abandoned.
D&D publishes errata for rules clarity issues. Can you show me examples of things errated for power level reasons?
Besides the 5e remaster itself? But OK let's consider it a new edition. In all of them there is some degree of rebalancing, not just clarifying, but adding or removing content to change the balance of the game.
pH unbalanced wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: To beat Usain Bolt's record, you'd need to hit 70 feet of movement per action. A level 19 human monk with Fleet tops out at 65 feet per round without magical aid. That sounds perfectly balanced to me -- an extremely high-level monk can go approximately as fast as the fastest human to ever live. So the Wizard can rain fire from the heavens, but the Monk can't even beat a normal, if exceptionally experienced, human in a foot race.
YuriP wrote: But they are, and progressively so that they feel the improvement as the levels pass. Initially with the Double Slice, and gradually improving being able to switch both weapons quickly with the Lightning Swap, then improving his defense with the Twin Parry, then improving his sequential attacks with the Agile Grace and extra hits via reactions with the Twin Riposte and even more later with the Improved Twin Riposte, becoming even more precise with Graceful Poise or focusing on a more defensive stance that frees up actions with Twinned Defense until you reach a point where you can even parry and reflect spells with your weapons using Reflecting Riposte
The idea here is that you don't start out heroic, you become heroic!
My issue is that this isn't applied evenly and doesn't respect how easy or difficult a technique is. This can lead to situations where a dual-wielding character gets to feel like a hero from myth while a sword and shield character is paying feat taxes to use a shield in a way a trainee is able to use it with minimal training.
BigHatMarisa wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: Is that what you call bleeding experienced developers and being widely lambasted for not paying a living wage for the area in which they're headquartered? Alright, bud, this makes it pretty clear you aren't here to forge an actual debate. I'm not sure what your goal here is, but it's not to have a discussion if this is the kind of shit you're flinging. Is it an unfair assessment of the situation?
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RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: And do you understand that in the end you are either forcing players to limit themselves or to seek optimization in order to play? Yes, and I don't see an issue with that. A game with wider balance windows allows for a broader selection of characters to be built and a greater selection of stories to be told. The cost is that it takes more effort to learn and that you won't always be able to use 100% of the game's content in every campaign. You're contradicting yourself here. You're simultaneously saying that the imbalance allows for a wider selection of characters, and then saying that it will need to be limited because it can't be used in 100% of campaigns.
Besides, I don't see how PF2e's balance doesn't provide a better situation, where you can choose practically any option for practically any style of campaign, without having to restrict it. The only type of restriction that you often see GMs asking for is the removal of magical, divine or technological classes when the story isn't suitable for them.
But other than that, due to the balance, GMs usually allow everything, because they don't need to worry about balance.
YuriP wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: But these games try to be balanced all the time! They seek balance, not the other way around. The issue is that balancing an asymmetrical game is a complex process that requires constant adjustments as serious balance flaws are found. This even applies to PF2e and D&D, which receive errata and adjustments between versions.
If they let go of balance, the game would end up being abandoned.
D&D publishes errata for rules clarity issues. Can you show me examples of things errated for power level reasons?
Besides the 5e remaster itself? But OK let's consider it a new edition. In all of them there is some degree of rebalancing, not just clarifying, but adding or removing content to change the balance of the game. You're missing the forest for the trees here. I've never said that there is literally no balance in other games, but that balance is rarely the primary focus of a game's design. D&D 2024, while it did make some balance changes, did nothing to address the largest balance concerns of the system and showed no interest in doing so.
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RPG-Geek wrote: OrochiFuror wrote: Many people who play PF2 do so because they dislike how unbalanced 5e is. Even if 90% of PF2's players play PF2 because they don't like how unbalanced D&D is that's a drop in the bucket next to all the people who play D&D. You understand that most of the audience that plays D&D plays it because of the fame, or some love for the franchise, but most of them don't even know that there are alternatives, right?
Most likely the biggest reason why Pathfinder has fewer players today is due to less marketing than anything else.
It's very hard to compete with Hasbro in this regard, all other systems have a hard time competing with them in this regard.
RPG-Geek wrote: YuriP wrote: Now you have the opposite problem, killing the fantasy of the fully armored knight with shield! That kind of knight was fully armored in a chain haubark. Once large, rigid plates were the order of the day shields fell by the wayside. So if you wanted to be a sword and shield user, you'd have the advantage of wearing lighter armor that can be donned and dofted far more swiftly. Do you really understand the concept of fantasy?
