Pathfinder 2e

[maglag]

Elder scrolls, Fallout and around half of MMOs have unmagical weapons with limited durability charges too. Even unmagical armor has charges there.

That's what I get for not liking new video games: I don't get to enjoy shitty durability mechanics. Fallout 1+2 didn't have durability, and I don't remember Daggerfall or Morrowind having it either (or it was a drawback you could choose in Daggerfall).

Never played Daggerfall but Morrowind sure had nonmagic item durability too.

Fallout 1 and 2 had guns with limited ammo along a limited number of in-game days before things went tits up.

Games seem to repeatedly switch between "we want magical healing, because using a skill to instantly fix wounds doesn't make sense" and "we want a skill to heal wounds, because people don't like spending any money on healing items that wear out, and don't want to use found wands/potions because they're one-use and might be needed later." The other option is healing magic, but nobody wants to play the healbot.

Either everyone needs to heal to full "because magic" in the background between fights with no cost, or they need to design the game with the idea that you might be wounded going into fights, and expecting every fight to be able to wear you down to nothing is a bad idea.

Why not both? Fire Emblem Heroes normally is based on single maps where you always start at full, but then there's also gauntlet missions where you need to fight multiple maps in a row with no free heals in between so equiping healing skills and/or bringing a healer becomes a lot more important.

[Iduno]

Why not both? Fire Emblem Heroes normally is based on single maps where you always start at full, but then there's also gauntlet missions where you need to fight multiple maps in a row with no free heals in between so equipping healing skills and/or bringing a healer becomes a lot more important.

Both sounds okay, if you can trust the GM. In a video game, you can be pretty sure the creators have some idea of the balance of the game, and are going to make the gauntlets easier to survive and gives you the tools you need to survive. You can also reload more easily. Variable difficulty settings in tabletop would need to be clearly communicated, and there are a lot of idiot players and GMs.

[Pedantic]

Also, the Exile series, dunno about the Avernum remakes though. E2 even had a spell or ability to let you recharge your wands.

Having said that, whilst more or less all fantasy RPGs borrow from D&D, Exile was very big on that.

Avernum definitely still has charged wands, though they tend toward offensive spells, and the primary benefit is that they can be used to make your turns more efficient by taking extra actions.

Spiderweb has played around with a "first aid" skill as well, either as an active healing power, or often as a passive stat that heals you and recovers mp each time the battle music ends. It's useful for some dungeons that make resting difficult.

[maglag]

Why not both? Fire Emblem Heroes normally is based on single maps where you always start at full, but then there's also gauntlet missions where you need to fight multiple maps in a row with no free heals in between so equipping healing skills and/or bringing a healer becomes a lot more important.

Both sounds okay, if you can trust the GM. In a video game, you can be pretty sure the creators have some idea of the balance of the game, and are going to make the gauntlets easier to survive and gives you the tools you need to survive. You can also reload more easily. Variable difficulty settings in tabletop would need to be clearly communicated, and there are a lot of idiot players and GMs.

Well the Fire Emblem Gauntlets have multiple difficulty levels and the hardest mode will demand a max level team with skill inheritance, seals, and blessings to have a chance of winning. The only single maps that are as challenging are the ones where the game just cheats and throws you an extra-size enemy force fully pimped out in a perfect position in perfect terrain and sometimes reinforcements spawning every turn on top because why not.

And in a tabletop group "reloading" can be just as if not easier, the DM can just declare the enemy or somebody else bind the party's wounds or ressurect them, cue short timeskip/easy escape scenario and the party's back on action.

Communication is indeed important and should be used to determine what the group wants. A particularly frustating scenario for a DM is when the players show up and some are sporting super-optimized builds and other players not so much so enemies that can threaten the top players will curbstomp the weaker ones right away and enemies that the weak players can stand to will be no threat at all to the strongest players.

[tussock]

There was no wands of clw until the idea got around for using them post-3e.

Other media has potions of healing because AD&D had potions of healing and not wands of it, and other media is mostly older than 3e.

Like, healing was fucking rare in AD&D, 4d8 for a 5th level spell, 1d8 for a 1st level spell. The potion was 3d6+3, which is not much but not many monsters did more than that in a round at best, and you could get your AC so good that they wouldn't hit much anyway. That's the potions you get in other media because everything was based on AD&D.

[Pariah Dog]

I don't remember Daggerfall or Morrowind having it either (or it was a drawback you could choose in Daggerfall).

Arena and Daggerfall did have equipment wear down and you would have to take it to a armorer to repair it (and wait around a number of days too). Magic items like Torcs (Necklaces) and Rings and Crystals would have a finite number of charges you'd need to get refilled at the local mages guild.

