The Gaming Den

Oh god, they actually kept using the term ancestry instead of switching to something unambiguous like species.

Axebird wrote:

Axebird wrote:

WTF?! Placing these side by side shows only failure and lack of planning. So you spend a feat to barely succeed at low difficulty tasks?

EDIT: Well, to be fair, the feat does exactly what it says on the tin: "you can perform basic tasks".

Still, weak-sauce as fuck.

Those are from the playtest. They axed the mega table and instead have a vague recommendation of simple categories without examples, and level based DCs for identifying items and stuff. Here's the finished product:





Proficiency bonus is Level + (2 if Trained; 4 if Expert; 6 if Master; 8 if Legendary). Your proficiency bonus is always 0 if you're untrained. Characters will usually be Experts in their most important skill at 3, Masters at 7, and Legendary at 15.

It's DM asspull DCs all the way down, but with fancy reference tables. Cool that you can take 10 and be assured of.....well, it's cool that you can take 10.

Do they have examples of what a lvl 20 extreme challenge for a given skill is vs 1 or 10 or 18

That was a part of 4e harped on a lot

They've got lists of hazards - traps, mostly - and here's a level 21 one (they have examples at 19 and 21 but not 20 exactly): second chance

General 'level 20 extreme' DCs aren't something they have, no.

I have to say it's hard reading through this. I don't think it's written for most people. Lawyers or people on the autistic spectrum, maybe.

Orca wrote:I have to say it's hard reading through this. I don't think it's written for most people. Lawyers or people on the autistic spectrum, maybe.

That seems to be a recurring complaint on the Paizo forums as well. After Occult Adventures, I'm not surprised.

It's very dense, and they've introduced a lot of technical jargon and piles of linked traits on individual actions that are referenced by other rules. I hope you remembered to check whether every ability or item you have has the Manipulate trait, because that's one of the four criteria for determining if using it provokes an Attack of Opportunity (assuming the thing you're fighting even has that feat).

Orca wrote:I have to say it's hard reading through this. I don't think it's written for most people. Lawyers or people on the autistic spectrum, maybe.

Text of laws are complicated because they want to be as unambiguous as possible. Pathfinder is complicated for the sake of being complicated.

... Or maybe it's a strategy: many people can't make the difference between "overly complicated" and "really smart".

Axebird wrote:It's very dense, and they've introduced a lot of technical jargon and piles of linked traits on individual actions that are referenced by other rules. I hope you remembered to check whether every ability or item you have has the Manipulate trait, because that's one of the four criteria for determining if using it provokes an Attack of Opportunity (assuming the thing you're fighting even has that feat).

lol, no.

link 1. Weapon trait : parry : "This weapon can be used defensively to block attacks. While wielding this weapon, if your proficiency with it is trained or better, you can spend an Interact action to position your weapon defensively, gaining a +1 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn."

Link 2: The interact action has the manipulate trait.

In pathfinder, positioning your weapon defensively provokes an AoO.



... As I said, Pathfinder is complicated for the sake of being complicated.

This is actually what every ruleset ends up looking like if no one ever edits or designs the fucking things. In the old days, D&D as written was literally unplayable, so everyone ran enormous numbers of house rules. These in turn got codified and thrust into three ring binders at the tables of the enthusiastic, with each page being anything they felt strongly enough about to write it down on lined paper and then slide it into the binder.

Pathfinder 2 is just the logical extension of what happens when there are word processors and the difficulty of putting things into the folder approaches zero and also no one is having any meetings about taking shit out or streamlining things. All the stuff where various ideas don't quite fit together and have weird implications and leave things unsaid is because it's a series of ideas and submissions rather than a completed game.

Now the really weird thing to me is why Paizo would publish something that's so obviously not in a completed or appealing state. Like, why do that? 3rd edition is an engine that actually is playable without a binder full of house rules, and you could go back to the well there and make some broad changes to how the classes and monsters are presented and have a new game that was still known to be playable because the core engine was explicable.

This is just someone's tabletop fantasy project from the mid eighties without even the inertia veto of ideas having to get enough traction for people to write them up by hand before putting them in the binder. The electronic writing and submission means that every idea about weapon length or encounter distance or whatever the actual fuck just flows into the final product. It's like trying to game with a DM who has Tourette's without even having the decency to move past the outbursts.

Like, if the kids from Stranger Things had voice to text and were making a new version of Rolemaster from scratch, it would be Pathfinder 2.

-Username17

I recall people used to complain about 3.0's giant table of things that provoke an AoO, not because it wasn't also listed in the relevant parts of the text, just that it was huge and people neither like nor expect to take AoO when they try to do interesting things beyond constantly face-stabbing the monsters.

If they just dramatically cut back on things that provoke AoO, players would be cool with it, that would be a popular change. This? Meh, it's new words that attack an old complaint without understanding why the complaint arose and leaving the original problem there, if not worse.

And yeah, it's hard to read because there's lots like that, they've coined new terms for all sorts of stuff that is mostly not all that different, but just different enough to often have unexpected outcomes. And it still takes an action to hold your fucking shield up, like seriously, it's harder to carry if you're not holding it up. Fucking gamist crap.

I can see how the parry triggering an AoO could be missed. Parry to interact action, interact action to manipulate trait, manipulate to AoO - that's three degrees of separation. And most enemies can't do AoOs now remember, so the details of them may escape some writers. Good editing would be needed and obviously didn't happen.

