Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[kenada]

Can anyone tell me what Systems expect from the DM and what burden they put on them compared to the player?

The GM is in charge with all the usual GM stuff.

Second editions sound like it is created to put the Dm in change and give him little freedom (is this true?) and sounds like created by people had had very adversary or anti-party DMs

I run an old-school style game using PF2. I don’t feel like the system gets in my way. I find it empowering to have tools that actually work and a framework for adjudicating improvised actions.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sometimes, it feels like PF2 was designed in order to “reign people in” at the expense of people who don’t need to be reigned in.

Absolutely. There were a lot of people in PF1* that needed to be reigned in. Like me, for instance.

PF1 breaks the second you let loose a player looking to break it. (Unless you keep playing at levels 1-4, I guess ) It sucks to be playing PF1 as a "casual" unless everybody is.

But that's actually not a problem big enough to abandon the ruleset. After all, except for Pun-Pun, the GM can always throw more monsters at the group. More importantly, PF1 places unreasonable demands on the DM GM. That game needed a replacement if for no other reason than statting up monsters and especially humanoid NPCs are a nightmare in almost every respect imaginable.

*) 3.5 actually. Whatever WotC and Paizo said at the time, 3.0 and 3.5 and PF1 are functionally identical games as far as I'm concerned.

 

[CapnZapp]

What you have is almost the same as how it’s written. If the issue is how the game presents things, than I agree completely.

Well, how the game is presented is how it's written, so...

But I'm assuming what you really meant was the end results. The actual result of the mechanics. Then yes, I can accept that.

But when I suggested my 2-sentence replacement, I wasn't entirely kidding.

Yes, if you were to look at it closer, you'd probably need a couple more sentences to fully replicate the byzantine tangle that is the actual CRB rules.

But my point is that that I am completely serious about the overarching point.

RAW Crafting gets a clear D if not an actual F as a design grade from me simply because I'm convinced the exact same rules could have been written as a single paragraph (even if a 6-sentence one and not my 2-sentence attempt). And that this would have not only been simpler and faster, it would have fooled far less players into thinking Crafting actually makes you money, which it quite assuredly does not do.

I refuse to just say "okay so the rules could have been written better but the actual results aren't too bad". The rules are written catastrophically bad compared to alternatives, and I consider myself as having proven that. The fact the actual results aren't "too bad" does not let Paizo off this hook.

 

[CapnZapp]

I mean VP is basically clocks, but the GMG takes several times as many words to say the same thing.

I would say that every variant rule I read about in the GMG comes across as incredibly cluttered and wordy for no good reason.

But that's my entire complaint against PF2. Having thousands of feats is only done in the interests of being able to offer supplement bloat. The game could have run functionally identically with only a quarter as many feats, and it would have been unquestionably better for it.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, but I think it’s more like “PF2 was designed for PFS”. PFS takes that kind of stuff very seriously, especially compared to AL.

Designing a game primarily for tournament play... yes, you could summarize my complaints against PF2 that way.

No way that's a good marketing idea. I am absolutely certain this limits your market. Gobs and gobs of potential customers are lost - in way higher numbers than complaining PFS players that actually make good on their threats and quit giving Paizo money.

The PFS player that complains but keeps playing is not a use case Paizo should have prioritized. But I'm convinced that is what having a public play test exposes your design project to: if you are an enthusiastic Paizo customer, you are more likely to participate in PFS and have that use case front and center for your feedback. And enthusiastic playtesters are vocal playtesters.

 

[CapnZapp]

I do think the Pathfinder Society is why pathfinder has become what it is. which is unfortunate since all they do is cookie cutter encounters.

In the defense of tournament play: writing for the middle is just about required when you can't make any assumptions on player skill and party compositions.

In other words, the notion that PFS and AL scenarios are creatively stunted may be correct. But the notion that they are more creatively stunted than what they have to be is not necessarily as correct.

 

[CapnZapp]

no because in 3e the DM was supposed to be the balancing factor. In Pathfinder the DM is just an arbiter of the rules. I don't know why people that like that don't just play video games.

This is dismissive of everyone that has attended a convention and walked away with a bad GM experience.

 

[CapnZapp]

3e also tried to codify a lot of stuff as a way to empower players. Pathfinder didn’t develop in a vacuum. It grew out of that player empowerment culture.

The irony is that Paizo, while clearly aware of player entitlement culture, made a distinctly worse job of combating it than WotC did with 5th Edition.

 

[glass]

IMNSO, Organised Play is like a stress test for a ruleset. Any flaws that could show up in a home game will show up more often and/or with greater magnitude in Organised Play. As such, thinking about what will or will not fly in Organised Play has utility for developers beyond the obvious.

_
glass.

 

[CapnZapp]

People took the wrong thing from 3e’s guidelines

That's far too simplistic and dismissive IMHO. The Alexandrian puts far too much weight behind individual paragraphs, and he's not alone.

In reality we have "show, don't tell".

Early adventures for a game line have a FAR higher impact on people's perception of how to run that game, than anything written in the rulebook. He puts far too high faith in a DM guideline shaping the game. Many DMs don't change their games just because one sentence out of a thousand seems to indicate they should.

What Alexandrian does is tantamount to cherry picking. I'm sure I could find a rules passage that counteracts his arguments. Plus, he reads a lot more out of that passage that what's necessarily there. (Hint: That the advice is telling you that heroes can take on more low-level encounters than high-level encounters is NOT a clear mandate to include lots of trivial encounters!)

The bigger point is that: if the rules were so unequivocal and clear, how did the adventures become so different? The obvious answer, of course, is that it isn't hard at all to understand how adventures did not "respect" his quoted passage.

Challenging combats is more fun than trivial ones.
Being forced to trudge onward while vulnerable and exposed is far less fun than striding proudly forth, whole of mind and body.