Pathfinder 2 Playtest 2nd Edition: If it ain't broke, still fix it.

[Rynjin]

Golarion isn't a setting at all. Golarion is not one setting but many; a kitchen-sink agglomeration of dozens of - mostly generic - settings, squeezed side-by-side onto one world map. Even adjacent regions mostly have nothing to do with each other, with events (from, say, one AP) in one region for the most part never affecting their next-door neighbour.

This, right here, is the selling point for me over, say, Forgotten Realms. APs and Modules are mandated to take place in a bubble; with the exception of sequel APs like Shattered Star and the occasional nod like Jade Regent featuring a bit character from Rise of the Runelords in a starring role no AP ever assumed another published bit of content happened.

This keeps lore tracking at a minimum.

Golarion is then otherwise a serviceable generic setting with some interesting tidbits I find more engaging than Forgotten Realms as well (all the deities are cooler, and planets like Triaxus are cool too).

[Cosi]

Again, "you can focus down on a narrow part of the setting and ignore everything else" strikes me as a really weird reason to praise a setting. If the adventure paths are going to be totally self-contained, why do you even need a setting at all?

[Rynjin]

Again, "you can focus down on a narrow part of the setting and ignore everything else" strikes me as a really weird reason to praise a setting. If the adventure paths are going to be totally self-contained, why do you even need a setting at all?

Because it gives you a context for the world events taking place in the AP.

Compare/Contrast most published Wizards settings, where the modules give you context for the other modules. It's exhausting.

[skaddix]

Golarian has to fit every type of adventure basically in the Inner Sea Regions...ie its a setting built to play campaigns not be a coherent world first. I think its fine since I can separate each country but yeah a selling point by itself hardly...


...personally with 5e leaning lower power...Pathfinder should have gone higher power especially in regards to buffing melees.

[Florian]

Again, "you can focus down on a narrow part of the setting and ignore everything else" strikes me as a really weird reason to praise a setting. If the adventure paths are going to be totally self-contained, why do you even need a setting at all?

Good question.

I think a lot of gms and groups have a weird relationship to their respective setting, or "game worlds". For example, if I play AP1 with group A and AP2 with group B, there is no overlap, like at all, because they don't happen in a shared game world. Heck, if I play AP1 and AP2 with group A, there is still no overlap or continuity, because I don't care for that, therefore I don't care to update the state of the game world.

So, no, I basically don't need a setting, in the sense of a game world, beyond the region that the actual campaign or AP is based in, there only to provide the context.

And that makes Golarion so great: It is written and organized around supporting campaigns and not around providing a fictional world.

[skaddix]

Good question.

I think a lot of gms and groups have a weird relationship to their respective setting, or "game worlds". For example, if I play AP1 with group A and AP2 with group B, there is no overlap, like at all, because they don't happen in a shared game world. Heck, if I play AP1 and AP2 with group A, there is still no overlap or continuity, because I don't care for that, therefore I don't care to update the state of the game world.

So, no, I basically don't need a setting, in the sense of a game world, beyond the region that the actual campaign or AP is based in, there only to provide the context.

And that makes Golarion so great: It is written and organized around supporting campaigns and not around providing a fictional world.

I don't think it matters the setting breaks down when you look at it as a cohesive world or continent. But in most campaigns how much time do you spend moving between two different countries enough to throw you off. Usually you spend most of a campaign be it official or otherwise in one country. So as long as any one country has an internally consistent theme you are probably fine bonus point if the countries that border it don't instantly break the immersion by being vastly different.

[Minion #6]

...personally with 5e leaning lower power...Pathfinder should have gone higher power especially in regards to buffing melees.

Very much this. 5e already has the """grounded"""* niche cornered. Rather than try to move into this space, why not further differentiate from it?

*not really grounded, but I have in real life argued with people who seem to believe that "lower numbers = grounded" or "mundane martial characters = grounded" in a universe where spellcasters can still teleport you across the planet at 13th level.

[Storyteller_Arc]

now they still need to adjust the other side of the equation and double the proficiency bonuses. I.e. +2 for Expert, +6 for Legendary, something like that.

