Keith Baker asks about walking away from Eberron.

[Sacrosanct]

As someone else who participated in that contest, it breaks my heart that he worries about this. If you think it would be appropriate, please let him know that a random stranger on the internet thinks this is nonsense.

I don't know that he does worry about this. Not in that sense anyway. He might, but I don't have any extra insight. My impression is that he's just worried about the unknowns of moving to a different system and how fans of Eberron might feel left out. I definitely got the vibe he cares very much about his fans.

 

[Scribe]

... we will see. There is certainly a component of people playing 5e that want more crunch.

But the majority of casual players that I see (and casual players make up the vast majority of players of 5e) are not looking for anything more difficult. IME, and this IME only, when you have people that forget that their Fighter has the second wind ability every single time you get together, trying to get them to play a system that is even marginally more complex and geared toward making correct decisions ... is difficult.

Yeah, 5e has found who it was good for. Its not folks who want more complexity.

 

[Faolyn]

I NEVER thought I'd see this.

What is this from, exactly? I'd like to link it to a friend.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

What is this from, exactly? I'd like to link it to a friend.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-poll-new-77741503

You have to be patron to see the post. I'd screen shot it, but I'm not in a place I can do it at the moment.

 

[SteveC]

... we will see. There is certainly a component of people playing 5e that want more crunch.

But the majority of casual players that I see (and casual players make up the vast majority of players of 5e) are not looking for anything more difficult. IME, and this IME only, when you have people that forget that their Fighter has the second wind ability every single time you get together, trying to get them to play a system that is even marginally more complex and geared toward making correct decisions ... is difficult.

I have to laugh because the player I'm thinking of literally had that problem with second wind. We're starting a new 5e game tonight and I expect the DM may need some adult beverages to ease him into the new campaign. I'm playing in this game with my friend who was running this player in 3.5 and we're both looking forward to not being the "explain your character" people for once.

For PF2, we play with Foundry, and I managed to show him how to select Power Attack when he wants to use it (which is more often than he should). That's his big choice, along with "hey, can I try and help my friend with that?" ("Yes, you can, just like all the other times...")

I guess my experience has been that even casual players can get burned out on 5E, and a lot of the complexity of PF2 is more in theory. One great example is the three action rule. In 5E you can attack, move, and then attack again, which my difficult player had a ton of problems with for some reason. He'd always want to turn that into a double move. With PF2 it was "move, attack, move ... and you're done." Yes, the 5E rule of moving might have seemed more friendly, but it didn't work out for this player in practice.

I don't know if the complexity of PF2 will be a barrier after people rage quit, but I do think that exploring other games (any of them!) leads to better gaming for everyone. It also will hopefully lead to less "my group wants to play 5E, ugh!" threads.

 

[darjr]

https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-poll-new-77741503

You have to be patron to see the post. I'd screen shot it, but I'm not in a place I can do it at the moment.

Thank you!

 

[Faolyn]

https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-poll-new-77741503

You have to be patron to see the post. I'd screen shot it, but I'm not in a place I can do it at the moment.

Thanks! I'll let my friend know. He's such an Eberron fan that he might by a patron as well.

 

[Justice and Rule]

... we will see. There is certainly a component of people playing 5e that want more crunch.

But the majority of casual players that I see (and casual players make up the vast majority of players of 5e) are not looking for anything more difficult. IME, and this IME only, when you have people that forget that their Fighter has the second wind ability every single time you get together, trying to get them to play a system that is even marginally more complex and geared toward making correct decisions ... is difficult.

As someone who has run both, the complexity is honestly more for the DM than anyone. The level of crunch people talk about is more of a meme than anything. It's largely some combat options and a bevy of feats to choose from to customize your character. Where things get more difficult is the DM's side, where there are more sliders to adjust, a few more charts to check, etc... Like, I'd put it at a healthy middle-ground between 5E and 4E.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I guess my experience has been that even casual players can get burned out on 5E, and a lot of the complexity of PF2 is more in theory. One great example is the three action rule. In 5E you can attack, move, and then attack again, which my difficult player had a ton of problems with for some reason. He'd always want to turn that into a double move. With PF2 it was "move, attack, move ... and you're done." Yes, the 5E rule of moving might have seemed more friendly, but it didn't work out for this player in practice.

I don't know if the complexity of PF2 will be a barrier after people rage quit, but I do think that exploring other games (any of them!) leads to better gaming for everyone. It also will hopefully lead to less "my group wants to play 5E, ugh!" threads.

I feel like Pathfinder is more explicitly complex, and its complexity is often more intended. 5E is absolutely complex: I related this in another thread, but I'm in an Eberron game. Our old Cleric decided she wanted a new character, so the old character did the classic villain heel turn (It was wonderful) and one of our characters met her new one.

And she wanted to be an Artificer/Cleric and we are at 4th level. That meant the two players who were deepest into the game had a good, long conference after the game was over as to how to make her work because we already have an Artificer and the classes don't really line up well. Multiclassing in 5E kind of just mashes classes together, and while the classes might seem simple, the way multiclassing is done really makes hell of things.

Now that's not a bad thing, necessarily, but that feels like a real thing with 5E: simple exterior, but with a whole lot of implicit and perhaps unintended complexity given how you can build characters with stuff like class dips and such. Like, go try building a multiclass character in both games and 5E is going to be the complicated one because there are so many weird class interactions you have to account for.

 

[Haplo781]

Relevant announcement from Paizo. Take it FWIW

View attachment 273868

A 1600% sales boost is ... Well it ain't nothing.