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

[Ignimortis]

I'm seeing a lot of 3.5 grognards, some of them not even playing PF1, talking about 3.5 and not about PF2. That is getting so annoying I actually hope for folks like DSP to come out and announce their own kickstarter, just to get rid of the whole fans.

Not sure I'm following your logic right now. There's a game called Pathfinder (1st edition now) that is a spiritual successor to D&D 3.5. Therefore, when we're talking about a 2nd edition of whatever is Pathfinder is supposed to be, we can compare it to 1st edition and D&D 3.5, because that's where we started.

PF 2e is not going to be judged on its' own merits, because we already have an established standard which is still relevant to the discussion. And so far it seems that PF 2e isn't fixing the problems largely perceived by the 3.PF community in the earlier material.

[Kish]

Oh, I make no pretense of objectivity. We can be as subjective as we want about which decisions are good or bad. I'm just hoping we can reach those opinions on their own merits and without unnecessary guilt by association.

Again: Fix the beam in your eye.

[Chromascope3D]

Which is a little ironic, or maybe just misguided, because the original iconic ranger, Aragorn, was the inspiration for TWF and hardly ever used a bow.

Forcing rangers to be ranged sounds like a terrible design decision. One more reason to breeze right past this edition.

I think Aragorn actually two-handed a bastard sword. Legolas was the one who switched between bows and TWF.

...Which is why it's silly that Ranger once again has no THF options :p

[Kish]

Indeed. Dual-wielding rangers came from a much less noble source than Aragorn: Drizzt Do'Urden, who dual-wielded because it was a drow fighting style, and whose ranger teacher was puzzled that he would fight with two long blades without getting himself tangled up in them.

[Peat]

I'm not convinced that the design team agrees with me that the problems I see are problems. If they have had 'two years of internal playtests', then I suspect they are content with the general place martial characters are in. I expect they simply want a different game than I do. Oh well.

At which point, it is a fair comparison because we're not necessarily talking about Knowledge so much as Intent. If Paizo wanted a PF2 that gave more power to Martial classes, we'd be seeing that.

Instead they seem to want less power for all. Which sucks. Maybe it turns out that after the nerfbat's been applied all round they come out ahead on the game, but I really doubt that.

[catman04221985]

From pg. 3 of the playtest- Using these playtest rules, you can build any
kind of sword and sorcery story imaginable. So to me most of the nerfs and features are doing as advertised. But I quite enjoy DSP, and SOP/SOM.

[Morty]

I think Aragorn actually two-handed a bastard sword. Legolas was the one who switched between bows and TWF.

...Which is why it's silly that Ranger once again has no THF options :p

This is one of the reasons I'm puzzled by people who talk about how PF2e is such a radical change from PF1e/3.5. It's not radical if they're still holding on to the silliest traditions.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Chromascope3D
I think Aragorn actually two-handed a bastard sword.

He did, but he also fought the Ringwraiths at Weathertop “with a flaming brand of wood in either hand.” Pretty sure I read somewhere, possibly an old Dragon article, that this was the original genesis for the TWF style.

[Florian]

He did, but he also fought the Ringwraiths at Weathertop “with a flaming brand of wood in either hand.” Pretty sure I read somewhere, possibly an old Dragon article, that this was the original genesis for the TWF style.

That would be more than laughable.

[Rhedyn]

From pg. 3 of the playtest- Using these playtest rules, you can build any
kind of sword and sorcery story imaginable. So to me most of the nerfs and features are doing as advertised. But I quite enjoy DSP, and SOP/SOM.

Haha they do not even know their genre.

[Kish]

Just out of curiosity, what are you implying the genre should be, there? Sorcery and More Sorcery?

[Rynjin]

Just out of curiosity, what are you implying the genre should be, there? Sorcery and More Sorcery?

High Fantasy. They're distinct genres.

Sword and Sorcery is the likes of Conan as far as genre conventions; relatively small scale stories that do involve magic, but generally in a more diminished role as far as story (sword and sorcery tales are often, but not always, low magic settings as well).

