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 skyth wrote:
I've said it before. PF2 may be a perfectly good game. It is not Pathfinder though...

What I find odd about it (don't know if I've mentioned it in this thread before) is they've abandoned the hybrid 6th level spellcasters (Bard is now a 9th level caster, and the rest are gone: Inquisitors, Hunters, Warpriests and even Alchemists, as the abomination in the playtest is a joke that can be replicated by anyone in the party just buying mundane alchemy items). Those included some of the best classes that Paizo ever designed, and the game is radically different (and has far fewer options and themes covered) without them. To me they were one of Pathfinder's few signatures that made it something other than random 3.5 house rules.

A shame. I loved playing an Inquisitor.

But the good thing is that RPGs never truly die.

Interesting. Inquisitor and Alchemist were some of the bits of design I actually thought were decent. Not perfect (my alchemist player certainly got a lot of use out of stacking various armour bonuses with her insane dex to be unhittable with normal attacks, and her bomb damage was absolutely massive) but interesting developments on the 3e framework to deliver a different style of class.

Shame that they have gotten rid of them. I would like to see an alchemist class for Dungeons and Dragons, it is a fun trope.

Used to be an Alchemist in AD&D 2nd edition.

Where was that? There were a lot of obscure classes scattered around in various campaign settings and Dragon magazine (though the only ones there that stuck with me were anti-paladin and barbarian cleric), but I don't remember alchemists.

Trying to remember. I believe in one of the splatbooks? (Complete wizard's?)

Basically, regular wizard but they had special ability to brew potions for just a gold cost.

People that like the PF1 rules should really take advantage of the blowout sales on PF1 product -at Frog God Games in particular - The Blight and Razor Coast are likely my favorite RPG settings of all time - and nothing alike.

There is enough good stuff being sold off that it will keep you going for years.

Don't get caught in a 4e trap - I think we may be looking at the death of Pathfinder, so be prepared.

The Auld Grump - playtest is in its final stretch, and no urge to get back in - we really do not like the direction Pathfinder is going. The main description in my group has been 'Not Fun'. And some of us have been playing Pathfinder since the original Alpha rules, ten years ago.

Yeah, the new class changes are underwhelming. The only good one is rogue, which allows them to choose which key ability score matters depending on their style.

Wizard got more ridiculous, since they decided that since people were always choosing a ridiculous feat the class should just get it for free.

And barbarians get lol!random rage, for reasons. Didn't even touch the basic problems with rage (it's basically a negative trade) or with specific totems, many of which are awful.

Cleric healing got nerfed, which was basically their only thing because their spell list was gutted from playtest day 1.

Paladins got freed from LG-only shackles to any good, but are basically bubble shield masters as their only role.

And this was the last update, and the playtest closes at the end of the year.

Then they redo everything without feedback and produce a final system. Basically what WotC did with 5e.

Yeah, the last update, here https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/paizo-images/image/download/PZO2100UE-1.6.zip

The designers intend to revise the monsters and a few other things, but not subject the changes to any playtest. At least any external playtest. I do hope that they playtest in-house. (something TSR was apparently forbidden to do during part of the Lorraine Williams years... or so went the rumors.)

Holy crap - I got an email from D20PFSRD about Pathfinder 2nd edition.... A Survey.

One of the 10 questions was whether folks would be interested in an updated version of Pathfinder first edition - even if it came from somebody other than Paizo.

This... cannot be a good omen for PF2.

I went 100% for an updated PF1 - and will be ecstatic if it happens.

My interest in PF2 is very, very low.

Another question was whether folks would be interested in Adventure Paths for PF from companies other than Paizo. (Hell, yeah.)

There is definitely push back against PF2.

The Auld Grump

I agree there is push back on PF2 and its funny how many people in this thread keep bringing up 4th edition D&D; makes you wonder if PF2 will break the community like 4th.

My biggest thing is a new edition should always feel like an improvement from the previous edition, this is why I feel like AoS failed right out of the gate..

I hope they will surprise me but right now my gut is saying otherwise.

I think it depends how much they depart from the playtest in their internal work on the system.

There are a lot of subsystems that to me are overly complex for little return. To the point of being worse than 3.5 or PF1.

