All this stuff about "gamers" hating change, how do people square that with the state of boardgames or other table top games? Not only is "cult of the new" a huge factor, games that you only play once or a limited amount of times have been a big hit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1035006I have to admit, in my more uncharitable moments, I do think this.  My apologies.

Pfft.

My social value with whom?  Nobody on this site gives a shit what I play or who I am; the ODD74 board and Ruins of Murkhill are about the same 30 active people; and the GaryCon people I see once a year and in between talk about the next GaryCon.  The couple of dozen people at GaryCon I consider friends don't give a shit what I play, and most of what I do at GaryCon is play old school wargames.

I HAVE no "social value."

Gronan doesn't hate change; he hates people. Big difference.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1034984Heal gains 1 or 2 dice every level, depending on action consumption.

I don't think this is right.  I think it is one die per level if you are using it to hurt undead, or two dice per level if you are trying to heal the living, but the three action version remains a small, non-discriminating blast and doesn't get boosted.

Quote from: happyhermit;1035007Except of course it doesn't apply to the damage option, because reasons. I've come to appreciate scaling cantrips and upcasting spells from 5e and I'm sure they could be done better even. I actually appreciate asymmetrical stuff more than ever these days, so I am almost primed to like this stuff, but when I break down and look at this PF2 material I just ... nope.

5e's a well-designed game. If you look at the early playtest packets, they were significantly more complicated than what was finally published. For example, just about every class got "martial damage dice," "maneuvers," and a "martial damage bonus" that scaled at different rates for different classes, with Fighter getting the most of them. That "martial system" was somebody's baby, and while it lives on in truncated form in a Fighter subclass, I can guarantee you it was somebody's baby, and there were lots of arguments over it. It must have hurt to finally concede that it was too much fiddling, and relegate it to a corner of the game rather than its main martial mechanic.

Good design means throwing out stuff you like for the integrity of the whole. It doesn't seem like Paizo's doing that. There's no apparent rhyme or reason to their design choices; it just seems that whatever the developers think is cool makes it to the final cut if they like it enough. If you look at the blog posts, you see a lot of talk about "opening up the design space" (meaning giving developers more toys) and "cool mechanics," but nothing about problems that anyone solved.  5e's design talk has lots of problem-solving. Market research uncovered that most people who play fighters want the fighter class to be simple. The early iterations of the ghoul TPK'd way too easily. Even when they don't explicitly say so, you can see how most of their design choices were about problem-solving, not "cool mechanics."

Quote from: Manic Modron;1035018I don't think this is right.  I think it is one die per level if you are using it to hurt undead, or two dice per level if you are trying to heal the living, but the three action version remains a small, non-discriminating blast and doesn't get boosted.

One die if you are using it to heal or hurt, unless you are using the 1 or 2 action version to heal. So I think this is how it works

[table=width: 500]
[tr]
   [td]#Actions[/td]
   [td]Healing[/td]
   [td]Hurting[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]1[/td]
   [td]+2d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]2[/td]
   [td]+2d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]3[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

I think. Who the fuck knows.

Quote from: fearsomepirate;1035020One die if you are using it to heal or hurt, unless you are using the 1 or 2 action version to heal. So I think this is how it works

[table=width: 550]
[tr]
   [td]#Actions[/td]
   [td]Healing[/td]
   [td]Hurting[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]1[/td]
   [td]+2d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]2[/td]
   [td]+2d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]3[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
   [td]+1d8[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

I think. Who the fuck knows.

Okay, I get what you are saying.  I think we both had a little of the truth in that, let me try your table code.

[table=width: 650]
[tr]
   [td]  [/td]
   [td]Healing Living[/td]
   [td]Hurting Undead[/td]
        [td]bonus Healing dice [/td]
        [td]bonus Hurting dice [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]Somatic Casting (1 action)[/td]
   [td]1d8+Wis Bonus at Touch range[/td]
   [td]1d8+Wis Bonus by Touch attack, no save[/td]
        [td]+2d8/level [/td]
        [td]+1d8/level [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]Somatic & Verbal Casting (2 actions)[/td]
   [td]1d8+Wis Bonus at 30' range[/td]
   [td]1d8+Wis Bonus at 30' range w/ Fortitude save[/td]
        [td]+2d8/level [/td]
        [td]+1d8/level [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
   [td]Somatic, Verbal, and Material Casting (3 actions)[/td]
   [td]Wis bonus healing to all within 30' AND[/td]
   [td]Wis bonus damage to all within 30' w/ Fort save[/td]
[td]+1d8/level [/td]
[td]+1d8/level [/td]  
[/tr]
[/table]

The table was fun to edit, thanks for doing the leg work on it.

I feel that any good RPG should have you writing tables to figure out how Cure Wounds works.

