Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2E or Pathfinder 1E?

Aldarc said:

I think that one of the biggest fallacies of gaming is the idea that D&D can do everything well...

Click to expand...

To be clear, I very much adored the 3e/PF1 era of D&D. Every edition is different and this one had some staying power, which is why I followed it to PF1 vs 4e.

Different editions of D&D play differently, but what we remember decades later are the stories we told more than anything else - the unique stories we couldn't get elsewhere that are unique to our group relative to others, that played the same adventures. Typically regardless of the rules or editions, crazy antics will come down to a series of fortunate and unfortunate rolls, and where the d20 is involved that's 1s and 20s (or as close as possible).

This was the disappointment with codifying "Legendary" skills in PF2. A "Legendary Thief" (pg168) can "steal an object that is actively wielded.. You must do so slowly and carefully, spending at least 1 minute and significantly longer for items that are normally time-consuming to remove (like armor)..."

I want to say these are antics we pulled back in 1e/2e games when there were less rules... I've had a player sneak under table during a meal and steal the magic slippers off an NPC without needing a 15th level Feat. Most of the Legendary Feats are things I'd love for players to just attempt without having to actively build a character to do so. In a player's mind, if they are playing one tabletop campaign in their life and they're "The Thief" they want to flex and try all these things and not be told by the other players, "Oh, you need to wait until you're higher level and take a feat to try that." And it has this other awkward side effect because you had to "build towards it" where now you're trying to do something was a narrative gem but it's now a commonplace ability that you want to use once per session because you feel like you spend a character-building "resource" to obtain it.

wakedown said:

To be clear, I very much adored the 3e/PF1 era of D&D. Every edition is different and this one had some staying power, which is why I followed it to PF1 vs 4e.

Different editions of D&D play differently, but what we remember decades later are the stories we told more than anything else - the unique stories we couldn't get elsewhere that are unique to our group relative to others, that played the same adventures.

Click to expand...

This platitude is a bit of a red herring. That's not the point.

This was the disappointment with codifying "Legendary" skills in PF2. A "Legendary Thief" (pg168) can "steal an object that is actively wielded.. You must do so slowly and carefully, spending at least 1 minute and significantly longer for items that are normally time-consuming to remove (like armor)..."

I want to say these are antics we pulled back in 1e/2e games when there were less rules... I've had a player sneak under table during a meal and steal the magic slippers off an NPC without needing a 15th level Feat. Most of the Legendary Feats are things I'd love for players to just attempt without having to actively build a character to do so. In a player's mind, if they are playing one tabletop campaign in their life and they're "The Thief" they want to flex and try all these things and not be told by the other players, "Oh, you need to wait until you're higher level and take a feat to try that." And it has this other awkward side effect because you had to "build towards it" where now you're trying to do something was a narrative gem but it's now a commonplace ability that you want to use once per session because you feel like you spend a character-building "resource" to obtain it.

Click to expand...

The point is not whether or not you prefer needing a feat to do these things. I am merely discussing the presumed scope and tone of the fantasy. /facepalm

Aldarc said:

The point is not whether or not you prefer needing a feat to do these things. I am merely discussing the presumed scope and tone of the fantasy. /facepalm

Click to expand...

Well, I'm down to play Fate anytime...

As I read the PF2 Playtest, I didn't feel like it was be presuming a more legendary tone than it's 1e, 2e or 3e forebears (or its 5e cousin). The page and a half of Legendary Feats where most were a few lines ("Your swim speed is equal to your land speed", "When you Squeeze you move through tight space at full speed", etc) didn't spark any legendary daydreaming for me. I'd imagine for Paizo this game space is something they would explore later in a "Mythic Adventures 2.0" type book and what they have now is kind of this awkward bolt-on to the skill/feat rules where they wanted to have a token end cap for each skill.

Given PF1/2 is mostly a 3e chassis, I feel like I found more "legendary" inspiration from Complete Scoundrel's Skill Trick system if I was looking for something codified into character building to enable fancy things.

Retreater said:

Dare I say that 4E did a decent job at this. Characters could become terribly complex, but the streamlined Essentials builds were pretty effective for characters who didn't want to make the effort.

Click to expand...

Yeah but even with the Essentials line of 4e character building was still pretty involved. This is just my opinion but I feel like one of 5es greatest strengths is the minimum amount of time it takes to build a character. In my experience most new players would already make up their mind they didnt like D&D halfway through building a character, same with Pathfinder.

I kind of agree with both CapnZapp and Saelorn on the sandbox and DC's discussion in that DC 45 for high level progressions is not desirable and neither is a +7 variation at 20 level difference, assuming +7 is the max possible differentiation.

