Paizo maintained 3.x longer than WotC did.

The munchkin powergaming was a byproduct of the rules options that were added. Most of these options were added to flesh out Golarion and make different parts of the world distinct, but some players treated them as a grab-bag of goodies for min-max character builds. Some adventure designers treated those character options this way as well.

PF2 probably does a pretty good job of addressing a lot of the rules bloat that appeared in PF1. Most of the character options from PF1 were mechanically weak and never got used, and PF2 does split up feats and forces players to choose from specific buckets. The downside is this creates more things to keep track of, and also it scares off newer players because the character sheet is four pages.

PF2 reminds me an awful lot of D&D4, complete with the space opera game system in the middle to benchmark certain aspects of the system. Starfinder is like a half step between PF1 and PF2, just like Saga Edition Star Wars was a midpoint between 3E and 4E. From what I've read and played, Paizo did a better job of making PF2 feel like a "new edition" of its predecessor (and therefore 3.x as a whole) rather than how D&D4E seemed to be a completely different game.

Reviews I've read about PF2 are less complimentary, and it seems overly impressed with its own mathematical balance. It's way too easy for PCs to fall off the balance curve.

By the mid-2010s Pathfinder was a daunting prospect for a brand new player. I don't see that their 2nd edition has improved matters. The best thing Pathfinder could have done was not much different than what they actually did do, which was license Pathfinder out to Pinnacle. The Savage Worlds system has much a wider tolerance range, which allows players to pick things that look cool rather than agonizing over how to get the most +1 bonuses. This is a lot more conducive to bringing in new players. Simply put, it's hard to make a Savage Worlds character that is bad. The wider tolerance range also blunts attempts to create munchkin characters. Pathfinder desperately needs both of those things.

Do you think PF2e actually needs 25 different character classes?   From just a glance, that feels bloated to me at first glance but admittedly I haven't actually played it.

Quote from: RNGm on May 01, 2025, 05:01:53 PMDo you think PF2e actually needs 25 different character classes?   From just a glance, that feels bloated to me at first glance but admittedly I haven't actually played it.

Need? I would say no. But a glance through various fan forums (e.g., Reddit) shows a vocal set of people who can't be bothered to just flavor a few class types to meet their need - they need it proscribed in the rules. So Paizo caters to them.

Probably the best thing that they did was make a Savage Worlds version of their game that can be blended with the generic Fantasy Companion for SW. The groups I am in may be eclectic or weird, but they all would rather try Savage Worlds as something new over D&D, which Pathfinder is obviously close too.

Quote from: Shteve on May 01, 2025, 05:48:29 PMNeed? I would say no. But a glance through various fan forums (e.g., Reddit) shows a vocal set of people who can't be bothered to just flavor a few class types to meet their need - they need it proscribed in the rules. So Paizo caters to them.

Definitely.   While I haven't played pf2e (though I did play OG pf when it came out), I did play Starfinder for a while and the crowd there is likely similar with alot of crossover.  They like what they like and that usually involves some sort of purple furry creature whether as a pet or the character itself in alot of cases.   To each their own!  SF1e wasn't around as long but had some class spam as well hence my question in seeing that PF2e was at least 50% greater in that regard.     

You've got a wide variety of games that you're playing according to your sig from 5e to PF2e to Dragonbane.   Any particular favorite mechanically?

Quote from: bat on May 01, 2025, 06:53:58 PMProbably the best thing that they did was make a Savage Worlds version of their game that can be blended with the generic Fantasy Companion for SW. The groups I am in may be eclectic or weird, but they all would rather try Savage Worlds as something new over D&D, which Pathfinder is obviously close too.

That was a smart move on their part.   If I were more interested in the core SW mechanics then I'd consider playing it beyond the two online games that I have.

Quote from: RNGm on May 01, 2025, 08:03:02 PMYou've got a wide variety of games that you're playing according to your sig from 5e to PF2e to Dragonbane.   Any particular favorite mechanically?

I had a lot of fun with Dragonbane - it was easy to pick up but had some interesting approaches I hadn't tried before. Hoping to GM a couple one-shot sessions at a local NerdFest this summer.

