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Author Topic: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…  (Read 24386 times)

Mistwell

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #30 on: December 08, 2020, 11:04:41 PM »
5e is everybody's second favorite edition by mostly being vaporware.

That's not what the term "vaporware" means. There is nothing vaporware about 5e.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2020, 11:08:06 PM by Mistwell »

bat

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #31 on: December 08, 2020, 11:35:21 PM »
Thinking of giving it a try and I looked up PF2 character sheets just to see what was out there and I came across a Twitter post by one of the DnD5 diehards that complains about the PF2 character sheet being four pages. As one is a spell sheet and another detailed inventory it isn't THAT heavy of a burden as any 5e sheet, yet the 'yes people' join in lamenting how obtuse and busy and 'like a tax form' the sheet is. So it isn't just grognards that want it their way. Apparently some of the new wave of gamers are so set on 5e that they do not see that it is also a crunchy game.
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Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #32 on: December 09, 2020, 12:26:11 AM »
That's not what the term "vaporware" means. There is nothing vaporware about 5e.

Fair enough. Though most of 5e was promised in development and never came out. But its success is being so insubstantive that people attach whatever they want too it.

TJS

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #33 on: December 09, 2020, 12:32:27 AM »
That's not what the term "vaporware" means. There is nothing vaporware about 5e.

Fair enough. Though most of 5e was promised in development and never came out. But its success is being so insubstantive that people attach whatever they want too it.
Yeah. The highly modular game of D&D that we were promised never really materialised.

What we got was a highly cleaned up and modernised take on Castles and Crusades.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #34 on: December 09, 2020, 06:21:25 AM »
Yeah. The highly modular game of D&D that we were promised never really materialised.

What we got was a highly cleaned up and modernised take on Castles and Crusades.

My slant on that same idea is that 5E was (mostly well) designed to be modular but many of the modules were never developed because WotC spent too much time writing D&D fan fiction.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #35 on: December 09, 2020, 08:08:53 AM »

Hold on... that's awesome!  They nerfed that to make them a PC race!?

So dumb. Orcs and Goblins are for the killing.
Orcs, hobgoblins, kobolds, even gnolls could make decent enough PCs. Bugbears don't work because they tend towards serial killer sadism, but at least they'd make interesting opponents, kind of like a fantasy version of the Ghost-face killer from Scream.

Goblins, on the other hand, are routinely routed by angry dogs and are frightened of horses (who return the favor by stepping on goblins). They're terrified of writing -- they think it steals words out of your head. About the only impressive skill they have is arson and fire-handling (they seem to have an innate knack for not setting anything on fire that they don't want to). They're also prone to getting distracted in combat.

And this is all documented in Paizo's Classic Monsters Revisited. So it's not like this is homebrew or me making shit up.

finarvyn

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong%u2026
« Reply #36 on: December 09, 2020, 08:20:53 AM »
My slant on that same idea is that 5E was (mostly well) designed to be modular but many of the modules were never developed because WotC spent too much time writing D&D fan fiction.
I think that the "modular" aspect is that you can add or remove certain components of the rules or character creation and the game still works well. For example, if one wants a really old school vibe one can remove skills and backgrounds and the game has an older feel to it. The free "basic" PDF with only a "core four" class approach shows that you really don't need all of the extra classes and class options. I think that this is what they meant, and I feel like 5E delivered something like that.

Is there any any 5E fiction? I haven't really kept up. Most of the D&D fiction that I've seen seems to be Dragonlance or older Forgotten Realms stuff.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2020, 08:23:02 AM by finarvyn »
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Abraxus

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #37 on: December 09, 2020, 08:45:59 AM »
Agreed!
They have an entire line of books for their hodgepodge setting.  There was no need for it to be in the CRB to be honest.

Seconded

What is annoying with PF 2E and new setting material is they have become very greedy and how the sell it with the new edtion. With the Inner Sea world book it has everything one needs without buying other expansions and priced right imo:

https://www.amazon.ca/Pathfinder-Campaign-Setting-World-Guide/dp/1601252692/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3C2UVCWCX84UH&dchild=1&keywords=inner+sea+world+guide&qid=1607521336&sprefix=inner+sea+%2Caps%2C155&sr=8-1

Their update for P2E is not even half the size and costs only a little less:

https://www.amazon.ca/Pathfinder-Lost-Omens-World-Guide/dp/1640781722/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pathfinder+2e+lost+omens&qid=1607521402&sr=8-3

With them spreading out the information as much as possible over multiple sourcebooks and each one has to be a hardcover so they can sell it twice as much as one of their old softcover sourcebooks used to cost.

