Hot take: get rid of the "balanced party" paradigm

I really dont believe this. I think there are far more casual players that really dont get/desire the tactical role work as a team aspect. I mean, above the simplest aspects of do more damage to the enemies than they can do to the party. Its up to the players how much they want to optimize to do that. D&D traditionally has been dial up, instead of dial down. It drove a lot of folks from 4E and they smell it all over PF2 making them no-gos.
I doubt that, team sports that feature roles are very popular overall, as are video games that feature team roles, even like the lionization of different roles in something like a rock band. I suspect people that don't like them are just louder because they're often confronted with them, and because something they're used to working suddenly doesn't, lest you forget that very few people are coming into the game without the context of prior games.

Dialing down is much easier than dialing up (as in, it's easier to use low and moderate encounters than come up with elaborate ways to make an encounter beyond deadly to force roles and rebuild character options to be more interdependent), and I don't think it really drove very many people from 4e, there's way too much baggage in that discussion as a whole to assume that-- everything from reactions to the AEDU symmetry, the excess HP at launch, the marketing, and subtly different, the codification of roles as something a specific class.

In other words, when you play a Paladin in 4e, you are a defender, even using the attackier subclass, you're a defender, ditto for a fighter, that was restrictive even for the time considering that even WOW let classes flex between roles to some extent.

But either way, that sure is a weird thing to say about the market's #2 game when the #1 game is a household name with the backing and marketing of a much larger company, it sure isn't helping the other games that lack roles much, and even DND clings to the aesthetic and implication of roles, new players love to talk about their tanks and DPS.
 

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I doubt that, team sports that feature roles are very popular overall, as are video games that feature team roles, even like the lionization of different roles in something like a rock band. I suspect people that don't like them are just louder because they're often confronted with them, and because something they're used to working suddenly doesn't, lest you forget that very few people are coming into the game without the context of prior games.

Dialing down is much easier than dialing up (as in, it's easier to use low and moderate encounters than come up with elaborate ways to make an encounter beyond deadly to force roles and rebuild character options to be more interdependent), and I don't think it really drove very many people from 4e, there's way too much baggage in that discussion as a whole to assume that-- everything from reactions to the AEDU symmetry, the excess HP at launch, the marketing, and subtly different, the codification of roles as something a specific class.

In other words, when you play a Paladin in 4e, you are a defender, even using the attackier subclass, you're a defender, ditto for a fighter, that was restrictive even for the time considering that even WOW let classes flex between roles to some extent.

But either way, that sure is a weird thing to say about the market's #2 game when the #1 game is a household name with the backing and marketing of a much larger company, it sure isn't helping the other games that lack roles much, and even DND clings to the aesthetic and implication of roles, new players love to talk about their tanks and DPS.
Lets just say I disagree on the crowds and their desires. I do get, for folks who like an emphasis such as yourself, a system that doesnt embrace design around the team tactical aspect isnt going to be engaging enough. So, naturally you want it built solid for your preferences and then dialed down from there. Everyone prefers that type of design. Few care at all if it suits anyone else.
 

Lets just say I disagree on the crowds and their desires. I do get, for folks who like an emphasis such as yourself, a system that doesnt embrace design around the team tactical aspect isnt going to be engaging enough. So, naturally you want it built solid for your preferences and then dialed down from there. Everyone prefers that type of design. Few care at all if it suits anyone else.
Edit: you know what? I'm getting catty and I can't really read this in any other way, so as far as I'm concerned you are too, I'm cutting this off here instead of what I originally said, ciao.
 

I was responding primarily to OP, who gave the example of healing, which is a combat oriented role, I really like being able to play a healer and having the game back that up as a necessary strategy as opposed to a waste of time.

It is in D&D and similar games. Plenty of other games don't have an enormous amount (if at all) of tactical healing. But I get that was the context the OP was probably using it in.