[TiaC]

They posted their "design goals" if you can call them that.

1. Create a new edition of Pathfinder that's much simpler to learn and play—a core system that's easy to grasp but expandable—while remaining true to the spirit of what makes Pathfinder great: customization, flexibility of story, and rules that reward those who take the time to master them.
2. Ensure that the new version of the game allows us to tell the same stories and share in the same worlds as the previous edition, but also makes room for new stories and new worlds wherever possible.
3. Work to incorporate the innovations of the past decade into the core engine of the game, allowing the best rules elements and discoveries we've made to have an integrated home in the new system (even if they aren't present in the initial book).
4. Forge a more balanced play environment where every character has a chance to contribute to the adventure in a meaningful way by allowing characters to thrive in their defined role. Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group.
5. Make Pathfinder a game that's open and welcoming to all, no matter their background or experience.

[GâtFromKI]

I guess I'll copy/paste what I wrote on their forum: I can't even figure how point 1 and point 4 could be achieved at the same time.

Point 1: "rules that reward those who take the time to master them"; so I guess the reward is "being more efficient"? Be it because the character is more powerfully builded, or because he is more efficiently played.

Point 4: "forge a more balanced play environment where every character has a chance to contribute to the adventure in a meaningful way by allowing characters to thrive in their defined role"; huh, no, a character isn't allowed to be more efficient than another one. If two players play rogues, they both should be allowed to contribute in a meaningful way - even if one player masters the system and the other doesn't.

So what is the "reward" they're talking about in point 1?

... The whole thing looks more like commercial blurb than actual design goals. "The game will have all existing qualities, even if those qualities contradict themselves!".

... In the other hand, that's how PF2 actually works: you don't like infinite healing? We removed wands of CLW. You need infinite healing? We created a skill for that. You don't like mandatory magic items? We removed the +Str belt and the +Save item. You think mandatory items are great? We made the magic sword and the magic armor even more mandatory than ever. You don't like when when PCs sell the magic axe they found because no one can use it? Now magic weapon are materia, you can transfer it from a weapon to another. You like when PCs sell their magic items? Now we have trinket that are basically impossible to use - it can only be used by a PC of the right class who selected the right feat, the probability a PC can use a trinket they loot is ~0%. Etc

Anyway, point 1 is a failure (the game is even more byzantine than PF1, and the players are usually punished for having system's mastery - see every Colette's thread, the game becomes less and less playable the more rules you use), point 2 is a failure (magic is so inconsequential, I can't imagine Runelords being powerful), point 3 I have no idea what it mean (should Path 2 be propelled by apocalypse? should it use only 2/3 spellcasters because those are the only classes that are balanced in Path 1? should it use bounded accuracy? I dunno), point 4 is a failure (how do you intend to balance a game where the barbarian has the same damage as the fighter, but only 75% of the time and with lower defenses?), point 5 I don't know about any game that doesn't do it (... I'm lying. RaHoWa and FATAL don't accomplish this point. those are outliers) but I guess saying it explicitly is better.

[tussock]

Design goals for a new edition are essentially a list of things that are wrong with the previous edition, plus a list of things that must not be changed while trying to fix that.

1. Create a new edition of Pathfinder that's much simpler to learn and play—a core system that's easy to grasp but expandable—while remaining true to the spirit of what makes Pathfinder great: customization, flexibility of story, and rules that reward those who take the time to master them.
2. Ensure that the new version of the game allows us to tell the same stories and share in the same worlds as the previous edition, but also makes room for new stories and new worlds wherever possible.
3. Work to incorporate the innovations of the past decade into the core engine of the game, allowing the best rules elements and discoveries we've made to have an integrated home in the new system (even if they aren't present in the initial book).
4. Forge a more balanced play environment where every character has a chance to contribute to the adventure in a meaningful way by allowing characters to thrive in their defined role. Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group.
5. Make Pathfinder a game that's open and welcoming to all, no matter their background or experience.

#1 says PF1 is too hard to get into. I agree entirely. That is it's greatest flaw by far. The classes that get some fiddly little thing every level, on top of archetypes that change arbitrary elements of that progression, on top of feat chains and all the other options, it's just stupidly complicated to understand how to turn an idea into a character by reading the books.

Liking system mastery is kinda weird in 2018 though. google exists. For 3.0, in 2000, I understand system mastery, it was a big deal in the 80's and 90's, and the prosaic books of yore made searching for stuff less bad, but it's a stupid idea now. Everything needs to work because people just look it up, and the books are way too full of math that most players don't interact with, they just google the answer.

