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WRT fictional tropes: Yes, there are tropes like "the villain grossly miscalculates or underestimates the protagonist," "the villain thinks the party is beneath their notice," and all kinds of standard contrivances. I personally find that when the main ways the players interact with things are skill checks and fighting and tactics, and they're expected to earn progress mechanically, they are very aware of when punches are pulled or when it feels like the GM is giving them a bone. Such freebies tend to make the players feel like their agency doesn't really matter.
In contrast, I find the villain underestimating the PCs to be natural. Furthermore, a closely related case is the villain throws their toughest sub-boss and their spare minions at the party, hoping that that is enough, because the villain is too busy to handle the party themselves.
I have an example from Vault of the Onyx Citadel in Ironfang Invasion. In Part 3 of that module, the heroes reach the Vault of the Onyx Citadel, a habitable region in the Elemental Plane of Earth. The Ironfang Legion based in the Onyx Citadel responds.
The party is 17th level, so they can handle the combined threat from Kraelos and his riders. All other troops at the Onyx Citadel walk instead of ride, so they would be too slow to catch the party (er, they forgot about their Ruby-Wing Gargoyles, CR 14 with fly speed 60 feet). Kraelos was the best the enemy has available.
The events played out differently in my game. The party traveled to the Vault of the Onyx Citadel with the magical help of allies, using a broken onyx shard recovered from a destroyed Stone Gate tower as an interplanar tuning fork. They spent days in the Vault, sabotaging the geomantic nexuses scattered around the Vault because those powered the Transposition Engine that created the Stone Road. The Ironfang Legion was unaware but the party had plenty of fights with top-tier native monsters. I put a seventh nexus next to Stonehome to lure the party there. They encountered Shaakhib shaking down the pechs, as the module intended. The Ironfang Legion did not trust their hireling Shaakhib, so they were scrying on him and spotted the party dealing with him. The Ironfang Legion sent Kraelos and his riders rode out to deal with the party as the module expected. The other big difference is that the party was 19th level, so I rebuilt Kraekos as creature 18 and gave him three 16th-level Yzobu Riders to keep the challenge the same.
I could not not simply add enemies over 17th level at whim, because the Ironfang Legion would have sent those people to hunt down the party earlier. Therefore, the Ironfang Legion was running out of forces that could be effective against the party. Creatures that can overpower a 19th-level party would be legendary. The adventure path had forewarned about the five (and only five) high-level characters in the Ironfang Legion: General Azaersi (20), sorceress Zanathura (19 rebuilt as 20), cleric Azlowe (18 rebuilt as 19), cavalier Kraelos (17 rebuilt as 18), and spymaster Taurgreth (16 rebuilt as 17). They all had duties that kept them from hunting the party themselves and earlier in the adventure path Kraelos and Taurgreth were probably lower level. I did invent extra 16th-level enemies, such as Richelle Redrage (tiefling warrior bard 16) who led Ironfang troops that conquered towns.
On the main topic of comparing PF1 and PF2, building and rebuilding creatures is easier in PF2. Thus, I had an easier effort adding extra enemies such as Richelle Redrage to keep the party challenged.
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I personally find that when the main ways the players interact with things are skill checks and fighting and tactics, and they're expected to earn progress mechanically, they are very aware of when punches are pulled or when it feels like the GM is giving them a bone. Such freebies tend to make the players feel like their agency doesn't really matter.
I've seen this first hand and, while most tables are willing and able to play it off or ignore it, it's definitely a feels-bad moment. As far as pf2e goes an issue I've seen brought up on multiple occasions on the part of players is the meaninglessness of most moderate and below encounters. As long as the casters aren't forced to expend any of their highest 2-3 slots worth of spells then the ability to resourcelessly heal to full afterwards makes them feel like pity-combats that just serve to shovel exp into the players at the expected rate. This is particularly an issue because of how carefully balanced everything is within it's expected difficulty band, as once players get a feel for how the party is generally doing by turns 2-3 in a combat of each difficulty they can generally eyeball when the game is pulling it's punches to "make them feel powerful". I find that was one of the benefits of pf1e, the ability of a group of players to go all-out resource burn instead of pacing themselves and then punching multiple CR above their general maximum resulted in moments that left lasting impressions, in large part because they "knew" they were powerful in that fight, not just being manipulated to feel powerful by the game or GM purposefully sandbagging. It also helped that the game itself was comfortable with players feeling competent and powerful in those moments, unlike pf2e where the game is specifically balanced around players failing at their core action types over and over again in these kinds of high-stakes battles.
I just feel like there was such a homogenization of difficulty levels (and perhaps also of ways something can be difficult, though I want to think about that a while before I commit to it) that it went from a hard-but-doable task to a task I cannot really do at all.
Perhaps in a different vein, but I was really bothered by the locking of classic problem solving resources behind the uncommon and rare tags, presumably because Paizo didn't want people ruining their premade narratives with an unfortunate Speak With Dead or to have players bypass a puzzle or get somewhere "out of bounds" from the adventure using Dimension Door or Teleport. These were the kinds of options that enabled alternative, or even level agnostic, methods of problem solving.
On a personal note I strongly dislike how pf2e went out of its way to prevent players from being able to surprise the GM or subvert their plans without the GM specifically enabling them to do so. One of my favorite things, particularly when operating as a player, is to pull out a niche item, narrowly useful resource, or option of last resort and have a meaningful chance of overturning a bad situation. Even if the method only has a 1/20 chance of working, when it worked the game didn't have a dozen safety rails to ensure that it didn't work *too* well. If the party were all down and you exposed the still-not-bloodied boss to your single emergency dose of an expensive knockout poison/drug that they only have a small chance of being downed by, they weren't protected from being hard cc'd by the incapacitation tag, nor where they unable to be 1-shot by your Coup-De-Grace while they were down. Yes, this existence of these kinds of narratively disruptive tools could cause table issues if they were used too frequently, but that's something that you can solve with a solid session 0 rather than preemptively engineering the system to make it completely impossible.
Referring back to the first paragraph of this post, the removal of these kinds of options greatly contributed to pf2e's issue with removing meaningful narrative input from the player side of the screen by locking challenges into clear "you WILL find encounters at X point of the level band trivial/easy/hard/impossible and you WILL like it because you have no recourse to do otherwise". It's important that players have the ability to override the narrative flow the GM or AP author has pre-built by doing both better and worse than the game expects, but pf2e's purposeful design of putting PCs so close to the power ceiling means the only option mechanically available to players is to do worse than the rules expect (an unwillingness to abandon this design philosophy is a major contributor to why the Mythic rules and options were such a disaster).
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As far as pf2e goes an issue I've seen brought up on multiple occasions on the part of players is the meaninglessness of most moderate and below encounters. As long as the casters aren't forced to expend any of their highest 2-3 slots worth of spells then the ability to resourcelessly heal to full afterwards makes them feel like pity-combats that just serve to shovel exp into the players at the expected rate.
I feel like a lot of what you're pointing to is the lack of attrition. Since the "default" mode of play has become to rest after every encounter, and many APs are written and balanced as though you will do exactly that, every encounter feels like it has very few consequences for later encounters. There's not much resource management. Since you can just rest off all the encounter's consequences besides spell slot expenditure, it feels like the encounter doesn't really matter that much.
You -can- design areas intended to be tackled in succession without resting, but it requires lowering the encounter difficulty a fair bit. I think the results are often worthwhile, but it takes you off the rails a bit. I'd especially encourage it if the party has a cleric, since it gives them more reasons to burn through their font.
his is particularly an issue because of how carefully balanced everything is within it's expected difficulty band, as once players get a feel for how the party is generally doing by turns 2-3 in a combat of each difficulty they can generally eyeball when the game is pulling it's punches to "make them feel powerful".
I want to point this out, in specific. I find encounters are so predictably constructed that I'm usually tabulating encounter budgets in my head and am basing my actions and targeting decisions on them. I hate it. If you have half an idea of the monster construction rules or have seen enough bestiary monsters, you can also often use check results during combat to confirm or deny your assumptions and adjust accordingly. The "balanced" math becomes something of a two-way street; sure, it's easy for the GM to make encounters, but it's depressingly easy for a player to reverse-engineer the encounter. You have to start making encounters that sit inbetween encounter budget numbers and using elite and weak templates when you have multiples of the same type of monster to make it more difficult to reverse engineer the combat.
Even then, the second someone crits on a 16 or 17, the party usually knows an enemy is just fluff. DC +/-10 also made it way easier to reverse engineer ACs, and a lack of opposed rolls makes it easier to reverse engineer other defenses with things like Demoralize, Bon Mot, and combat maneuvers. There's not much you can do to keep a party from metagaming this out if they want to, and the DC+/-10 system gives them ample incentive to do so.