High fantasy tends to be higher stakes, and often focus on globally (or AT LEAST nationally) important events. While not always high magic (A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of a setting that is Low Magic, High Fantasy) they do tend to be.

D&D has long skewed toward the latter. Even 5e, which is relatively low power, tends to want the PCs to face off against enemies that threaten the fate of countries or the whole world (and is where the system math starts to clash with the tone of the officially published modules and previous events of the Forgotten Realms).

[Caelestion]

The stories of Conan, Fafhrd the Grey Mouser and so on were some of the main sources of inspiration for Gary Gygax. Just because high-level adventures skew towards the grand tales of saving the world doesn't mean that all adventures are like that by any means.

[catman04221985]

Just out of curiosity, what are you implying the genre should be, there? Sorcery and More Sorcery?

I prefer I guess high fantasy. I enjoy doing what I believe as cool and impactful things. For example As a fighter I like in SOM Around lv 6 I can possibly get a climb speed. I was hope for something like that kind stuff at the latest lv 10. In the playtest its lv 15.

[Rynjin]

The stories of Conan, Fafhrd the Grey Mouser and so on were some of the main sources of inspiration for Gary Gygax. Just because high-level adventures skew towards the grand tales of saving the world doesn't mean that all adventures are like that by any means.

Gary Gygax stopped being the driving force behind D&D almost 40 years ago. The game has evolved, and recent editions have been much higher fantasy oriented in tone and high magic in power level. Changing this isn't necessarily bad, but it is a change, and not one I prefer.

[Cosi]

"you have to build your style from class and multiclass features, with more or less all classes having roughly the same number of slots to do so" is giving me 4ed flashbacks.

And just like 4e, they're making the mistake of eliminating all the things that make classes distinct, but keeping classes. If everyone has unified resource management, there is zero reason for classes to be on rails, and fairly little for them to exist at all (at least, in a form recognizable from PF or 3e).

It's almost like they would have benefited from making their design goals explicit, rather than presenting the rules as fiat acompli.

Lack of engaging martial options in core Is a major issue with PF1. Comparing a dedicated 3pp product for a mature system to a playtest for a new system isn't fair either.

I think it's fair to say that Spheres of Power, or Tome of Battle, or Path of War, or <arbitrary fan fix> is how martials should be done and ask that they have that level of competence. Asking for the level of versatility of a dedicated subsystem is unfair, but it's totally reasonable to ask that there be a martial build on par with what you can do with access to all of PF 1e. A new edition is supposed to be a refinement of the best supplemental material, so it's reasonable to expect that there will be some gesture towards support for those ideas.

I really enjoyed the system, and I saw some of the steps it took as natural progressions from late-3e concepts. Putting everyone on the same power-gain progression was an attempt to put an even distribution of power between the different classes, and while it had flaws, it was open to refinement (like Essentials).

Unified resource management basically fixes class imbalance by abolishing classes. Like everything else about 4e, its class structure was designed to facilitate shovelware development.

Lot's of people's problem with 4e is that it stands as the poster boy for the "MMORPG-ization" of D&D. The ironning out of all the deeply engaging wrinkles, crevices, dead ends, subsystems and, dare I say, exploits, in the name of *massive finger quotes* Balance. In hindsight, that's also something Paizo's Pathfinder is guilty of through another vector, that being literal frequent and continuous code rules patches.

This idea is honestly the worst thing about 4e. The game is not even balanced (frankly, when you consider its more limited scope, its less balanced than 3e), and yet it's convinced people that the problems the game had were the result of trying to achieve balance. So now people argue about how we shouldn't fix the Fighter in PF, because if we did we'd end up with 4e. That's a laughable argument, and it makes the games its made about worse. And it exists pretty much entirely because of 4e. 4e was such a colossal failure that it destroyed the D&D brand and made other games worse just by existing.

It doesn't matter how useful our feedback is, Paizo actively feels harassed by feedback much less will actually listen to it.

Well, this was exactly what happened with the playtest for 1e, so I'm not sure this should be considered news to anyone. Like, we could have had a system that had the smartest people in the entire (vast) 3e community identifying and fixing balance issues and rules exploits. Instead, those people were chased off quite explicitly and Paizo instead solicited feedback that made them feel good.

