Pathfinder 1E Did most PF1e Players migrate to 2e or stick with 1e?

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, thats fair, it doesnt cover "I am the Archmage Khelben Blackstaff Arunsun". That sort of game would be much harder to GM in D&D though. Especially if you try to run it using gameplay loops from low level D&D. Probably at some point, most of the game would mostly turn into a political game managing various agents, punctuated with an occasional epic wizard battle. But thats a very different kind of game. And then youre essentially GMing Lords of Waterdeep, the Campaign.

Probably so. Most of my own fantasy RPG campaigns have been run with either Fantasy Hero or some BRP variant, so its been a non-issue to me, but I always thought D&D 3e (and presumably PF1es) big virtue was they didn't chicken out at those higher spell levels.

Too bad they also didn't really have any idea how to manage them, either.

I've seen many who do that. Often they reinvent the wheel, just making some other game but worse and hacked out of current edition d&d.

Yeah. What gets me is there's only two reasons to do that I can see: 1. You think it'll be easier to find players (which might turn into an unpleasant surprise when they find out how far you've drifted from what they think of as D&D), 2. You're too lazy on one hand to look around for a better choice, but are still going to mutate the game far afield, which seems--perverse.

Point.

There might be a giveaway; the presence or lack of Advantage/Disadvantage for example. But someone who wants to thoroughly rework D&D into their dream game might not like that either (personally, not a fan).

Hero system is on my bucket list. I have some HERO books on my shelf, mostly 6th Ed but with I think one 5th Ed or 4th Ed book. Interesting looking but I haven't played or run it yet. And yeah, rebuilding D&D content in another system is no small task.

Like I said, that's the price for the insistence D&D has had on all the special casing almost from day one. And insisting that experienced spellcasters all have a million spells known to them. While Hero can be intimidating to some people (but I doubt to an experienced GURPS guy) it normally has the advantage that it really doesn't feel the need to give spellcasters access to 50 different potential spells with fine distinctions, but if you literally want to port over most of the D&D spell systems, that's just part of the lifting you've bought.

If I want to run Faerûn, nearly all. Otherwise, less is fine.

That's why I asked. Even when emulating a specific setting, I don't think I'd bother to duplicate the whole D&D magic system; I'd do enough work to get some of the same look-and-feel and then move on. But different people are fussy in different places.

Thats probably most of them. I always liked more janky playstyles and weird abilities. And when I tried PF2 (in 2019 or 2020 mind you, there were only a few books out), "Meaningfully contributes without interacting with enemy HP" didnt really seem to be a viable or variable supported playstyle. Most of my other gripes at the time were on the character customisation side. I concluded it seemed much like PF1 but blander.

Well, in the end of the day, PF2e very much wanted to move away from hardcore save-or-suck type effects, so even if a spell is not doing HP damage, its usually setting things up so you can do HP damage easier, or so the opponent can't do it as easily. There's just not a lot of point in giving people and opponents a bunch of hit points and then making it easy--maybe even possible--for someone to just end run that. If anything I wish they'd done the 13th Age thing of limiting some spells effectiveness not on the level of the target, but its hit points, so you still had to have damage causers involved, but sometimes the spellcasters would set them up, and sometimes they'd set the spellcasters up.

I was more saying that the stackable archetypes + customisations (on base classes so no prereqs) practically let you design your own 1-20 class to play, and I think "build-a-class" comes pretty close to being classless, but with more involved homework.

I've seen attempts to do that before, but its a hard row to hoe balance-wise; traditional style class components are almost never really properly balanced with each other; that's part of what tended to break 3e era multiclassing that proper dipping could often vacuum up all the best class abilities. It was hard to make it work right with spellcasters for reasons we've discussed, but it could absolutely supercharge non-spellcasters if done right.

Yeah, thats a fair statement. It wasn't a particularly extensive rebalance over 3.5.

Honstly, it would likely have been hard to do and still satisfy the fans of D&D 3e who were fleeing to it because 4e wasn't what they wanted.

This premise is the origin of my own system which is coming along but isn't finished yet. I have patched out some balance issues, but it is certainly looking less like D&D (and its to run my own setting, not an official D&D setting). Part of that is because I intend a rather different (less combat-centric) gameplay loop and rate of progression than D&D's assumed ones though. I did spend almost half a year on character option rebalancing. As for whether I will have crippling balance problems, on paper it looks like it should be less of an issue than 3.5’s. Hopefully issues beyond that reveal themselves in playtesting.

Well, in the end of the day, that's always how you have to find them. If you can manage to do it, I recommend doing some blindtesting (i.e. getting some people to play it who don't play with you and thus don't share your expectations) because there's otherwise liable to be things that everyone just--skips over--until they don't.