Quote from: Shteve on May 01, 2025, 05:48:29 PM

Quote from: RNGm on May 01, 2025, 05:01:53 PMDo you think PF2e actually needs 25 different character classes?  From just a glance, that feels bloated to me at first glance but admittedly I haven't actually played it.

Need? I would say no. But a glance through various fan forums (e.g., Reddit) shows a vocal set of people who can't be bothered to just flavor a few class types to meet their need - they need it proscribed in the rules. So Paizo caters to them.

I played about as much PF2E as I did D&D4E. That is to say a few sessions shortly after release. I haven't followed it very closely since.

As for the question of needing character classes, maybe it does. I sincerely mean that, in all of its ambiguity.

The 12 in the core rulebook are probably more than the game actually "needs" and I'm sure you can just make due with the same four you always had. Frankly, you don't even need separate cleric and wizard classes because the sorcerer can be an arcane or divine spellcaster depending on their bloodline. With the skill system in place, you could come up with a way to roll the rogue into the fighter.

There is something to be said for having the game mechanics reflect the character. Sure, I could just be a fighter and say I'm a samurai. That works, and therefore D&D doesn't need a samurai class, but if I wanted to play a samurai I would never do that. I would play Legend of the Five Rings. That's a whole game that I don't need, because I could play a fighter and say I'm a samurai.

Some people need more help than others with making a character. Others don't want to do the work of making Class A into Class B. Then there is a third group who likes the classes presented to them in Pathfinder, and wants to have an official PF2E version of that class, even though it's obviously just a variant of an existing PF2E class. Even though you don't actually need all those classes for the game to run properly, or for a person to enjoy playing that particular thing, realistically PF2E probably does actually need all of those classes.

My experience with Savage Worlds has shown me that D&D 3.x actually did need some of those classes that Paizo invented for Pathfinder. The fighter/magic-user sucks. Simply being a magic-user heavily penalizes your ability to be a fighter in all editions of D&D, up to and including 3.x. (I don't really pay attention to 4E, and 5E has its own multi-classing issues). People might argue this character is really good because it's very versatile and can do both things, but the character you end up with is not the character you think it's going to be when you read the player's handbook. Seeing how Savage Worlds allowed this character to work out of the box gave me an appreciation for how Pathfinder actually does need the magus class, and by extension, all of those other hybrid classes they made. The multi-class character concepts need to be compressed into a single class, like the elf from B/X, but without the obscene experience requirements to advance in level.

On paper, PF2E seems to solve this multi-classing issue. In practice, a multi-class character probably ends up being shit because you spent character resources on a worthless secondary class that can't succeed on rolls and your numbers for that secondary class just never catch up to where they need to be.

Fair enough.   From my outsider's perspective looking in, it just seems redundant TBH.  For example, have one spellcaster class for each type of magic (arcane, divine, primal, etc) and then have variations using the archetype rules they already have instead of a full class with all the trappings and complexity that adds.  It just felt like they're trying to slice the pizza into more and more slices in the name of player choice to the point of absurdity.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 01, 2025, 09:57:36 PMMy experience with Savage Worlds has shown me that D&D 3.x actually did need some of those classes that Paizo invented for Pathfinder. The fighter/magic-user sucks. Simply being a magic-user heavily penalizes your ability to be a fighter in all editions of D&D, up to and including 3.x. (I don't really pay attention to 4E, and 5E has its own multi-classing issues). People might argue this character is really good because it's very versatile and can do both things, but the character you end up with is not the character you think it's going to be when you read the player's handbook. Seeing how Savage Worlds allowed this character to work out of the box gave me an appreciation for how Pathfinder actually does need the magus class, and by extension, all of those other hybrid classes they made. The multi-class character concepts need to be compressed into a single class, like the elf from B/X, but without the obscene experience requirements to advance in level.

On paper, PF2E seems to solve this multi-classing issue. In practice, a multi-class character probably ends up being shit because you spent character resources on a worthless secondary class that can't succeed on rolls and your numbers for that secondary class just never catch up to where they need to be.

Gonna do some mild-pushback here.

SW Pathfinder works because it takes the immense amount of 3.x design out of the equation entirely. The *problem* is the mechanics of d20 itself in trying to unify the power-conceits of spellcasting and martial combat that inherently has never existed in Pathfinder at all (much less in D&D writ-large). The idea of the "Gish" Fighter/Magic-User has always been an issue outside of short-form play (modules, convention, and one-shots). In longform campaigns you're always going to be a cut-rate at both fighting and magic-use.

