Pathfinder 2E Taking20 -"I'm Quitting Pathfinder 2e Because of This Issue"

@Justice and Rule You got me to rewatch that part of the video. Something that really stuck out to me is the assumption that grappling the tripped wight would make the ranger prone. That’s not how it works in PF2, 5e, or even 3.5e. In PF1, you have a penalty to Dexterity while grappling and are denied your dexterity bonus while pinning someone, but that’s still not being prone.

It’s just picking more nits (like how the ranger doesn’t Hunt Prey when it melees the wight), but it happened to catch my attention because I’d just finished summarizing Grapple in my PF2 cheat sheet. The only way you can end up prone while trying to Grapple is if you critically fail and the target chooses to have you fall prone (versus grabbing you back instead).

There's just a bunch of weird naughty word he's doing there. Like a PF2 Ranger that has 10 Strength? This is the sort of thing that people who play 5E would just gloss over, but to a PF2 person it's like "What?" Allow me to explain for the benefit of others who don't know PF2:

In PF2, the way you build characters is that you basically get a bunch of "Boosts" to your stats as you go along in character creation, with a boost being a +2 bonus to that characteristic. You typically get at least 9-10 boosts, which are spread over four parts of character creation: Race (2-3, though if you get 3 typically you have a "flaw" which gives you a -2 in one stat), Background (2), Class (1), and Free Boosts (4). You can't put multiple boosts into one stat during any single part of character creation, which means that you have to focus on not spreading out the love. And at level 4 (Correction: Level 5), you get 4 more boosts (again, with the restriction you can't stack them on a stat). I would say it's actively difficult to avoid putting at least one boost into Strength, and kind of absurd given that if you want to do any sort of melee combat at all it's an incredibly valuable stat. Like you want to see the stats of the Paizo-made Iconic Ranger at 5th level?

Stats.png


I would note that he's a Dwarf (hence the Charisma penalty), but Harsk's stats would look insane for a 5th level 5E character: he's stat'd incredibly broadly with two 18s and two 16s, and one stat below 10. Compared this to the 5E ranger pre-gen (Which isn't a human, so it's not a direct comparison to what Cody would have used, but whatever):

Stats 2.png


As you can see, it's quite a bit different (also have to laugh at the Ranger also having a -1 in Charisma. Seems like everyone thinks Rangers are surly...). And remember, this is an Wood Elf Ranger, so they'd have to spend a boost to get a Feat at 4th. But obviously Cody's idea of a Ranger having 10 Strength makes sense for the 5E Ranger, while it comes off like nonsense when you look at the PF2 Ranger. It's just not how characters are built, but if you are only familiar with 5E and make assumptions built on that, you'd never know why that comes off as weird.

And that's how a lot of this is: he puts no skills down for the PF2 Ranger nor looks at any sort of ancestry, despite using one for the 5E Ranger (Variant Human, because otherwise you wouldn't have access to a Feat without sacrificing a skill boost). And that's where much of the game is: in PF2, you can actually use skills in combat in a way that you really can't in 5E. You can Demoralize with the Intimidate skill to temporarily frighten them (and basically give a universal -1 debuff to everything, including AC), pick up the Bon Mot skill feat and use Diplomacy to hurl witty insults to lower their Will Save and Perception (and if they want to end that, they have to end anything they are concentrating on!) like you're Guybrush Threepwood, or use Deception to Feint and make them flatfooted (a -2 modifier to AC) to your next attack which increases your critical range because crits a DC by 10+. Like, those are all valid things... and we have no clue what that Ranger can do, other than him probably being pretty damn good at them given that he's given nothing to Strength. Hell, Battle Medicine would be something that he could use to keep the fighter fighting.

What's more, there are skill feats like Assurance that allow you to be able to do things competently without having to roll at all: you add your proficiency to 10 and take that automatically, no circumstance bonuses, ability bonuses, or penalties. So with Strength 10 but being just Trained in Athletics (a +2 skill bonus, the lowest level of skill training) at 5th level and using Assurance means you automatically roll a 17 for Trip, Shove, and Grapple. With these wights, they only have a Reflex DC of 16, so even Cody's bad Ranger can Trip them all day, and since it ignores penalties for multiple attacks you could maximize your actions to Stride, Quick Draw (Draw weapon and Attack) and then auto-Trip to maximize everything there.

