The Gaming Den

It seems like a "convenient" excuse to see just how little you can actually work while still having your fans buy your product. The "waiting to see if people like the new format" sets off all kinds of alarms

GâtFromKI wrote:What's the purpose of a game element the pcs can't interact with ? Why does Paizo pretend they're writing game while it's so obvious they want to write novels ?

It seems to be what their audience wants. Presumably GMs rather than players. "A ton of lore for interesting characters from the setting" as one poster on their site put it.

Or as I'd put it, "Let me tell you about my 42 characters; it'll only cost you 35 dollars".

Seems like there will also be some crunch, "secret techniques, items, and knowledge PCs might gain from encountering these larger-than-life figures". Of course they might be a bit too busy to pass on their secret techniques to the PCs (maybe busy being dead, in some cases). It's like Paizo looked at Golarion and decided what it needed was lots of Elminster-type figures to interact with the PCs.

amethal wrote: Or as I'd put it, "Let me tell you about my 42 characters; it'll only cost you 35 dollars".

Let me tell you about my characters, also without telling you much about them, because I don't know yet.

Can I handle my pc the same way?

"I play an awesome gunslinger with a gun which can destroy any protection. I don't have a statblock since it would allow you to challenge my character - you can simply assume I succeed any roll, I'm never hit and my weapon bypass any defense."

It sounds an awful lot like that PC would be able to impact a railroad in some way, so that's a no from me dawg. This is PF2e, we can't have that.

GâtFromKI wrote:Can I handle my pc the same way?

Yes, but not in the way you want. You can play where you don't have a stat block, and only succeed when the GM's story (which he bought from Paizo) says you're allowed to.

Iduno wrote:Yes, but not in the way you want. You can play where you don't have a stat block, and only succeed when the GM's story (which he bought from Paizo) says you're allowed to.

And you still have to roll at about 50/50 odds if you're anything but optimal - can't have you critically succeed, now can we?

In Pathfinder, any craft takes (at least) 4 days.

I guess baking a cake or cooking a meal is some kind of craft (since it doesn't seem there's anything else which could handle baking or cooking). Hence it takes 4 days to bake a cake or to prepare a coffee.

In the other hand, any craft takes 4 days if you have enough raw material. So you can construct a castle, or an aircraft carrier, or a death star within 4 days.

GâtFromKI wrote:In the other hand, any craft takes 4 days if you have enough raw material. So you can construct a castle, or an aircraft carrier, or a death star within 4 days.

Et tu, Histoire?

Being fair, however, dnd skill systems didn't apply to "real world stuff" even back in 3E. I mean, unless all adults were level 8+ commoners, dnd-land is a world where people fucks up three out of four times at everything they try (DC 15 being the default), which means they'd be a culture of spazzes that would never have been able to even reach the stone age (or, conversely, since dnd-land is creationist/interventionist, a world where the gods and their angels do everything for people and they just sit and eat and crap like Wall-E's humans).

Dogbert wrote: Being fair, however, dnd skill systems didn't apply to "real world stuff" even back in 3E. I mean, unless all adults were level 8+ commoners, dnd-land is a world where people fucks up three out of four times at everything they try (DC 15 being the default)

A level 1 NPC with 4 ranks in a skill and a +1 stat bonus can consistently pass a DC 15 skill check by taking 10. I'm not sure where you're getting level 8 from.

Where are you getting DC 15 as the default? The craft skill has simple items at DC 5 and typical items at DC 10. Making them takes 8 hours/(DC*check result/item price in sp). Common meals cost 3sp per day, so even an untrained cook can make their own food in 2:40 a day by taking 10. Since that's completely from scratch and includes small beer and bread, I'd say that's not horribly inaccurate.

Maybe Dogbert's using D&D 5e's skill system?

It seems there've corrected the pregen characters - now they follow the bulk rules. It seems there was two layers of errors in the bulk values - the values given in the crb were wrong (there's an errata), and the computation on each pregen was wrong.

And people on the official forum are still arguing Bulk is simple. The designers themselves literally make mistake over mistake when using this system, but people are arguing it's very simple. It's quite amazing.

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edit: By the way, could someone draw a gnome or a halfling with handholds? I want to create a new pathfinder meme...

long story short: bulk values are supposed to take into account not only the weight, but how convenient it is to carry something. Ie, an heavy stuff with handhold may have a lower bulk value than something lighter but without any way to conveniently carry it. So far so good.

