Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2
- Thread starter CapnZapp
- Start date
Thomas Shey
Legend
This strikes me as the classic problem of someone reading something that makes it easier to do something as something that's required to do something. Also, that bolded text? I'd absolutely question it.
It seems similar to the mindset of conflating not having a benefit with being punished. I’ve seen that in the PF1 community and had a player like that once. It didn’t end well.
CapnZapp
Legend
I completely understand the theoretical idea "okay so nobody takes this or that feat, what's the problem?"It seems similar to the mindset of conflating not having a benefit with being punished. I’ve seen that in the PF1 community and had a player like that once. It didn’t end well.
The problem is where do you draw the line. Which feats are irrelevant, or phrased differently: open to "GM generosity"?
Per the rules, as soon as you take even 1 point of damage from a fall, you land prone. Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?
Per the rules, you crawl excruciatingly slow (1 square per action). Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?
Per the rules, you can never jump longer than your Speed (even if you spend more than action). Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?
Per the rules, you can't climb with weapons drawn (since both hands and feet are needed for the climb), meaning you must spend actions drawing and sheathing your weapon(s) each time you need to reposition yourself on the wall or cliff (making it a no-no to try to defend yourself in practice) Unless you have a feat. Do you allow corner cases, and if so, how can you justify taking those feats?
If you think it's so easy to just be generous, which feats are worthless in your campaign so I know which ones to avoid. Maybe I don't need Quickdraw if you simply allow a DC 15 Acrobatics or Initiative check? Maybe you allow a hero to Grab an Edge even though he wields a two-handed weapon - in which case it's no point is building a Zorro character that fights with one hand "empty"?
This never ends. Per the rules, you need to spend three actions if you want to take a step to the table, jump up on it, and keep moving. Or if you want to reach the door, open it, and step through.
And on and on. I can't be bothered to research this reply, so hopefully you will not get sidetracked if I made a mistake.
Point is, we're quickly moving away from playing PF2 here and into playing KenadaFinder2. Nothing wrong with that...
...except that unless you have a photographic memory, you will forget in which cases you held firm and required the feat, and when you allowed the feat to be bypassed.
In a game where the feat choices - and the very subtle improvements they (together with spells and magic items) grant- are what charbuilding is all about, you quickly end up with an unsatisfying mishmash. Can I ever be certain I'm getting the printed benefit out of my feat choices, or will Kenada just let my fellow players persuade him into letting them try without them?
What then is the point of making choices?
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No, Pathfinder is very clearly a game actively preventing you from the "yes, but" generous GM play style. I myself made a couple of such attempts to be generous, but quickly stopped when my players started asking questions like "is your decision final and permanent? Just want to know which feats I should ignore..."
In almost every single case where I thought "no harm in being generous" a player went "but what about my feat then?" And in the few cases nobody objected, chances are it's just because we weren't high level and hadn't experienced all classes yet - the generosity just happened to invalidate a feat from a class or level my players hadn't checked out.
You can't track a beast you haven't seen with this specific feat.
You can't be smart about finding leads without this specific feat.
And on and on and on...
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Example from practical play.
The player of a level 15 Barbarian, happy to put her newly taken Cloud Jump to the test, challenged my level 18 monster to a long-jumping contest. After reading the rules and the text of the feat, I had to conclude we couldn't hold that contest (despite the monster being clearly superior in Athletics!) - either the player character would win trivially, or I had to rule the monster didn't need the feat to jump longer distances than its Speed.
Smarting from my previous experiences, I quickly decided not to open Pandora's Box, and suggested they compete another way instead.
Had the game been sensibly designed, every character who becomes Legendary in Athletics would gain this ability automatically. Justifying that my monster was of equivalent ability (monsters don't specify proficiency ranks) would have easy in comparison.
Of course, even better would have to have a general rule that said something like "jumping like on clouds* requires a DC 34 Athletics check**.
*) meaning whatever the benefits of the feat are
**) DC 34 selected because it's the class DC for level 15
The point is, now you have a rule that works for all characters and all monsters. You don't need to reach any specific threshold at all. If you have a +20 bonus, you can try but will find it challenging. If you have a +30 bonus, it's close to a given (especially since you can apply Assurance). As an added benefit, you're not asking a high level character to still jump like a low-level plebe (jumping the standard speed of 25 feet is something you mastered many levels ago) unless you prioritize this one feat.
