Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E or Pathfinder 1E?

Aldarc said:

Funny thing though. Throughout the PF2 playtest, no one on the Paizo forums were clamoring for PF2 to be like 5E. If anything, quite the opposite. So it would be refreshing if you would acknowledge that maybe you are truly not the core audience that Paizo is designing PF2 for and maybe what you want out of the game is not what Paizo's core audience wants.

This will be improved somewhat. I recall Paizo saying that monster/foe creation will be more akin to its easier Starfinder iteration.

It's not that different from reading through the Warlock invocation list.

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I agree with you that he isn't the target audience, although I think some of his ideas have merit.

Your comparison of feats and the warlock invocations is ludicrous. Are there 2000 invocations? No.

Aldarc said:

Funny thing though. Throughout the PF2 playtest, no one on the Paizo forums were clamoring for PF2 to be like 5E. If anything, quite the opposite.

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I was, at least in parts. For example, I dearly wish they'd get with the program and use Arcanist/neo-Vancian casting instead of Vancian.

Ancalagon said:

Your comparison of feats and the warlock invocations is ludicrous. Are there 2000 invocations? No.

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If every 5E class used warlock-style invocations and ASI/feats were more common... Also, are there even 2000 feats in PF2?

Staffan said:

For example, I dearly wish they'd get with the program and use Arcanist/neo-Vancian casting instead of Vancian.

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That I agree with as well. I would have thought that the sheer popularity and positive reception of the Arcanist would have taught them otherwise.

Aldarc said:

As did I, but I also noticed a LOT people who did not want PF2 to move in the direction of 5E.

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I fully understand that for many Pathfinder fans, 5E is a red blanket.

It might not be as clear as it ought to be, but my position isn't really "be more like 5E" but "don't un-fix the solutions brought by 5E".

A PF2 game can come across as quite different from 5E while still having learnt the lessons of that game's design.

For instance, IMNSHO several spells (and much of the basic magic framework) have been comprehensively fixed in 5E in a way no previous edition have ever come close to.

Unravelling that progress would be a huge step backwards for a game released in 2019.

Does that mean Wizards must be hamstrung by attunement and concentration and spell slots in the exact same way as in 5E?

No.

But does it mean "I don't like 5E, let's ignore what it brings to the table" is a reasonable idea?

Hell no. Not in an era with millions of new gamers that only really know a single game: 5E.

zztong said:

I can agree with that. The tone of the boards changed noticeably during the Playtest. A lot of the voices advocating for alternatives left. Much of the dissent focused on retaining more of PF1, but... and this is just my opinion... there were folks advocating for changes that remind me of 5E.

I don't post much on the Paizo boards anymore. I recognize Paizo invests a lot of effort trying to keep them cordial, but the remaining audience clearly wants PF2.

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An echo chamber then. Not a particularly useful feedback group.

Saelorn said:

I'm not convinced that clothies with no Con bonus are a thing that exist in 5E. In the last game I played, the average Con score at the end of the campaign was around 18. As long as everyone focused on offense, you really could just charge into the fray and kill them before they killed you, and you'd always come out on top. Due to the action economy, no BBEG is really capable of dealing damage quickly enough to win that exchange.

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This reveals that your group (much like mine) have seen through the game: analyzed its traits and made a (correct) conclusion.
Although an average Con of 18 - across a whole group - is extreme even from my POV.

However, you might be surprised to learn that lots and lots and LOTS of gamers don't know this stuff and/or ignore it.

If you play, say, a Bard (or Druid or Warlock etc) with AC lower than 18 and middling Con, you will instantly evaporate if the baddies look twice at you, and you are best served by long-range attacks, where incoming damage is largely soaked by your buddies (tanks or no tanks). "Luckily" the 3E-era penalties on range and non-strength based attacks are largely removed from 5E, so this is much less of a handicap than you might think.

But this isn't the problem. The problem is that even if you build toward a "tanking" character, you can't reach a meaningful multiple of expected survival: that is, the only approach is for the group (or most of the group) to share the soak.

Saelorn said:

In particular, 5E doesn't allow for stratospheric AC; you can get reliable AC against minions, but bosses will always have at least a 30% chance to hit you, so you can't just stand there forever.

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This.

Or rather, obviously nobody expects you to have infinite staying power. What would be nice, and what would qualify your build as a "tank", would be to be able to reliably keep standing for the three first few rounds, with a shot as bonus rounds depending on die rolls.

That is, enough to actually tank a significant foe. (Combats are indeed short, so the difference between a promising tank build and a disappointing tank build can be as little as a few rounds worth of staying power).

Which brings us to the (Bear) Barbarian: effectively having twice the hp of anyone else is the only real tanking ability that stands out from the crowd.

The diminishing return is on the effort; you have to work much harder to get your AC from 26 to 27, than you do to get it from 23 to 24, and it doesn't help you at all against anything that would already need a 20 to hit you.

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My experience is the reverse. Increasing your AC from, say, 20 to 21 doesn't do you much good, when viewed from the "Am I a tank" perspective.

Sure the incoming DPS is lessened. But the amount of avoidance (from high-threat foes) is not meaningfully reduced, i.e. you're no more a tank just because you effectively have 5% more hp. Not when TWICE the hp is the kind of change you want - at minimum.