(A little ancedote about that. For a while I was looking at using a middlin' decently designed system called Sabre (Sabre Fantasy and Sabre Sci-Fi being the two branches of it) that's basically a hybrid of Mythras/Runequest 6 and D&D 5e, and ran a playtest of it to see what I and my players thought of it. The reaction of the group was mixed but my wife had a terrible time with the ranger equivelent.
Because, it turned out, it was really, really bad, largely because it was very focused on archery, and archery in the game was pretty bad for about four different reasons. And the designer had never really realized it because instead of telling him, his players just avoided playing archers. Once I presented the problems to him, he was aghast and went back and worked on them. He'd have probably addressed them a long time before if he'd done any blindtesting).

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's not so much about the cap of spell power itself as it is to move power budget from the spellcasting progression to other class features. That in turn leaves room for trading those features out using archetypes and/or prestige classes.

As a side effect it would also hose down some of the alpha-striking ability of the upper end of the game, at least a little.

 

[VHawkwinter]

As a side effect it would also hose down some of the alpha-striking ability of the upper end of the game, at least a little.

I have been mulling over how to change that for RoS, and was thinking about capping the number of spell slots lower.

(I already have slower spell prep, and slots are developed one at a time (spell-powers that run on a mana pool are possible but significantly more expensive than prepared + slots, and available at later levels), but now I am mulling over the possibility of slowing down the minimum character level to acquire spells of a new rank as an additional possibility.

I'll have to play with some test builds and see how they look.

Currently I don't have too much preventing people from nova-ing, but they cannot assume they'll be at full the next morning, because they won't.

(But part of will also be that you'll be using your own mana / spell slots to keep magic items charged, most won't have their own batteries).

(I'll respond to your comments directed directly to me from my PC)

 

[VHawkwinter]

Probably so. Most of my own fantasy RPG campaigns have been run with either Fantasy Hero or some BRP variant, so its been a non-issue to me, but I always thought D&D 3e (and presumably PF1es) big virtue was they didn't chicken out at those higher spell levels.

Fair.

Too bad they also didn't really have any idea how to manage them, either.

Yeah; I don't think they really handle it the best, either. But they at least made some attempt. Haha

Yeah. What gets me is there's only two reasons to do that I can see: 1. You think it'll be easier to find players (which might turn into an unpleasant surprise when they find out how far you've drifted from what they think of as D&D), 2. You're too lazy on one hand to look around for a better choice, but are still going to mutate the game far afield, which seems--perverse.

I definitely looked first. I just mostly wasn't satisfied with the offerings.

There might be a giveaway; the presence or lack of Advantage/Disadvantage for example. But someone who wants to thoroughly rework D&D into their dream game might not like that either (personally, not a fan).

Likewise. I preferred stackable bonuses to that.

Like I said, that's the price for the insistence D&D has had on all the special casing almost from day one. And insisting that experienced spellcasters all have a million spells known to them.

They may not all be prepared even if they know a ton of them. But yes, very different than a comic booky wizard who only really uses the same couple of spells 99% of the time, and then casts from a book when they want anything else.

While Hero can be intimidating to some people (but I doubt to an experienced GURPS guy) it normally has the advantage that it really doesn't feel the need to give spellcasters access to 50 different potential spells with fine distinctions, but if you literally want to port over most of the D&D spell systems, that's just part of the lifting you've bought.

Indeed. I don't particularly want to do that work, which is what dissuaded me from trying to use HERO for FR. If I decide to ever try it again with GURPS, much of the work is now done for me. Some of it was already done back in like 2018, but not a whole lot. Now there's a ton of it already finished.

That's why I asked. Even when emulating a specific setting, I don't think I'd bother to duplicate the whole D&D magic system; I'd do enough work to get some of the same look-and-feel and then move on. But different people are fussy in different places.

I don't need it to be (or really care if it is) a perfect match to the TTRPG, but I need it to be a close enough match to replicate the feel of the characters (many of whom are Wizards or Clerics) in the novels from ~1990-2005. Which is still pretty specific.

Well, in the end of the day, PF2e very much wanted to move away from hardcore save-or-suck type effects, so even if a spell is not doing HP damage, its usually setting things up so you can do HP damage easier, or so the opponent can't do it as easily. There's just not a lot of point in giving people and opponents a bunch of hit points and then making it easy--maybe even possible--for someone to just end run that.

Yes. I understand what they're going for. A game where the combat cannot be bypassed and you have to pull out the minis and fight it out. My favourite PF1 character I ever played was a Wizard who knew only nonlethal spells to disarm without permanent injury or to reshape the terrain to run away or to contain them. The game they wanted to make me play for PF2 was not the game I enjoyed playing in PF1 with lots of effective noncombat options, but what PF1 became when I played a more boring character.

If anything I wish they'd done the 13th Age thing of limiting some spells effectiveness not on the level of the target, but its hit points, so you still had to have damage causers involved, but sometimes the spellcasters would set them up, and sometimes they'd set the spellcasters up.

I can see that.