Why? I mean, with the Crit System functioning as it is, doubling the increased rank bonuses would mean that the entire Crit system would likely need to be overhauled.

I mean, I do think they need to improve the Tier system and what they actually grant you, but I don't think you need to flat-out double all the numbers in order to improve it.

Plus, they lowered a lot of the skill DCs as well, making it more likely that trained+ characters would succeed in the goals.

[Ignimortis]

I mean, a little bit? Obviously there should be classes targeted at people who want to engage primarily with the combat parts of the game, but as-is things swing entirely too far in that direction. There need to be martial classes that cater to players who are interested in engaging with things that aren't combat.



I agree that these abilities need to exist, and that martials need to have access to them. However, I'm less convinced than I have been that the skill system is the right way to do that. Certainly there are some skills with uses that scale up to match high level magic. Stealth skills granting stealth magic, Survival granting travel or teleportation magic, Heal granting raise dead and friends, Perception skills granting divination, and so on. But there are lots of skills that should exist, but don't have appropriate high level uses. It's not obvious what Use Rope is going to do that is competitive with 9th level spells. There's also the problem of having choices made at low levels potentially lock in your high level options to a potentially undesirable degree.

I think the best solution is to just give people class abilities that are level appropriate (you know, like casters get), and just have the skill system be mostly level-agnostic. Anything that should show up for multiple classes can be a feat. But skills shouldn't be turning on high level abilities. They should be there to ensure that when the system needs to have someone forge a sword, or till a field, or track an army, the results for that action are sane.

Maybe so. However, most skills that made it into Pathfinder usually have enough focus to allow 3-4 spells per each skill, and thus seem like an easy option. Then again, maybe easy isn't good in this case...

It's situations exactly like this that are why I think the Tiers are fundamentally unhelpful for analysis. The definition of Tier One includes things "Capable of doing absolutely everything, often better than classes that specialize in that thing" or "hard to challenge without extreme DM fiat, especially if Tier 3s and below are in the party". What do those statements even mean if you're designing a new game that reflects a tighter balance band? A Wizard might well be better than a Paladin at providing healing. They're not better than a Cleric, and a game balanced around the Wizard wouldn't have a Paladin in it (or would have a more powerful Paladin). When you strip out the relative stuff (like "breaks the game", which usually means "has abilities Fighters don't" or "is better than a Fighter") or the stuff that's just not true (encounters designed for Wizards, as all encounters would be if the game was balanced around the Wizard, aren't ended in a single spell), Tier One basically says "Has world changing powers at high levels", which is something that the game should absolutely have.

But that's not really relevant to the question of whether you should tie skills directly to non-combat abilities. You could have skills that gave spell-like abilities (whether literal SLAs or just "similar to spells") that were as good as a Wizard's magic. You could also have ones that were merely as good as a Warmage's magic or a Healer's magic. It's like saying that any setup that uses Feats must end up in the same power band as the 3e Fighter. You certainly could end up there, but you don't have to.

I admit that Tiers are inconsistent in this kind of analysis. My main gripe with so-called Tier 1 classes and well-built Tier 2 classes is that they usually can circumvent the game entirely at high levels, unless you design specifically around their high-OP shenanigans, at which point it's less (super-)heroic fantasy and more 4d chess where anyone who doesn't have the same level of magic doesn't matter. This is in part due to their extremely high ability to "outsource" solutions by dumpster-diving Monster Manuals for things that do stuff beyond their own capabilities at the same level.

I do agree that high-level characters should be able to change the world easily, i.e. Meteor Swarm is incredibly unimpactful as a 9th level spell. It should level cities and destroy armies, not a few buildings and fifty low-level commoners. But on the other hand we have Planar Binding, which is available at level 11, the middle of the game, and it's obviously more useful than a Meteor Swarm in anything that's not mass combat-related IF you have the system mastery to summon exactly what you need.