That a fully heavy armor player might still want to have a shield and have it mechanically make him stronger, even if it comes at some cost in actions?
YuriP wrote: You're contradicting yourself here. You're simultaneously saying that the imbalance allows for a wider selection of characters, and then saying that it will need to be limited because it can't be used in 100% of campaigns. There isn't a contradiction. GURPs allows you to build anything you can imagine, but you'd never want to use everything it has to offer in a single game. PF2 is the Henry Ford of games, you can play anything you want as long as it fits into this specific style and level of balance.
Quote: Besides, I don't see how PF2e's balance doesn't provide a better situation, where you can choose practically any option for practically any style of campaign, without having to restrict it. PF2 doesn't allow for "practically any style of campaign". It does poorly at low fantasy games, can't replicate things that were possible in PF1, and doesn't do social-focused campaigns especially well. It's very good at being a specific kind of WoW-style theme park fantasy with well-balanced tactical combat that even PF2 fans will admit often has a fair bit of clunk with many classes being balanced by action taxes.
Quote: The only type of restriction that you often see GMs asking for is the removal of magical, divine or technological classes when the story isn't suitable for them. The rarity system and the gating of spells by default suggests otherwise.
RPG-Geek wrote: I think you didn't understand when I said that they took an old concept and made a new and interesting idea inspired by it. Adding a penalty to a weapon and making you pay a feat tax to remove it isn't particularly interesting. You understand that this "tax feat" exists in D&D also in all versions from 3.0 onwards so that you want to shoot with a bow at a short distance (you do not need to pay for it if you want to use the bow only for longer distances). What if, to nerf is a valid option to turn a bow that trivialized its short version.
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BigHatMarisa wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: Is that what you call bleeding experienced developers and being widely lambasted for not paying a living wage for the area in which they're headquartered? Alright, bud, this makes it pretty clear you aren't here to forge an actual debate. I'm not sure what your goal here is, but it's not to have a discussion if this is the kind of s&*~ you're flinging.
You don't like PF2; that's apparent. Not sure why you're here if that's the case. I hope you find a system that does everything you want and more.
I urge everyone else to stop engaging with this person, because it's clearly not worth the effort and they've derailed the thread far past its original discussion. You have a point, this guy clearly doesn't like the system, he'll do anything to point out how bad the system is for him, it's really become a useless discussion.
YuriP wrote: You understand that most of the audience that plays D&D plays it because of the fame, or some love for the franchise, but most of them don't even know that there are alternatives, right?
Most likely the biggest reason why Pathfinder has fewer players today is due to less marketing than anything else.
R. Talsorian games is a far smaller company than Paizo and had a triple-A game and hit anime series made from the IP. Paizo can barely get companies that make their living doing CRPGs to touch their IP.
Perhaps the issue is that Golarion is so generic that Paizo's IP has no distinctness it can leverage to get outsiders on board.
RPG-Geek wrote: Do you really understand the concept of fantasy?
That a fully heavy armor player might still want to have a shield and have it mechanically make him stronger, even if it comes at some cost in actions?
If that strength comes at the cost of an action, using the shield doesn't make that character better and allowing that character to shine comes at the cost of restricting defensive options that would otherwise equal it. Balance at the cost of extreme niche protection is hardly an ideal solution.
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Even though I somewhat agree with some of RPG-Geek's arguments (like the highest movement speed a character can have is still lower than that of a regular, even if highly athletical person), the fact that the standard movement in PF2e is 25 feet isn't really because of balance or anything similar but because of tradition. 25 feet is the equivalent of 5 blocks of movement. Rather than saying 25 feet they could have said 50 feet and that 10 feet would roughly be 1 block of movement. That or say 500 feet and that 100 feat is 1 block of movement instead. I wouldn't be surprised if a future edition does what Star Wars Saga Edition did replacing the "base speed of 30 feet" of D&D 3.5 with "base speed of 6 squares" for simplicity.
I think most of the "realism ruins the fun" type of things are mostly relegated to skill feats in PF2e. Even post-Remaster Eyes for Numbers is a joke of a feat that shouldn't have been a feat in the first place, while every single Medicine feat is game changing in contrast. Also some rules like underwater combat are kinda limited for no reason when the expectation most people have playing heroic fantasy is that everyone is at least superhuman.