I've seen attempts to do that before, but its a hard row to hoe balance-wise; traditional style class components are almost never really properly balanced with each other;

Agreed, that's why PF1 generally had you trading out ~1/4 of your class for a different 1/4 of your class rather than an individual feature - but yes, if you combined that with extensive multiclassing, you could absolutely optimise it. In RoS I spent a great deal of time pricing out abilities relative to eachother. I doubt I got it perfect, but hopefully it turns out to be good enough for now, and I'll patch trait pricing bugs as I encounter them. I'm not making a physical book, so updates are more doable.

that's part of what tended to break 3e era multiclassing that proper dipping could often vacuum up all the best class abilities. It was hard to make it work right with spellcasters for reasons we've discussed, but it could absolutely supercharge non-spellcasters if done right.

Absolutely.

Honstly, it would likely have been hard to do and still satisfy the fans of D&D 3e who were fleeing to it because 4e wasn't what they wanted.

Yes, yes that is true. But I meant PF2 could have been a PF1 overhaul rather than a totally different game, and that would have been much more appealing to me.

Well, in the end of the day, that's always how you have to find them. If you can manage to do it, I recommend doing some blindtesting (i.e. getting some people to play it who don't play with you and thus don't share your expectations) because there's otherwise liable to be things that everyone just--skips over--until they don't.

That is the plan.

(A little ancedote about that. For a while I was looking at using a middlin' decently designed system called Sabre (Sabre Fantasy and Sabre Sci-Fi being the two branches of it) that's basically a hybrid of Mythras/Runequest 6 and D&D 5e, and ran a playtest of it to see what I and my players thought of it. The reaction of the group was mixed but my wife had a terrible time with the ranger equivelent.
Because, it turned out, it was really, really bad, largely because it was very focused on archery, and archery in the game was pretty bad for about four different reasons. And the designer had never really realized it because instead of telling him, his players just avoided playing archers. Once I presented the problems to him, he was aghast and went back and worked on them. He'd have probably addressed them a long time before if he'd done any blindtesting).

I have, on a couple occasions, posted a snippet of design to /tg/ specifically because I understand the people there to be quite rude. They certainly didn't hold back in criticising my work, which was what I was hoping for. My wife questioned me enacting such a strategy because she thought my feelings would be hurt, but it worked pretty well to point out problems I hadn't noticed. It was a little like StackOverflow. Haha

Anyway, blindtesting will be important. As will having people who are not afraid to hurt my feelings telling me I screwed up. Yes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair.

Don't get me wrong; making higher level D&D spells available, even for only a subset of campaigns was not without a price, and I don't think at the time of 3e's publication (or even 3.5) they really weren't ready to deal with the problems associated with that. This is not surprising because unless you were off in the superhero RPG part of the hobby, you were unlikely to have seen things with that kind of implications before (and even in the superhero part some of the problems with transport and sensory magic weren't as common because not every PC group would have them).

Yeah; I don't think they really handle it the best, either. But they at least made some attempt. Haha

Well, like I say above, its not entirely surprising.

I definitely looked first. I just mostly wasn't satisfied with the offerings.

Its absolutely a thing that can happen. The fact you're pretty wedded to the D&D spell system makes it hard. Its just that I don't think many people are quite that fixed on the specifics of the magic system they're using in a way that an extent system that otherwise doesn't suit them is liable to be the only one that gets the job done. (Though I say that now and I did something like that once where I had a magic system that really well represented what I wanted, but it was designed to work with BRP, and I didn't want to use BRP for that game, so I tried to hack Hero into faking the magic system. In the end the campaign did not go well and I should have just stuck to BRP).

Likewise. I preferred stackable bonuses to that.

Its not like there aren't other solutions to the problem it was solving To reference back to this thread, just cutting back the number of different bonus types makes most of it go away.

They may not all be prepared even if they know a ton of them. But yes, very different than a comic booky wizard who only really uses the same couple of spells 99% of the time, and then casts from a book when they want anything else.

Even other games mages often don't have that kind of variety. They often take the tact like GURPS main magic system where you know the spells you know, and picking up new ones is possible but non-trivial. They're more like D&D sorcerers than D&D wizards.

Indeed. I don't particularly want to do that work, which is what dissuaded me from trying to use HERO for FR. If I decide to ever try it again with GURPS, much of the work is now done for me. Some of it was already done back in like 2018, but not a whole lot. Now there's a ton of it already finished.

Its always nice when someone has done the work for you.

(I wouldn't be surprised if someone has ported a lot of D&D spells into Hero at some point or another, but I'd probably just end up taking issue with how they chose to do it. )

I don't need it to be (or really care if it is) a perfect match to the TTRPG, but I need it to be a close enough match to replicate the feel of the characters (many of whom are Wizards or Clerics) in the novels from ~1990-2005. Which is still pretty specific.

Fair enough. You want what you want.