There aren't enough game systems, and game systems are flexible enough, for us all to have one tailor made for the games we want to run. With PF1 I've found I can get what I want with levels 1-10, and basically a +10 differential without considering the effect of abilities and situational modifiers. PF2 tramps down on the modifiers such that situational modifiers are too small. D&D 5E constrains the +1 per level progression but lets the modifiers speak, sort of, with the Advantage system. Trade Advantages for a +4 bonus and I think they've got something.

CapnZapp said:

A perfect illustration to accompany my prayer that Paizo scraps the current PF2 effort and starts again from scratch!

Click to expand...

I have bad news for you.

Ancalagon said:

Swimming and climbing aren't really the stuff of epic games are they?

Click to expand...

Beowulf did some pretty epic swimming, IIRC. Whenever a non-magical character does something that's far beyond the capacity of normal people, that pushes them into epic territory. A more traditional example for D&D would be the DC 45 mechanical lock, which requires a legendary burglar to pick.

Magic can complicate matters. Magic needs to be very powerful, before anyone starts to notice that it's far beyond the capacity of normal wizards. And it's hard to tell when you should be impressed, if someone does something that's physically impossible but magically trivial.

Ancalagon said:

I'm not really sure what this has to do with a sandbox style of play. By this logic, sandbox is *only* possible at high level because at low levels your bonuses are low and the dice is more volatile.

Click to expand...

At low levels, you get to experience the sandbox when high-level characters trounce you due to their superior capabilities. You probably want to give them a wide berth.

You'll need to find an area without those sorts of people, anyway, if you want to do anything impressive. There's no point in trying to be a level 1 hero in a city where level 14 heroes can solve all of your problems in a few minutes. That's the old Superman + Green Arrow teamup problem.

Ancalagon said:

If the DCs scale up with the level of the characters... why bother scaling the DCs?

Click to expand...

Unless the GM is taking very firm control over where the party goes and who the party interacts with, the point of scaling DCs is that you only rarely encounter challenges of your exact level. That aforementioned DC 45 lock is amazing because it can keep out anyone with a skill check bonus smaller than 25 and that includes the overwhelming majority of individuals who might come against it. It would be significantly less impressive if everyone within a hundred miles of it was level 20, and the average thief (from the subset of those who actually come across it) was capable of bypassing it after a few tries.

Scaling DCs become superfluous when you've contrived all encounters to only take place against challenges of an equal level. In that case alone, the specific numbers are meaningless, and you could accomplish the same thing with Bounded Accuracy. That's kind of a degenerate case, though; it doesn't describe a believable world.

CapnZapp said:

I don't think you can even theoretically achieve both. Either a game does what you describe, or choices don't mean much. If you end up with a quite decent character without thinking, you do not have to think.

Click to expand...

You can still have meaningful choices, even if they are equivalent in power. I would argue that a choice isn't meaningful unless they're very close in power; otherwise, you "obviously" choose the correct option. Even if everything was balanced, so you didn't have to take power into consideration, you would still have to think about which options you would prefer and how to best represent the character you want to play.

The problem is when you consider "finding the correct choice" to be a game in itself, and you prefer playing that game to playing the game of overcoming in-game obstacles from the perspective of your character. The character building game of system mastery is incompatible with natural development, but I see no reason why a system should favor the former over the latter. Do people actually go around saying that they want to make the most game-breaking character possible, so they can single-handedly destroy the opposition and trivialize any challenges they may come across? Because that doesn't sound like the kind of person I would want to play with.

zztong said:

There aren't enough game systems, and game systems are flexible enough, for us all to have one tailor made for the games we want to run.

Click to expand...

The good news is that there are an unlimited number of game systems out there, and you absolutely can tailor make exactly the one that you want to run. If you understand an existing game well enough to find faults with it, then you understand it well enough to write a game that's better for you. Assuming you grok the underlying math, and you aren't trying out anything too experimental that might require extensive testing, you should be able to go from complaining on the internet to holding a book in your hands in about six months.

Saelorn said:

The good news is that there are an unlimited number of game systems out there, and you absolutely can tailor make exactly the one that you want to run. If you understand an existing game well enough to find faults with it, then you understand it well enough to write a game that's better for you. Assuming you grok the underlying math, and you aren't trying out anything too experimental that might require extensive testing, you should be able to go from complaining on the internet to holding a book in your hands in about six months.

Click to expand...

Of course. I can, and do, modify my games to suit my needs. I was speaking broadly, though I probably wasn't very clear about that. Many people look for off-the-shelf solutions to fit their available time. They want to use a stock system with off-the-shelf adventures. Those folks are not able to meaningfully rearrange the math of a system, or tinker.

They person who is running the PF2 Playtest in which I play is like that. He's quite capable of modifying the rules, but doesn't have the time to do so, nor customize the APs. It is a priority for him to have an off-the-shelf system that is receiving active support so that he can buy products and use them, and occasionally run off to a convention and play it.

In contrast, I usually have more time to write adventures and tinker with systems. I don't like playing games at conventions. I always monkey with things.