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Among PF1e players, the biggest probably single turn off that prevents us from playing PF2e, and we want to, is the very unrealistic decision to NOT have weapon size affect damage.
For us, this taints PF2e because this major point of believability has been shattered -- the rest of the system, though, seems okay.
Yes, we could make a home rule to reintroduce weapon size rules from PF1e into PF2e -- and right now that's probably the only way I'd play.
It just feels like we're fixing an obvious problem, and it doesn't feel good.
I suggest adding an alternate rule to PF2e to have weapon size (or bulk) affect damage so that legacy PF1e players can feel good about playing it.
Yes, it really a kind of psychological barrier -- but breaking down that barrier (and acknowledging the issue) very likely would open the flood gates for more PF1e players to play PF2e.
The PF1e community is actually growing and thriving, now. We're getting a lot of players who have out grown 5e and its oversimplicity and lack of realism -- some are coming from PF2e.
I believe only this minor fix is needed.
A new alternate rule that formalizes how weapon size affects damage -- for example there a difference between a hammer and a sledgehammer (and PF1e players just can't ignore it and have a believable game).
Ironically most actual war hammers had more in common with a basic hammer than a sledge hammer. The bigger the surface area the more spread out the hit. Most of the damage increase is the strength of the user than the size of the weapon.
Like a medium two handed spear and a large two handed spear shouldn't do different damage because the part that is actually the work is basically the same.
The main difference would be in ability to parry/block the attack. It would make some sense to give large weapons the razing trait vs weapon sizes smaller than them.
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Obsessing over weapon size and the damage dealt as a reason to dislike the system is...silly.
The interaction was removed to stop shenanigans that had been in PF1. Now, when you do interact with an ability that increases your size, it just gives you more damage.
The game is honestly better having removed weapon damage dice being dependent on size.
If this is your hill to die on, then in my opinion you can do what you can to do. Weapon damage dice should NEVER EVER EVER go back to being dependent on size, it would break so many things within the systems of PF2 that it is a terrible idea.
PF2 eschews realism when it would break the game (which is often). And it's better off for it.
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Obsessing over weapon size and the damage dealt as a reason to dislike the system is...silly.
I agree with this. But I think it applies to your overreaction almost as much as the OP.
It really wouldn't be a huge deal if weapons did damage according to size. It would be 1 pt per dice gain or loss. While definitely noticeable and definitely not a great idea it would not
break so many things within the systems of PF2 that it is a terrible idea.
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Any bonuses to damage would have to be offset by penalties so the net result remains the same, such is the tight balance of PF2's numbers.
A proportion of damage is random/dice and the rest is static/bonuses. PF2 is a bit more consistent there than PF1 where weapon dice via size & energy damage (often Holy) were about the only ways to increase the random portion. I remember being stunned that weapon dice increase in PF2, "That's so much!", but this was alongside "DR from a shield!" so there was a legit tension in one's weapon choices (later noticing the importance of free hands & how some feats/equipment that made that valuable).
So while having the net result end up the same seems feeble to me, it's better than trying to increase the dice via size without an offsetting bonus to other choices. And I'm saying this as someone who loved piling up my weapon dice in PF1. And introducing bonuses to alternate options is too much of an overhaul! (Never mind its rippling effects on everything else.)
So while size matters psychologically, even narratively, it shouldn't matter mechanically; too late for that. PF2's parts are too tuned for one cog to swell in importance. Yes, there can be a disconnect looking at a giant's 1d4 dagger next to a Halfling's 1d12 greatsword, but in play much of that washes away, i.e. giant's seldom use daggers and a Halfling with a greatsword will typically be an astounding anomaly much like those thin anime heroes stronger than beefy brawlers. Then there's how hit points are only partially physical anyway, much of it being plot armor and/or preternatural ability, which implies increases in damage might have similar elements beyond the weight of one's weapon.
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Obsessing over weapon size and the damage dealt as a reason to dislike the system is...silly.
I agree with this. But I think it applies to your overreaction almost as much as the OP.
It really wouldn't be a huge deal if weapons did damage according to size. It would be 1 pt per dice gain or loss. While definitely noticeable and definitely not a great idea it would not
break so many things within the systems of PF2 that it is a terrible idea.
I kind of almost agree with you. I was meeting hyperbole with hyperbole.
I do think it's a bad idea. And it would go off into left field in terms of damage done versus what the system expects. And while it wouldn't completely break anything, it would throw off the balance of the whole system in a way that isn't positive.
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Hmm... without the advantages smaller size categories used to have in 1e (better hide modifier, better AC and to-hit), reduced weapon damage dice would be a straight up nerf to small and tiny PCs. And striking runes mean this would continue to sting at higher levels.
At the same time, large-sized weapons doing multiple dice of damage isn't compatible with the striking runes system, and threatens to open an enormous vein of cheese from 1e that I'm glad we don't see anymore. Not to mention I don't know how it would affect the increasing number of large ancestries being released.