Yes. I understand what they're going for. A game where the combat cannot be bypassed and you have to pull out the minis and fight it out. My favourite PF1 character I ever played was a Wizard who knew only nonlethal spells to disarm without permanent injury or to reshape the terrain to run away or to contain them. The game they wanted to make me play for PF2 was not the game I enjoyed playing in PF1 with lots of effective noncombat options, but what PF1 became when I played a more boring character.

But you have to ask the question "If a spellcaster can negate the fight by clever use of spells most of the time, what are the martials there for?" That was always the problem as D&D evolved, and became more and more pronounced as you levelled up. At a certain point, they weren't even there to keep opponents off the casters any more (not that that was a terribly satisfying procedure for them in the first place).

I can see that.

Of course it still means that spellcasters have to have some damage capacity, or be okay with doing support spells for the beginning of the fight while the martials whittle down those hit points, but I don't really see any solution that avoids that which doesn't produce the thing I mention above where martials are a strictly secondary type in the game.

Agreed, that's why PF1 generally had you trading out ~1/4 of your class for a different 1/4 of your class rather than an individual feature - but yes, if you combined that with extensive multiclassing, you could absolutely optimise it. In RoS I spent a great deal of time pricing out abilities relative to eachother. I doubt I got it perfect, but hopefully it turns out to be good enough for now, and I'll patch trait pricing bugs as I encounter them. I'm not making a physical book, so updates are more doable.

I saw it a fair bit when I ran D&D 3e, and like I said, there was only so much PF1e could do to fix that given their attempt to be relatively compatible in look-and-feel with D&D3.

Yes, yes that is true. But I meant PF2 could have been a PF1 overhaul rather than a totally different game, and that would have been much more appealing to me.

Its a no-win though; it probably wouldn't have brought in a lot of new players, and among the old ones you'd have gotten a mix of people who would have felt like they were just being taken advantage of by making them rebuy the same game (a common complaint with new editions of games anyway, but gets really steep in a line with a lot of output like PF has had) because they didn't think it had changed enough to matter. Assuming any overhaul could have been done that actually did more than noodle at the margins (I'm very dubious) and not be just as radical in different ways.
(Personally I find describing it as "a totally different game" a little hyperbolic, but then, I found the people who called D&D 4e "not D&D" hyperbolic too; it came across as not comparing it to other games outside the D&D sphere to see what a real "not D&D" looked like).

That is the plan.

You'd be shocked at how few people actually try to do blindtesting even in the professional sphere.

I have, on a couple occasions, posted a snippet of design to /tg/ specifically because I understand the people there to be quite rude. They certainly didn't hold back in criticising my work, which was what I was hoping for. My wife questioned me enacting such a strategy because she thought my feelings would be hurt, but it worked pretty well to point out problems I hadn't noticed. Haha

The biggest thing is to understand that the law of unintended consequences lurks in game mechanics all the time. I learned that years ago when I made a fairly simple change in something involving parrying in RuneQuest and saw it do something that (in retrospect) was extremely predictable but had flown right under my radar.

Anyway, blindtesting will be important. As will having people who are not afraid to hurt my feelings telling me I screwed up. Yes.

There's no need most of the time to be rude to a designer/houseruler about the potential problems a design choice can have. As long as they can tolerate you walking though it--and remember that different people will do different things with faced with a rule--there's no need to be offensive. Of course sometimes you'll get a designer who really has tunnel vision, and they're not going to easily accept that same truth, but you don't come across as someone likely to be like that.

 

[VHawkwinter]

But you have to ask the question "If a spellcaster can negate the fight by clever use of spells most of the time, what are the martials there for?" That was always the problem as D&D evolved, and became more and more pronounced as you levelled up. At a certain point, they weren't even there to keep opponents off the casters any more (not that that was a terribly satisfying procedure for them in the first place).

The answer I settled on for Realm of Stars is that everyone has noncombat stuff, and either magic or fantastical martial arts techniques (think Legend of the Condor Heroes, or Naruto, or maybe Bleach). I avoid Angel Summoned and BMX bandit by making a wider variety of Angel Summoners and just stating plainly that BMX Bandit is the character concept of an NPC lower in level than a starting PC. More noncombat gameplay as a focus, and everyone is assumed to be doing more than just combat.

When running PF1, I would often just run a tier 1-3 game (if youre familiar with d20 class tiers), say Tiers 4-6 are too limited for players, tell my players they should be reserved for hirelings and sidekicks via leadership, and if they wanted to run one anyway, I would have them give me written text explicitly confirming that they understand they are building a character with limited capabilities outside the potential for violent conflict resolution, while other players will have a variety of noncombat problem resolution tools beyond just skills, most of them magical in nature, and they promised not to complain when thats exactly what happened at the table. When broken down in that way, they would either choose a more versatile character or promise not to gripe about being a 1-trick pony. Only once did someone who signed the waiver complain about it at the table, and I raised an eyebrow and told him that he knew what he signed up for and asked him if he wanted me to work in an excuse to re-spec as a more versatile class or to play a different character. I forget what he chose. But one way or another he went for a more versatile character. Another few were happy to play a one trick pony and just wanted to hang out and roleplay with the guys anyway.

