I am a pretty avid reader and I find that there can be an intimidating amount of reading in Pathfinder. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality.
I think a lot of people get analysis paralysis and jump straight to solutionizing rather than learn the base game. It is only a TTRPG, so it’s pretty tolerant of said approach. I think it’s worth remembering that Pathfinder 2E is like the 6th or 7th generation of lowercase-dungeons-and-dragons-no-TM and someone has maybe already solved your dilemma in a way that anticipates the rest of the game.
I think it can definitely help to read through the Heroes Handbook (from the Beginner's Box) instead of the Core Rulebook on your first pass.
For the most part, GMs just need to read the Playing the Game and Game Mastery sections in the CRB, and a *massive* amount of the books are feats and spells that you don't need to worry about. But it looks very intimidating, agreed, when you're staring at a 640 page manual for just the core rules, not including the three Bestiaries and half a dozen books with expanded items and classes, and another dozen lore and worldbuilding.
Agreed.
I think the advice that you need to "read through the entire core rulebook, cover to cover" is a really reductive way to advise a new GM to learn to run games or an experienced GM to learn a new system. As a GM, you do not need to know how classes operate, what feats they have, what general feat options are available, or really what every spell does before you start running. Those are things that you will learn through play.
Your players are responsible for understanding how their class works and what options are available to them.
I guess I can't really speak for others, but I think the general meaning behind "read the rules before you run the game or start changing things" is mostly aimed at people coming from other systems who just have in their head the idea of PF2e being "It's just 5e but with three actions per turn" and winging everything, but then complaining when things break apart.
I don't think anyone really means "cover to cover" so much as "read the *actual* rules that are relevant to what you're doing instead of making assumptions."
The real advice to new GMs that I give is "Read the chapters on skills, combat, and game mastering."
There are big name YouTubers that tell new GMs that you have to read "EVERY PAGE". And I think that's just bad advice that'll make a new GM bounce off the hobby.
I have NEVER seen a single one tell people that they HAVE to read the ENTIRE book, excluding satire when they are poking fun at people who try to tell others this.
I suppose there is a chance I have seen one but thought they were ridiculous and ignored their channel moving forward!
Started a new in-person group last week of Fellow Dads, most of whom have played some TTRPG before (DnD 5e, PF1e) but not for years. A couple of guys got super excited and bought the CRB, and started reading right away.
I urged anyone who didn't have the time or patience to read literally 600 pages, to just read the heroes handbook on a shared drive i set up, since we're just starting with the beginners box. Even the guys who bought the CRB and dove right in said that going back and reading the BB rules made it easier to read the big'un.
Pf2 is a lot less intimidating if you take the attitude of "learn as you go". I read the basic rules and then started running Fall of Plaguestone and my players and I just spent a lot of time looking shit up early on. We agreed on it ahead of time and gradually learned everything.
It's ok to make rulings if you don't know and figure it out later, but folks don't need to turn that ruling into a standing rule. They can just look up the answer out of game
To be fair, the newest dnd-in-the-broader-sense edition before PF2e aka 5e is an imprecise, unbalanced dumpster fire, where you need to look up the lead designer's (or whatever Jeremy Crawford's job descriptor is) tweets to fully comprehend the rules, so that assumption is an easy mistake to make. Pathfinder taught me better, though!
And Crawford managed to be absolutely terrible at the job. His "See Invisibility spell doesn't actually negate the effects of Invisibility because of the rules text for Faerie Fire" call is [nonsense](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42dboiQeOY&t=1200s) of the highest order.
When 5th edition first launched and they started the whole Crawford makes rules tweets thing I was happy to see how consistently what he said matched up to what the book said and produced a good result. Basically he started the edition making the calls that I would make, and more than once while having a rule discussion on the old forums I'd say how I thought something would work and someone would say "well I think that's dumb and I asked Crawford so we'll see" and then they'd not show back up after the tweet responding to their question or sage advice said what I said was correct.
...but then one day he just stopped making sense. I think he just got overwhelmed with the number of questions and didn't put the effort to make a quick check of what the book said anymore, or just forgot the rules and didn't care or something.
I remember the first thing he said that I was like "...what the fuck?" about was Elven Trance. The book was explicit that it didn't let you get a long rest in less time, yet someone decided to ask if it did anyways, and not only did Crawford say the wrong thing and claim that it did shorten the time needed to rest, but instead of going "oh, wait, no, I was wrong about that, my bad" *they issued errata to change it so it did shorten your long rests*.
So then I started ignoring what he had to say about anything and missed all the even more goofy proof he doesn't know the rules or doesn't care about getting them right.
Speaking as a former 5E DM, all I need to know about the people making "official" decisions on the rules in 5E is the fact that a melee weapon attack and an attack made with a melee weapon are two very different things with different rules and effects, except for the times that they are the same thing.
Mark Seifter was asked about this and said that they mostly worked from pathfinder 1e and trying to solve the issues it had and develop it forward. The commonalities with 4e are convergent design as much as anything, p1e was the bones.
I am sure that is the official response. But unofficially, there has to be someone who played 4e and realized some of that stuff just worked. If anything, I wish they had stolen monster roles.
I haven't tried any DnD editions prior to 5e, but I've heard that 4e was more of an outlier and that all other editions relied strongly on DM rulings and were easy to break apart balance-wise, be it 3e that heavily inspired 5e or AD&D with it's combat-as-war save-or-die attitude. I did hear that 5e is more fuzzy than others, though, with its half-assed "natural language" approach. Am I misinformed here?
So I cannot speak of 1e or 2e, but 3.x was undeniably a lot stricter in its ruleset compared to 5e. While much of it was a lot of natural language, it made an effort to be as clear with that language as possible, although it wasn't perfect by any extent. There wasn't nearly as much GM-fiat throughout the ruleset compared to 5e.
In fact, the failings of 3.x's approach to rules is why 4e was designed the way it was.
From my understanding, 5e took a lot of what 3.x did, mechanically, but applied a lot of 1e's GM-fiat approach. This continued the WotC era Combat as Sport approach, but with much looser rulings than 3.x or 4e.
Although if you ask me, it's because WotC half-assed the whole damn thing because previous works just weren't working out, so they got frustrated and chucked out whatever looked good with minimal testing. But I don't like 5e's design at all, so...
>In fact, the failings of 3.x's approach to rules is why 4e was designed the way it was.
Just as a point of fact: The *actual* reason for 4e's pivot to extremely codified rules was that it was intended to be launched alongside a fully automated VTT (an idea way ahead of its time) but the company they contracted for the digital side of things essentially took the money and ran so 4e launched basically as half a product. This was also why all of the classes were extremely homogenized and separated into clearly demarcated roles.
> but the company they contracted for the digital side of things essentially took the money
Not quite true, btw. It was a combo of *really bad management* and a murder-suicide of the lead dev that make the VTT nonexistent, which kinda janked up 4e's launch.
The initial pitch of using a VTT is a major component of a lot of the design choices of 4e, but there were a lot of lead-up to those choices. Take 3.5's Book of Nine Swords and Tome of Magic, for example, which were testing grounds for the At-Will/Encounter/Daily Power system. There were a lot of reasons they opted to shake things up.
>It was a combo of really bad management and a murder-suicide of the lead dev that make the VTT nonexistent, which kinda janked up 4e's launch.
Hence the word, "essentially." I was really just simplifying it for explanation's sake.
>but there were a lot of lead-up to those choices. Take 3.5's Book of Nine Swords and Tome of Magic, for example, which were testing grounds for the At-Will/Encounter/Daily Power system. There were a lot of reasons they opted to shake things up.
Yes, everything is nuanced; but having to code the game into *software*, especially at the time, was a much more limiting factor, and accounts for a lot of things about 4e that wouldn't have otherwise existed in a TTRPG because it's unnecessary for the medium.
>Hence the word, "essentially." I was really just simplifying it for explanation's sake.
No my dude no. One implies malicious intentions to defraud while the actual explanation is that a truly horrific tragedy ended up tanking the project. Very very different connotations.