Not only that, but the level of these creatures is not the same: both are CR3 for their system, but those dudes are not the same sort of threat for the PF2 guys as they are for the 5E characters. A wight in PF2 has 50 HP and one in 5E has 45 HP; these are superficially close, but there are huge differences that need to be recognized. For starters, the 5E wight has resistance to all non-silvered attacks, which means their HP is effectively doubled unless you have some specialized equipment (notable in that the 5E elf builds for Fighter and Ranger do have silvered weapons, but the human fighter does not). The other half is relative hit points: the 5E human fighter and elf ranger have 44 and 39 HP, respectively. Valeros and Harsk? 78 and 75 HP. The PF2 characters have way more hit points, which changes the nature of the fight: they can outlast the wights fairly easily, while in 5E you're going to need to maximize way more because the wights have effectively way more hit points if you don't have anything magical...

... Which leads into equipment. Cody gets another thing wrong in choosing a longbow without remembering it has the "Volley" trait, which means it's at a -1 at close ranges (Correction: -2), which is going to lower the numbers a bit. That might seem fiddly, but that's part of the design differences in 5E versus PF2: 5E was deliberate in largely keeping weapons mostly homogenized so that it didn't matter what weapon you took, you could largely use it on everything. PF2 is much more having the right tools for the job, where having different weapons gives you different build advantages. Again, there are more rules differences that, if you don't know PF2, are easy to gloss over: for example, Cody needs to make the Ranger Strength 10 because Ranged weapons don't add the character's Dexterity bonus and thus output less damage than melee. Same with Finesse, where it can be used to hit, but not for damage, meaning that you really need at least a little Strength to get good return on melee (which is not terribly hard given the amount of stat boosts you get to build your character). But a dude like Harsk with a +4 Strength and a d12 Dwarven Axe will possibly get more in 1 hit than a ranged Ranger in two, depending on their weapon choice.

Further, there are differences in assumptions on magical weapons as well: the PF2 Iconics at least a set of decent magical weapons on them for their level, while the 5E characters don't. They aren't amazing, but runes of striking (which give extra damage dice to weapons) are important and the increased damage output are huge, especially in this sort of scenario. 5E... doesn't have that. It's built without it and it's not really built with the same ideas in mind that makes something like striking runes a good idea. But it also makes this scenario very difficult to properly play out and make observations on: the wights are going to get melted by the PF2 Iconics, while the 5E characters are in for an incredibly deadly fight, which would probably necessitate the most optimized of tactics and ruthlessly punish that stupid shove/grapple combo because they desperately need to outrun the DPS train in that scenario.

... Man, finally got a bunch of that out there. Real Festivus moment. :LOL:

Again, I'd be fine if he said "There's a lot of complexity here, and my players just don't engage with it in a way that makes the game better." But instead he's trying to do all this ILLUSION OF CHOICE stuff to hide it, and when you break things down it starts to come off as wildly dishonest if he actually does know the rules, and irresponsible if he doesn't.

Battle mats don't cover 600 ft. Modules rarely use that scale, especially when the companies sell tiles, flip mats, etc. If you're playing a standard adventure on a tactical grid, you're likely in a 30-40 ft room in a dungeon. And it's probably a square or rectangle. Unless you get freaky and it's a circle or an easily drawn polygon. This is the industry standard of design for the RPG business, and it has been for 40 years.
If you're outside you might be on a road on an ambush or in a forest with a handful of trees.
People who suggest they regularly use multi-levelled battlefields with complex terrain, hazardous zones, and rich tactical depth are either being disingenuous or are exceptions to every game I've played in, published adventure I've read, and printed battle map I've seen.
Cody's setup was fine. It was a little simple for demonstration purposes, but if we're all honest, it's a standard sample fight in any d20 system. And for most players most of the time, it's accurate.
If people want to get on here and pretend every battle in their game is like the opening of Bayonetta, I find it hard to believe.