But yes, absolutely, that is a design problem that needs solving. I just clearly favour different answers than Paizo.

I don't really see any solution that avoids that which doesn't produce the thing I mention above where martials are a strictly secondary type in the game.

Or "Everyone is some kind of Wizard, harry."

you'd have gotten a mix of people who would have felt like they were just being taken advantage of by making them rebuy the same game (a common complaint with new editions of games anyway, but gets really steep in a line with a lot of output like PF has had) because they didn't think it had changed enough to matter.

True. Ive seen people make that complaint about 5.5

I find describing it as "a totally different game" a little hyperbolic, but then, I found the people who called D&D 4e "not D&D" hyperbolic too; it came across as not comparing it to other games outside the D&D sphere to see what a real "not D&D" looked like.

Well, some of us were running 3e a bit closer to Runequest or Rolemaster, with more noncombat gameplay as a world simulator, and not using minis. 4e was a pretty radical departure from that.

Similarly, PF2 leans very heavily into the miniature skirmish gaming that I still wasn't doing a ton of in PF1 in 2017, usually we did totm, and if I was the GM there was also generally less combat, and then of course the game has a ton of ways to not combat. And in dropping the 3.x back compatibility, PF2 would be more work to port over the various 3.x noncombat expansions I like, even before considering the character playstyle mismatches.

But what I meant here by different game was "not cross compatible with the stuff I have". It is recognisable as Pathfinder, but when I tried it, it played as a blander version of PF1 without the fun Paizo stuff or compatibility with the fun Non-Paizo stuff.

But I will admit that what I consider the best books of 3.x are specifically books that expanded on the noncombat gameplay.

There's no need most of the time to be rude to a designer/houseruler about the potential problems a design choice can have. As long as they can tolerate you walking though it--and remember that different people will do different things with faced with a rule--there's no need to be offensive.

No, there isn't a need for it, but a space where the people give harsh criticism and don't care about your feelings isn't going to hold back on criticism to try not to hurt your feelings. Maybe It's just because I got used to Stack Overflow, but if someone wants to call me stupid while they point out my mistakes, and the advice is solid, I will accept that as the price of useful constructive criticism.

Of course sometimes you'll get a designer who really has tunnel vision, and they're not going to easily accept that same truth, but you don't come across as someone likely to be like that.

I certainly hope not. I want the game to be good, not to be coddled. I may also be desensitised to insults during advice from years of StackOverflow. You know what they say, Cunningham's Law. If you want the right answer to a problem, post a question and then use another account to post the wrong answer, and then wait for someone to correct you.

(Man, auto correct really doesn't help me out when I post from my phone.)

 

[Thomas Shey]

The answer I settled on for Realm of Stars is that everyone has noncombat stuff, and either magic or fantastical martial arts techniques (think Legend of the Condor Heroes, or Naruto, or maybe Bleach). I avoid Angel Summoned and BMX bandit by making a wider variety of Angel Summoners and just stating plainly that BMX Bandit is the character concept of an NPC lower in level than a starting PC. More noncombat gameplay as a focus, and everyone is assumed to be doing more than just combat.

I'm not going to say this is wrong, but it still seems if the spellcasters fit your tastes that when combat is going on, one has an immediate takeout/disable capacity and the other probably has fancier ways to do damage. I'm pretty sure I at least would not find that satisfying in a martial type, even a wuxia type. This is assuming even in a less combat focused game that it still happens reasonably often (because if it doesn't, why am I bothering with a martial oriented character in the first place?)

I mean, I can get the idea of games less combat oriented; I'm currently running Eclipse Phase, and most of that is based around investigation and interaction. But when combat does come up, the combat characters are very much at the center of events, and no one is liable to make them moot.

When running PF1, I would often just run a tier 1-3 game (if youre familiar with d20 class tiers), say Tiers 4-6 are too limited for players, tell my players they should be reserved for hirelings and sidekicks via leadership, and if they wanted to run one anyway, I would have them give me written text explicitly confirming that they understand they are building a character with limited capabilities outside the potential for violent conflict resolution, while other players will have a variety of noncombat problem resolution tools beyond just skills, most of them magical in nature, and they promised not to complain when thats exactly what happened at the table.

Well, if in practice you're running a game only for mages, that's a different beast. I just think that's farther along than what you seem to suggest up above in that first paragraph. Even fantastic martial arts doesn't exactly suggest huge amounts of options outside the combat and physical.

But yes, absolutely, that is a design problem that needs solving. I just clearly favour different answers than Paizo.

