Pathfinder 2 Blog: Critical Success and Failure

[Psyren]

As an example, the P1 system treats a 15th level fighter as just as mechanically capable as a 15th level wizard.

No, it doesn't. It says a party of 4 of them with WBL 15 can take on a CR 15 encounter - that's it. Nothing about the classes being equals.

As for the other posters bit, I've already said you have a sunnier outlook than I do and I'm leaving it at that.

[upho]

No, it doesn't. It says a party of 4 of them with WBL 15 can take on a CR 15 encounter - that's it. Nothing about the classes being equals.

Strange that they have the same CR as NPCs then, don't you think?

As for the other posters bit, I've already said you have a sunnier outlook than I do and I'm leaving it at that.

You mean my view of posters on other forums is just as bleak as it is of those here?

[Psyren]

Strange that they have the same CR as NPCs then, don't you think?

That guideline is a rule of thumb at best. A Wizard 15 who prepares nothing but read magic in every slot is CR 15 according to that vaunted line, right? Even if he can't even stop a Hill Giant. But by all means, hew to it blindly if you want.

[upho]

That guideline is a rule of thumb at best. A Wizard 15 who prepares nothing but read magic in every slot is CR 15 according to that vaunted line, right?

Nope, not according to the NPC creation rules and guidelines. These instead emphasize a caster NPC should have a variety of spells of the two highest levels they can cast, and even suggests not bothering with the lowest spell levels of NPCs intended for combat in order to speed up creation.

But regardless of what the guidelines say, I suggest simply looking at how they are applied in practice by Paizo by comparing named NPCs in Paizo APs. I can assure you that you'll have a very hard time finding even a single named fighter of CR 8+ actually more dangerous than any of the named wizards of equal CR, when run as written without changes to tactics or prepared spells, feats, gear or anything else.

(And no, the mechanical power of different monsters of the same CR generally don't vary nearly as much as that of different PC classes, even though the bestiaries also include quite a few famous examples of misleading and highly questionable ratings. Which is BTW typically due to SLAs and/or other magic abilities similar to spells, as the power of such abilities can be largely unaffected by the monster creation target numbers.)

[Morty]

Seems unlikely. The details still unknown to us would have to be significantly different from those revealed for martial combat mechanics in P2 to not have much of the same shortcomings as those in P1.

They did mention a Fighter feat that lets you spend an extra action to frighten an enemy with an attack. So there's some elements of control and debuffs in there. But keeping them entirely out of the weapons' baseline traits isn't a good start.

In their defence, it's possible they thought such options were too strong for such basic traits. And the D&D combat model really doesn't give them too much wriggle room.

[Psyren]

Nope, not according to the NPC creation rules and guidelines. These instead emphasize a caster NPC should have a variety of spells of the two highest levels they can cast, and even suggests not bothering with the lowest spell levels of NPCs intended for combat in order to speed up creation.

Good catch! So Heightened Read Magic then. Or ooh wait, let's do Screen, Discern Location, Create Demiplane, Greater Age Resistance, Greater False Vision, and Temporary Resurrection. That'll show that Hill Giant who he's messing with

But regardless of what the guidelines say, I suggest simply looking at how they are applied in practice by Paizo by comparing named NPCs in Paizo APs. I can assure you that you'll have a very hard time finding even a single named fighter of CR 8+ actually more dangerous than any of the named wizards of equal CR, when run as written without changes to tactics or prepared spells, feats, gear or anything else.

My point, which you seem to keep missing, is that the relationship between CR and difficulty in this game is geared at monsters, not NPCs. As I've demonstrated above, an NPC's power/usefulness is far more dependent on how they're built, rather than the level number written on their sheet or statblock. Pointing to that rule of thumb and saying "see, Paizo lied to us! Wizards and Fighters should be equal!" makes no sense whatsoever, and any disappointment you or anyone else feels at that not being the case is entirely on you. Monster entries meanwhile not only have static builds, they also have set tactics or, attitudes or behaviors that inform that number.

5e makes no such claims of parity either; despite having a far narrower range of balance, ultimately the casters are still more powerful than the martials in that game too, particularly at high levels. Yet that hasn't stopped it from dethroning PF as the most popular TTRPG on the planet right now. Quite simply, people don't care that magic is better overall than not-magic (or more accurately, spells better than not-spells) as long as some modicum of effort is made to keep them from getting too far apart.