For a whitebox, the setup itself (ignoring other factors) isn't bad. You can certainly do more with VTTs, where I've set up absolutely huge maps before for dungeon crawls, but the setup itself isn't all that problematic. The problem is just not understanding the mechanics and instead running things based on assumptions in one system without recognizing how they are not the same in the other.
 
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Retreater

Legend
So you guys are telling me that you regularly use encounter distances of 100+ feet in dungeons, through winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc?
If nothing else, your limit is 60 ft with darkvision while in a large, unlit room.
I'm aware encounters can be overland, outside on a clear day with miles of visibility. I'm aware that dungeons can have massive rooms of 300+ feet with their own illumination. But if we're honest, none of those examples are assumed to be the norm by the encounter design of published adventures by WotC, Paizo, or even TSR back in the day.
If you're running a game like that, you are definitely going against the design philosophy of the system. Standard encounters are probably on a maximum 50 x 50 ft area. They are probably in a dungeon or other closed adventure site.
Having run the first two books of Age of Ashes (like Cody did), I can say that they use fairly small encounter areas (except for an encampment in the second book, which isn't intended so much as a single encounter area but several zones).
 

Starfox

Adventurer
I always find this opinion to be puzzling, since it implies that roleplaying can only be done outside the rules, rather than actually engage with the rules created.
My point is the exact opposite: the part of a game emphasized in the rules is the part likely to be used most. And PF2 and 4E both focus on the boardgame elements. Thus play in these games tend to focus on the battlemap and combat abilities. The mechanics of non-combat events in 4E/PF2 seem to be made to gloss over such events using simplistic mechanics like the skill challenge, that encourages roll-play over role-play to save time and allow more time to be spent on the focus of the game, combat.
 


My point is the exact opposite: the part of a game emphasized in the rules is the part likely to be used most. And PF2 and 4E both focus on the boardgame elements. Thus play in these games tend to focus on the battlemap and combat abilities. The mechanics of non-combat events in 4E/PF2 seem to be made to gloss over such events using simplistic mechanics like the skill challenge, that encourages roll-play over role-play to save time and allow more time to be spent on the focus of the game, combat.

And PF1 wasn't? Like, if you were talking other systems maybe I'd agree because most d20 systems are focused on combat, but trying to say that PF1 was somehow more roleplaying-oriented ruleswise... I just don't see that reflected in the rules.
 

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
So you guys are telling me that you regularly use encounter distances of 100+ feet in dungeons, through winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc?
If nothing else, your limit is 60 ft with darkvision while in a large, unlit room.
I'm aware encounters can be overland, outside on a clear day with miles of visibility. I'm aware that dungeons can have massive rooms of 300+ feet with their own illumination. But if we're honest, none of those examples are assumed to be the norm by the encounter design of published adventures by WotC, Paizo, or even TSR back in the day.
If you're running a game like that, you are definitely going against the design philosophy of the system. Standard encounters are probably on a maximum 50 x 50 ft area. They are probably in a dungeon or other closed adventure site.
Having run the first two books of Age of Ashes (like Cody did), I can say that they use fairly small encounter areas (except for an encampment in the second book, which isn't intended so much as a single encounter area but several zones).
I regularly run encounters at ranges of more than twenty of thirty... or... as your post mentions ranges like sixty & sometimes more. Not every campaign takes place in a dungeon &making ranged weapons have absurd ranges on the assumption they dungeon crawl only campaign requirements will wall off problems that result. Even in the example itself the ranger wasn't far from a door he could have walked towards done a free object interaction to open and taken a step or two back. The 5e illusion of choice is that the ranger could reasonably do anything but move away and maybe hunters mark then do fly the full attack chain because the ranges are insanely overly generous among other design signs like having all damage beyond zero just go away. It only looks otherwise in his example because he's trying to show how doing the pf2 options would work out in 5e
 

kenada

Legend
Supporter
My point is the exact opposite: the part of a game emphasized in the rules is the part likely to be used most. And PF2 and 4E both focus on the boardgame elements. Thus play in these games tend to focus on the battlemap and combat abilities. The mechanics of non-combat events in 4E/PF2 seem to be made to gloss over such events using simplistic mechanics like the skill challenge, that encourages roll-play over role-play to save time and allow more time to be spent on the focus of the game, combat.
Exploration mode in Pathfinder 2e harkens back to old-school exploration procedures. It’s not without its warts, but it’s certainly more robust than what 4e (or even 5e) offer. If a GM isn’t taking advantage of what the system offers, then that’s on the GM. I’d suggest checking out the exploration mode discussion to see some of the cool stuff that @!DWolf is doing with it.