The emergent issue is people want to "feel" their Fighter/Magic-User is unique contextually to others conventional concepts. The problem is that martial combat and spellcasting are mutually exclusive in their expression of the rules. D20 Magic use in particular narratively sounds great, but it's really just a sub-system designed to bypass established mechanics without too much design consistency (in general). This is precisely why we have the 3.x issue of the Linear Fighter/Quadratic Mage problem. Players and fans of D&D come to *expect* spellcasters to operate at a certain level. And Gish concepts simply don't cut the mustard. Which is ironic given that these people that defend d20 mechanics (specifically post-2e) simply ignore all the assumptions of the system in how they actually are expressed as being mechanically out of whack in relation to one another (martial vs. spellcasting). Earlier editions of d20 don't suffer nearly as much - but those mechanical balances were largely removed from the game.

Savage Worlds doesn't suffer from this because while spellcasters can do pretty much everything a d20 caster can do (arguably they're much more frontloaded as effectively "metamagic" feats are *free* as spellmodifiers) the entirety of the spellcasting system is unified in terms of general "output" effects-wise as non-casters.

The curious thing about the Gish concept is it works *tremendously* well in modern SWADE rules. The weird part is the Magus class in SW Pathfinder is so utterly redundant it actually doesn't play as well as something you could make *without* the class. I'd even go so far to say the Magus class in PF exists specifically to attempt to make a "Gish-like" character feel good in d20. It *doesn't* feel good translated into SWADE. It's basically a Wizard that can swing a sword, but you'll soon find out, your sword-fighting abilities are pointless, and you may as well just be a wizard.

The IRONIC thing is if you just *build* the Gish concept with standard SWADE rules (which you can do in SWADE PF) you can skin the cat in multiple ways to express the Mystical Warrior concept without ever taking the Magus class (which in SWADE PF is *ass*). The only reason the Magus class edge exists is simply as a nod of directly translating it from Pathfinder. SWADE didn't need it at all. Fortunately since it's SWADE it's easily fixable.

Edit: I have a player currently in my campaign playing a Magus in my Forgotten Realms SWADE game. We're going to move him over to a modified "Star Warrior" (from the SWADE Sci-Fi Companion) and make a Spellblade Class Edge to better handle the Gish concept. We're using the "Star Warrior" arcane background (basically it's a Jedi) and tweaking it for fantasy trappings.

Nothing about 3/3.5/Pathfinder was inherently broken. People still play and enjoy Pathfinder 1, and from what I've seen there's actually a significant chunk of players that are playing Pathfinder 1 still, so by doing a second edition, Paizo split their own fanbase.

Here are the problems that I see with Pathfinder 1:

* Extremely Rules Crunchy
* Steep Power-Curve

The rules-crunch is mostly a factor of the huge number of options in Pathfinder. There are a lot of strategies to mitigate rules-crunch both before the game begins and at the table.

Steep power curve can be mitigated by adopting a set of rules for lower-level play, like E6 rules. Paizo could have easily taken the E6 ruleset, formalized them, and started producing content geared towards Pathfinder 1E run using the E6 ruleset.

Quote from: RNGm on May 02, 2025, 08:22:09 AMFair enough.  From my outsider's perspective looking in, it just seems redundant TBH.  For example, have one spellcaster class for each type of magic (arcane, divine, primal, etc) and then have variations using the archetype rules they already have instead of a full class with all the trappings and complexity that adds.  It just felt like they're trying to slice the pizza into more and more slices in the name of player choice to the point of absurdity.

That's a reasonable take. Unlike the current discussion surrounding Shadowdark, I don't think a person should be obligated to pay full price for the game and then play it for 10,000 hours before they decide they don't like it and it wasn't worth the money.

For me, it's not the unnecessary classes that turns me off from the game, it's the likelihood that those classes really are necessary.

