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<blockquote data-quote="Porridge" data-source="post: 7997681" data-attributes="member: 7020143"><p>Yeah, PF2 has sometimes been called the "GM's edition" because so many of the changes of the game are explicitly oriented to making things easier and more enjoyable for the GM.</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The game is set up in a very modular and easy to customize way, <a href="https://paizo.com/threads/rzs431cm&page=2?Advance-Players-Guide-preview-from-GTM#71" target="_blank">making it easy for GM's to come up with and implement house rules</a>.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Monsters have unique and engaging abilities that distinguish them from each other, and make them more fun (as a GM) to play.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The game employs a rarity system to helpfully flag spells for the GM that are potentially plot-breaking for various common fantasy campaigns. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Level-appropriate challenges involving skills will reliably be challenges for your party, not challenges that (as in PF1) are either trivialized by specialists, or impossible to make for non-specialists.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Level-appropriate combat encounters will reliably be challenges for your party, not challenges that (as in PF1) are either trivialized by optimized characters, or very difficult for non-optimized characters, or (worst of all) trivial for some players and extremely difficult for others in the same party.</li> </ol><p>But in order for something like #4 and #5 to be true, you don't want a magic item system which allows characters with these items to trivialize the encounters, and characters without them to struggle. So you need to expect that the party has certain items and factor that in to the encounter math, which (as you noted above) is precisely what PF2 does. </p><p></p><p>In contrast, 5e leaves really powerful magic items in the game that aren't factored into encounter math, which has the perk of making them feel really powerful and game-changing (because they are!), but has the downside of making it increasingly difficult for the game to satisfy #5. </p><p></p><p>I understand why PF2 didn't adopt the 5e approach to magic items, to keep encounter balance intact. But, like you, I'm not a fan of having magic items "baked into" the math, like the default PF2 rules do. In order to both keep encounter balance and not bake items into the math, you need to eliminate flat number-boosting items from the game. This is my preferred solution. And happily, the PF2 Gamemastery Guide's Automatic Bonus Progression option does just that!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Porridge, post: 7997681, member: 7020143"] Yeah, PF2 has sometimes been called the "GM's edition" because so many of the changes of the game are explicitly oriented to making things easier and more enjoyable for the GM. [LIST=1] [*]The game is set up in a very modular and easy to customize way, [URL='https://paizo.com/threads/rzs431cm&page=2?Advance-Players-Guide-preview-from-GTM#71']making it easy for GM's to come up with and implement house rules[/URL]. [*]Monsters have unique and engaging abilities that distinguish them from each other, and make them more fun (as a GM) to play. [*]The game employs a rarity system to helpfully flag spells for the GM that are potentially plot-breaking for various common fantasy campaigns. [*]Level-appropriate challenges involving skills will reliably be challenges for your party, not challenges that (as in PF1) are either trivialized by specialists, or impossible to make for non-specialists. [*]Level-appropriate combat encounters will reliably be challenges for your party, not challenges that (as in PF1) are either trivialized by optimized characters, or very difficult for non-optimized characters, or (worst of all) trivial for some players and extremely difficult for others in the same party. [/LIST] But in order for something like #4 and #5 to be true, you don't want a magic item system which allows characters with these items to trivialize the encounters, and characters without them to struggle. So you need to expect that the party has certain items and factor that in to the encounter math, which (as you noted above) is precisely what PF2 does. In contrast, 5e leaves really powerful magic items in the game that aren't factored into encounter math, which has the perk of making them feel really powerful and game-changing (because they are!), but has the downside of making it increasingly difficult for the game to satisfy #5. I understand why PF2 didn't adopt the 5e approach to magic items, to keep encounter balance intact. But, like you, I'm not a fan of having magic items "baked into" the math, like the default PF2 rules do. In order to both keep encounter balance and not bake items into the math, you need to eliminate flat number-boosting items from the game. This is my preferred solution. And happily, the PF2 Gamemastery Guide's Automatic Bonus Progression option does just that! [/QUOTE]
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