For me, the action system is a big part of it, probably the biggest. You can put together a barbarian that can sprint 140' as two actions (of 3 in a six second round), but still requires an entire action to put a hand on a two handed sword. 3 attacks are possible, by -10 interacts really poorly with crit success/failure at target AC +/- 10 (even though normal attacks don't crit fail).

The other big problem is the game feels terribly mechanical and soulless, pretty much the opposite of what I'd want to see in an RPG. To the point that the 'exploration mode' tells you not to use in-character description but instead just focus on game terms and the provided 'exploration tactics.' You don't fling water or flour as a clever gambit to detect invisible foe, you use the 'seek' action.

And the language makes me spit:

Method of Use held, 1 hand; Bulk L
Activation [Action] Operate Activation

That... that pile of redundant gibberish equals 'drink the potion'
Also note that 'method of use' is telling you how to hold it, not use it.

Almost as if it were intended to be a computer game or MMO.

Who knows how the designers will sort everything out. I wish Paizo well. Competition is good, and we've all seen what WotC gets up to without it.

Some instinct of mine tells me that Paizo should stop trying to make high level play. Set 12th level as the highest level for characters, and scale accordingly.

 Red Harvest wrote:

Some instinct of mine tells me that Paizo should stop trying to make high level play. Set 12th level as the highest level for characters, and scale accordingly.

Better yet. Get rid of levels entirely. Move to a granular system where each ability, skill, spell slot, stat boost, etc... are paid for individually. Each class having a progression tree of abilities, most of which have prerequisites of lower tier skills. This would allow for a more natural progression system overall, and greater customization.

Costing each ability individually also gives you better control over the balance of the game. If an ability is highly situational or weak, you can make it a cheap ability. If it is strong, make it more expensive. Likewise with spells.

It gets rid of the immersion breaking "Wow, I killed this one last Kobalt and suddenly I gained 10 new abilities I didn't have 30 seconds ago". It also makes extra Xp that the GM might hand out for cool stuff suddenly actually worth something because it would actually let you buy something.

There are plenty of games which use systems like that, Gurps is one example. It can be pretty cool to get points to invest at the end of every session.

 Da Boss wrote:
There are plenty of games which use systems like that, Gurps is one example. It can be pretty cool to get points to invest at the end of every session.

The downside is that it makes min-maxing easier, and makes balance harder. The advantage of a level system is that everyone is theoretically at the same degree of power (in practice, this often falls down), and you can't rush powerful abilities (say one wizard having a versatile suite of 3-5th level spells, and the other one rushing Gate or Shapechange). To use a very extreme and very silly example in GURPS, the ability to destroy every living thing in the universe* can cost you 53pts and the cost of the alcohol you used to get the GM drunk before they approved character sheets.

Some games do a hybrid system, like Savage Worlds or the old 40K RPG's--you can spend your XP on whatever, and gaining a rank / tier / level when you've spent X total experience simply opens up new options.


* http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=239055&postcount=216

 Elemental wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
There are plenty of games which use systems like that, Gurps is one example. It can be pretty cool to get points to invest at the end of every session.

The downside is that it makes min-maxing easier, and makes balance harder. The advantage of a level system is that everyone is theoretically at the same degree of power (in practice, this often falls down), and you can't rush powerful abilities (say one wizard having a versatile suite of 3-5th level spells, and the other one rushing Gate or Shapechange). To use a very extreme and very silly example in GURPS, the ability to destroy every living thing in the universe* can cost you 53pts and the cost of the alcohol you used to get the GM drunk before they approved character sheets.

Some games do a hybrid system, like Savage Worlds or the old 40K RPG's--you can spend your XP on whatever, and gaining a rank / tier / level when you've spent X total experience simply opens up new options.


* http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=239055&postcount=216

While gurps in particular is prone to min maxing not all point buy systems are. WoD games are all point buy, but character creation has those points sectioned off into different categories so that all players start the same in terms of number of skills to attributes to whatever. Then you can spice it up with a little mix of bonus exp at the end to give players a chance to customize. I.e. his character is more skilled but her character has more natural apptitude.

As long as the cost to increase goes up with the increases and the categories are well adjusted min maxing isnt really an issue.

