Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2 and support for other playing styles/subgenres

[FrozenNorth]

I get what you are saying, but I'd respectfully disagree with the conclusion. The things you've stated here aren't necessarily required knowledge, known only by hoary old players. These are the that things the game is designed to want you to do. If there was no incentive to recall knowledge, why would "waste time" doing it for example?

There are two ways a player can be incentivized to use Recall Knowledge:

• either to gain a benefit; or
• to avoid a penalty.

My point is that Recall Knowledge seems to be balanced to incentivize the players to avoid a penalty: overall, spell effects seem weaker than weapon attacks unless you successfully target a weakness.

To my mind, it seems a lot of what you said can be reduced to "The game plays differently, leading me to bounce off it". I really don't mean that in an offensive way here (I appreciate text is crap at conveying tone). A lot of these "tricks and knowledge expectations" (paraphrasing yourself), actually seem to have thrown more "experienced players" than totally new ones (hence many in the old guard having a negative reaction).

I’m not sure I agree with that. I think that experienced PF1 players had their own different issues with the game, but I don’t think any of the examples I gave are things that would be unexpected to long time players.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Seems like a fair portrayal of how well players pay attention sometimes.

I always love the reverse, which is the GM overexplaining things to the point of hilarity. I always remember the example of "Buck Fever" for GURPS 3E in their Compendium II:

Player: "I'm taking aim with my rifle at the IRA terrorist."

GM: "You have trouble focusing; somehow the sights and the target won't align, sweat stings your eyes and the faces of the hostages keep sweeping across your vision. The rifle quivers in your hands. Somehow, the old, familiar feel from hours on the range is gone; your trigger finger seems to be on someone else's hand."

Player: "Is this a subtle indication that my skill is being negatively affected by stress?"

 

[transmission89]

There are two ways a player can be incentivized to use Recall Knowledge:

• either to gain a benefit; or
• to avoid a penalty.

My point is that Recall Knowledge seems to be balanced to incentivize the players to avoid a penalty: overall, spell effects seem weaker than weapon attacks unless you successfully target a weakness.


I’m not sure I agree with that. I think that experienced PF1 players had their own different issues with the game, but I don’t think any of the examples I gave are things that would be unexpected to long time players.

That’s fair. I get that. I just know from my experience and some fellow players were initially thrown as we were used to static combat because of AoO and gated feats that made it pointless to do certain “tricks” unless you built into it.

Once we grokked it, we found it quite liberating for new school play.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Edit: Also worth noting that Battle Assessment can give you knowledge unique to a certain creature as well (since resistances and saves can be modified by magical items and such), which I don't think I'd allow for a generic Recall Knowledge check.

I wonder about this last point. In the adventure I played, I did not use RK on any individuals (for the reasons you specify), but to be honest, RK is really unclear as to whether this is the correct way to interpret this action.*

*Specifically, being a narrative player, I give greater weight to how an action is called/described in the book than others may. From that perspective, if an action is called Recall Knowledge, it doesn’t make sense to me to use it if there is no chance that you would know the person.

*Likewise, the Lie to me feat between those who thought it should be usable in most circumstances and those who taught that it should be usable only if the person with the feat was in conversation with the liar.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Want to call out about recall knowledge- the description actually alludes to the player trying to recall specific facts several times.

You might know basic information about something without needing to attempt a check, but Recall Knowledge requires you to stop and think for a moment so you can recollect more specific facts and apply them.

And here:

You attempt a skill check to try to remember a bit of knowledge regarding a topic related to that skill. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and which skills apply

Here we see it alluding to information within the statblock:

For example, Arcana might tell you about the magical defenses of a golem, whereas Crafting could tell you about its sturdy resistance to physical attacks.

There's also a bit about assesing the skill of an acrobat with acrobatics that feels like its talking about their actual acrobatics skill, with the way the system discusses NPCs.

Finally, take a look at this feat that has a couple of variants and a spell that all accomplish a version of it. It really only makes sense if the player is the one asking questions and theyre really specific pieces of information the GM can just reference. This is supported by the critical success verbage in recall knowledge as well, that requires a specific piece of information contrasted with additional context chosen by the GM.

Its recalling knowledge about a creature, statblock info is knowledge, so absent any guidance, or a house rule by the GM, that exempts statblock info... it really can do that. There are other feats that imply this too, like the Investigator's "Known Weakness"

Creature identification, as far as i can tell, is written to purely to name the damn thing, and then calls out extra info to guide the GM into giving them a little common knowledge about the creature. It is not Recall Knowledge.

in example, If we were to use it on the Cap, a GM might think it would be sufficient to identify him as a troll, but the way its written also heavily pushes them to tell us he is weak to fire. This would be a completely seperate action, than us asking about his weakest save or ability score using the distinct recall knowledge skill. Its a patch to make identification a little better.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It's not about venting about the system, it's constantly venting about the system and telling us we're all wrong. And I mean that latter part literally, as they've literally declared victory in his arguments before.

I’m pretty sure that would be less of an issue if there were more PF2 threads posted.

Part of the issue seems to be that the ENWorld PF2 community is so small that one person who has issues with PF2 contributes something like 20% of the posts on the forum.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This caught my attention:

Erik: It hisses as the blade sinks into its shoulder. That looks like it hurt, but the undead thing doesn’t appear to be slowing down. James, that was all three of your actions. Next up is Kyra!
Judy: I think this is undead. What do I know about it?"

Dammit Judy, Erik just told you it is an undead!

Hey, Judy is just avoiding metagaming! Don’t shame her for that!

 

[transmission89]

I’m pretty sure that would be less of an issue if there were more PF2 threads posted.

Part of the issue seems to be that the ENWorld PF2 community is so small that one person who has issues with PF2 contributes something like 20% of the posts on the forum.

This is true, but as a corollary, if I was a new pf2 player, or prospective new player, what do you think my impression of the community/system be upon seeing that? Would I be so inclined to get involved and create posts of my own?

 

[kenada]

This is true, but as a corollary, if I was a new pf2 player, or prospective new player, what do you think my impression of the community/system be upon seeing that? Would I be so inclined to get involved and create posts of my own?

There have been posts recently calling that out from a new player perspective, so we don’t need to speculate (except the extent to which it has happened). Who wants to give a game a try when almost every discussion gets turned into someone’s soapbox?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Its recalling knowledge about a creature, statblock info is knowledge, so absent any guidance, or a house rule by the GM, that exempts statblock info... it really can do that. There are other feats that imply this too, like the Investigator's "Known Weakness"

So, would you allow RK on a named NPC the characters don’t know anything about?