So I think I have to strongly disagree, here. There's definitely some unrealistic aspects to weapon sizes, but at the same time weapon mass is such a small portion of that (Reach, balance, and striking area also play a huge role, as do the combatants themselves). Trying to inplement realism would require a lot more work and mostly end up making hafling melee users worthless, so I don't think I'd advocate for it.
I think if I were to make any kind of house rule to this, it would be something along the lines of: if you roll a one on every damage dice with a large weapon, add one damage to the total.
If you really want to penalize small creatures you could do the same thing with rolling max damage on the damage dice losing 1 point, but PF2 has none of the other offsets that help balance how this worked in PF1.
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Bigger = better is dumb.
If we're talking about having more mass, you can already make normal sized weapons nigh-unwieldable by adjusting the balance and materials. If more mass = more better, weapon design would already account for it. Essentially, you want to have a usable balance between mass and speed to convert your muscle power into damaging strikes that have a hope of hitting their target.
If we're talking about size, as long as a face, edge, or point is sufficient for lethality, extra size is only a detriment. Spreading your force over a larger area or introducing more surface area for friction during a cut is just not helpful.
Bigger creatures deal more damage because they're stronger, and can handle swinging around more mass at an effective speed. The increased size of their weapons is about durability and comfort.
So a regular sized human, who is supernaturally strong enough to effectively wield a giant's sword, would be better off using that strength on a weapon sized for themselves, with a mass distribution that maximizes their muscle effectiveness.
I get that some people are still going to be like "but my cool too big sword!" and want a mechanical benefit for using one. If giant instinct barbarian isn't enough, slap on a house rule +1 bludgeoning damage per die to go along with the clumsy condition.
Tiny Sprites can jump as high as gargantuan Titans.
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I think we should stop asking for realism in TTRPGs.
Realism isn't and never was fun because it only leads to casters being OP because you can't design casters with realism in mind because, well, magic doesn't exist. A greatsword should deal more damage than a dagger, but the dagger needs to have its own advantages too because otherwise its just a trap option.
I also seriously doubt this "problem" is as big as OP seems to think it is, as I don't feel the number of people jumping from D&D 5e or PF2e into PF1e is nearly the same as the amount of people from D&D 5e or PF1e that jump into PF2e. I'm in a couple of TTRPG communities and the only time I see PF1e mentioned nowadays is from people that tried it out because they didn't know the difference between PF1e and PF2e.
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Now, when you do interact with an ability that increases your size, it just gives you more damage.Yes I think it's often hidden in the flat bonuses, but its there. The giant bar's +6 when every other instinct gets a lower bonus, for instance. Or if you look at monster core monsters like a cave giant or a cloud giant, their flat damage bonus is higher than their Str attribute. Enlarge gives a +2 bonus to damage. Etc.
The only thing really missing is the ability of a regular PC to pick up an oversized version of a weapon and have it have the same name, category, group, traits, etc. of the normal sized version but yet do more damage. Seems like an easy fix for the GM to make if the players are demanding it. You want a giant-sized dagger and not just call it a shortsword or longsword? Clumsy 1 and double the weight for a dice size bump, go for it.
I also agree with execquiel about realism. If you want martial artists fighting alongside armored knights and gun-slinging pirates, you have to somewhat equalize the pros and cons each technique uses. That's not realistic, but it's needed for the game. That doesn't mean everything has to do the same damage, but it does mean you want to stay away from rules like 'bigger is always better' because that effectively wipes out a number of character concepts.
The funniest thing is that bigger ISN'T always better.
Like a small thin dagger to fit between gaps in armor when you've knocked a person in full plate flat on their back is much more effective than any greatsword will be.
And you can absolutely end up with a weapon so large that the wielder can't wield it effectively.
And bigger isn't always better for other reasons too, like the space you have to fight in. Big long weapons are going to be less maneuverable in tight spaces. But we don't see anything in the rules to simulate that bit of realism.
If you want "bigger weapon means more damage" you also need things like "this weapon is to big to fight effectively in this 5ft hallway" or "this weapon is so big you fight with it worse". If you're a fan of realism that's all on the table right?
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Among PF1e players, the biggest probably single turn off that prevents us from playing PF2e, and we want to, is the very unrealistic decision to NOT have weapon size affect damage.
For us, this taints PF2e because this major point of believability has been shattered
Like... seriously?
Maybe among a small group of players. But I certainly haven't seen that be the single biggest turn-off. That doesn't even break the top 10.
1) Lack of math boosting build options like Vital Strike, Power Attack, and Iron Will.
2) Lack of combinatorial and stacking build options that allow overpowering roll bonuses.
3) Enemies having enough HP that a blitz attack doesn't drop them in one turn.
4) Enemies having high enough bonuses that they can hit PCs.
5) The existence of Skill feats.
6) Debilitating effects of spells relegated to critical success effects.
7) The Incapacitation trait.
8) Lack of Sunder maneuver.
9) Familiars.
10) Shield mechanics.
Somewhere significantly below those is "medium characters don't do more damage with the same weapon than small characters do."
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My group has not noticed this change and doesn't care. PF1 wasn't realistic with weapons. Most of these weapons are built for realism. They're all very generic.