While some people dislike the demand for teamwork in pf2e, I wouldn't really see it as obligatory to prioritize them over people who like roles, I also think that the are/aren't distinction is kind of problematic here-- it's something you choose to do, not something you are or aren't.

I think there's some excluded middle there, though. Most games in the D&D sphere have roles, and presumably that's part of what people like about them. However, there are a lot of them that are a lot more loose in how important individual ones are, and how tight the game is about making sure you get good teamwork. This is kind of important because there's a fair number of people who just don't pay that much attention to what other players are doing in a combat situation; some roles absolutely demand you do that (I can't imagine things are going to go well if you do that with the group's only cleric) but with others its historically been less critical.

That's not the case with PF2e, and that's part of why some people bounce off of it.

There's no group on the planet that can't have a conversation about coverage, and admittedly, if you as a table actively don't want to, it's much more trivial to accommodate that than it would be to accommodate the reverse in a game that functionally doesn't have roles, because building in the need for roles is much harder than eliminating it.

Eh. I'm still not sold that most RPGs don't have roles. They may not have classes, but classes are just a particular way to reify those roles. If anything, sometimes those are even more necessary.
 

Going back to the halving days of my teens, I have always rankled at “should” in D&D. Play what you want. But of course choices have consequences.

5e ends up being as much about capabilities as classes. I think you can choose to not be good in all areas as a party. And it’s fine with me. I like the options.

I also really liked 1e. And having recently purchased a retro clone, dragonslayer, I can say sometimes I DO like some semblance of balance and required cohesion.

So the more I think about it the more I like the option of both playstyles and imperatives as long as it’s a choice.

The most fun I had playing D&D was as a barbarian with thieves. Not a spellcaster to be found…and it was epic!

But of course the dm made a campaign we would want to participate in. We did not fight a bunch of undead…we did not seek out goals outside of our range and the dm obliged is with being able to make informed choices.
 

But of course the dm made a campaign we would want to participate in. We did not fight a bunch of undead…we did not seek out goals outside of our range and the dm obliged is with being able to make informed choices.

This is, of course, key. In most games you can get by with a limited range of characters--if the GM actively plays along. If he doesn't, chances are its only a matter of time until you slam into a wall, hard.
 

It is in D&D and similar games. Plenty of other games don't have an enormous amount (if at all) of tactical healing. But I get that was the context the OP was probably using it in.



I think there's some excluded middle there, though. Most games in the D&D sphere have roles, and presumably that's part of what people like about them. However, there are a lot of them that are a lot more loose in how important individual ones are, and how tight the game is about making sure you get good teamwork. This is kind of important because there's a fair number of people who just don't pay that much attention to what other players are doing in a combat situation; some roles absolutely demand you do that (I can't imagine things are going to go well if you do that with the group's only cleric) but with others its historically been less critical.

That's not the case with PF2e, and that's part of why some people bounce off of it.



Eh. I'm still not sold that most RPGs don't have roles. They may not have classes, but classes are just a particular way to reify those roles. If anything, sometimes those are even more necessary.
So one thing we're in the weeds of that I want to address, is that we're talking about 4e and PF2e in a similar breath with regards to role enforcement, but they're distinctly different in this respect, PF2e has much looser roles than 4e does.

Fourth Edition performed it's role enforcement by telling you up front on every class what the role was supposed to be for every single member of that class and then dropping more or less symmetrical class features that made the character capable of performing that role and no others to degree a class intended for that role could. Subclasses provided a secondary role-- for example many Defenders had a subclass that protected less, but provided more damage, but you were still dependent on your main role.

For example, in 4e ALL the Defenders got a Marking mechanic that imposed a penalty to hit creatures that weren't them, all the Strikers got a damage boosting feature along the line of Hunter's Quarry or Warlock's Curse.