It also helped that the game itself was comfortable with players feeling competent and powerful in those moments, unlike pf2e where the game is specifically balanced around players failing at their core action types over and over again in these kinds of high-stakes battles.
I feel that this is an impression derived primarily from low level, and it's another reason the game feels awful in that level band. Skills don't feel so hot early. But skills, in particular, become extremely reliable as you level. At level 7, a character with expert in a KAS-based skill keeping up with item investment should have about an 80% success rate vs DC by level, and their success rate won't dip below that thereafter. (It can become particularly absurd with status and circumstance bonuses.) Hitting enemies also becomes less painful as you become able to dole out ever higher status bonuses and penalties.
Perhaps in a different vein, but I was really bothered by the locking of classic problem solving resources behind the uncommon and rare tags, presumably because Paizo didn't want people ruining their premade narratives with an unfortunate Speak With Dead or to have players bypass a puzzle or get somewhere "out of bounds" from the adventure using Dimension Door or Teleport. These were the kinds of options that enabled alternative, or even level agnostic, methods of problem solving.
I partially agree, but I also see this more as a codification of common houserules and an ease-of-use improvement. A lot of tables barred this stuff anyways, and plenty more new GMs got a nasty surprise when they realized they had to check the reams of spells the game had on offer to make sure their plots couldn't just be trivialized. Making it opt-in instead of opt-out saves a lot of headaches.
I still miss free access to those spells, though.
Referring back to the first paragraph of this post, the removal of these kinds of options greatly contributed to pf2e's issue with removing meaningful narrative input from the player side of the screen by locking challenges into clear "you WILL find encounters at X point of the level band trivial/easy/hard/impossible and you WILL like it because you have no recourse to do otherwise". It's important that players have the ability to override the narrative flow the GM or AP author has pre-built by doing both better and worse than the game expects, but pf2e's purposeful design of putting PCs so close to the power ceiling means the only option mechanically available to players is to do worse than the rules expect (an unwillingness to abandon this design philosophy is a major contributor to why the Mythic rules and options were such a disaster).
I think there is something to this, though. The easy mechanical levers for doing "gamechanging" things are removed, so the party is left with soft levers that are basically just negotiating with the GM. You can still do things that are unexpected and off the rails, but it requires additional buy-in, because it's mostly occurring on the storytelling layer and not the mechanical layer.
I'm not in perfect agreement, because some of what you're describing really is just "gotcha" power; surprising a new DM with "Speak with Dead" probably isn't a great example of narrative sway. But I do think that a campaign designed with the possibility of using Speak with Dead to gain information (without breaking the plot in half) has more player agency available than one not so designed, and I only see that as a good thing.
I do also think, a bit cynically, that this more boxed-in design is better for paizo as a company. APs are their bread and butter, and a less-disruptable AP is an easier AP to run and a better product for prospective GMs.
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My assertion basically boils down to, "before, some enemies were more dangerous, and others were less dangerous. The more...See, all of this is true... but it's also true in PF1. That's the thing, you said it's worse and it's not particularly worse. In PF1, a single Greater Shadow can wipe out an entire level 5 settlement: most of the people there don't have magic and are thus defenseless against it. It's killing them in ~2 hits, against touch AC (so it's very rarely missing), it can go through walls, and it can spawn more shadows to snowball the whole thing horrifically.
That's a CR 8, so it's not even that much higher than the settlement in question. Hell, a CR 3 Shadow is still a dire threat if it starts in a civilian's house instead of starting with the strongest people in the area, because there will be a LOT of them by time the guards realize anything is going on. So a GM has to keep these from doing that despite it by far being the most obvious thing for them to do.
Spellcasters have already been covered, but even a mid level PF1 spellcaster can dominate a low level area if they know what they're doing.
Theoretically a more martial enemy can be taken down with enough forces in PF1... but that's assuming they can't do anything else. Like sure, if a random Rune Giant shows up in town, throwing enough attacks at it will probably eventually chip it down. Assuming, of course, it doesn't spam its cone attack and be wiping out entire groups of defenders with that every 1d4 rounds or use it's mental magic to get some of those folks to its side... which it absolutely would. Actually using its full power, it's mowing down anything low level that gets sent against it without taking serious damage even if there's dozens of them.
PF2 didn't really make this problem that much worse: it just made it so it's more readily apparent. The only way to really not have this is to have a substantially flatter power curve, which is a very different game than Pathfinder (in any version).
I don't even understand this sentiment. Prior to PF2 it was extremely difficult to hit the mark, especially if your group was a group of optimizers. My players built characters in PF1/3E that any DM that tried to run the game in an as written fashion wouldn't even be able to challenge the PCs past a certain level. It would have taken highly detailed work to challenge the PCs.
I still remember my PCs destroying shoggoth with one spell and ending the Jabberwock with one lucky shot and bad save. Just ridiculous destructive abilities.
So not even sure what you mean by wriggle room. I had to boost enemy hit points by 10x for big single monsters in PF1 to make them last past a few rounds. Casters had so many spell options and builds the fight was over as soon as the casters took their turns with rare exception.
PF2 is far more accurate in construction an accurate challenge for the PCs. You know if you want to challenge them, a CR+2 to 4 can provide a challenge. If you want them to have an easier time and crush some mooks, CR-2 to 4 can do it. And everything else.
Nothing has changed for providing challenges or making them easier other than you can do it more accurately now.
I'm not seeing the problem. Being able to accurately gauge a challenge is more useful as a DM than having to completely rewrite the rules to provide a challenge because your players are very good at optimizing as well as teamwork which compounds challenge issues with a broken rule system like PF1/3E.
I even remember when haste let you cast an extra spell. Casters with quicken could cast three spells in a round and that led to absolutely brutal crushings of enemies.
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...are we really at the point where now someone's complaining "the game is too well-designed and I hate that numbers actually make sense"?
And let's be real: the minute someone got any full attack off in PF1, you knew the target's AC unless it died instantly. Also it didn't usually matter unless the number was just flat broken since it was trivially easy to optimize for any non-broken number anyways.
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I want to point this out, in specific. I find encounters are so predictably constructed that I'm usually tabulating encounter budgets in my head and am basing my actions and targeting decisions on them.
I've been half-eyeing this thread with a slightly growing fear of saying "there's a awful lot of badwrongfun going on here," but I just have to step in here.
As someone who does a ton of encounter design, "predictable encounters" aren't a system issue (to me), but a play issue. If every encounter is as simple as mashing two sets of numbers against each other and seeing which ones are bigger, than I could see you walking away with that impression. But even in APs you see encounter that encourage different goals for the opposition, differing terrain elements, and ongoing hazards that alter how a group can approach a combat.
Even taking something as simple as a giant rat and having it Hide under tables and leap out to gnaw at PCs before climbing up onto a shelf throws a lot of the expectations out the window. From the thread, I can see you approaching things from a very numbers-based point of view, but the actual gameplay is so much more varied that you're giving it credit.
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I don't even understand this sentiment. Prior to PF2 it was extremely difficult to hit the mark, especially if your group was a group of optimizers. My players built characters in PF1/3E that any DM that tried to run the game in an as written fashion wouldn't even be able to challenge the PCs past a certain level. It would have taken highly detailed work to challenge the PCs.
Most tables I've played at and ran aren't quadruple optimizers. I agree that it's quite difficult to challenge an extremely optimized party, especially at high levels, but the game genuinely falls apart at high level anyways. Early levels are easier, but you still need a good idea of what to allow and what not to allow, and "PFS legal only" doesn't cut it—even if it helps for the PFS level range. -Emergency Force Sphere- is still PFS legal, and that spell is broken as anything. If you let anything go, yeah—PF1E is impossible to balance. I don't know a single person who still runs it without clear houserules about what is and isn't allowed, though.
Sponging hp up by 10x sounds... a bit extreme. But yeah, lucky bad saves will do it on any enemy. Slumber witch alone is the epitome of it, and requires no optimization effort whatsoever and no resource expenditure. It gets even worse when you have players trying to play optimized exploiter wizards, etc. And I think a lot of people underestimate the sheer damage output of some martials because they're usually classed as t3 or t4; some classes can just steal the spotlight out of nowhere with a full round, and they'll look like more of a problem at some level ranges than a caster does.
PF2E's math and balance means you don't need to account for any of this or have any extra knowledge of what to ward players away from to cap the game's powerlevel where you want it. It makes encounter math far more predictable, as well. I don't disagree.
I just can't say the outcome has given me much satisfaction.