I don't know how many of them are necessary. They aren't all necessary, but some of them are due to the system itself. To your point, just within the core rulebook there is a spellcaster class for each type of magic (wizard, cleric, druid, bard), but then there's a sorcerer who gets to be any of the four depending on their bloodline. I guess that's a thing, to have a fifth spellcaster who has the option, but then you have the witch that is also set up the same way. It isn't clear to me how the witch and the sorcerer are materially different, except the ability score used to govern their spellcasting, but that's kind of a big deal in and of itself.

I think you're onto something with complexity, except I think you have it backwards. These player options aren't so much the cause of complexity, they're the result. Yes, they do create complexity by their very existence, but the complexity was already there to begin with. Which is why I switched to Savage Worlds and never looked back. Fundamentally I don't disagree with your overall conclusion, but your question wasn't about the style of game I prefer, it was about whether PF2E actually needs all of those classes.

Quote from: tenbones on May 02, 2025, 10:57:08 AMGonna do some mild-pushback here.

I wouldn't really call that pushback. Your experience of Savage Worlds isn't remarkably different from mine, nor is your assessment of the root problem. Which, thank you for articulating that. I gave up on it because I felt my reply was already getting long.

I think TSR-era D&D had the same issues. It may have been a little better or a little worse, but the core issue is present. Having two classes was perceived as being more powerful than having one because you're more versatile, which is true, but it's not 1:1. In some ways, 1E and 2E are worse because you continue to split your experience and your hit point roll after you reach max level in one of your classes.

I have no experience with the Savage Worlds magus in actual play, but I found it overtuned when I was reviewing my beta copy. The fighter + arcane background + eldritch knight already did everything you want a magus to do. I've been similarly pleased with how easily the arcane trickster came together in Savage Worlds. This gets back to my opinion on the PF1E and PF2E classes. These various character concepts work so well out-of-box in Savage Worlds that it points to a deficiency in standard Pathfinder that probably does mean they need their own classes in those systems.

Quote from: Zelen on May 02, 2025, 11:18:36 AMNothing about 3/3.5/Pathfinder was inherently broken. People still play and enjoy Pathfinder 1, and from what I've seen there's actually a significant chunk of players that are playing Pathfinder 1 still, so by doing a second edition, Paizo split their own fanbase.

Here are the problems that I see with Pathfinder 1:

* Extremely Rules Crunchy
* Steep Power-Curve

The rules-crunch is mostly a factor of the huge number of options in Pathfinder. There are a lot of strategies to mitigate rules-crunch both before the game begins and at the table.

Steep power curve can be mitigated by adopting a set of rules for lower-level play, like E6 rules. Paizo could have easily taken the E6 ruleset, formalized them, and started producing content geared towards Pathfinder 1E run using the E6 ruleset.

As someone that did an awful lot of design-work for both Pathfinder and 3.x in general - I can and will attest, that 3.x/PF *is* broken. I spent years working alongside and with Mike Mearls and others about trying to fix it, but editorial at Paizo and WotC shutting us down "because" (egos).

Non-casters are not at parity in terms of "power" vs. casters. AT ALL. Spells are game-breaking in how they're expressed mechanically vs what non-casters are capable of. Part of this issue is the sliding scale assumptions of holding onto older editions of d20 tropes - Fighter-types have high HP, wear armor, and look! now everyone can get multiple attacks, and of course FEATS. But the powercurve is spread anemically over *20-levels* which was never the assumption in previous editions. Further, spellcasters exponentially gain power with each spell, which mechanically are far more powerful than any particular Feat. They require no particular form of itemization (outside of scroll acquisition - hell most campaigns have places to buy scrolls. Imagine having a Feat store for PC's) and are instantly put into play. Add to the fact that casters also get specialized Feats and you have the LQFR problem.

I could go on and on. The issue isn't that the system couldn't be fixed - the foundational design of it is flawed because WotC didn't think through what these mechanics mean vs. one another. They didn't account for the number's bloat that stacked on flawed design ideas that are not inherent to the mechanics themselves - like 'Itemization As Balance'. It incentivizes, for new players, *bad things*. By a deep examination of basic Task Resolution, it's pretty easy to spot.

Two iterations of 3.x *did* do this: True20 and Fantasy Craft. Both are outstanding examples of what 3.x *could* have been. I'd argue to my dying days that Fantasy Craft should have been 4e.