Finally some of those games have the gm oversee character progression with rules. " this is the human limit on an attribute. You are never allowed to have more than one attribute reach this point and not during character creation. No skill can be higher then x at the end of character creation without special permission. No skill can be increased in game unless you used it. Etc etc...

Min/Maxing is always an issue with those games. It certainly is with World of Darkness crap, which has a lot of useless things that don't really do much, absurd combat monsters, undetectable invisibility and straight up mind control. For all its (false) blather about roleplaying, the system is awful and you can straight up fail at the game at the character creation step.

The big problem with a lot of the 'buy abilities' games is the high system mastery, particularly in the area of defenses. If you don't max those at, you can and will get arbitrarily exploded by someone who happens to hit a weak area. Or, in games like Rolemaster, it is just statistically likely to happen anyway regardless of what you do.

If you make Pathfinder a level-less point buy system, it won't be Pathfinder any more...

Since RPGs have a neutral referee, I never found that sort of thing to be too much of a problem. We just banned certain methods of getting more points (maxing out disadvantages for example) or if we found a trait overpowered just upped the cost to upgrade it.

I agree though, these sorts of systems are not the be all and end all. Dungeons and Dragons (which Pathfinder is basically just a set of unimaginative house rules for) is a level based system and always has been, and it is incredibly popular.

I mean, I love the Hero system (Champions is the best superhero game out there). But I also enjoy level based games (D&D/Pathfinder) and hybrids like Rolemaster.

Aye, there is definitely a place for level based systems, but I find them inherently less immersive than point-buys. Progression feels stilted and inflexible, and you always run into issues where certain classes are unbalanced because the get under/over-powered abilities without really "paying" for them. While in a point-buy system, you can simply ignore or skip a bad ability and get something more useful. And for OP abilities the GM can just say "You can't buy that", while with a level based system the GM has to erase the ability and give you an alternative.

 Da Boss wrote:
Dungeons and Dragons (which Pathfinder is basically just a set of unimaginative house rules for)

I tend to regard this as true. But in the climate that it was released (WotC releasing 4e, and burning Paizo by cancelling the Dragon and Dungeon magazines out from underneath them which they'd run successfully for years at that point), I understood why PF1 happened. That isn't true at all beyond a general feeling that PF1 is kinda bloated.

PF2 doesn't seem to have a goal or purpose, beyond 'we want to resell you all this shovelware again.' Usually a product has (at least internally) some sort of design document that covers the goals and why changes are being made. PF2 doesn't really have any sign of that, and some of the things they were so keen of during the previews were set on fire awfully fast once players got a look at them. While responsiveness can be good, some were complete reversals on things that seemed absolute (like denying cheap and easy post combat healing. Most of the point of resonance was to deny cheap healing wands, now anyone with the healing skill can wipe away sword cuts with a roll of bandages. At least until iterative probability smacks the party with a hammer, and they fail and arbitrarily can't do it anymore)


And they've reformatted the game so that their are more feats (and more types of feats that touch everything from race to skills, and most class abilities are also feats, plus other 'general' feats. Feats for days!) so the shovelware books will be even easier to write, and the bloat will happen even faster.

Plus Paizo is kind of bad at writing D&D feats, which they've proven repeatedly over the years. Most recently in starfinder, which includes a feat for flipping a table and using it as cover. Some of the PF1 feats were written so poorly they didn't actually do anything: Prone Shooter was fun for that, which granted the ability to shoot a crossbow while prone at normal penalties for being prone. it just becomes an exercise in dumpster diving, while the pool of garbage simply grows over time as they release more books.

 skyth wrote:
If you make Pathfinder a level-less point buy system, it won't be Pathfinder any more...

If the only thing that makes it pathfinder is that core system then pathfinder is a shallow pile of garbage to begin with and deserves to be scrapped for something new.

On the other hand what makes Pathfinder, Pathfinder is the setting, the character, and all the flavor it brings to the table then it doesn't matter how you change the mechanics if they reflect pathfinder well then it will be pathfinder.

It's like saying Castlevania isn't castlevania if it isn't a side scroller platformer. And yet the Lords of Shadows (the first one at least) is a REALLY great castlevania that gets everything about the setting feeling and action right. You don't need a mechanic to define a game.