...are we really at the point where now someone's complaining "the game is too well-designed and I hate that numbers actually make sense"?
And let's be real: the minute someone got any full attack off in PF1, you knew the target's AC unless it died instantly. Also it didn't usually matter unless the number was just flat broken since it was trivially easy to optimize for any non-broken number anyways.
There are ways to balance a game that aren't what PF2E is. PF2E is completely functional and serviceable. But the outcome is also limited and predictable in exchange, because of how that was achieved.
I don't think that a game's monster design must work like PF2E for the game to be balanced. There's a lot of pushback against the kinds of homogenization PF2E uses to achieve its balance in almost every gaming sphere I interact in. People who play the MMOs I play complain about classes becoming too samey for balance. People complain about fighting games homogenizing different characters' options. This isn't something universally liked or good. It's just that the people who dislike it won't be posting on the official paizo boards for the game.
WRT AC: AC is a painfully informative number because of how the game is designed. If you have a rough idea of a creature's function and what AC progression that design would usually have, knowing a creature's AC lets you infer quite a lot. Outliers like will-o-wisps (which are effectively gimmick enemies designed to dodge tank) or oozes (low AC, annoying abilities, crit immunity) are rare, and usually obvious. In PF1E, knowing AC doesn't tell you very much; AC half looks like it was rolled on a random table sometimes. In PF2E, that number will usually tell you far too much instead. If the AC of an enemy is off even 1 or 2 points, their difficulty skyrockets, so it -has- to be formulaic.
I've been half-eyeing this thread with a slightly growing fear of saying "there's a awful lot of badwrongfun going on here," but I just have to step in here.
As someone who does a ton of encounter design, "predictable encounters" aren't a system issue (to me), but a play issue. If every encounter is as simple as mashing two sets of numbers against each other and seeing which ones are bigger, than I could see you walking away with that impression. But even in APs you see encounter that encourage different goals for the opposition, differing terrain elements, and ongoing hazards that alter how a group can approach a combat.
Even taking something as simple as a giant rat and having it Hide under tables and leap out to gnaw at PCs before climbing up onto a shelf throws a lot of the expectations out the window. From the thread, I can see you approaching things from a very numbers-based point of view, but the actual gameplay is so much more varied that you're giving it credit.
How much does that actually vary the combat, really? Okay, I spend an interact action to flip the table, or we have to look up the vertical reach table if we're new and see if I need to do anything special after the rat climbs up onto the shelf. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'm not seeing anything too special here mechanically. I think it does a really good job of narratively selling the rat, to be clear. I just don't think any of this makes the encounter much more compelling to play out, nor does it change the basic gameplay of the encounter all that much.
... That doesn't mean PF1e made it easier to have low and high level people coexist, it means they lied about the level of some things. Unless you consider a giant crocodile being worth more XP than a shadow despite being objectively less dangerous to be an important worldbuilding statement about the state of the world (in other words, you consider XP, the spending of it, and levels to all be fundamental aspects of the world broadly known to people) there is no real difference from the world of PF2e where crocodiles are lower level than shadows, accurately, for the people living in it.
I did say you could argue I'd be talking differently if CR evaluations were more accurate, and I do still think there's something to that.
I do think an important thing that's on a lot of PF1E enemies, though, is... how should I put this? PF1E enemies can genuinely be much weaker than they initially appear. They can have signifiers of a certain level of power without having much else of that level of power. It is very possible for an enemy to have a few tricks that really sell how dangerous it is without it being much of a threat in reality, because those tricks are horrifying—but that's all it has. PF2E monster design won't do this by default, for the most part, because enemies have a pretty consistent powerlevel.
PF2E monsters also tend to make it more difficult to have scary but lowball outcomes, like being paralyzed by lower level ghouls, failing hold person checks, etc. Incap is pretty much always on those effects, so the party gets success upgrades. You can't really make people feel scared with those effects in the same way you can in 1E.
Most PF2E combats have been both mechanically unengaging and narratively forgettable for me, and the ones that haven't typically involved overtuned enemies or encounters, everyone nearly dying, or both. You have to really work to sell an encounter yourself, in my experience, because the mechanics generally won't do it for you.
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There are systems that really demand the ability to dynamically assess threats and where enemy profiles can genuinely hit across so many different vectors that all builds genuinely fluctuate greatly across different encounter types.
Level based d20 systems are not one of them, and PF1e definitely isn't one of them. Go play a Storyteller/Storypath system instead.
Everything in PF1e (players and monsters) do one of three things: assemble a Jenga-like set of things that result in them rolling a bunch of dice to deal a bunch of damage, cast spells or spelllikes that completely shut down enemies (generously, with a save) or useless ribbons that only matter if the GM calls for it. It's 'non-homogenous' in the sense that those that can do the second are a lot more powerful than the first, but that doesn't really have much meaning - it just means, circling back to my CR commentary, that some things are lying about being on the same power level as others. A level in wizard isn't really worth a level in fighter.
I've ran plenty of encounters that were moderate or severe and still gave my players pause, often straight from the AP with no real adjustment. And honestly, wisps aren't it - that kind of absurd defensive tech just makes battles drag, not impress. Interesting reactions (graveknights are engraved into my players psych for the ability to deny healing), some spicy crits (fatal, crit effects) or even just the ability to disrupt space boldly (swallow whole is always a star) are all ways PF2e monsters can feel dangerous even if the final encounter is fair... and make investment in odd, niche feats pay off in a way that make players feel heroic. If you need incap effects to scare your players (and for some reason won't use the perfectly sensible three same level enemy formation to do it), that's not PF2e's fault.
Honestly, having played 3.5e recently, I don't get what the difference is, unless you've perfectly memorised every single statblock. You meet an enemy, your GM probably intends for you to...
3.5x could use a wider range of stat profiles to make the same level of challenge. Even among encounters of the same CR that are equally challenging to a party (Read: Properly balanced by a skilled GM), those enemies could approach being difficult in different ways. For durability against attacks alone, rather than just having AC, it could also be a miss chance, damage immunities, massive HP pools, or regeneration. The party needed to have more tools to deal with these things, rather than expecting to always have a chance to hit the AC if they do some very basic tick-the-box things every combat.
Yeah, you could break things and make these puzzles trivial, but when you choose not to do those things, 3.x/PF1 has more ways to present challenges and make your life interesting than PF2 has. The idea of players using templates or playing as species with a level adjustment is something PF2 simply can't ever do, much less playing as a monster turned into a class. I weep for how many interesting ideas PF2 abandoned for the sake of balance when it didn't have to be this way.
...There are systems that really demand the ability to dynamically assess threats and where enemy profiles can genuinely hit across so many different vectors that all builds genuinely fluctuate greatly across different encounter types.
Level based d20 systems are not one of them, and PF1e definitely isn't one of them. Go play a Storyteller/Storypath system instead.
Everything in PF1e (players and monsters) do one of three things: assemble a Jenga-like set of things that result in them rolling a bunch of dice to deal a bunch of damage, cast spells or spelllikes that completely shut down enemies (generously, with a save) or useless ribbons that only matter if the GM calls for it. It's 'non-homogenous' in the sense that those that can do the second are a lot more powerful than the first, but that doesn't really have much meaning - it just means, circling back to my CR commentary, that some things are lying about being on the same power level as others. A level in wizard isn't really worth a level in fighter.
I've ran plenty of encounters that were moderate or severe and still gave my players pause, often straight from the AP with no real adjustment. And honestly, wisps aren't it - that kind of absurd defensive tech just makes battles drag, not impress. Interesting reactions (graveknights are engraved into my players psych for the ability to deny healing), some spicy crits (fatal, crit effects) or even just the ability to disrupt space boldly (swallow whole is always a star) are all ways PF2e monsters can feel dangerous even if the final encounter is fair... and make investment in odd, niche feats pay off in a way that make players feel heroic. If you need incap effects to scare your players (and for some reason won't use the perfectly sensible three same level enemy formation to do it), that's not PF2e's fault.
Honestly, having played 3.5e recently, I don't get what the difference is, unless you've perfectly memorised every single statblock. You meet an enemy, your GM
I don’t see why pf2’s structure couldn’t more or less accommodate a ‘monster turned into a class’. Have the ancestry . And a class which has class feats that expand upon that monster’s abilities in addition to the ancestry feats provided by the ancestry. Boom. Monster as class.
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I don't think that a game's monster design must work like PF2E for the game to be balanced. There's a lot of pushback against the kinds of homogenization PF2E uses to achieve its balance in almost every gaming sphere I interact in. People who play the MMOs I play complain about classes becoming too samey for balance. People complain about fighting games homogenizing different characters' options. This isn't something universally liked or good. It's just that the people who dislike it won't be posting on the official paizo boards for the game.
