Pathfinder 2 3.0: Meh, what for?

[Florian]

I feel like people greatly overestimate the importance of attributes in general.

I think that a lot of people have problems with the abstractions that are common to some systems. They try to understand the results the system generates and fall back to a reference framework they can grasp. That's especially true for systems that don't manage to model the impact of skill and training in a meaningful way.

Questions like: What affects how good I hit with my sword? What affects what happens when I hit with my sword? What affects what happens when I get hit with a sword? - All of those are quite common and abstractions like BAB, Iterative attacks and HP are quite unintuitive, so it seems to be more or less natural to fall back on a framework based on basic (physical) capability to answer those.

[Rhedyn]

Attributes are important because the bonuses are a treadmill. If you decided to have 14 in strength instead of 18, then perhaps you also buy a con belt first rather than str. Maybe you get a flame tongue instead of a +2 weapon. Maybe you pass on class specific bonuses to branch out.

Soon you find yourself 5-10 points behind and power attack becomes a DPR loss and your character is now really bad at their main contribution.

It's not hypothetical, I've seen many players do this. Specifically a 14 strength 18 charisma Hospitaler Paladin that felt my CRB-only fighter was OP.

[icefractal]

I feel like people greatly overestimate the importance of attributes in general. Particularly in D&D, where they're just one source of numbers out of many. It's different in a system where they're the basis of the math, of course.

In 5e, attributes are king. Until high level, an untrained guy with a high attribute beats a trained one, and even a Rogue doesn't pull ahead until mid levels.

In PF2, level does matter, but having a high attribute still makes a bigger difference than being a "master" of the skill.

In 3e, skills aren't kept "on track" in the same way, so with the multiplicity of ways to boost skills you can compensate for a low attribute. Although even then, attributes can make a pretty big difference. And do make a huge difference in other areas.

So what system are you referring to where attributes aren't that important?

[Morty]

I think that a lot of people have problems with the abstractions that are common to some systems. They try to understand the results the system generates and fall back to a reference framework they can grasp. That's especially true for systems that don't manage to model the impact of skill and training in a meaningful way.

Questions like: What affects how good I hit with my sword? What affects what happens when I hit with my sword? What affects what happens when I get hit with a sword? - All of those are quite common and abstractions like BAB, Iterative attacks and HP are quite unintuitive, so it seems to be more or less natural to fall back on a framework based on basic (physical) capability to answer those.

That's a fair point. Attributes are the more immediately obvious than the more in-depth characteristics. "This character is strong" and "this character is clever" leap out more than skills and class features.

So what system are you referring to where attributes aren't that important?

None whatsoever, seeing how I never said that. I said people overestimate their importance by treating them as be-all, end-all of a character's capabilities and acting like they accurately represent anything other than the game's math. Not quite the same thing as "not important".

[icefractal]

None whatsoever, seeing how I never said that. I said people overestimate their importance by treating them as be-all, end-all of a character's capabilities and acting like they accurately represent anything other than the game's math. Not quite the same thing as "not important".

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you. By "people" do you mean game designers or players of those games?

[Morty]

I'm talking about players, when discussing the games. The attributes' importance is overstated often. They are important, but they're just one element, next to skills, class features, feats, spells and whatnot. This is particularly evident when people try to nail them down to real-life concepts, like "18 intelligence makes you Einstein" or whatever.

[Erloas]

I think the big thing about attributes is that they have impacts on many other parts of a character and they're just about the only "given" in any game.

When you consider that most games start at lower levels, many don't get to really high levels, optimization varies widely, and item availability changes with every DM, it is one of the few things essentially guaranteed.

While you can use feats, spells, items, and other ways of getting certain things very high, it is usually a very select set of things you can do. So higher attributes lead to more well rounded characters instead of highly specialized ones.

[137beth]

How many years do y'all think it will be before we get Starfinder 2nd edition?

[Almadelia]

How many years do y'all think it will be before we get Starfinder 2nd edition?

Paizo will go bankrupt after PF2e flops and they realize that Colette and the other forum-goers were right all along about their math being rubbish and their design being unfocused gibberish. So never.

[Morty]

Doomsaying aside, Starfinder's reception seems to have been mild, unless I missed a lot of enthusiasm. So I wouldn't be sure either way.

[Florian]

How many years do y'all think it will be before we get Starfinder 2nd edition?