It allows you to clean out all these useless feats that just serve to emasculate characters, there to create an artifical option space. But mostly introduce monster and NPC incompatibilities and generally be a royal pain in the hindquarters.
The-Magic-Sword
Small Ball Archmage
Preaching to the choir, my players aren't unkind, but I've got one who can be pretty stubborn about this in particular-- I'm using Automatic Bonus Progression for an upcoming pirate-themed West Marches where I want to incorporate a little old school mentality by having everyone be focused on treasure, having it be player scheduled (taking cues from open table, and proper west marches.) The reason for ABP is to make to be able to step away from mandatory WBL guidelines, and allow for wealth to provide an incentive to explore-- a player whose bad at exploring won't get much, whereas a player who is good at it could get very wealthy, so I needed to make sure that was kosher mathematically.It seems similar to the mindset of conflating not having a benefit with being punished. I’ve seen that in the PF1 community and had a player like that once. It didn’t end well.
That player and I had a heated debate over whether there should be a baseline treasure the GM shovels towards the players for time spent playing in all adventures. We had another debate because he thought having guild provided sailing vessels for all adventures would be the way to go, whereas I want to let that be organic as players acquire vessels, organize with who has what, and let the logistics management be a player facing part of the game. We argued over whether high level settlements should just be there and freely accessible. Like, these weren't fights, they were respectful and I value his input (especially on other things not relevant to this), but whew lad when he homes in on something he sees the players as entitled to, its like arguing with a hurricane.
If anyone's curious, I settled on the logistics being player facing, but allowing them to accept contracts with factions to handle the logistics of a given voyage conditionally (e.g. a major cut of the treasure, constraints on which missions they'll support you on, etc.) I determined that there's a low level starting settlement everyone has access to, but then higher end settlements scattered through the isles are protectionist enough to require permits to do business in-- which could be stolen, given as rewards, be sent to certain players as invitations from the port, using a reputation system. I also allowed that players position in the isles only matters during a session-- downtime can be done at any port your character has a permit to access, and voyages can start at any port any of the players in the voyage have a permit to access (I'm planning to use a hex grid to systematize travel and navigation, so the position of ports vs. certain destinations can result in shorter journeys, inconvenient previously discovered obstacles, and etc.)
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The-Magic-Sword
Small Ball Archmage
Most the feats in the game don't have this problem, because they allow you to do something in a certain way, or are mindful about applying bonuses to 'checks to do this thing' even those that give access to special downtime activities don't preclude you being able to do it through other means, they just offer a specific method, one that tends to be easier.
For instance, compare Dandy Dedication to Sow Rumor, they overlap heavily in purpose but offer a different mechanical implementation, and neither actually suggests its the only way to spread rumors-- obviously if you walk around town and manually lie to people spreading stories, you could probably pull it off, but you wouldn't get to use either of these tailored implementations. The GM would be determining whether and how you could do that, which is the normal procedure for skills, the feats just take the GM by the hand and say 'don't worry bro, here you go' and the player knows that they're getting a writ-in-stone mechanical way of doing the thing when they announce that they sow rumor or some such-- which makes sense, since both features are a part of mechanic packages that demand being able to do so with consistency and balance, whereas a one-off plan can even vary between instances with the same GM.
Off the top of my head, the GM could use victory points to let a player tarnish someone's reputation with rumors, or run it as a 4e esque skill challenge (x successes before y failures.) Its totally up to the GM, unless the player has something that the GM can hone in on like "oh it says you can do that? rad."
What you're talking about comes up a lot with languages in a lot RPGs that feature them, on optimization boards, there's an assumption that the GM will give you a means of translating need to know information, so whats the point of investing in languages? Hence they're exclusively marked as trap options in guides and such. But to get there, you have to treat your GM as a constraint on the metagame of your table-- you might very well miss treasure, or something in my game, by doing that (the sandbox and freedom of approach in my game softens the consequences to the point they're usable in an impactful way) whereas another table could dump languages (or encumbrance, or whatever) safe in the knowledge it isn't used.
It's endemic to the genre, but I like that PF2e has explicit ways to do something a player can draw on to not have to worry about their GM mucking it up, or to make it easier to perform, or whatever.
