So… a month or so ago I told myself I wasn't going to get sucked into Pathfinder 2, as it seemed like it was going to be a 3e vs 4e Edition war all over again. Even before the playtest dropped the divisions in the community seemed raw and the mood was tense.
But I'm a dumbass who cannot help but engage. I literally have to block sites via my route to remind myself not to reply and be baited. So when the playtest actually dropped and I read it to do my review, I couldn't help but dive back into the debate head first.
And every single discussion I have had on the subject I've pretty much regretted.
As I said in
my review, I loved 3e and Pathfinder and played the hell out of both. And despite being burned by Pathfinder, I almost want to go back for one last campaign to try and get some final use out of my massive stack of books. (I know the campaign too: it'd be
Carrion Crown.)
And I have a strong, strong fondness for Paizo as a company. I want to see them succeed.
But I can't deal with another bulls**t edition war.
So here's my final post on the subject of Pathfinder 2. Which kinda ballooned as I started getting my thoughts down.
I burned out *hard* from Pathfinder 1.
A large part of that was the bloat. The optimizers in my table could build characters that could solo encounters. I regularly had two encounters trigger at the same time or denied the party and opportunity to rest between fights. And I slowed advancement, to keep them lower level so the fights would be an appropriate challenge. (By the time my second AP ended, the party was two levels behind where they were supposed to be. And the final boss fight was STILL two encounters mashed together followed immediately by a third.)
But a lot of the rules also grated at me. The magic item Christmas tree where magic items were just another element of character builds and not wondrous treasure. The crazy high math and bonuses that just went up and up for no reason and made it harder to use the monsters I wanted as they were a couple levels too low. And the crazy complexity of characters that meant half my table only partially levelled up, putting off the annoying homework of feats or talents for a couple levels.
The Playtest fixes a lot of problems with Pathfinder. But half the problems it fixed were not problems
I had.
What I would like to see the final product do is make a few serious changes.
First, there needs to be more mandated class features. Every class needs a half-dozen baked-in signature features gained and unlocked at higher levels.
Right now most classes just get feats. Which is fine... but makes the classes indistinct: you get so very many feats, the benefits of your class become forgotten. There's few element uniting rangers who go down different paths. They might as well be different classes. Especially as there's so much potential for overlap and classes gaining access to each other's feats. A two-weapon fighter and two-weapon ranger will look a lot alike.
The solution is to give classes more powers at higher levels. Plus… several of these features should be based on exploration and downtime. Non-combat. Flavour powers: what 5e would call "ribbons". Because when you give players the option of taking a utility power or a combat power, almost all will choose the later, so make it a mandatory part: every class should have some utility features, which are currently lacking in a lot of classes.
However, these class features should be role neutral. Right now the fighter and paladin have very tanky features. Characters should have roles in the party, not classes. The fighter should be able to be a brute and focus on DPR or built as the meat shield and protect the party. The player should make that call, not the game system.
Similarly, there needs to be a list of Universal Class Feats. Feats you can take in place of your class feats (but not in place of skill or general feats). The generic feats that fit the wheelhouse of every class. This is where you put stuff like charging, archery feats, two-weapon fighting, and the like. Meanwhile, the more specialized stuff can remain in the classes. The feats that feel like things only that particular class should do, rather than things multiple classes could be good at.
Because people
need to be able to make the characters they want. The game shouldn’t tell you that your fighter can’t use a crossbow or your wizard can’t take a long sword. If I want to build an archery based wizard inspired by an arcane archer, that should be doable. (It technically already is, as you can take the multiclassing fighter feat, which offers more benefits to the wizards, but literally zero to the paladin. Multiclassing
strongly favours working against type rather than being a Paladin McFighter or Ranger McRogue.)
After all, if classes and class options are remotely balanced between each other, taking another class’ feats shouldn't completely break the game.
As a small addition, add suggested builds. Tracks for people who just want to sit down and play and not engage in character building between games.
Because there are different kinds of players. Not every player is a “caster” player who likes lots of different options with their character and making a dozen different choices each round. And not every player likes to spend an hour going over every potential feat and pre-building their character to level 20. Some players just want to find one trick they like and spam it. Some players want to spend 30 seconds leveling a character at that table and then playing and not thinking about the game between sessions.
Second, cut the level bonus in half. Adding your full level to all checks is just needless. It makes the numbers too high and makes mid-level characters cartoonishly more potent than low level characters.
Right now characters advance like they're in
Dragonball Z. Put a couple levels on and the former threat is just flailing at you ineffectually. And you end up with absurdities like the 9th level wizard with 8 Strength being able to out wrestle a level 1 barbarian. Meanwhile, the 9th level barbarian is better than every Olympic athlete.
Adding half level still gives you bonuses. Far more bonuses than 5th Edition. But the numbers are significantly less high and are far less cartoonish.
This means that monsters can be a threat for longer. Instead of monsters five levels lower than you awarding literally 0 experience, you could face those creatures seven or even eight levels later and they still might be partially effective.
And while we're at it, dump the assumption that magical plusses are needed for weapons, armour, and saving throws. Or even delay them a little. +1 at level 10, +2 at level 15, and +3 at level 20. Rather than assuming everyone has +1 to everything by level 5.