Maybe 10? PF1 has remarkable staying power and SF was a b-product of preparing the follow-up transitions, as well as a thing to keep sales and organized play going, even with PF1 coming too an end. I don't think that SF, by itself, is actually well received and something that people actually wanted, but judging it as sorta-kinda stop-gap-measure, it seems to be doing well. So: Well see SF2 when we're nearing the end of the production run of PF2.

[137beth]

Starfinder sold sufficiently well that they are doing a playtest for an expansion. If it weren't making at least some money, Paizo probably wouldn't be supporting it at all. Maybe it started as a paid alpha for PF2, but then sold better than expected. Or maybe Starfinder was always meant to be a separate product line and the timing with PF2 was just coincidental. Either way, it's well past time for another product that is just meant as an alpha for Pathfinder 2, so if Paizo is planning to put out more Starfinder stuff in 2019, they probably think it will make money.


Granted, just because it is making enough money for them to keep churning out APs and maybe occasionally a new expansion doesn't mean Starfinder is making enough money to justify a new edition. And, if Pathfinder 2e flops badly enough, it could lead to Paizo going out of buisness regardless of whether Starfinder is making a profit. But if Gamma World can make it to seven editions, I figure there is at least a faint possibility of a 2nd edition of Starfinder. Maybe it will be produced by Paizo, or maybe it will be published by whatever company scoops up Paizo's assets if they go bankrupt. Or it might never happen.

[Florian]

I feel like a broken record some times: The main product are APs, rules and stuff are just the way to facilitate those sales. That's simply a thing when using the OGL, you're bound to be open source and have to find a way to deal with it.

(There's strong evidence based on when certain topics crop up, that the majority of users on this board never threw a dollar towards Paizo but rather rely solely on PFSRD.)

[thelastorphan]

I feel like a broken record some times: The main product are APs, rules and stuff are just the way to facilitate those sales. That's simply a thing when using the OGL, you're bound to be open source and have to find a way to deal with it.

(There's strong evidence based on when certain topics crop up, that the majority of users on this board never threw a dollar towards Paizo but rather rely solely on PFSRD.)

The existence of the PFSRD and Paizo's willingness to put nearly all of their material on the web for free is part of the reason I STARTED buying their books. They didn't have to do that. It motivated me to make the jump from 3.5. I doubt I am alone in that.

[OgresAreCute]

Speaking of Starfinder playtests, is there a mirror to the playtest doc that doesn't require me to sign into anything?

[Florian]

They didn't have to do that.

That's not correct. Check the back of each PF product and you'll find the Open Gaming License Version 1.0a (in short: OGL) there. The mechanical aspects of anything related to the D20 system are free, must be shared and can be used as such by any other 3PP for any purpose, like setting up the D20PFSRD or Paizo often using monster stat blocks from Tome of Horror Complete (Necromancer Games, Frog God Games).

Basically, Paizo would have no problem building modules, an entire AP or writing source books for Akashic, Path of War or Spheres stuff. The pendulum swings both ways.

The real question always is, what is not shareable and how to build a business model around it?

[Cosi]

Florian is, as usual, talking nonsense.

The PFSRD drives sales rather than depressing them. Both 3e and PF owe their impressive successes to making the rules more open.

APs are a niche product. They sell to DMs, and a subset of DMs at that. You don't make money by selling something that only 20% (roughly) of your customers are even notionally interested in. To counter Florian's anecdote (interesting that apparently now we're supposed to take "people on the forums do it" seriously, but we aren't with balance complaints or 3rd party products) with my own, I know more people who bought a double-digit number of 3e splatbooks than who bought any 3e pre-written adventures at all. If splat sales are lower -- and again, there's no real indication they are -- it's profoundly unlikely adventure paths are making up the slack.

Any interesting mechanical news about PF 2e? They ditch the critical success/failure nonsense yet?

[Almadelia]

(There's strong evidence based on when certain topics crop up, that the majority of users on this board never threw a dollar towards Paizo but rather rely solely on PFSRD.)

This sounds incredibly and entirely irrelevant to the point at hand, yeah, and can only reasonably be construed as an attempt to discredit others in the thread. So, stop that.

[Erloas]

I think most companies have realized that making their rules available online is about the only way, at this point in time, to have any chance of getting wide spread adoption. Most wargames have gone that route too.

It helps sales, because without free rules a lot of people won't even look at a system now, so if even learning the basics of your game is behind a pay-wall that is going to cut your potential market drastically right out of the gate.