Out of the box, PF2 doesn’t provide anything analogous to skill challenges. The VP subsystem in the GMG is similar, but it’s closer to progress clocks than 4e-style skill challenges. I’ve only used the influence subsystem (built on the VP subsystem), but it flowed very differently compared to the times I’ve run skill challenges in 4e. Essentially, the PCs played through the scene like normal, and I had a structure to help me determine how things were going.
 

Yardiff

Adventurer
There's just a bunch of weird naughty word he's doing there. Like a PF2 Ranger that has 10 Strength? This is the sort of thing that people who play 5E would just gloss over, but to a PF2 person it's like "What?" Allow me to explain for the benefit of others who don't know PF2:

In PF2, the way you build characters is that you basically get a bunch of "Boosts" to your stats as you go along in character creation, with a boost being a +2 bonus to that characteristic. You typically get at least 9-10 boosts, which are spread over four parts of character creation: Race (2-3, though if you get 3 typically you have a "flaw" which gives you a -2 in one stat), Background (2), Class (1), and Free Boosts (4). You can't put multiple boosts into one stat during any single part of character creation, which means that you have to focus on not spreading out the love. And at level 4, you get 4 more boosts (again, with the restriction you can't stack them on a stat). I would say it's actively difficult to avoid putting at least one boost into Strength, and kind of absurd given that if you want to do any sort of melee combat at all it's an incredibly valuable stat. Like you want to see the stats of the Paizo-made Iconic Ranger at 5th level?

View attachment 130703

I would note that he's a Dwarf (hence the Charisma penalty), but Harsk's stats would look insane for a 5th level 5E character: he's stat'd incredibly broadly with two 18s and two 16s, and one stat below 10. Compared this to the 5E ranger pre-gen (Which isn't a human, so it's not a direct comparison to what Cody would have used, but whatever):

View attachment 130705

As you can see, it's quite a bit different (also have to laugh at the Ranger also having a -1 in Charisma. Seems like everyone thinks Rangers are surly...). And remember, this is an Wood Elf Ranger, so they'd have to spend a boost to get a Feat at 4th. But obviously Cody's idea of a Ranger having 10 Strength makes sense for the 5E Ranger, while it comes off like nonsense when you look at the PF2 Ranger. It's just not how characters are built, but if you are only familiar with 5E and make assumptions built on that, you'd never know why that comes off as weird.

And that's how a lot of this is: he puts no skills down for the PF2 Ranger nor looks at any sort of ancestry, despite using one for the 5E Ranger (Variant Human, because otherwise you wouldn't have access to a Feat without sacrificing a skill boost). And that's where much of the game is: in PF2, you can actually use skills in combat in a way that you really can't in 5E. You can Demoralize with the Intimidate skill to temporarily frighten them (and basically give a universal -1 debuff to everything, including AC), pick up the Bon Mot skill feat and use Diplomacy to hurl witty insults to lower their Will Save and Perception (and if they want to end that, they have to end anything they are concentrating on!) like you're Guybrush Threepwood, or use Deception to Feint and make them flatfooted (a -2 modifier to AC) to your next attack which increases your critical range because crits a DC by 10+. Like, those are all valid things... and we have no clue what that Ranger can do, other than him probably being pretty damn good at them given that he's given nothing to Strength. Hell, Battle Medicine would be something that he could use to keep the fighter fighting.

What's more, there are skill feats like Assurance that allow you to be able to do things competently without having to roll at all: you add your proficiency to 10 and take that automatically, no circumstance bonuses, ability bonuses, or penalties. So with Strength 10 but being just Trained in Athletics (a +2 skill bonus, the lowest level of skill training) at 5th level and using Assurance means you automatically roll a 17 for Trip, Shove, and Grapple. With these wights, they only have a Reflex DC of 16, so even Cody's bad Ranger can Trip them all day, and since it ignores penalties for multiple attacks you could maximize your actions to Stride, Quick Draw (Draw weapon and Attack) and then auto-Trip to maximize everything there.