Quote from: Rhedyn;10349811. Not all systems have their rules available for free. Even if they do, important rules could be behind the paywall or changed later by lazy developers.

Quote from: RandallS;1034993Sorry, but I neither have the time to read or the money to buy (to enable reading) every RPG out there.

Both of these are fine, true statements. But again, no one is forcing or suggesting forcing anyone to do so. It simply means that having strong opinions on these games has less cachet. There is nothing wrong with saying, "Game XYZ? Oh, I haven't looked into it. Not really in the market for another (ex.) fantasy RPG at the moment."

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1035006They don't hate change for the sake of hating change.  They hate change because it's something they're not used to.  Humans are built around comfort, patterns and habits.  Change disrupts this, thus humans in general do not like it, and often, yes fear it.

Generalizing this to all of change and all of humanity makes this both amazingly true and amazingly false. Most humans are both familiarity seeking and innovators. That's why as a species we're the ones that have done so much to completely reshape our environment, yet amazingly predictable at times.  

QuoteGamers are worse, because a lot of us were pushed into a sub-section of 'humanity' that isn't often liked or even tolerated, it's not something we were invited to.  After all, there's a reason unpleasant appellations were leveled at us during High School and often later, terms like Nerd or Geek.  So gamers, especially of my generation had to find something within our new 'culture'/clique/tribe to enjoy, and make our own. RPGs (and gaming in general) was it.

I've been rather critical of the 'gamers/nerds as oppressed class' mentality as it applies to pubescent behavior. I'm even less sure of its' value now that comic book geeks and people into computers have grown up to become the upper 75-90 %-er income bracket, as well as the market to which Hollywood is catering their movies towards. But I guess I will agree that there could be a 'tribal protectionist' factor involved in whether the TTRPG community embraces change or not.

The thing is, I find the evidence one way or the other (on hate/embrace change, specific to TTRPG people) hopelessly mixed. People loved the change to WotC-D&D for a good 2.5-3 years before they started complaining about the balance issues (many of which were relatively obvious from first-look, so it wasn't a big deal until a critical mass of people started complaininng, or what...?), so that's pro-change. People rejected 4e (relatively speaking) in favor of 3rd edition attempt #3 (PF), so pro-status quo. People like 5e, which is a throwback edition if you turn your head and squint hard enough, which is... I really don't even know. Some people are embracing changes in gaming culture like the webcam gaming, others hate it (certainly not just Pundy). Gaming forums in general seem to be contracting as the audience is moving to FB and G+ and other social media. I just think that without some higher level analysis (survey research or the like, solid purchasing data, etc.), we can probably each tell whatever story we like and find evidence to support it.

It could be a decent spell set up to replace the entire Cure X range, but yeah, it really could use tighter language.

I'm not one to force a fellow gamer to read another rpg if they don't want too. Knowing now that some are talking about rpgs without actually reading them makes me wonder to a some extent if their opinion on said rpg can be trusted. At the very least going forward if I ask for a review or just to talk about a rpg a requirement would be that they have read the rpg. I want the best possible complete if possible factual information on a rpg. If it means not getting a response to my inquiry than so be it better no information than so be it better no information than wrong or biased information.

Quote from: Manic Modron;1035041It could be a decent spell set up to replace the entire Cure X range, but yeah, it really could use tighter language.

Which is not Paizo strong point imo.

Quote from: happyhermit;1035010All this stuff about "gamers" hating change, how do people square that with the state of boardgames or other table top games? Not only is "cult of the new" a huge factor, games that you only play once or a limited amount of times have been a big hit.

The people driving the boardgame hobby bus today are very different (and not just in their game tastes) from people who have been playing the same edition of D&D for 15 or 30 years. Boardgaming has its grognards too, the ones who play hex and counter wargames, still think Advanced Civilisation is the best game ever, or have a handful of games or systems they play almost exclusively. The boardgamers into the cult of new are open to experience, and keen to try new mechanics and participate in new trends. I'd wager even their eating habits tend to be more adventurous.

Some gamers welcome new experiences, some don't.

Quote from: sureshot;1035049Which is not Paizo strong point imo.

This is an unfortunate truth.

Quote from: Haffrung;1035067still think Advanced Civilisation is the best game ever

I mean, it is pretty awesome.

Quote from: Manic Modron;1035041It could be a decent spell set up to replace the entire Cure X range, but yeah, it really could use tighter language.

This isn't really an option, because they've boxed themselves into "keeping what makes the Pathfinder RPG special," i.e. 3.x-isms that 5e discarded. Applying the KISS principle is a 5e thing, so they have to do the opposite. Hence their version of the "streamlined" action economy is even more fiddly than the old Standard/Swift/Move -- Full Round system. Hence their condensation of Cure Wounds requires a 3x3 matrix to really understand.