Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
My little conspiracy theory is that the art orders are all in metric, and they just replace the meters with "5 feet" in the legend. Future proofed. It's the only rational explanation.
Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?
- Thread starter Mercurius
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My little conspiracy theory is that the art orders are all in metric, and they just replace the meters with "5 feet" in the legend. Future proofed. It's the only rational explanation.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Yes. They work very smoothly for enabling TotM, 13A uses them, for instance.
Well, that's /a/ problem, certainly. In the Next playtest a wizard wanted to know how far back in a group of kobolds he could target his fireball while still catching all the ones in the front (blocking a 15' opening) - obviously the wizard could center his fireball as much as 18 feet behind the lead kobold and still catch his buddies on either side. Ok, it wasn't obvious to the player who was thinking he might need to drop it right on the leader (I guess he confused radius & diameter), so good thing he asked.
Oh, so the solution to that problem of running TotM when the game uses geometric areas in feet:
game with engineers.
Apropos of nothing, but GURPS used a 'hex' that was 3' across, but 6' high, which seemed odd, at first, but it was, what our local GURPS enthusiast called "a people tube!" so it was actually pretty easy to visualize/estimate relative sizes/areas/distances in hexes, because the size/proportions of a person is pretty familiar.
Oh, but we're in the process of transitioning! Eventually everyone will use the Metric System. I mean, like, no later than 1984... Certainly in the far-flung future of the 21st century, we'll all be driving flying cars with speedometers in kph!
Range bands are hella gamist, by comparison.
I mean, you're OK converting square feet to square meters, but multiplying or dividing by 5 is too much for you?
Really, a fantasy RPG should use some archaic unit of measurement, like ells or rods or the Roman /passus/.
...ooh, actually the standard units of length in D&Dland should be the Pole (10') and the Rope (50') ;P
Really, a fantasy RPG should use some archaic unit of measurement, like ells or rods or the Roman /passus/.
Yeh! And what's with these monetary systems that are divisible by 10? It should be 4 brass bits equals 1 silver, and 12 silver equals a gold. Starfinder should do everything in hexadecimal.
CapnZapp
Legend
I think maybe it's time you played 5E, really played 5E, instead of just putting your foot in the mouth. 5E fixed 3E which people find interesting. 5E is maybe something else than 4E, but nobody cares.
You will certainly not listen to reason, so you'll have to see for yourself why 5E is so popular, and why Paizo definitely should have looked closer than you have.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Yes. They work very smoothly for enabling TotM, 13A uses them, for instance.
Well, that's /a/ problem, certainly. In the Next playtest a wizard wanted to know how far back in a group of kobolds he could target his fireball while still catching all the ones in the front (blocking a 15' opening) - obviously the wizard could center his fireball as much as 18 feet behind the lead kobold and still catch his buddies on either side. Ok, it wasn't obvious to the player who was thinking he might need to drop it right on the leader (I guess he confused radius & diameter), so good thing he asked.
Oh, so the solution to that problem of running TotM when the game uses geometric areas in feet:
game with engineers.
Apropos of nothing, but GURPS used a 'hex' that was 3' across, but 6' high, which seemed odd, at first, but it was, what our local GURPS enthusiast called "a people tube!" so it was actually pretty easy to visualize/estimate relative sizes/areas/distances in hexes, because the size/proportions of a person is pretty familiar.
Oh, but we're in the process of transitioning! Eventually everyone will use the Metric System. I mean, like, no later than 1984... Certainly in the far-flung future of the 21st century, we'll all be driving flying cars with speedometers in kph!
Range bands are hella gamist, by comparison.
I mean, you're OK converting square feet to square meters, but multiplying or dividing by 5 is too much for you?
Really, a fantasy RPG should use some archaic unit of measurement, like ells or rods or the Roman /passus/.
...ooh, actually the standard units of length in D&Dland should be the Pole (10') and the Rope (50') ;P
I don't disagree that bands are a game construct, however, they are also sensible natural language constructs, same as using real measurements. I could get behind an Ell standard, however.
Parmandur
Book-Friend, he/him
Hexidecimal is bestidecimal.
CapnZapp
Legend
I can only speak for myself, but my argument is indeed not that 5E is popular because LFQW is fixed or that NPC gen is quick and easy. After all, most 5E gamers have never experienced LFQW or complicated NPC building.
My argument is related, but different. It is:
1a) a game with LFQW approaching 3E levels is likely going to fail with the 5E crowd
1b) a game where creating high-level NPCs is drudgework is likely to be impopular with DMs
2) most of the customers Paizo needs to sustain its current status, size etc are 5E players, not Pathfinder players
Ergo
3) Paizo damn sure needed to make sure their new game addresses the issues 5E has comprehensively fixed in the 3E framework
Thx
Tony Vargas
Legend
I /really/ have. And every other edition back to 1e & the '79 basic set.
I do & I have.
I think the factors that contributed to the current resurgence in D&D's popularity have been pretty well hashed over - there's a lot of 'em, and really, only relative importance is left up in the air.
1)a)i)"the 5e crowd" is not a viable target audience for PF2.
1)a)ii) Lack of LFQW has proven more detrimental the acceptance of D&D editions than even a profound excess of that issue.
Any reason to think PF2 won't have several ways to handle creating NPCs, ranging from hand-waving, to condensed stat blocks, to monster-style stat blocks, before getting to full PC-style builds? I mean, every version of D&D has done all of those, with the minor proviso that 3e monsters were hardly less complex than PCs - and even it had NPC classes that had less going on than PC classes.
Prettymuch all of Paizos loyal customers for the last 10 years have been PF1 players. There's likely a lot of crossover with 5e, in the sense that a lot of PF players also play or have converted to 5e, but /not/ in the sense than a large percentage of 5e players - 5e is growing rapidly, a growth fueled by new players who have never heard of PF - also pay any attention at all to PF.
No one cares about those marginal improvement you keep calling 'fixes.' Actual fixes were implemented, and did not go over well with Paizo's core PF audience - indeed, their rejection is part of /why/ Paizo has had a core audience for PF1 for the last 10 years.
...
As it relates to PF2 being like 4e, though, the critical aspect of 5e's popularity isn't /why/ it's popular, because no game has ever succeeded by simply copying the current D&D when it was at it's most popular. Rather, it's that the simple fact of 5e's popularity (indeed, Dominance), and it's broad acceptance by the whole D&D fan base, leaves PF2 no opportunity comparable to that enjoyed by PF1 at the height of the edition war.
Given that, it makes sense not to simply clone D&D again, but strike off on their own. It'd make a lot more sense to return to supporting D&D as a 3pp, though, leveraging all that Golarion IP to make 5e adventures and supplements.
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I mean, is LFQW as bad as it was in 3E in a game where your melee character can German Suplex the Tarrasque through a mountain, swim across an entire Ocean with very few breaks like they were Beowulf, and leap up directly into the Dragon's face and smash their skulls in? Where your great warrior of whatever class gives such a terrifying stare that the foe literally dies from fear? Where the Ranger can literally track their target even through planar teleportation? How does the final boss fare when you snuck up on him and stole the armor off his back before he noticed?
Between impressive high level class feats and skill feats to boost skill abilities, Martials have more options than ever to hang with the Casters.
Aldarc
Legend
It's also part of the Cypher System and a few other games that I play. Not sure if I heard of them referenced that way before. I prefer distance bands as well, though not because of any glorification of one mode of play (theater of the mind) over another (square grids), but simply because it's less book keeping and work. Regardless of my preferences that does not mean that square grid play without merit or strengths.
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