I'm not sure how many people have subscriptions to Paizo's stuff, but I would imagine it is a decent amount of people. So there are a lot of books that people are buying even if they don't have a direct interest in them. So that even if a player isn't using everything they get in the subscription, having a lot there makes it seem more valuable. With a set and known "pre-orders" for every book they put out, they can have a pretty good idea of what their limit for resources for each of those books is (both printing and designing).

I would be willing to bet, that even if a lot of players/DMs don't directly use an adventure path or similar, since they've got the book anyway, they're probably borrowing encounters, characters, ideas, etc. That is probably happening with groups that primarily use the SRDs, people that play very heavily modified/houseruled versions of the game, and people that bought the main books.

As such, I can't see PF2 sinking Paizo, even if it does very poorly. We'll see how they handle things in the next 3-6 months, but none of the indicators of "this is a last ditch effort by a company to survive" seems to be there. Considering they've made it through a recession and very turbulent times for every forms of entertainment and publishing, I'm thinking they've actually got a pretty good handle on the financial side of things and they wouldn't be betting the farm on this. Not to say very poor sales wouldn't hurt them, but hurt them and cause them to go under are two very different things.

[Almadelia]

etc

I don't literally think they're sinking but I just do not see 2e doing well. They'll probably have to go back to doing 1e content or else change stuff up drastically if they want a chance. This isn't even like when 4e or 5e was being announced, there was outrage on forums, groups were abuzz. With this? Nobody I know even cares anymore, they're just 'meh not my thing I'll go houserule some new stuff in 3.x'. Apathy kills far more than just hate, because hate at least generates controversy, gets people's heads turning, asking 'what's the problem this time?'

[thelastorphan]

That's not correct. Check the back of each PF product and you'll find the Open Gaming License Version 1.0a (in short: OGL) there. The mechanical aspects of anything related to the D20 system are free, must be shared and can be used as such by any other 3PP for any purpose, like setting up the D20PFSRD or Paizo often using monster stat blocks from Tome of Horror Complete (Necromancer Games, Frog God Games).

Basically, Paizo would have no problem building modules, an entire AP or writing source books for Akashic, Path of War or Spheres stuff. The pendulum swings both ways.

The real question always is, what is not shareable and how to build a business model around it?

All the OGL requires is that it be shareable. They didn't have to spend their resources as a company to create as comprehensive an srd as they maintained. (Now AoN has taken it over?) Other companies hadn't done that to the same degree previously. 3.5's srd is nothing compared the one Paizo ran. Does Sword and Sorcery have an srd? Kalamar? One with all their content? D20pfsrd is seperate and collects all the third party stuff into an srd but no agreement makes it necessary. Only that when someone does share it there's no problem as long as that company's intellectual property isn't reproduced. Hence no Gods from paizo on Srds etc.

Do we know if Paizo is gonna maintain a strong srd for PF2? I hope so. It's the only thing that might get me to pick up the system if it turns out okay.

[Morty]

Starfinder sold sufficiently well that they are doing a playtest for an expansion. If it weren't making at least some money, Paizo probably wouldn't be supporting it at all. Maybe it started as a paid alpha for PF2, but then sold better than expected. Or maybe Starfinder was always meant to be a separate product line and the timing with PF2 was just coincidental. Either way, it's well past time for another product that is just meant as an alpha for Pathfinder 2, so if Paizo is planning to put out more Starfinder stuff in 2019, they probably think it will make money.

Seems I was wrong, then. I'm not sure just how much SF was testing the waters before PF2E. At least some ideas ended up carrying over, like weapons scaling in damage... sadly, this particular idea is a pretty wrong-headed one. Others, like two health tracks or reducing casters to six spell levels didn't, even though they really should have. Maybe if I knew more about SF, I'd see more similarities.

[OgresAreCute]

Seems I was wrong, then. I'm not sure just how much SF was testing the waters before PF2E. At least some ideas ended up carrying over, like weapons scaling in damage... sadly, this particular idea is a pretty wrong-headed one. Others, like two health tracks or reducing casters to six spell levels didn't, even though they really should have. Maybe if I knew more about SF, I'd see more similarities.

I think how monsters are made and scaled is pretty similar, but I haven't really looked much at pathfinder 2 lately. In Starfinder at least enemies have humongous to-hit modifiers, and the system has some of that "tight math" which means if you use a monster with CR 2 or 3 higher than APL, everyone's gonna die.

[Rhedyn]

I was really pumped for Starfinder, but I found the core book to be incomplete (lack of certain gear for each level, or a way to make our own). The monster math was kind of terrible and summon monster was barely satisfactory (sure lots of cosmetic variety but barely any special abilities).

