Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

Lefi2017 said:

Isn't 5e a system to be easy made to be easily moded and subject to rulings by design after all ruling over rules is a core component

Can you say the same about pathfinder 2e ? that house rule do not invalidate feats or mechanics?

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I don’t find 5e easier to modify than PF2 because the design isn’t as cleanly delineated. Like, can you ignore the loot tables in the DMG? Well, Xanathar’s tells us there’s a loot progression encoded in them that’s assumed by the DMG. I think this is also why errata continues to lock down certain language to avoid multi-class abuse (e.g., to clarify that a warlock/caster doesn’t refresh the caster class’s spells during a short rest).

If I want to make a ruling, 5e doesn’t give me a lot of tools for doing that. Sure, it tells me to go right ahead, but how can I make sure it’s reasonable or that I haven’t accidentally broken something? Yeah, balance is kind of tenuous in 5e, so maybe don’t worry about it? That’s fine, but that’s not really the game for me.

I’ve done homebrew (see ancestries here, here, here, here, here, and here and a monster here) in 5e, but I find PF2 easier because of the constraints.

MaskedGuy said:

Third is one of those grey situations. I'm willing to consider "crowd" a single target when doing oratory speech, but when you are trying to convince something like four council representatives, you usually would have to convince them separately yeah.

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I considered that approach, but I’m pretty sure convincing the crowd as a singular entity isn’t the goal. In that case, I’d prefer to run an influence event instead of just boiling it down to a roll.

wakedown said:

The TLDR is that feat heavy systems, especially if they want to get you to purchase a dozen books over the years, will inevitably end up gating good ideas and if there's a person at the table with disparate rules mastery, they'll potentially call out the rule(s) that were applicable. It's fine with a home group of friends because your DM can handwave it as long as everyone shares roughly the same philosophies of rules-getting-in-the-way. I think in our limited play of PF2, the gentleman's agreements ended up just imagining every PC had over a dozen or so feats we encountered would've gated play - "just imagine anyone creatively problem-solving can use this rule or a rough approximation of it". Of course then that leads to character building questions, "can I just assume we'll all have this feat in play so I don't have to take it?". If I were to be in charge of PF3, I'd take maybe one third of the feats and put them in a GM Advice Guide (which I know would be a bummer for revenue vs sprinkling them out over a dozen supplements players building PCs could buy to get power) as "suggestions to adjudicate creative player ideas". Or, just trickle the feats-as-advice out via free blog posts to encourage DM creativity.

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This is a legitimate concern about any system that allows skill feats or unlocks or tricks or whatever. I think PF2 made a mistake by not reassuring people they could allow people to do things at a penalty, so no one should have to worry about whether they accidentally invalidated a feat or something else. This was a pretty big miss on Paizo’s part.

kenada said:

That’s how I view having a good framework in a game. That’s why I call it empowering rather than constraining. Because of that framework, I can fit improvised actions into the game’s action economy and have things key off of them where it makes sense. Because I can reason about the game, I can tweak things with an understanding of the implications.

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Sure, and I would say that a detailed rules framework for you occupies the same mental space that the “spirit of the rules” occupies for me.

It is a process that guides the way we adjudicate issues that come up in play that reflects our different ways of processing information.

kenada said:

Rule #1 of Pathfinder 2e is that you can change the game and make it yours. The game entreats you to change it. Refusing to change it would not be running the game as RAW.

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I am conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with you. I don’t think “but it’s RAW” is any defence when a rule or an option defies common sense or is broken. The game (and any AP) is made to be played with, adjusted and houseruled in whatever way is the most enjoyable to your group.

On the other hand, I see where Cap’n Zapp is coming from as well. When you start a system, you are generally going to try to play it as intended, at least until you feel more confident to tinker around the edges. If using a fairly common playstyle means you get your teeth kicked in or the game regularly grinds to a halt, that will definitely affect your impression of the game.

Definitely, my experience with the system was less than stellar.

I just treat skill feats like I treat playbook moves in Apocalypse World. They are narrative permissions that always apply for your character. Without them you need to depend situational rulings that may not apply all the time.