Even if I would even the most mundane martials like the fighter to have more supernatural stuff early on, I appreciate PF2e for allowing martials to not feel like an afterthought like in every other D&D edition or derivated product like PF1e. I'm not big into casters and I played martials in D&D 3.5. If you had a caster next to you they could, every day if they wanted, to learn or prepare certain spells and do everything you did as a martial but leagues better, while at the same time be allowed to prepare other spells the next day and play a totally different character. Martials are fun in PF2e and that's why I love the system.
YuriP wrote: You understand that this "tax feat" exists in D&D also in all versions from 3.0 onwards so that you want to shoot with a bow at a short distance (you do not need to pay for it if you want to use the bow only for longer distances). What if, to nerf is a valid option to turn a bow that trivialized its short version. D&D 2024 only penalizes ranged characters being in point-blank melee range, so long as you're not standing right next to somebody, you're not taking any penalties. That's a far cry from taking penalties within 30 feet.
The shortbow should have been balanced for use by different types of characters, but if it wasn't, that wouldn't have been a huge issue. There are already plenty of weapons in PF2 that are only taken for flavor reasons.
exequiel759 wrote: Even though I somewhat agree with some of RPG-Geek's arguments (like the highest movement speed a character can have is still lower than that of a regular, even if highly athletical person), the fact that the standard movement in PF2e is 25 feet isn't really because of balance or anything similar but because of tradition. 25 feet is the equivalent of 5 blocks of movement. Rather than saying 25 feet they could have said 50 feet and that 10 feet would roughly be 1 block of movement. That or say 500 feet and that 100 feat is 1 block of movement instead. I wouldn't be surprised if a future edition does what Star Wars Saga Edition did replacing the "base speed of 30 feet" of D&D 3.5 with "base speed of 6 squares" for simplicity.
I think most of the "realism ruins the fun" type of things are mostly relegated to skill feats in PF2e. Even post-Remaster Eyes for Numbers is a joke of a feat that shouldn't have been a feat in the first place, while every single Medicine feat is game changing in contrast. Also some rules like underwater combat are kinda limited for no reason when the expectation most people have playing heroic fantasy is that everyone is at least superhuman.
Even if I would even the most mundane martials like the fighter to have more supernatural stuff early on, I appreciate PF2e for allowing martials to not feel like an afterthought like in every other D&D edition or derivated product like PF1e. I'm not big into casters and I played martials in D&D 3.5. If you had a caster next to you they could, every day if they wanted, to learn or prepare certain spells and do everything you did as a martial but leagues better, while at the same time be allowed to prepare other spells the next day and play a different character. Martials are fun in PF2e and that's why I love the system.
The fact that martial characters are on par with casters is the biggest thing I'll give PF2 and Paizo credit for, but skill feats are a huge step in the wrong direction, and the three-action system ends up leading to balancing via action taxes, which tends to feel bad. This balance has also led to wide dissatisfaction with casters which highlights the way 4DOS can feel worse than a simple pass fail system tuned slightly in favor of the player succeeding.
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JiCi wrote: Tridus wrote: 1. It actually can get rid of the Volley trait on all bow weapons. There's a stance for that.
2. So what? Nothing intrinsically says that Fighter should be able to do these things.
3. As was pointed out, this is already an Inventor thing. Why would it make sense to give Fighter a thing to make it more unique by taking it from another class?
Fighter is one of the best designed classes in the game at doing what it's intended to do. It doesn't need these kind of changes. Maybe it's just not the class for you, and that's fine.
1) I'm not talking about a stance, I'm talking about treating weapon swith extra traits.
2) So the Fighter, often considered a "weapon master", shouldn't be able to treat weapons "better" than other classes?
3) The Inventor can craft its own weapons. The Fighter should wield weapons in better ways than other classes. When the feats require you to hit to make them work, then hitting better makes you wield weapons better.
Are you trolling us? Do you have some real data showing the fighter not "wielding weapons" better or having problems?
You should have to show the problem with examples which I don't see anyone on this thread doing.
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RPG-Geek wrote:
Many people who play PF2 do so because they dislike how unbalanced 5e is.
Even if 90% of PF2's players play PF2 because they don't like how unbalanced D&D is that's a drop in the bucket next to all the people who play D&D.
Who cares?
