Pathfinder 2E Problems with percieved overpowered encounters in Pathfinder 1e+2e?

[Thomas Shey]

For not nearly as big a pain in the behind as arguing with the players who want to check the books and stop the game now that there is a rule for nearly everything. your paradise is my hell.

Sure. Always is. I accept some people would rather make up out of whole cloth, but that's not me as a GM, and I don't appreciate it as a player. Never have.

 

[nevin]

Why in most older versions of D&D was it possible for a living thing to resist disintegration, but other than magic items on everything else it just worked? Why did Cloudkill stop working at all on you if you were above a certain level?

Like I said, arbitrary as could be from day one

You missed the point completely. Tell me that's how disentegrate works fine. Your right been doing that since the beginning.

tell me I can't cast a wall of fire in the air it has to be anchored fine.. But Tell me that a wall of fire that burns everything else on earth doen't afect affect vehicles because......I don't know constipation when the developer wrote it. then no. I get cognitive disconnect that causes lack of enjoyment. because at that point the system is not setting the ground for fun it's simply preventing common sense tactics because some idiot didn't like it.

Spell descriptions are the biggest offender in both versions of pathfinder but it's all throughout the rules. It's the game system that hates it's players unless they are being good little dungeon crawlers and not being creative.

 

[Kichwas]

That analysis largely misses the fact that many topics, like skills, were completely undefined in early D&D. Fighting men fought, clerics healed and disposed of undead, and magic users cast arcane spells. But when it came to knowing things or doing skillful things that weren't encapsulated in those 3 activities above, everything else was fair game without limits and boundaries except what the DM decided to invoke. Kind of more like improv acting, planning, and debating with the DM than it was a game.

All of the elements we now see as skills were just not part of the game back in the day. One of the things early competitors like Runequest did was say "hey D&D, you're ignoring that more happens than just killing monsters in 10x10 foot rooms, so we added a skill system."

When that concept finally made it's way over to D&D they could have said "OK, the rule for 'do anything' is roll a dice and add the right attribute bonus'... Or they could have divided it up between classes and group roles to preserve the very point I am talking about: each player sits down with a clear role and sense of purpose because this is a game first, a roleplay session second.

D&D 2E did a skeleton of that, D&D 3E more heavily took from competing RPGs but then limited your access so that no one could do everything - leaving each player with a clear sense of identity at the GAME table.

That's why MMOs that are the most successful look more like D&D than they do like GURPS. FFXIV is the extreme, and the #1 MMO - you can't pick anything other than minor armor buffs. WoW has a diverse talent pool, but these are like class feats. The vastly less popular #3 and 4 MMOs (Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars) are also much less clear on sense of purpose. While ESO has the near Runequest model of "everybody gets to do everything all the time", Guild Wars 2 has clear classes and builds - but the game itself is very fuzzy on what to do with them and ends up leaving players with... the number one complaint about GW2: WTF am I doing here? What is my purpose in this group?

Narrow choices to define a clear role just makes for better gaming.

Not everyone can be both the goalie and the offensive kicker and the main blocker all at the same time. If they could, the players would wander around the field wondering who is doing what and when.

If the GAME side is not important, then a person's best tRPG choice probably is Theatrix - which if fully aimed at roleplay. Too bad it coupled it's setting to an 'Adult NSFW' comic book and so became obscure the moment it went to print. The actual core book which didn't have the setting was a great design for people that don't want the game interfering with roleplay. It's the purest 'anti D&D' RPG ever, even more than the 'Amber' game was.

 

[nevin]

Narrow choices to define a clear role just makes for better gaming.

Not everyone can be both the goalie and the offensive kicker and the main blocker all at the same time. If they could, the players would wander around the field wondering who is doing what and when.

100 percent agreement on this....

 

[payn]

All of the elements we now see as skills were just not part of the game back in the day. One of the things early competitors like Runequest did was say "hey D&D, you're ignoring that more happens than just killing monsters in 10x10 foot rooms, so we added a skill system."

When that concept finally made it's way over to D&D they could have said "OK, the rule for 'do anything' is roll a dice and add the right attribute bonus'... Or they could have divided it up between classes and group roles to preserve the very point I am talking about: each player sits down with a clear role and sense of purpose because this is a game first, a roleplay session second.

D&D 2E did a skeleton of that, D&D 3E more heavily took from competing RPGs but then limited your access so that no one could do everything - leaving each player with a clear sense of identity at the GAME table.

That's why MMOs that are the most successful look more like D&D than they do like GURPS. FFXIV is the extreme, and the #1 MMO - you can't pick anything other than minor armor buffs. WoW has a diverse talent pool, but these are like class feats. The vastly less popular #3 and 4 MMOs (Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars) are also much less clear on sense of purpose. While ESO has the near Runequest model of "everybody gets to do everything all the time", Guild Wars 2 has clear classes and builds - but the game itself is very fuzzy on what to do with them and ends up leaving players with... the number one complaint about GW2: WTF am I doing here? What is my purpose in this group?

Narrow choices to define a clear role just makes for better gaming.

Not everyone can be both the goalie and the offensive kicker and the main blocker all at the same time. If they could, the players would wander around the field wondering who is doing what and when.

If the GAME side is not important, then a person's best tRPG choice probably is Theatrix - which if fully aimed at roleplay. Too bad it coupled it's setting to an 'Adult NSFW' comic book and so became obscure the moment it went to print. The actual core book which didn't have the setting was a great design for people that don't want the game interfering with roleplay. It's the purest 'anti D&D' RPG ever, even more than the 'Amber' game was.

There are many gross generalizations here. Don’t know where to start so I won’t.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You missed the point completely. Tell me that's how disentegrate works fine. Your right been doing that since the beginning.

No, I'm arguing you're being extremely selective in what bothers you. One doesn't make any more sense to me than the other. They're just naked game mechanics to serve an outside purpose.

You're not required to see it that way. But other people aren't required to see it yours, either. In my case most D&D mechanics haven't made particular sense from the very start, and the ones you're complaining about don't seem significantly worse than ones they've had for decades.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Narrow choices to define a clear role just makes for better gaming.

A rather lot of people who've played in games outside the siloing of D&D for decades see it rather otherwise.

 

[Justice and Rule]

ok then explain to me why I can cast a wall of fire in the air and when the ship sails through it only the sailors take damage. Vehicles in pathfinder only take damage if the effect is cast directly on them.....I can't think of a single thing like that in DND but I can come up with a book of em for pathfinder. tha'ts the stuff that makes me feel like it's a game with 4 nuns leaning over the table smacking finger's arbutrarily yelling that's not nice!.

I don't see anything here that indicates this. I think you are confusing the fact that they have Object Immunities with the fact that this is found in the Item section, and that Items typically have to be directly targeted otherwise a Fireball would basically destroy anything and everything you were carrying on you person.

 

[nevin]

read vehicle combat rules.

 

[Zubatcarteira]

In both 5e and PF2, Wall of Fire only seems to damage creatures (I think in 3.5 too, but I'm not too sure on the object damage rules there).