[Cosi]

Arguing with Psyren about this is pointless. He is fully committed to the position that balance is dumb and bad, and seems convinced that "the rule is sometimes wrong, therefore it is totally meaningless" is a sufficient argument for this point. You will never convince him otherwise because accepting that the game is supposed to be balanced would imply that the existing imbalance is a failure of the designers.

On the other hand, you can keep arguing until he blocks you for being "toxic". Maybe if he does that to enough people he'll eventually realize the problem isn't the rest of the forum.

[Scowling Dragon]

that balance is dumb and bad.

I don't think that thats the best way to put it. 4e proved that "You said you wanted balance? Well here is the balance! Every class is like a inch of difference from another!". I don't even get its "Wuxia" comparisons since characters there could do less then most classes with items in 3e.

But its pretty obvious that casters in D&D are just on a literal extra level. We can futz about when we get a bonus feat or not, but casters still literally get a whole list of extra stuff they can do per day.

When will vanician casting die in a ditch?

[Cosi]

I don't think that thats the best way to put it. 4e proved that "You said you wanted balance? Well here is the balance! Every class is like a inch of difference from another!".

The narrative that "4e was balanced and that is why it was bad" gets a lot of play, but it doesn't make sense. 4e wasn't balanced. You had Orbizards, Blade Cascade Rangers (or whatever the "one-shot Orcus in early Paragon" build was called), Yogi Hat Rangers, and core classes with builds that simply didn't have the abilities they needed. 4e was more balanced than 3e, but it also totally excluded the imbalanced systems. I don't think you can really call that "sucking because it was balanced". The real reason 4e was bad is because the designers listened to people who said that Wizards were the problem (I mean, beyond boring reasons like "the designers weren't very good at their jobs"). So they brought everyone down to the level of the Fighter, and to the surprise of absolutely no one bringing everything down to the level of a class that sucked made everything suck.

When will vanician casting die in a ditch?

I think Vancian casting is fine. There is nothing inherently broken about "you prepare a bunch of spells and then you can cast those spells but not other spells". I do think daily limits are probably not workable, but the broken parts of Vancian magic would still be broken if they were instead part of a system that ran off of Spell Points or Recharge Magic or Drain or whatever. The broken part of planar binding has never been that you could use that slot for acid fog tomorrow.

[Scowling Dragon]

The narrative that "4e was balanced and that is why it was bad" gets a lot of play,

Guess better word for it is very samey and I can only describe the impression like "Bumper Cars". Like the way its structured is designed to simulate the ride of D&D but isn't exactly it.

Yes rituals exist and those are solid for some stuff (Teleportation on a mile scale really is super obnoxious when its spammable), but its so structured against going against the grain.
I do still find the Description of "MMO" apt.

I think Vancian casting is fine. There is nothing inherently broken about "you prepare a bunch of spells and then you can cast those spells but not other spells".

Its unintuitive and requires so much tracking but at the same time its not really naturalistic. Id say its one of the clunkiest aspects of D&D.

But its not like it also makes up for it in vertisility, nor does it make for very thematic characters. What separates from a clockwork technomage and a Necromancer supreme is that they might have a spell slot per spell level set aside to a thematic spell .

[Psyren]

Its unintuitive and requires so much tracking but at the same time its not really naturalistic. Id say its one of the clunkiest aspects of D&D.

It worked well for what D&D was (i.e. pre-app age.) You write down all the specific spells you have that day, and show the sheet to your GM so he's on the same page. Then as you use them, you cross them out or put an X next to them. At any given time, both you and your DM could just look at the paper and see what's left. No need to track mana or cooldowns, and you don't have to balance around everything being at-will either. Spontaneous casting is a lot easier to use, but your GM still needs to be aware of the spell level of everything in your loadout so they can watch for potential mistakes (or cheating.)

But now that we all have smartphones in our pockets, I would say Vancian isn't necessary anymore; TTRPGs like Green Ronin's Dragon Age and CRPGs like Divinity Original Sin are trying to bring spell points and cooldowns to the mainstream, and align it more with the popular systems used by MMOs while keeping a distinctly tabletop feel. It's unlikely D&D (or PF for that matter) will go that route, but I'm interested to see what other systems could result.