No seriously - why does this matter? If people want to play DnD they can go do that, and if people get annoyed at the way DnD 5e is set up, they can find something else. What does the relative popularity matter?
Outside of those idiots on reddit who waste their time trying to debate 5e players into playing pathfinder, most pathfinder players aren't trying to erase 5e from existance.
Yesterday when I was playing my level 16 fighter hammering people to the ground with Crashing Slam then Reactive Striking them for 80 to 100 points of damage a crit with my falcata or and 30 to 40 points with a regular hit, I was thinking, "Damn. I feel really weak. I wish I had something more."
Didn't much matter that I was crushing everything in my path with this simple strategy. I just felt for some reason I should be able to do more than beat everything with relative ease and crush them for tons of damage with my weapon with the best chance to hit in the group.
That best chance to hit and crit just wasn't enough with my Crashing Slam feat and extra reactions with my heavy armor and my stance that I activated as a free action to raise my AC to 40 in heavy armor. I really felt, "I need more. This great AC, great chance to hit, great Fort and Reflex saves, and my maneuver feats and being the best at hitting with weapons and using my feats made me feel...empty inside."
Fortunately, I had taken rogue archetype and picked up gang up so I could flank easier and at level 16 I had taken Opportune Backstab, so not only was I getting Reactive Strikes, but an opportune backstab so an extra reactive strike on top of the one when they stood up.
And after I killed everything, I still felt I should have more. Just because it randomly popped into my head because sometimes crushing your enemies by being the best at weapons just doesn't feel strong enough. You just feel like you should have more...just a feeling really because why not.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
RPG-Geek wrote: pH unbalanced wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: To beat Usain Bolt's record, you'd need to hit 70 feet of movement per action. A level 19 human monk with Fleet tops out at 65 feet per round without magical aid. That sounds perfectly balanced to me -- an extremely high-level monk can go approximately as fast as the fastest human to ever live. So the Wizard can rain fire from the heavens, but the Monk can't even beat a normal, if exceptionally experienced, human in a foot race. The Monk can beat the fastest person in human history at a foot race of double the length he is used to running.
(Generally speaking I think you are *strongly* devaluing the abilities of professional athletes.)
pH unbalanced wrote: The Monk can beat the fastest person in human history at a foot race of double the length he is used to running.
(Generally speaking I think you are *strongly* devaluing the abilities of professional athletes.)
The monk, without magical enhancement, can do the 200-meter race in 20.18 seconds, while Bolt did it in 19.19. The last year that our 19th level monk would hold an outdoor 200-meter world record would be 1962. It's only at the 400-meter mark where our monk manages to finally clear the current record.
It feels weak when our fastest character can only barely edge out IRL humans while other classes are turning into animals, flying, conjuring fire, etc.
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RPG-Geek wrote: You can easily solve this issue by making it so shields can only raise your AC to a certain level. This way, you'd see characters in plate armor stop using shields in the same way it happened in history.
So now you've just killed off a bunch of character concepts and reduced tactical decision making in the name of... what, realism?
God that sounds so lame.
Squiggit wrote: So now you've just killed off a bunch of character concepts and reduced tactical decision making in the name of... what, realism?
God that sounds so lame.
Frankly, the idea that AC alone can ever make a character too good is absurd, even in a game as tightly balanced as PF2. I merely pointed out that you could solve the issue by capping how much AC you can have before a shield stops being useful and that it's realistic for it to work that way.
Raising a shield as a discrete action each round is about as tactical as rolling a skill check to unsheath your sword or measuring each round by the number of steps your character can take and giving each action a step count cost rather than an action cost. At a certain point, everything taking an action goes from being tactical to being a pure tax.
There's nothing wrong with a shield just working all the time and a separate defensive action existing to fill the roll that raising a shield does now.
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RPG-Geek wrote: You can embrace superheroic fantasy and verisimilitude simultaneously. Please give me an example of a published game that manages this. I've only played maybe 50 to 100 odd different game systems so I might well have missed the game that manages this.
Certainly Gurps, Hero, D&D, Pathfinder, Cyberpunk, VtM, FUDGE, M&M, Song of Ice and Fire RPG, L5R, Rolemaster don't come even remotely close.
I'll kinda define Superheroic fantasy as the genre where a group of 4-6 heroes can take on a group of giants or a dragon (either of which can literally destroy entire towns) and expect to win most of the time without losing a character.