What I mean by T3 being a desirable balance point is basically saying "everyone should have unique ways to contribute meaningfully in and out of combat, with specific circumstances allowing a particular solution to solve the problem very quickly and efficiently". This is why I also think that focused casters are the name of the game for magic in D&D - they have specific blind spots (Beguilers don't actually kill anything, Warmages/Healers mostly don't do anything BUT kill/heal things , Dread Necromancers rely mostly on their minions for brute force, which are in turn far more vulnerable than the PC themselves) which force them to cooperate with other character classes. Some of them could use buffs (especially Healers), but their core design is better for the declared purpose of D&D, to provide a heroic fantasy system with a zero-to-hero-to demigod power curve.

Why? wish is conceptually impressive, but mechanically it doesn't actually do all that much. If you're casting it out of spell slots you can't afford to do things like grabbing a bunch of Inherent bonuses or making cheap magic items, and other than that it's basically just "grab the perfect lower level spell for the situation". Even if you can do those things, it's not really mechanically different from a cash injection (if you add in a GP cap like 3.0 wish had). Is that somehow fundamentally better than wail of the banshee? Particular if it carries the high non-slot cost it does in 3e and PF.

Conceptually. Precisely that. It can, by definition, have any effect the DM approves and a list of lesser effects. This kind of thing is either a very expensive Swiss knife of spells, which I admit isn't too broken for a 9th level spell, or something that requires adjudication. That second part should be probably reserved for narrative rituals that heroes try to stop before the villain becomes immortal and invincible or something.

Also, too many things have it as a SLA, making it accessible way earlier than level 17.

[Morty]

The new update does sound like a step in the right direction, but I feel like they don't address some fundamental problems - like that too many feats are folded into class feats which are then parceled out in small lists. In fact, some of the problems the update is fixing stem directly from it.

But then, valiantly fixing problems that don't appear in any other system is kind of tradition for new editions of D&D, isn't it.

[Schattenbach]

Hm ... I never liked class-looking basic capabilities (like weapon mastery) or level-gating or feat-locking basic features (be they basic class features or simple capabilities regular humanoids ought to be capable of with no or little experience) one bit and don’t why Paizo wouldn’t use some different approach if it wanted to improve its system.

[CasualViking]

Why not? Their overhauling some pretty big issues in the game, so what's the issue?

Because doing your own clean-up after you **** on the coffee table in front of everyone doesn't make you a stand-up guy. Correcting mistakes that should never have been made in the first place does not engender trust.

[Schattenbach]

Because doing your own clean-up after you **** on the coffee table in front of everyone doesn't make you a stand-up guy. Correcting mistakes that should never have been made in the first place does not engender trust.

Getting praise for solving problems one created in the first place is quite common, isn’t it? Doesn’t change the fact that fixing mistakes isn’t particular wrong, though, even if it makes them look even worse if they only do so after they are practically forced to do so due to fear of too many customers leaving the ship.

[Scowling Dragon]

I can compliment Paizo for attempting improvements, but the reason their not getting as much praise it's because of its so scattershot and reeks of amateurism.

It's like if the captain of the ship starts making course corrections away from a reef and he asks his first mate:
"Say what is Starboard?"
Like it doesn't invite so much trust.
Again paizo is playing a game where it can't tell us what its design core is so fundamentally all design choices and all playtest answers will be of limited aid.

[Minion #6]

I can compliment Paizo for attempting improvements, but the reason their not getting as much praise it's because of its so scattershot and reeks of amateurism.

It's like if the captain of the ship starts making course corrections away from a reef and he asks his first mate:
"Say what is Starboard?"
Like it doesn't invite so much trust.
Again paizo is playing a game where it can't tell us what its design core is so fundamentally all design choices and all playtest answers will be of limited aid.

I left the Paizo forums recently because of that lack of design goals. There was a thread, asking for and discussing possible design goals, that got a bit off track. A staff member comes in to keep the thread on track, but provides no actual answer. Amateurism is definitely the word. When staff of a prominent RPG company participating in a public playtest either cannot or will not provide information on what they are trying to achieve with their work when a little studio like DSP or DDS can and will elucidate these things while arguably putting out better content...