On slightly related immersion breaking stuff hobgoblin warriors forget how to take AoOs if they get promoted.

Paizo has had real problems with streamlining text in the past. There's something institutional there where people complaining that the PF1 kineticist was hard to understand and overlong led to longer text which was harder to understand. Getting them to add text is much easier than getting them to rewrite it.

I pointed out the Parry issue to my local discord and immediately got told by someone else I would get kicked off his table for rules layering. Apparently pointing out a flaw in the rules is as bad as using it to exploit the game. Go figure. Anyway, it's probably to early to tell but I have no idea if it's a success or a flop or in between. The Paizo forums support it, ofc, as does reddit, ofc, and groups like Polygon are giving it rave reviews ofc. Probably need to let it stew for a month.

Certain use limited class features are called "Focus Spells", despite not all of them even resembling spells. These abilities are not listed in the only class that has access to them, they are 300 pages later at the back end of the Spells chapter.

Just... why? Why organize it like that? Were they already embarrassed that their classes chapter is three times as long as the chapter in PF1, so they wanted to cut a page from a few of them?

I like this part from sensate gnome:

You gain a special sense: imprecise scent with a range of 30 feet. This means you can use your sense of smell to determine the exact location of a creature.

from: http://pf2.d20pfsrd.com/ancestry/gnome/

The more I read into Pathfinder 2, the more it reads like a video game. It seems like its made for official play only and nothing else, given the lack of flexibility with anything in there.

saithorthepyro wrote:I pointed out the Parry issue to my local discord and immediately got told by someone else I would get kicked off his table for rules layering. Apparently pointing out a flaw in the rules is as bad as using it to exploit the game. Go figure. Anyway, it's probably to early to tell but I have no idea if it's a success or a flop or in between. The Paizo forums support it, ofc, as does reddit, ofc, and groups like Polygon are giving it rave reviews ofc. Probably need to let it stew for a month.

No one of importance or influence ever writes mean things about new products from 'major' names in the ttrgp industry.

it is supremely depressing that finding non-biased reviews is so difficult or outright impossible.

WiserOdin032402 wrote:The more I read into Pathfinder 2, the more it reads like a video game. It seems like its made for official play only and nothing else, given the lack of flexibility with anything in there.

Nah. Computer programs can't run when there are gaps, loops, or bugs. Feeding PF2 into a computer would just crash.

You get shit like this because no one is attempting to compile it on anything. Not on a computer, not even really in their own human brains. It's all a bunch of declarations, things written on a white board. Except it's just being typed into a computer and stuck together edgewise or anyhow.

-Username17

WiserOdin032402 wrote:The more I read into Pathfinder 2, the more it reads like a video game. It seems like its made for official play only and nothing else, given the lack of flexibility with anything in there.

"You can run pregen adventures straight by the book and nothing the players can do will ever force you to improvise" does seem to be a primary design goal.

So, it's not a video game, but it would be much better as one - you'd get the same "stick to the path" experience, but with pretty graphics and the calculations being handled for you.

It's an interesting design goal, if heavily flawed in execution.

They do seem to have some definite design goals, although they're never explicit about them, and of course don't execute them well.

"You should always be rolling the dice. If a single thing you try to do is an auto-success or doesn't require a roll, something has gone wrong." seems to be another.

Orca wrote:I can see how the parry triggering an AoO could be missed. Parry to interact action, interact action to manipulate trait, manipulate to AoO - that's three degrees of separation. And most enemies can't do AoOs now remember, so the details of them may escape some writers. Good editing would be needed and obviously didn't happen.

The parry stuff isn't even the real fun of the story.

This "parry glitch" was posted on the Paizo's messageboard, with another similar glitch : quickdraw is now a iaijustu feat (*) and it provokes.

Paizil's answer is "it makes sense the 'draw a weapon' action provokes". Seriously. Some guy explains parry provokes as well as iaijutsu, it ensues several pages of argument about why "draw a weapon" should provoke.


(*) The feat allow the character to draw a weapon and strike with the same action (this action inherit the "manipulate" trait from the interact action). This means, the character can't even quickdraw, move, and attack. I think it's even more restrictive than actual iaijustu.

Iajutsu as practiced today is an art entirely revolving around drawing your weapon to defend yourself standing up sitting down going for a stroll and any situation, so that is very very dumb

So do they have archetype or spec type stuff? I’m curious as to what they wrote fighters rogues to be good at... in intention

Like poisoning or traps or what

OgreBattle wrote:So do they have archetype or spec type stuff? I’m curious as to what they wrote fighters rogues to be good at... in intention

Once you pick a class you have to stick with it. You may use some of your class feats to pick up multiclass feats. You get these feats on even levels and they give you your class abilities other than the base chasis. So you could have a rogue that multiclasses with fighter and gets better weapon proficiency (which is a huge deal since it increases your attack bonus) and a couple or fighter maneuvers OR you could have a fighter that picks up rogue feats and gets better at skills and even gets sneak attack and other roguey stuff.

So that's in "intention". This week I'll be starting my PF2e campaign, so I'll let you know how it works out in practice (I don't have a rogue/fighter on the party, but I have a rogue/sorcerer).

PF2e launched with a 40% discount on Amazon and isn't even surpassing the trickle sales of 5 year old D&D 5e. That's embarrassing.