Thomas Shey
Legend
I quite liked it as a player, but I'd actually be willing to run it as a GM, something I couldn't say about 1e after my experiences running D&D3e.
Pathfinder 2E Why are all the magic items so boring?
- Thread starter stonehead
- Start date
I quite liked it as a player, but I'd actually be willing to run it as a GM, something I couldn't say about 1e after my experiences running D&D3e.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I thought I'd posted this but it doesn't seem to be here: My PF2e GM had run multiple PF1e campaigns prior to using it, so I think it pretty well looks dodgy when you suggest he hated it.
Incenjucar
Legend
Meanwhile I'm building a nagaji swashbuckler who will be using Smoke Balls, a Goz Mask, and Bioluminescent Stripes to utterly abuse the nagaji gaze abilities while using swashbuckler's decent stealth to play ultimate peek-a-boo.
payn
Glory to Marik
This is one of those general things, not meant to include literally everyone. Like "everybody's second favorite edition".
Thomas Shey
Legend
Which is why I said "At best an impressive bit of hyperbole." (I've mentioned before I'm not actually a big fan of hyperbole.)
The-Magic-Sword
Small Ball Archmage
I like it as both a player and a GM, one of the big reasons is that I never really liked gentleman's agreements to control for optimization in a party, and I really enjoy the whole character optimization side, so the game having a no-nonsense attitude about game balance feels much better-- the play itself is also a lot of fun because of how much more you depend on moment to moment tactical decisions to deliver effectiveness than the PF1e/4e game generation, which were much more, in my experience, about clicking your build buttons and powering through the situation. 4e's roles were very nice, but it made the tactics more abstract for me compared to what I have now because the effectiveness could be so self-contained once you 'clicked the button.' So when you combine that and the balance, I can optimize to give myself a lot of cool build tricks, use them in fights to answer different situations, and everyone in the party can contribute well. In terms of Magic Items, they're one of the places you can squeeze some additional output in, especially for casters who can use them to have denser adventuring days in terms of castings, but martials have more choices to make in their equipment due to runes and talismans.
But another thing that I like is that items are really nice in the context of exploration mode-- the game is a sleeper in terms of dungeon exploration. Hazards are well realized, treasure can be plentiful and useful, and both subsystems really like rewarding the party for balancing between searching, investigating, detect magic etc as they move along and the profusion of spells and spell-like effects encourage a worldview where you might have traversal obstacles or other gimmicks to use them with. So having scrolls of problem-solver spells you don't necessarily want to prep daily is always nice, or items like this.
It's a semi-gygaxian skilled play dynamic by way of lock and key dungeon design and the metroidvania, you present problems and those problems probably have intended solutions (or 'default solutions' as I think of them), but the profusion of problem-solvers allows for players to bring their own keys that might fit into many of your locks and thereby take a different, possibly easier route through the prepped content.
But another thing that I like is that items are really nice in the context of exploration mode-- the game is a sleeper in terms of dungeon exploration. Hazards are well realized, treasure can be plentiful and useful, and both subsystems really like rewarding the party for balancing between searching, investigating, detect magic etc as they move along and the profusion of spells and spell-like effects encourage a worldview where you might have traversal obstacles or other gimmicks to use them with. So having scrolls of problem-solver spells you don't necessarily want to prep daily is always nice, or items like this.
It's a semi-gygaxian skilled play dynamic by way of lock and key dungeon design and the metroidvania, you present problems and those problems probably have intended solutions (or 'default solutions' as I think of them), but the profusion of problem-solvers allows for players to bring their own keys that might fit into many of your locks and thereby take a different, possibly easier route through the prepped content.
Doctor Futurity
Hero
LOL reading that gave me a nervous tick ;-)
Thomas Shey
Legend
While I get some of what you're talking about, IME there were only a very few 4e builds where you could just "click the buttons" without reference to the situation and what other PCs were doing. Most of them were very much interactive.
(I did find them overly abstract in some cases, but that's a separate issue from just being on autopilot).
payn
Glory to Marik
A lot of this is going to be in the eye of the beholder. I bounced off PF2 in a way I wouldn't describe as "just push buttons" but I wont say it doesnt describe how I felt playing it either.
Thomas Shey
Legend
I can see some arguments there's a certain degree of distance in parts of PF2e, though I don't think its as severe as the 4e version in that it usually does describe what's going on in a fairly concrete way. Now, the way it describes it may seem--odd--or over the top--or overly specific, but I don't know that its completely mechanistic.
(You can make an argument its not very flexible, but honestly, that describes a lot of D&D-sphere abilities to me--they run from one extreme to the other of being either "It does just this one thing, though the thing can be useful" or "Here's the all-purpose power tool" (the latter most likely with some magical abilities).