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pauljathome wrote: RPG-Geek wrote: You can embrace superheroic fantasy and verisimilitude simultaneously. Please give me an example of a published game that manages this. I've only played maybe 50 odd different game systems so I might well have missed the game that manages this.
Certainly Gurps, Hero, D&D, Pathfinder, Cyberpunk, VtM, FUDGE, M&M, Song of Ice and Fire RPG, L5R don't come even remotely close.
I'll kinda define Superheroic fantasy as the genre where a group of 4-6 heroes can take on a group of giants or a dragon and expect to win. Shadowrun isn't my favorite system, but it doesn't do too many things where I roll my eyes that my hyper-competent character can't accomplish a fairly basic task and allows for fighting literal giants and dragons.
RIFTS... The rules are a mess, and the editing is worse, but it does go out of its way to ensure that the flavor and mechanics mesh well and is designed to run everything from a rags to slightly better rags game to one where you battle god-like beings.
I find Eclipse Phase more interesting as a setting than a game to run, and it's a little abstract, but it does a good job of tying its setting into how your characters approach their missions.
You could hack something like the Riddle of Steel to push it into that realm, but it would be a stretch, given where the game is starting from in terms of scale and lethality.
I've hacked magic into Cyberpunk before, and you could use the Maximum Metal rules to build a "Dragon" for the party to fight.
Ars Magica probably has the best feeling of being a mage researching and perfecting new spells and at the top end of its scale you get really strong.
I also strongly feel that building a system specifically to do realistic-feeling battles against epic-scale monsters is possible. You'd build out the monsters almost like how BattleTech builds mechs, with hit locations and "systems" that can be crit once the beast's hide is pierced. Characters are squishy and rely on having the right tools for the job as well as trading off who the monster is focused on. Ideally you rarely get hit at all, but an unlucky hunt is still going to leave a character or two with broken bones and injuries/ailments to recover from.
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RPG-Geek wrote:
Frankly, the idea that AC alone can ever make a character too good is absurd, even in a game as tightly balanced as PF2. I merely pointed out that you could solve the issue by capping how much AC you can have before a shield stops being useful and that it's realistic for it to work that way.
Raising a shield as a discrete action each round is about as tactical as rolling a skill check to unsheath your sword or measuring each round by the number of steps your character can take and giving each action a step count cost rather than an action cost. At a certain point, everything taking an action goes from being tactical to being a pure tax.
There's nothing wrong with a shield just working all the time and a separate defensive action existing to fill the roll that raising a shield does now.
Taking an action isn't a tax because in the three-action system your third action (which might not actually be your third) is considered significantly less valuable than the first two. Basically, if a round is 6 seconds, your 'first' action is 3 seconds, your 'second' is 2 seconds and your 'third' is 1 second - raising a shield is that last one, a tiny tax on your regular combat routine that's trading off against 'step back 5ft', 'making a quick, inaccurate stab' and 'telling your enemy you're going to do things to his mom'. It's already an improvement from D&D, where characters can never be shields down which is equally unrealistic.
Also, the attempt to compare speed against the best record of a professional athlete again forgets it's based on consistent movement in combat and not peak theoretical movement on a dedicated running field. The monk isn't doing the 200m race, they're crossing 200m while being on guard against enemy attacks, across rough terrain that doesn't cross the line to becoming difficult, while maintaining the ability to stop, start and turn on a dime. A 200m race would be a skill challenge modified by base speed.
Deriven Firelion wrote: Yesterday when I was playing my level 16 fighter hammering people to the ground with Crashing Slam then Reactive Striking them for 80 to 100 points of damage a crit with my falcata or and 30 to 40 points with a regular hit, I was thinking, "Damn. I feel really weak. I wish I had something more." Could be a level thing. While I'm not sure there's any level where fighter compares badly to other classes, at early levels it may feel constrained in terms of action economy (they kinda all do). Sounds a bit like he's frustrated playing sword and board and having to either pay an action to raise shield or pay a feat (Reactive Shield) + reaction to do it.
RPG-Geek wrote: There's nothing wrong with a shield just working all the time and a separate defensive action existing to fill the roll that raising a shield does now. So why not remove the action cost in your home game? Rule 0, play it your way and have fun. Go through a few sessions with this homebrew, then come back and tell us how it was. Did the fighter end up doing most of the party's damage? Did the monk complain he doesn't get any piece of this now completely free +2 to AC? How did your players like it?