I'm not sure how to fix 3.5, but PF2e isn't doing it. 3.5's biggest problems are how hard it is to run. The balance aspects are only relevant in comparison to how hard it is to run. But it's only hard to run because everyone can do cool and amazing things. PF2e largely solved "that problem" by making a really boring game.

My view is that 3e's balance problems are less about what happens in game, and more about what they prevent from happening. There is a really cool, high powered game where choices have epic consequences and shake the setting like something out a of a Zelazny novel, but the classes that aren't casters basically can't do anything in that game. Which means that if anyone wants to play a Barbarian, you can't play that game. A good 3e fix would fix that, by providing more explicit rules for non-combat interactions (something neither PF 1e, 4e, 5e, or PF 2e show any real chance of doing successfully) and by providing non-combat tools to all classes (ditto). Combat imbalance exists, but it's a lot less important, in no small part because even if a Fighter is less valuable to the party than a Wizard, he's still doing something that you can draw a clear through line to "winning" from.

Oh, noes! Another company drops 3.5 for good and doesn't cart about supporting a 20 year old product anymore! The world will end!

And this is why the folks over at Paizo will prolly ignore a lot of feedback, because right now, it´s only trolling against any progress.

Radically transforming the premise of the game isn't progress. Progressive change would be refining PF 1e, not going in a completely different direction. The idea that an edition change is somehow supposed to be a complete ground-up restructuring is something that is unique to D&D, which only came into full effect in the transition to 4e. Before that point in D&D, and at every point in other TTRPGs, a new edition has meant a refinement in the mechanics of the old edition.

Certainly, Paizo is free to throw away the work they've done, the things they build their name on, and the parts of their game the community likes. But don't act like wanting them to not do that is trolling. It's just asking that they treat this edition change like the vast majority of RPG edition changes ever have been treated.

I'm seeing a lot of 3.5 grognards, some of them not even playing PF1, talking about 3.5 and not about PF2. That is getting so annoying I actually hope for folks like DSP to come out and announce their own kickstarter, just to get rid of the whole fans.

It seems to me that the input of people who liked 3e and aren't giving Paizo money right now is more valuable than yours. You already by PF 1e, so they don't need to do anything to get your money. On the other hand, someone (like myself) who felt that PF 1e failed to improve on the mechanics of 3e enough to justify switching could potentially become a new customer if Paizo were to make a PF 2e that actually delivered an experience that was better than, but similar to, 3e + houserules. Really, this is the exact same argument you didn't complain about when it came from the perspective of a 5e player, so maybe there's some additional opinion here you should make explicit. Other than "people who disagree with me are idiots", obviously.

[Rhedyn]

High Fantasy. They're distinct genres.

Sword and Sorcery is the likes of Conan as far as genre conventions; relatively small scale stories that do involve magic, but generally in a more diminished role as far as story (sword and sorcery tales are often, but not always, low magic settings as well).

High fantasy tends to be higher stakes, and often focus on globally (or AT LEAST nationally) important events. While not always high magic (A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of a setting that is Low Magic, High Fantasy) they do tend to be.

D&D has long skewed toward the latter. Even 5e, which is relatively low power, tends to want the PCs to face off against enemies that threaten the fate of countries or the whole world (and is where the system math starts to clash with the tone of the officially published modules and previous events of the Forgotten Realms).

Even 5e is high fantasy and high magic comparatively.

Like (as but one example) I don't need to worry about my firebolt permanently twisting my flesh as I slowly lose my grasp on either sanity or humanity.

[Midnightninja]

One of my biggest concerns is that non-casters lack engaging mechanics. Obviously over time there will be more interesting stuff, but I don't want to wait 5 years for fun things to slip into a player companion. As it stands, is there any reason not to multiclass into caster? I can build a more mechanically engaging character at level 1 with Spheres of Might than at level 5 with PF2.

^^^So much this.