So I'm gunna say that last bit is bullshit and the more they stick to it the worse the game will be. Which, kinda sucks in a game with lots of options, if none of them are particularly good or bad, well, that makes choosing painful, rather than fun. See also CRPG changes in the last twenty years. Way less choices, way more impact behind each, that's the current zeitgeist, put it up front rather than hidden behind twenty garbage choices that people bypass with a net search.

#2 ... PF1 didn't really support the stories in the modules they made for PF1, so continuing to support the PF1 module stories and also many more stories, uh, OK. Like, it's still all XP for killing things and then, uh, we're not supposed to slaughter the entire town before setting off to the dungeon? Money is power but not greyhawk the whole planet? Kill the magic mart merchant in his sleep and win? Pfft. Bullshit, they're not even trying.

#3 Keeping all the good splatbook stuff. Which, they seem to think is "alchemists". Here, designers seem to keep falling into the trap of believing people like the concept of "a character throwing bomb potions", rather than people just like effective characters. There are people who play Monks because Ember looks cool, but mostly they end up not liking RPGs because their GM didn't throw enough unique powerup artifacts at them to compensate for being a Monk, while the "system mastery" people just don't play Monks.

Which is to say, designers often get the completely wrong idea about what is "good", when trying to keep it. This seems, uh, fully on display with PF2.

Like the thing with getting rid of wands, and then replacing the function with something else. People don't like the emergent game properties of the function! There's a huge problem with every fight being tightly balanced where if one PC doesn't show for the session you have to change all the fights so the party can win at all, it's so much mind caulk to overlook that all the time, and smaller fights just being totally pointless.

More than that though, if you went to see your favourite band and they asked you personally what your favourite song was and then just played that same song all night, for hours, eeew. It doesn't work, you need little fights for those big drag out fights to feel good, and for little fights to be a valid use of game time you can't have unlimited post-fight healing. It's just bad. People express that as "I don't like wands of CLW", but it's not the wands!!!!!!

Lots of little changes in RPG editions are like this. 4e D&D was so much this all over the place. People can't tell you they dislike healing, they like healing, they like being fully healed, just the game that results from everyone being fully healed all the time is terrible, so they tell you they dislike wands of CLW, but also like being fully healed, and the response to that in PF2 completely misses the point.

And it misses the point because PF modules have always had bullshit hard fights everywhere to compensate for the wand of CLW effect, which worked and people liked within that rules complex, but for a new edition it's just a bad idea and they do not hear that.

#4 Is apparent in the playtest. They tried to give you strong mechanical reasons to play within your character's niche, and support others within their own niche. As you can see in this thread, some don't much like that, especially when one class' niche is "healing", and other classes like Monk still don't have a niche that works at all. Plus, the numbers on what monsters put out make some of it dysfunctional.

@GâtFromKl, I think that's what they mean. So Rogues should have a niche they shine in regardless of system mastery, but they'll be better still if you get gud (or google the answer like a real person). I'm not sure they'll get far on it, but that's what they're aiming for.

#5 ... hmm. I think they mean they want to be less racist and stuff. That's a fine life goal.

[FatR]

If you translate these design goals from Marketing to English, you will get approximately the following: "We want to sell you fifty books worth of fiddly mechanical shit we generate without thinking all over again, and we don't want to actually work on it either".

If I had to rewrite PF1, my design goals would have been to address several key flaws while keeping the rest, particularly the core mechanics, relatively the same:

(1)Prune hard the uncontrolled growth of class powers, archetypes, feats, etc. Un-nerf, combine trees into single things, delete, until you get about to 3.0's overall level of complexity. Tone down numbers a bit as well.

(2)Address underlying gameplay problems thanks to which PF1 adventures need a lot of gentlemen agreements to work without turning into effortless stomps because of 5-minute workdays or without the party getting gangbanged by the whole dungeon converging on it or/and murderbosses, created with 5-minute workdays in mind. While this requires changes to the design philosophy of adventures, the resource management scheme also needs to be addressed.

(3)Place the whole game on the power scale given by the corebook level range. Raise level cap to 25 or 30 if you must, but no Mythic rules bullshit that gates all the content you may want to fight in the latter half of an actual high fantasy campaign behind a broken subsystem from a supplement you must buy separately.

(4)Fix various specific issues, like Stealth or Diplomacy being total clusterfucks.