The only thing that has an effect in PF2 is the weapon die size because of striking runes. You want the biggest possible die you can get because of how striking runes work.
Otherwise, nothing else really matters when it comes to weapons. Maybe the deadly or fatal traits for crit focused classes.
Among PF1e players, the biggest probably single turn off that prevents us from playing PF2e, and we want to, is the very unrealistic decision to NOT have weapon size affect damage.
I just want to point out that the entire premise of the OP is at least partially false.
You can just extrapolate the rules from the barbarian's Giant instinct:
Instinct Ability—Titan Mauler You can use a weapon built for a Large creature if you are Small or Medium (both normally and when raging). If you’re not Small or Medium, you can use a weapon built for a creature one size larger than you. You start with one such weapon, which you receive for free. It must be a common melee or ranged weapon, it must have a Price of 9 gp or less (not including the Price adjustment for being a larger weapon), and it must be common or you must otherwise have access to it. It is your personal weapon and has no value if sold unless you later add runes to it, and it has the normal Bulk for a weapon of its size.
When wielding a larger weapon in combat, increase your additional damage from Rage from 2 to 6, but you have the clumsy 1 condition because of the weapon’s unwieldy size. You can’t remove this clumsy condition or ignore its penalties by any means while wielding the weapon.
For characters that aren't Giant instinct barbarians, you can probably just add +2 to weapon damage (or +4 if you are generous and/or require a general feat to use oversized weapons) with the drawback of the clumsy 1 condition.
Maybe I am confused about what the OP is asking for. I wasn’t thinking they were concerned about the same character using an oversized weapon but about how a small creature’s short sword does the same damage as a large creature’s short sword.
While I agree with posters who are saying that this isn’t a problem for them and that the realism of turn based RPGs is already so far off the deep end that this isn’t just a drop in the ocean, I don’t think the suggestion to add clumsy and a damage bonus is a useful solution because that is specifically the smaller character using the oversized weapon. That was why my suggestion was to just raise the damage floor of a large weapon by 1 and the ceiling of a small weapon by one, and that it only needs to apply to the base weapon die because everything else is magical.
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...The biggest turnoff of PF2? Really? I can think of like a dozen better reasons and I like PF2. I don't think any of my friends who prefer PF1 have ever mentioned weapon size even in passing.
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Tiny Sprites can jump as high as gargantuan Titans.Diminutive Grasshoppers can jump higher than elephants
If you have a tiny sprite with an 18 str and a human with an 18 str pound for pound that sprite is a freaking monster.
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I'll grant that first reading Second Edition rules, I found there not being a change in damage for size changes was a bit perplexing. However, it didn't take much to explain SOME of it away quickly. Simply put, putting a giant's sword in the hand of a medium person and expecting it to do more damage, when the weapon clearly wasn't made for an individual or that size, when you think about it, actually made sense it wouldn't cause more damage. (in fact, it maybe should do less damage if you want to cite 'realism') The leverage and such would simply not provide that much advantage, and might literally make it worse. So from that standpoint, it made perfect sense to not have it affect die size unlike how it had in first edition. A two handed sword in the hands of a gnome, may very well do more damage to someone than a longsword in the hand of a human. The gnome is using the leverage of multiple arms, vs. the human's one hand. And if using two hands, not optimized for two hands, just using it for a little extra.
Where I have to admit the 'view' seems to fail is when a Tiny Sprite's longbow, and its arrow does more damage than a human's short bow. The long bow is supposed to do more damage because it is bigger/better leverage right... but it doesn't in this case, it is smaller.
In the game, the game doesn't differentiate between small and medium... they are considered the same size, just with two different sized creatures using them. That seems a reasonable abstraction for me, though it took some getting used to. But it did bring up the idea that while considering them a S/M combined size, it seemed like there could be an acknowledgement of other sizes.
I don't think I'd considered the idea of boosting the floor or reducing the ceiling of damage, but I had considered size differences past the S/M baseline having a +1 damage (or +1 per die) bonus per the size. I imagine someone is going to complain that it hurts their sprite concept, but I honestly don't think a sprite doing 1 less point of damage a strike less being concept breaking (especially if rather than per die the adjustment only applied once). And honestly, if anything could actually make a sprite with an 18 Str and a polearm even more fantastic, since it would do so much damage, even overcoming a slight disadvantage.
Ohh... and for clarity... the bonus damage doesn't come from using a larger weapon... it only would come from a larger creature using a larger weapon. Giant Barbarian's have different rules which override this more mundane effect, which enables them to use larger weapons effectively. That is fine, but as a general rule, someone needn't get more damage from a weapon because they pick up a bigger one of it.
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Does anyone miss the annoyance of the party gaining magic weapons and armor that your character can't use because it was the wrong size?
I agreee, size does matter. It is silly that it really doesn't in PF2. In fact things like this are my personal biggest problem with PF2. Too many powers have a cute concept and name but don't actually provide any mechanical support for that flavour.
Yes PF1 was ridiculously over powered in it's size change modifiers - things like +8 strength differences. We shouldn't go back there.