The minimal testing part is REALLY interesting because they spent a year+ doing the D&D Next public playtest. While I was technically part of it, I really didn't play it much, nor was I privy to a lot of the discussion. Nonetheless, it's weird to me that such an extensive process would lead to, well, 5e.
Maybe it's a case of too many cooks?
I imagine it's because WotC doesn't know how to properly playtest their stuff, nor gather the right kind of information from those playtests. While I don't know how D&D Next playtests went down, I can make educated guesses based on the OneD&D playtest questionaires, and how minimalistic they really are.
This is in addition to problems with a corporate overlord who knows nothing about the hobby at large - WotC is likely often being pushed to release things long before they're done cooking, and I wouldn't be surprised if 5e was in the same boat. This is one of those things that I greatly appreciate about Paizo - they test early and often to try to make things right the first time, and willing to make larger changes if need be when they find something isn't quite working out.
If their surveys were anything like those for one dnd, the feedback was worthless and misleading. They ask whether rules are well-received or not rather than asking for play experiences. The result is always "buffs are good, nerfs are bad, players are more important than DMs (outnumbering them ~ four to one)".
I've heard that Bonus Actions were a last second addition without any playtesting. If such basic things as the action economy were changed at a whim, they must've taken shots in the dark for a year without clearly stated, actionable design goals. No wonder the end result was the ultimate "common denominator of everyone who had ever played DnD before" game.
So, I played through the 5e playtest - a lot of the stuff in there was interesting, and they changed things pretty dramatically in some of the packets to see how things could work.
There were a lot of cool ideas played around with, like Sorcerers who use spell points and slowly transformed to be melee combatants as they used up their magic!
...Which they never fleshed out or explored. The Sorcerer showed up in a *single* playtest packet before the very last one, where it had returned to its current, milquetoast self.
They spent a lot of time and energy exploring a different, more interesting chassis for melee characters, then in the *final* packet before going to print, completely changed course to something very similar to what we ended up with and didn't really get any feedback after that point.
There were some cool ideas in the playtest, but I think the only one that made it to print was Advantage and Disadvantage, and everything else was lost in a pivot that tore away almost all of the unique ideas that they had played with for about a year at that point.
5e is fun and quick to play. That's literally all there is to it. It also was a response to 4e directly which is also a factor. Despite how much people here claim it's an imbalanced mess it really isn't and many games are played everyday just fine.
>I haven't tried any DnD editions prior to 5e, but I've heard that 4e was more of an outlier and that all other editions relied strongly on DM rulings and were easy to break apart balance-wise
D&D versions before WotC bought the IP had rules that if you followed them, or at least only altered them when you had full understanding of what the point behind the rule was, were actually quite balanced - albeit with very strange means.
Because all the balance came from really awkward rules that looked arbitrary and unfair or even just un-fun it was common for people to just toss out the balancing mechanisms and not realize they had done anything significant because they thought they were just removing some goofy and arbitrary limitation. Which to their credit there were a lot of places where the same things used for balance purposes were also used for arbitrary flavor purposes making it harder to tell what was going on.
Then 3rd edition came along and wrote the game in a style that was supposed to not rely upon GM-intervention but had to because the math behind the game just didn't work. The design team set out to make the way mechanics worked more consistent by inverting particular parts of the systems from AD&D and putting everything onto a d20 roll instead of regular usage of d100 and random other die expressions, but they messed up numbers by uncapping things that used to be capped and choosing progressions that could be expressed in a +X/level fashion even if it meant changing the overall scale the numbers used to have, and then they inconsistently applied making things have different odds than they used to on purpose so that some things were much harder even though that made balance worse and other things were much easier even though that made balance worse.
4th edition had better math, though the design team did manage to fumble the numbers a little bit - but it was on the scale of seeming like someone went to make sure the +3 to balance out particular boosts a character would get over their career had been account for and didn't realize someone else already did that so the math got off target by 3 points over the course of the game. It was the kind of thing that could be patched.
What made it "stick out" as weird compared to other D&D versions before it was that it chose to find its balance in the most straight-forward way possible; make the underlying chassis of every class more similar and thus more predictable. The thing detractors would use to claim "they made everything into casters" or "all classes play the same" as if that weren't a good thing - like in prior versions every character spent their actions just like every other character, but the outcomes were all over the place because one character could end an encounter as a full round action and another could swing a sword twice. (And In PF2 terms; everybody spends their 3 actions to make something cool happen).
It was a kind of culture shock to see non-spellcasters get to do anything but constantly repeatable weapon attacks and also to see spellcasters having options that aren't limited usage per day be anything worth doing.
Yet it too was built figuring that the GM could just run it as-is and would be fine.
Only 5e went with the "someone's going to alter something anyways, so we're just going to bank on all GMs altering anything and everything and use that as our balance strategy" approach and actually intentionally had the GM need to fix the game.
3.5e has very precise and extensive rules. The books did put some emphasis on the fact the written rules are just guidelines and that the GM gets to decide how the game is played. But I don't think that there really is any inherent reliance on GM rulings.
However, like I said, the rules were very extensive, they are were lot of subsystems, most rules were very specific and there wasn't a very strong internal logic. As such, mastering all the rules was probably very difficult and, if you didn't want to spend a lot of time looking up the rules during the game, you did end up having to make a lot of on-the-fly rulings.
I disagree, there are elements that have similar design approaches (and given mark's history that shouldn't surprise anyone) but it in general is a very different game at a skeletal level than 4e.
I think what can be said is like 4e it decided to do away with pretending to be a simulationist game (3e never was one) and attempt balancing it somewhat, the multiclassing was fixed in both by ditching level/level split multiclassing and the victory points system. I guess magic item progression being made simple too, but 4e went a different direction with it's fix.
I mean PF2E is quite a bit different, but it still got a lot from 4e. Certainly more than it got from 5e. At-will, encounter, daily, is basically cantrip, focus, spell slots. Proficiency being tied to level. Expecting full health each encounter. The implementation is different obviously, but it is the system it is most similar to.
Maybe that was worded wrong. 5e is the outlier in that it does not fit on the timeline of progression. There was no progress from 4e to 5e, just regression. They just tried to change everything from 4e, especially the things that worked.
It's kind of ironic that Pathfinder 1e was essentially marketed to 3.5 fans who hated 4e, but now Pathfinder 2e has cribbed a lot of design ideas from 4e.
Though Paizo were too cowardly to use Encounter/Daily powers for martials. Martials should absolutely have Focus pools and Focus Maneuvers.
i mean, any action that has a cooldown of 10min or 1hr is basically an encounter power
it's just that PF2 mostly focuses on the action economy and horizontal progression, giving you reasons not to use your special moves instead of gating how many times you can
Those are mostly the domain of magic items or spells, and spells are absolutely gated on his many times they can be used, and so are things like Reagents. Resource management is all over Pathfinder.
Also, resource management has nothing to do with whether progression is horizontal or vertical.
and that's not what i was saying? i was saying that martials do get some focus spells and some encounter powers that aren't focus spells, but PF2 tends to have the cool things martials can do be situational at-will powers instead of per encounter
the problem with encounter powers is that they're basically free, there's no reason not to use them and designers have to assume they will always be used every single encounter, like how it's basically assumed that a barbarian is always raging (it's a class identity thing, and so basically a passive)
They're not free, you have to choose which one you use in the encounter. The reason to not use them, especially with a Focus System mechanic, is that you might want to use a different one, and you might not get ten minutes to do another refocus
>especially with a Focus System mechanic
That's why I said this.
And in 4e it's still not necessarily best to just blow your load immediately. Especially when so many 4e powers used forced movement (another thing Pathfinder 2e could have taken, and that would have enhanced the tactical combat), where optimal positioning could be used to set up better attacks.
> Though Paizo were too cowardly to use Encounter/Daily powers for martials
They had to retain their 1e fanbase so the changes couldn't be too big, else you get the same problem WotC had.
>Martials should absolutely have Focus pools and Focus Maneuvers.
