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Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7631325" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>No - that's not what I'm saying. The THAC0 chart for fighters and other "fighting man" types was +1 per level. Not for everyone else though.</p><p></p><p>Every edition prior to 4e had combat bonus progressions that varied by class. Prior to 2e "To Hit AC" tables varied by class - different classes used different tables. In 2e these tables were codified such that the "Warrior" types improved their THAC0 by 1 every level, rogue types every 2 levels, priest types every 3 levels and wizard types every 4 levels. 3e changed these to Base Attack Bonus progressions and were warrior types at +1 per level, spellcaster types at +1/2 levels, and cleric and rogue progressions as +3/4 levels. But embedded in all of these editions was the idea that mathematically the different classes should have their hit progression with weapons change at different rates as they leveled up.</p><p></p><p>4e threw that out the window and said "everyone levels up their hit bonuses as +1/2 levels period the end" and then relied on other things to make fighter types better at using weapons than spellcasters. Because the innovation in 4e was to realize that these bonuses actually didn't matter - what mattered was finding a way to make it so that the wizard didn't want to pick up a sword and to give the fighter something else that made them better with a weapon and armor than everyone else.</p><p></p><p>5e kept 4e's version of attack progression, it didn't revert back to prior editions' vision of how progression scales. It changed it to roughly "everyone levels up their hit bonus at +1/4 levels" instead of "+1/2 levels" so the spread of levels 1-20 in 5e has similar attack bonuses to the spread of levels 1-10 in 4e, but other than scaling progression is the same. The bonus isn't what makes a fighter type better at fighting with weapons than a caster type in 5e. If my wizard picks up a weapon she's proficient with and stabs someone with it, she's using the same "proficiency bonus" that a fighter of the same level uses. And yet nobody has a problem with that anymore because that bonus is almost unimportant when it comes to why the fighter is better with weapons than a non-fighter. The proficiency bonus has gone from the single thing that leveling up a fighter was important for to almost an afterthought - a thing that's in the game because people expect it to be there, but the progression on it is so slow that it's almost meaningless over the course of a campaign. Just like it was for 4e for the most part, except via a different mechanism - in 4e the "+1/2 level" bonus increase was unimportant because the game was supposed to be scaled to the capabilities of the PCs through direct DM intervention - the monsters were increasing in a very precise mathematical measure of difficulty as the proficiency bonus increased, so it all washed out. In 5e, the bonus increases over such a narrow band and AC scales across the same narrow band that it achieves pretty much the same effect - the bonus is nearly meaningless so long as the DM is dishing out "appropriate" threats to the party. Where "appropriate" is scaled much more according to how many hit points a monster has and how much damage it dishes out than the attack or defense bonuses.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7631325, member: 19857"] No - that's not what I'm saying. The THAC0 chart for fighters and other "fighting man" types was +1 per level. Not for everyone else though. Every edition prior to 4e had combat bonus progressions that varied by class. Prior to 2e "To Hit AC" tables varied by class - different classes used different tables. In 2e these tables were codified such that the "Warrior" types improved their THAC0 by 1 every level, rogue types every 2 levels, priest types every 3 levels and wizard types every 4 levels. 3e changed these to Base Attack Bonus progressions and were warrior types at +1 per level, spellcaster types at +1/2 levels, and cleric and rogue progressions as +3/4 levels. But embedded in all of these editions was the idea that mathematically the different classes should have their hit progression with weapons change at different rates as they leveled up. 4e threw that out the window and said "everyone levels up their hit bonuses as +1/2 levels period the end" and then relied on other things to make fighter types better at using weapons than spellcasters. Because the innovation in 4e was to realize that these bonuses actually didn't matter - what mattered was finding a way to make it so that the wizard didn't want to pick up a sword and to give the fighter something else that made them better with a weapon and armor than everyone else. 5e kept 4e's version of attack progression, it didn't revert back to prior editions' vision of how progression scales. It changed it to roughly "everyone levels up their hit bonus at +1/4 levels" instead of "+1/2 levels" so the spread of levels 1-20 in 5e has similar attack bonuses to the spread of levels 1-10 in 4e, but other than scaling progression is the same. The bonus isn't what makes a fighter type better at fighting with weapons than a caster type in 5e. If my wizard picks up a weapon she's proficient with and stabs someone with it, she's using the same "proficiency bonus" that a fighter of the same level uses. And yet nobody has a problem with that anymore because that bonus is almost unimportant when it comes to why the fighter is better with weapons than a non-fighter. The proficiency bonus has gone from the single thing that leveling up a fighter was important for to almost an afterthought - a thing that's in the game because people expect it to be there, but the progression on it is so slow that it's almost meaningless over the course of a campaign. Just like it was for 4e for the most part, except via a different mechanism - in 4e the "+1/2 level" bonus increase was unimportant because the game was supposed to be scaled to the capabilities of the PCs through direct DM intervention - the monsters were increasing in a very precise mathematical measure of difficulty as the proficiency bonus increased, so it all washed out. In 5e, the bonus increases over such a narrow band and AC scales across the same narrow band that it achieves pretty much the same effect - the bonus is nearly meaningless so long as the DM is dishing out "appropriate" threats to the party. Where "appropriate" is scaled much more according to how many hit points a monster has and how much damage it dishes out than the attack or defense bonuses. [/QUOTE]
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