I don't want to see halfling melee fighters being made obsolete.
However size should have an effect. Some differences would be nice. Pluses and minuses. It should have a play effect when you are taking on a monster a couple of size categories larger than yourself.
Things like The Titan Wrestler feat that allows halflings to grapple Ogres with no penalites are just a bad idea. Why can we have some special rules to give that situation some character? Maybe the effect of grapple is a bit different, but tripping stills works??!?
Yes I am an engineer.
Whatever you decide to house rule about this, I would really not encourage it apply to any damage die except the first mundane one. One extra damage (or one less) per die would be too much, and all the additional damage comes from magic so it doesn’t need to follow the same guidelines.
Well, I used Microsoft CoPilot to ask the following questions:
1. How do you calculate damage in PF2e?
2. What would the calculations look like using a greataxe for a Fire Giant?
In #1, it gave an example of a barbarian using a greataxe. Ignoring barbarian special abilities, the difference in damage centering around the greataxe my PF1e players thought just wasn't believable.
We're not asking for realism -- we're just asking for a level of believability.
I'll bet if a survey was taken, most PF1e players would have a lot of issues playing with PF2e damage calculations -- with the core issue being weapon size.
Having a tiny greataxe and a huge greataxe do the same damage is just unacceptable to PF1e players. Almost always discussions about this with different PF1e players yield utterances of "dumbing it down".
This is the same thing PF1e players said about 5e.
I'll grant that first reading Second Edition rules, I found there not being a change in damage for size changes was a bit perplexing. However, it didn't take much to explain SOME of it away quickly. Simply put, putting a giant's sword in the hand of a medium person and expecting it to do more damage, when the weapon clearly wasn't made for an individual or that size, when you think about it, actually made sense it wouldn't cause more damage. (in fact, it maybe should do less damage if you want to cite 'realism') The leverage and such would simply not provide that much advantage, and might literally make it worse. So from that standpoint, it made perfect sense to not have it affect die size unlike how it had in first edition. A two handed sword in the hands of a gnome, may very well do more damage to someone than a longsword in the hand of a human. The gnome is using the leverage of multiple arms, vs. the human's one hand. And if using two hands, not optimized for two hands, just using it for a little extra.
Where I have to admit the 'view' seems to fail is when a Tiny Sprite's longbow, and its arrow does more damage than a human's short bow. The long bow is supposed to do more damage because it is bigger/better leverage right... but it doesn't in this case, it is smaller.
In the game, the game doesn't differentiate between small and medium... they are considered the same size, just with two different sized creatures using them. That seems a reasonable abstraction for me, though it took some getting used to. But it did bring up the idea that while considering them a S/M combined size, it seemed like there could be an acknowledgement of other sizes.
I don't think I'd considered the idea of boosting the floor or reducing the ceiling of damage, but I had considered size differences past the S/M baseline having a +1 damage (or +1 per die) bonus per the size. I imagine someone is going to complain that it hurts their sprite concept, but I honestly don't think a sprite doing 1 less point of...
It's all physics and inertia. A tiny creature with a tiny greataxe simply isn't going to be able to hit with the same force as a huge creature with a huge greataxe -- just based on the weapon size, alone, and force of impact.
A huge creature with a tiny greataxe (ignoring size penalty for a moment assuming we're strictly talking about mass) will do far less damage with all their strength as the same creature with a huge greataxe.
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...I'll grant that first reading Second Edition rules, I found there not being a change in damage for size changes was a bit perplexing. However, it didn't take much to explain SOME of it away quickly. Simply put, putting a giant's sword in the hand of a medium person and expecting it to do more damage, when the weapon clearly wasn't made for an individual or that size, when you think about it, actually made sense it wouldn't cause more damage. (in fact, it maybe should do less damage if you want to cite 'realism') The leverage and such would simply not provide that much advantage, and might literally make it worse. So from that standpoint, it made perfect sense to not have it affect die size unlike how it had in first edition. A two handed sword in the hands of a gnome, may very well do more damage to someone than a longsword in the hand of a human. The gnome is using the leverage of multiple arms, vs. the human's one hand. And if using two hands, not optimized for two hands, just using it for a little extra.
Where I have to admit the 'view' seems to fail is when a Tiny Sprite's longbow, and its arrow does more damage than a human's short bow. The long bow is supposed to do more damage because it is bigger/better leverage right... but it doesn't in this case, it is smaller.
In the game, the game doesn't differentiate between small and medium... they are considered the same size, just with two different sized creatures using them. That seems a reasonable abstraction for me, though it took some getting used to. But it did bring up the idea that while considering them a S/M combined size, it seemed like there could be an acknowledgement of other sizes.
I don't think I'd considered the idea of boosting the floor or reducing the ceiling of damage, but I had considered size differences past the S/M baseline having a +1 damage (or +1 per die) bonus per the size. I imagine someone is going to complain that it hurts their sprite concept, but I honestly don't think a sprite
Damage is built around levels and hit points. You can configure however you want to make it believable, but the game is still built so damage is rangebound according to level and hit points.