Well, I hope you understand why the solution that adds up to "The way to deal with the fact casters outshine martials even in combat is to have no martials" isn't too satisfactory for a lot of people? I mean, bluntly, people who would be happy with that are probably playing something outside the D&D sphere in the first place (say, Ars Magica). Even Earthdawn didn't go that far.

Or "Everyone is some kind of Wizard, harry."

Earthdawn did something like that, but they did it in part by compressing the two types closer together, so you still didn't get casters who were the all purpose power tool.

True. Ive seen people make that complaint about 5.5

And that's it. PF1e had largely reached saturation. How was just fiddling at the borders going to make sense for a new edition? I mean, they've had some complaints about that with the Remastered books, because the changes mechanically there are generally mild (a few classses with some problems got tuned up and a couple other things), but Remastered had a secondary purpose in disconnecting them from the OGL. It'd have looked like nothing but a naked cash grab if it had been that modest to a lot of people.

(I'm not qualified to judge about 5.5, not being a D&D 5e guy).

Well, some of us were running 3e a bit closer to Runequest or Rolemaster, with more noncombat gameplay as a world simulator, and not using minis. 4e was a pretty radical departure from that.

I can see that, but I'm not sold 3e wasn't pretty heavily combat focused. I mean, look at the capabilities of player characters and count how much of that is not combat focused. I mean, I didn't find 4e entirely satisfying for similar reasons, but--not D&D? Uhm, how many "not D&D" games have the combination of classes, levels, level elevating hit point, the particular six attributes--the only thing that had changed in broad was how magic was handled. I mean, all I'd have needed was to look at a character sheet and I'd have gone "Some version of D&D, clearly." You can argue that 4e leaned into tactical combat more than most D&D versions, but its not like D&D has had a lot of non-combat oriented characters since day one, and I'm even including types like rogues and bards. I just didn't find the skill challenge approach entirely satisfying; a little too undifferentiated.

Similarly, PF2 leans very heavily into the miniature skirmish gaming that I still wasn't doing a ton of in PF1 in 2017, usually we did totm, and if I was the GM there was also generally less combat, and then of course the game has a ton of ways to not combat. And in dropping the 3.x back compatibility, PF2 would be more work to port over the various 3.x noncombat expansions I like, even before considering the character playstyle mismatches.

Though I'll note PF2e actually had a fair bit of third party outside-of-combat supplimental material. I just bought a kingdom managing book for it, and I've seen stronghold managing ones.

(I won't say there's a massive amount of diplomacy support in the game, but then, I didn't think there was that much in 3e either. )

But what I meant here by different game was "not cross compatible with the stuff I have". It is recognisable as Pathfinder, but when I tried it, it played as a blander version of PF1 without the fun Paizo stuff or compatibility with the fun Non-Paizo stuff.

Hmmm. Well, if you actively avoided combat I can maybe see that. I wouldn't call PF2e "bland" but then I'm playing it in presented form, so a fair amount is combat and some of the other s hazard avoidance, and I think there's plenty of interest in those. The social parts aren't especially flavorful, but then, that describes most games to me; most of the flavor there in my experience comes from the roleplaying; few systems do much work there.

But I will admit that what I consider the best books of 3.x are specifically books that expanded on the noncombat gameplay.

Well, yeah, if you were playing 3e ina mode fairly off the beaten path, a new version of the game focused more or less on the beaten path might be unsatisfactory.

No, there isn't a need for it, but a space where the people give harsh criticism and don't care about your feelings isn't going to hold back on criticism to try not to hurt your feelings. Maybe It's just because I got used to Stack Overflow, but if someone wants to call me stupid while they point out my mistakes, and the advice is solid, I will accept that as the price of useful constructive criticism.

I suppose, I just find people who feel a need to tell you you're stupid may have questional judgment with their system analysis.

(Unless you get hostile in their more polite critique. At that point you get what you bought, as it were).

I certainly hope not. I want the game to be good, not to be coddled. I may also be desensitised to insults during advice from years of StackOverflow. You know what they say, Cunningham's Law. If you want the right answer to a problem, post a question and then use another account to post the wrong answer, and then wait for someone to correct you.

Heh. Well, there's something to be said for that.

 

[VHawkwinter]

I'm not going to say this is wrong, but it still seems if the spellcasters fit your tastes that when combat is going on, one has an immediate takeout/disable capacity and the other probably has fancier ways to do damage. I'm pretty sure I at least would not find that satisfying in a martial type, even a wuxia type. This is assuming even in a less combat focused game that it still happens reasonably often (because if it doesn't, why am I bothering with a martial oriented character in the first place?)

Agreed, that's one of my bigger problems with Book of Nine Swords and Pathfinder's third party Path of War.

I mean, I can get the idea of games less combat oriented; I'm currently running Eclipse Phase, and most of that is based around investigation and interaction. But when combat does come up, the combat characters are very much at the center of events, and no one is liable to make them moot.