It lacked the gear it needed to seem like a fun system. Sure I guess splat could save it eventually, but I find the setting to be garbage. The Gap basically ruins the setting and destroys world building. The Pact Worlds themselves are majority Evil and only lazy writing makes the overall Pact Society "good". Sure just ignore the consequence of you members being Drow, Undead, Far Realm Nightmares, with a neutral block of Robots, Bio-roids squid monsters, and Space Mars. Somehow the two to three good members just make everything nice. Barf.

[Florian]

Oi, were talking about an extremely saturated marked. The situation outside the USA is even more complicated, as imports (like PF) tend to be cheaper than homemade (like DSA for Germany), as they only need a license, translator and final editor (Friends and me did this to get funds as students, so, yeah, I actually know the difference there because I keep in touch with "pro" writers for local games - You´ll find my name in the credits beginning with Complete Divine up to Advanced Players Guide - german version)

[Slithery D]

I was really pumped for Starfinder, but I found the core book to be incomplete (lack of certain gear for each level, or a way to make our own). The monster math was kind of terrible and summon monster was barely satisfactory (sure lots of cosmetic variety but barely any special abilities).

It lacked the gear it needed to seem like a fun system. Sure I guess splat could save it eventually, but I find the setting to be garbage. The Gap basically ruins the setting and destroys world building. The Pact Worlds themselves are majority Evil and only lazy writing makes the overall Pact Society "good". Sure just ignore the consequence of you members being Drow, Undead, Far Realm Nightmares, with a neutral block of Robots, Bio-roids squid monsters, and Space Mars. Somehow the two to three good members just make everything nice. Barf.

Armory solves a lot of the gear and weapon gaps.

The Gap saves the setting, because it doesn't have to address what happened in Pathfinder's era and invalidate people's campaigns and rewrite their history or make up a "how Golarion got industrialized" history. Paizo has shown with Golarion's ridiculous history how bad they are at writing that stuff.

The mostly evil planets in the Pact Worlds have tiny populations compared to Aballon, Castrovel, Akiton, and the gas giants. If 10% of those planets are good then they enormously outnumber the evil people in system.

[Rhedyn]

The Gap saves the setting, because it doesn't have to address what happened in Pathfinder's era and invalidate people's campaigns and rewrite their history or make up a "how Golarion got industrialized" history. Paizo has shown with Golarion's ridiculous history how bad they are at writing that stuff

Not harming PF doesn't save the setting. Hell just make it an alternative universe.

Just because the history would be crap is no excuse for preventing history. We actually used a different system in that setting and boy were my players annoyed at the severe limitations the gap put on backstory and lore for their custom races.

It's also a terrible conceit

[thelastorphan]

If its sufficiently far into the future the gap is unnecessary. Let players fill it in how they want. That being said I don't really mind. I like the mystery aspect of it. My pet theory is that there is only a gap from the perspective of the rest of the pact worlds and that Golarion as we know it is preserved within the Starstone. Soldiering onward as the planet we are used to, unadvanced.

[Rhedyn]

If its sufficiently far into the future the gap is unnecessary. Let players fill it in how they want. That being said I don't really mind. I like the mystery aspect of it. My pet theory is that there is only a gap from the perspective of the rest of the pact worlds and that Golarion as we know it is preserved within the Starstone. Soldiering onward as the planet we are used to, unadvanced.

Yeah but the gap was all of 300 years ago.

[Almadelia]

If its sufficiently far into the future the gap is unnecessary. Let players fill it in how they want. That being said I don't really mind. I like the mystery aspect of it. My pet theory is that there is only a gap from the perspective of the rest of the pact worlds and that Golarion as we know it is preserved within the Starstone. Soldiering onward as the planet we are used to, unadvanced.

Problem is that it's 300 years ago. It's even part of the setting, there are elves alive in the present who just have a block of their memory completely wiped out, it's part of the reason they've gone full isolationist, Grey Elf style. Even the older dwarves would remember that when they were a kid nobody was in space or any of that stuff. Even for humans this is relatively recent, 300 years is the length of one dynastic cycle or the time from Charlemagne to Phillipe II, yeah it's a long time but no it isn't long enough ago for it to be "in the past". The Gap is lazy as hell, it's basically just throwing your hands up in the air and going "nobody knows lol". If you can't give an answer to a fundamental question of this magnitude, maybe the question shouldn't be part of the setting. Leaving it "to the players" is counterproductive because if you're leaving the biggest questions to me, why am I buying your setting books?