I recently told a friend about SoM.* He loves monks and grappling (and is frequently disappointed by the options available for either). Compare a PF2e Monk's Level 10 feat
Sleeper Hold

Spoiler: Sleeper hold

Show

Requirements You have a creature grabbed or restrained.

Attempt an Athletics check to Grapple the creature.

Success The target is sluggish 1 through its next turn.

Critical Success The target falls asleep for 1 minute, though it remains standing and doesn’t drop what it holds.

to the SoM wrestling sphere's Chokehold which is available as early as level 1

Spoiler

Show

Whenever you control a grapple against a creature, that creature is unable to breathe or speak, though they may hold their breath in response to being grappled. Each consecutive round they spend grappled by you counts as a number of rounds equal to your practitioner modifier against the total number of rounds they may hold their breath before they are forced to make Constitution checks to avoid suffocating. For every 4 points of base attack bonus you possess, each passing round counts as an additional +1 round when determining how long they can hold their breath.

I'm not convinced that the design team agrees with me that the problems I see are problems. If they have had 'two years of internal playtests', then I suspect they are content with the general place martial characters are in. I expect they simply want a different game than I do. Oh well.

I came to this realization when looking at the Starfinder soldier last year. They're the only class in the game that doesn't have a class feature related to skills, and god help you if you want to meaningfully contribute outside of DO ALL THE DAMAGE. Upho's concerns in the last thread about about damage myopia was pretty insightful.

From pg. 3 of the playtest- Using these playtest rules, you can build any
kind of sword and sorcery story imaginable. So to me most of the nerfs and features are doing as advertised. But I quite enjoy DSP, and SOP/SOM.

Haha they do not even know their genre.

I think catman hit the nail on the head. They know exactly what genre they're going for. They just very quietly announced it. What catman wrote really helps explain the general scaling back of everything in the playtest.

There's a thread on the paizo forums (surprisingly they're back up and seem to be pretty stable) called What Is The Goal Of This Game? (I'm pretty sure started by one of the posters here) with a couple of posts that seem to get to the heart of a lot of the decisions.

From what I can tell, the chief design goal is system stability. Many of the game's pieces are modular in order to prevent a bad piece from infecting the whole game. The modifiers are kept small and few so that the maximum variance on a die roll is known without knowing all possible means of modifying that die roll. Many, though not all, effects reference the same set of debuffs in order to ensure that any character capable of creating an effect creates it identically.

This design goal manages expectations for the designers pretty well. Anyone writing modules or running games can make good guesses on what will be doable by any party.

The lack of complementary abilities stems from this modularity. Do to the need to constrain the range of effects allowable in the game, interactions between abilities need to be tightly controlled. The math needs to be worked through with each additional option allowed and any synergies either plotted out ahead of time or removed. The strongest example of this would be the fighter two weapon fighting feats and the need to untrain agile grace in order to take advantage of two weapon flurry. These things would seem like they aught to work together by their purpose and description, but since they can't if balance is maintained, they won't be allowed to.

Spells are designed in a similar fashion. Restricting the duration of spells, and keeping a high action cost, and reducing the number of spells, means that very few will be active at the same time allowing the design team to treat most spells as existing in a vacuum.

It's all very designer friendly. As a player you're dealing with the leftover math though. All the weird extra bits are left on your end, like sloppy electrical work. Things that aught to be done automatically by the system are left for the player to do in order to give players something to do on level up. That part is a little cynical, there aught to be some other reason but I can't see it.

Maybe I'm wrong. That would be nice.

I think PFS balance has more of an impact on this edition than people realize. It is in this medium that balance concerns and silly builds become the most dramatic since GMs are told they can't improvise anything or change any rules in order to accomodate strange characters. With heavy homgenization and super tight math, that means the quests will always be appropiate and nobody will be able to break the game.

As said earlier in this thread, this is the perfect game for Adventure writers and designers since they don't have to account for anything from the PCs and likely have tables that say exactly what they can and can't do (Without even needing to know what build/composition they have, since it matters little). So, good for them, I guess.