Not only that, but the level of these creatures is not the same: both are CR3 for their system, but those dudes are not the same sort of threat for the PF2 guys as they are for the 5E characters. A wight in PF2 has 50 HP and one in 5E has 45 HP; these are superficially close, but there are huge differences that need to be recognized. For starters, the 5E wight has resistance to all non-silvered attacks, which means their HP is effectively doubled unless you have some specialized equipment (notable in that the 5E elf builds for Fighter and Ranger do have silvered weapons, but the human fighter does not). The other half is relative hit points: the 5E human fighter and elf ranger have 44 and 39 HP, respectively. Valeros and Harsk? 78 and 75 HP. The PF2 characters have way more hit points, which changes the nature of the fight: they can outlast the wights fairly easily, while in 5E you're going to need to maximize way more because the wights have effectively way more hit points if you don't have anything magical...

... Which leads into equipment. Cody gets another thing wrong in choosing a longbow without remembering it has the "Volley" trait, which means it's at a -1 at close ranges, which is going to lower the numbers a bit. That might seem fiddly, but that's part of the design differences in 5E versus PF2: 5E was deliberate in largely keeping weapons mostly homogenized so that it didn't matter what weapon you took, you could largely use it on everything. PF2 is much more having the right tools for the job, where having different weapons gives you different build advantages. Again, there are more rules differences that, if you don't know PF2, are easy to gloss over: for example, Cody needs to make the Ranger Strength 10 because Ranged weapons don't add the character's Dexterity bonus and thus output less damage than melee. Same with Finesse, where it can be used to hit, but not for damage, meaning that you really need at least a little Strength to get good return on melee (which is not terribly hard given the amount of stat boosts you get to build your character). But a dude like Harsk with a +4 Strength and a d12 Dwarven Axe will possibly get more in 1 hit than a ranged Ranger in two, depending on their weapon choice.

Further, there are differences in assumptions on magical weapons as well: the PF2 Iconics at least a set of decent magical weapons on them for their level, while the 5E characters don't. They aren't amazing, but runes of striking (which give extra damage dice to weapons) are important and the increased damage output are huge, especially in this sort of scenario. 5E... doesn't have that. It's built without it and it's not really built with the same ideas in mind that makes something like striking runes a good idea. But it also makes this scenario very difficult to properly play out and make observations on: the wights are going to get melted by the PF2 Iconics, while the 5E characters are in for an incredibly deadly fight, which would probably necessitate the most optimized of tactics and ruthlessly punish that stupid shove/grapple combo because they desperately need to outrun the DPS train in that scenario.

... Man, finally got a bunch of that out there. Real Festivus moment. :LOL:

Again, I'd be fine if he said "There's a lot of complexity here, and my players just don't engage with it in a way that makes the game better." But instead he's trying to do all this ILLUSION OF CHOICE stuff to hide it, and when you break things down it starts to come off as wildly dishonest if he actually does know the rules, and irresponsible if he doesn't.



For a whitebox, the setup itself (ignoring other factors) isn't bad. You can certainly do more with VTTs, where I've set up absolutely huge maps before for dungeon crawls, but the setup itself isn't all that problematic. The problem is just not understanding the mechanics and instead running things based on assumptions in one system without recognizing how they are not the same in the other.
Couple minor corrections that really dont matter that much to what you said, which was a very good example. PF2e stats boosts are at 5th lv and Volley Trait is -2.
 


The-Magic-Sword

Small Ball Archmage
So you guys are telling me that you regularly use encounter distances of 100+ feet in dungeons, through winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc?
If nothing else, your limit is 60 ft with darkvision while in a large, unlit room.
I'm aware encounters can be overland, outside on a clear day with miles of visibility. I'm aware that dungeons can have massive rooms of 300+ feet with their own illumination. But if we're honest, none of those examples are assumed to be the norm by the encounter design of published adventures by WotC, Paizo, or even TSR back in the day.
If you're running a game like that, you are definitely going against the design philosophy of the system. Standard encounters are probably on a maximum 50 x 50 ft area. They are probably in a dungeon or other closed adventure site.
Having run the first two books of Age of Ashes (like Cody did), I can say that they use fairly small encounter areas (except for an encampment in the second book, which isn't intended so much as a single encounter area but several zones).
Here's a sample of some maps I used in the last leg of my recent campaign, over the course of 2 levels, and from summer to the end of the campaign in November (I forget the date of our last level skip.)