Yeah, combat will come up regularly, I just think it should normally be like, ~30-45 minutes of a 4-5 hour session (maybe an hour), not 3.5 hours of a 4-5 hour session.

Well, if in practice you're running a game only for mages, that's a different beast. I just think that's farther along than what you seem to suggest up above in that first paragraph. Even fantastic martial arts doesn't exactly suggest huge amounts of options outside the combat and physical.

I mentioned Naruto as an example for a reason. The "martials" will have fewer magical abilities, but they'll be able to use them without preparing them, and they'll draw from an "Essence" pool.
Running up walls; walking on water; attacks that target ability scores; save or suck effects on attacks; knockout gas; perhaps invisibility. The starting 'classes' are either a kind of dedicated-mage with weak martial abilities, or gishes. The abilities will be extraordinary techniques still, but not vulnerable to antimagic, and no longthy spell prep required for those. They'll have more stuff favouring combat, but it won't be all combat stuff. The goal is all the characters should be decently well rounded by default. And some of them will use more mundane weapons as well and have more staying power but less variety in their powers. That's the goal, anyway.

Well, I hope you understand why the solution that adds up to "The way to deal with the fact casters outshine martials even in combat is to have no martials" isn't too satisfactory for a lot of people? I mean, bluntly, people who would be happy with that are probably playing something outside the D&D sphere in the first place (say, Ars Magica). Even Earthdawn didn't go that far.

Sure. Some people want a mundane knight in a game with wizards, not shonen fighting anime protagonists and shonen fighting anime protagonists with a bit of spellcasting, and wizards. I get that. But - You can see how the believable mediaeval knights don't keep up with an archmage. Either the Knights are sidekicks and you accept the power & versatility disparity and accept it will happen; or you need to either nerf the mages or give a bunch of utility magic to the knights (not just "damage again, but this time it's blue") to close the gap.

Earthdawn did something like that, but they did it in part by compressing the two types closer together, so you still didn't get casters who were the all purpose power tool.

I am selectively nerfing the d20 magic in RoS and making new spells as well (but mages are predominantly prepared spellcasting while the powers someone without proper spellcasting run on simple mana pools); and the main book is only going to cover up to 6th level magic. So I'm also toning down the upper limit of mages in my base game - while raising the floor (The game spans D&D ~level 6 to 12 for now, and character advancement is slower than D&D, with you acquiring the abilities that make up a level more a la carte, rather than every 3-4 sessions you get a big chunk of new stuff all at once). I'll do 7-9 in a future expansion about playing higher level characters where I will work on the gameplay loop for that power level. But even in that context, my intention is to utility-magic up the martials (whether with spells or powers) so they don't feel like sidekicks.

And that's it. PF1e had largely reached saturation. How was just fiddling at the borders going to make sense for a new edition? I mean, they've had some complaints about that with the Remastered books, because the changes mechanically there are generally mild (a few classses with some problems got tuned up and a couple other things), but Remastered had a secondary purpose in disconnecting them from the OGL. It'd have looked like nothing but a naked cash grab if it had been that modest to a lot of people.
(I'm not qualified to judge about 5.5, not being a D&D 5e guy).

Fair fair. It would certainly be a bit more like selling a new edition of Call of Cthulhu than selling a new D&D. Maybe that wouldn't have done as well. I haven't done a business analysis. It would have appealed to me though. ️

I can see that, but I'm not sold 3e wasn't pretty heavily combat focused. I mean, look at the capabilities of player characters and count how much of that is not combat focused.

The classes certainly focused more on combat features, but the skill system was pretty fleshed out (GURPS more so obviously, but 3.x skills are much better than most games); subsystems for running a business in DMG2; Cityscape had guild advancement; Stormwrack had nautical stuff (worse than some third party offerings but it's there; mage duels in... Magic of Faerun? Reputation and Contacts (forget which book, probably DMG 2, Maybe cityscape); Various books full of wilderness hazards; Stronghold Builder's Guidebook; Spell inventing rules (PF1's are better, and there's still room for improvement, but they exist); Magic Ritual framework (Incantations); Power of Faerun had some stuff on Rulership, and campaigns that take place within a church, and courtly intrigues, and business leaders (not the best, but they existed); Somewhere I remember a subsystem for gambling. Might have been a dragon mag. Then PF1 has Ultimate Campaign for city development (before going into the third party books of stuff I like, like the IMO better base building rules in Strongholds & Dynasties). - I'm just saying, 3.x has a lot of different kinds of support for different kinds of noncombat gameplay, and I was always inclined to use some more of it for more varied gameplay.

I mean, I didn't find 4e entirely satisfying for similar reasons, but--not D&D? Uhm, how many "not D&D" games have the combination of classes, levels, level elevating hit point, the particular six attributes--the only thing that had changed in broad was how magic was handled. I mean, all I'd have needed was to look at a character sheet and I'd have gone "Some version of D&D, clearly." You can argue that 4e leaned into tactical combat more than most D&D versions, but its not like D&D has had a lot of non-combat oriented characters since day one, and I'm even including types like rogues and bards. I just didn't find the skill challenge approach entirely satisfying; a little too undifferentiated.