I am also like not at all concerned with spotlight balancing or niche protection. The game has retraining rules for a reason. If you are not happy with a feat you have tools to swap it. If the group is not happy we can change it or let you swap.

Campbell said:

I just treat skill feats like I treat playbook moves in Apocalypse World. They are narrative permissions that always apply for your character. Without them you need to depend situational rulings that may not apply all the time.

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I do and advocate basically the same thing. It’s not for everyone though, which is why I’ve started bringing up a penalty or some cost to the action instead.

FrozenNorth said:

On the other hand, I see where Cap’n Zapp is coming from as well. When you start a system, you are generally going to try to play it as intended, at least until you feel more confident to tinker around the edges. If using a fairly common playstyle means you get your teeth kicked in or the game regularly grinds to a halt, that will definitely affect your impression of the game.

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There are a couple of things to unpack here. I agree that a group new to a game is likely to look towards official adventures to see how it plays. I think they’ll made a good faith effort to runt he rules as written, but I expect most groups to diverge from what’s written in the adventure because that’s just what happens in an RPG.

I’m pushing back on the idea that everything has to be run as written because it feels like that’s being used as a way to constrain the discourse, so that we naturally have to draw the right conclusion. We can’t suggest ways of remedying problems or alternate approaches because that undermines the constraints that are necessary for the argument. It has to be as written. It has to be for a specific style.

It may be that PF2 adventures just aren’t very good for the kick-in-the-door style without some tweaking. That tweaking could be to the adventure, or it could be to the system by just letting everyone heal up or whatever. If the intent were figuring out how to make that work, I think we collectively could figure something out. I don’t feel that’s the intent. It’s like telling your doctor it hurts when you do something, your doctor tells you to stop doing that, and you tell them you can’t because you need to prove that it hurts.

I’ll also add I don’t think kick-in-the-door is the presumed default style for official adventures. There wouldn’t be any point to exploration mode or downtime mode if the adventures were just about going from encounter to encounter with the in-between happening automatically for the most part. They’re not sandboxes, but there are other options between those two extremes.

FrozenNorth said:

Definitely, my experience with the system was less than stellar.

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Yep. And that sucks. I’ve said multiple times that I think Paizo made a mistake with the difficulty of the adventures they’re releasing. That people in your group apparently want to continue playing in spite of the difficulties is a credit to Paizo I suppose, but it still doesn’t sound like a very fun experience. Hopefully the changes you are making will improve the experience.

kenada said:

Yep. And that sucks. I’ve said multiple times that I think Paizo made a mistake with the difficulty of the adventures they’re releasing. That people in your group apparently want to continue playing in spite of the difficulties is a credit to Paizo I suppose, but it still doesn’t sound like a very fun experience. Hopefully the changes you are making will improve the experience.

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No offense taken, but that was Retreater. We played for a year, finished the adventure, than changed systems.

kenada said:

I’m pushing back on the idea that everything has to be run as written because it feels like that’s being used as a way to constrain the discourse, so that we naturally have to draw the right conclusion.

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"Run as written" is an important thing in Paizo-land, particularly because of the development of the broader gaming culture Paizo cultivated in its wider playerbase via adventures and Pathfinder Society. The goal for organized play was to ensure a consistent experience through adventures (inclusive of Society scenarios and sanctioned Adventure Paths) and to not have a wide variance in play where one group had a TPK in an encounter and the other group overcame it due to GM fiat on rules. This was even more important as players moved from GM to GM and it was a question of permissiveness to use certain edge rules between tables because you'd end up with 4th, 5th, 6th, etc level characters that were given permission to do something ruleswise only to finally reach an arbiter who would say "no the rules don't allow that". A lot of PF1E rules were "gimmicky" or borderline exploits so rules interpretation as close to RAW became a critical part of the wider, disparate groups orbiting and engaging in FLGS gaming. Society volunteer leadership felt the instruction was to make things as black and white as possible which permeated the culture.

For a consumer who just picked up a couple books and played exclusively with their home group, they would have likely not been aware that the bulk of the active gaming audience was mired in heated RAW debates during the height of Paizo gaming.