On the other hand, it's not really focused on player ease or fun, since that often goes contrary to the above point. Of course the developers will think it's great even when they playtest, there is a big conflict of interest here after all.

EDIT: It doesn't matter as much for GMs playing APs in a home game, since they can eventually figure out what to do before the party starts getting too silly. Even a newbie can realize encounters are being too easy hard or how an obstacle can be skipped/impossible and ajdust accordingly after a few months.

Considering how little variance they've allowed in the rolls and how constrained everything feels, making a system that they can't break later and that is very predictable for all levels of play really helps PFS and AP writing.

Spoiler: *

Show

I introduced him to it by showing him the artwork in the book that has a guy suplexing a dragon. Somehow, the SoM authors were reading my mind.

[T.G. Oskar]

I don't understand you guys as every one of you try to toot your own horn about how perfect edition will be but none of you sit the f down and say keep this, this and this solve following problems with these options from those companies. No you gents just enter hulk smash mode and try to preemptively burn the product that basicly came past month. Are we in that much of burn the witch with out trial mode. Calm down and start putting realy usefull feedback will ya like what parts of first edition you realy like to keep( mine the whole class design) what new concepts they need to introduce( for me just gave green light to sphere system).

Umm...don't seem to understand your point. So - all of the people posting here are solely praising or burning the system? I understand your request to focus on how it could improve, but a viable way to work with this is to point the flaws in the system.

If the game had no flaws, then there'd be no discussion for improvement; the system would be at its best, and any attempt at "improvement" would just ruin it. Likewise, if the game was entirely flawed, then redoing it would be the best way to improve it - the game's ruined, might as well remake it and hope it's better this way. If the game's flaws were recognized equally by everybody, then they'd be easier to point out and fix.

However, everyone has a different opinion on what they consider a flaw on the system, and what they consider the opposite (a win). One poster may like the class system, another might like most of it but not all (say, maybe how the proficiencies improve), another may be ambivalent about it (like how casters are presented, but not martials), another may dislike most of it but see potential (class feats don't really seem to grant options, but if they reworked it in a different way, you'd see a ton of fun builds laid down easily), some may loathe it altogether, and a handful might just hate the system so much they're bashing it for the sake of it. Every one of the previous examples has a point, and even the hater might have a valid point. The idea is that, with discussion, you can refine all those opinions into a consensus, which will eventually lead to an improvement. That's what playtests are for.

Paizo, however, has a tendency to not understand how a playtest works. Compare to WotC and what they're doing with 5e. Say what you like about the game, say what you like about Mearls, but the team does seem to work on feedback. Pretty much everyone realizes parts of the 5e Ranger suck, and while it's still on the backburner, there's a revision to the class. Pretty much everyone wants psionics in the game, and they developed the Mystic, which is still incomplete and awaiting a final revision (which may end up making it close to what it was in 3e, for what it's worth). The new archetypes are revised and altered before they go into print, and by the time that happens, you can notice the changes (for good or ill). Paizo...well, when they present the "playtest", it's like when Blizzard presents a new character - it's more of a preview than a playtest, a product that's for the most part finalized, that all it needs is basically some feedback to prove the concept works. Over the years, Paizo has proven that it's...a bit allergic to feedback, happier to nerf than to buff, and only barely accepting when they're wrong about something (consider how long it took for most of the weapons that require Weapon Finesse could add their Dex to damage, for example, and even then it's a bit mindbending to see how they did it). Most of the people that post here, fans or haters, are at least aware of that, and know that Paizo might not implement the changes they want. The hope is that, by pointing it loud enough, the developers actually listen and do the right changes. However, there's not much consensus when your hopes are low, though many people can agree on a few things (like Paladins and their issue with reactions, for example).

This thread, and the previous one, aren't really burning or praising the system without providing feedback. I'd say quite the contrary. Even in my case, which is mostly moaning; I'm not a fan of PF1e, and despite seeing a few cool things in PF2e (Resonance could work well if it worked more like Essentia, for example, or how Actions work), I know it's not gonna be my cup of tea. If I make someone point out flaws in my logic, or even refine it, and that leads to a discussion? All the better, because it's another head adding to the discussion.