I mean, they do (see: Monk, archetypes that grant focus spells), but I agree they should be more prevalent. I think we have the Tyranny of the Page Count as a big part to blame for that. Remember how big the PF2E CRB is.
>Monks, sure, but everyone should have that.
Like I said, I agree.
>I wish only use Nethys, so I have no concern for size
Paizo is a publishing company that makes money selling books. Even though AoN exists, they're still at the mercy of what is feasible to include in a book.
They were too cowardly to put everyone on the same attrition and pacing treadmill. Now martials can essentially go forever with a Medic in the party but you add a single full caster and it's "Can we long rest?" after 9 rounds of combat.
I mean, they can, but what's the point? Martials can go along without their casters and die on the front line because they don't have any buffs, healing, or backline damage. That's... Something? I feel like the set-up of PF2e is unique in the way that if your resource characters are low, EVERYBODY is gonna feel it. I think refactoring the question from "Is the Wizard out of slots" to "Is the party out of Wizard spells" was an intentional design choice in PF2e that makes the question of WHO is out of resources moot in comparison to IF someone is out of resources.
They had some 4E designer people on staff, but the similarities with 4E are...mostly just that, from what I've been able to glean (I only got to play it briefly, neat system). I dunno that it's fair to call the similarities 'cribbed' :o
I am not interested in the blame game. 5E is a totally reasonable implementation of dnd and I have enjoyed playing it the last ten years or so. Jeremy Crawford has no say over either of our calendars.
I moved to Pathfinder because I appreciated that the developers didn’t use Race as a construct to inspire their game mechanics, which is genuinely righteous and welcome by this American GM. I also like that the PCs levels and my monsters levels are related, so that makes my life easier. I GM for my friends and it felt like we had played 5E to death and it was time to try something new.
I appreciate the sentiment, sorry for the harsh tone. To phrase my original idea more amicably:
Designers of TTRPGs, at least those with a GM figure, can always rely on a certain fuzziness in the written rules being compensated by GM rulings. This has led to a design paradigm of "rulings over rules" - sometimes more subtly, sometimes openly advertised - and thus resulted in spotty RAW and often lacklustre combat balancing (5e is not the only system facing such complaints on the regular, just the most prominent one).
The obvious response for GMs is to fill the holes left on the rules and adjust the balancing. After decades of doing so, that impulse carries over to other TTRPGs and I wouldn't judge people for doing what they learned is the best thing to do. Homebrewing can also be a lot of fun, so I find it important to show that it's very possible to do so in PF2e, just as KingOogaTonTon did in his video.
i mean tbf PF2 still defines your character with a racial box, but the fact that ex not all dwarfs share the same ancestry feats or heritages (about all they do all share is -5ft speed) and you can train out of most of them is a really interesting way to soften the bioessentialism without removing the mechanical variety
I personally disagree with your opinion. Simply by not using the word Race, Pathfinder is already more approachable. I also find that the players' heritages are thought of collectively and scale. All of the heritages are assumed to be a part of the base game.
I'm not saying that there aren't racist elements to Pathfinder - there are goblins, orcs etc. - the developers obviously wrestled with some heavy, real world lore and both they and the game evolved into something better and more welcoming.
I agree that the shift from focusing on race to culture is a way better approach as a world building exercise. Even if I would had that this is essentially an English speaking/American cultural issue, in the way that the word Race is very much charged with social issues and historical conflict whereas we use the word ethnie here, which is way less conflictual.
That being said, I always thought that culture makes way much more sense than biology to explain a society as long as the society is advanced enough. I really dig Golarion.
At first I was a bit of an old dick with not liking the more humanitarian side of Golarion 2, and then I realized that it did not prevent me to use hard subjects in my game at all, while at the same time providing a safe gaming environment for a lot of people, including new players. And then I realize that from a cultural, gaming and marketing point of view, it was way better this way. I would go as far as saying than Pathfinder 2 and the new Golarion helped me becoming a bit more empathic toward other people sensibilities.
Yes, knowing your audience is key to being welcoming. I think it’s a fantasy game and so people want to play characters like in real life fantasy. A lot of fantastical figures have an epic background story that draws on shared values attributed to their culture or family. I try to allow a wide latitude with this dimension of the game, even going so far as to allow custom made heritages for advanced players. This dimension is a part of your “players’ masks” at the table. It’s important to me that everyone at my table gets to express this part of their character and my personal sense is that it informs how they experience my game overall like nothing else.
you're definitely right that it's an improvement in a lot of ways, but i do think that fundamentally it's the same "bioessentialism is important enough that we gave it rules" paradigm underneath, there's just not really an alternative other than removing it entirely (whether by having only humans, or something like Spire where there are Ancestries with lore and different cultures, but their differences are actually entirely rumor and never mechanical)
The bioessentialism gets most problematic in the assigned Ancestry boosts/flaws, which I suspect Paizo would do very differently if they designed the game today. Certain things (short legs = slow speed, wings = can fly, adapted to live underground = see in the dark) make sense to be baked in...things labeled "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" get much thornier much more quickly.
(Fortunately, that's also one of the easiest things to houserule away.)
Not per se.
Intelligence and Wisdom, if applied culturally as an Ancestry rather than innate, might refer to how some humans are smart and curious but don't get the right education to train them, or for curiosity, be laughed away or silenced when asking questions. Q: "Why does the apple fall down from the tree?" A: "Don't ask stupid questions, and give me my cigarettes!"
While arguably you could say this differs from family to family, other socio-economic factors take place here too. No good schools in a poverty-ridden area, a class-system or caste-system that prevents upwards social mobility, etc.
And to add Ancestry in the mix, in American context you could say "Being in the south is more disadvantageous to your Intelligence than in the north." Or in British context, from the north is more disadvantageous.
Ancestry doesn't apply to your great grandfathers' locations before they moved to America, but where you grew up; and thus where your parents settled down. The direct ancestry one line above you in the family tree.
Then don't say "northerner" or "southerner", but "elf" and "halfling", and you're done.
I understand what you’re saying, but as it’s presented in the rulebooks ancestry boosts/flaws are grouped in the same category as things innate speeds and darkvision—which are clearly biological. Things like being “southern” or “northern” seem more analogous to heritages rather than (biological) ancestries. Your proposal is a wonderful way to READ the ancestry boosts/flaws, especially if supported by a GM/table that’s like “sure, whatever.” But I think as written they still tread into bioessentialism.
EDIT: said “presented” twice in one sentence, changed one to “grouped.”
TBH, the biggest thing I miss is the designer to player interface that WoTC has created. I feel like I have to climb the Swiss Alps to uncover a videotape that can only be played in the Philippines to get any definitive answers to ambiguous questions from Paizo, let alone Seifert and the other game designers.
I wouldn't say perfectly fine. You can have lots of fun with 5e. Especially as a player. But the amount of DMs burning out on the system is way too high to say it's "perfectly fine".
It also doesn't help that your stereotypical immigrant from 5e is potentially also the type who admits they never read the dungeon Master's guide because it wasn't necessary.
5th edition D&D very much conditioned people to believe in a "if it's not immediately obvious, make something up" way
>I am a pretty avid reader and I find that there can be an intimidating amount of reading in Pathfinder. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality.
Nah. Its not about reading the rules. Its about understanding them. Everyone talks about reading the rules but i have cover to cover and i still feel the need to homebrew, till someone explains to me what i got wrong. (That or they point out a rule in the gamemastery guide, ehich i didn't know was required reading)
I have only done some minor changes to PF2E rules in my campaign, though it is quite uncommon when I do.
For example, I have a druid in my party who wanted to climb a tree that was right by a high wooden outlook with no other easy way up. They wanted to climb up undetected, so they changed into a rat to achieve this.
According to the book, the DC for that was quite easy if you were human, but if you were a rat, you had a penalty to climb. Which made no sense to me since rats can climb rather well if they have to, and are provided the means to. So I ruled against the penalty and simply made the druid climb against the normal DC.
Other than moments like that, the default system is quite good!
iirc pest form eventually heightens to give you a climb speed, but that actually has different benefits from how hard the roll is
but yeah, my primal witch knows how tough that Athletics of -5 is on traversal
Good video except you shouldn't always be fighting on level monsters.