67 Squares means it has a length of 335 feet, they fought a bunch of Gashadokuro and a Graveknight here at the gates of the familial castle of one character.

52 Squares means it has a length of 260 feet, they fought 3 adult dragons, followed by an ancient shadow dragon here.

48 squares means it has a length of 240 feet, this was the map for my final boss, a powerful Ravener, and her Graveknight minions.

40 squares means it has a width of 200 feet, and 30 squares means it has a length of 120 feet, this is where they encountered the Black Dragons they cut a deal with, but it was prepped for if things go south.

That isn't even all my examples, since my home-made maps aren't available to me at my desk at work, whereas the ones I saved from reddit to use are. I have smaller maps too that fit more into what you're thinking of, but the point is, its not exactly uncommon in my campaign to end up with these massive sight lines.
 

Yardiff

Adventurer
This is my potential 5th lv PF2e Ranger. We're using the GMG option for free archetypes.
Human Heritage: Half-Elf, Elf Atavism (cavern elf grants Dark Vision)
Stats at 5th lv 18, 18, 16, 10, 14, 10.
Hunters Edge: Flurry
1st lv:
Class Feat: Hunted Shot
Skill: Medicine
2nd lv:
Class Feat: Twin Takedown
Free Archetype: Archer Dedication
Skill Feat: Battle Medicine
3rd lv:
General Feat: Godless Healing
4th lv:
Skill Feat: Hefty Hauler
Free Archetype: Point Blank Shot (removes Valley penalty if no valley trait get +2 damage at 30' or less.
Class Feat: Gravity Weapon
5th lv:
Ancestry Feat: Nimble Elf

Composite Long Bow: Damage3-10
Composite Short Bow: Damage 3-8, at 30' or less damage increases to 5-10

A little more info, at 5th lv Rangers upgrade to expert in simple and martial weapons. Archer Archetype grants weapon specialization bows.
With that on critical hit the target can be pinned to a surface and need to take spend an action (DC 10 Athletics) to become unpinned.
Hatchet: damage 5-10
Light Hammer: damage 5-10
 
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tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Here's a sample of some maps I used in the last leg of my recent campaign, over the course of 2 levels, and from summer to the end of the campaign in November (I forget the date of our last level skip.)

67 Squares means it has a length of 335 feet, they fought a bunch of Gashadokuro and a Graveknight here at the gates of the familial castle of one character.

52 Squares means it has a length of 260 feet, they fought 3 adult dragons, followed by an ancient shadow dragon here.

48 squares means it has a length of 240 feet, this was the map for my final boss, a powerful Ravener, and her Graveknight minions.

40 squares means it has a width of 200 feet, and 30 squares means it has a length of 120 feet, this is where they encountered the Black Dragons they cut a deal with, but it was prepped for if things go south.

That isn't even all my examples, since my home-made maps aren't available to me at my desk at work, whereas the ones I saved from reddit to use are. I have smaller maps too that fit more into what you're thinking of, but the point is, its not exactly uncommon in my campaign to end up with these massive sight lines.
"conveniently" for 5e all it takes is one player to notice that sharpshooter allows 600ft longbow\320ft shorbow\320ft light xbow\400ft heavy xbow shooting without disadvantage and ignores half/three quarters cover to make sure nearly all of the ranged weapons can hit any point on those maps from anywhere not completely blocked. I guess it's our own fault for engaging in badwrongfun instead of strictly limiting our campaigns to consist only of the goodrightfun of "winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc" that @Retreater noted we should do.
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Of course at that point it's only a matter of time before a second player says "I want to approach from the other side" & you are immediately confronted by your huge maps needing to be 2-3x larger.
 