Unless you mean how people are complaining about how DSP could make a better PF2e/3e follow-up? DSP has earned a lot of dev cred because they're pretty good about playtesting. That's a parallel discussion, though.

Which is a little ironic, or maybe just misguided, because the original iconic ranger, Aragorn, was the inspiration for TWF and hardly ever used a bow.

Forcing rangers to be ranged sounds like a terrible design decision. One more reason to breeze right past this edition.

As others mentioned, Aragorn was more of a swordsman than a ranged character (he favored melee weapons and his iconic weapon is the reformed Narsil, for one). The term "Ranger" does refer to the Dunedain, but the execution is very much Legolas. Do note that Legolas, while focused on ranged attacks, also used TWF.

That said, D&D "Rangers" were more Hunters, and Hunters tend to go ranged to pursue their game. That's why they get Animal Companions in the first place, and have kept it in pretty much every system. Rangers as they exist in D&D (and by extension, Pathfinder) combine the LotR Ranger's knowledge of terrain and healing, the fighting styles of Aragorn and Legolas, and the concept of the game hunter, complete with animal companion that drove out the game itself. Think of a modern Ranger as...a game hunter wielding a single-shot Remington hunting rifle with a hunting knife or maybe a handaxe/tomahawk as emergency melee weapons, with a trusty hound on its side, that also had proficiency in first-aid, survival skills, navigation with map/compass/straightedge and GPS, and to top it off, was a Green Beret or Spetznaz and keeps all of that training. Rangers are meant to be pure badasses, but for the most part, ranged combat is kinda their thing (particularly in these times, where firearms >> pretty much everything else).

Not giving options besides a focus on Ranged or TWF is a flaw, though.

[Morty]

He did, but he also fought the Ringwraiths at Weathertop “with a flaming brand of wood in either hand.” Pretty sure I read somewhere, possibly an old Dragon article, that this was the original genesis for the TWF style.

This may be the third explanation I've seen for this, but nowadays rangers dual-wield because they always have and designers think people will be upset if it's gone entirely. So even if they're no longer locked into either dual-wielding or archery, the dual-wielding is still there. Like in PF2e or D&D 5e.

[skaddix]

DnD Rangers are more Robin Hood inspired if you ask me. Yes Yes He Stole...but he and the Merry Men spent most of their time in the woods.

Dual Wielding is associated with Rangers and Rogues and Thieves. Although the weapons they tend to Dual Wield differs.

But yes granted you could certainly compress most of the Melee Characters into Fighter especially Ranger.

[Peat]

The stories of Conan, Fafhrd the Grey Mouser and so on were some of the main sources of inspiration for Gary Gygax. Just because high-level adventures skew towards the grand tales of saving the world doesn't mean that all adventures are like that by any means.

They were a big influence, but that doesn't mean that what came out of the pot particularly resembles them.

If I had my druthers, there'd be a recognised sub-genre of fantasy called Gygaxian Fantasy, for fantasy books particularly influenced by what came out of D&D. It's a blend of S&S and LotR (and Vance and Anderson and a few others) - a lot of S&S heart but tied to LotR's trappings, scale and vision of Good vs Evil (although executed with somewhat S&S sensibilities) with some choice cuts from the rest of fantasy.

But since it isn't a recognised term, I'd argue D&D is definitely set up for High/Epic Fantasy (which it hugely influenced), not S&S. Nevermind the scale of the adventure - there's too many people in a gaming party to map to classic S&S and magic is too common, too powerful and too nice. I'd say about 90% of the sorcerers and what not in the original S&S were villains.


Rhedyn is right. They don't know their genre, even if they think they know it. If they really want S&S, they need to nuke magic far further into the ground - and also make martials far handier outside of combat. S&S heroes survive as much by their cunning and skills as their mighty thews. What they have is a confused mess, in which relatively realistic warriors try to hew their way through the world while next to them the magic users saunter through due to having unlocked the secrets of the cosmos.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Morty
This may be the third explanation I've seen for this….