This was done to ensure fights stay roughly the same duration regardless of level give or take a round.
PF2 is built for balance, not believability as you call it. So if you want believability for size, then adjust for yourself as most of us want balance over believability. We don't want gamified believability that does nothing more than provide some damage advantage that breaks the game.
A PF2 DM can adjust the damage portion that comes from "size" if you want to make it believable. Regardless the damage is built for a certain range of damage according to level. The composition of that damage is up to the DM to modify if they want some believability or what not.
I never saw weapon size as making things believable in PF1. Hit points aren't very believable. Being blown up by meteors or lightning isn't very believable or swinging a great axe with the same ease as a shortsword. Or firing a longbow 5 or 6 times a round.
I don't have much interest in believability over a game I can run that doesn't break past certain levels making the game even more unbelievable when players are able to easily kill ancient dragons with their tiny swords even for a medium character.
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I--You... You asked Copilot to explain you a game system you didn't know and became upset with the result the tells-plausible-lies box gave you based on that incomplete information?
Like, the rules are actually free. Online. Easy to access!
The reality is, comparing the damage calculation for a fire giant's great axe is a nonstarter. Monsters and PCs don't operate on the same mechanics, and the minor hit that deals to realism is more than made up for by the fact that we don't have to jump hoops making up the right numbers so that it deals the appropriate amount of damage for a 10th level monster, we just give it about the right amount of damage for a 10th level monster and justify it later if we feel like it.
I doubt extremely very many 1e diehards prefer that edition specifically or even mostly because of weapon size modifiers vs. say the many many things we have heard 1e players specifically discuss as things that turned them off 2e.
As a former 1e player (and before that, 3.5e player), I loved the change to damage, because now I can actually play a small ancestry as a martial character without being shunted into exclusively playing a Rogue if I wanted to be halfway effective at my role.
That, and the reality is, weapon damage mechanics in either edition barely touch on realism. Weapon damage is an abstraction that breaks any similarity with realism past the first couple levels. It simply doesn't matter all that much to me that a pixie taking a great sword to your exposed bits deals the same damage as an orc with the same when a 5th level character can take that hit several times in a row before they feel it.
The thing which is currently preventing one of my players (whom I don't want to lose) to accept 2E is that level is added to everything (except untrained skills), which for some reason is a huge turn-off to him. Weapon resizing doesn't even come into it. No, I'm not interested in running proficency without level games, as a GM I want the mathematical balance of the normal rules.
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So, this isn't going to happen. Having weapon size not impact damage was a deliberate change to simply how the game runs, along with size impacting fewer things in general. Changing it is a big deal because damage dice impact a lot more things and are a much bigger part of an average PF2 character's damage than in PF1 (where it's basically a rounding error for some characters and for others it gets put into some busted feat chain to get multiple size increases), and just lowering die size would be such a severe hinderance that it would effectively break martials that use smaller weapons.
Weapon sizes in PF1 are really janky and you need a lookup table to deal with them effectively, so they require significantly more system mastery to deal with than PF2 wants in its game (and even more to take advantage of to cheese).
Fundamentally, this is at odds with how the system wants to work and that was deliberate, so the odds of an official rule for this are approximately 0%. House rule it if it's important to you.
I don't even know how to reply to all the commentary because after all the years we've had of listening to PF1 players complain about PF2, this doesn't crack the top 5. I don't know how you're quantifying that the PF1 community is growing, but it doesn't line up with what I'm seeing, especially with how much harder PF1 is to get into (it's an actively new player hostile system).
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I find this conversation interesting in a lot of ways, the biggest of those being game historical.
What I find interesting is that if you look back at 1E D&D, you find why the big weapons have larger damage dice.
They are slower to use.
See, back in 1E, everyone rolled, I think it was a d10+dex mod (which was lower) for Initiative. That was when you first went, and when you went next was determined by what you did.
If you cast a spell, your spell had a casting time, and it actually resolved when that casting time ended, and if you were hit before then, you lost the spell.
But, every *weapon* also had a speed rating, and the bigger it was, the more time that was. A greatsword had I 9, I think, and a dagger had a 2.
So, if you are using that greatsword and go at 10, and a person with a dagger also goes at 10, it sequence would be:
You and the dagger guy at 10, dagger at 12, dagger at 14, dagger at 16, dagger at 18, and then you at 19.
Bigger weapons traded attacks for damage, and it was a thing you had to think about. If you brought a greatsword to a fight with a couple of rogues, you might well be poked to death before swinging a second time.
And if you brought a polearm, I'd feel bad for you.
But, while quite realistic, it was a cumbersome system to use, and was eventually tossed, but the damage dice were not changed, and that brings us to 50 years later, where people argue, 'why does a large and slow weapon that is made larger and slower not do more damage?', and that just amuses me.
Now, if I were going to bring something back, weapon-wise, from the past, it would be the penalty for someone with a reach weapon to hit someone who was right next to them, but I suspect a lot of people would not like that.