According to the rules, a halfling or a gnome is 3 bulks; while their plate armor is 5 bulk (4 bulk if worn). ie, carrying an halfling armor is less convenient than carrying an halfling - even though the armor is lighter and can be more easily compacted (eg storing the arms of the armor in the breastplate).

My explanation: in Golarion, halflings and gnomes have handholds.

Pregen characters are often really really bad. They are often created while the rules are in flux, and even when they are penned after the rules have cooled and congealed they are written by people who remember alternate proposals for the rules. Making rules errors under those circumstances is very easy, and it's why the pregens in games like Shadowrun almost never have their point totals add up properly. It isn't just that people are uninvested in getting the editing done properly - it's that they are often written with respect to rules and costs that changed at some point during the design and development process.

Of course, the PF2 Bulk rules are a war crime, but pregen characters not using them as written isn't much of a data point to prove that.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Pregen characters are often really really bad. They are often created while the rules are in flux, and even when they are penned after the rules have cooled and congealed they are written by people who remember alternate proposals for the rules. Making rules errors under those circumstances is very easy, and it's why the pregens in games like Shadowrun almost never have their point totals add up properly. It isn't just that people are uninvested in getting the editing done properly - it's that they are often written with respect to rules and costs that changed at some point during the design and development process.

Of course, the PF2 Bulk rules are a war crime, but pregen characters not using them as written isn't much of a data point to prove that.

-Username17

... I guess I think to much as an programmer and not enough as a RPG designer.

When you program, you have to test your code after each (publishable) change. (i won't define "publishable" here, but obviously the published version should be a publishable version). When you apply this principle to RPGs, it means you have to recreate PCs from scratch after each (publishable) modification. You can't just take a part of the numbers you've got with another version of the rules, somehow merge it with another part of the PC you've got with another version, and call it a day: you have to do everything from scratch - you just read the last version of the rules and do what the rules tells you to do.

If you don't do that... Well, I can't say it's a big surprise if your game is unplayable as-is and it requires a patch from day one.

GâtFromKI wrote:... I guess I think to much as an programmer and not enough as a RPG designer.

It's a common issue we have. For perspective, imagine somebody desk checking some code they wrote, but not bothering to look up another module they used in it. That second module has been changed in response to a shift in the whole project, and some functions actually do different things now.

That's what happens in RPG development "testing". People say "oh, I know how that bit works, I don't have to look it up." But somebody else has changed that bit, so now the first guy's work is invalid and nobody knows.

TiaC wrote:Where are you getting DC 15 as the default? The craft skill has simple items at DC 5 and typical items at DC 10. Making them takes 8 hours/(DC*check result/item price in sp).

Thanks for the reminder. It's been 10 years, I have forgotten most of d20 by now.

I've read this awesome though on the Paizo's forum :

some paizil wrote:By the rules of PF2, there is basically no benefit to attempting to surprise someone.

And honestly, I'm glad for it.

A bit of context: no one understand how the transition from exploration mode to encounter mode works, especially when surprise is involved, so there's a new thread about every 2 weeks.

I think this Paizil guy has understood the only quality of the game: by the rule of PF2, there is basically no benefit to attempting anything - hence the GM can resume his railroad without any PC interference.

GâtFromKI wrote:by the rule of PF2, there is basically no benefit to attempting anything - hence the GM can resume his railroad without any PC interference.

In today's meta, that's a "feature, not a bug."

Dogbert wrote:In today's meta, that's a "feature, not a bug."

This is, indeed, how I interpreted the "honestly, I'm glad for it" in the paizil's post I quoted. And this is why I find this quote awesome: to see a fanboy's mind transforming some obvious flaws into features is quite fascinating.

It's maddening. A friend of mine pulled the friend card to get me to play in his 5e game which I'd rejected multiple times and now having sat down and made a character I hate 5e more now than I did before. There is nothing in this game and the reasoning he has for liking 5e is the same 'less is more' story's attitude.

MGuy wrote:It's maddening. A friend of mine pulled the friend card to get me to play in his 5e game which I'd rejected multiple times and now having sat down and made a character I hate 5e more now than I did before. There is nothing in this game and the reasoning he has for liking 5e is the same 'less is more' story's attitude.

Specifically, you being able to do less allows me to tell more of the novel I've written.

Also if the cover of the next Ap's players guide is any indication we can assume things are not going to improve.

Bit of a late news spoiler, but according to people with early copies of the GameMastery Guide, Gestalt is now a legal thing you can do in Pathfinder 2e, and the book says that to adjust encounter difficulty for it the most you might need to do is bump the level up by 1, and only if your group is hardcore optimizers.

They're still making PF2e books?