What gets me playing Draw Steel and not Pathfinder 2e?

[Thomas Shey]

Abilites that combo with other players, and not simply buff, is a key feature of Draw Steel. It is a very gamist game that probably plays best with some meta-talk at the table.

Coleville quotes the X-men's Fastball Special and the Avengers where Iron Man lazerbeams off Captain America's sheild as inspriation.

I understand of the fun of a more simulationist game, where everyone is alone on the battlefield, but this isn't that game.

And to bring some of the PF2e discussion back to topic, this is to some extent the way you get the most out of it. This is very pronounced with some classes (the Redeemer subversion of Champion comes to mind) but applies to some degree with almost all of them.

 

[Enrahim]

Abilites that combo with other players, and not simply buff, is a key feature of Draw Steel. It is a very gamist game that probably plays best with some meta-talk at the table.

Coleville quotes the X-men's Fastball Special and the Avengers where Iron Man lazerbeams off Captain America's sheild as inspriation.

I understand of the fun of a more simulationist game, where everyone is alone on the battlefield, but this isn't that game.

I sort of hope this meta-talk becomes less part of the game as the players get more experienced. After all, Iron Man and Captain America doesn't have a 5 minute conversation before blasting. I would think it would be really cool if indeed we get to the sim where the player just calls out "I fire my beam at Cap", letting the other platyer themselves immediately recognise the situation and follow up with "I use my reaction to bounce that off my shield toward the enemy".

Or even better - Cap eats the hit, and shortly after it is reveal that they saw an when better and cooler way to use their reaction, making this play worth it. I think this kind of play might be trough the roof cool.

 

[Staffan]

And you'll note that's a situation that's, shall we say, a little abnormal, right? Having only one character who could hold a line at all is probably a pretty abnormal outlier, and oddly enough, nothing produces degenerate play (in the sense of doing things not typical for a game) like outliers.

We started an Agents of Edgewatch campaign where we had two rogues, one investigator, one wizard, one archer-ranger, and one fighter that was only occasionally present. That's when I realized that if everyone wants to be in the second rank, everyone is actually in the first rank.

This is why I really have trouble taking it seriously when people talk about, essentially, playing PF2e on autopilot being the natural way to play; its not only not intrinsically attractive (most classes have too many situational toys to play with), it quite clearly would have been, well, kind of dumb play in too many situations I was in over the last few years. And that was just with the Fighter, let alone the Champion/Bard or the Gunslinger.

I think it depends a lot on what class we're talking about and what options one has taken. If you have cool things to do that use up two actions (either as a single two-action activity, or as two actions that naturally go together like the Investigator's Devise a Stratagem and Strike) you will naturally want to focus on doing those things, and that gives you a lot less flexibility. In some cases the activity itself has a lot of flexibility (Cast a Spell is commonly two actions, but which spell?), but often you have a "desired turn" and if you don't get to do that you'll feel sidelined.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I sort of hope this meta-talk becomes less part of the game as the players get more experienced. After all, Iron Man and Captain America doesn't have a 5 minute conversation before blasting. I would think it would be really cool if indeed we get to the sim where the player just calls out "I fire my beam at Cap", letting the other platyer themselves immediately recognise the situation and follow up with "I use my reaction to bounce that off my shield toward the enemy".

That would fit my experience with other games where there's a lot of mechanical interplay among characters, but it also matters how frequently new tools in the toolkit become available; the more often then do, the more discussion you need to have about applying them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We started an Agents of Edgewatch campaign where we had two rogues, one investigator, one wizard, one archer-ranger, and one fighter that was only occasionally present. That's when I realized that if everyone wants to be in the second rank, everyone is actually in the first rank.

And honestly, in PF2e, rogues can hold a front rank if they have to (so can an investigator far as that goes); there's not that much variance in AC, and they aren't so low on hit points its not doable. Its just far from optimal.

