Savage Pathfinder - More of a Slog Than PF1?

[BrokenTwin]

I do think that part of the problem is that Savage Worlds' tagline of "Fast Furious Fun" made a lot more sense when it first game out and there wasn't a lot of market saturation for truly rules lite games like the Powered by the Apocalypse systems.

Also, no, I don't agree with the idea that the vast majority of the people at the table should be able to get away with never learning the rules of the game they agreed to play. I take a lot of the computational load off of my players when I run the game, but the expectation is that they will eventually actually learn to play over time.
I play a lot of board games. Some are party games (with the expectation that all of the players can learn the rules and be competent inside of five minutes), others are serious games that require massive dedication to learn and play (hello Twilight Imperium). But even the most rules-lite TTRPGs require more buy in than something like Cards Against Humanity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm looking at the first few encounters in Burnt Offerings;

1: vs 3 Goblins (Parry 5, Toughness 4)
2: vs 2 Goblin Warchanters (WC, Parry 5, Toughness 6) + 7 Goblins
3: vs 1 Goblin Commander (Wild Card, Parry 6, Toughness 6), 1 Goblin Warchanter (Wild Card), 1 Goblin Dog (Parry 5, Toughness 5) and another 7 Goblin.

Initially I was planning to question how this could have dragged on for over an hour, but looking at this list, that is three combats that should have been condensed into one, and altogether too many Wild Cards.

That was my reaction on reading the opposition you list. Assuming a four character PC group, that first encounter should have been mostly speed bump (I'd expect a fair chance for all those goblins to go down in one round, and there may have been too many Wild Cards in the other two fights (I'm not sure I'd have bothered with either of the first two fights if I was going to do that third).

This is a problem with PF4SW and highlight what I and others have said about the devs leaving in all the trash mobs. This should have been one combat with 1x Wild Card Commander, 1x Dog, 2x Warchanters (extras) and Goblins (2x per PC - 2). I suspect you would have had a better time if you had played Savage Worlds as it was originally intended, rather than Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, which suffers due to the agreement with Paizo not to improve/alter their original work.

Unfortunately, that does kinda' make the PF4SW books kinda' redundant, as you are better off just converting the adventure yourself, if you have access to the original module, and don't mind more prep.

Its a problem I've seen elsewhere in the SW lineup; I backed one SW third party project that was, frankly, rotten because the designers were trying too hard to force the D&D version that done into SW, and another that, while not too bad, had one place where it gave out resources that were waaay overpowered for the point in process they were provided, because, again, it had originally been done for PF1e and the equivlenets there would have been good but not as impactful.

 

[mamba]

I suspect you would have had a better time if you had played Savage Worlds as it was originally intended, rather than Pathfinder for Savage Worlds, which suffers due to the agreement with Paizo not to improve/alter their original work.

is this about the adventure design / encounters or a more general issue with PF4SW class / feat / … design?

 

[BrokenTwin]

is this about the adventure design / encounters or a more general issue with PF4SW class / feat / … design?

I would definitely say it's more in the adventure/encounter design. I do have some quibbles with the balance of some of the class edges (the base Fighter edge could use a bit of a buff, compare it to the Druid class edge), but overall I think it works fairly well. But applying D20 adventure design directly to the SW chassis works about as well as applying it to the PbtA chassis.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be honest: no. If your players won't engage with the system, pretty much no system is going to be satisfactory. Or at least no system with a depth beyond that of Lasers & Feelings.

Yeah, honestly, I'm not sure where the idea you don't need to engage with a system to get value out of it comes from. Usually when a system doesn't expect you to do that to some degree, its because it also doesn't provide you much meaningful options anyway. OD&D was largely like that back in the day for Fighting-Men, and as a consequence any interest in combat at all came from various GM ad-hoc decisions, not the system (and thus largely arbitrary); it wouldn't surprise me that there are a few OSR games like that, but even most of those require some engagement, as do things like 13th Age or Shadow of the Demon Lord (the latter can, depending on your character build/development be toward the mild end, but it still needs something).

Otherwise is always comes down to "See if the dice cooperate, and otherwise other than picking targets you could pretty much play on autopilot."

 

[Retreater]

To be honest: no. If your players won't engage with the system, pretty much no system is going to be satisfactory. Or at least no system with a depth beyond that of Lasers & Feelings.

Without being hyperbolic, they can (and do) learn systems. They can handle 5E D&D and we're doing okay with Daggerheart (which we've been playing for five months and reaching the end-game).

But they're not going to learn to be min-maxing, highly strategic, tactical masterminds. They like a more casual and light-hearted game. This is why I don't suggest Pathfinder 2 for them.

Spoiler: Typical PF2 talk

"You didn't demoralize and flank the enemy, giving him Frightened 1 and the Off-Guard condition. Obviously, you're not going to be able to have a 50% chance to crit him by going +10 over his AC. And if you're not crit-fishing, you're - frankly - playing the game wrong. Until you learn to do that, you won't be able to handle Severe encounters."

And really, if I'm going to be talking like that to get Savage Worlds to work, that trashes the idea of "fast, furious, fun." And I might as well be playing a system that actually cares about balance and like PF2 or Draw Steel. Not a game of throwing out a deck of playing cards for initiative, tossing around metacurrency tokens like candy.

Honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen in my 35 years of gaming a system that is as tonally incongruent as Savage Worlds.

 

[MGibster]

Simply put, they're not going to learn a system like this. They want to come in, drop some math rocks, feel like badasses, and kill some goblins. And shouldn't a system promising what Savage Worlds does do this? Should it be a game that requires the players to jump through hoops, taunting and distracting, rolling opposed tests, just to defeat the bare minimum, most weaksauce enemy in the history of tabletop roleplaying games (the goblin)?

The Savage World rules really aren't all that complicated. If we were talking about GURPS or Phoenix Command I could understand not wanting to learn the system. But in this case, I don't think the problem is with SW. And I can empathize. Despite playing SW off an on for more than a decade, I still have a player who will ask, "Do I roll my Wild Die with that?" when I ask him to make an attack roll.

 

[Retreater]

Usually when a system doesn't expect you to do that to some degree, its because it also doesn't provide you much meaningful options anyway.

Options I took in my playtest that I thought could've been meaningful, but ultimately weren't.

Rogue getting the drop on an enemy to sneak attack.
Cleric forgoing attacks to heal an injured ally.
Wizard increasing power points spent in hopes of doing extra damage. Wizard spending bennies to recharge power point pools.
Fighter trying to take out the enemy spellcaster.

One thing that happened: Enemy spellcaster lowered the Strength trait of the Fighter so he couldn't do big damage. Fighter couldn't shake it. Enemy spellcasters were able to heal each other.

 

[Retreater]

The Savage World rules really aren't all that complicated. If we were talking about GURPS or Phoenix Command I could understand not wanting to learn the system. But in this case, I don't think the problem is with SW. And I can empathize. Despite playing SW off an on for more than a decade, I still have a player who will ask, "Do I roll my Wild Die with that?" when I ask him to make an attack roll.

Just so I'm clear, my experience is with myself playing the game by myself. I haven't brought Savage Pathfinder to my group yet.
I was just trying to run a basic combat with basic characters using basic tactics like a casual, new player might. And it took over an hour and was terrible.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But they're not going to learn to be min-maxing, highly strategic, tactical masterminds. They like a more casual and light-hearted game. This is why I don't suggest Pathfinder 2 for them.

Man, I'm usually somewhat sympathetic to your situation, but to describe the necessary buy-in to get value out of SW this way is hyperbole of really ridiculous proportions.