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I'll bet if a survey was taken, most PF1e players would have a lot of issues playing with PF2e damage calculations -- with the core issue being weapon size.Having a tiny greataxe and a huge greataxe do the same damage is just unacceptable to PF1e players. Almost always discussions about this with different PF1e players yield utterances of "dumbing it down".
This is the same thing PF1e players said about 5e.
The survey was done. 7 years ago. And you would have lost your bet.
Your experience is not necessarily representative of all PF1e players ever.
And if PF1 is your system of choice, in the words of Jason Bulmahn, that is great too.
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The weapon size issue the OP has isn't the real issue. The issue is that the mechanics are disconnected from fluff in a way that prevents some players from fully engaging with the fiction. Size bonuses are just one visible example of this, but skill feats (feats in general), how some feats sound amazing in the fluff and then do nothing at the table, monsters and players being created differently, are all things that might take a player out of the action.
PF1 often let you "fix" these troubles by "breaking" sub-optimal options and making a functional build out of them that works at good, but not broken level tables.
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I--You... You asked Copilot to explain you a game system you didn't know and became upset with the result the tells-plausible-lies box gave you based on that incomplete information?
Like, the rules are actually free. Online. Easy to access!
The reality is, comparing the damage calculation for a fire giant's great axe is a nonstarter. Monsters and PCs don't operate on the same mechanics, and the minor hit that deals to realism is more than made up for by the fact that we don't have to jump hoops making up the right numbers so that it deals the appropriate amount of damage for a 10th level monster, we just give it about the right amount of damage for a 10th level monster and justify it later if we feel like it.
I doubt extremely very many 1e diehards prefer that edition specifically or even mostly because of weapon size modifiers vs. say the many many things we have heard 1e players specifically discuss as things that turned them off 2e.
As a former 1e player (and before that, 3.5e player), I loved the change to damage, because now I can actually play a small ancestry as a martial character without being shunted into exclusively playing a Rogue if I wanted to be halfway effective at my role.
That, and the reality is, weapon damage mechanics in either edition barely touch on realism. Weapon damage is an abstraction that breaks any similarity with realism past the first couple levels. It simply doesn't matter all that much to me that a pixie taking a great sword to your exposed bits deals the same damage as an orc with the same when a 5th level character can take that hit several times in a row before they feel it.
Yep, OP made a classic blunder, almost as bad as getting involved with a land war in Asia!
In PF2, NPC stats (including damage) aren't calculated based on equipment. You want to go to this page, and scroll way down.
You select the damage from a chart based on the creatures combat level, and how good you want them to be at strikes (Low, Moderate, High, Extreme).
I find funny that OP thinks a tiny creature swinging a a greataxe "simply isn't going to be able to hit with the same force as a huge creature with a huge greataxe" in the context of a fantasy world but likely didn't have a problem with skills like Knowledge (Arcana) allowing them to literally know everything that's somehow related to arcane magic, plus identify all arcane spells, identify all magical materials or spell components, and a ton of monsters too.
This isn't a simulation, its a game. If someone wants to play a pixie with a greatsword because its funny to them only for you as a GM to tell them "well, since you are tiny you actually can't deal more than a d4 of damage with your greatsword" its just bad. This is game where even 1st level characters can wrestle with bears and fight interdimensional beings. Who cares if a small fictional being shouldn't be able to hold a weapon three times its size.
Going back to the Knowledge (Arcana) example I used earlier, I find funny that all the people that scream for realism in TTRPGs always ignore the totally unrealistic aspects of TTRPGs, which are usually in regards to stuff that's harder to measure in numbers like knowledge or expertise, while hyperfocusing on the stuff that can be measured like the amount of weight a character can lift. Like, there's people that don't want martials to do weabo fightan magic because of realism but when they get impaled three times in the chest by a demonic spear and they heal in literally less than 6 seconds because they or someone else used the Medicine skill nobody bats an eye.
I'm sorry if I sound a bit aggresive here but I just don't see the point for why someone would want a system to be designed around realism. Do you want realism for your table? That's perfectly fine, but don't make it sound as if everyone wanted that or like it was a huge problem when it isn't. If you want to add realism to your game then you are welcomed to homebrew it. Nobody agrees on what's realistic or not in TTRPGs so trying to design a system around realism is a fool's errand IMO.
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If you want realism, with all it's horrible consequences go try something like Hackmaster. I don't quite know if I'd call it realistic, but it's certainly an attempt at being more simulationist than Pathfinder is.
Well, I used Microsoft CoPilot to ask the following questions:
1. How do you calculate damage in PF2e?
2. What would the calculations look like using a greataxe for a Fire Giant?
In #1, it gave an example of a barbarian using a greataxe. Ignoring barbarian special abilities, the difference in damage centering around the greataxe my PF1e players thought just wasn't believable.
We're not asking for realism -- we're just asking for a level of believability.
I'll bet if a survey was taken, most PF1e players would have a lot of issues playing with PF2e damage calculations -- with the core issue being weapon size.
Having a tiny greataxe and a huge greataxe do the same damage is just unacceptable to PF1e players. Almost always discussions about this with different PF1e players yield utterances of "dumbing it down".
