Similarities 4E PF2?

CapnZapp · Jul 14, 2019

Edit: This is not a troll thread. For the purposes of this thread, assume I am neutral towards 4th edition and that any similarities are neither bad not good. Thank you.

I've heard the sentiment "PF2 will be good because it's like D&D 4E" enough times now that I gotta ask:

What are the similarities between 4E and PF2? What could be the specific PF2 mechanics (and/or design assumptions) that makes anyone say this? And are these people the same ones that see similarities between 5E and 4E? (That is, are the alleged similarities between PF2 and 4E stronger or weaker than the ones between 5E and 4E?)

What (other than personal wish lists) could suggest PF2 will play like 4E and not like PF1 (and therefore 3.x?)

I am genuinely curious. Too many people here and at Reddit and elsewhere say this. No edition-bashing intended.

mewzard · Jul 15, 2019

I find these kinds of topics amusing, because I think PF2e will be fantastic and I also really disliked my time with D&D 4th Edition.

Not denying there may be some shared elements somewhere in the system, but not to enough of a degree to remind me of the less than positive experience of 4E on my end. I was the first person in my group to push moving from 4E to Pathfinder, which worked out (haven't played since), and if Pathfinder Second Edition ends up half as good as I'm getting from various previews and such, I'd at least like to do one regular game of it, and see from there if it's worth a more complete transition.

Tony Vargas · Jul 15, 2019

CapnZapp said:
Edit: This is not a troll thread.

Well, in the sense that flames won't stop it from regenerating... ;P

For the purposes of this thread, assume I am neutral towards 4th edition and that any similarities are neither bad not good. Thank you.

Click to expand...

...we'll see...

(That is, are the alleged similarities between PF2 and 4E stronger or weaker than the ones between 5E and 4E?)

Click to expand...

That's an interesting question. 5e has more than a few little details lifted straight from 4e, and more than a few more re-named, bowdlerized, or otherwise reduced to an acceptable post-edition-war level. The result is /both/ absolutely nothing like 4e, and very similar to 4e. So that complicates the issue.

I am genuinely curious. Too many people here and at Reddit and elsewhere say this. No edition-bashing intended.

Click to expand...

I'm with you.
PF1 was born of an opportunity to pick up the torch of 3.5 D&D dropped by WotC in the form of the OGL/SRD, leverage their Dragon/Dungeon subscriber list, and sell to the winning side in the edition war.
There are no such opportunities, today. 5e has it's own OGL, 4e does not; Paizo has no existing relationship with past fans of 4e; and there's no anti-5e edition war.
There's no /reason/ for Paizo to in any way intentionally evoke 4e.

The only possible source of similarity might be in that with nothing else to leverage, Paizo might resort to merely trying to make PF2 a better game than PF1 in it's own right.

Jer · Jul 15, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
The only possible source of similarity might be in that with nothing else to leverage, Paizo might resort to merely trying to make PF2 a better game than PF1 in it's own right.

I'm not sure if this is the same thing that you're saying or not, but...

My thought is that any "similarities" between PF2 and 4e arise because the developers of both are in similar headspaces - i.e. "the 3.5 D&D engine has certain balance issues that everyone knows about and make it hard to develop for - how can we fix the engine to make it more balanced so that it's easier to extend?" If you start from that and have certain things that you want to keep in the system, then it's kind of inevitable that you're going to end up with some similarities - they are fixing the same problem in the same way. For example, level based attack progression - the solution used in 4e is a natural extension to how 3e handled it - just give everyone the same progression and let something other than attack progression differentiate fighters from wizards. 3e already had the structure there to do this - adding feats to the game for fighters meant that you could do this by figuring how how to use feats to do that - but it wasn't done back in 2000 because the idea that different classes need different attack progression is something that was baked into D&D from the earliest editions. So it's natural that the PF developers would pick that up as a solution - it's not only the one that both 4e and 5e have adopted, it's an extension of 3e that seems reasonable if you want to make things simpler.

I don't think you're going to see PF devs intentionally lift things from 4e - it wouldn't make sense. Their player base exists because of people who didn't want to change from 3e to 4e - turning around and giving them a new 4e would just be stupid, and Paizo isn't stupid. But I wouldn't be surprised to see design choices that are similar to 4e because they're trying to solve the same problems that the 4e devs were trying to solve and they're trying to keep the same kind of feel that the 4e folks were trying to keep when they were trying to fix 3e. Fortunately for them they have another decade of game design under their belts and have the benefit of seeing how 4e went. I'm curious to see where they ended up with their final product in a few weeks.