Paizo gets a pass with Pathfinder because they didn't design 3.x, they only capitalized on it because they effectively had no choice. I was *there* when 4e was quietly revealed to their crew of feature writers and Dragon and Dungeon were being shut down. Pathfinder was the option to try and keep those that wanted to keep going with 3.x in light of being locked out initially of the 4e endeavor.

That said - the flaws of 3.x are what they are. Ironically, the "problems" you cite are *exactly* the emergent issues with the design. Your solutions (and they're completely legitimate ones) are directly pointing at the very things you say are not what make 3.x inherently broken. Yeah, you saw the problems and they're due to the design. But in order to identify those issues correctly it has to do with what people confuse "balance" with "mechanical consistency".

Balance is what happens at the table. Mechanical consistency is how the interoperative task resolutions and sub-systems work with each other in terms of where players have points of contact. The problem with 3.x is that the internal mechanical consistency is a little bit off - and the points of contact (the expressions of how classes play) are *way off* in relation to those core mechanics. The 20-level spread causes those flaws to extrapolate very very fast.

By contrast, SWADE has *none* of those problems, even in it's Pathfinder version. Imagine playing Pathfinder at 15th-30th level just like you're playing E6. Okay maybe it's closer to E9.

Yeah it can do that.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 02, 2025, 12:21:57 PMI wouldn't really call that pushback. Your experience of Savage Worlds isn't remarkably different from mine, nor is your assessment of the root problem. Which, thank you for articulating that. I gave up on it because I felt my reply was already getting long.

I think TSR-era D&D had the same issues. It may have been a little better or a little worse, but the core issue is present. Having two classes was perceived as being more powerful than having one because you're more versatile, which is true, but it's not 1:1. In some ways, 1E and 2E are worse because you continue to split your experience and your hit point roll after you reach max level in one of your classes.

I have no experience with the Savage Worlds magus in actual play, but I found it overtuned when I was reviewing my beta copy. The fighter + arcane background + eldritch knight already did everything you want a magus to do. I've been similarly pleased with how easily the arcane trickster came together in Savage Worlds. This gets back to my opinion on the PF1E and PF2E classes. These various character concepts work so well out-of-box in Savage Worlds that it points to a deficiency in standard Pathfinder that probably does mean they need their own classes in those systems.

Fair, heh. Yeah trying to explain SW vs d20 *always* gets long-winded. As for the Magus, this is my first rodeo with a players using it. That's why I jumped into the thread. After a couple of months of weekly play, the flaws in it were pretty glaring from the start. I *literally* have been reworking it the last couple of days (rather, I'm creating something new entirely and planning on ditching the Magus) so your comment immediately jumped out at me.

I'm 100% in agreement with you on the deficiencies. But I've always thought that about 3.x classes. I'm in a very small minority of 3.x players/GM's, but my solutions for Pathfinder classes in PF1 were to:

1) Make Feat acquisition MUCH more flexible. Spellcasting in PF1/3.x makes casters insanely powerful very quickly. Allowing non-casters to acquire Feats through in-game methods (there is a little known optional suggestion in the 3.x DMG that says GM's could/should reward characters with Feat training for in-game awards based on goals met.

2) Beefing the Feats up and making PrC's smaller and more powerful. Eliminating Feat trees as much as possible.

3) Making sure the world reflects the mechanics the PC's have to play by.

Fortunately SWADE does most of this heavy lifting for me (#3 is always a GM thing).

Fantasy Craft did a lot of this too. It's the SWADE of 3.x which means it's pretty heavy crunch. But it's very finely tuned and mechanically consistent like SWADE. Once it's up and running, it's high-octane glory.

Quote from: tenbones on May 02, 2025, 12:45:26 PM...

Completely agree with you, I'm just spitballing about how to kind of resolve these problems without jumping to an entirely different system.

Ironically I think Pathfinder 2E didn't actually address either problem of Extreme Rules Crunch or Steep Power Curve.

The only thing that 2E did successfully is mechanically homogenize combat encounters to the point where you can mathematically calculate difficulty with a fair degree of accuracy. That's actually nice for AP-designers, but the value for GMs & players is mixed. Not every group wants tactical combat every encounter, and GMs must actively work to prevent encounters from all feeling the same, because that's how the system is designed to feel/work.