The Gaming Den

I took the time to read the Fighter and all I could think is "why is this so fucking complicated"? I mean, I am glad that Fighters have options other than "hit" but choosing from like 18 feats at every goddamn level seems unnecessary and overwhelming, ESPECIALLY if as a few people have mentioned most of them are crap/trap options. Craptraps.

And yes by the time I got to the end, Fighters still have no abilities that make them relevant at high levels of play. But then again I haven't read the Wizard so I don't know if high levels of play even exist as I understand them from 3.X, I don't know if Wizards can still Wizard or if they got 4E'd.

I also don't really get what they're going for in making you pick up your racial bonuses piece-meal rather than getting them all at once? Like I don't see why or how needing to take my dwarven weapon proficiencies, my dwarven poison resistance, and my dwarven anti-giant training as separate feats makes anything more fun or better.

I don't really get what's up with needing to take an action to raise your shield, either. I mean...did shields really need to get nerfed? I guess I don't TOTALLY hate it because it does seem to make melee feel a little bit more like Dark Souls but it's just such a strange choice.

Honestly, this and the fact that I am currently involved around some pretty good Pathfinder campaigns is making me appreciate Pathfinder 1E a lot more.

GâtFromKI wrote:

Iduno wrote: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.

So they noticed that their design was so fucked people would naturally use a work-around, and their "fix" is to remove the work-around? I wish I was still capable of being surprised by things like that.

Iduno wrote:

GâtFromKI wrote:

Iduno wrote: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.

So they noticed that their design was so fucked people would naturally use a work-around, and their "fix" is to remove the work-around? I wish I was still capable of being surprised by things like that.

They didn't notice anything. I don't think they have any idea of the rule they wrote. I guess they employ mercenaries to write rules, but since no one re-read what they write, no one knows what the written rules are.

As I said, it seems the exploration rules prevents you from carrying your weapon in your hand while looking around or while doing anything. As in: "no one knows if it's actually possible to carry your weapon in hand while looking around". It's not a correction for something they noticed, it's just poorly-written rules.

More precisely, the exploration tactic "raise your shield" is the only tactic mentioning you carry your weapon in your hand. You can either interpret this either as "since it's the only one saying you have your weapon in hand, it's the only one allowing you to have your weapon in hand", either as "tactics don't have to state explicitly you can carry your weapon in hand, so you can have your weapon in hand with any tactic". The first interpretation sounds stupid, but:
1/ some people are actively defending it on the messageboard. They argue that the "search" tactic requires you to touch thing with your hand and you can't do that with weapon in hand.
2/ more importantly, it's not more stupid than the rest of the exploration rules. I mean, there's an explicit rule saying that when several PC are searching, you roll only for the best PC - so the other PCs aren't contributing at all. That's an actual rule actually written in the book.

All-in-all, PF2 rules are the houserules of Mark Steifer re-houseruled by a bunch mercenaries without any consideration for what the other mercenaries wrote, and the exploration rules are a bunch of punitive houserules designed to prevent PCs from doing anything.


... Oh, and i can't resist. One of the goal of the exploration rules should be to handle the transition with combat mode. The actual example actually given in the actual book is: Kyra is negotiating with a goblin king, Merisiel loses her patience and decide to jump on a chandelier to initiate combat. She's in front of the goblin king, and instead of stabbing him with a concealed dagger or something, she suddenly jump on the chandelier in the middle of the conversation. This allows her to use her acrobatics skill in place of initiative. I'm not exagerating, that's actually what's written in the book. I guess Kyra can initiate combat by reading a prayer book to use her religion skill for initiative.

And then, when combat start there's an actual loading screen. Not literally, but if you were doing some activity that can't be done during combat, like casting a spell with 10-minutes casting time, the activity is disrupted. It's not disrupted when someone attacks you or when you take some combat action instead of pursuing the activity, it's disrupted when the MC declare the combat mode starts. It's literally disrupted by the start of combat. That's an actual rule in the actual book. In other words, if you're casting a 10-minutes casting-time-spell and Merisiel jumps on a chandelier, your spell is disrupted. So my interpretation is there's a loading screen disrupting casting and other long activity.

Note: verbal casting is noisy, so there's a non-null chance some lone slick goblin come to check during your casting. This disrupt your spell, even if the fighter one-shot the goblin before he gets a chance to act.

It's weird, I can touch things while holding a knife or sword in one hand, and I'm not even a trained adventurer!

I foresee a lot of arguments about skills as initiative.

I don't know if I have the strength to read this thread. just downloaded the playtest, seen that they add like a billion parts to every character and class and basic rule terminology gets all streamlined in a way that can only be described as "so the idiots who think you can have three arms because nowhere does it say you only have two arms on a human" are stopped right in their tracks...

I mean... fuck. the goblin doesn't get a bite attack, he gets a jaw unarmed attack. what even am I supposed to feel right now other than the desider to suck off a loaded gun

That's the best light I can put on P2 at this point: at least they're aiming to avoid having to do the "you can do a Stunning Fist with a kick, no wait unarmed strike are punch only, you can't flurry of blows with stuff in your hands, Final Destination only, oh wait that breaks half the game we're walking that back wait we can't walk back it's company policy oh fuck huh well when you flurry you have virtual hands so..." flurry of erratas.

remember the free action errata that made it impossible to shoot more than 3 arrows on your turn? urgh. I guess they are tailoring the new system to their experience with their customers. ok. gonna give them credit for that.