To call this homogenization is to assume that the only way to have differentiation is numbers. Sure, the numbers in character creation are homogenized in PF2, and that's not the only way to achieve balance in theory - though I also have never seen a game with the amount of crunch that PF2 has be anything approaching balanced in the long-term without reducing pre-combat numbers to pretty small bands. But it's theoretically possible to have massively different numbers and balance it out, especially if you only publish a small amount of content to ensure it's all carefully triple-checked and playtested. But the whole point of PF2 is to try and put the focus on your active choices in combat; allowing the pre-combat numbers to be massively divergent is really running the risk of locking you into whatever your numbers dictate. If my champion's AC is massively higher than all the other martials at the cost of having terrible offensive capabilities, or if my cleric's healing spells are massively better than everyone else's healing at the cost of being terrible at other sorts of magic, then I'm already locked into things extremely strongly. I like that the champion in my Stolen Fate table is a sword + shield champion and mostly goes pretty defensively with 1 strike/turn, but in the fights against fiends recently they've been incentivized to strike 2/turn and neglect those defences a little because their Holy Avenger is really effective at triggering weaknesses.
PF2 does allow for pretty drastically different numbers, but the expectation is that those numbers primarily come from action you take in combat - the Champion who has Raised a tower shield and got a +1 status bonus to AC from the bard is 8 points higher in AC than a standard non-plate wearing martial. The Fighter with a +4 aid bonus and a +3 Fortissimo status bonus targeting a Frightened 2 off-guard creature has an effective +13 bonus to-hit over a standard martial. A spellcaster targeting the weak Ref save of a Frightened 2 creature affected by Distracting Feint or Catfolk Dance has about a +7 accuracy bonus over one targeting an un-debuffed average save. But to get these changes in numbers, you take actions during combat; that's the intent of PF2's "homogenization" of the maths, to put the focus on the active tactical choices you're making in combat. Are there issues with this? Absolutely, no game is perfect, and there are both characters that tend to have minimal tactical choices available/options so good they remove choice (ranged flurry ranger should basically always just put as many attacks as possible into the creature most likely to be killed by those attacks every turn), and it is definitely possible to end up repeating the same similar tactics in most fights, at which point it can really make the game feel like you're not meaningfully making tactical choices anymore. Both are significant problems; the first should just not have been printed, and the second should be addressed by varying the combats significantly enough that keeping reusing the same tactics is actively harmful. This is not an easy thing to do, though, and I think it's a pain point of PF2 - the game doesn't provide the tools for a GM to easily be able to figure out how to do this (and the GMG was better than GM Core here, IMO), and the APs don't demonstrate it well. Varying the amount of enemies, the distance at which combat starts + that enemies work well in, the primary aim of the combat (e.g. are you trying to kill them all, are you trying to keep non-combatants around alive, are you trying to buy time for reinforcements to arrive/a retreat to finish), time limits on a fight, and the introduction of terrain, hazards, enemies you don't have to fight, etc, are all pretty essential for a game focused on tactical choices to not become 'solved', and I think a lot of tables would benefit from guidance here. Ironically, I think Dawnsbury Days, the PF2 game on Steam does a good job here in a lot of ways - the stat blocks for all enemies are completely transparent and you can try a fight as often as you want with the same starting point, so the challenge doesn't come from obfuscation but from varying the conditions. It's not perfect, but there are some fun demonstrations of different sorts of ways one can vary encounters to encourage tactical flexibility.
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I don't even understand this sentiment. Prior to PF2 it was extremely difficult to hit the mark, especially if your group was a group of optimizers. My players built characters in PF1/3E that any DM that tried to run the game in an as written fashion wouldn't even be able to challenge the PCs past a certain level. It would have taken highly detailed work to challenge the PCs.How did your group not get bored of doing the same optimisations over and over again? My group would find things that made the game too easy, and the players would self-ban them and either replace the offending spell/ability or roll up something more interesting. The mark of a game isn't if it can or can't be broken, but what it offers to players willing to meet the system halfway.
In this respect, 3.x and PF1 blow the doors off of PF2 for interesting builds that can meet the game where it's at while still offering a wide range of options. PF2 makes the balance automatic and allows for unlimited optimisation, but in doing so, it throws most of the toys out of the play area and adds fences so nobody can escape the very narrow range of expected play.
I'd rather a game that offers everything and respects its players enough to let them find what works and what doesn't than a game that baby-proofs itself because it expects its players to be so immature as to be unable to play it as intended rather than breaking things and complaining that the game didn't stop them from ruining their own fun.
This completely ignores the players that don't know how to do that, show up with something drastically underpowered because of all the trap options baked into 3.5/PF1, and expects the GM to just make it work somehow. It's the exact same problem as with overpowered characters except in reverse: underpowered characters cause a bunch of problems too.
The 3.x systems are actively new player hostile. There are too many trap options (some of them even put there deliberately by the original designers), there's just too much stuff in general for anyone new to possibly sift through, there's too many obscure edge cases where things don't interact correctly, and the power gaps are simply too high to just show up with your own character and have a good time next to veteran players that don't know if you're going to use a guide to have a good character or if you're showing up with something from tier 4 with poor optimization.
Fixing that requires either someone to optimize for the new player (like by following a build guide which defeats a lot of the point of character creation), that the GM twist themselves into knots trying to create the illusion that the underpowered character is actually helpful despite being in a party of superheroes, or that everyone else play down to that level.
People seriously romanticize the "interesting builds" that 3.x and PF1 enable while glossing over the part that the vast majority of them simply don't work at a given table because they'll either be useless next to everyone else and feel bad to play, or they'll completely eclipse everyone else. Once you start corralling players into a power band where the game actually works well, you've removed a lot of that and ended up far closer to PF2 except it took a bunch of work for everyone involved to get there.
I mean, there were lots of reasons why 5e got so popular so fast, but one of them was how comparatively easy it was for someone new to get into it and show up with a character that's probably going to work perfectly fine, and that is not a thing you can say for new players making their own characters in PF1.
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I don’t see why pf2’s structure couldn’t more or less accommodate a ‘monster turned into a class’. Have the ancestry . And a class which has class feats that expand upon that monster’s abilities in addition to the ancestry feats provided by the ancestry. Boom. Monster as class.
It wouldn't work. The 3.x version had you become exactly that creature, customised with feats, skills, and spell selection. PF2's design doesn't allow for this sort of exact one-to-one translation because PCs and monsters share such different design philosophies.
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This completely ignores the players that don't know how to do that, show up with something drastically underpowered because of all the trap options baked into 3.5/PF1, and expects the GM to just make it work somehow.
It seems like that player is the problem, and one easily solved with a season zero followed by a session 0.5 where everybody builds characters together from allowed sources. The better builders will help the new player get the character they want while keeping the power levels even.
The 3.x systems are actively new player hostile.
As is PF2, as evidenced by some people finding low-level play too difficult and the complete need for turn-by-turn optimisation in combat, too mentally taxing to be fun. You have a preference for the PF2 style, but that doesn't mean that 3.x is that much more unfriendly to the new player.
There are too many trap options (some of them even put there deliberately by the original designers), there's just too much stuff in general for anyone new to possibly sift through, there's too many obscure edge cases where things don't interact correctly, and the power gaps are simply too high to just show up with your own character and have a good time next to veteran players that don't know if you're going to use a guide to have a good character or if you're showing up with something from tier 4 with poor optimization.
PUGing and bringing in a character utterly incompatible with the group is a terrible idea anyway, doubly so with a new player joining a high-power table of veteran players. The solution is playing with a stable group (this requires friends which seems to be an issue for some on these forums) and to have the more skilled builders help the newer or more RP focus players get the playstyle they want while using as much system knowledge as needed to reach wherever the group has set par.
Fixing that requires either someone to optimize for the new player (like by following a build guide which defeats a lot of the point of character creation), that the GM twist themselves into knots trying to create the illusion that the underpowered character is actually helpful despite being in a party of superheroes, or that everyone else play down to that level.
It mostly just requires the group to be welcoming and to help the new player turn their idea into a workable build. This idea that games need to be tuned for a bunch of random players who don't communicate before bringing their characters to the table is a terrible one. Drop in PUG play, PFS included, makes for a terrible TTRPG experience as at best it's bland and formulaic and at worst its unbalanced and one player hogs the spotlight and this is true even for PF2.
People seriously romanticize the "interesting builds" that 3.x and PF1 enable while glossing over the part that the vast majority of them simply don't work at a given table because they'll either be useless next to everyone else and feel bad to play, or they'll completely eclipse everyone else.
