Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[nevin]

I'm not saying I think Pathfinder's niche involves any campaign style. Most of the pathfinder players I meet get together and play a module or a DM generated dungeon crawl. they don't really play campains. They have what resembles a video game. They go to the dungeon do thier thing, go to town spend thier money and then rinse repeat, or in some cases don't even do the town thing. They just kill things and solve puzzles every week. For them it's a board game with some roleplaying tacked on.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So now you're saying our entire discussion is sand and water? Talk about resorting to scorched earth argumentation.

The only reason we're having this discussion is because Pathfinder 2 has proven itself significantly lethal: both in absolute terms and relative to the (by far) most likely comparison point (5E).

If you don't agree to that, why are you even here?

Because you don't own the discussion and get to beg the question and require people to accept your premises in whole. But its now extremely obvious that's exactly what you expect people to do.

 

[Retreater]

I'm not saying I think Pathfinder's niche involves any campaign style. Most of the pathfinder players I meet get together and play a module or a DM generated dungeon crawl. they don't really play campains. They have what resembles a video game. They go to the dungeon do thier thing, go to town spend thier money and then rinse repeat, or in some cases don't even do the town thing. They just kill things and solve puzzles every week. For them it's a board game with some roleplaying tacked on.

I'm sure there are some groups who do that. I would like to see more content from Paizo (or other publishers) to support that style of game. This is one of the reasons I'm pumped about their forthcoming Abomination Vaults dungeon campaign.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The other issue is the OSR passed right on by Pathfinder. We see some old-school type elements in PF2. It does acknowledge exploration as an actual thing, but the implementation is still in service of story-driven adventurers (there are no procedures for exploration as its own goal). PCs are presumed to be heroes that become super heroes, and the system’s progression is designed with that in mind (higher level characters/creatures destroy lower level ones without breaking a sweat). Fights need to be balanced because they serve a dramatic role. You don’t just fight something because you got in trouble, it’s part of the narrative progression.

Of course, you can ignore some of those things. I ignored balance when I converted Winter’s Daughter, and it went fight. Fighting there is really more of a failure state than a form of narrative progression. You can do open-ended exploration if you import a procedure from somewhere else. I did, and the system works fine for that (although I’ve started the conversation about switching to something else, I wouldn’t suggest taking that as an indictment of the system).

Yeah, I think at worst you have to make the distinction between "Currently PF2e doesn't support some styles very well" (which I'd generally agree with) and "PF2e can't support those styles". As I've noted, there are things you aren't going to do with it the way you can some other D&D incarnations--but that's been true of every edition and variation from 3e on, its just a question of which ones--like randomly dropping in more opponents and such without some thought, but a lot of the other style things can be done, they just require some additional subsystems or thinking through how they should work in the context of the system.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm sure there are some groups who do that. I would like to see more content from Paizo (or other publishers) to support that style of game. This is one of the reasons I'm pumped about their forthcoming Abomination Vaults dungeon campaign.

Well, honestly, its the style that least requires outside support; its pretty trivial to do in any edition/variation of D&D once you understand how the pieces fit together, which is why its where low-effort DIYers in the hobby have always lived (and that sounds more critical than its intended; its the place I pretty much lived for my first few years in the hobby).

 

[Porridge]

They place way too much emphasis on fighting, and they’re too linear. Even if the execution is often flawed or poor, the official 5e adventures at least try new things.

I'll confess I'm a bit surprised to hear the sentiment that Paizo doesn't try new things. Although Paizo tries to stagger their more experimental APs with "standard fare" APs to appeal to multiple kinds of players, it seems to me like the experimental APs are trying new things all the time.

I can’t see Paizo’s ever doing a sandbox like* the opening of Rime of the Frostmaiden or a heist or anything like that.

FWIW, the second chapter of All or Nothing (book 3 of Paizo's current AP) is a heist. And it's done in a free-form sandbox style. The general floor plan and main characters are presented, a bunch of possible avenues of investigation and infiltration are discussed (along with encouragement to roll with other approaches players think up), but then the PCs are left to try to pull it off in any way they like.

 

[CapnZapp]

I’m not going to claim that’s an illusion of choice because I think there are more choices than just (and more choices that matter outside of) what you do in combat or when building characters, but it made combat feel kind of bleh. There was an investigator, and it was the same way. Devise a Strategem, do a thing (or not do a thing when you roll a natural 1). I need still to process my thoughts, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of that feeling right now.

You referenced this in the other thread, so I gave it a second look.

Pathfinder 2 is certainly not the game were you go for the high swing in round 1, forcing the opponent to parry; while in the next round you feint and stab.

Each round, yes, you do have a couple of feats granting you class-flavored special attacks, but there's generally no continuous selection process. You go for the mathematically optimal one.

There's some mixup in that you could go for something that slaps a condition (like flatfooted or prone) that can be more worthwhile in certain situations than in others (no need to flatfoot somebody when your buddy is already standing on the other side of the monster flanking).

You're basically given HUGE choice with very little mechanical effect. Of course some like how this means "there's no wrong choices" or even go "the game is won on the battlemat, not during charbuild".

But yeah, your choice mostly boils down to not doing the stupid thing like running into a room full of monsters just before all of them take their turn.

D&D has always been "I go you go" meaning "I stab you stab" with no meaningful need to explain or embellish what "stab" means.

I guess you can draw the conclusion "if it's all the same to you, I rather play a fine-page retroclone".

Personally however, I didn't get a "meh" out of PF2 combat. Most everything else, sure, maybe - but not combat.

 

[kenada]

I'll confess I'm a bit surprised to hear the sentiment that Paizo doesn't try new things. Although Paizo tries to stagger their more experimental APs with "standard fare" APs to appeal to multiple kinds of players, it seems to me like the experimental APs are trying new things all the time.

I admit my experience is with PF1 APs (Rise of the Runelords, Council of Thieves, Kingmaker, and Shattered Star), so maybe PF2 is different. Kingmaker may have looked like a hexcrawl, but it too was still just an encounter-driven, linear story. It’s just that instead of a normal dungeon, the wilderness was the dungeon.

FWIW, the second chapter of All or Nothing (book 3 of Paizo's current AP) is a heist. And it's done in a free-form sandbox style. The general floor plan and main characters are presented, a bunch of possible avenues of investigation and infiltration are discussed (along with encouragement to roll with other approaches players think up), but then the PCs are left to try to pull it off in any way they like.

Neat. I assume it uses the infiltration subsystem from the GMG?

 

[kenada]

I guess you can draw the conclusion "if it's all the same to you, I rather play a fine-page retroclone".

It’s more like: given game A that can be made to do what I want and game B that does what I want, and also that game A ends up clashing with how I want to run and having elements I find I don’t like, then I’m inclined to switch to game B.

Personally however, I didn't get a "meh" out of PF2 combat. Most everything else, sure, maybe - but not combat.

We never really saw the purportedly amazing combats manifest at the table. It could be because of that style thing I mentioned earlier. Fights happen when they happen rather than as part of something planned and orchestrated as a set piece battle.

 

[Justice and Rule]

We never really saw the purportedly amazing combats manifest at the table. It could be because of that style thing I mentioned earlier. Fights happen when they happen rather than as part of something planned and orchestrated as a set piece battle.

Yeah, I think you're clashing with more modern design sensibilities. Not that it's wrong or anything, but there's definitely been a move towards more planned combats than random/naturalistic encounters.