[Morty]

Vancian casting was meant to be a restriction on magic. You can do powerful magic, but you can only do it a limited number of times every day. Of course, being told that your magic-user can't use magic isn't what most people wanted, so the restrictions were gradually relaxed. More spells per day, spells known, at-will cantrips, and such. So whatever balancing value Vancian casting had was worn down.

Besides that, having half the party run on per-day resources and the other half on at-will ones wrecks the game's pacing completely. Particularly given the loud and strong opposition to giving non-spellcasters even per-encounter resources. Of course, how much of a hindrance Vancian casting is also depends on the pacing, which only really works if the GM is willing and able to enforce a strict number of encounters and challenges per day. Which is of course more and more difficult as you go up in levels, which is supposedly a feature (except when it isn't), and limits the GM's creativity. It also means the entire party runs on the spellcasters' schedule... or more specifically, the healer's schedule. 4e's healing surges really are an underrated mechanic.

There's a good reason few if any non-D&D systems use anything Vancian casting. Per-day limits in general are used sparsely; if anything it's per scene or per session. But, of course, it "wouldn't be D&D otherwise", so it's stuck with that instead of any of the many other possible ways to regulate it.

[Andor13]

It worked well for what D&D was (i.e. pre-app age.) You write down all the specific spells you have that day, and show the sheet to your GM so he's on the same page. Then as you use them, you cross them out or put an X next to them. At any given time, both you and your DM could just look at the paper and see what's left. No need to track mana or cooldowns, and you don't have to balance around everything being at-will either. Spontaneous casting is a lot easier to use, but your GM still needs to be aware of the spell level of everything in your loadout so they can watch for potential mistakes (or cheating.)

But now that we all have smartphones in our pockets, I would say Vancian isn't necessary anymore; TTRPGs like Green Ronin's Dragon Age and CRPGs like Divinity Original Sin are trying to bring spell points and cooldowns to the mainstream, and align it more with the popular systems used by MMOs while keeping a distinctly tabletop feel. It's unlikely D&D (or PF for that matter) will go that route, but I'm interested to see what other systems could result.

I have never seen that argument before, that Vancian casting was a result of the limit of PnP systems. And while it's an interesting argument, it's also nonsense. D&D uses Vancian casting because Gary Gygax was a fan of Jack Vance. Runequest was contemporaneous with D&D and uses three different magic systems, only one of which is similar to Vancian casting. Before smart phones, before the web existed, I'd seen and played with spell point systems (including 2e psionics), skill based systems, fatigue based systems, etc. Cooldown based systems, I admit are new, and probably spring from MMO roots, but even there, the good old D&D dragons with their 1d4 round breath weapon recharges led the way.

[Psyren]

I have never seen that argument before, that Vancian casting was a result of the limit of PnP systems. And while it's an interesting argument, it's also nonsense. D&D uses Vancian casting because Gary Gygax was a fan of Jack Vance. Runequest was contemporaneous with D&D and uses three different magic systems, only one of which is similar to Vancian casting. Before smart phones, before the web existed, I'd seen and played with spell point systems (including 2e psionics), skill based systems, fatigue based systems, etc. Cooldown based systems, I admit are new, and probably spring from MMO roots, but even there, the good old D&D dragons with their 1d4 round breath weapon recharges led the way.

I didn't say spell points systems didn't exist at all (whatever "Runequest" is I'm sure it had its audience). I was talking about mainstream appeal specifically. Dragon Age went with it because that is what the video games used and that's where they were expecting their audience to come from, but by the time it came out tracking points was easy.

Vancian casting was meant to be a restriction on magic. You can do powerful magic, but you can only do it a limited number of times every day. Of course, being told that your magic-user can't use magic isn't what most people wanted, so the restrictions were gradually relaxed. More spells per day, spells known, at-will cantrips, and such. So whatever balancing value Vancian casting had was worn down.

Besides that, having half the party run on per-day resources and the other half on at-will ones wrecks the game's pacing completely. Particularly given the loud and strong opposition to giving non-spellcasters even per-encounter resources. Of course, how much of a hindrance Vancian casting is also depends on the pacing, which only really works if the GM is willing and able to enforce a strict number of encounters and challenges per day. Which is of course more and more difficult as you go up in levels, which is supposedly a feature (except when it isn't), and limits the GM's creativity. It also means the entire party runs on the spellcasters' schedule... or more specifically, the healer's schedule. 4e's healing surges really are an underrated mechanic.