This is the same thing PF1e players said about 5e.
I have tried to understand where you are coming from because I love PF2 and think it is really easy to make small changes that help meet different tables needs, but I really don't think I understand this at all.
What levels are you trying to compare a Barbarian using a greataxe to a fire giant using a Greataxe? 10? What kind of barbarian? If it is a giant barbarian, then the barbarian is using the same sized axe. Even other kinds of barbarians are filled with all kinds of magical energy that is massively boosting their damage. If the barbarian is not raging their damage is going to fall waaaay behind. Barbarians do not represent regular people doing regular things with weapons. A Fire Giant Barbarian should do significantly more damage than a regular Barbarian in the same way. A fighter is going to be more accurate, and thus likely to crit, but do significantly less base damage.
I think trying to quantify every single aspect of a character's power using mathematical formulas makes for great power scaling discourse, but not the most balanced RPG design. In fact, I would say that simulationism and balance tend to be at odds with one another: realistic games tend to be the kind where guns beat swords every time, and most character concepts one might have in mind are likely to perform pretty poorly. I'm happy suspending disbelief if it means my wee kobold Barbarian can hit just as well as a Jotunborn of the same class.
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Well, I used Microsoft CoPilot to ask the following questions:
1. How do you calculate damage in PF2e?
2. What would the calculations look like using a greataxe for a Fire Giant?
In #1, it gave an example of a barbarian using a greataxe. Ignoring barbarian special abilities, the difference in damage centering around the greataxe my PF1e players thought just wasn't believable.
We're not asking for realism -- we're just asking for a level of believability.
I'll bet if a survey was taken, most PF1e players would have a lot of issues playing with PF2e damage calculations -- with the core issue being weapon size.
Having a tiny greataxe and a huge greataxe do the same damage is just unacceptable to PF1e players. Almost always discussions about this with different PF1e players yield utterances of "dumbing it down".
This is the same thing PF1e players said about 5e.
For the love of all that is holy do not use LLMs to tell you how a system works. They're prone to just lying at the best of times, much less parsing specific information about a system with similar names and mechanics to other systems.
I'm not going to comment on the size thing because this is clearly just going to come down to personal prefrence, but the rules are easily accessible online and you're more than capable of reading them on your own.
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I have an idea that will blow your mind.
When you spend an action to strike, you can say your large sized barbarian chops into the enemy with one mighty swing of their giant sized ax, while your kobold dragon barbarian takes a smaller ax and with far greater speed does nearly identical damage with multiple hits.
Spending one action, doing a strike, are just game terms to lead you to rolling damage. If you can't find a way to flavor things to make sense to you, that's largely a you problem.
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I just don't see the point for why someone would want a system to be designed around realism.
Yes some people do want more realism. I do get that people have different tastes. Don't assume everyone agrees with yours, or worse that just because you have a more popular opinion that there aren't large groups of people who want to do it their way. PF2 is not PBTA or FATE - it is clearly a crunchier system for people who like that. Also within PF2 there are huge play and stylistic differences.
It is always going to be a question of how much realism.
Yes people have different comprehension about what is real, and we have fantasy elements to the game. But we do have a shared real world that we all interact with as a basis of understanding.
Because many people like to build off that understanding and explore the logical consequences from there.
Deus ex Machina is not something most people like.
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I think it's not so much about strict physics realism, but more about whether it goes with or against the grain of your imagination. This isn't the first time the subject comes up. Big weapons = big damage is a popular trope.
But, so are "fast small warrior running circles around a big oaf of a giant" and "big weapon awkward in tight dungeon". PF1 had rules for polearms not working well against close by enemies, as well as bonuses to AC and to-hit for smaller creatures. Overall, PF1 definitely put more mechanical importance on size than PF2.
I've enjoyed my PF1 goliath druid that terrorized enemies in a 25ft radius by shapeshifting into a troll wielding a big horsechopper. It's an entertaining fantasy.
But what I couldn't really do in PF1 is play a goblin that's just really angry and has a hammer and will really do a big number on you. Because small PF1 races unless you were exactly the right class were just always at a disadvantage if you want to play a martial.
I think you can come at this in two ways:
- Let people build many different fantasies, and some will appeal more to some people and others more to other people.
- Strongly favor some kinds of fantasy, but to do that you have to make some others harder to do.
If you go really hard on "bigger weapons and bigger characters do much more damage" you might make it really hard for someone else to have fun playing that kobold with the bizarre pick axe weapon because he's not getting all those bonuses. Either you're too strong compared to game balance baseline, or he's too weak.
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I find this conversation interesting in a lot of ways, the biggest of those being game historical.
What I find interesting is that if you look back at 1E D&D, you find why the big weapons have larger damage dice.
They are slower to use.
See, back in 1E, everyone rolled, I think it was a d10+dex mod (which was lower) for Initiative. That was when you first went, and when you went next was determined by what you did.
If you cast a spell, your spell had a casting time, and it actually resolved when that casting time ended, and if you were hit before then, you lost the spell.