In my experience GMing for a group of four players who all worked together and collaborated on builds, an entire group of optimisers can be trusted to have all 5 characters built to a very narrow level of power that they find fun. These same players played everything from tuned break the game spellcasters, to all martial parties based on monstrous species and martial prowess. The key is communication and building characters as a collaborative exercise.
I mean, there were lots of reasons why 5e got so popular so fast, but one of them was how comparatively easy it was for someone new to get into it and show up with a character that's probably going to work perfectly fine, and that is not a thing you can say for new players making their own characters in PF1.
If this were true FATE and PBTA would have exploded in popularity, but seeing as they haven't, I think it's safe to say that 5e was powered more by better advertisement in the form of Stranger Things and Critical Roll than anything it did well with its rules. It's like MtG, a new, objectively better-designed TCG could come along, but brand identity and market share will likely keep that game from growing and eclipsing MtG.
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I don't even understand this sentiment. Prior to PF2 it was extremely difficult to hit the mark, especially if your group was a group of optimizers. My players built characters in PF1/3E that any DM that tried to run the game in an as written fashion wouldn't even be able to challenge the PCs past a certain level. It would have taken highly detailed work to challenge the PCs.How did your group not get bored of doing the same optimisations over and over again? My group would find things that made the game too easy, and the players would self-ban them and either replace the offending spell/ability or roll up something more interesting. The mark of a game isn't if it can or can't be broken, but what it offers to players willing to meet the system halfway.
In this respect, 3.x and PF1 blow the doors off of PF2 for interesting builds that can meet the game where it's at while still offering a wide range of options. PF2 makes the balance automatic and allows for unlimited optimisation, but in doing so, it throws most of the toys out of the play area and adds fences so nobody can escape the very narrow range of expected play.
I'd rather a game that offers everything and respects its players enough to let them find what works and what doesn't than a game that baby-proofs itself because it expects its players to be so immature as to be unable to play it as intended rather than breaking things and complaining that the game didn't stop them from ruining their own fun.
By switching classes or learning to optimize the same class with a different build.
I did a lot of stuff:
Cross-blooded sorc
God Wizard Divination
Summoner Unchained
regular Summoner
Mythic Cleric with massive built up casting levels to make holy word blow stuff up
Black Blade magus
Super AC save Monk/Paladin
You try different stuff because PF1/3E had an enormous number of customization options, so you could optimize different classes to see what they could do.
It's fun for my group.
I really did enjoy PF1/3E a whole lot. Most fun edition to build characters in. Just terrible to DM past the low levels.
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By switching classes or learning to optimize the same class with a different build.
I did a lot of stuff:
Cross-blooded sorc
God Wizard Divination
Summoner Unchained
regular Summoner
Mythic Cleric with massive built up casting levels to make holy word blow stuff up
Black Blade magus
Super AC save Monk/PaladinYou try different stuff because PF1/3E had an enormous number of customization options, so you could optimize different classes to see what they could do.
It's fun...
I adore the character building and CharOp aspect of those games as its own thing, distinct from playing the game itself. In actual play, the best-tuned builds were rarely interesting compared to a build with 2/3rds or even 1/2 the power that forced more on-the-fly thinking because they couldn't entirely rely on a single trick. You could get a good deal of the way to the PF2 experience without giving up much freedom by self-limiting and avoiding things that trivialise the entire game.
I don't even understand this sentiment. Prior to PF2 it was extremely difficult to hit the mark, especially if your group was a group of optimizers. My players built characters in PF1/3E that any DM that tried to run the game in an as written fashion wouldn't even be able to challenge the PCs past a certain level. It would have taken highly detailed work to challenge the PCs.Most tables I've played at and ran aren't quadruple optimizers. I agree that it's quite difficult to challenge an extremely optimized party, especially at high levels, but the game genuinely falls apart at high level anyways. Early levels are easier, but you still need a good idea of what to allow and what not to allow, and "PFS legal only" doesn't cut it—even if it helps for the PFS level range. -Emergency Force Sphere- is still PFS legal, and that spell is broken as anything. If you let anything go, yeah—PF1E is impossible to balance. I don't know a single person who still runs it without clear houserules about what is and isn't allowed, though.
Sponging hp up by 10x sounds... a bit extreme. But yeah, lucky bad saves will do it on any enemy. Slumber witch alone is the epitome of it, and requires no optimization effort whatsoever and no resource expenditure. It gets even worse when you have players trying to play optimized exploiter wizards, etc. And I think a lot of people underestimate the sheer damage output of some martials because they're usually classed as t3 or t4; some classes can just steal the spotlight out of nowhere with a full round, and they'll look like more of a problem at some level ranges than a caster does.
PF2E's math and balance means you don't need to account for any of this or have any extra knowledge of what to ward players away from to cap the game's powerlevel where you want it. It makes encounter math far more predictable, as well. I don't disagree.
I just can't say the outcome has given me much satisfaction.
...are we really at the point...
The crits were so high in PF1/3E that 4000 hit points merely extended the fight enough to make it sort of scary.
One of the biggest problems with encounter design with single monsters is the action deficit the monster has. A single monster using the same number of actions as PCs is basically at a severe disadvantage.
PCs have a number of actions equal to number of players times every available action and action option often against a monster that does a full attack with a maybe a quickened option with passive ability like an aura or gaze.
I feel that eventually the designers will have to account for this action deficit and start giving single, BBEQ monsters extra actions to account for the action deficit of a PC party. As the party gets more and more powerful with more varied options, a single BBEG monster ends up overwhelmed by the action deficit.
I think monster design should incorporate the feeling you see in movies or read in books where the single BBEG can take enough actions to challenge a group. They should get some kind of BBEG action advantage so you don't always have to add henchmen to make the BBEG tough enough to have a shot at challenging PCs as they get more powerful and gain more levels.
Nowhere was this action advantage more pronounced than PF1/3E with haste, multiple attacks of opportunity, summoning, slow, quicken spell, and all the ways players could enhance their number of actions.
What made me really boost hit points was when the barbarian received Come and Get Me. That ability was incredibly hard to counter for any melee monster wanting to take a full attack.
I often hear others says, "Just this to counter it" like the barbarian is alone or something. A BBEG having to use all their tactical acumen to counter a single character's vastly overtuned ability opens them up to the other characters powerful abilities.
Thus 10x hit points or around that was what I calculated against the party's expected DPR to last a certain number of rounds and inflict enough damage to possibly threaten one of the melees since they almost no chance of even reaching a caster to harm them.
I adore the character building and CharOp aspect of those games as its own thing, distinct from playing the game itself. In actual play, the best-tuned builds were rarely interesting compared to a build with 2/3rds or even 1/2 the power that forced more on-the-fly thinking because they couldn't entirely rely on a single trick. You could get a good deal of the way to the PF2 experience without giving up much freedom by self-limiting and avoiding things that trivialise the entire game.By switching classes or learning to optimize the same class with a different build.
I did a lot of stuff:
Cross-blooded sorc
God Wizard Divination
Summoner Unchained
regular Summoner
Mythic Cleric with massive built up casting levels to make holy word blow stuff up
Black Blade magus
Super AC save Monk/PaladinYou try different stuff because PF1/3E had an enormous number of customization options, so you could optimize different classes to see what they could do.
It's fun...
Let's just say our DMs including myself enjoyed the challenge of standing against such characters.
Some of the DMs, mainly two, would always overtune the encounter and kill the PCs. One of them gave up as he didn't like people whining about being killed.
I did make a few mistakes myself killing the PCs.
But when the encounter hit right, it was great. You really pushed the super-powerful characters to the brink. That's fun.
But you get old and you get tired of that much work just to sit down and spend some time playing with friends. It's fun when young and you take on the challenge. But the older you get, the more you want to sit down with some friends and enjoy a fun game session without too much work to DM.
PF2 is better for that.
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Have you... actually fought a decent variety of PF2e enemies? Because they do exactly that. Taking just from Abomination Vaults alone, the early floors have zebub and wisp (miss chance), golem and shadow (immunities and resistances), the bloodsiphon and the canker cultists (large hp pools via self healing), werewolf (regeneration) and of course oozes. Oh, and the mitflits have Bane, can't forget that.
Yes, and I disagree with your take.
Lacking touch AC and CMB (or Grappling modifiers) still leaves the players short of tools to combat different defences in the same ways they could in past editions of the game. The categorisation of abilities (Ex, Sp, and SU abilities) that could each be shut off or granted by form-changing magic also reduces variety even further. This is then further diminished by creatures needing to be squares rather than allowing some creatures to be long, and seeing how that impacts combat.