There's a good reason few if any non-D&D systems use anything Vancian casting. Per-day limits in general are used sparsely; if anything it's per scene or per session. But, of course, it "wouldn't be D&D otherwise", so it's stuck with that instead of any of the many other possible ways to regulate it.

I like what Starfinder went with - Resolve as a form of "healing surge" that powered many other things, but allowed parties to operate without a dedicated healer if they were sufficiently cautious and skilled. This aids in verisimilitude since avoiding damage at all is pretty much how most elite squads are expected to operate. Sure field medics exist, but if you end up needing one then chances are you're out of the fight entirely anyway.

[Morty]

One does wonder why PF 2e isn't doing something similar, along perhaps with Starfinder's health/stamina split. Or, well, I don't wonder, because I know it's likely because it'd be too unrealistic/gamey/like 4e.

Of course, healing surges didn't replace healers, but rather introduce an internal resource separate separate from the healers'. So that getting wounded would eventually force you to rest even though healing could be used every encounter or short rest.

[upho]

They did mention a Fighter feat that lets you spend an extra action to frighten an enemy with an attack. So there's some elements of control and debuffs in there. But keeping them entirely out of the weapons' baseline traits isn't a good start.

Yeah, I was actually expecting more stuff along the lines of the trip trait. Not as much as I'd prefer of course, but at least less attack and damage myopia than the revealed traits suggest.

In their defence, it's possible they thought such options were too strong for such basic traits. And the D&D combat model really doesn't give them too much wriggle room.

Well, I agree having weapon traits actually allowing new control or debuff mechanics would likely be too much. But I think they could at the very least have made more traits granting basic numbers boosts to stuff other than attack or damage. Instead, so far it appears most traits improving attack won't even be beneficial for combat maneuvers, since those are skill checks instead of attacks in P2.

[upho]

Stuff.

Well, let's put it this way, AFAICT you seem to agree there is a clear power difference between casters and non-casters in P1. Yet you'll find absolutely nothing published by Paizo so far which actually tells you that this is the case, but plenty of stuff which at the very least strongly indicates that Paizo believes even their own equal CR fighter and wizard NPCs are at least as balanced as monsters of the same CR. And these omissions and grossly misleading indications and descriptions makes for a poor instruction manual. WoTC realized as much, even if their solution obviously wasn't very great.

Regardless, I'm not going to discuss this further with you if you continue making arguments of the same poor standard as those you've made so far. Nitpicking details while refusing to meet the obvious point does not make for a meaningful discussion.

Arguing with Psyren about this is pointless. He is fully committed to the position that balance is dumb and bad, and seems convinced that "the rule is sometimes wrong, therefore it is totally meaningless" is a sufficient argument for this point. You will never convince him otherwise because accepting that the game is supposed to be balanced would imply that the existing imbalance is a failure of the designers.

Honestly, I'm tempted to fully agree with you. I mean, arguing against the fact the P1 books completely fail to recognize the C/MD issue is just utterly futile and pointless. As is arguing against the fact the books instead largely denies the existence of any such issue.

On the other hand, you can keep arguing until he blocks you for being "toxic". Maybe if he does that to enough people he'll eventually realize the problem isn't the rest of the forum.

Yeah, although I think the problem here is that Psyren believes there's so much misdirected and/or poorly argued critique and general negativity against Paizo and PF that he feels compelled to defend against it spreading through the echo-chamber and only point out the positive. It's unfortunate that this defense has apparently made him increasingly zealous and less willing to admit any critique is justified, seemingly having him dismiss actually valid and nuanced critique as unjustified echo-chamber hyperbole and hate. This is of course only my personal impression.

@ Psyren: Listening to well-founded critique is not just good but often vital for the long-term survival of a game, often more so than praise and high current popularity ratings. Recognizing such critique and discussing how to solve the related issues does not mean you're somehow automatically also buying any of the hyperbole describing PF as a complete failure or even a poor system. Nor does doing so mean you're somehow automatically thinking the PDT is a bunch of incompetent fools who don't have a clue about how their own system actually works, or that you think everything Paizo does or says is bad per default. Note how this swings both ways, and that you're actually doing both the game and Paizo a disservice by dismissing the actually valid critique.