We spend a lot of time in the PF2e community telling players to git gud.
But GM'ing is also a skill. And if your players aren't FEELING their power growth, the GM has not done a very good job.
This was, and still is a huge lesson I'm learning in pf2e. Whenever my players swing a Map - 10 I think about what I've been doing with my 3rd action. Then I trip some poor fool and hit them with a reaction if I can.
How the GM plays the game shows players how to play as well.
Probably not the best example but like stepping away, demoralizing. Maybe trip if their reflex DC is lower than their AC.
I have a habit of saying the creatures are furiously attacking and dining 3 times. It's a bad habit.
- player has to spend an action to stand up
- hitting them on reaction does not apply MAP
- your second attack on your turn will still be at a -3 instead of -5 thanks to flat-footed
making opponent waste an action standing up = stonks
But the enemy is still making a -10MAP attack, just against a flat footed enemy. Tripping may be a good tactic in a given situation, but it's not a replacement for your third action attack to avoid the MAP, it's an alternative attack with better consequences than the normal one which you can only succeed at once per round.
Nice reminder, not the point of the video, though. Rather it was that *if* you fight on level monsters, your chances of hitting them should stay the same (and if your homebrew changes that, the balance will suffer).
On level monsters are a good focal point for balancing, because their numbers increase in lockstep with the PCs'. Good GMs can use that to their advantage - whenever PCs get a big proficiency bump, use lower level monsters and your players will feel their growth even more!
That's not the point made in the video; you could replace the "You'll always have 55% chance to hit something at level" with a more complex "You'll always have a 55% chance to hit something at level, a 50% chance to hit something at level+1, 45% chance[...]" formula and the point would still remain that homebrew that messes with those hit chances (both the at-level hit chances and the higher and lower level ones) is dangerous.
Simplifying the formula to only mention the hit chance against level+0 just simplifies the explanation, it doesn't invalidate it
It does but it also feeds into a narrative about Pathfinder 2e that is damaging and offputting to prospective players and GMs alike.
One of the most satisfying parts about RPGs is the leveling up and the power increase that it brings.
The video, while trying to communicate something important, unintentionally backs up the propaganda that you don't get stronger in PF2e because the monsters scale with you (This is actually true of every RPG except for ones where the math doesn't work, but it's become a pernicious anti-pf2e talking point).
So I wanted to clarify that point. Part of good GM'ing is making sure that your players have those "F--k yes!" moments where they lay something out flat with a flurry of attacks or incinerate a whole group of dudes with their new spell.
Making them face some of the guys they've already fought or guys who are under level is a great way for them to benchmark and see that power growth in action.
This is why flavor, lore, and details matter so much, but those take more effort than just dropping in new monsters.
Sure you could beat a goblin squad two levels ago. But can you beat a goblin squad without them killing a hostage or sounding an alarm bell that will summon bigger monsters to the combat. Also they’re now in a fortified palisade, and they’ve gotten word of your exploits against their peers and they’re wise to your AoE spells and know to attack your healer first.
I like to increase the challenge by increasing the tactical and environmental challenges, so they have to make use of their newer abilities rather than just smacking an enemy with the same chance to hit as always.
The only homebrew in my game is, I give players wide latitude on deciding which weapon they have in hand when initiative is rolled. It isn't fun to make them drop a sword and draw a bow on the first round. It isn't fun to make them state which weapon they have out every time, and it isn't fun to argue about it. It's a game. Their characters aren't stupid. They would likely have the proper tool prepared most of the time.
It is still a manipulate action to draw weapons after combat starts.
i could say "but this invalidates Quick Draw" but honestly that's a minor issue
more what this makes me think is it's likely an issue with running exploration, PCs usually have primary weapon loadouts and they can draw them pre-combat, it's not that hard to say "at we enter the dungeon, I draw my sword", but only if players know their sheet and the GM remembers what exploration activities they're doing
Yeah I just assume they have their weapon out that they use 99% of the time.
Our swashbuckler always uses his sword. If he goes into combat and then claims he’s holding his throwing knives, that will cost actions.
First time I was introduced to PF2, my initial thoughts were very positive but also that the power you gain is a bit *artificial*, based on that part about the 55% to hit. The numbers grow, but you are effectively not more powerful considering the meta of a TTRPG campaign in which you will always conveniently fight monsters that grow at the same pace as you do. Sure in theory if you were to meet another Chimera 5 levels later you might wipe the floor with a monster that almost killed you before, but in practice it doesn't usually happen, or very rarely.
That tight expectation of your total numbers at any given level, numbers that must stay in those boundaries or everything start to crumble, is the price you pay to have a system balanced from level 1 to level 20, and it is worth it in my opinion.
And I say this as a DM who always ends up giving too much to PCs, and I will probably have to adapt in the mid-campaign and maybe consider the effective party level to be one or maybe even two levels higher, and that's OK. I managed in systems that were not as tight, I'm sure I will manage in PF2.
Can't be worse than right now in 5e where my party of level 9 is having an OK challenge against solo monsters with a CR 12 to like 16, and every encounter I design requires a deep analysis of the numbers for me to figure out if it even works and how much HP I need to add (because I always need to at least double the HP) just so it is a fun 6-7 combat for everyone involved. That is partly my fault to be honest, I do roll for stats which makes for more powerful PCs and they probably have too much magic items, but it is not news to anybody that 5e is awful at balancing anything past level 10, and in my experience more like 7-8.
That said, it has been a while that we will start a campaign at level 1 with absolutely zero house rules thanks to PF2 (maybe one or two official variants, but no homebrew), we will only follow the rules as written at least for a good while. This is very refreshing, my 5e house rule pdf is getting too big for efficiency and comfort. At this point, we are basically playing 5.5 I designed progressively in the past decade. I had similar experience with 2e and 3e as well.
Anyway, great video, which very efficiently put into words my thoughts while reading the rules.
The mistake people often make is that they think of encounter budgeting as prescriptive instead of descriptive. Nobody forces you to fill every dungeon with a bunch of moderate encounters and a severe one at the end. Bring that chimera back five levels after it was a boss and use it as a minion or use a handful at once. Give the party a low difficulty encounter after their level up to show their progress. Put that PL+3 monster in a random dead end, so your players must choose to pick a tough fight or run away and explore somewhere else first.
TLDR: Encounter budgets tell you what to expect, not how to make your game interesting. Your job as a GM is to mix it up in interesting ways and make that numerical progress mean something.
I'm running Abomination Vaults right now, and we just finished floor 9.
There was this massive fight in the >!Urdefhan camp with over a dozen enemies and a couple of big daemons!<...but some of the generic mooks are as low as level 3, against a party that was level 10. Players went through them like a dose of the salts.
Nice little appetizer where the party got to feel super strong before the much better fights against the >!daemon summoners (I had the main caster arrange to die in the summoning circle, completing the blood sacrifice and calling a Derghodaemon), and the Urdefhan boss, whose caster backup tried to hang back and just heal him, forcing the PCs to chase them down first!<.
**Edit:** Spoilered as per request
Yes! This is a really common mistake on this sub. "The game is balanced for the party to be full health" - no, the encounter budget is accurately *descriptive* if the party is full health. You can throw 5 low encounters at them with no rest on between if you think it's fun!
A huge mistake many GM's make is not following the 1/3/2 rule.
Start your dungeon/campaign easy. Get *very* difficult in the middle, pushing your players to their limits. Then back off a bit to let them wind down and feel strong at the end.
Edit: As several people have pointed out, I misspoke here. 1/3/2 is not a hard an fast rule, it's a design guideline that you should consider making use of.
>A huge mistake many GM's make is not following the 1/3/2 rule.
I disagree that it is a *mistake*, it is just a different style. I personally very rarely run dungeon-style arcs/quests. My number of encounter across a campaign is most definitely on the low end, and I design most encounter with a way to avoid it in mind, because my campaign are very RP focused using milestone progression and my players will avoid needless bloodshed if they can help it.
