Pathfinder 2E Is this a fair review of PF2?

[Aldarc]

I think what you're looking for is a crunchy system (so not Fate) that has explicit rules that clearly state what the physical effects of damage are without the GM needing to make stuff up (so not D&D). Savage Worlds would be my next guess as a system for you, but I think the emphasis on "fun" over "realistic" will turn you off, so I guess, like others, I'm left with Rolemaster as the most likely system to satisfy you.

I would have guessed something like the Basic Roleplaying System, potentially Mythras.

The rules have never been entirely consistent with "luck, stamina, and will to fight", even in 4e. But they have always been notably more consistant with that than with meat points.

4e also had the "bloodied" condition, which arguably made HP meatier than prior editions.

 

[glass]

If you claim that you are hit by an attack in 4E or 5E, and all of the damage from that attack is removed by taking a short nap, then one of the following things must be true: 1) You weren't actually hit; or 2) You can regenerate like Wolverine.

3) You wre really hit but not significantly injured. Just like you had to say in prior editions because no hit point loss except the last one impaired you in any way, and you could get them back by resting for four weeks with no medical intervention.

In AD&D 2E, at the very least, the rules were perfectly consistent with meat points. There are no non-physical ways to increase your HP total (assuming there's at least some physical difference associated with class level), and there are no non-physical ways to inflict HP damage.

Cause Light Wounds spell. Trvially falsified. Also see notes (multiple times) above about healing and impairment.

So ... a commoner has d8 hit points in AD&D. 3 hit points is therefore a very reasonable number to expect to have. If a commoner with three hit points takes an arrow doing 3 hit points they drop unconscious and have about a 50-50 chance of dying if unaided.

So clearly 3 hit points of hit points that are "perfectly consistent with meat points" is a likely-fatal wound. One that would realistically take weeks or probably months to recover from, if at all. Most likely IRL you'd have a wound that would last forever.

So yes, unrealistic to assume an hour nap completely cures it. Also unrealistic to assume a day's nap does. Both AD&D and 5E are unrealistic vis-a-vis hit points.

I am pretty sure the "death's door" rule was optional prior to 3e (albeit very commonly used) so you for the purposes of argument you probably should not assume that the 3 hp commoner is going to survive that arrow. OTOH, it is probably more illustrative to assume a 4 hp commoner is hit by that same arrow. He is not incapacitated in any way, and can go about his business without penalties to anything except his ability to resist further arrows (and sword, spears, bizarre threshing accidents etc). If he could afford three days of full bed rest, which admittedly is not a given for a commoner, even that goes away. Even if he cannot, he could live a long life with that one hitpoint (as long as nobody else tries to kill him) and it would never affect his day-to-day life in any way. This is not how real injuries work.

If your interpretation is inconsistent with the rules, then you should change your interpretation until it isn't inconsistent. If it would be silly to recover from a severe wound in just a day, then the wound is not severe.

Both sentances of this paragraph are literally our arguments to you.

Well, with the nuance that there is no single interpretation that is completely consistent with the rules in all cases. But no interpretation less consitant with the rules (of any edition) than all meat point all the time.

A consistent interpretation would be that the arrow impacting against the commoner's armor inflicted a wound which would heal in three days - i.e. a fairly minor wound, mostly bruising, which is only potentially-fatal because the one on the receiving end is such a chump.

Except if the commoner is not wearing armour (maybe they are a first-level wizard instead), the exact same rules apply. So by the exact same logic, they must have taken "a fairly minor wound, mostly bruising". As we have been saying all along, they can be hit but not seriously hurt by that hit. QED (again).

_
glass.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

For a starting point, everyone in combat is either wearing armor (like a fighter or thief), or is magic (like a wizard, priest, or monk). That's the reason why a single hit from a sword or arrow is not fatal. Everyone can suffer a finite, non-zero number of meaningful weapon impacts while wearing armor, before falling. Unarmored, non-magical, non-monstrous combatants are outside the context of the game design.

That does not explain it at all. First, unsrmored creatures are within the context of the game. 2nd, having armor doesn’t change anything. If the 1st level fighter is wearing plate, he or she is going to die from 2 arrows, but the 10th level fighter in the same armor will survive 20 arrows - and would do so if he or she wasn’t wearing armor. You just making stuff up now.

That's the thing. A world heavyweight champion is substantially bigger and tougher than a novice boxer. Gaining levels is the process by which a novice boxer becomes a heavyweight champion.

IDK, perhaps you haven’t boxed or practiced martial arts, but that is not the case. In fact, you can have a complete novice who is bigger and tougher (more meat points), but can’t take down the experienced veteran. You are creating a fiction to model a reality that doesn’t exist.

 

[GrahamWills]

IDK, perhaps you haven’t boxed or practiced martial arts, but that is not the case. In fact, you can have a complete novice who is bigger and tougher (more meat points), but can’t take down the experienced veteran. You are creating a fiction to model a reality that doesn’t exist.

A bit of an aide, but a few years back I was a competitive martial artist. We had a guy come to our gym who regularly completed Iron Man competitions. Fantastically fit, honestly a bit intimidating. Now clearly he wasn't a trained fighter and we could hit him pretty much at will, but the really interesting thing was that he ran out of energy much faster than we did. It was amazing to see such a radical difference in endurance between high-intensity 3 minute rounds and multi-hour grueling sessions. I knew it was there, but I had no idea it was such a large degree.

My experience with competitive martial arts made it clear to me that any attempt at realism for a rule-heavy game is doomed. You either go with a rules-light system where you have an aspect "iron man competitor" vs. "martial arts nationals competitor" and let common sense work out what that means, or you accept that having an 18 CON is a game concept with a tenuous connection to reality

 

[The Crimson Binome]

3) You were really hit but not significantly injured. Just like you had to say in prior editions because no hit point loss except the last one impaired you in any way, and you could get them back by resting for four weeks with no medical intervention.