TL/DR: It's OK to think and admit PF has both good and bad parts, just as it's OK to think and admit Paizo does some things right and some things wrong. Not doing so is however not OK, at least not if you want reasonable people to listen and value what you're saying instead of dismissing you as a biased "axe-grinder" (of either stripe).

[Psyren]

I've pointed out Paizo's shortcomings numerous times, including in this very thread; the Kineticist and Shifter being horribly designed and them taking way too long to give the base Fighter anything special for example. It's (apparently) tough to miss with all the much more visible hyperbole and hate flying at them from other sources, but my own criticisms are definitely there. If you want to lie and say "Psyren doesn't believe any critique is justified" then I certainly can't stop you, other than pointing out that's what it is, a blatant lie.

What I am doing is fundamentally disagreeing with you that (a) Fighters and Wizards should be equals even if they share a nominal level and (b) that there is some kind of pervasive expectation out there that they should be. By all means narrow the gap, but getting rid of it is unnecessary and thus a waste of resources; 3e/3.5 proved this, P1 proved it, and 5e proved it too.


(As for my block list, since a certain person you quoted brought it up - there are exactly two people on it and he is one of them, so I'm pretty sure I know exactly where the "problem" lies.)

[Morty]

Yeah, I was actually expecting more stuff along the lines of the trip trait. Not as much as I'd prefer of course, but at least less attack and damage myopia than the revealed traits suggest.

Well, I agree having weapon traits actually allowing new control or debuff mechanics would likely be too much. But I think they could at the very least have made more traits granting basic numbers boosts to stuff other than attack or damage. Instead, so far it appears most traits improving attack won't even be beneficial for combat maneuvers, since those are skill checks instead of attacks in P2.

What could they add numbers to, though? There's not much beyond attack and damage in D&D's basic combat. Everything else tends to require special abilities, if it even exists.

I don't know. I see what you're saying but it seems to me like they should have gone in the other direction and focused on broad weapon groups and giving players freedom to describe their weapons. Adding specific traits to specific weapons requires granularity that D&D's mundane combat just doesn't have.

More importantly, healing surges didn't work, in the sense that they don't actually impact the game in the way the authors intended.

One goal of HS was to keep parties from requiring a healer, but general wisdom in 4E is still that every party needs a healer regardless of what the other PCs are. Another goal was as a pacing mechanism, but PCs get so very many of them that they basically never run out of surges on an adventuring day (parties instead rest when they run out of daily powers, reinforcing the 15-minute adventuring workday). The existence of an easy way to redistribute HS among party members didn't help.

So I'm sure there's some good ideas in there, but 4E's implementation really fell flat. I hope P2 can do better than that.

We'll never know if it can do better, because it's not going to try. Despite Starfinder testing the waters with something similar and two health pools. Not that the latter is a remotely new idea, but it certainly is new to D&D, outside of the Wounds/Vitality variant.

[Scowling Dragon]

You know for once Il side with Psyren. I don't believe any person is REQUIRED to admit anything.

I do believe how Psyren treats people he deems Toxic is not very good at all, but I don't believe somebody is requisite to admit good or bad because X said so.

Overall internet debates are not worth anybodies effort.

[Cosi]

But its not like it also makes up for it in vertisility, nor does it make for very thematic characters. What separates from a clockwork technomage and a Necromancer supreme is that they might have a spell slot per spell level set aside to a thematic spell .

That's a problem with the specific implementation, not the mechanic. It is certainly true that the Wizard doesn't have a thematic list, it's not like you couldn't make one, or the Wizard's list would somehow become more thematic if it used Recharge Magic.

The complaint is that 4E's designers wanted to achieve balance so much, that they sacrificed too much to make it happen. This is why people call it "bad". Whether the designers actually succeeded at balance is immaterial, the point is how much they sacrificed for their goal.

I don't really think that makes sense as an argument. If 4e's designers did not, in fact, achieve game balance, why would we assume that trying to achieve it would result in a game that was flawed in the same way? What about the other design goals 4e had? Why shouldn't we blame class roles for the homogenous power system, or assume that any game that tries to provide a unified system for adjudicating complex non-combat tasks will fail in the same way 4e did with skill challenges?

Besides that, having half the party run on per-day resources and the other half on at-will ones wrecks the game's pacing completely.