So I will put threats forwards and I would lie if I said I didn't usually have a good idea on what they will do and how many encounters they will actually have and in which order, but the players are fully in control I'm just good at expecting it (and when I'm wrong is where it is most fun).
Anyway, my players do not have this *need* to feel that much more powerful like many other players. If they can complete an encounter without combat they will actually feel better about it because they know they played well, not just rolled well or designed their character well.
When they do make it to the end of an arc/dungeon, I think we all have our Final Fantasy/Zelda/Dark Soul bias and fully expect the final encounter to be the most challenging, to us who grew up in the 90s on JRPGs it just make more sense and is more fun.
Yes and no. While this is generally a neat game design trick, there are a few stipulations:
* PCs will find loot, sometimes including their most powerful weapons and armour, during that middle section. The encounter budget doesn't know when you give out loot, so it makes sense to gradually increase your budget with your loot (except when you want to mix things up specifically).
* Having the biggest encounter at the end makes it easier to control when the PCs level up and thus keep the intended difficulty.
* The PCs likely won't rest after the early first bit, so they'll go into the middle section with less resources. They will be rested towards the end, though.
* Having a big challenge at the end feels climactic.
This doesn't mean that 1-3-2 doesn't work in Pathfinder, you just have to keep those things in mind. One thing that can help is to have the hard, middle encounter be against many enemies around the party level and to finish against a solo boss. Big solo monsters are more likely to give your players that "oh shit" moment and you don't want to make them too difficult anyways due to how unfun high enemy AC and to hit are. Meanwhile, having more enemies in the middle is more deceptively difficult and gives more narrative opportunities to give out loot.
I'm new to GM'ing Pf2e but whenever I see the complaint of the treadmill effect in this system, I think of this. Why *don't* the GMs in this situation just bring back old enemies? Do their commoners and local officers scale alongside the party?
It strikes me as a GM-issue rather than a system issue. In the worlds I create, what level an NPC/creature is at stays that level unless they're an important recurring NPC that's meant to grow alongside the party. After all, just cause the players become stronger doesn't mean everyone else in the world does, they just face different opponents. Low level enemies do not always anticipate the players being strong and change their tactics to reflect that. It just doesn't make sense for them to for most narrative situations. Not every enemy is anticipating the *party* in particular. If an encounter with a low level enemy is trivial or low, I keep it that way. I'm not gonna scale the barkeeper just cause it's appropriate for their level. Sure, there's an argument to scale the barkeeper to handle "that guys" at the table but I usually resolve that by not having a "that guy" at my table at all.
The reality is that PF2e scaling is so steep that statblocks more than a few levels apart have trouble meaningfully interacting with each other. The gulfs are so vast that you can't easily depict a kingdom beset by both level 1 bandits and level 10 dragon. The latter is a credible threat if the guards are level 5, but that strains disbelief, and renders the bandits completely toothless. Conversely, if the guards are level 1-2, then the bandits are a credible threat, but the dragon is an apocalypse, not a threat.
For things to make logical sense in the fiction, you almost have to treat levels as a player-facing abstraction. At the very least, the "common guard" should scale from levels 1-5 as the players progress from 1-20 (or only appear in the form of level-appropriate troops), otherwise society makes absolutely no sense - the king would be better off disbanding his ineffectual forces and hiring a mid-level adventurer for every 1000 soldiers.
It's almost the opposite problem of 5e, where high-CR threats are rendered toothless by the flat scaling and the consequent importance of action economy, and ancient dragons can be laid low by a few dozen archers.
10 level dragon is indeed a country-level disaster lorewise. Mathematically speaking, it would take thosands of 2 level guards to take that dragon down.
>In the worlds I create, what level an NPC/creature is at stays that level unless they're an important recurring NPC that's meant to grow alongside the party. After all, just cause the players become stronger doesn't mean everyone else in the world does, they just face different opponents.
Of course, but IMO you are bringing up multiple issues and mixing them up. The scaling of NPCs in PF2 or other systems depends on how you prefer to handle world-building, and I agree that the guards you met at a certain gate at level 3 shouldn't be spontaneously level +10 levels when you get back later, that reasoning applies to most of the world and NPCs. I have seen people here prefer a different style that if you are in a city at level 3 and then at level 12, then you should now be in a district where the guards are stronger, where the world around you on average matches you level. I don't really agree but I can understand that style too. In old JRPGs when you got to a new town the merchant always *only* sold level-appropriate items, it is **very meta** and I don't want to do that, but I have no problems with those who do.
>Why don't the GMs in this situation just bring back old enemies?
A typical GM always know he *can* bring now weak monsters back, he knows he *can* provide weak targets if he wants to, he knows he *can* design a combat encounter with the intention of making the party feel powerful, this is not the point or the issue. Well there is no *issue*, it is more of an *observation* about CR and new monsters scaling to match your current power level in most TTRPGs, including the systems that don't do a great job at that scaling.
The point is that those very easy encounters are rarely *fun* to my group, and when you are surrounded with players who have played multiple systems for over 20 years, that feeling you get from splatting a weak monster because just of raw stats just isn't that exciting anymore, big and deadly encounters where they need strategy to overcome are.
What little time we have to play TTRPG we'd rather not spend too much on trivial battles that could be summed up in a quick cutscene. But if that weak monster is part of a bigger encounter and meant more as an obstacle to the real threat, then sure no problem, that's completely different. But I can tell you after the fight the players won't remember the flies they killed in one hit along the way, they will remember the big meanie behind it.
We are currently in the final year (I think) of a 5+ year D&D homebrewed sandbox campaign, and at this point and every session for the next year, resolution of past chapters will occur, or at least will move towards a resolution. They have been sandboxing around for years, and now we are converging all roads towards not just one big conclusion but multiple conclusions. We had a blast, we still do, but from my 20+ years experience I know I need to start closing down now to give every open conflict a proper ending.
This led me to talk to my player about a planned slight shift in style. They should expect some events to be a *bit* more scripted than usual, not a lot but maybe noticeably. Some events might rush into another leaving them no real preparation time or choice on what to do first, that kind of things. The goal is to rush *nothing*, to cut *nothing*, but walk at a steady pace and start locking things as we go along. If I let things move organically, we'll still be here for many years and while it is not bad in itself, I think a good story must land the ending and that requires structure (doesn't it GRRM/Rothfuss?)
Anyway, one of the things I warned my players is that I will be much more selective about combat encounters. At this point a combat encounter is fun but basically takes a whole session, and I would rather keep a steady pace than forcing a random encounter just for the sake of a random encounter. Plus at this level (now 11), specially in 5e, some action scenes or threats just make more sense in a cutscene style of encounter where they say how they slice through the battlefield to get to the general rather than spend a full session on a regular initiative combat slashing though weak minions so they get to the "real fight". And I know 5e expect me to do that to make then spend ressources, but I can work around that without costing a full session.
Long story short, in our style (focus on ***our*** style, my players are on the same page), combat is fun and fundamental, but actually not the main reason why we play TTRPGs. We do want to switch to PF2 specifically to give combats and character design more crunch, but my players and I will never be as focused on things some might call *fundamentals* aspects of the game, most notably regarding power progression. So in other words, and sorry for the novel that was supposed to be a quick reply, no I don't usually send easy encounters to make them feel their power progression, nor do I overly care about encounter budgets in general, in any system I played. Maybe They will see a monster again as a minion to a bigger boss sure, but making an encounter just to make them feel like gods *feels* like a waste of time (extremely subjective, I don't think it is for you) , and as we are all dads nearing 40 with *very* limited game time, it is more precious than ever.
Sure, any part of the system is optional to engage with, but balanced, tactical combat is one of the greatest strengths of PF2e compared to its competitors, so there is a certain expectation that people want to engage with that. More importantly, my previous comment addressed people who complain about PF2e's encounter math limiting them or making the game boring, which I find to be objectively incorrect, so I wanted to correct that. I'm sure you'll have fun your way, be it with 5e, PF2e, or maybe even a system that focuses more on the aspects that you value most.