Hype the game as PF1, but fixed, just like PF1 was hyped as 3.5, but fixed. The entire reason anyone buys your game is that people would like to keep playing 3.5! And for fuck's sake, you've witnessed what happened when Wizards started putting out editions of DnD that couldn't be plausibly presented as the natural evolution of the older rules. The proposed PF2 is different from its immediate predecessor on all levels, including basic combat resolution mechanics, even the change from 3.5 to 4 was arguably less profound.

[Username17]

If you translate these design goals from Marketing to English, you will get approximately the following: "We want to sell you fifty books worth of fiddly mechanical shit we generate without thinking all over again, and we don't want to actually work on it either".

Basically yes. They've gibbered out a bunch of marketing-speak that basically just says that they intend to do a reboot. There aren't actually any goals in there other than "do what we did before, just updated so that it's now instead of then."

Like, sometimes people do reboots because they have specific goals. Sometimes those are bad goals, like Man of Steel where they did a grim and gritty Superman reboot based on Objectivist philosophy. And sometimes those are good goals, like Dark Knight where they rebooted Batman with a grim and gritty modern semi-plausible tech vibe. But sometimes the only goal is "we can't figure out how to make any money out of this property without rebooting the franchise, so we're hitting the reset button." Like the Andrew Garfield Spiderman movies.

And that's honestly where this whole thing feels like it's going. There's no vision, there's no admission of what actual problems PAthfinder even had. And there's no reason for me to care. I don't see how that could possibly be enough. If the only reason we're doing a reboot is because 3rd edition is now old enough to vote and have children of its own and we can't get shelf space without putting out a new edition, why the fuck should I buy any of it? Paizo doesn't have the hype any more. They have no more "right" to make a new edition of 3rd edition D&D than K and I do.

-Username17

[CapnTthePirateG]

Again.

What the fuck were were expecting? This is Paizo we're talking about, not a company known for insightful design and quality products.

[GâtFromKI]

Again.

What the fuck were were expecting?

3 things:

1/ Paizo has made only poor system until now, but until now they were constrained by the 3.5 framework. if they don't like it, maybe they could do something good by starting from scratch without any 3.5 heritage?

2/ Even a broken clock is right twice per day. They could have done something good by chance.

In the same vein: I think Games Workshop is very bad at designing rules for tabletop game (their rules are fun at first, but unbalanced, and the more and more you play it, the more and more exploits you find - until you reach a point the game is completely degenerate); but Blood Bowl 2 is one of the best tabletop game I know.

3/ It's like looking at an accident in slow motion. You know the ineluctable end, you can't do anything, but you can't look away.


Spoiler: point 1 and 2 don't stand anymore since PF 2 is awful - in every way a game can be awful.

Point 3 stands more than ever, since their schedule doesn't give them enough time to correct (and test) all the systemic problem of PF2. The game can be better than it is now at release, but there's no way it can be good.

[Previn]

1/ Paizo has made only poor system until now, but until now they were constrained by the 3.5 framework. if they don't like it, maybe they could do something good by starting from scratch without any 3.5 heritage?

They DID make a game from scratch. Starfinder. It's a literal dumpster fire of an MMO grind and factually, provably broken math.

[Orca]

Does anyone know if Starfinder is at all popular? On the shelves in places where local game stores still exist &/or played at RPG conventions are measures which occur to me, but I'll take anything.

[Axebird]

Starfinder is terrible, but it's definitely not a game made from scratch. It's clearly Pathfinder with a few changes they were considering for 2nd edition thrown in.

[Mord]

Does anyone know if Starfinder is at all popular? On the shelves in places where local game stores still exist &/or played at RPG conventions are measures which occur to me, but I'll take anything.

Starfinder was released on August 17 2017. According to ICv2, Starfinder was #2 seller among all RPGs in the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018, outselling Pathfinder 1e and being beaten only by D&D 5e.

[Previn]

Does anyone know if Starfinder is at all popular? On the shelves in places where local game stores still exist &/or played at RPG conventions are measures which occur to me, but I'll take anything.

Starfinder was released on August 17 2017. According to ICv2, Starfinder was #2 seller among all RPGs in the second half of 2017 and the first half of 2018, outselling Pathfinder 1e and being beaten only by D&D 5e.

I expect that's GenCon hype followed by a slow lingering death.

I mean roll20 shows it 12th on the list for Q4 2017, and 11th for Q1 2018, and that's clearly a skewed by lots of games being created and not being filled by players. When you have 1403 games and only 1823 players, there is not a lot of interest in actually playing it. If it wasn't buoyed by the number of games, it would drop way way down into the bottom third the roll2 rankings.

[Orca]

So they've got a new game boost at least, but it mightn't be wise for them to do an extended playtest of PF2 relying on Starfinder cashflow. Thanks.