One of the bullet points on the back of the box is that 2nd Edition is supposed to simplify and condense the game.

That shit definitely isn't happening. The core rulebook is apparently going to be 640 pages.

So they just put up art of the new design for there Iconic Amiri and am I wrong in thinking she is pretty sickly looking?

https://paizo.com/image/content/Pathfin ... -Amiri.jpg

Especially compared to her old look

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/pat ... 0602015712

I think she just finished an adventure in the underdark. Messed with her sleep
schedule and complexion is all.

She looks like she's dying of ghoul fever or hitting undernourishment, to me. She's supposed to be an absurdly buff colossus that swings a sword made for someone 15 feet tall, I would've expected them to update the art to match that better rather than worse.

Axebird wrote:One of the bullet points on the back of the box is that 2nd Edition is supposed to simplify and condense the game.

That shit definitely isn't happening. The core rulebook is apparently going to be 640 pages.

560 pages for the PF1 equivalent. It's not a lot more but yeah, certainly not less.

Meh, her new skin tone might be more indicative of her origin. She comes from the "far north" equivalent land, after all (and she had a tan on PF1). Her new expression seems to say "I've been fighting vampires and taking WIS damage all night. If you so much as talk to me I'll fucking snap".

The thing I don't quite like though is the fact that she is not nearly buff enough to wield a large 2-handed bastard sword, as was mentioned by Axebird (this was also the case in PF1, of course). I don't get the fear of drawing chicks with weight lifter's bodies. There is one in overwatch that has some sort of minigun and she looks fine and badass, not at all silly.

The other thing that bothers me is that all the weight of her armor is concentrated on her arms... you know, the same arms that have to wield a 50 pound monstrous sword. What's up with THAT?

Yesterday's Hero wrote:I don't get the fear of drawing chicks with weight lifter's bodies.

Like, this weightlifter's body?


Pop culture musculature is often ridiculously overwrought, and it skews our expectations, but such caricatures bear little resemblance to an actual (and in this case Olympic gold medalist) athlete.
The only part of Amiri's body you can see well enough to judge is her midriff, which is very slender, but acceptably muscled.

angelfromanotherpin wrote: Pop culture musculature is often ridiculously overwrought, and it skews our expectations, but such caricatures bear little resemblance to an actual (and in this case Olympic gold medalist) athlete.
The only part of Amiri's body you can see well enough to judge is her midriff, which is very slender, but acceptably muscled.

Uh, yeah. These two bodies are indeed very similar even if Amiri is more slender. Tara is on the short side at only 154 Cm, so the barbarian might make it up on the height difference if she's 10 or 20 Cm taller.

I've seen buffer women, but I don't think I've ever paid that much attention to Olympian weightlifters.

A Medium Bastard Sword is 6 lb, so that's 12 lb for Amiri's at size Large.

I have no idea if a 48 Kg Olympian can wield a 5.5 Kg weapon effectively in combat. In PF 1 she takes non-insignificant penalties on it due to the size difference of the weapon. A greatsword is significantly lighter at 8 lb (3.6 Kg).

So, whatever, I take it back then. I rather like the new look for her.

2e looks like it’s going to be DOA at this point. Word of mouth is minimal, the communities I frequent have exactly one ardent 2e defender, and the only place I’ve seen receive it positively is their own forums. Unless Paizo gets a lot of marketing done before the August release day, there probably won’t even be an edition war.

This is as it should be. The question becomes, what happens afterward? Ideally, when one of the biggest providers of monkey-typewriter design backed by extra-bullshit marketing has that model fail hard, the industry would take a long look at itself and shift towards something else. But I think the odds of that are... not good.

angelfromanotherpin wrote:This is as it should be. The question becomes, what happens afterward? Ideally, when one of the biggest providers of monkey-typewriter design backed by extra-bullshit marketing has that model fail hard, the industry would take a long look at itself and shift towards something else. But I think the odds of that are... not good.

I think improv reigns supreme for the forseeable future. We're in for a lot of theater games disguised as indie RPGs, comedy/storytelling streams with a gentle patina of 5e and designers actually trying to write game systems migrating over to board games.

We truly are in the hobby's dark age.

What did Paizo think this would accomplish? They already had Starfinder, which definitely needs more support than it currently has.

Stupider things than PF2 have been successful in this market. I wouldn't call it dead until the dust settles.

[quote="WiserOdin032402"]What did Paizo think this would accomplish? They already had Starfinder, which definitely needs more support than it currently has.[/quote]

and is already on it's way out if the latest ICV2 ratings are anything to go by

Alas, thanks to payola applied to social media, you can keep the people convinced the king is not naked for as long as the money keeps flowing.

Purple Duck Games seems to be turning their Porphyra setting initially released for PF into its own game but with relatively minor rules changes/fixes, so basicallly PF 1.5 (or D&D 3.79 depending on how you look at it).

Re: Amiri bod

I actually agree that she looks pretty sickly in the new art but it isn't a matter of muscle definition but rather it's the fact that in the new art she has a giant fuckin' noggin compared to the rest of her body. That's some amateur hour shit because the whole point of the "Girls get big heads" cheat is that it reads as delicate and childish.