Well, this is based on an old memory of an old Dragon article, which unfortunately I can’t quote as to issue or page. If you have a specific source I’d be glad to see it, since I’m genuinely interested in the origins of the class concept.

Originally Posted by T.G. Oskar
Do note that Legolas, while focused on ranged attacks, also used TWF.

He’s a TWF monster in the movies, but I don’t recall if he was explicitly TWF in the books.

[Morty]

They were a big influence, but that doesn't mean that what came out of the pot particularly resembles them.

If I had my druthers, there'd be a recognised sub-genre of fantasy called Gygaxian Fantasy, for fantasy books particularly influenced by what came out of D&D. It's a blend of S&S and LotR (and Vance and Anderson and a few others) - a lot of S&S heart but tied to LotR's trappings, scale and vision of Good vs Evil (although executed with somewhat S&S sensibilities) with some choice cuts from the rest of fantasy.

But since it isn't a recognised term, I'd argue D&D is definitely set up for High/Epic Fantasy (which it hugely influenced), not S&S. Nevermind the scale of the adventure - there's too many people in a gaming party to map to classic S&S and magic is too common, too powerful and too nice. I'd say about 90% of the sorcerers and what not in the original S&S were villains.


Rhedyn is right. They don't know their genre, even if they think they know it. If they really want S&S, they need to nuke magic far further into the ground - and also make martials far handier outside of combat. S&S heroes survive as much by their cunning and skills as their mighty thews. What they have is a confused mess, in which relatively realistic warriors try to hew their way through the world while next to them the magic users saunter through due to having unlocked the secrets of the cosmos.

I don't think D&D has known what genre it is or wants to be for a while, if it ever did. So I wouldn't lay it entirely at Paizo's feet.

He’s a TWF monster in the movies, but I don’t recall if he was explicitly TWF in the books.

All the books mention on the subject is Legolas using a knife once he ran out of arrows.

[Peat]

I don't think D&D has known what genre it is or wants to be for a while, if it ever did. So I wouldn't lay it entirely at Paizo's feet.

That's part of why I argue for it being its own genre. It is its own thing.

And while Paizo do have certain legacy issues to grapple with in terms of deciding what its emulating and its only fair to note that, I think its also only fair to note that within their own section of the D&D ballpark they can make their own rules and to a certain extent have.

[Rhedyn]

I would say D&D fantasy can be it's own genre. Most D&D settings and editions have a lot of conceits likes all the backbending it takes to justify dungeons and PCs going into them.

Outside of just calling it D&D Fantasy, High Fantasy with rock hard magic systems if a good enough descriptor.
Even lowest fantasy versions like B/X (or the BE in BECMI) still have warriors rolling around in magic gear with casters using spells with impunity. Even versions like 5e are fairly High in terms of genre. Arguments could be made that 4e is the highest we've had so far, even outstripping 3e.

S&S though is not D&D and the closest it ever was to D&D was during some of the 1e and 2e days where magic was a lot more dangerous to use.

[catman04221985]

Umm...don't seem to understand your point. So - all of the people posting here are solely praising or burning the system? I understand your request to focus on how it could improve, but a viable way to work with this is to point the flaws in the system.

If the game had no flaws, then there'd be no discussion for improvement; the system would be at its best, and any attempt at "improvement" would just ruin it. Likewise, if the game was entirely flawed, then redoing it would be the best way to improve it - the game's ruined, might as well remake it and hope it's better this way. If the game's flaws were recognized equally by everybody, then they'd be easier to point out and fix.

However, everyone has a different opinion on what they consider a flaw on the system, and what they consider the opposite (a win). One poster may like the class system, another might like most of it but not all (say, maybe how the proficiencies improve), another may be ambivalent about it (like how casters are presented, but not martials), another may dislike most of it but see potential (class feats don't really seem to grant options, but if they reworked it in a different way, you'd see a ton of fun builds laid down easily), some may loathe it altogether, and a handful might just hate the system so much they're bashing it for the sake of it. Every one of the previous examples has a point, and even the hater might have a valid point. The idea is that, with discussion, you can refine all those opinions into a consensus, which will eventually lead to an improvement. That's what playtests are for.