Sure. But that doesn't mean you can't have Vancian magic. You can just set the recharge period to 15 minutes. Then you don't have pacing problems.

but my own criticisms are definitely there. If you want to lie and say "Psyren doesn't believe any critique is justified" then I certainly can't stop you, other than pointing out that's what it is, a blatant lie.

You certainly seemed very vocal in this thread (and the previous one) about how it was absolutely unacceptable to judge the product based on what has been released, rather than an imagined assumption of a perfect finished product. It's possible you have some criticisms, but it certainly looks like the bulk of your output is dedicated not just to arguing against criticism, but to mocking people who attempt to criticize or attempting to shut down the entire notion of criticizing the design process.

[Scowling Dragon]

I don't really think that makes sense as an argument. If 4e's designers did not, in fact, achieve game balance, why would we assume that trying to achieve it would result in a game that was flawed in the same way?

Thats a ton of things in life sadly. It makes perfect sense. Allot of things historically that try to avoid being something end up becoming that exact same thing.

[upho]

I've pointed out Paizo's shortcomings numerous times, including in this very thread; the Kineticist and Shifter being horribly designed and them taking way too long to give the base Fighter anything special for example. It's (apparently) tough to miss with all the much more visible hyperbole and hate flying at them from other sources, but my own criticisms are definitely there. If you want to lie and say "Psyren doesn't believe any critique is justified" then I certainly can't stop you, other than pointing out that's what it is, a blatant lie.

Fair enough. I blame my obviously deteriorating Perception bonus for my impression being off. I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions.

What I am doing is fundamentally disagreeing with you that (a) Fighters and Wizards should be equals even if they share a nominal level and (b) that there is some kind of pervasive expectation out there that they should be. By all means narrow the gap, but getting rid of it is unnecessary and thus a waste of resources; 3e/3.5 proved this, P1 proved it, and 5e proved it too.

I obviously haven't been clear enough. Now this little discussion may actually get somewhere.

(a) That wasn't my critique. What I did say was that I demand a manual largely free of errors, and mentioned an example of such an error in P1 (in detail):

1. The books never so much as hint at the fact that fighters and wizards aren't even roughly equal, notably not even in the introduction to the class chapter in the CRB where it probably should have been.
2. The GM guidelines, CR and XP system at the very least strongly suggest that they are at least as equal as monsters of the same CR.
3. The class descriptions don't mention the power disparity and don't match their mechanics, which in turn decreases people's ability to make informed choices and the game's ability to live up to expectations and be fun for everyone.

(b) There probably isn't an expectation of the kind of equality you seem to believe I'm advocating. But I'm pretty certain there's also no expectation of a disparity as great as it is in P1, and most importantly that the game would've been more successful and appreciated had the books been open about the disparity and the GM guidelines taking it into account instead of suggesting equality.

In other words, it's besides the point whether I may be more interested in seeing P2 having less C/MD than you are. Or to use the car analogy, I didn't demand the previous model's poor suspension is upgraded to be on par with the fantastic engine, but that the driving and maintenance guidelines take the quality disparity into account. Instead of, you know, coming with guidelines suggesting these parts are equally capable and durable, regardless of whether you're carting your frail old aunt around a peaceful suburb or trying to set new amateur track records on the Nürburgring.

[137beth]

New blog about equipment. This one is sparse on details.

[Scowling Dragon]

New blog about equipment. This one is sparse on details.

I will say the relation between armor and proficiency bonus is pretty confusing.

[upho]

The narrative that "4e was balanced and that is why it was bad" gets a lot of play, but it doesn't make sense. 4e wasn't balanced. You had Orbizards, Blade Cascade Rangers (or whatever the "one-shot Orcus in early Paragon" build was called), Yogi Hat Rangers, and core classes with builds that simply didn't have the abilities they needed. 4e was more balanced than 3e, but it also totally excluded the imbalanced systems. I don't think you can really call that "sucking because it was balanced".

This is at least a lot more accurate than most of the erroneous beliefs about 4e repeated by people who obviously have a very poor understanding of what was possible in 4e, at least once the system had matured away from the PHB's overly careful and inexperienced "samey" power design and provided all the PHB class build variants with better tools for their intended jobs. And when it comes to 4e class features outside the standard AEDU system, I think it's worth keeping in mind that many of the classes found in the 4e PHB actually grew to become some of the most powerful in the game, despite the increased competition from several newer classes which had significantly better designed class powers right off the bat when they were released.