I always get the feeling 3.5; PF1 and PF2 are games where the creators don't trust Dms to be fair and fun and see to limit in gm freedom. Like the all had anti group gms that made Tomb of Horror dungeons all the time and played against the table then with them seeing TPKs as their win condign. Like all had grown from it is Gm VS player mentality and to give players tools to keep their DMs in check
I’ve already discussed possible approaches to being more permissive, and you rejected them. I’m not going to waste my time discussing them again because you’ll just find another way to move the goal posts. You’re not interested in having a discussion. You just want us to validate your perspective.
Justice and Rule
Legend
Because that's already out there and some people desire a game with more structure. I mean, I've run 5E since it came out and continue to run it today (I'm DMing a game Sunday and possibly one Friday) and if I just wanted more 5E, I'd go for it.
Instead, I do kind of want to see a game that has similar mechanics, but more depth. I mean, clearly other people want that, too, otherwise this site wouldn't be doing a "5E Advanced" project. But the problem is that 5E's looser design fights against more minutiae rather viciously: for example, it's hard to create gradations in different circumstances because the one go-to for the system is Advantage/Disadvantage, and that's it. The only exception to that are cover penalties, but otherwise there's just not much there, and that can be immensely frustrating as a DM when you want to create small differences between situations.
That can be fine, but at the same time that breeds its own problems: if you can do everything with skills, there's less differentiation between characters unless you do really in-depth breakdowns of skills and allow for people to specialize in them.
Like, if I have a strength fighter who is a sailor and I have a strength fighter who is just a knight, both are likely to have athletics and high strength. Seems natural, right? So how do I differentiate the sailor as someone who climbs better because he spends time in the rigging of the ship more?
(Yes, I know the Sailor background has Underwater Marauder, but I find the Rigger background from EC to be very fitting as long as you change the Lore skill)
To me, Combat Climber serves that purpose well: it gives that person something special that is fairly specialized (being a better combatant while climbing) while other players don't lose anything: they can still fight, they can still climb, they just can't do it at the same time.
Even if the knight were as good a climber as the sailor, that doesn't mean they know exactly the same techniques and the sailor could still know some nuances better than the knight, and this captures that.
Sometimes PF2 does do this - for instance tumbling through an enemy's space. Have a look at the rule:
- everybody can do it, no feat needed
- it isn't automatic, you need a decent die roll
Why this natural intuitive playable implementation wasn't used more is anyone's guess. (You still need Acrobatics, so it's still a wonky implementation if your position is that any high level hero should be able to tumble through a villager's space. But it's infinitely preferable to having a feat called, say, "Tumbler" without which you can't even attempt the maneuver. In this case, there is no such feat - Tumbler doesn't exist, or at least it does something else - but unfortunately there are dozens if not hundreds of Tumbler-like feats in the game. It is also wonky in that you get to attempt to tumble through ONE enemy's space, meaning you need to spend all three of your actions to tumble through three guards even if the total distance moved is just 20 ft or so)
I mean, that's an apple and oranges comparison. Tumbling is an action, just like Climbing. The Combat Climber feat is not an action, but a modifier to an action based on the character having a specialized expertise.
Again, the problem with "everyone can do it with a roll" is that everyone can do it with a roll. It limits the ability to distinguish and specialize characters in some way. This is one of the most frustrating things about 5E having run it for years: at a certain point it becomes dull because there are clear paths as to how to do things with your character because classes and subclasses have so little variation within them: if you are Cleric of Light, there's just not much variation in how you build that because your class features are basically completely set and you have little in the way of selection.
Pathfinder 2e's ala carte way of doing things is refreshing as hell by comparison: there tons of little options for customization that aren't just straight skill bonuses, but instead allow you small modifications of how different actions interact or allowing you to just do things. And while you look at it as a limit on the other players, I see it as a benefit to the game: instead of everyone trying to do the same thing with varying penalties, it forces people to make plans or use other skills in interesting ways.
For example, my sailor fighter can climb and fight more effectively, so if we're getting attacked by harpies on the side of a cliff, he's probably going to take a more frontline role in things. The Rogue or Ranger would be able to use their Quick Draw to attack better while managing their action economy, while the knight uses his Reactive Shield to help defend himself better in the same way. What you see as limits to me are part of the fun: you have a problem where everyone has different tools and must all solve it in their own way.