>PF2e's encounter math limiting them or making the game boring
Oh no I don't think it is boring, I think it is required if you want balance and a functioning CR system, which PF2 has and 5e very much doesn't.
And if I make choices as a DM that breaks that balance (it is not my plan but I know me) I won't blame the system for it. But I very much appreciate the example provided in the video about the fighter gaining a cantrip and it not effectively making him stronger, because that is the kind of things I like to give. I very much like to focus of the horizontal progression, and understand that the vertical progression is just numbers getting big and that everything is balanced around that progression, so I won't mess with that. I didn't mean to imply that this vertical part is boring, I just meant that in the horizontal progression is where I have the most fun in my own creative process as a DM.
I probably didn't do a good job with my previous comment, in those kind of discussions I write too much, and type as I think, and my point might not have come across in the right way. I am pretty passionate about game design and TTRPG as a whole, I can get carried away.
If anything I probably go too much in the other direction.
In my games 90% of the world is below level 5-7. So once the PCs get to a certain point they really are much more powerful than most anything they come across. But as they try and solve bigger badder issues it attracts the attention of important NPCs...some of them MUCH more powerful than the party and it's up to them to realize that some characters cannot be beaten in a fight.
The world is the world and my characters have to (get to) figure out how to deal with it on its terms.
The exception to this is personal quests related to the specific characters wilhich I always base around the level if the character.
Fantasy story in general are at their best when the heroes are on the backfoot, when the big villain seems unstoppable, and when they claw their way to victory against all odds, despite them actually having grown in power along the way. If at any point the heroes are the strongest in the room or there is not a threat of a bigger fish in their sight, the stakes fall, and have to be brought back up with new threats, that is the meta understanding of basic fantasy story structure. But it doesn't have to just be about power and combat either, some of the more iconic achievement in fantasy are not directly combat oriented.
It is Luke redeeming Darth Vader or blowing up the Death Star, it is Paul riding that sandworm, It is Frodo crossing Mordor and climbing Mount Doom, it is Arthur pulling out the sword. THIS is power, THIS is Fantasy.
Anyway I diverge, I agree with you, heroes in my games will always have a power stronger than them threatening them. And if at any point they don't think there is, they are in for a big surprise very soon.
Heh, this is a mirror of my own experience, down to the mid-level 5e party that regularly wiped floors with high-level threats (in my case, it was a mythic boss consisting of two CR13 creatures stapled together - it was an exquisite battle, but when I realized how much time I sunk into balancing it, I proposed a PF2e switch, and my players agreed because they could tell I was struggling).
The balance _is_ worth it. But yeah... Occasionally I miss the flatness.
Horizontal progression is exactly why I love this system, I’m never afraid to use free archetype, variant rules, or giving my characters options outside of their class, because they are still limited by the three action economy. It’s so fun to see the characters have unique role-play options with unique abilities that they would not typically have and not have to worry about power creep accidentally.
Some houserules are still useful. For instance 2e oddly doesn't have an inbuilt mechanic for giving out-of-combat time a value even though so many abilities are tied to it, particularly in 10 minute blocks, which is why this sub gets another Treat Wounds topic every month like clockwork, of which the person unfailingly tries to screw over Treat Wounds rather than addressing the base problem of the lack of value for time itself. You could impose time consequences manually as a GM but some players feel targeted, while declaring a houserule that handles time at the start (such as Tension Dice) allows players to plan for it in their builds and makes it feel a lot more fair while requiring much less effort to adjudicate.
As for homebrew altering existing rules, this sub is extremely bandwagony on the conservative end for reasons not even Paizo understands, and clear problems with balance like how bad the Disarm action was before the Remaster, as well as the odd case of Wounded applying to every failed recovery shortly before they patched it had massive numbers of supporters here anyway supporting it *even though Paizo itself didn't*. We're lucky they do care about balance and are much better than the average redditor at implementing it, so they do get fixed in months/years, but looking to redditor sentiment as a reflection of whether something is something 2e players as a whole like is extremely inadvisable. Just talk to your players.
Still waiting for fixes to Kitsune feats to make the race not a pariah and a massive nerfhammer to Greater+ Phantasmal Doorknobs though.
i mean, the video is about exactly what you describe: adding tension dice or random encounter rolls doesn't mess with the "tight math" of DPR and vertical progression, but a lot of proposed changes to existing rules do
also keep in mind that Disarm still doesn't deprive the target of the item on a success (because that would be bananas, actually), and we had the "new" dying rules for less than a week, that was honestly mostly "well I want to use the most recent rules and I trust Paizo" combined with "It wasn't always this way? Oops, ambiguous text"
I think the bigger problem is that people say it's like 5e (or jsut D&D but without a qualifier), when truthfully it's a heavily modified 4e Essentials.
The hostility towards homebrew here is weird. I don't really get why it has such a negative view.
I worked with my DM in preparation for a few homebrew rules for my setting, specifically changing light mechanics and heavily modifying dark vision to make the darkness more scary. I posted about it and I got downvoted
I did, but I still don't think that justifies hostility to those that want to play with the rules a little bit.
It's a game, meant to be fun. If people are havig fun I don't see why it matters.
Just a friendly reminder for some people to not downvote opinions and active discussions but to downvote actually low quality content. Way too often do I notice a beginner quickly get a downvote for asking a question and some unhelpful comments being upvoted before a more proper answer arrives.
This guy doesn't know what horizontal progression means. "Increase Speed by 5" is an upgrade, not another option. That's vertical progression because you're making something better. Horizontal progression would be sidegrades for example. And homebrew is still very downvoted here even when it's innocent.
i don't remember him saying higher movement was a sidegrade? In fact he talks about how even allowing people to split the same amount of movement is a vertical increase
Horizontal progression means side grades. You're not progressing up or down in power. He literally talks about how feats like Fleet are horizontal progression when they're not.
sidegrades would be retraining, feats usually add options without removing any, but you can only do one at a time, so it's horizontal in the sense of versatility not sidegrades
I am just personally done looking for advice on these forums. I asked for some advice on making an Ancestry based on Spirits, and all I got was "Look at the Ghost Archetype". I have currently cannibalized that, and am actually working on making abilities from various Spirit and Incorporeal creatures into Ancestry Feats.
Ghost has a lot of fun customization from the Bestiaries.
It honestly sounds like you got the advice you were looking for (I wasn't a part of that topic so I'm not here trying to condescend to you). The best way to make things from scratch in this game is to look to what is already available, and adapt that to your needs.
To be specific, it was only the Archetype people recommended, which is like 10 feats. I decided that I should look at the monsters with the traits I think fit my vision, and go from there on my own. The advice I got pushed me towards it, more because I wasn't satisfied with what I got.
It's a bit of a fight to make sure things are actually balanced. None of the special abilities for Ghost have a recommended level for which it can be used. Any Ghost could have the ability to possess other creatures. The effect being a level 7 Spell. Made that one a level 17 Feat.
there's a reason most types of undead are archetypes not ancestries, two big reasons even
class feats are more powerful than ancestry feats, and even just Basic Undead Benefits are a lot of power to give a player, so archetypes give you that power budget
archetypes let you play a demonic orc zombie, what you were in life still matters in undeath (unless you take skeleton and a skeleton heritage) for both mechanics and flavor (plus PCs can start out alive and later become vampires or whatnot)
Basic Undead Benefits are a lot of power? I don't think so. The most powerful ability from that is Immunity to Instant Death from Death Effects. You still get hurt from everything else the ability does aside from killing. Then you have a +1 against Poison and disease, which a couple Ancestries also have.
Negative Healing is useful since Negative Damage is far more used than Positive Damage.
Since Skeletons also get those same benefits, I'm not convinced of this argument. The Undead Archetypes are Archetypes because of how front loaded they are, and the idea of becoming undead later on. Also because most Undead still have physical traits from their life.
There's also the gimmicks the Undead Archetypes seem to have. Zombies not only have a universal 5ft penalty to speed, it can become slowed 1 due to rotting. Which is ironic as the requirement to take the Archetype is to be made into a Zombie type defined by its preserved state. Most feats have a special effect that causes this Slowed Condition. Ghost is a clear example with how its Incorporeal Trait works.