[exelsisxax]

I left the Paizo forums recently because of that lack of design goals. There was a thread, asking for and discussing possible design goals, that got a bit off track. A staff member comes in to keep the thread on track, but provides no actual answer. Amateurism is definitely the word. When staff of a prominent RPG company participating in a public playtest either cannot or will not provide information on what they are trying to achieve with their work when a little studio like DSP or DDS can and will elucidate these things while arguably putting out better content...

Point me at whoever thinks sacred geometry, kineticist, shifter, and monk are better designed than ultimate psionics, spheres, and path of war. I've got fighting to do, because someone is wrong on the internet.

[Scowling Dragon]

The argument I hear is "But Paizo doesn't want to scare away any demos by stating their design goals upfront!"
But that also means it's not attracting any either. To not say what your weakness is is also to not say what your strengths are either.

[Midnightninja]

The argument I hear is "But Paizo doesn't want to scare away any demos by stating their design goals upfront!"
But that also means it's not attracting any either. To not say what your weakness is is also to not say what your strengths are either.

Paizo's said that they don't want to share design goals because they fear it will taint survey results. However, one of the devs mentioned recently that they want to figure out a way to present their design goals without skewing the playtest results.

As for our goals, I'm working to find a good way to share those that does not corrupt our playtest results.

I will say, I don't envy Paizo's current position. Dozens of impassioned posts yelling about various aspects of the game, frequently with staunch defenders on either side of any given topic. You get people who can point to specifics (the way DCs scale giving success rates that feel too low to feel like an expert at any given task) to a bunch of fawning praise to posts that say ...i dunno...I just don't...like how the the game...vibes...ya know?

Trying to suss out useful data from thousands of voices demanding contradictory things and make a product that appeals to the largest number of people as possible is HARD. I swear there's at least 1 Extra Credits episode that touches on this.

I'm saying all of this as someone who's been very unimpressed by this playtest, but they are listening. They've gotten rid of signature skills, they've fixed the barbarian's dragon transformation being a nerf (I'm not sure how they put it out that way initially), gave the superstitious barbarians a way to non-magically heal (I don't know why nobody hadn't mentioned that being an issue until they did), they've made mundane healing available (the DC scaling is weird though), they clearly weren't married to that godawful resonance system they released (why they were trying to solve 3 three "problems" with one clunky-a** system will never make sense to me), they nerfed casters into the ground (which could be seen as listening to 10 years of C/MD threads).

It really seems like they've gone into this being aware that what they like isn't necessarily what will sell the best.Compound that with PFS play and AP writing considerations and I can't imagine how much pressure they're under to put something out that could reasonably achieve those goals. We could probably cut them a little slack.

While simultaneously shaking our heads at the baffling decisions they've made and will continue to make.

Point me at whoever thinks sacred geometry, kineticist, shifter, and monk are better designed than ultimate psionics, spheres, and path of war. I've got fighting to do, because someone is wrong on the internet.

rofl. Can I please sig this? I'm not sure I've ever seen a post that wins a thread that doesn't even exist.

[EldritchWeaver]

Point me at whoever thinks sacred geometry, kineticist, shifter, and monk are better designed than ultimate psionics, spheres, and path of war. I've got fighting to do, because someone is wrong on the internet.

You misunderstood - Paizo is the one putting out worse content than DDS and DSP.

[CasualViking]

I have to say, if you have hundreds of pages of spells and feats, but you don't have fundamental ideas like "daily resource management" and "mandatory classes" in place, you are doing game design wrong.

[Scowling Dragon]

Paizo's said that they don't want to share design goals because they fear it will taint survey results.

.....To me this is the captain of the ship is not course correcting because he doesn't want to avoid that iceberg dead ahead.

Of COURSE, its supposed to impact friggin survey results!
This isn't some double-blind experiment on the effect of placebo pills....
However maybe taken as that it begins to make much more sense.

[Florian]

@Scowling Dragon:

Do you have any clue about product development for the mainstream? Or did you learn anything from the 4E debacle, like, at all?

When it comes to the mainstream, the best product is not the one that manages to hit one set of specifications perfectly, but rather the one that manages to hit multiple contradictory sets of specifications rather broadly and with the least fuss.

