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Pathfinder Playtest: Rulebook
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7495081" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p><strong>2 out of 5 rating for Pathfinder Playtest: Rulebook</strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Before I started reading the Pathfinder 2 rulebook, I thought about what I wanted the game to do. I mentally laid out my “deal breakering” problems that I would want addressed, which I listed at the start of this review: </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">1) Reduce the “number porn” of higher level play</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">2) Reduce or limit the mandated complexity of characters</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">3) Place some focus on play other than combat, </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">4) Magic item Christmas Tree & Treadmill</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Bonuses for characters were not reduced. Comparing the numbers for monsters with monsters in a Pathfinder 1 <em>Bestiary</em> show monster math is fairly close to the same, and Pathfinder 2 monsters are higher in a number of places. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">While I don’t think the game needs to go with the flat math and bounded accuracy of 5th Edition D&D, Pathfinder 2 could easily have halved their bonuses by only adding 1/2 level to d20 checks rather than level. And not assuming magic items in their math would further reduce the number bloat.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Characters are just as complex as they were in Pathfinder 2. There are no simple characters for people who just want to sit down and play, as even the fighter and rogue require choosing one or more feats every level. And while the fighter is often considered simple as it doesn’t have spells, it requires selecting and managing more feats than normal. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">For a final product, I think suggested builds would be lovely. One or two characters that are laid out with suggested feat chains from level 1 to 20. It’s not perfect, but it would help.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">The combat focus in the game bugs me. Too often my Pathfinder campaigns descended into lurching from combat to combat in a dungeon, especially when running the published adventures. While you don’t *need* rules for roleplaying, encouraging that type of play helps. After all, nothing stops you from roleplaying in a game of <em>Battletech </em>or <em>Warhammer 40,000</em>either, but that doesn’t mean those are RPGs. A good roleplaying game with continually suggest personality traits, and maybe even include a section for “personality” or “flaws” on the character sheet. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Lastly is magic items. Which isn’t any better in Pathfinder 2. The edition has even added the new Resonance mechanic which pretty much solely exists as a crutch to prevent why higher level parties don’t just buy dozens of low level magic items. It’s the definition of a rules patch: it doesn’t remotely fix the underlying problem and just smooths over a more irritating proud nail. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Pathfinder 2 is a very curious beast. Superficially, it incorporates a lot of 4th Edition design elements. Treasure packages, classes based around individual powers, heavy combat focus, emphasis on tactical play and in-combat movement, mandated magic items, comparable bonuses across classes, jargon and keyword heavy writing style, and even icon based powers. Which feels ironic as Pathfinder was created to appeal to D&D fans who didn’t like 4th Edition. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">It’s really hard to judge this product because it’s so very dense. Even after a week of reading the book and watching several streamed playtest games there are still elements I’m not entirely sure I understand. Every single time I pick up the book and look up something, I stumble across some other sub-mechanic I have missed. Between the start of this section and and the end I decided to double-check how grappled was handled and came across references rolling against someone’s “Fortitude DC”. A quick search of the document pulls up a few other examples but no explanation of what a Fortitude DC is. An opposed check by rolling a Fortitude save? But then why not say that? And while doing an editing pass of the review I wondered how spells save DCs were determined, and spent five minutes trying to find out for certain as it’s not explained in either the Classes or Spells chapters. It’s a dense rulebook with spread out rules that require you to reference rules in two or three other places to figure out how something works. While learning the rules I was constantly flipping back-and-forth throughout the book.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">With the lengthy above review all said and done… who is this product for? </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">I think it will appeal to alot of Pathfinder 1 fans as well as to D&D fans who are unhappy with 5th Editions “rulings not rules” attitude and want a game with less arbitration (and more crunchy character options). Ironically, I expect a lot of 4th Edition D&D fans who feel left out by 5th Edition and unsatisfied with that game’s simplicity will also enjoy Pathfinder 2. It’s become my go-to recommendation to jaded 4e fans.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">Who is it not for? As this edition is not backwards compatible, using any class options for Pathfinder 1 is not an option. As such, I don’t this game as a good idea for die-hard Pathfinder fans who still enjoy the system: there’s so much material out there already that upgrading is likely unnecessary. You can play for years with what you have. Similarly, if you are like me and fell out of love with Pathfinder, this game is unlikely to win you back.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">The Pathfinder 2 Playtest is also its own product, which largely stands alone. I’m uncertain how much this playtest book will reflect the final product: by design, this book was meant to provoke reactions from players and illicit feedback. The designers have admitted that whenever they had two different design directions they could go, they favoured the more extreme version to gather better feedback. And given several months have passed since this version of the playtest was sent to the printers, I bet the internal version Paizo is using already differs in a number of ways. So, very likely, a number of major complaints with the game could already be “fixes” and are simply awaiting reaction from the fans. </span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><span style="font-family: 'Tahoma'">It will be interesting to see how much or little the final product diverges from this.