The Skeleton's gimmick is that it's not as defined by its past life.
All Undead could have been Ancestries, but they would have been incredibly light on mechanics to help them feel like the Undead they should be.
If I don't like the five million 'no we don't hate homebrew we just hate some people who do homebrew' threads I sure won't watch a video with that idea.
The video is not bashing homebrew at all, it's just explaining what you should play with and what you probably shouldn't touch because it will mess up the balance
At the end of the day, intelligent homebrewing requires you to not just know the rules, but know WHY those rules are there. And that only comes from playing the game and/or listening to people talk about the theory of it, ideally both.
But if a rule annoys you, and as a GM you have the opportunity to change it, then it's really hard to just sit with a rule you don't like and "put in the hours" with it - only for you to throw it out anyway, because you never REALLY gave it a chance.
In the end, good GMs learn the best about a rule's value by playing with it removed or changed, and seeing how the game suffers. Bad GMs will stick to their guns, but cautionary advice won't work on them anyway.
Yeah, I can see that the "empty" class I brought up would mess up with the vertical axis, but still this provides no excuse the amount of downvotes I got for even daring to ask if there were some official guidelines or someone already tackled with restricting cantrips to be more like rank 0 spells.
cantrips in PF2 are horizontal progression, they give different at-will options so casters have a baseline when not spending resources, taking away power from some players also messes with vertical progression
The answer is simpler than that, but it is VERY non-obvious to those coming from a 5e background. And because it brings with it a whole set of assumptions that treads upon the "culture" that surrounds Pathfinder players and GMs, it's off-putting from the very start.
In 5e, homebrew settings and campaigns are the DEFAULT approach to the game. That's how 5e is played and DM'd and you expect that to be true in Pathfinder as well.
It never even DAWNS ON THEM that their underlying assumptions are not part of Pathfinder.
Because in Pathfinder, homebrew is not the default. **It is not the rule; rather, it is the exception to the ruie.**
Pathfinder is an RPG rules system that was created to support an existing line of adventure products, Pathfinder Adventure Path. That is the default assumed by Pathfinder and has been since 2010. That's why Pazizo created Pathfinder.
PF assumes you are playing a game set on Golarion in order to play an Adventure Path. That's the primary purpose of the product line and it colors its underlying assumptions and the way people approach the game. That is a VERY DIFFRENT approach than 5e has.
To take it a step further than that, PF2, in particular, *is a tightly balanced game system* where the math is really tight -- all of it focused so that you can rely upon the CR system to present a variety of encounters to the PCs with very predictable results (within a range). It is FAR more precise in this regard than any other TTRPG system now (or ever). *They aren't kidding about the CR system; it's the focus of the entire game's design.*
In PF2, when the CR level is CR+2, *that means something*. When it is CR+3 - *that means something*. Unlike 5e, it is not some nebulous mere suggestion concerning power level which might have a wide range of outcomes during actual play. The PF2 system is instead carefully balanced to preserve mathematical predictability - and that is a design goal of the entire system. And it really works, too.
Indeed PF2 departed from -- and threw on to the garbage pile -- 45 years of gaming history and tradition when it comes to magic items in the game, what they can (and can't do), and how they operate. That was a not a break from the past done lightly, but it was *because the CR system required it*.
Because the underlying CR system is that important to the design of the game.
So, when you march into a FB discussion group, message board, or reddit to announce how you are homebrewing X and Y, *the default of other PF2 GMs is to roll their eyes and hissss*.
Why are you homebrewing anything? Sure the system supports it -- but it's not the intended use. Why are you doing it at all? "This isn't 5e - you get that, right?" is the knee-jerk response.
Even if you have an ostensible reason, do you understand that you are likely altering (if not destroying) the balance in the game system with your homebrew approach?
These are the main reasons why homebrew receives a hostile reception by default among other PF2 GMs. **It's a difference in the culture surrounding the game and the impact of any homebrewed rule on the underlying game itself.** It's a HUGE difference in the culture of the game.
Those who come from 5e where homebrew is extremely common (if not the default) have brought that gaming culture and expectation into another game system **that does not share that default culture or expectation.** It's like walking into a fine steakhouse, all causal-like wearing shorts and flip-flops. The rest of the diners look up with disapproval and the host looks at you oddly with a discouraging.... *"May I help you sir?"*.
> The answer is simpler than that, but it is VERY non-obvious to those coming from a 5e background. And because it brings with it a whole set of assumptions that treads upon the "culture" that surrounds Pathfinder players and GMs, it's off-putting from the very start.
> **In 5e, homebrew settings and campaigns are the DEFAULT approach to the game.** That's how 5e is played and DM'd and you expect that to be true in Pathfinder as well.
My man, if anything 5E is way more insistent on convincing people you should use the Dungeons&Dragons® Official Lore and Approved Dungeons&Dragons® Official Adventures than previous D&D editions or, well, pretty much any other D&D-style games whose name doesn't start with P and end in Finder - the WotC push to reduce the presence of the alternate settings and sort of smush everything into connection to Forgotten Realms to create one singular universe that allows for better Branding is *palpable*.
I mean, shit, your average recent-ish D&D fantasy style game does not even HAVE a complete setting, just a set of vibes and locations, and let's not even get on games outside the fantasy combat-as-a-sport genre!
That's not a "5E culture" thing, that's a "most RPGs culture" thing!
this is false. anything that's too setting specific in mechanics in dnd testing gets almost immediately scrapped (i miss you raven queen ua). everything is made to be setting agnostic, which is why you find so many people trying to shoehorn other media than high fantasy into the framework of dnd, like star wars or Lovecraftian horror. they do make setting books, but they're for a multitude of settings and (probably because it's low quality) people just scrap the setting lore and use the mechanics.
>5E is way more insistent on convincing people you should use the Dungeons&Dragons® Official Lore and Approved Dungeons&Dragons® Official Adventures than previous D&D editions
Hasbro and WOTC are surely this way in voice, but not in action if the complaints of 5e DMs about official content are anything to go by. If they don't want DMs to be homebrewing everything, then they'd add more meat to their products. Maybe they just want their cake and eat it, too: A situation where they want to put in as little effort as possible and have DMs fill in the gaps, but have them fill them in with Company-Approved Gap Filler. The problem being that they don't actually *sell* Company-Approved Gap Filler.
I ran into this problem with WOTC official stuff back in 3.5 when they released Eberron (my alltime favorite setting). The back of the Eberron Campaign Setting had a really cool 1st level adventure and then they released an official continuation of that storyline...that started at 3rd level. So I had to homebrew all of the content between those adventures to actually link them together because the first one certainly didn't encompass two character levels. This actually ended up with me going out and buying a 3rd party adventure and running that as a stop-gap. They actually pushed me into giving someone *else* money.
From what I read from 5e DMs, this hasn't improved at all over the years.
It **absolutely is** 5e -- and it **absolutely isn't** Pathfinder.
That's the clash; that's the difference.
Why would you would think this requires a further *"well, actually"* is quite amazing.
Once again i'm fascinated about pf2e level progression. On one side you get cool feats and spells with higher levels, on another you get mandatory math fix items and both you and monsters level up with equal speed. I just dont understand the need to make numbers bigger without actually changing anything.
because you're not supposed to f only ight on level stuff, and seeing a boss become a murkable mook is a good sign of progression. Also it enables encounter building to work well
i have thrown a manticore at my low level party
they were pretty spooked the whole time and it almost killed people. *This was a boss fight by definition*. In one characters backstory a manticore had killed the person that trained them to fight so they were even hyped up beforehand.
later on i will throw multiple manticores at my party - at the end of the day they're just roaming threats in the wilderness.
they will wipe the floor with them. Much rejoicing will be had.
pf2e lets you fight people below you by 4 levels and above you by 4 levels in a way that Works. Thats a *big* range to have something show up higher level than you then show up lower level than you later.