But, every *weapon* also had a speed rating, and the bigger it was, the more time that was. A greatsword had I 9, I think, and a dagger had a 2.
So, if you are using that greatsword and go at 10, and a person with a dagger also goes at 10, it sequence would be:
You and the dagger guy at 10, dagger at 12, dagger at 14, dagger at 16, dagger at 18, and then you at 19.
Bigger weapons traded attacks for damage, and it was a thing you had to think about. If you brought a greatsword to a fight with a couple of rogues, you might well be poked to death before swinging a second time.
And if you brought a polearm, I'd feel bad for you.
But, while quite realistic, it was a cumbersome system to use, and was eventually tossed, but the damage dice were not changed, and that brings us to 50 years later, where people argue, 'why does a large and slow weapon that is made larger and slower not do more damage?', and that just amuses me.
Now, if I were going to bring something back, weapon-wise, from the past, it would be the penalty for someone with a reach weapon to hit someone who was right next to them, but I suspect a lot of people would not like that.
Yep. I remember it. Big, slow heavy hitting weapons. You could get a few attacks with a dagger or small weapon before a big weapon got to go.
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Tiny Sprites can jump as high as gargantuan Titans.Diminutive Grasshoppers can jump higher than elephants
Geese can flyer than mountaims.
...I'll grant that first reading Second Edition rules, I found there not being a change in damage for size changes was a bit perplexing. However, it didn't take much to explain SOME of it away quickly. Simply put, putting a giant's sword in the hand of a medium person and expecting it to do more damage, when the weapon clearly wasn't made for an individual or that size, when you think about it, actually made sense it wouldn't cause more damage. (in fact, it maybe should do less damage if you want to cite 'realism') The leverage and such would simply not provide that much advantage, and might literally make it worse. So from that standpoint, it made perfect sense to not have it affect die size unlike how it had in first edition. A two handed sword in the hands of a gnome, may very well do more damage to someone than a longsword in the hand of a human. The gnome is using the leverage of multiple arms, vs. the human's one hand. And if using two hands, not optimized for two hands, just using it for a little extra.
Where I have to admit the 'view' seems to fail is when a Tiny Sprite's longbow, and its arrow does more damage than a human's short bow. The long bow is supposed to do more damage because it is bigger/better leverage right... but it doesn't in this case, it is smaller.
In the game, the game doesn't differentiate between small and medium... they are considered the same size, just with two different sized creatures using them. That seems a reasonable abstraction for me, though it took some getting used to. But it did bring up the idea that while considering them a S/M combined size, it seemed like there could be an acknowledgement of other sizes.
I don't think I'd considered the idea of boosting the floor or reducing the ceiling of damage, but I had considered size differences past the S/M baseline having a +1 damage (or +1 per die) bonus per the size. I imagine someone is going to complain that it hurts their sprite
Thanks for your explanation. Interesting perspective. I'll have to think about that. Seems to offer greater ability to role play without being penalized, for example, if you want to be a pixie versus a giant.
It's an interesting way to play.
I just recommend to the PF2e game designers to create an option to play it the way PF1e players are used to -- to formally define and recognize it as another option to have weapon size affect damage to help give PF2e a sense of legitimacy in the minds of the PF1e player and allow us to also feel we are playing a legitimate and accepted PF2e game -- just more in line with what we're used to.
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I just recommend to the PF2e game designers to create an option to play it the way PF1e players are used to -- to formally define and recognize it as another option to have weapon size affect damage to help give PF2e a sense of legitimacy in the minds of the PF1e player and allow us to also feel we are playing a legitimate and accepted PF2e game -- just more in line with what we're used to.
Respectfully, this strikes me as an unrealistic ask. I don't have any of the numbers that the teams at Paizo do, but I've been around these forums long enough to have heard a thing or two and get some sense of how things work. Even if Paizo had the time and energy/money to take out of their production schedule to create a variation on the base game (or, on a smaller scale, a new official variant just to address size scaling), there is almost no reason for them to do so.
An official mod for something as small and easy to houserule as weapon/creature sizes would either need to be shoved somewhere into a random book on the production schedule, or made as its own thing. Furthermore, a variant designed only to appeal to a vanishingly small holdout of PF1 players who would be appeased by exactly such a variant would have an extremely hard time justifying the page space. And then on top of that, even if it were made as a larger set of variant rules designed for broad spectrum appeal to 1e players who haven't made the switch, such a variant would likely by necessity break many things that 2e's mechanics were explicitly designed to fix.
And the unfortunate economic reality underlying this is that 2e currently has more players than 1e did at the height of its popularity (citation needed, but this has been said). Those who still play 1e likely do so out of deep love for the game and marked preference for the way it plays. Even if it were possible to convert these holdouts, there is simply not enough of them left to justify creating variants to a well-beloved system specifically for their sake. Certainly not when many of them are likely experienced enough to create their own variants if they did find 2e attractive enough to play with modification.
TL;DR - Paizo doesn't have unlimited production power to spend on items of niche appeal, and converting 2e back into an imitation of 1e for those few who might actually be convinced by that is as niche as is even worth talking about in the first place.