Personal opinion if they could find away to take away their SRd the would as without it one has to buy the new material. 

Armchair Gamer

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #38 on: December 09, 2020, 08:48:00 AM »
What we got was a highly cleaned up and modernised take on Castles and Crusades.

  Which is one of the key reasons I've never bought the 5E core books--by the time it came out, I had already invested in C&C to fill that niche, and the 5E additions didn't justify the expenses and other annoyances. Besides, the Trolls don't despise me. :)

Abraxus

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #39 on: December 09, 2020, 08:50:20 AM »
Honestly any rpg selling point of being modular is somewhat overrated.

What i mean that many gamers tend to just take a setting change a few things here and there yet mostly use most of the material as written. While making a new setting from scratch is both fun and rewarding to both players and DMs. It's takes work and time consuming. Not something many DMs/Gms want to do. I liked the setting for Golarion for the most part changed a few things and added a few new yet the majority of the setting remain intact.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong%u2026
« Reply #40 on: December 09, 2020, 09:02:18 AM »

Is there any any 5E fiction? I haven't really kept up. Most of the D&D fiction that I've seen seems to be Dragonlance or older Forgotten Realms stuff.

I exaggerate only slightly for effect.  The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is the worst (at least out of the ones published back when I was still buying their stuff).  In an alternate timeline where nothing else changes in 5E but that SCAG is completely trashed and replaced with a book that delivers on module implementation -- not necessarily even excellent modules, merely solid -- it radically changes the whole quality of the 5E product line.  Basically, if the book had been as well done as the third-party Middle Earth adaptation.  Sure, there would still be all kinds of issues that could be better, but SWAG is a book written by hacks and splat writers instructed to try not to write a splat book and thus filling it with mostly crap. 

If it were me, I'd have written the replacement book as a very solid effort towards supporting old-school sandbox play, complete with some advice on how to do it for newbies and also some advice on how to edge into it for effect for those that don't care for the style.  However, that would have taken real thought, work, and effort.

TKurtBond

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #41 on: December 09, 2020, 09:43:53 AM »
Goblins as a PC race was utterly bizarre, as Paizo had refluffed goblins into barely-sentient creatures who were more like tool-using pirahna than anything else. I would've added kobolds as an option instead.
Huh.  Did they get the idea from Harn's Gargun, or come up with it on their own?
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oggsmash

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #42 on: December 09, 2020, 10:36:45 AM »
We switched from PF1 to PF2 at the start of this year with my friends and family group.   It has the right amount of crunch for those that want it and the 3 action combat system makes the combat flow quite nicely.   They can put all the SJW stuff in their setting that they want since I don't use Paizo's hodgepodge world setting or adventures.   I have my very own setting that my group have been in for years....we change the game engine from time to time.  At first it was Ad&d 2E then years later switched to PF1 now its PF2.   

Over all its not a bad system.   I like a lot of it and change the few things I don't like, just like every game system I have ever GM'd. 

At the end of the day, despite what others say, I'm having fun using the PF2 system.  Right now Paizo could disappear off the face of the earth.   I have what I need to keep playing PF2.   I would of course come up with my own classes, spells, feats, magic items, races, etc....which I already have because that's what PermaGM's do :p
  I liked the PF1 rules for the most part.  I almost started a campaign with PF, but it was just as the release of PF2's 'beta' rules hit the shelves.  When I read through the lecturing at the beginning it sort of put me off, and we went with 5e instead.  Given current course, it might be a lot easier to swallow a paragraph of lecture than endless splats and core rule changes.  I do like the idea of Paizo putting some of their stuff into savage worlds.  I would LOVE to see frog god games put rappan athuk in SW (I have pathfinder RA and 5e RA, was going to convert RA to Gurps or SW, but it would be a great thing if FG was nice enough to do that for me). 
  I do not much care for d20 systems, but my group likes them the most, and the reality is they tend to be the ones with the longer development concepts behind them  and seem to be easier to grasp for most people.   I would really love for PF2 (lecture paragraph and all) to be a real competitor to D&D, and I am a bit confused as to why they are not (I remember at GenCON 2016 pathfinder had a H U G E presence, and I do not remember even seeing a WOTC booth) at least in terms of sales.  I think real, healthy competition at the top produces other quality products that can get a foothold like SW and DCC.  I have about written GURPS off, even though at this point the starter rules can do just about anything you would ever want to do in an rpg, their presentation, iconic characters and digital media presence are pretty...ugh.  They create the appearance of being a system only engineers can enjoy, despite that not being the case.