Let´s talk a bit about game theory: The RPG systems that successfully made up the mainstream so far, are the ones that can mostly be used by anyone, no matter how deep and in what corner of the G/N/S spectrum the particular customers are.

To give you an example from my industry: I could make you the "Perfect Lager" and you'd probably love it to death, that is, until you see the price tag, because it would clock in at around 54€. That's not mainstream. So I would do a "Perfect Lager under 1€/bottle", which is an entirely different specification, but will hit the mainstream.

[skaddix]

Too Many Feats especially former stuff you got for free turned into Feats such as Racial and Class Abilities.

Even more galling most of the feats don't feel impactful or numerous enough when I said I didn't like feat chains I meant more eliminate worthless feat taxes and have more feats scale over time into being more useful.

[EldritchWeaver]

Too Many Feats especially former stuff you got for free turned into Feats such as Racial and Class Abilities.

Even more galling most of the feats don't feel impactful or numerous enough when I said I didn't like feat chains I meant more eliminate worthless feat taxes and have more feats scale over time into being more useful.

I don't mind that stuff you got always has been turned into an option, which you get an additional resource to spend on, but if a 20th level 2e dwarf is less dwarfy than a 1st level 1e dwarf, something is wrong. Also, if you get so many things to choose (and to choose from), but the effect of the thing is negligible, this becomes just busywork. So overall, the base idea is nice, but the execution is bleh.

[CasualViking]

PF2: If you want the long, drawn-out character creation of PF1, but the simplistic gameplay of 5E. A lot of the character options do feel like tedious busywork.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Yeash... a lot of people bitching about how 'this should have been obvious' or it was 'stupid to put the system in, in the first place'.

Does anyone here know the difference between internal data and external data? Seriously. The amount of data you get from internal data is insignificant compared to the amount of data you get from external playtests!

I mean, Riot Games once talked about how within an hour of the release of a new champion, they get more data on that champion than several months worth of internal testing.

Seriously, if you still got issues with the system, that's fine. Heck, I agree with several that have been voiced here already! But don't use that as an excuse for why the fact that they are currently fixing several glaring issues with the original playtest is not something that should be congratulated for. Because they should be. A lot of companies don't listen to feedback, and Paizo is proving that they do.

And don't get me started over the face-palm inducing stupidity of all the people crying out about how they aren't getting design goals for the playtest/game... like. Why? Why is that important? Why does that influence things at all? They want feedback and data on their new system, isn't that good enough?

[CharonsHelper]

PF2: If you want the long, drawn-out character creation of PF1, but the simplistic gameplay of 5E.

Well - considering that probably the second biggest complaint about 5e I've seen is the lack of character options...

(The primary being the "DM May I" of the skill system.)

Yeash... a lot of people bitching about how 'this should have been obvious' or it was 'stupid to put the system in, in the first place'.

Does anyone here know the difference between internal data and external data? Seriously. The amount of data you get from internal data is insignificant compared to the amount of data you get from external playtests!

While your argument certainly has merit, to be fair to the complainers - some of the problems could have easily been caught with some math rather than needing actual playtests.

[Minion #6]

Paizo's said that they don't want to share design goals because they fear it will taint survey results.

Except that's nonsense. Uh, not you, Midnightninja, but that idea from Paizo. This isn't some double-blind scientific study, this is for a commercial product. If PF2 is trying to accomplish certain things, why not let the playtesters know what those things are? That way, playtesters aren't getting caught up with things that won't change because they're part of the core design (super tight maths resulting in high failure rates, lowered power ceiling, lots of "your GM decides the DC" arbitrariness) and actually give feedback on whether the playest rules accomplishes what they want to accomplish!

Plus it gives people like me, who suspect but don't actually know for certain that the design goals of the game are near diametrically opposed to what they would like, a reason to just give up on it and devote our energy to something where our feedback might make a difference.

[Storyteller_Arc]

While your argument certainly has merit, to be fair to the complainers - some of the problems could have easily been caught with some math rather than needing actual playtests.

Maths only goes so far.

[EldritchWeaver]

Maths only goes so far.

True, that's why he said "some of the problems".