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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Justice and Rule" data-source="post: 8145309" data-attributes="member: 6778210">I mean, have you ever thought that maybe you're the one being contrarian?You've discussed how you think PF2 is overdesigned, and I think I'd be willing to buy that if your arguments didn't seem to revolve around what come off as trivial complaints. Telling me about how bad a feat is that allows someone to climb with a weapon or trying to convince me how a system is overdesigned because it has you fall prone if you take fall damage or because your crawl speed is 1 square unless it's modified is... a hard sell, to say the least.And this isn't to say that PF2 is perfect: Again, I think the crafting is wonky and there are feats out there that would probably be better to just have as part of the class. Sometimes they went a little too far with ala carte, like having racial weapon proficiencies be a feat. But I think these are small complaints. Overall I appreciate that many of these systems are there because I find it infinitely easier to tweak something rather than create something, and PF2's dedication to fairly consistent system building (Most systems generally work off the same principles) helps me if I wanted to do something.Like, you say that there is no choice where it matters, but keep complaining about how all these feats lock you out of things. And I think that's a hard circle to square: if the choices don't matter, then they can't lock you out of meaningful stuff, right? And you keep telling us of how limiting these feats are, but your actual play example is you as a GM telling a player that they can't use their feat in a creative way. To me, I feel like this is all just contradictory. Really, the thing here is that the feats are meaningful, but much less so than 5E... and that's by design. They are incremental, thus you don't get wild swings from certain features at different levels.You also keep bringing up 5E's success as something while talking about how people are finally talking about how there are problems about 2E on Paizo's forums and I'm like... have you talked to people about 5E before? Because people talk about the problems of 5E all the time. naughty word, just bring up the Ranger if you want a litany of problems with that game, or its magic item system, or Saving Throws, or its wild class imbalances, or the fighter debate, or how proficiency in skills can be easily outstripped by ability bonuses, or its CR problems... people have huge complaints about 5E, and it doesn't really stop people from still enjoying it. I'm one of them. Heck, we're on a forum that's literally doing a playtest to make an advanced version of 5E!I feel like PF2 did look at 5E and rather than imitating it, looked at where it failed. Skills and proficiency are a good example of this: 5e's idea of proficiency was interesting, but not quite there. It's certainly simple, but at the same time it lacks nuance and could lead to problems. For example, you have ability score versus proficiency problem: for certain classes it's not worth it to take certain skills because they will likely be outshone by another party member who might not even have that skill but have a much better ability modifier.My go to examples are any Int skill for a Fighter, and Animal Handling for a Ranger. A fighter taking an Int skill in a party that has, say, a Wizard is just a waste of resources because the Wizard's natural intelligence will likely outstrip the fighter's proficiency , and as time goes on with ASIs they will only catch up at the highest levels. Same with Animal Handling for a Ranger: Charisma is a tertiary ability score for that class, and a Paladin (or any CHA-based class, which there are a lot of in 5E) will likely be naturally better by virtue of it being their primary ability score even if they don't take the skill. Part of this is to allow everyone to do just about anything, but it ends up devaluing choices because there's little reason to put resources into something that you really won't succeed in compared to a place where you will. This thing is frustrating, and one of the things I ended up doing when I made out my "Skill Uses" was to have Trained and Untrained uses. If you were trained in a skill, you were at Advantage on Untrained uses and if you didn't have a skill, you were at Disadvantage on Trained uses. I thought this worked fairly well at making skills worthwhile, but it's still something of a clumsy hack.PF2 nails their system as a great compromise between 5E and 4E: proficiency is based on leveling, but also there are gradations beyond just your level which allows you to differentiate between what people can and can't do. The whole thing is fantastic, and I love how they use that proficiency system beyond just skills and with combat abilities (like the Fighter) and defense (Crusader and Monk). Similarly it's a great way of solving the Saving Throw complaint with 5E: you have advancement in all your saves, but some saves are still better than others. And how skills are doled out is just smarter, too! Instead of giving a class a limited list of skills and depending on background and race to fill out what other ones you might want, in PF2 you GET your important class skill (So Rangers no longer need to debate taking Survival and Nature and just get those for free) and have access to every other skill out there so you are free to build your concept. Suddenly I don't need to build a custom background so I can get the exact skill loadout I need, and instead I can just select a background for the flavor.Like, I could go on about how I feel some design choices were reactions to 5E problems, but I don't want to filibuster any more than I already have at this point. I think asking why PF2 didn't imitate 5E is obvious: there's no point in being an iteration on an incredibly successful formula. If people want that, they'll go with the original. Instead, PF2 found its own voice as an interesting mix of 3.75E, 4E, and 5E. As a guy who has played 5E since the beginning, I wouldn't have been interested in looking at it otherwise.It's not just a tough choice, it's a bad choice. You are basically being given a choice between creating uniqueness in your character or actually advancing your stats in a game that does not give you many options for that. 5E doesn't give you many options to actually make a class/subclass your own: most of your options are fixed once you choose it. So feats stand as a great way to individualize your character beyond what you currently have. However, you are sacrificing one of your few chances to actually advance your stats in a game where you have precious few chances to actually do that, and even with small numbers that can really suck.Like, it's just not good design, and it's largely because they didn't want to have Feats as RAW because... reasons? I dunno. There's so much I really love about Feats conceptually that doesn't work in actuality with 5E. You can see the basic idea and it's a great idea, but the implementation is just unideal, to say the least.</blockquote>

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