I think homebrew is going to be your best bet. IMO your chances of Paizo changing that rule based on this player feedback is...low. Close to nil.
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RPG-Geek wrote:
I also strongly feel that building a system specifically to do realistic-feeling battles against epic-scale monsters is possible. You'd build out the monsters almost like how BattleTech builds mechs, with hit locations and "systems" that can be crit once the beast's hide is pierced. Characters are squishy and rely on having the...
So, there is NOT currently a system that does this.
You should create your own then and prove to the world that
1) This can be done
2) There is a market for it.
Prove to people like me that it is possible and desireable.
And until then you should DEFINITELY not play Pathfinder or Starfinder since they both have design goals that are very, very far from what you want in a game. I'd suggest that you also stop discussing its many flaws since it is very obviously just not the game for you.
Looking forward to seeing your game system in print.
Easl wrote: Deriven Firelion wrote: Yesterday when I was playing my level 16 fighter hammering people to the ground with Crashing Slam then Reactive Striking them for 80 to 100 points of damage a crit with my falcata or and 30 to 40 points with a regular hit, I was thinking, "Damn. I feel really weak. I wish I had something more." Could be a level thing. While I'm not sure there's any level where fighter compares badly to other classes, at early levels it may feel constrained in terms of action economy (they kinda all do). Sounds a bit like he's frustrated playing sword and board and having to either pay an action to raise shield or pay a feat (Reactive Shield) + reaction to do it. If you could hear my voice, the entire post is sarcasm.
I didn't feel weak at any point playing a fighter. No player I've ever had in PF2 feels weak playing a fighter.
Fighter is well-designed and powerful and can be built in a lot of different ways to be effective.
The fighter is always one of the strongest in any group. That +2 with even a single weapon group is absolutely amazing and makes you feel great critting a ton.
pauljathome wrote: So, there is NOT currently a system that does this.
You should create your own then and prove to the world that
1) This can be done
2) There is a market for it.
Prove to people like me that it is possible and desireable.
I pointed out several systems that do a good enough job at it, even if many of them have their own warts.
As for making my own system, the rules aren't an issue. It's the art assets and editing as well as the low RoI on publishing an indy TTRPG. It doesn't matter how good your game is; the market is tiny and highly saturated, and prices are kept artificially low.
I have a system started, but its hard to be motivated to finish it when there's no economic incentive to take it from 80% to where it's good enough to publish.
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RPG-Geek wrote: I have a system started, but its hard to be motivated to finish it when there's no economic incentive to take it from 80% to where it's good enough to publish. The thought of playing a better system with your friends is insufficient motivation, I guess? You don't need all the presentation/publication bells and whistles to do that, either...and playtesting is something you'd need to do before final version is published, anyway.
Tridus wrote: The net outcome is the same: changing how the weapon works in some way. ... for the Fighter only.
How come Gunslingers are heavily specialized in Firearms and Crossbows, but Fighters cannot fill blanks with other Weapon groups again?
Quote: It literally already does. Where do you think that proficiency bump is coming from?
That it doesn't do it in the hyper-specific way that you think it should doesn't matter.
An extra +2 to attack rolls is not the same as Rage, Sneak Attack and Spells getting more powerful with levels.
If you give Legendary Proficiency to every class, what does the Fighter have left?
If you remove Legendary Proficiency from every class, what does the Fighter have left?
Dude, Mythic Proficiency can be access by anyone.
Quote: Literally anyone can craft their own weapons if they take Crafting. That's not an Inventor thing. Modifying weapons with additional traits IS an Inventor thing. That's the whole schtick of the weapon innovation.
Fighter doesn't need that and there's no particular reason to give it to them.
Really? Where are the rules to craft custom weapons? There's none... A regular blacksmith cannot craft a longsword with extra traits, for instance. The Fighter should be able to be "the only one" to wield weapons in creative ways.
Easl wrote: ElementalofCuteness wrote: Money and Runes I think is the big issue with multiple weapons ro anything similar to it honestly. Even that part of the OP I found to be hyperbolic. It may be true that you don't have the money to max-rune a whole arsenal through direct purchase, but to use OP's example, if you find that really cool lance after specializing in polearms, you can transfer the runes over for 10% the cost of buying them.