PF2 also drops the ball on describing creatures let's compare the fluff or the 3.5 Aboleth to the PF2 version.
The cool, refreshing water suddenly erupts in a storm of reaching, grasping tentacles. The tentacles connect to a primeval fish, 20 feet in length from its bulbous head to its crescent-shaped tail. Three slit-shaped eyes, protected by bony ridges, are set one atop the other in the front of its head, which remains just beneath the surface as it attacks.
The aboleth is a revolting fishlike amphibian found primarily in
subterranean lakes and rivers. It despises all nonaquatic creatures
and attempts to destroy them on sight.An aboleth has a pink belly. Four pulsating blueblack orifices line the bottom of its body and secrete gray slime that smells like rancid grease. It uses its tail for propulsion in the water and drags itself along with its tentacles on land. An aboleth weighs about 6,500 pounds.
Aboleths are cruel and highly intelligent, making them dangerous predators. They know many ancient and terrible secrets, for they inherit their parents’ knowledge at birth and assimilate the memories of all they consume.
Aboleths are smart enough to refrain from immediately attacking land dwellers who draw near. Instead they hang back, hoping their prey will enter the water, which they often make appear cool, clear, and refreshing with their powers of illusion. Aboleths also use their psionic abilities to enslave individuals for use against their own companions.
Aboleths have both male and female reproductive organs. They breed in solitude, laying 1d3 eggs every five years. These eggs grow for another five years before hatching into full-grown aboleths. Although the young are physically mature, they remain with their parent for some ten years, obeying the older creature utterly.
Aboleths speak their own language, as well as Undercommon
and Aquan.
Aboleths form the core of alghollthu society, and while they are the “common folk” of their own societies, they see themselves as masters of all others. Unlike their leaders, who mask their actions using magical disguises, aboleths revel in their monstrous forms, appearing as primeval fish with tentacles. Masters of psychic manipulation, they are a species so ancient that they were present in the world when it was young, before the gods had turned their attention to the planet. They see all other life as something they have the right to control, so the idea that potential slaves might have faith in a higher power other than themselves enrages aboleths.
The difference is stark and not to PF2's favour.
Once again, I've played both, 3.PF is a lot worse with new players and worse, it's very not obvious why you've failed as a new player (because it's often in the build, not the play). At the very basic, you can't end up with 1hp from chargen in PF2e where you can in 3.PF (as proof, my PC Desperate to Live, third of his name, an elf who started with 1hp and whose overriding goal was to gain a level for more hp). PF2e early game is harder than later levels primarily because it's the range where variance can end up killing a well-built character through no fault of their own, because both variance mitigation tools and hp:damage ratios go up as you level, but this was even more true of 3.PF where hp pools were lower, ability damage was rampant and focus spells and infinite cantrips didn't exist.
As I have, yet we still disagree. Early game 3.5 has ways for a smart player to make nasty encounters easier with a well-used Sleep or Color Spray. Carrying even the greenest player through those levels while teaching them the rules and getting them into the RP is easy. In PF2, every character needs to pull their weight, or the entire party falls.
'It's a better game if you have more system mastery than the game developers' isn't, like, amazing praise - if you have that much system mastery of PF2e too you can almost certainly tweak it to your taste. The 3.5e game I'm in runs on the basis of limiting entirely to a curated list of T3 classes, a revised list of legal feats and free stuff given to every character, and a megadungeon setup very favourable to retreating when things get tough. It's a passion project by the DM, but I wouldn't care to run it myself.
System mastery is forever. Once you understand a system like 3.x, the added options easily overcome the initial learning curve once you've played a while and your group understands what it wants from the system. A limited game is quickly mastered and then becomes boring, both in character building and play.
You also sound weak if the idea of running 3.5 on easy mode seems like too much effort for you.
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Let's just say our DMs including myself enjoyed the challenge of standing against such characters.
Some of the DMs, mainly two, would always overtune the encounter and kill the PCs. One of them gave up as he didn't like people whining about being killed.
I did make a few mistakes myself killing the PCs.
But when the encounter hit right, it was great. You really pushed the super-powerful characters to the brink. That's fun.
But you get old and you get tired of that much work just to sit down and spend some time playing with friends. It's fun when young and you take on the challenge. But the older you get, the more you want to sit down with some friends and enjoy a fun game session without too much work to DM.
PF2 is better for that.
I think you could have that with 3.5 if you let go of your established notions of the best way to play and played down to the game's level. You could even see what the "weakest" characters you could build that are still able to clear content are, slowly banning classes and spells until you find a party that can't clear the module in question, even with foreknowledge of what's to come.
I think you could have that with 3.5 if you let go of your established notions of the best way to play and played down to the game's level. You could even see what the "weakest" characters you could build that are still able to clear content are, slowly banning classes and spells until you find a party that can't clear the module in question, even with foreknowledge of what's to come.Let's just say our DMs including myself enjoyed the challenge of standing against such characters.
Some of the DMs, mainly two, would always overtune the encounter and kill the PCs. One of them gave up as he didn't like people whining about being killed.
I did make a few mistakes myself killing the PCs.
But when the encounter hit right, it was great. You really pushed the super-powerful characters to the brink. That's fun.
But you get old and you get tired of that much work just to sit down and spend some time playing with friends. It's fun when young and you take on the challenge. But the older you get, the more you want to sit down with some friends and enjoy a fun game session without too much work to DM.
PF2 is better for that.
We have no interest in that. Every game, every version, every video game, optimize for the best possible character and play to win. That is the way.
We do that in PF2 as well. Only difference is the game system is inherently more balanced, so it only works to a certain degree.
We have no interest in that. Every game, every version, every video game, optimize for the best possible character and play to win. That is the way.
We do that in PF2 as well. Only difference is the game system is inherently more balanced, so it only works to a certain degree.
Different strokes, I guess, but I find winning with a handicap way more interesting than winning when I have access to every possible tool and loophole. I think my mentality is more mainstream as well, if you look at the popularity of challenge runs in games versus speedrunning, which would be the equivalent of your group's optimisation. More players opt into playing challenges, which can be tailored to their desired difficulty and skill level, than will ever even attempt a speed run.
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I'll probably write up a longer post later responding to other posts, but I'd like to clarify that I strongly agree that PF1E is full of landmines for inexperienced players. At my and my friend's table, we typically check the optimizers to let them know if things are okay or pushing it; on the other hand, we typically ask new players who aren't ready to dive into the deep end what they're trying to accomplish and give them build suggestions wholesale. (We'll also direct them to pretty specific, relevant advice if they want to study up on their own.) Trying to build a character with no system knowledge is a nightmare, and funnily enough, it can be a nightmare in basically any direction—a table of people who have no idea what's going on will just as easily fumble the bag as accidentally have someone stumble into premaster summoner and look comedically strong. (And summoner isn't even -that- busted in the grand scheme—it's just really easy to make a good summoner when compared to many other classes.)
You can still fumble the bag in PF2E real easy if you think your choices should mean much of anything outside of their mechanical value (i.e., Please Do Not Give Yourself Points in Charisma without a Plan and Please Max Your KAS and Please Wear the Best Armor You Can), but as long as you don't perform a few cardinal sins, you'll at least be able to mindlessly stride, strike, or use combat maneuvers on a martial and contribute at a passable floor. There are also fewer points of absolute failure. Players will still generally need help with their 2E builds, but the results are far less variable and disastrous if they don't get it.
I'll also admit I'm -very- guilty of romanticizing the variety of PF1E builds, but I also desperately miss class archetypes and swappable features that aren't feats and whole load of other things about the PF1E design that basically just got thrown away. (I'm a "we always play with FA" kind of player in 2E.) I also miss the kinds of true flavor overhauls the 1E archetype system and prestige class system were capable of, and I feel those didn't really have to die. I would really love to see something as simple as just "hey, after ten levels in Fighter, you can take this one alternate class path with some different feats and features that does a cool thing." 2E archetypes don't really scratch the itch I want them to, unfortunately. I like bespoke things more than things I'm supposed to mix and match to approximate my idea.
...A lot more to say later, probably.
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It's hard not to read these responses without wondering exactly what the intended goal is. The OP explained the issues they had with the game and their expectations. After some back and forth, the OP agreed that it might not be the game for them, but it sounded like they'd give it another shot or at least might not have gotten the full impression.
But then it's just turned into a full on edition war five years after it's release. I mean, most of us here do really like both the PF2 and 3.X/PF1 systems, but repeating over and over that things were just better in the older systems just seems to come down to taste. And the shifting goalposts feels wild.