Nitpick: "Captain Cascade", as the highly optimized early TWF ranger build (by Lordduskblade) was sometimes jokingly called on WoTC's 4e Char-op forum, couldn't one-shot Orcus (CR 35) in early Paragon, nor in mid Paragon when he could grab the 15th level (Daily) Blade Cascade power which his signature overkill combo relied heavily upon. (IIRC, he also had to be redesigned to keep his Orcus one-shot capacity in Epic tier since the Blade Cascade power got nerfed in the very first round of errata released, and he was soon joined by builds of other "striker" classes just as capable of embarrassing the demonic God of Undeath in a similar fashion, such as the "Storm/Hurricane of Blades" barbarian which could achieve even greater DPR spikes during one or two rounds per encounter or day.)

The real reason 4e was bad is because the designers listened to people who said that Wizards were the problem (I mean, beyond boring reasons like "the designers weren't very good at their jobs"). So they brought everyone down to the level of the Fighter, and to the surprise of absolutely no one bringing everything down to the level of a class that sucked made everything suck.

While I believe this is probably a quite accurate description of the design policy for the 4e PHB, that policy obviously had a clearly noticeable effect only on the options found in that very first book. And I can't help but find it a bit amusing that the 3.5/PF standard fighter/wizard comparison translates so poorly into 4e, since both the fighter and the wizard were two of the strongest classes in the game, with the fighter having a potential the one-dimensional 3.5 namesake can only dream of and the wizard being a more powerful "controller" class than any other in 4e by a pretty wide margin.

I think Vancian casting is fine. There is nothing inherently broken about "you prepare a bunch of spells and then you can cast those spells but not other spells". I do think daily limits are probably not workable, but the broken parts of Vancian magic would still be broken if they were instead part of a system that ran off of Spell Points or Recharge Magic or Drain or whatever. The broken part of planar binding has never been that you could use that slot for acid fog tomorrow.

I fully agree. It's the power level of individual spells and the daily limits being largely exclusive to casters which are the main culprits for the C/MD in 3.5/PF. The power of spells can of course easily be tuned down, but balancing classes primarily regulated through limited use abilities with classes primarily regulated through at-will abilities is impossible, at least if the game is also intended to allow for a varied number and/or makeup of encounters faced between instances restoring limited use abilities. In short, a single system simply cannot provide balance, limited use classes, unlimited use classes and a varied encounter pacing all at once. One or more of these goals must be given a lower priority in order for the other goals to be met.

Guess better word for it is very samey and I can only describe the impression like "Bumper Cars". Like the way its structured is designed to simulate the ride of D&D but isn't exactly it.

And here's the "samey" myth again. Didn't play much 4e games using more than the PHB, and never with PCs using options like hybrid classing, did you?

If you had, your impression most likely would've been quite different. To give you a glimpse of just how much 4e classes and builds could differ, have a look at a couple of "Ultimate Defenders" like "Darth Vader" and the "Inexhaustible Dragon Sovereign". Then I suggest you ask yourself whether you believe any 4e class designed for another primary combat role could've been even remotely as good at protecting a party as either of these two are, how good the defenders in your 4e games were at their main job in combat in comparison, and whether you believe these "Ultimate Defenders" have mechanics and/or play-styles more "samey" than those of most single-classed PF martial builds.

The complaint is that 4E's designers wanted to achieve balance so much, that they sacrificed too much to make it happen. This is why people call it "bad". Whether the designers actually succeeded at balance is immaterial, the point is how much they sacrificed for their goal.

I don't think this was a major reason for the failure of 4e, nor that too much was sacrificed to achieve balance when taking the entire system into account. That said, I believe the poor design of many options in the PHB (probably along with 4e's "striker" classes in general) is very much responsible for most of the bad impressions people have of 4e, including sacrificing too much to achieve balance, and for a lot of people giving up on the edition after having tried it out a bit early on when few or no additional player options existed.

[Baroncognito]

I will say the relation between armor and proficiency bonus is pretty confusing.

It sounds like there are going to be tiers of armor proficiency now, going by the comment about how shields and armor interact. I wonder if that'll advance with class level for some classes or if it's going to require feats.