TwoSix · Jul 16, 2019

Both 4e and PF2 (or at least the playtest) have some class description, followed by a lot of rectangular boxes, and those boxes have small blocks of rules text organized by number.

I think this is a laughably small issue that will become magnified because aesthetics matter. To my mind, the greatest sin of 4e was presentation; the books were well done as a reference but felt sterile, only the actual reading content inspired the imagination. Obviously, the actual design of the core rulebook will be key, but I think this has a strong possibility of being a pain point for PF2.

Tony Vargas · Jul 16, 2019

TwoSix said:
Both 4e and PF2 (or at least the playtest) have some class description, followed by a lot of rectangular boxes, and those boxes have small blocks of rules text organized by number.

I think this is a laughably small issue that will become magnified because aesthetics matter.

Did you notice the remarkable visual similarity between 4e & PF1 monster stat blocks? With the shading and all? Most obvious difference was purple instead of green.

CapnZapp · Jul 16, 2019

Okay, so I'm not seeing any replies from people that actually share the sentiment asked about; just speculation on what they might say. Carry on...

Parmandur · Jul 17, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
Well, in the sense that flames won't stop it from regenerating... ;P

...we'll see...

That's an interesting question. 5e has more than a few little details lifted straight from 4e, and more than a few more re-named, bowdlerized, or otherwise reduced to an acceptable post-edition-war level. The result is /both/ absolutely nothing like 4e, and very similar to 4e. So that complicates the issue.

I'm with you.
PF1 was born of an opportunity to pick up the torch of 3.5 D&D dropped by WotC in the form of the OGL/SRD, leverage their Dragon/Dungeon subscriber list, and sell to the winning side in the edition war.
There are no such opportunities, today. 5e has it's own OGL, 4e does not; Paizo has no existing relationship with past fans of 4e; and there's no anti-5e edition war.
There's no /reason/ for Paizo to in any way intentionally evoke 4e.

The only possible source of similarity might be in that with nothing else to leverage, Paizo might resort to merely trying to make PF2 a better game than PF1 in it's own right.

It's worth noting that a lot of people who have been working on PF2 were working at WotC eleven years ago, working on 4E. It's not just an unrelated group who might come to similar solutions, it's the same people approaching problems they worked on before.

As to your question, [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] in terms of what people are gesturing towards as re.inding them of 4E (good or bad, fairly or unfairly) compared to PF1, I would point to:

1. The action economy, which is a major shift from 3.X ways of doing things, and obviously pretty core to the play experience.

2. The per level addition to all checks, which takes 4E's approach but with even bigger numbers. This is in addition to a 5E style multitiered proficiency system, which has apparently gotten bigger numbers since the playtest.

3. The Feat-a-Palooza approach to PC building within a Class framework bears more than a superficial resemblance to the 4E power catalogs (though the stylistic resemblance is potent).

Jer · Jul 17, 2019

Parmandur said:
1. The action economy, which is a major shift from 3.X ways of doing things, and obviously pretty core to the play experience.

But it's nothing like 4e, which kept 3e's action economy intact.

Parmandur said:
3. The Feat-a-Palooza approach to PC building within a Class framework bears more than a superficial resemblance to the 4E power catalogs (though the stylistic resemblance is potent).

Funny, I feel it's the exact opposite of 4e's approach. Making everything a feat feels very much like a 3e way of approaching game design to me.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 17, 2019

The biggest similarity, at least from my perspective, is their approach to the basic math. It certainly appears as though they're trying to keep more control of which specific numbers will be necessary to hit, in order to guarantee that you have an interesting fight against monsters of your own level. Fourth Edition is unique, in that it assumed you would only be fighting things within a very narrow band of levels, because each encounter was intended to stand on its own, and you were guaranteed a fairly hard reset between fights. That's a stark contrast to 5E design philosophy, where they intended for you to often fight lower-level enemies; and to 3E, where they really didn't care.

Strong control over the math implies (to me) that they are again looking to balance the game at the encounter level, rather than across an entire day (or an entire adventure).