Chris24601

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #43 on: December 09, 2020, 11:03:33 AM »
Honestly any rpg selling point of being modular is somewhat overrated.
I tend to agree. That’s why I don’t bill my game system as modular.

That said, I do have a whole section of optional rules that can allow it to better emulate various editions of D&D.

The default is a Big Damn Heroes (far from invincible, but a starting PC could handle a trio of city guards solo with little difficulty) with attributes assigned from an array, an option selected at each level up and tactical combat on a grid.

But with the optional rules you could start down at “zero” on the zero to hero scale (at the most extreme option a single city guard would be a life-threatening encounter) with randomly generated, class options are predetermined and the combat rules tweaked for theatre of the mind.

It’s also designed so you can just yank any species or classes you don’t want out and you won’t need to make any extra changes to the rules as a result (i.e. a game where everyone is human and there is no magic works out of the box; so does one where everyone has to play a mystic dragon).

Similarly, while I have a detailed default setting, I deliberately designed it to be only a small region (c. 100 miles across) so GMs can easily add their own details just beyond the borders (or drop their own region onto the world a thousand miles away). I’m also finishing up a lengthy section on how to put together a campaign region to help guide new GMs through the process step-by-step (including random tables if they don’t want to decide for themselves) to ensure it will have all the basics needed for a campaign (primarily a home base and enough nearby places to have adventures in with interesting things in the wilds between them).

I also left a number of things as outright mysteries with a list of possibilities for the GM to choose from. A related section had suggestions for how to tailor the setting through the use of descriptions as anything from a post-Roman collapse Dark Ages, to a modern post-apocalypse (think Thundarr the Barbarian) to a Science Fantasy world (think the Outer Rim regions of Star Wars).

Also included are suggestions on how to tailor the tone of a campaign on a few axis; serious vs. silly, linear vs. sandbox, heroic vs. horror) to match your desires and including optional rules to implement for each extreme since the default rules are mostly in the middle.

So it’s kinda modular in that one group could be playing a serious Dark Ages zero-to-hero horror sandbox with only humans, no magic, random attributes, random backgrounds and fixed class abilities while another group is playing a light-hearted science fantasy big damn heroes romp through a quest-based campaign where everything from sprites to dragons is available and they select every class and background option they gain when leveling up.

But that’s not modular in the way you’re using the term (i.e. here’s a box of Legos; you need to put them together into a setting). It’s just taking the time to lay out for new GMs how they can adjust many parts of the setting/rules to fit their particular tastes.

TKurtBond

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Re: Pathfinder 2e - Have the tea leaves been read wrong…
« Reply #44 on: December 09, 2020, 11:43:43 AM »
I'm interested in seeing the Pathfinder stuff in Savage Worlds versions.  I'd probably never play the Pathfinder versions, but I probably would the Savage Worlds versions.  I'm also interested in how it will play differently than Pathfinder in the Savage Worlds versions.  I like the different way fantasy games play in D&D, Savage Worlds, and GURPS.  Each systems gives the game a different interesting flavor.  (My experience with Pathfinder 1E was short and entirely out of the core books, and to me it played like a slightly cleaned up D&D 3.5E.)

When I write my own fantasy adventures I tend to use Savage Worlds, because I find prepping for it is easier than GURPS or D&D 3E and its descendants, and I enjoy running Savage Worlds more than recent iterations of D&D and friends.  (I very much enjoy playing D&D 5E, just not running it.)

I like D&D 3E and its descendants for consistent skill rules and the addition of feats, but I came to realize that the fact that most monsters were now just as complicated  as the player characters meant that prepping to run a game was much more complicated for the DM.  The asymmetrical nature of monsters in traditional versions of D&D made prepping much easier.  You can say "just wing it" and throw down some numbers arbitrarily, but I found something about D&D 3E and friends encouraged building the opponents to be as complicated as the PCs, and that takes time and effort.

I think the additional effort required helped the popularity of Paizo's Adventure Paths, and D&D 5E's campaign books: The work is done for you, which makes a lot of difference when you don't have a lot of time and all you want to do is sit down and play.  I have a feeling that something like this might also be profitable for GURPS, for that matter.  (Gaming Ballistics' Nordlond books are a step in the right direction for GURPS in the form of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, but are a series of short adventures and setting information, rather than long-term campaigns.)
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