"In PF2, you need to optimize in order to succeed," versus "You can make a decent character in PF1 if you have a patient group and have a character build session during session zero, I see no reason that you need to optimize," is some pretty dramatic doublethink. Like, I LOVE PF1, but you'd have to have the most shallow experience with the game to say that it required no optimization and that any character could succeed. And that's not necessarily bad if that's the sort of game you're looking for.
Give the games their credit for what they do. Arguing 5 years into the game's lifecycle that the core math of the game isn't interesting is very much a subjective statement and it could just be a romanticization of a previous system. No one here can argue "I actually prefer a different game," but it is tedious to have a conversation with someone who says, "the game that you enjoy is worse because it stops players from exploiting the systems within it." There's not much that can be said when one is looking to remove something that has gotten so much acclaim over the years.
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This completely ignores the players that don't know how to do that, show up with something drastically underpowered because of all the trap options baked into 3.5/PF1, and expects the GM to just make it work somehow.It seems like that player is the problem, and one easily solved with a season zero followed by a session 0.5 where everybody builds characters together from allowed sources. The better builders will help the new player get the character they want while keeping the power levels even.
Session Zero is not always enough.
A new player joined our PF1 Iron Gods campaign at 2nd level. He was new to roleplaying games but had plenty of design help from the other players, who encouraged him to play a Fighter because the party needed another heavy hitter. As I said in my chronicle, Iron Gods among Scientists, comment #21
Kheld was designed by committee of the other players to fit that background. The 20-point build gave Str 17, Dex 13, Con 12, Int 14, Wis 13, Cha 10. Rich chose Ancestral Weapon, a Numerian regional trait, but was more familiar with real medieval weapons than Pathfinder weapons, and wanted a lucerne hammer without the long handle. I said that the ancestral weapon could be a custom weapon. After more discussion, he decided against a hammer, but his ancestral weapon is still a custom weapon, a cold iron collapsible glaive. His other trait is Conspiracy Hunter, a campaign trait from Council of Thieves, to make Perception a class skill. Starfall is a town with a corrupt government, same as Westcrown, so it fits. (I have been using the Archives of Nethys website as my source of traits.)
Rich was a bad player. This is common for the first few sessions with a new player, but he stayed bad longer than most newbies. His goals for his character Kheld exceeded the abilities of a character of Kheld's level. He wanted Kheld to be able to do everything: fight, negotiate, solve mysteries, run a business, etc. He kept asking questions about character builds to optimize Kheld as a Renaissance man who was also the best fighter in the world. He multiclassing into investigator to get the skills he wanted. Eventually, I directed him to several build optimization guides on the internet.
At 7th level, my wife's character Boffin took Leadership in order to gain a robot companion. She was essentially inventing the PF2 Inventor class by means of PF1's strong customization. This worked so well that Rich and another player both took Leadership at 9th level. The strix skald Kirii gained a lyrakien skald apprentice Tay. The fighter/investigator Kheld gained a samsaran wizard Juran highly optimized for crafting magic items. That made sense, because the campaign allowed a lot of downtime for crafting. I suspect that Rich found the build on the internet somewhere.
The first magic item Juran made was a Belt of Giant Strength. But instead of putting the belt on his fighter Kheld, Rich put it on his wizard Juran. He put his two characters side by side on the front line. Samsarans have a -2 to Constitution and Juran almost died while doing very little damage. The other players taught Rich how Juran would play better as a support wizard in the back rather than as a frontline damage dealer.
Sometimes PF1 players persist in their bad builds.
Rich built a lizardfolk champion for my first PF2 campaign, but he got sick and had to drop out.
The 3.x systems are actively new player hostile.As is PF2, as evidenced by some people finding low-level play too difficult and the complete need for turn-by-turn optimisation in combat, too mentally taxing to be fun. You have a preference for the PF2 style, but that doesn't mean that 3.x is that much more unfriendly to the new player.
We had a whole thread on new players overwhelmed in PF2 back in March, The game doesn't do a good job at teaching new player's how to play. PF1 relies on builds, so PF1 players have to learn optimal builds. PF2 relies on tactics, so PF2 players have to learn optimal tactics.
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Pf1 had builds that worked because there were options(and by option I mean mandatory selections) that generally gave another + to your DC, your hit, or damage.
The more the game had in this respect for a specific thing you wanted to do the better it could perform. If the creature design was set based on full optimization then anything that fell short of it was not viable to play. This is not interesting character building its just finding out of all the options which ones have the most + support to stack. Once you've found it and tried it out it gets boring too.
PF2 took a different approach by making almost all the vertical growth level dependent. By doing that it makes almost every build viable with the only limits being what you do with stats and what proficiency is available to your class and archtypes. So if your fun is finding some niche thing that over performs to a broken degree the game doesn't have very much of that to do.
We all know this here.
The benefit is that a real challenge is more predictable since you can determine the power of characters by their level more easily than in Pf1.
If you wanted to be ahead of the power curve to curb stomp encounters by finding those extra +'s at character creation then its not a great game for that.
I don’t see why pf2’s structure couldn’t more or less accommodate a ‘monster turned into a class’. Have the ancestry . And a class which has class feats that expand upon that monster’s abilities in addition to the ancestry feats provided by the ancestry. Boom. Monster as class.It wouldn't work. The 3.x version had you become exactly that creature, customised with feats, skills, and spell selection. PF2's design doesn't allow for this sort of exact one-to-one translation because PCs and monsters share such different design philosophies.
Why is it important to be ‘exactly that down to the last number”?
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Why is it important to be ‘exactly that down to the last number”?I don’t see why pf2’s structure couldn’t more or less accommodate a ‘monster turned into a class’. Have the ancestry . And a class which has class feats that expand upon that monster’s abilities in addition to the ancestry feats provided by the ancestry. Boom. Monster as class.It wouldn't work. The 3.x version had you become exactly that creature, customised with feats, skills, and spell selection. PF2's design doesn't allow for this sort of exact one-to-one translation because PCs and monsters share such different design philosophies.
More importantly: Is this the optional 3.x rules that let you have a monster ancestry with some sort of level adjustment to it? So you could be a level 5 Elf Wizard, or you could be a level 3 Drow Wizard because the Drow race had a 2 level adjustment accounted to it.
No, PF2 doesn't have anything like that.
PF1 didn't really have anything like that. Making monster races was done with homebrew of varying levels of officiality. You can homebrew monster ancestries in PF2 too if you really feel like it. Battlezoo has some already that you can check out.
Why is it important to be ‘exactly that down to the last number”?I don’t see why pf2’s structure couldn’t more or less accommodate a ‘monster turned into a class’. Have the ancestry . And a class which has class feats that expand upon that monster’s abilities in addition to the ancestry feats provided by the ancestry. Boom. Monster as class.It wouldn't work. The 3.x version had you become exactly that creature, customised with feats, skills, and spell selection. PF2's design doesn't allow for this sort of exact one-to-one translation because PCs and monsters share such different design philosophies.More importantly: Is this the optional 3.x rules that let you have a monster ancestry with some sort of level adjustment to it? So you could be a level 5 Elf Wizard, or you could be a level 3 Drow Wizard because the Drow race had a 2 level adjustment accounted to it.
No, PF2 doesn't have anything like that.
PF1 didn't really have anything like that. Making monster races was done with homebrew of varying levels of officiality. You can homebrew monster ancestries in PF2 too if you really feel like it. Battlezoo has some already that you can check out.
But he wants it to be exactly the same.
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Rich was a bad player. This is common for the first few sessions with a new player, but he stayed bad longer than most newbies. His goals for his character Kheld exceeded the abilities of a character of Kheld's level. He wanted Kheld to be able to do everything: fight, negotiate, solve mysteries, run a business, etc. He kept asking questions about character builds to optimize Kheld as a Renaissance man who was also the best fighter in the world. He multiclassing into investigator to get the skills he wanted. Eventually, I directed him to several build optimization guides on the internet.
Rich sounds like a poor fit for TTRPGs in general as no system would meet his goals for his character at that low level and while many systems could let him dabble in mutliple skills at higher levels, this seems like a player who wouldn't be satisfied unless he was the best at everything he wanted his character to do. I feel the issue here is with Rich, not any TTRPG system he interacts with.
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Why is it important to be ‘exactly that down to the last number”?
If I'm playing a creature, once I hit the exact level where my soloing that monster should be a 50/50 toss-up down to dice and tactics, why shouldn't I have the exact same stats as them? If I'm looking to play as a monster, let me be that monster once I'm the right level.
