Pathfinder 2E Discussing a new PF2 healing paradigm

[jmartkdr2]

My own limited experience has been: even if it's easy to do, you still need someone to be a healer of some kind or the whole party is in a bad spot after the first fight.

The fact that there's a lot of way to be a healer mitigates this, but doesn't eliminate it.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Notably, DBZ is actually a really interesting example because its a fantasy world where 'level' actually trumps everything, rather than being an abstraction like we normally imagine it is in trditional conceptions of DND, the reason that second smaller guy is more intimidating (aside from the fact that he's creepy and uncanny valley most of the time) is that he literally outpaces the first guy to a ridiculous degree, the first guy realistically couldn't injure him even if the second guy just stood there T-Posing, and the first guy (as well as everyone else with fighting experience) can literally feel that.

That first guy is weaker than the person the second guy is fighting in this clip:


What you can sort of take away from this, is that even your low charisma Barbarian is very intimidating but it depends who she's intimidating because someone as powerful or more powerful won't be as impressed with her power. Similarly even your high charisma character will struggle to intimidate someone they aren't much of a threat to, but will be able to put people off balance better by unnerving them, or coming across as ruthlessly cruel, or calling their enemies assesment of their power into question, or simply by making the consequences for losing seem so imposing that the enemy has trouble fighting confidently.

 

[payn]

That Dragonballz dynamic does explain PF2 well. It also sums up my problem with it. Matter of taste.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yeah, for me, I grew up on this stuff (and still love it, really) so my feeling is that level largely creates a dynamic that replicates a shonen fighting anime, where power is a fairly strict hierarchy that people can ascend through with training, experience, creativity, and sudden breakthroughs where they go further and further down a rabbit hole of surpassing fantastical human limits through magic, desperation, and good old fashioned hard work. For me, that's a pretty comfortable and well integrated aspect of a world with fantasy and magic that matches the way we traditionally progress from fighting goblins, to fighting dragons of increasing size, age, and power, to eventually fighting Balors, to Deities and Demigods or 'epic tier' god fighting shenanigans.

It doesn't do "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings" where the power of the protagonist is relatively static, and only increases in smaller and qualitative ways throughout the story, but that would also be abandoning the pretense of a power oriented progression system almost entirely to begin with-- the character can progress socially, or maybe gain some new capabilities through magic items (like rings that turn you invisible, or Mithral Chain that makes you harder to kill, or swords that light up when goblins are near) but the actual curve of "I got more powerful" is sort of arbitrarily constrained to normal human limits, which tends to hurt my suspension of disbelief-- a lot of the creatures at the higher end don't feel like something a dude with a sword can hurt-- like the Dragon on the cover of PF1e Mythic Adventures or the dragon the 5e Basic Rules and so on.

I'd go to a different game for that, but my players and I largely prefer the Shonen Anime power scaling of 'weeaboo fightin magick', it does a lot to 'grease the wheels' of a few old problems (like linear martials, quadratic wizards) believably, and we all grew up with it (as did most of our generation of fantasy nerds) so it doesn't tend to feel off for us.

 

[payn]

Yeah, for me, I grew up on this stuff (and still love it, really) so my feeling is that level largely creates a dynamic that replicates a shonen fighting anime, where power is a fairly strict hierarchy that people can ascend through with training, experience, creativity, and sudden breakthroughs where they go further and further down a rabbit hole of surpassing fantastical human limits through magic, desperation, and good old fashioned hard work. For me, that's a pretty comfortable and well integrated aspect of a world with fantasy and magic that matches the way we traditionally progress from fighting goblins, to fighting dragons of increasing size, age, and power, to eventually fighting Balors, to Deities and Demigods or 'epic tier' god fighting shenanigans.

It doesn't do "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings" where the power of the protagonist is relatively static, and only increases in smaller and qualitative ways throughout the story, but that would also be abandoning the pretense of a power oriented progression system almost entirely to begin with-- the character can progress socially, or maybe gain some new capabilities through magic items (like rings that turn you invisible, or Mithral Chain that makes you harder to kill, or swords that light up when goblins are near) but the actual curve of "I got more powerful" is sort of arbitrarily constrained to normal human limits, which tends to hurt my suspension of disbelief-- a lot of the creatures at the higher end don't feel like something a dude with a sword can hurt-- like the Dragon on the cover of PF1e Mythic Adventures or the dragon the 5e Basic Rules and so on.

I'd go to a different game for that, but my players and I largely prefer the Shonen Anime power scaling of 'weeaboo fightin magick', it does a lot to 'grease the wheels' of a few old problems (like linear martials, quadratic wizards) believably, and we all grew up with it (as did most of our generation of fantasy nerds) so it doesn't tend to feel off for us.

Yeap, I like the ideas behind 5E bounded accuracy. I've been wanting for it in D&D for decades. It sucks that I like Paizo Pathfinder style of games much better tho.

 

[Retreater]

Yeap, I like the ideas behind 5E bounded accuracy. I've been wanting for it in D&D for decades. It sucks that I like Paizo Pathfinder style of games much better tho.

What would the hybrid look like to you? PF style with bounded accuracy? Would you run APs with 5e?

 

[payn]

What would the hybrid look like to you? PF style with bounded accuracy? Would you run APs with 5e?

5E is super easy to run. I find it pretty boring as a player though. I think I'd like to give PF2 a shot from the GM chair sometime. I would for sure use the proficiency without level and free archetype variants. Maybe that would do the trick?

If not, I could always do what I did in 3E/PF1 and call it quits around level 12.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My own limited experience has been: even if it's easy to do, you still need someone to be a healer of some kind or the whole party is in a bad spot after the first fight.

The fact that there's a lot of way to be a healer mitigates this, but doesn't eliminate it.

That's true, but the point its possible to be a fairly dedicated healer with skill and a couple of feats and not otherwise impinge on the rest of your operating procedure, instead of, say, tying up a big part of your spellcasting capability in doing it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It doesn't do "The Hobbit" or "Lord of the Rings" where the power of the protagonist is relatively static, and only increases in smaller and qualitative ways throughout the story, but that would also be abandoning the pretense of a power oriented progression system almost entirely to begin with-- the character can progress socially, or maybe gain some new capabilities through magic items (like rings that turn you invisible, or Mithral Chain that makes you harder to kill, or swords that light up when goblins are

Well, you can also do it by having a non-linear progression where, say, your early advancement produces some notable steps upward, but then it flattens out. That's the way it usually works in BRP systems, and to some extent, in GURPS for example.

 

[jmartkdr2]

That's true, but the point its possible to be a fairly dedicated healer with skill and a couple of feats and not otherwise impinge on the rest of your operating procedure, instead of, say, tying up a big part of your spellcasting capability in doing it.

So long as somebody wants to do that, you're good to go.

But if no one wants to (because they're more interested in other skills) or if the one player who did isn't there this week... you're in a bad spot.