</span></span></p><p></p><p></p><p>Read my full review <a href="http://www.5mwd.com/archives/4964" target="_blank">here</a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7495081, member: 37579"] [b]2 out of 5 rating for Pathfinder Playtest: Rulebook[/b] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Before I started reading the Pathfinder 2 rulebook, I thought about what I wanted the game to do. I mentally laid out my “deal breakering” problems that I would want addressed, which I listed at the start of this review: [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]1) Reduce the “number porn” of higher level play[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]2) Reduce or limit the mandated complexity of characters[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]3) Place some focus on play other than combat, [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]4) Magic item Christmas Tree & Treadmill[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Bonuses for characters were not reduced. Comparing the numbers for monsters with monsters in a Pathfinder 1 [I]Bestiary[/I] show monster math is fairly close to the same, and Pathfinder 2 monsters are higher in a number of places. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]While I don’t think the game needs to go with the flat math and bounded accuracy of 5th Edition D&D, Pathfinder 2 could easily have halved their bonuses by only adding 1/2 level to d20 checks rather than level. And not assuming magic items in their math would further reduce the number bloat.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Characters are just as complex as they were in Pathfinder 2. There are no simple characters for people who just want to sit down and play, as even the fighter and rogue require choosing one or more feats every level. And while the fighter is often considered simple as it doesn’t have spells, it requires selecting and managing more feats than normal. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]For a final product, I think suggested builds would be lovely. One or two characters that are laid out with suggested feat chains from level 1 to 20. It’s not perfect, but it would help.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]The combat focus in the game bugs me. Too often my Pathfinder campaigns descended into lurching from combat to combat in a dungeon, especially when running the published adventures. While you don’t *need* rules for roleplaying, encouraging that type of play helps. After all, nothing stops you from roleplaying in a game of [I]Battletech [/I]or [I]Warhammer 40,000[/I]either, but that doesn’t mean those are RPGs. A good roleplaying game with continually suggest personality traits, and maybe even include a section for “personality” or “flaws” on the character sheet. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Lastly is magic items. Which isn’t any better in Pathfinder 2. The edition has even added the new Resonance mechanic which pretty much solely exists as a crutch to prevent why higher level parties don’t just buy dozens of low level magic items. It’s the definition of a rules patch: it doesn’t remotely fix the underlying problem and just smooths over a more irritating proud nail. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Pathfinder 2 is a very curious beast. Superficially, it incorporates a lot of 4th Edition design elements. Treasure packages, classes based around individual powers, heavy combat focus, emphasis on tactical play and in-combat movement, mandated magic items, comparable bonuses across classes, jargon and keyword heavy writing style, and even icon based powers. Which feels ironic as Pathfinder was created to appeal to D&D fans who didn’t like 4th Edition. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]It’s really hard to judge this product because it’s so very dense. Even after a week of reading the book and watching several streamed playtest games there are still elements I’m not entirely sure I understand. Every single time I pick up the book and look up something, I stumble across some other sub-mechanic I have missed. Between the start of this section and and the end I decided to double-check how grappled was handled and came across references rolling against someone’s “Fortitude DC”. A quick search of the document pulls up a few other examples but no explanation of what a Fortitude DC is. An opposed check by rolling a Fortitude save? But then why not say that? And while doing an editing pass of the review I wondered how spells save DCs were determined, and spent five minutes trying to find out for certain as it’s not explained in either the Classes or Spells chapters. It’s a dense rulebook with spread out rules that require you to reference rules in two or three other places to figure out how something works. While learning the rules I was constantly flipping back-and-forth throughout the book.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]With the lengthy above review all said and done… who is this product for? [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]I think it will appeal to alot of Pathfinder 1 fans as well as to D&D fans who are unhappy with 5th Editions “rulings not rules” attitude and want a game with less arbitration (and more crunchy character options). Ironically, I expect a lot of 4th Edition D&D fans who feel left out by 5th Edition and unsatisfied with that game’s simplicity will also enjoy Pathfinder 2. It’s become my go-to recommendation to jaded 4e fans.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]Who is it not for? As this edition is not backwards compatible, using any class options for Pathfinder 1 is not an option. As such, I don’t this game as a good idea for die-hard Pathfinder fans who still enjoy the system: there’s so much material out there already that upgrading is likely unnecessary. You can play for years with what you have. Similarly, if you are like me and fell out of love with Pathfinder, this game is unlikely to win you back.[/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]The Pathfinder 2 Playtest is also its own product, which largely stands alone. I’m uncertain how much this playtest book will reflect the final product: by design, this book was meant to provoke reactions from players and illicit feedback. The designers have admitted that whenever they had two different design directions they could go, they favoured the more extreme version to gather better feedback. And given several months have passed since this version of the playtest was sent to the printers, I bet the internal version Paizo is using already differs in a number of ways. So, very likely, a number of major complaints with the game could already be “fixes” and are simply awaiting reaction from the fans. [/FONT][/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000][FONT=Tahoma]It will be interesting to see how much or little the final product diverges from this.[/FONT][/COLOR] Read my full review [URL="http://www.5mwd.com/archives/4964"]here[/URL] [/QUOTE]
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