Paizo, however, has a tendency to not understand how a playtest works. Compare to WotC and what they're doing with 5e. Say what you like about the game, say what you like about Mearls, but the team does seem to work on feedback. Pretty much everyone realizes parts of the 5e Ranger suck, and while it's still on the backburner, there's a revision to the class. Pretty much everyone wants psionics in the game, and they developed the Mystic, which is still incomplete and awaiting a final revision (which may end up making it close to what it was in 3e, for what it's worth). The new archetypes are revised and altered before they go into print, and by the time that happens, you can notice the changes (for good or ill). Paizo...well, when they present the "playtest", it's like when Blizzard presents a new character - it's more of a preview than a playtest, a product that's for the most part finalized, that all it needs is basically some feedback to prove the concept works. Over the years, Paizo has proven that it's...a bit allergic to feedback, happier to nerf than to buff, and only barely accepting when they're wrong about something (consider how long it took for most of the weapons that require Weapon Finesse could add their Dex to damage, for example, and even then it's a bit mindbending to see how they did it). Most of the people that post here, fans or haters, are at least aware of that, and know that Paizo might not implement the changes they want. The hope is that, by pointing it loud enough, the developers actually listen and do the right changes. However, there's not much consensus when your hopes are low, though many people can agree on a few things (like Paladins and their issue with reactions, for example).

This thread, and the previous one, aren't really burning or praising the system without providing feedback. I'd say quite the contrary. Even in my case, which is mostly moaning; I'm not a fan of PF1e, and despite seeing a few cool things in PF2e (Resonance could work well if it worked more like Essentia, for example, or how Actions work), I know it's not gonna be my cup of tea. If I make someone point out flaws in my logic, or even refine it, and that leads to a discussion? All the better, because it's another head adding to the discussion.

Unless you mean how people are complaining about how DSP could make a better PF2e/3e follow-up? DSP has earned a lot of dev cred because they're pretty good about playtesting. That's a parallel discussion, though.



As others mentioned, Aragorn was more of a swordsman than a ranged character (he favored melee weapons and his iconic weapon is the reformed Narsil, for one). The term "Ranger" does refer to the Dunedain, but the execution is very much Legolas. Do note that Legolas, while focused on ranged attacks, also used TWF.

That said, D&D "Rangers" were more Hunters, and Hunters tend to go ranged to pursue their game. That's why they get Animal Companions in the first place, and have kept it in pretty much every system. Rangers as they exist in D&D (and by extension, Pathfinder) combine the LotR Ranger's knowledge of terrain and healing, the fighting styles of Aragorn and Legolas, and the concept of the game hunter, complete with animal companion that drove out the game itself. Think of a modern Ranger as...a game hunter wielding a single-shot Remington hunting rifle with a hunting knife or maybe a handaxe/tomahawk as emergency melee weapons, with a trusty hound on its side, that also had proficiency in first-aid, survival skills, navigation with map/compass/straightedge and GPS, and to top it off, was a Green Beret or Spetznaz and keeps all of that training. Rangers are meant to be pure badasses, but for the most part, ranged combat is kinda their thing (particularly in these times, where firearms >> pretty much everything else).

Not giving options besides a focus on Ranged or TWF is a flaw, though.

This point right here is why I am not supporting the playtest. They internally playtested for two years and are just refining it. I feel like they are just going to tweek little by little but as a whole its done. In not so many words paizo is going to do what paizo is going to do.

[Caelestion]

This point right here is why I am not supporting the playtest. They internally playtested for two years and are just refining it. I feel like they are just going to tweek little by little but as a whole its done. In not so many words paizo is going to do what paizo is going to do.

Please edit the quotes more selectively. That said, the bolded section was always going to happen, because it's a meaningless statement.

[Ignimortis]

Please edit the quotes more selectively. That said, the bolded section was always going to happen, because it's a meaningless statement.

I think that meant "well, it's Paizo, what'd ya expect".

[catman04221985]

True true. I was just trying to explain my thoughts.