Unless something ridiculous is going on with your natural healing rate, the sort of minor "wounds" that heal over the course of an hour will never accumulate to a point of incapacitation. Actual minor wounds, that require a week to recover from, can much more reasonably accumulate to the point of incapacitation.

Cause Light Wounds spell. Trvially falsified. Also see notes (multiple times) above about healing and impairment.

So now you're claiming that the cause light wounds spell doesn't cause wounds of any sort. That's a joke, right?

Except if the commoner is not wearing armour (maybe they are a first-level wizard instead), the exact same rules apply.

This isn't "Commoners & (House) Cats"; every class in the book can reasonably be expected to either wear armor in combat, or be magic. An unarmored commoner is outside of that context. And if the rules don't work outside of their intended context, then it has no bearing on the game as a whole.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If the 1st level fighter is wearing plate, he or she is going to die from 2 arrows, but the 10th level fighter in the same armor will survive 20 arrows - and would do so if he or she wasn’t wearing armor.

But the 10th level fighter is wearing armor, and what would happen if they weren't wearing armor is irrelevant. If a ruleset is going to be efficient, then we need to track which assumptions are in play, and that's one of them. If we want a ruleset that covers every unlikely situation that might come up ever, then we're going to have ten times as many pages as we actually need.

IDK, perhaps you haven’t boxed or practiced martial arts, but that is not the case. In fact, you can have a complete novice who is bigger and tougher (more meat points), but can’t take down the experienced veteran. You are creating a fiction to model a reality that doesn’t exist.

At a very basic level, the fiction which is being modeled is inherently unrealistic. Getting into a lot of fights doesn't make you more resilient against injury, in real life. In real life, you get tougher through a combination of training and not accumulating long-term injuries.

In the game world, you get tougher by surviving fights, regardless of how many (non-fatal) injuries you recover from along the way. The game models your growth from a chump who can't take a hit, to a champion who can. It's not unreasonable of them to declare that an experienced fighter is inherently tougher than a novice fighter, even if it isn't strictly realistic.

 

[Lefi2017]

In the game world, you get tougher by surviving fights, regardless of how many (non-fatal) injuries you recover from along the way. The game models your growth from a chump who can't take a hit, to a champion who can. It's not unreasonable of them to declare that an experienced fighter is inherently tougher than a novice fighter, even if it isn't strictly realistic.

The Higher Hitpoit do not represent you have become more resilinat to a dagger only that you can a void it better a dagger into your heart while you sleep will still kill any pc regales of lvl 1 or 20

hit point also represent your experience on how to manage avoiding damage in fights it is a abstract and is not just body points

 

[glass]

Unless something ridiculous is going on with your natural healing rate, the sort of minor "wounds" that heal over the course of an hour will never accumulate to a point of incapacitation. Actual minor wounds, that require a week to recover from, can much more reasonably accumulate to the point of incapacitation.

Ditto for wounds that heal overnight (or even over three days & nights), thus fatigue, luck etc have to be involved too. You are really good at arguing against yourself!

So now you're claiming that the cause light wounds spell doesn't cause wounds of any sort. That's a joke, right?

It doesn't cause them physically (the caster simply touches the target). Which was the challenge you set, before the goalpost went wadering off.

But no, since it only causes hp loss, it does not necessarily cause physical wounds. The cause/inflict spells (as well of the cure spells) are misnamed.

This isn't "Commoners & (House) Cats"; every class in the book can reasonably be expected to either wear armor in combat, or be magic. An unarmored commoner is outside of that context. And if the rules don't work outside of their intended context, then it has no bearing on the game as a whole.

It is almost like I made the point that the 4hp unarmoured commoner could also be a first level wizard, to keep it entirely relevant. Actually it is exactly like that.

_
glass.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Ditto for wounds that heal overnight (or even over three days & nights), thus fatigue, luck etc have to be involved too. You are really good at arguing against yourself!

Three days is a lot longer than one day, or one hour. And three days doesn't even heal all wounds, in AD&D; it only heals the sort of weak-sauce wound that would fell a complete chump. You're being disingenuous.

It doesn't cause them physically (the caster simply touches the target). Which was the challenge you set, before the goalpost went wandering off.

But no, since it only causes hp loss, it does not necessarily cause physical wounds. The cause/inflict spells (as well of the cure spells) are misnamed.

Of course. In order to try and defend your position, you have to claim that words don't mean what they actually mean. By that metric, you're really "winning" this debate.

Cause Wounds spells cause wounds the same way that anything else causes wounds - by damaging the body. Don't try and pretend that there's such a thing as "wounded luck" or "wounded stamina".

It is almost like I made the point that the 4hp unarmoured commoner could also be a first level wizard, to keep it entirely relevant. Actually it is exactly like that.

Now you're claiming that you don't understand the difference between a commoner and a wizard. If you can't even understand that, then you're beyond help. I'm done wasting time on you.

 

[glass]

-more of the same, with extra insults-

Well, you have managed to convince me of one thing; debating with you is pointless. Although TBF this was pointless from the start. People have been arguing in favour of meat points and losing for decades; for you to come up with something genuinely new would be surprising.

EDIT: Damn, failed my Will save. I will say that of course I understand the difference between a commoner and a wizard. The only difference the affects the situation of a 4 hp old school wizard taking 3 hp from an arrow shot is that the wizard is more likely to have a cleric on hand (or failing that, be able to afford three days off to fix it).

_
glass.