Why is it important to be ‘exactly that down to the last number”?If I'm playing a creature, once I hit the exact level where my soloing that monster should be a 50/50 toss-up down to dice and tactics, why shouldn't I have the exact same stats as them? If I'm looking to play as a monster, let me be that monster once I'm the right level.
But you won’t be. You’ll be modified by whatever leveling you’ve done. Or you’ll have been massively overpowered. Or …
Seriously? This is the argument you’re making?
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More importantly: Is this the optional 3.x rules that let you have a monster ancestry with some sort of level adjustment to it? So you could be a level 5 Elf Wizard, or you could be a level 3 Drow Wizard because the Drow race had a 2 level adjustment accounted to it.
You could also buy down that level adjustment later, and there was an entire rulebook dedicated to playing monsters broken down into classes. This often left the monstrous PC weaker than they should be, but it gave a start for players and GMs alike to work with.
No, PF2 doesn't have anything like that.
PF1 didn't really have anything like that. Making monster races was done with homebrew of varying levels of officiality. You can homebrew monster ancestries in PF2 too if you really feel like it. Battlezoo has some already that you can check out.
I didn't like that PF1 had ditched this idea either, and I'd rather homebrew my own systems than use third-party material. I know Battlezoo is held in great esteem, but I'd rather modify things for myself if we're deviating from core rules.
More importantly: Is this the optional 3.x rules that let you have a monster ancestry with some sort of level adjustment to it? So you could be a level 5 Elf Wizard, or you could be a level 3 Drow Wizard because the Drow race had a 2 level adjustment accounted to it.You could also buy down that level adjustment later, and there was an entire rulebook dedicated to playing monsters broken down into classes. This often left the monstrous PC weaker than they should be, but it gave a start for players and GMs alike to work with.
I didn't like that PF1 had ditched this idea either, and I'd rather homebrew my own systems than use third-party material. I know Battlezoo is held in great esteem, but I'd rather modify things for myself if we're deviating from core rules.No, PF2 doesn't have anything like that.
PF1 didn't really have anything like that. Making monster races was done with homebrew of varying levels of officiality. You can homebrew monster ancestries in PF2 too if you really feel like it. Battlezoo has some already that you can check out.
So if they were weaker, they weren’t the same.
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So if they were weaker, they weren’t the same.
*bangs head into desk violently* They were often weaker than their fellow party members because monsters of a given CR back in 3.5 were rarely as good as a well-built PC. They'd be on par with, if not slightly stronger than, an average member of the monstrous species they were playing as.
I'm not sure why you're arguing with me when you're clearly not familiar with the material I'm referencing.
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This is a bad tangent. Take a moment to think what point you're trying to make. "PF2 isn't 3.5" is not a radical statement.
So if they were weaker, they weren’t the same.*bangs head into desk violently* They were often weaker than their fellow party members because monsters of a given CR back in 3.5 were rarely as good as a well-built PC. They'd be on par with, if not slightly stronger than, an average member of the monstrous species they were playing as.
I'm not sure why you're arguing with me when you're clearly not familiar with the material I'm referencing.
How is it not artificial to start as a ‘baby monster’ and level up to a normal one?
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This is a bad tangent. Take a moment to think what point you're trying to make. "PF2 isn't 3.5" is not a radical statement.
How about PF2 has less fluff in its Bestiaries than 3.5 had in the Monster Manual? Is that better for you?
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This is a bad tangent. Take a moment to think what point you're trying to make. "PF2 isn't 3.5" is not a radical statement.How about PF2 has less fluff in its Bestiaries than 3.5 had in the Monster Manual? Is that better for you?
Okay. I'm not sure what that means. Like... okay, I'm a guy that loves fluff, but missing two paragraphs of fluff isn't relevant to anything?
The hill you die on seems to misunderstand how important that is for everyone else.
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How is it not artificial to start as a ‘baby monster’ and level up to a normal one?
Who said it wasn't? The point is that it gave rules for picking any monster a GM could use, turning that into a class, and allowing a player to play it. If you wanted to, you'd eventually end up as an exact copy of that monster, ready to start taking class levels.
It is a way to allow a player to play a Troll or Ogre or lesser Celestial or whatever else they may wish to play, alongside a party that's otherwise too low level to have this as an acceptable option. It's a fairly common trope and one that rarely gets solid rules.
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Okay. I'm not sure what that means. Like... okay, I'm a guy that loves fluff, but missing two paragraphs of fluff isn't relevant to anything?
The hill you die on seems to misunderstand how important that is for everyone else.
PF2 also drops the ball on describing creatures let's compare the fluff or the 3.5 Aboleth to the PF2 version.
The cool, refreshing water suddenly erupts in a storm of reaching, grasping tentacles. The tentacles connect to a primeval fish, 20 feet in length from its bulbous head to its crescent-shaped tail. Three slit-shaped eyes, protected by bony ridges, are set one atop the other in the front of its head, which remains just beneath the surface as it attacks.
The aboleth is a revolting fishlike amphibian found primarily in
subterranean lakes and rivers. It despises all nonaquatic creatures
and attempts to destroy them on sight.An aboleth has a pink belly. Four pulsating blueblack orifices line the bottom of its body and secrete gray slime that smells like rancid grease. It uses its tail for propulsion in the water and drags itself along with its tentacles on land. An aboleth weighs about 6,500 pounds.
Aboleths are cruel and highly intelligent, making them dangerous predators. They know many ancient and terrible secrets, for they inherit their parents’ knowledge at birth and assimilate the memories of all they consume.
Aboleths are smart enough to refrain from immediately attacking land dwellers who draw near. Instead they hang back, hoping their prey will enter the water, which they often make appear cool, clear, and refreshing with their powers of illusion. Aboleths also use their psionic abilities to enslave individuals for use against their own companions.
Aboleths have both male and female reproductive organs. They breed in solitude, laying 1d3 eggs every five years. These eggs grow for another five years before hatching into full-grown aboleths. Although the young are physically mature, they remain with their parent for some ten years, obeying the older creature utterly.
Aboleths speak their own language, as well as Undercommon
and Aquan.Aboleths form the core of alghollthu society, and while they are the “common folk” of their own societies, they see themselves as masters of all others. Unlike their leaders, who mask their actions using magical disguises, aboleths revel in their monstrous forms, appearing as primeval fish with tentacles. Masters of psychic manipulation, they are a species so ancient that they were present in the world when it was young, before the gods had turned their attention to the planet. They see all other life as something they have the right to control, so the idea that potential slaves might have faith in a higher power other than themselves enrages aboleths.
7 paragraphs versus 1. It's even worse if I were to pick Hobgoblins to compare between 3.x and PF2. How is a new GM supposed to play these monsters well when they're giving sweet nothing to work with in PF2?
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Using the rules, I would imagine.
There is an immense amount of lore and "fluff" for both monster families within the "fluff" books. There was a decoupling of the fluffier books and mechanical books back at launch.
Turns out that you ended up in the minority. There was a big thread about it years back.
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Using the rules, I would imagine.
There is an immense amount of lore and "fluff" for both monster families within the "fluff" books. There was a decoupling of the fluffier books and mechanical books back at launch.
Turns out that you ended up in the minority. There was a big thread about it years back.
Why should I have to buy two books to learn basic information about a monster? I'd rather pay more for a single book with a higher page count that gives me everything than a cut-back version with a required companion text.
Why should I have to buy two books to learn basic information about a monster? I'd rather pay more for a single book with a higher page count that gives me everything than a cut-back version with a required companion text.Using the rules, I would imagine.
There is an immense amount of lore and "fluff" for both monster families within the "fluff" books. There was a decoupling of the fluffier books and mechanical books back at launch.
Turns out that you ended up in the minority. There was a big thread about it years back.
Decoupling the fluff makes refluffung easier.
Different strokes, I guess, but I find winning with a handicap way more interesting than winning when I have access to every possible tool and loophole. I think my mentality is more mainstream as well, if you look at the popularity of challenge runs in games versus speedrunning, which would be the equivalent of your group's optimisation. More players opt into playing challenges, which can be tailored to their desired difficulty and skill level, than will ever even attempt a speed run.We have no interest in that. Every game, every version, every video game, optimize for the best possible character and play to win. That is the way.
We do that in PF2 as well. Only difference is the game system is inherently more balanced, so it only works to a certain degree.
Characters are an investment of months to years of time as our average campaign reaches 15 to 17th level. I want the character I invest that much time in to be as top tier as I can make it.
I am truly not certain of how long the average group plays or the median level most reach in a campaign. If you're spending time making deliberately weak characters, you play enough that that would feel like a worthwhile expenditure of your time.
When I test out a new class or build, I want to max it out.