[Neurosis]

Example : counterspell.

There's a level 1 wizard feat to counterspell (p 139). It's a reaction, with trigger "a creature casts a spell that you have prepared." There's no indication about how you identify a spell being cast. So you look at the description of the arcana skill (p 145), there's no reaction for identifying a spell being cast. There's nothing either about identifying a spell being cast in the Casting spells section of the spell chapter (p 195). So it's automatic, the MC has to say which spell is being cast ?...

... That's until someone takes the feat Recognize spell (p 170). It's a reaction, that allow you to recognize a spell being cast. So you need a feat to identify a spell being cast and use a counterspell. And a reaction.

... Except you can use only one reaction per turn. Even if you have several reactions per turn, you can use only 1 reaction on any given trigger (p 422) (this rule about "1 reaction per trigger" isn't stated p 7 in the section about reactions, but it's stated in the glossary p 422 for some reason).

Hence I have no idea how you can counter a spell.

HOW THE FUCK DO YOU COUNTER A SPELL??

Anyway, yes/no question: is Pathfinder 2E really, at its heart, in its soul basically the same game engine as D&D 3.5 or not? Just with a lot of fiddly house rules?

[GâtFromKI]

Anyway, yes/no question: is Pathfinder 2E really, at its heart, in its soul basically the same game engine as D&D 3.5 or not?

Long story short: no.

[deaddmwalking]

If I could characterize what I think is driving this; they're trying to simplify and codify options to reduce complexity (ie, more like a board game), but they're also really bad at that. Things like redefining the actions available (quote below for reference):

"It's your turn. You get to take three actions. That's it. You want to move three times? Done. Instead you want to move once, draw your sword, and attack? No problem. How about attack three times? Go ahead (but you'll take an increasing penalty for each additional attack). With only a few notable exceptions, most things in the game now take one action to accomplish. Opening a door, drawing a weapon, reloading a crossbow, moving up to your speed, raising your shield, taking a guarded step, swinging your greataxe—all of these and much more take just one action to perform."

3 actions and one reaction. Most everything is one action, and you can repeat them as you wish. 3 moves, 3 attacks, 2 moves and an attack. Spells usually cost 2 actions, but some quick ones cost just 1 action.

Now, I don't know if that's up to date or not, but if you're a first level character you can draw a weapon, walk to an enemy and attack once. If you're 15th level, you can draw a weapon, walk to an enemy, and attack once. In 3.x (and Pathfinder), drawing a weapon doesn't count as action if you move and have a BAB +1 or higher. So very clearly a 'high level martial' is even more redundant.

Things like that don't really do anything to make the game better.

[Iduno]

Now, I don't know if that's up to date or not, but if you're a first level character you can draw a weapon, walk to an enemy and attack once. If you're 15th level, you can draw a weapon, walk to an enemy, and attack once. In 3.x (and Pathfinder), drawing a weapon doesn't count as action if you move and have a BAB +1 or higher. So very clearly a 'high level martial' is even more redundant.

Things like that don't really do anything to make the game better.

It either punishes the player for being stupid enough to roll a fighter, or makes the PCs always carry their weapons in their hands so they don't have to draw them. Neither of those is an improvement, either.

Edit: or it makes people think playing a monk is a good idea, because they're always armed. Anything that makes monks look good without actually making monks not bad is an insult that demands Piazo issue a retraction and heartfelt apology to all of the people affected by their unreasonable actions.

[Ice9]

I played one of the PF2 playtests, on the request of other group members, and the main feeling I got from it was "much complexity for little reward". Like, 3.x is overcomplicated, but at least it allows you to do amusingly crazy stuff, and there are benefits to "monsters work like PCs", although it causes issues as well.

PF2, I had to pick over a dozen feats (most of them individually very crap) and select a bunch of other things in order to end up with a Barbarian that ... just punched people and did damage, plus some skills that were about exactly where you'd expect for the level, and the use of which was often up to the GM anyway.

Some groups don't give a shit about knot-cutting or being able to themselves do the things the adventures talk about NPCs doing (or even actively dislike such). So for those groups I can see the appeal of using a system where you stay the fuck inside the box and do the adventure like it was planned to be done, no fancy tricks desired or allowed. But a system for that doesn't need to be remotely as fiddly as PF2.

[GâtFromKI]

It either punishes the player for being stupid enough to roll a fighter, or makes the PCs always carry their weapons in their hands so they don't have to draw them. Neither of those is an improvement, either.

It seems the exploration rules prevents you from carrying your weapon in your hand while looking around or while doing anything else than raising your shield.