Aldarc
Legend
I think that it's nice having these rules available free online. When it comes to the game table, however, my players and I prefer hard copies.
PF2 and the adventure day
Tony Vargas
Legend
It's funny that those are all derivative.
It's just dialing spell brokedness back up, but not as far up as 3e. That is fundamental to the traditional feel of D&D, though.
That last hints at it's true legacy: Consolidating the legacy of TSR era D&D. 5e righted the boat that WotC had started rocking, by unwinding the improvements 3e & 4e had made to the game that were incompatible with the 'soul' of the original.
Thanks to 5e, D&D going forward will be, essentially(npi), and in perpetuity, what D&D was in the 80s.
The whole Big Tent inclusiveness thing was trumpeted from the beginning of the playtest - "innocuous enough to avoid edition warring" is just my cynical spin on it.
It has, the same sort of feat Marvel did, just for a lot less money: it took a 40yo property with a nerdy, even cultish, positively disgruntled fan base, and rebooted it in a way that didn't outrage their peculiar expectations and prejudices, while still being approachable enough to sustain a resurgence in interest from more mainstream customers.
The former required returning to a more traditional feel, including restoring perennial, intractable, structural issues like LFQW & 5MWD, that had only recently been solved, and falling back on the best traditional way of coping with them: the DM.
The latter required toning down the steep learning curve of TSR era baroque heterogenous sub-systems ( which even 3e had managed) and the high bar for system mastery of 3e.
The resulting compromise isn't as evocative of the True D&D Experience as the OSR, nor as approachable and quick/easy for new-to-the-hobby potential players to learn as 4e, but it avoided the kind if controversy from established fans that would keep potential new ones from even trying it, and it was readily accessible to returning fans, while not being too off-putting to new ones.
Looks? At a glance it looks like 3e or 2e or 1e: there are spells/day tables.
But you don't even need to pop the hood to see that those tables are a lot more similar to eachother than in 1e, for instance - and, there are /at-wiil attack cantrips/, unthinkable under The True Way of Vance.
While not accomplishing the same things, and being limited to primary casters, unified progression, viable at-wills for all, and two recovery cycles are clearly retained from 4e.
5e /is/ very much a return to the feel (and failings) of the classic game, but not by re-winding to 3e and fixing it up, but by intentionally breaking 4e.
Are in no way surprising if you were aware of the BA goal. Bonus stacking, thus buff stacking and the systematic (and wasteful) 3e-optimal strategy of pre-casting, were simply off the table, they couldn't be added back the way 9 spell levels and LFQW could be.
If there had never been an intervening edition that /actually/ fixed those issues, the net, non-trivial reduction in their severity could be rhetorically exaggerated as a 'fix,' but, misrepresenting the re-introduction of solved problem as a fix by disingenuously ignoring that they had already been solved is counter productive in any discussion, even this one.
5e gamers - The new/returning ones driving the not-seen-since-the-80s-fad sales of D&D have zero appetite for learning a second RPG.
PF1 leveraged the improbable confluence of the edition war, the OGL, and a database of Dragon/Dungeon subscribers, to, essentially, take up the mantle of D&D with existing 3.x D&Ders.
That opportunity has run its course.
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Parmandur
Book-Friend
I don't think that there is *no* appetite for more RPGs (see the Adventure Zone embracing the Apocalypse engine "Monster of the Week," the continued success of the funky narrative dice Star Wars game, or the Modephius Star Trek streaming scene).
However, there may be limited appeal for a game that has the same setting and general gameplay as D&D, but way more math.
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CapnZapp
Legend
No, what 4E fixed or did not fix is irrelevant since it's representative of neither the edition people are used to (5E) not the edition I fear they won't like (PF2)The whole Big Tent inclusiveness thing was trumpeted from the beginning of the playtest, "innocuous enough to avoid edition warring" is just my cynical spin on it.
It has, the same sort of feat Marvel did, just for a lot less money: it took a 40yo property with a nerdy, even cultish, positively disgruntled fan base, and rebooted it in a way that didn't outrage their peculiar expectations and prejudices, while still being approachable enough to sustain a resurgence in interest from more mainstream customers.
The former required returning to a more traditional feel, including restoring perennial, intractable, structural issues like LFQW & 5MWD, that had only recently been solved, and falling back on the best traditional way of coping with them: the DM.
The latter required toning down the steep learning curve of TSR era baroque heterogenous sub-systems ( which even 3e had managed) and the high bar for system mastery of 3e.