And then what? You still have what is essentially a -2 penalty to hit with your lance, which you'll want to use since you deruned your polearm.
And if you want to retrain FWM to Lances, that will be a momth of downtime spent retraining RAW.
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PathMaster wrote: Easl wrote: ElementalofCuteness wrote: Money and Runes I think is the big issue with multiple weapons ro anything similar to it honestly. Even that part of the OP I found to be hyperbolic. It may be true that you don't have the money to max-rune a whole arsenal through direct purchase, but to use OP's example, if you find that really cool lance after specializing in polearms, you can transfer the runes over for 10% the cost of buying them.
And then what? You still have what is essentially a -2 penalty to hit with your lance, which you'll want to use since you deruned your polearm.
And if you want to retrain FWM to Lances, that will be a momth of downtime spent retraining RAW. What I was suggesting was do it the other way: take all the cool magic runes from the lance and transfer them to the polearm. That way you have all the cool magic you found, on your preferred weapon, and you're getting it at only 10% of the cost you'd have paid for buying those cool magic runes instead.
I suppose you could mean "what if I found a unique lance that has cool magic that's not in transferrable rune form?" Personally I consider that more a GM issue than a Fighter class issue. I.e. if that has happened to you, it means you're playing some AP where the loot drop included something the party can't use but the GM didn't consider changing it, or you're playing in a home game where the GM intentionally made up a loot the party can't use. Either way, not a fighter issue, a GM issue.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
JiCi wrote: An extra +2 to attack rolls is not the same as Rage, Sneak Attack and Spells getting more powerful with levels.
If you give Legendary Proficiency to every class, what does the Fighter have left?
If you remove Legendary Proficiency from every class, what does the Fighter have left?
Dude, Mythic Proficiency can be access by anyone.
If I give Rage, or Sneak Attack, or Spells to every class, what do those classes have left?
If I remove those features from every class, what does anyone have left?
Your questions are nothing burgers - no duh if you remove the special things the class gets, they don't have anything special anymore, like what? Fighter is the only class in the game that starts with 960 gp worth of accuracy with every simple and martial weapon. That's its special thing. It stays consistently powerful throughout the entire game because no other martial can have a +5 major striking weapon and a +5 greater striking weapon of an entirely different kind.
And again, this is discounting its feats for some reason.
Optional rules like Mythic rules are irrelevant to the discussion. They explicitly CANNOT be accessed by anyone.
Also I really don't know how good an argument "but the mythic rules let you do it" is, when the number one problem people have with the mythic rules is the uneven way they apply to classes.
JiCi wrote: Tridus wrote: The net outcome is the same: changing how the weapon works in some way. ... for the Fighter only.
How come Gunslingers are heavily specialized in Firearms and Crossbows, but Fighters cannot fill blanks with other Weapon groups again?
Most of the gunslinger's support for firearms/crossbows comes from keying it to the reload action which is... the same as all the fighter feats that key to a weapon trait. Like, theoretically, if they finally make the sling gunslinger subclass, almost all of the gunslinger's feats will be compatible with it, same as how I could make any weapon with existing traits and the fighter can work with it.
JiCi wrote:
The Fighter should be able to be "the only one" to wield weapons in creative ways.
It's almost like they get dozens of feats related to using weapons in creative ways, like, IDK, Slam Down, Intimidating Strike, Ricochet Stance...
Like, I have no idea what your contention is. The fighter has several feats that add new crit effects to Strikes, like Intimidating Strike and Felling Strike. It has feats that modify or act on weapon-specific traits, like Point Blank Stance, Agile Grace and Twin Parry. It has feats that effectively add traits to your weapon, like Brutish Shove and Overwhelming Blow. The only thing that the actual PF2e Fighter differs from what you're asking for is that it doesn't physically add the trait to the weapon, that's it. Do you really feel there's such a big difference between the lunge feat as written and 'this weapon gains reach for this Strike or skill action'?
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Please note that I'm not trying to disparage you, JiCi. I understand that the Fighter doesn't seem to have any sort of flair or oomph that you enjoy that makes it fulfill the fantasy you have, and that's something that - while I disagree - is a fair opinion to have.
However, I do think that arguing that Fighter doesn't have anything that fulfills a "weapon master" niche isn't a fair take given that most of its class feature and feat budget go into allowing you to effectively make a Build-a-Bear War Machine.
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