Yeah, I can see that argument.

Best I can raise you there is "I want my extensive catalogue of gods; a decade or two of in-world of novels I can pull from as campaign inspiration immediately preceding the campaign; the creature types (with appropriate abilities) from the novels, comics, and videogames; 7 types of elves; Halruaa; wemics; and vancian magic."

Which is admittedly a specific subset of D&D-Branded-Fantasy, but it illustrates how 4e wasn't up to the task for a subset of D&D players (ones like myself who at the time, spent significantly more time frequenting Candlekeep than the WotC forums or GitP). More than the combat, what put me off of 4e was that it was just terrible for the expansive and heavily detailed world I liked. In 4e I was expected to refluff a bunch of closest-bad-fit janky mechanics into what I look for setting-wise when I run D&D, and at that point, my thought was "At this point I may as well run Runequest instead for how much content I'll be reinventing myself." I did play it a little bit, and yes, the gameplay didn't satisfy me either. But it was worse for Faerun than Pathfinder or 3e. And then over time I grew to kind-of like Golarion for Pathfinder. But it helped that the Golarion games still had cross compatibility with the noncombat gameplay expansions.

Though I'll note PF2e actually had a fair bit of third party outside-of-combat supplimental material. I just bought a kingdom managing book for it, and I've seen stronghold managing ones.

(I won't say there's a massive amount of diplomacy support in the game, but then, I didn't think there was that much in 3e either. )

Oh - that's good to know. I did play PF2 pretty early on. Maybe it's come along a lot since then.

Hmmm. Well, if you actively avoided combat I can maybe see that. I wouldn't call PF2e "bland" but then I'm playing it in presented form, so a fair amount is combat and some of the other s hazard avoidance, and I think there's plenty of interest in those. The social parts aren't especially flavorful, but then, that describes most games to me; most of the flavor there in my experience comes from the roleplaying; few systems do much work there.

Yeah, I dunno. The "Health Number Go Down" playstyle in TTRPGs bored me as much as it did in MtG (many years ago, back when I played, I would always build for combos or similar. Take a higher loss rate over being bored playing burn or aggro - As MtG's meta shifted more toward fast creatures and slow spells, I lost interest. I think the last time I played it against a person was 2016, though I've played a little bit of Shandalar and the Forge MtG emulator to play a draft of cards from the 90s against computer players, around 2020). "Turn-Based Health Number Goes Down" is more interesting in a strategy game where I am controlling a bunch of guys rather than just one, though I still don't play a ton of those. Heroes of Might and Magic II has a lot of other stuff going on; I've never been interested in competitive Pokemon, it's just an easy RPG where you collect monsters; and I have a hard time quantifying why I like FFT so much but a lot of it is the writing (it is also generally quite easy combat).

Well, yeah, if you were playing 3e in a mode fairly off the beaten path, a new version of the game focused more or less on the beaten path might be unsatisfactory.

Right. There was a lot of mechanical support for the noncombat gameplay for 3.x / PF1, but certainly not everyone was using it, whereas I liked a lot of it for helping to round out the system for more of a fantasy world simulator style of gameplay.

I suppose, I just find people who feel a need to tell you you're stupid may have questional judgment with their system analysis.

That's fair. My thought was more that I can ignore someone calling me stupid if they're giving me helpful information. And if they are calling me stupid, I can rule out them sugarcoating how bad the thing theyre critiquing is. Heh.

(Unless you get hostile in their more polite critique. At that point you get what you bought, as it were).

Right, of course.

 

[Alzrius]

And that's it. PF1e had largely reached saturation.

Every new edition of a game is a gamble between potential loss of existing customers and trying to attract new ones. I only found out a little while ago that Paizo made Starfinder 1E specifically to act as an "anchor product" to keep customers around through the PF1 -> PF2 transition. It's no coincidence that Starfinder 2E now uses the same rules as Pathfinder 2E Remastered, since it being its own game served its purpose.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Every new edition of a game is a gamble between potential loss of existing customers and trying to attract new ones. I only found out a little while ago that Paizo made Starfinder 1E specifically to act as an "anchor product" to keep customers around through the PF1 -> PF2 transition. It's no coincidence that Starfinder 2E now uses the same rules as Pathfinder 2E Remastered, since it being its own game served its purpose.

There's also a good argument that SF1 suffered from being neither fish or fowl. It wasn't really just based on PF1e, and it didn't entirely go to PF2e, and there were experimental elements of it that didn't really pan out well. Since they were going to do the Remastered project with PF2e, there was little reason not to make SF2e compatible with it (even if that made some people unhappy).