@The-Magic-Sword 's example with the rumor feats is another good example: There's nothing that says you can't spread a rumor if you don't have those feats. Rather, you have an easy mechanical way of doing this without having to possibly go through a bunch of roleplay and hoops to do it. And I'm fine with that: it gives the player an interesting niche where they can do something quickly and easily while other players would have to go into more in-depth roleplaying to do.
I feel like this would make PF2 a more homogenized experience and just make it seem like a cut-rate 5E. The feats they have are generally good at giving interesting effects or niches to players, and I'm all for that sort of thing.
Are there really a lot of gotchas in this game? Like, is not being able to climb with a weapon in your hand really a "gotcha"?
I mean, you could literally say this about any sort of limitation within the book. Like, you could just as well say this:
Per the rules, all Elves have a move speed of 30 feet. Unless you have a feat. Do you you allow corner cases, and if so, how do you justify taking those feats?
It's the exact same thing. Can you allow situational cases? Well, as a GM I would say "It depends on the situation." But most of what you identify don't seem to actually be problems. Is having a crawling speed of 1 space per action actually a problem? Is falling prone if you take damage on a fall actually a problem?
I mean, that last one in particular feels even more out of place given your idea of allowing people to roll for it: you take damage on a fall by failing a check. The roll is already made, this is just an effect for failure. Do you think there should be a second roll? That seems needlessly complex. Do you think it should just be up to GM Fiat? In this case, I like the firmness of the rules: they give a concrete definition to the player as to what happens, there's a feat that gets around it, and if I find a situation where it'd be appropriate to not use it, I don't.
Because why should I have to roll to do everything? Maybe there are just things that I should be able to do or not do depending on whether I trained for it.
Also, "grabbing a leg while wielding a two-handed weapon" wouldn't be a problem since "wielding" isn't the same as just holding it: you release one hand and the two-handed sword dangles in your other. Now you won't be able to attack with it, unless you are going to start questioning why we have a two-handed restriction to begin with. I mean, if you have a high enough strength, right?
Why can't I just wield a two-handed weapon one-handed? Why can't I cast spells if my Arcana is really high? Why can't I Rage like a Barbarian?
These aren't problems, these are just questions. Like with what you've done, you really haven't established why not being able to climb with a weapon hand is some sort of problem, or why crawling only one space per action is a problem, or why you land prone if you take damage on a fall is a problem. You need to establish why these things are problematic to really have an argument.
For example, people have problems with the crafting system in PF2, and I can understand why they do because they actually explain why it's a problem. For example, 4+ days to make a bunch of arrows is a long time for a small amount of ammunition. They've identified a problem and identified why it is a problem.
With all this, you don't really identify why these specific rules are a problem. You seem to take more issue with the fact that there are rules about these things at all.
I don't even know what you are talking about with the first feat (Are you talking about the Warden spell?) but the second feat is absolutely off. You can track down leads intelligently with any character, but the Investigator is just better at it because that's part of their class gimmick. I don't understand the problem here with that.
I don't understand why you couldn't just let the monster fail trivially. It seems like your Barbarian was really clever and found an interesting advantage. I mean, if my badass monster challenged a 5E Monk to a climbing contest and he finds out that the monk is going to smoke him because he can just run up walls, that's not a problem with the system. That's things working as intended. If I wanted that to actually be a challenge, then I need to know how my monster works. And if your monster should be able to compete with a cloud-jumping Barbarian in a leaping contest, then I don't see what stops you from saying "This was my intention, thus this is how I'm going to do it". Maybe your view of that monster was different than Paizo's, but I'm not sure this is actually a problem.
I mean, why does everyone need to be as good at everything as long as they have the same theoretical "skill level"? Why not allow people to specialize, so that my Titan Wrestler Barbarian is actually unique because he invested in that specialization and can now wrestle dragons to the ground, while your player's Barbarian can cloud jump around? That way we have different purposes compared to each other. If we could both do the same things equally, you just homogenize us and allow us to play exactly the same way, rather than making choices and having to deal with situations using the tools we chose, rather than just having all the tools all the time.
I used to think that, but I've found out over the years that having visible structure for things can be a real help to new players: when you say "You can do anything", people just sort of freeze up with all their options. It also helps to have a good idea of what something will do rather than bargaining with the GM to it: instead of trying to hash out what could happen, you can just do it and have a good idea of what the result will be. I understand the aversion to it and depending on the game I can fall on either side.
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