The resulting compromise isn't as evocative of the True D&D Experience as the OSR, nor as approachable and quick/easy for new-to-the-hobby potential players to learn as 4e, but it avoided the kind if controversy from established fans that would keep potential new ones from even trying it, and it was readily accessible to returning fans, while not being too off-putting to new ones.
Looks? At a glance it looks like 3e or 2e or 1e: there are spells/day tables.
But you don't even need to pop the hood to see that those tables are a lot more similar to eachother than in 1e, for instance - and, there are /at-wiil attack cantrips/, unthinkable under The True Way of Vance.
While not accomplishing the same things, and being limited to primary casters, unified progression, viable at-wills for all, and two recovery cycles are clearly retained from 4e.
5e /is/ very much a return to the feel (and failings) of the classic game, but not by re-winding to 3e and fixing it up, but by intentionally breaking 4e.
Are in no way surprising if you were aware of the BA goal. Bonus stacking, thus buff stacking and the systematic (and wasteful) 3e-optimal strategy of pre-casting, were simply off the table, they couldn't be added back the way 9 spell levels and LFQW could be.
If there had never been an intervening edition that /actually/ fixed those issues, the net, non-trivial reduction in their severity could be rhetorically exaggerated as a 'fix,' but, misrepresenting the re-introduction of solved problem as a fix by disingenuously ignoring that they had already been solved is counter productive in any discussion, even this one.
5e gamers - The new/returning ones driving the not-seen-since-the-80s-fad sales of D&D have zero appetite for learning a second RPG.
PF1 leveraged the improbable confluence of the edition war, the OGL, and a database of Dragon/Dungeon subscribers, to, essentially, take up the mantle of D&D with existing 3.x D&Ders.
That opportunity has run its course.
Plus, fixing things by throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not particularly interesting.
5E really delivers on the promise of 3E, which is what I find so impressive.
Calling 5E regressive is just bitter and serves you no good. What it really is a valuable step forward from 3E.
Not sideways (like 4E) but actually forward.
Tony Vargas
Legend
I'm guessing you didn't mean to imply that PF2 will be an edition of D&D...
Its how 5e 'fixed' complaints about 4e. (Seriously, that metaphor got a lot of use durring the playtest, there were metaphorical wet crying babies littering the streets of Renton.)
Actually, 5e delivered on more of its own impossible promises than we had any right to hope.
But it really delivers on the feel of the classic game, and on DM Empowerment, both things the other WotC eds weren't too into.
(And I have to wonder what you consider the promise of 3e was...?)
I totally cop to being bitter. And don't forget cynical. But 5e being regressive may not be as accurate as derivative ... or reactionary.
TBH, the emphasis on DM Empowerment, the "play loop" and less encyclopedic rules with a much slower pace of release all mark 5e as straddling the Mellinium* between 2e & 3.0
4e certainly moved forward from 3e, just only about as far forward as a New Wave Indy game, about 10 or 15 years.
* though that's a bit of poetic licence, really, since no version of WotC D&D would've seemed out of place had it been published under some other title in the 90s (and only because there were so many D&D derivative fantasy heartbreakers)
(In comparably surprising news, chemists detect high levels of di-hydrogen oxide in water supplies, and peace remains elusive in the middle East. Details at 11.)
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Tony Vargas
Legend
So cynical, had to post it twice.
No, they are not. They'd like you to believe they are, but there is 5E's market share and then everyone else's. They are competing with everyone that is not WotC.
The casual newbies and the nostalgia crowd probably don't want to learn a new game. But the 5e market is bigger than just those two groups. It includes people who play multiple RPGs and aren't afraid of new systems. The tabletop gaming boom - of which D&D is just a part - has shown that there's a significant population of gamers out there who are fine with learning new games. The boardgaming hobby would collapse without the 10-20 new games a year crowd.
PF2 doesn't have to rival D&D to be a success. If it can keep 70 per cent of its existing fans, and spark the curiosity of 15 or 20 per cent of the groups playing 5E - gamers who have become disappointed by some of the warts of 5E or who like trying something new - that's enough to be a commercial success. I know three D&D groups among my acquaintances alone who have never played Pathfinder who are buying PF2. The D&D-like market is big enough for multiple commercially viable and professionally produced games.
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CapnZapp
Legend
If Paizo gains even 10% of 5E gamers I think it will be considered a smashing success.
Paizo doesn't even need any of its existing fans in that case...
(I think the 5E market is massively larger than the PF1 one)
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I will have more on this later tonight, but I think player skill is going to have a dramatic impact on the length of the adventuring day. This is emphatically a game where you could hand two different players the same fighter and one could get a lot more out of them because of the in play decisions they make. Will have to see how this bears out in play.
