Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[BryonD]

I think this post, more than anything, shows why you like PF2 and why I dislike it. (No judgment about people liking different things).

If a player’s background is that he was a blacksmith before adventuring, or that he is a priest of the god of blacksmiths, he should be really good at it. Maybe you’re better at building arms and equipment for you and your party (provided sufficient downtime). Great! That is what makes your character special.

Not sure if you and I are coming from the same place, but this statement very much applies to me.
The character's background as a blacksmith is a narrative concept.
The character being a priest of the god of blacksmiths is a narrative concept.

Narrative concepts are not the first priority of the MECHANICS of PF2E.
The math of PF2E demands compliance with the correct balance points. Then you can fine tune based on narrative. But you can't get outside the math allowances which were established before you ever knew if your character would be a blacksmith priest or a scrawny daydreamer rogue who never worked a hard day in his life.

This is fundamental to the PF2E mechanics and exists in every aspect of the game.
Armor class is an easy to see example. Narrative is largely irrelevant. At X level your AC is expected to be in Y to Z range. You can push the boundaries. But only once the non-narrative preconceptions have put you in the right band.
In 3X/PF your AC wants to know about the narrative things. What is your armor, what is your dex, what gear do you have, etc... Everything comes from narrative bits of the character (dodge feat, class abilities, etc) or something that materially exists within the narrative (armor, magic items, etc). Everything comes from the story, with no concern for balance. I can build a character with an AC way ahead of everyone else. Or is way better at Stealth. Or really is a crazy good blacksmith.

And I completely agree with you on "no judgement about liking different things." I know people HATE the Christmas Tree is PF and people hate collecting +1s. I totally respect that.

My point is not that PF is fundamentally better than PF2E. My point is that PF2E is fundamentally DIFFERENT than PF.
You can say the same words and tell the same story. But the words the players say on top of the mechanics are not what make an RPG ruleset. How that ruleset translates the things that are said into cause and effect is what makes an RPG ruleset.

When I write up a character and it doesn't live up to the narrative driven mathematical representation of those ideas, then I'm unhappy before I even start playing. I have that option in other systems in ways that PF2E specifically and intentionally chose to reign in.

Clearly, there is a niche of players who find that reigning in to be a godsend. More power to them.
But it is still a difference that is important and cuts in both directions.

 

[FrozenNorth]

When I write up a character and it doesn't live up to the narrative driven mathematical representation of those ideas, then I'm unhappy before I even start playing. I have that option in other systems in ways that PF2E specifically and intentionally chose to reign in.

Sometimes, it feels like PF2 was designed in order to “reign people in” at the expense of people who don’t need to be reigned in.

 

[kenada]

Note I have never actually said that making absolute money is a requirement for my approval.

What I don't like is where lost of posters think Crafting lets you make absolute money, yet it actually doesn't.

I'm arguing the system isn't just needlessly complicated (and that it could easily have been replaced with something quicker), it's so very complicated it is demonstrably opaque and difficult to understand.

Let me illustrate:

Crafting. This skill lets you make Earn Income tasks at your own level, regardless of the settlement's nature. You can spend these savings on crafting items, and once you've reached half the purchase price of the item, you can spend the other half of the purchase price in gold, and have your item.​

The end.

How about that for a simpler Crafting rule, that literally fulfills your every need? Two sentences and everything is explained, and nothing is hidden.

What you have is almost the same as how it’s written. If the issue is how the game presents things, than I agree completely. I’m pretty sure I’ve complained about that previously in this thread. It doesn’t do enough to help players form a coherent mental mode, and the way it’s written is like a dictionary.

One of my favorite RPG books is the Rules Compendium for 4e, so it’s not like I don’t like rulebooks. I don’t know if they were trying to optimize the CRB as a reference or what. The GMG is not as bad, but some of the individual subsystems are … loquacious.

I mean VP is basically clocks, but the GMG takes several times as many words to say the same thing. Except, it’s not even as clear. There’s a ton of focus on the mechanics of VP, but you have to go back and reread to see where the later examples built on the former. My intuition about VP ended up coming from BitD.

 

[kenada]

Sometimes, it feels like PF2 was designed in order to “reign people in” at the expense of people who don’t need to be reigned in.

Yes, but I think it’s more like “PF2 was designed for PFS”. PFS takes that kind of stuff very seriously, especially compared to AL.

 

[nevin]

Yes, but I think it’s more like “PF2 was designed for PFS”. PFS takes that kind of stuff very seriously, especially compared to AL.

I do think the Pathfinder Society is why pathfinder has become what it is. which is unfortunate since all they do is cookie cutter encounters.

 

[kenada]

I do think the Pathfinder Society is why pathfinder has become what it is. which is unfortunate since all they do is cookie cutter encounters.

I’d say the same thing about the adventures. They’re still trapped in the 3e mold where encounters are the primary narrative currency. Even if the results are sometimes not great, I can appreciate that WotC is at least willing to experiment and try new things with their storylines.

 

[nevin]

no because in 3e the DM was supposed to be the balancing factor. In Pathfinder the DM is just an arbiter of the rules. I don't know why people that like that don't just play video games.

 

[kenada]

no because in 3e the DM was supposed to be the balancing factor. In Pathfinder the DM is just an arbiter of the rules. I don't know why people that like that don't just play video games.

3e also tried to codify a lot of stuff as a way to empower players. Pathfinder didn’t develop in a vacuum. It grew out of that player empowerment culture.

What I was getting at is the way PF adventures are designed. People took the wrong thing from 3e’s guidelines, and that evolved into an expectation that adventures are built out of appropriately challenging and balanced encounters. Except the guidelines actually work, so you can’t just build your way out and overpower them, and now they’re too hard.

I don’t run official adventures. PF2 is one of my favorite systems for running sandbox games and old-school style games because having tools that work is really awesome. My players can build whatever characters, and I know they won’t break the game. I’ve done a ton of homebrew because the customization points make it easy to create new stuff or take existing stuff and repurpose it (e.g., building a new ancestry out of existing ancestry feats).

 

[Lefi2017]

Can anyone tell me what Systems expect from the DM and what burden they put on them compared to the player?

Second editions sound like it is created to put the Dm in change and give him little freedom (is this true?) and sounds like created by people had had very adversary or anti-party DMs

"we have a rule for it mindset" "do we need these rules?" problem

Role of the DM?
Expectation of Dm?
Freedoms of the Dm?
Rules vs DM?
for / from

1st editon D&D
AD&D
3e/3.5e D&D
4e D&D
Pathfinder 1E
D&D 5e
Pathfinder 2e
(13th Age)

 

[Retreater]

My view is that DMs of the 3.x/PF1/4e/PF2e era are the "ignorant muscle" of the rules, which are flexed by the players. Other titles include: Guardian of the rules, balancer of mechanics. These systems can basically be run with the DM as the AI of a cooperative dungeon crawling board game.

5e puts the DM in a similar role. It requires a little more finesse with the rules because there aren't rules for every conceivable thing - only most conceivable things. The DM is a player, like the party, has roughly equal say at the table as the players due to the limitations of the codified rules.

The TSR editions of D&D actually put the DM in the position of rules arbiter, storyteller, etc. 3.x and onward hamstrung the DM's decision-making and made the role largely superfluous.