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Message: <blockquote data-quote="!DWolf" data-source="post: 8101062" data-attributes="member: 7026314">Beware: long stream of consciousness incoming.I like the complexity of PF2E. I find it less complex, better balanced, and more accessible than PF1E while still maintaining a lot of its predecessor’s depth. DND 5e on the other hand falls into a bad spot for me: not deep enough for its complexity - when I want to play a simpler game, I have much more fun with a games like Dungeon World. I don’t think that following in 5e’s footsteps is the right approach and I probably would have stuck to 1e had they done so. If I wanted a 5e like experience I would have played 5e. Businesswise copying the market leader is not a recipe for success. Consider the video game industry: you had a couple of good mmorpgs and a lot that failed, same thing with mobas, looter-shooters, battle royal games, and open world sandboxes. If you want innovation and growth - following the market trend will not get you there. By going its own way from dnd, I think Paizo is better positioned than if it tried to cut off a slice of 5e pie (if that analogy makes any sense at all). To put it another way: DND 5e but better is not necessarily better than not DND 5e.Mechanically, I appreciate the fact that it has all the complicated subsystems built into the core rules (I count the gmg here). It is always easier to reduce complexity/detail than to add it, so by including the complexity by default, but in a modular way that lets play groups reduce the complexity they don’t need, I think Paizo made the right choice. Example: handwaving healing when you have no pressure or danger is easy, building and integrating a healing system that gives choices in high pressure situations is very hard. Note that by including the complexity they did: it enables more old school style play like I prefer to exist comfortably by new style play, making a big tent (and thus market).The above actually leads to one of my big gripes - the core rules recall knowledge checks on monsters. They didn’t make it complex enough. Thus each group has to sort of build their own system for what to tell the players and they are all different, with no consistency.I think Paizo also did a very clever thing with the design of PF2E that no one is talking about: they built an extensible framework that they can use to build further adventure paths. If you read the previous editions adventure paths you can tell that some of them (jade regent, kingmaker, parts of most others) suffered without it. Sure they were good - but Paizo was clearly bolting in parts to the system to try and get what they wanted out of it - which I think is ultimately one of the factors that lead to the mess that 1st edition became. So some of the design of 2e is to provide modular points for further APs so that they can more easily integrate things like circuses and watchmen and magical academies. If Paizo is up to the task of using them I don’t know (I haven’t read agents or extinction), but they are there. And if Paizo can’t home-brewers certainly can.Regarding the adventure paths. Playing robotically to produce an “authentic experience” is not the way they are meant to be played. Any tabletop rpg adventure will be influenced by the group they are in and there is no one true ideal way to play that you should strive for. The best experience you will get out of an adventure path is when you (plural - I’m talking about both players and gms here) make it your own. Thus paradoxically the “authentic experience” is only achieved by not seeking an “authentic experience.”</blockquote>

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