I guess it's our own fault for engaging in badwrongfun instead of strictly limiting our campaigns to consist only of the goodrightfun of "winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc" that @Retreater noted we should do.

Hey now, I don't think @Retreater is all that off-base with a lot of people's experiences, because while I know I've used large spaces before, I also have played games that simply don't: in particular, some people really focus on the dungeon part of D&D, and that carries into the fantasy genre. Some people don't have the time make or simple the space to support large maps in their gaming areas, and some people just don't do long-distance engagements.

Like, I have, but I also understand that I also game with wargamers, thus I've bought a lot of miniatures (because if we're playing something, the first question is "Why aren't we using miniatures?") and I have access to large tables and a lot of terrain. And when I don't, I bought an incredibly large wet-erase map to draw out dungeons. So in my circumstances I have players who are more inclined to do things outside of dungeons compared to others who might not be interested in that stuff. More recently, I've started do some big maps in VTTs as well, largely because the canvas is huge and I have access to a lot of cool stuff in that regard (and why wouldn't I use what I got?).

So I think it's wrong to characterize @Retreater as trying to "one true way" anything here, but just describe what a lot of players see in their own games. And I think that's understandable. :)
 

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
Hey now, I don't think @Retreater is all that off-base with a lot of people's experiences, because while I know I've used large spaces before, I also have played games that simply don't: in particular, some people really focus on the dungeon part of D&D, and that carries into the fantasy genre. Some people don't have the time make or simple the space to support large maps in their gaming areas, and some people just don't do long-distance engagements.

Like, I have, but I also understand that I also game with wargamers, thus I've bought a lot of miniatures (because if we're playing something, the first question is "Why aren't we using miniatures?") and I have access to large tables and a lot of terrain. And when I don't, I bought an incredibly large wet-erase map to draw out dungeons. So in my circumstances I have players who are more inclined to do things outside of dungeons compared to others who might not be interested in that stuff. More recently, I've started do some big maps in VTTs as well, largely because the canvas is huge and I have access to a lot of cool stuff in that regard (and why wouldn't I use what I got?).

So I think it's wrong to characterize @Retreater as trying to "one true way" anything here, but just describe what a lot of players see in their own games. And I think that's understandable. :)
more how wotc wrote the rules themselves than retreater, he just helpfully happened to point at the one true way 5e is written to ensure. Even without large open spaces you only need to do the unthinkable & move the action inside the buildings of a town/city or castle (even ones with big but believable rooms) & it goes back to the illusion of choice for something other then move away & shoot for a character like that ranger. Even wotc's own castles & such for 5e alone are conspicuously rather absent of winding corridors just as nearly every building build for human(oid)s to live & work in. Closed doors aren't an issue for the character waiting in the rear for someone like the fighter/rogue to open & backing through them doesn't require an action or provoke an AoO to open them just like many other things that once took to actions and provoked an AoO
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With nearly every race in 5e having darkvision & lighting being easy enough to handle that limited illumination is of limited value I made it a point to play up the limited illumination at one point in 5e & it worked until the players realized that arrows are an object no larger than ten feet in any direction suitable for giving the light cantrip a 150/600 foot reach if they didn't want to just spend a few coins & put continual flame on everyone's weapon/decorative bracelet/etc... Playing up poor lighting in 5e doesn't work like in past editions because light is almost irrelivnt to everyone with the ubiquity of darkvision60' & there are so many ways to trivially nullify it that doing so might as well be describing an obvious trap to players & expecting them to not react accordingly even if it's just dark.
 


Retreater

Legend
I guess it's our own fault for engaging in badwrongfun instead of strictly limiting our campaigns to consist only of the goodrightfun of "winding corridors, closed doors, limited illumination, etc" that @Retreater noted we should do.
I'm not saying anything about badwrongfun. I'm saying if you look at practically any published RPG content from the past four decades, it's mostly dungeon focused adventures. That's simply the default assumption of the designers and writers for combat encounters. Breaking out of that assumption is great, but it's not the default example of how the game is played - which is what Cody was demonstrating in his examples.
Don't believe me? Look at D&D adventures. How many large open areas are in Curse of Strahd, for example? Even the ones I can think of have descriptions of thick fog, elevation changes, etc, that will greatly limit how far characters can see. Or look at every AP produced for PF2.
 