What makes a player consider his or her build "successful" is much less some kind of average effectiveness. Much more important is to succeed when it counts. Nobody boasts about taking 7,3% less damage from some trivial goblin encounter. Everybody boasts about enduring the crushing blows from the giant or dragon, while the rest of the time brings it low.

Once your AC reaches 24, 25, 26... something finally changes significantly. Now only BBEGs hit you on anything less than a 20. Find a meaningful dose of temp hp and (ideally) crit immunity and you can finally call yourself a proper tank (assuming you're at a healthy hp total otherwise).

Pathfinder 1E is much the same, but increase the AC numbers by +10, and the boss's attack bonus by +20. In Pathfinder, if you don't throw absolutely everything you have into AC, such that normal minions need a natural 20 to hit, then the high-level boss monsters will only miss you on a 1.

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This only reinforces my belief that lower numbers (what's sometimes called "bounded accuracy") makes it easier to design a game where you retain the sweetspot longer and easier. That is, a game where you can reach 30% or lower hit rate, but not lower than 10%.

What I meant was this: if each bonus lowers the hit ratio by 5pp (percentage points), once you reach 30%, maybe each bonus only lowers the hit ratio by 2pp, and once you reach 15%, only by 1pp. (Not saying this is practical for a simple game).

On a side note, because AC in these games works as avoidance rather than mitigation, having a high AC can significantly reduce your ability to redirect attacks away from your allies. The enemy isn't going to keep swinging at you, if they roll an 18 and miss. It's not really a huge deal in either game, since enemies who miss on an 18 are also dead by round 3, but it's kind of annoying.

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Agreed.

Just because WotC avoids "aggro mechanics" like the plague doesn't mean PF2 has to.

Staffan said:

AC is a bit weird, because it actually has accelerating returns. Each additional plus gives you more life expectancy than the one before.

For example, let's say we have two characters in a party. One AC 15, and the other AC 21. You're fighting monsters with attack bonus +4. So they hit the first guy 50% of the time, and the second guy 20% of the time.

Now let's add a cleric who can cast shield of faith on one of these characters for +2 AC. If she casts it on the guy with AC 15, he is now hit 40% of the time instead. That reduces the damage he takes by 20%. But if she casts it on the AC 21 dude, he is now only hit 10% of the time - that's a damage reduction of 50%, so shield of faith is more than twice as effective on him.

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I guess this is another way of explaining the same phenomenon. That the bump in AC from 20 to 21 isn't nearly as meaningful for your ability to "tank" as the one from 24 to 25.

That's the problem with tanks in a game like D&D - the range between hard to hit and nigh-impossible to hit is very thin.

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And it only becomes thinner with larger numbers and bigger bonuses!

(Since the d20 stays the same).

So a game with AC 30 getting multiple +2 bonuses is much harder to steer into the "sweet spot" than a game with AC 15 and +1 bonuses....

Saelorn said:

That's a good point. I guess that makes sense, from a mechanical perspective, but I still don't find "You'll only get stabbed once per six seconds, rather than twice," to be a persuasive argument from an in-character perspective.

If our best plan is to send me out to distract the enemy, since I'll get stabbed less than anyone else, then I'm still going to advocate for any other plan first.

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Sorry but there is a fundamental difference between D&D and reality: hit points. And not just the concept in itself, but the concept of multiplying levels of hp with level.

You simply can't hold on to the real-life concern "I don't want to get stabbed, ever".

A game where you have 140 hp doesn't work properly if you only get hurt on 20 on a d20. That's a design extreme that misses the sweet spot. You need to abandon the idea that taking hp damage equals getting hit (while you play D&D): as long as you have most of your hp left, losing hp simply means you expend energy avoiding (dodging, parrying) serious injury.

Not that I want to turn this thread into yet another "what does hit points really model in the game world" thread. I just want to make the point that you need to choose.

Sticking to "don't want to get hurt" is a perfectly fine stance to take. In games where defense isn't meaningfully multiplicated as you gain experience, like Runequest perhaps. But not in Dungeons & Dragons.

CapnZapp said:

I fully understand that for many Pathfinder fans, 5E is a red blanket.

It might not be as clear as it ought to be, but my position isn't really "be more like 5E" but "don't un-fix the solutions brought by 5E".

A PF2 game can come across as quite different from 5E while still having learnt the lessons of that game's design.

For instance, IMNSHO several spells (and much of the basic magic framework) have been comprehensively fixed in 5E in a way no previous edition have ever come close to.

Unravelling that progress would be a huge step backwards for a game released in 2019.

Does that mean Wizards must be hamstrung by attunement and concentration and spell slots in the exact same way as in 5E?

No.

But does it mean "I don't like 5E, let's ignore what it brings to the table" is a reasonable idea?

Hell no. Not in an era with millions of new gamers that only really know a single game: 5E.

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Where I suspect the issue lies is in the underlying presumptions that these are problems to be fixed, 5e has fixed them, and that there are not other ways that they could be fixed. For example, I know from firsthand experience several people who wanted to ragequit D&D (and stay with Pathfinder) because 5e only permitted a single concentration spell. For many others I know, 5e fixed a problem. For others, this was not a problem that needed fixing and its solution was despised.

I don't necessarily think that 5e brought these solutions either. Though many would loathe to admit it - particularly 4aters who play Pathfinder - much of the advances of 5e are rooted in developments made in 4e.

And there are other systems that have made advances on the 3e/4e skeleton: e.g., 13th Age, Shadow of the Demon Lord, etc.