And move the increased damage dice from magical plusses to the masterwork type weapons.
And since the game isn't assuming magical items, you can dump the absurd amount of gold being gained. There can be an optional treasure table for those using the 3e magic item Christmas Tree and crafting, but make it optional for the system. Make magic special again, rather than just "feats" with a different name.
(I spent weeks trying
multiple different inherent bonus systems trying to kludge a replacement for magic items for PF1. And every attempt broke down after level 10 or so due to the ridiculous amount of gold being handed out.)
This has a wealth of different side effects. You can now give out expensive rewards again, like keeps or ships, without worrying that the party will just sell them and buy a shinier sword. There doesn't need to be a bunch of variant "wealth" systems for managing kingdoms or pirate ships because tracking gold breaks wealth-by-level. And most importantly, players can actually *spend* their money on fun things. Rather than having to invest 80% of their finances in magic items so they can adventure to get more money to invest in magical items so they could adventure...
While tweaking accuracy from magic items… the hit rate is too low. The game is designed for a 10+ to hit. This seems fine on paper, but in play you miss too often. Combat in Pathfinder is slow, and waiting 5 to 10 minutes just to miss feels like a waste. You might only get four turns in an hour long combat, and if you miss half of them, you wasted 30 minutes.
Which segues into feats and features granting bonuses and not negating penalties.
While the math is the same, getting a bonus is just more fun. Negating a penalty just feels like trading a feat to be neutral at a task. Plus, bonuses are just easier to track: they’re on the character sheet. Penalties need to be remembered and just add extra math. Forgetting a bonus is annoying but fine, as it can turn a miss into a hit. Forgetting a penalty and negating a hit is just pure suckage.
It’s also be nice to make the language more natural. Tags can be useful at times, but the extremely technical coder language the book currently has is a massive barrier to entry that punishes people who aren't good at memorizing the dozens of keywords and dozens of conditions. Too much information is stored in keywords, with very little benefit to play.
In theory, this is meant to save space. But in practice it's often not
that much longer to use natural language.
Someone on the Paizo boards brought up Furious Focus:
(1 Action), Attack, Fighter, Press
Requirements You are wielding a melee weapon without the agile trait.
Make a Strike. The Strike gains the following failure effect.
Failure This attack does not count toward your multiple attack penalty.
Pointing out how knowledge of the "press" keyword is essential to knowledge of how the power works.
Press Actions with this trait allow you to follow up earlier attacks. An action with the press trait can be used only if you are currently affected by a multiple attack penalty. Some actions with the press trait also grant an effect on a failure. Effects on a failure can be gained only if the action took a –4 multiple attack penalty or worse. The effects that are added on a failure don’t apply on a critical failure.
If your press action succeeds or critically succeeds, but it deals no damage and causes no other effects (typically due to resistance), you can choose to apply the failure effect instead.
They pointed out that it could be rewritten:
(1 Action), Attack, Fighter
All of strikes with a non-agile melee weapon, that suffer at least a -4 penalty from earlier attacks, do not increase your multiple attack for subsequent attacks if they miss, or miss and don't inflict damage, but not if they critically miss. This is incompatible with anything other then basic attacks.
Both are about four lines. They both take up about the same amount of space on a page. But you don't need to memorize as many side rules or reference multiple pages. The power is less of a trap for the uninitiated.
Lastly, healing is broken.
I like slow natural healing personally. And I found cure light wound wands annoying. But I also know you need something to mitigate a bad combat in the middle of an adventure.
CLW wands (aka happy sticks) were a problem, but they they were a symptom of two larger problems: cheap availability of magical items and the aforementioned unpleasantly slow rate of healing. Resonance is a bandage slapped on the problem of the abuse of low level magic, but it doesn't solve the overall cause, nor does it do anything to fix the healing problem.
Instead, “fixing” happy sticks just aggravates the previously fixed problem: that every party needs a cleric. While in Pathfinder 2 you have a couple builds of the sorcerer able to be a healer, the bard lost this option. So the number of healer classes remains the same. However, spells per day were slashed. This leaves the cleric, with its ability to cast heal via channeling remains the only viable option. Mandating that someone has to play the healer feels like a 2008 problem, and just leads to a 5 Minute Workday.
I doubt many fixes for the above problems will happen.
There’s just not enough time.
The book will probably need to go to the prints in about eight months. And the last month (or two) is heavily dedicated to layout. I don’t think there’s enough time to rewrite the book and do internal playtests for errors. They likely don't even have time to change the writing style in the book.
This playtest is all about catching small errors and making tweaks to subsystems. Elements like weapons, dying rules, and the like. They're likely to do small changes like altering the number of starting ancestry feats, but not stuff like making starting ancestries have more static bonuses.
I didn't enjoy the playtest, so I highly doubt I'll like the final product. And continuing to engage and offer feedback for the next four months will just be me banging my head against the wall again and again.
Which makes me a little sad. I'd hoped this game would lure me away from 5e and allow me to strike a balance between the two systems. That it would satisfy my crunch hungry players. But that seems unlikely. And I wanted to have an excuse to throw some money at Paizo for the first time in years. But that seems equally unlikely.