[upho]

It sounds like there are going to be tiers of armor proficiency now, going by the comment about how shields and armor interact. I wonder if that'll advance with class level for some classes or if it's going to require feats.

To me, the blog seems to suggest that armor proficiency is advanced for free for some classes, at least up to Expert.

Speaking of confusing, I don't really get how all the possibly simultaneous item bonuses are intended to stack, at least in the case of armors (and shields), if at all. It seems pretty clear you could for example have Legendary proficiency with a longsword (+3) and wield a longsword of Legendary quality (+3 item bonus) inscribed with a +5 "weapon potency rune" (which I assume increases the item bonus by +5), which I believe would stack for a total bonus of +11 to your attack rolls. But armors already grant an item bonus to AC, which armors of Expert or better quality (and "armor potency runes") supposedly also does. Does this mean that

1. armors of different qualities don't exist like it does for all other items,
2. the item bonus granted by an armor by default don't stack with the item bonus granted by the quality (making either bonus largely wasted),
3. these item bonuses are an exception and do stack,
4. armor quality item bonuses improve something other than AC (unlike other item quality bonuses which apparently improve the primary use/benefit of the item), or
5. armor quality and/or type item bonuses does something entirely different?

Otherwise, I especially like that they've separated what used to be enhancement bonuses in P1 - ie "potency runes" - from the abilities of specific magic armor/weapons, thereby allowing such items to be be useful during all remaining levels (unlike in P1 which recommends such items shouldn't be upgraded at all since the cost for doing so cannot be accurately determined).

Unless I'm missing something, I really dislike that they've apparently made shields awful, since they not only require you to pay with the use of a hand without giving you any passive benefit in return plus an action to gain the AC bonus for a single round, but also cannot be upgraded with potency runes. Which means that without additional investments in feats, their default benefit is effectively limited to a +5 AC bonus at the most (+2 heavy shield +3 Legendary quality), or even a measly +3 if the item bonuses don't stack. Unless perhaps if shield specific magic item abilities and/or feats are particularly awesome, this doesn't seem to be anywhere near worth the costs for a very large majority of PCs.

Likewise, I really dislike adding negative armor traits (such as the mentioned "noisy"), a new/expanded ASF category of penalties/limitations called "Bulky" and having ACP also affect Con-based checks, while seemingly also keeping P1's already overly punishing, fiddly and verisimilitude-breaking penalties. Not only does this seem to run counter to the fact that armor (and especially heavy armor) actually should provide greater benefits and come with less penalties than in P1 in order to improve balance, but also to the stated general goal of reducing/streamlining needlessly detailed and/or inconsistent rules found in P1.

When added up, I believe these reveals unfortunately suggest the related actual rules in P2 will be a deterioration of the P1 counterparts. If the PDT actually intended to showcase improved weapon and armor rules in this blog post, they chose to reveal a highly unsuitable set of details. I'm hoping this is the case, rather than these reveals being representative of the actual rules.

[Scowling Dragon]

And here's the "samey" myth again. Didn't play much 4e games using more than the PHB, and never with PCs using options like hybrid classing, did you?

It was my first RPG and what got me into Tabletop games to begin with. I owned every book until I stopped at the 3rd Players handbook because even then I felt like I was getting the same thing over and over.

Is that still not enough? You gott buy three BILLION books of repetative samey powers until things that feel like actual archetypes representing characters start coming out?
For instance playing an illusionist wizard meant you played the same old wizard but it did psychic damage. The most illusionisty thing they let the wizard have was make a wall as an encounter power but then they changed that into a daily power (Maybe they changed that back again but I was done by them).

Thats what I mean by bumper cars. You play the impression of characters and not really the characters themselves.

[Kurald Galain]

...can we talk about P2 some more and leave the Yet Another 4E Debate to the zillion threads we already have on that topic? Pretty please?


So anyway.

The weapons blog is looking good with various weapons that all act fundementally different from one another. Sure, we can all think of even more different tricks but they have to start somewhere.

The armor blog seems to take some good steps in reducing the christmas tree effect (and I mean actually reducing it, not bringing it to "only 15 slots" or something). I do think they're overusing the poor/normal/expert/legendary bit, it is a false elegance in game design to think that the same -2 to +3 scale applies to literally everything. For instance, I'm not sure why armor gets both this scale and a scale of enchantment runes.