On top of that enforcement class feature all 4e classes also had bespoke powers, and those powers further enforced the role by being appropriate only to that job-- Sorcerer powers had much smaller AOEs than Wizards did because Wizards were the actual controller, whereas Sorcerer just had a dash of controller, but Sorcerer powers were built to do more damage (and this is why Fireball was a trap in 4e, it was balanced for Wizards, but only did damage which Wizards were not equipped to do.)

Finally, feat support further doubled down on role-- mark's could gain more protection, while damage features gained more damage from feats.

PF2e doesn't do that, the classes don't have defined roles in the first place, and while at first blush you might be forgiven for seeing Sneak Attack/Rage/Fighter +2/ Spellstrike etc as role enforcement, most martials have some form of damage additive rather than split along different directions and it pretty much makes them a martial-- in 4e terms you're almost always starting with a striker and then building other capability on, but I think the actual differential is smaller overall because you don't have the powers emphasizing your role in the same way, many feats are shared between classes and archetypes are cheap and easy ways access to things like a fighter's Double Slice, or Lay on Hands, or whatever.

Spellcasters are even less applicable in these terms because they share spells and almost all the damage they do is part of the base spells they cast-- which means it differs from turn to turn, there are dedicated healing builds (usually stacking subclass benefits onto healing spells) but if I, as a cleric of sarenrae with healing hands, elect to toss a fireball for two turns, nothing makes me worse at doing that than the Wizard who fancied themselves as building a blaster, maybe they'll have a few points extra damage from a feat or something, and nothing stops that same Wizard from following their Slow spell up with Hand of the Apprentice to yeet a greatsword into someone if that routinee appeals to them, then blasting for the rest of the combat.

By extension, there's no punishment for the wildshaping combat druid to also pack heal spells and sometimes fire them off when I feel like 'just' blasting. Even a blaster is liable to pop an action to try and inflict frightened on a target, or move into a flank to benefit someone else, and feats usually reward that kind of thing.

So your role, is really just a set of things different people in the party can do and how each of you wants to spend your actions on any given turn, and what you buy for your particular build, not a set of jobs that specific party members have to fill if they don't want to, they're also interchangeable to a significant extent-- you can make do with perfunctory buffing and battle medicines or one Action Lay on Hands on third action while everyone plays what look a lot like dedicated Striker builds, so the teamwork isn't really about sacrificing unless you want it to be, its more just the skill expression to apply the tools you have at all.
 

Just a note I didn't say anything about 4e in my recent posts. I was simply noting that there's different levels of how critical roles are and how much teamwork is demanded by a game at least puts a thumb on that scale rather strongly.
 

Just a note I didn't say anything about 4e in my recent posts. I was simply noting that there's different levels of how critical roles are and how much teamwork is demanded by a game at least puts a thumb on that scale rather strongly.
I generally agree. There is a level of teamwork that's fairly casual - the rogue gets sneak attack if attacking someone his teammate is attacking so the teammate wades into the fight, everyone benefits on attacks if the monk stuns the target, cleric hits his combat teammates up with bless, the sorcerer hastes the fighter, etc. D&D has always had some of those elements and parties can thrive on them. And then there's eking out every +1 because the target is elite or a level/CR up on us or nudging the target 1 or 2 squares to the left so someone can exploit it.
I'm OK with the former. I find the latter tedious. So, I'm not about to pick up PF2 again any time soon.
 

Just a note I didn't say anything about 4e in my recent posts. I was simply noting that there's different levels of how critical roles are and how much teamwork is demanded by a game at least puts a thumb on that scale rather strongly.


I suppose that was the posts from different posters running together a bit in my head, though honestly I think it still works well as a response to your point because it illustrates the distinctions between role enforcement in a relative sense between the two systems in a way that contextualizes pf2e as more of a middleground than the extreme end of a scale. Teamwork matters, but you aren't meaningfully caged by a role.

In 4e you're caged by a role, and in 5e teamwork is largely perfunctory for experienced players, which is presumably part of why enough people bounced off DND to give PF2E such a healthy ecosystem niche in the first place.
 

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