tetrasodium

Legend
Supporter
I'm not saying anything about badwrongfun. I'm saying if you look at practically any published RPG content from the past four decades, it's mostly dungeon focused adventures. That's simply the default assumption of the designers and writers for combat encounters. Breaking out of that assumption is great, but it's not the default example of how the game is played - which is what Cody was demonstrating in his examples.
Don't believe me? Look at D&D adventures. How many large open areas are in Curse of Strahd, for example? Even the ones I can think of have descriptions of thick fog, elevation changes, etc, that will greatly limit how far characters can see. Or look at every AP produced for PF2.
The videos talk about the system forcing one choice and giving the "illusion of choice" & I already said that it wasn' you saying badwrongfun so much as pointing to the boundaries of goodrightfun the system defines to put everything else in the badwrongfun bucket that the system pretends you are just as free to do as the narrow scope of goodrightfun even though that badwrongfun is heavily discouraged with layers of rules/powers deigned to thwart it or a complete void of realistically viable components needed to do that... sure you can do it some other way, buuut.... the videos go into it nicely. Take those winding corridors you mentioned, not only are they out of place in nearly any manmade structure but they also tend to be lacking in places like castles even if you limit your scope to just 5e stuff. Even if you say for the sake of argument that winding corridors or some analog are common it makes the decision to present 150/600 ft longbows with a feat that makes them 600ftlongbows that ignore half & three quarters cover all the more mindboggling simply because the assumption at that point is that such a situation should almost never happen but now the monsters involved are sure to be thwarted by the system itself if someone does take that illusory path without contrivances like lots of total cover or excessive use of things like the darkness spell that only truesight & devils sight can see in.
 

Henry

Autoexreginated
I watched the video, and agree with some of his points, but for me the illusion of choice wasn't with the combat or encounters -- those seemed to work relatively fine - but for me the illusion was with the feats and magic items. I honestly did not feel any stake between one feat and another -- they all felt pretty uninspiring, much like feats from 4E D&D, where you gain a +1 to something if under full moonlight on a Tuesday. (I'm exaggerating, yes, but the conditionals did not feel like they offered a whole lot to me.). Same thing with the Magic items - until you got to levels 7 to 10 or higher, the magic items, from consumables on down, did not feel very important.

I did play PF2 all the way through the playtesting and on into the initial release for about 4 or 5 sessions, but eventually we let it go because there just wasn't a lot of desire to keep it going -- we were pretty deep into D&D 5e at the time, and it offered the D&D feel without the extra math. I don't think the system is bad, but it was missing a lot of the feel and flavor of PF1 for me. I may eventually give it a try again as my "Crunch >>> Flavor >>> Crunch" cycle circles back to Crunch again eventually.
 

I watched the video, and agree with some of his points, but for me the illusion of choice wasn't with the combat or encounters -- those seemed to work relatively fine - but for me the illusion was with the feats and magic items. I honestly did not feel any stake between one feat and another -- they all felt pretty uninspiring, much like feats from 4E D&D, where you gain a +1 to something if under full moonlight on a Tuesday. (I'm exaggerating, yes, but the conditionals did not feel like they offered a whole lot to me.). Same thing with the Magic items - until you got to levels 7 to 10 or higher, the magic items, from consumables on down, did not feel very important.

I did play PF2 all the way through the playtesting and on into the initial release for about 4 or 5 sessions, but eventually we let it go because there just wasn't a lot of desire to keep it going -- we were pretty deep into D&D 5e at the time, and it offered the D&D feel without the extra math. I don't think the system is bad, but it was missing a lot of the feel and flavor of PF1 for me. I may eventually give it a try again as my "Crunch >>> Flavor >>> Crunch" cycle circles back to Crunch again eventually.

I feel like after you get tired of 5E, you'll probably have a better time coming back to this, especially since I think the new system is closer to 5E than 3.X in overall design. When I was looking at this system, I was in the process of basically homebrewing all the stuff that I found in this system, from doing a magically Ranger, a maneuver focused Fighter, to doing weapons with more distinct traits.
 

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