If pathfinder is a setting then it does not need a new edition. Pathfinder is shallow garbage, being a transparent attempt (very slickly done mind you!) to capitalise on the failure of D&D 4e. It was never creative, relying entirely on the 3e architecture made by more creative and rigorous designers.
Please note I am not saying that enjoying PF means you are shallow, I have enjoyed it myself.

One could still keep all the D20 game mechanics and switch to a point buy leveling system. Bonuses based on level would need to get switched to something else, other systems use total XP sometimes, but that is a minor change.

I bet someone has made house rules for that for D20 somewhere online.

 Lance845 wrote:

 skyth wrote:
If you make Pathfinder a level-less point buy system, it won't be Pathfinder any more...

If the only thing that makes it pathfinder is that core system then pathfinder is a shallow pile of garbage to begin with and deserves to be scrapped for something new.

On the other hand what makes Pathfinder, Pathfinder is the setting, the character, and all the flavor it brings to the table then it doesn't matter how you change the mechanics if they reflect pathfinder well then it will be pathfinder.

The setting is just the personal setting of one of the Paizo staff (done for 3e, not PF), and is _mostly_ historical expies of real world countries at various periods jammed together in an incoherent fashion. Anachronisms abound, and are even more absurd than obsidian wielding Lizardmen with space lasers vs Renaissance Empire. The stuff that isn't just Egypt, Romania, or Revolutionary France heavily fetishizes slavery, racism and pretty brutal non-consensual S&M, which contrasts very oddly with the standards of language and behavior they enforce on their message boards and express through their policies and decisions. You can't (and shouldn't) talk about Romani the way the designers talk about Varisians (that they're nigh-universally criminals and prostitutes), even though they're the same people with a fantasy name scribbled in.

Voss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:

 skyth wrote:
If you make Pathfinder a level-less point buy system, it won't be Pathfinder any more...

If the only thing that makes it pathfinder is that core system then pathfinder is a shallow pile of garbage to begin with and deserves to be scrapped for something new.

On the other hand what makes Pathfinder, Pathfinder is the setting, the character, and all the flavor it brings to the table then it doesn't matter how you change the mechanics if they reflect pathfinder well then it will be pathfinder.

The setting is just the personal setting of one of the Paizo staff (done for 3e, not PF), and is _mostly_ historical expies of real world countries at various periods jammed together in an incoherent fashion. Anachronisms abound, and are even more absurd than obsidian wielding Lizardmen with space lasers vs Renaissance Empire. The stuff that isn't just Egypt, Romania, or Revolutionary France heavily fetishizes slavery, racism and pretty brutal non-consensual S&M, which contrasts very oddly with the standards of language and behavior they enforce on their message boards and express through their policies and decisions. You can't (and shouldn't) talk about Romani the way the designers talk about Varisians (that they're nigh-universally criminals and prostitutes), even though they're the same people with a fantasy name scribbled in.

This may come as a shock, but every RPGs setting is just the personal setting of one of the staff of developers that ends up fleshed out by the editing staff and input from the other developers.

Grey Hawk? A personal setting.

Ebberon? The same.

So on and so forth.

Pathfinder is every bit a dnd setting book as Ebberon or Dark Sun.

Then they made some modifications to the classes and races (just like other settings do) and ran off in their own direction.

The truth is if Pathfinder wants to be it's own game then it needs to stop fething around in dnds rules and make something wholly their own. It doesn't need to rely on anything that came before it. Not levels. Not classes. Not d20. They can build a new game from the ground up and it would be pathfinder if they built it for pathfinder. And they 100% completely should. Staying shackled to dnds bull gak is suffocating and stagnating.

You might be right Lance, but I have seen nothing from Paizo to suggest they have the mechanical or creative chops to do what you are suggesting. They piggybacked on D&D 3e because it was easy and the hard work was already done. Their advantage was excellent production values and a pretty canny assessment of what the market wanted, along with some decent adventure paths (though those also don't hold up incredibly well as paths, but have a lot of good ideas in the individual parts).
WOTC gets a lot of stick, but in some ways they are a lot braver than Paizo and I am glad it paid off for them.