I think it depends a lot on what class we're talking about and what options one has taken. If you have cool things to do that use up two actions (either as a single two-action activity, or as two actions that naturally go together like the Investigator's Devise a Stratagem and Strike) you will naturally want to focus on doing those things, and that gives you a lot less flexibility. In some cases the activity itself has a lot of flexibility (Cast a Spell is commonly two actions, but which spell?), but often you have a "desired turn" and if you don't get to do that you'll feel sidelined.

I don't think that actually changes my position that there are regularly going to be things to do that aren't Follow Process A that make more sense to do. That was true even with characters where the player had baked a cake about being as good at a particular process as was possible. If they still insist on doing that process even when those come up, that's kind of on them.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Abilites that combo with other players, and not simply buff, is a key feature of Draw Steel. It is a very gamist game that probably plays best with some meta-talk at the table.

Coleville quotes the X-men's Fastball Special and the Avengers where Iron Man lazerbeams off Captain America's sheild as inspriation.

I understand of the fun of a more simulationist game, where everyone is alone on the battlefield, but this isn't that game.

I think the issue that I have with the no-table talk "simulationist" approach is that play just doesn't feel like a simulation at all.

If these were real adventurers going into a dungeon, surely they would have more detailed conversations about each other's capabilities and how they would interact. Except nobody ever does that. That's incredibly boring for most players to sit around and just talk about strategies, especially on a second or third campaign. Actual adventurers risking their real lives would talk about it.

If you're doing that... I mean I guess good for you, but my games resemble basically every actual play where nobody even thinks of doing that.

If the cost of tactics and cooperation is "metagaming" to have a conversation with the players about what the characters should do... I just don't care about that. Especially if the results are a lot of fun.

I've said this elsewhere, but the breakpoint for us for "tabletalk is metagaming" I think was in a campaign where one player got frustrated because he couldn't figure out how to play an Int 25+ character and wanted help. Then the next session a character was Feebleminded, and just had to sit there and not say anything when the adventure stalled... even though what he knew is not exclusive to his character just something only he remembered. Nevermind all the social encounters where everyone silently stares at the Bard while he does whole encounter by himself for 30 to 40 minutes... for the whole campaign.

The character isn't the player and the player isn't the character. It's a game about collaboration and cooperation. So let the players collaborate and cooperate already!

 

[cranberry]

I'm in the process of building a character for Draw Steel, and all I can say, is that it is not a straight forward process.

In fact it's quite frustrating.

Having to jump back and forth between sections to build a character is one of the old school rituals that I'm glad I left behind.

And weeding through paragraph after paragraph of fluff to find the information I need, when I have limit time is not fun.

Give me Pathbuilder any day over this mess of a book.

 

[SteveC]

I've played exactly one session (a demo) for Draw Steel, but it seems like it does what it says it's going to: provide a cinematic tactical experience. To me, that means you can develop a variety of strategies and combo them with your party members.

PF2 is similar, but the combos aren't as obvious. I will be playing a few more sessions of Society games at Gamehole Con, and my Rogue is a fantastic character that I always find things to do. There tend to be classes that people say fall into the "always do the same thing, round after round" trap and I guess I'd suggest trying a different class combo until you find something that's a good fit.

 

[Enrahim]

I'm in the process of building a character for Draw Steel, and all I can say, is that it is not a straight forward process.

In fact it's quite frustrating.

Having to jump back and forth between sections to build a character is one of the old school rituals that I'm glad I left behind.

And weeding through paragraph after paragraph of fluff to find the information I need, when I have limit time is not fun.

Give me Pathbuilder any day over this mess of a book.

You are comparing an app with a book? Did you try forge steel?

 

[Retreater]

You are comparing an app with a book? Did you try forge steel?

In PF2's defense, you can kinda go through the book in order and build a character organically. You pick ancestry and get your heritage feat (listed in that section), stat increases, and traits. Then background and get that stuff. Then your class neatly lists what you get, the optional subclasses, the class feats (organized by level). It's not bad at all.