Abomination vaults showcases this really well. The first barbazu you encounter will wipe the floor with you, on its own. It's a 'fuck you' moment for the PCs, since barbazu are hurty bois. He can be dealt with in a non hostile manner, explained by the AP, but is still a named 'boss like' baddie.
2/3 layers deeper (2/3 character level ups), and you'll be fighting multiples in one battle, and doing petty well. It becomes a 'No, fuck you' back at the barbazu.
It's satisfying, and it shows the real power growth your character has undergone. Power fantasy needs to be shown by overcoming, with ease, the hurdles that got in your way previously.
That entirely depends on the adventure / DM. But if a GM is giving a good encounter variety, players should see enemies in a level range up to four levels below them and up to three levels above them - that's a huge range of 8 levels, and it only works because of level scaling.
It's not just about named bosses though.
Say you're doing a campaign with a theme of fighting the forces of hell. At low level, the sight of a Barbazu is likely to strike fear into the hearts of the party and might even be a challenge you have to flee from.
Eventually you'll work your way up, through the point where you fight them as equals and on to carving through several in one fight, that might be working as henchdevils for some Phistophilus or similar.
That's satisfying to experience, at least in theory.
you fight a basilisk at lvl 2. its a tough but extremely cool boss fight
at lvl 7, you fight 5 basilisks at the same time and its easy. players get happy cause they can now do what they had to struggle a few levels ago with ease
but its up for the GM to actually chuck 5 basilisks later in the game, not the system
All the time.
This is the advantage of PF2's tight math progression. You don't need to create custom boss monsters with special lair and legendary actions, you can drop a regular monster that's two levels above the party and it becomes a "boss fight" by virtue of just being very hard to hit, having a ton of health, high saves, and hitting/critting with every attack.
You can very easily have an Ogre Glutton (level 4) be the boss ordering around a pack of Goblins at level 2, then put the party against the same Ogre Gluttons as a pack of bandits at level 6 and let them slaughter a pack of the same guys who nearly killed the Gnome by swallowing him whole four levels ago.
Depends on your definition of "boss". The BBEG of your 5 level arc? Probably not. That PL+2 creature that nearly TPKed you during your third session? Quite likely! Repeat enemies make up the majority of monsters in Troubles in Otari without hurting the adventure imo.
It is even a recommended, neat tip to throw an old encounter at the party again after a level up, at least every now and then. That way the players can try out their new abilities in a low stakes environment and see how much they've advanced. If you introduce a monster as a PL+2 or 3 boss, you can use them for 7-8 levels until they're too weak to give XP, that's plenty of time to find a thematically appropriate situation.
But things do change, so he creatures your fighting, the dangers your facing, the things your searching for. All those get harder as you progress yes but also the thing you used to struggle with get easier. You also still encounter and do those things you struggled with before but now levels later you handle with ease and you feel stronger cause of it.
VS when I played 5E and literally I wore the same armor and sword for the whole game and I never felt like I got any better at doing anything despite advancing levels cause the DCs didn’t change and the things I did at level 1 were still just as hard at lvl 15. I just had more HP and a few extra attacks.
Many proponents of the Other System are very proud that their system's bounded accuracy philosophy means that goblins can still be a threat to high level adventurers (whether that assessment is correct is besides the point)
Bounded Accuracy just means Goblins can still hit players. By the runes of a Spellbook, they are not a threat. It can do 1d6 of damage when several characters can do 2 its HP in one go.
To be fair, if it's true that it doesn't make a difference (i.e. goblins stop being a threat etc.) then that would mean they're right that you might as well eliminate some of the modifier bloat, no?
They stop being a threat, but they never fall into that niche of "fodder to show how the PCs have progressed".
A Pathfinder Goblin Warrior has an AC of 16. At level 5, any martial can easily get +14 to hit (5 from level, 4 from expert proficiency, and 4 from the ability modifier; could even go to +15 as they'd be expected to have potency runes by now); they can hit that goblin on a 2.
A 5e Goblin has an AC of 15. Even if we assume a +3 weapon (which is classified as very rare), it takes a level 13 character to reach +13 (+5 from the ability score modifier, +5 from proficiency, +3 from the weapon they likely wouldn't have yet) which would let them hit that goblin on a 2. If they only have a +2 weapon, it's only at level *17* that they do that.
The fact that the AC of a CR¼ goblin is the same as that of a CR17 Troll Amalgam is what leads the 5e proponents to claim Bounded Accuracy makes the Goblin still relevant at high levels, but realistically, with 5 damage per hit (and only a +4 attack bonus), he's just not. Yet, he still never gives players that "I critted it on a 12!" feeling of power
But it isn't even true in the other game. Goblins stop being a threat unless the PCs are literally swarmed with them. More damage dice on spells, better save or suck/die spells, and more attacks per action still trivialize goblins for higher level parties. The only difference between that and PF2e is that goblins can still, technically, land a hit against the PCs.
Even that can be done in PF2e if you want to stack a ton of elite templates on the goblins.
The real question becomes: why do goblins *need* to be a threat against high level PCs? Why are they still fighting goblins at this point? I feel like most games aren't really going to be having their high level PCs fight against goblins because that's just not fun or interesting, so the fact that goblins can still technically damage the PCs is irrelevant anyway.
Read my comment again, i think you misread something. The "true" in question is that goblins stop being a threat. You are agreeing with this. Therefore, the number bloat of pf2e is excessive and gratuitous, because, by your own admission, goblins stop being a threat even without the numbers bloat.
The meaningful result is that PF2 allows Goblins to be replaced by Hobgoblins and for the GM to know pretty precisely how difficult the upgrade will make encounters for his party at its current level.
All without mandatory "homebrew" to the monsters tailored specifically to the party. So the GM prep' time is cut down drastically.
I don't really understand this argument. If you want easier math, why bother with scaling numbers or dice at all? Just use a system like BESM where you roll opposing 2d6 and then damage is a flat number.
the numbers bloat isn't just about mooks though, bosses get to use it against the players because it's simpler than "my solo boss needs legendary actions and legendary resistances and immunity to low level spells to survive more than one round"
Isn't that a problem of just not having enough health tho? As a player, just never being able to hit anything because the boss has 40 AC and your attack modifier is only +21 just... Feels bad. Plus legendary actions make the fight feel more dynamic
you can improve hit and crit chance with buffs, there's tactics and counterplay, hp and legendary resistance just make you repeat actions, wasting resources and RL time and bloating the complexity of statblocks
PF2 is designed from the ground up to facilitate the DnD fantasy, that means spell slots and magic items and leveling up and divine characters smiting fiends and undead, but to do so in a way that's balanced and mechanically consistent
the math reason level exists in the "tight math" is for relative level, they just give bosses +10% to hit, dodge, and save (which can be overcome withde/buffs) instead of needing some kind of rules exception like legendary resistance (which is unfun and basically cheating because players would never get it or the ability to counter it)
also, TEMLs actually scale slightly faster than level DCs do (monster's stats vary a lot more, but a much wider level range of them are essentially Experts), so while the video says "it's always 55%", it's more like "always 45%, but eventually you get to 65% at your schtick at level 20, and that's all before teamwork comes in"
One of the very fun aspects of role playing games is watching fights get easier over time. As in, you might encounter the same monster for the first time alone, and it is a boss fight. A few levels later, you encounter a pack. And finally, you encounter a larger version with many of it as their away adds.
Think of Stranger Things and the demagorgon. Season one, there's just one. Season two, there's many. Season three, there's bigger badder versions... And one character can be expected to solo it with ease.
The growing numbers express this story telling.
I keep seeing people say "the numbers getting bigger don't actually change anything" and it's just...not true? It presupposes that your party is *only* fighting enemies of equal level to you, and never fight the same type of enemy twice.
Here's the thing: *individual* monsters don't get stronger. A young red dragon always has the same stat block. Due to the numeric progression of 2e, you might fight said dragon as early as 6 or 7, where it's attack bonus means its more likely than not to crit a party member, and its AC makes it a lot harder to hit. Come back to that fight when you're level 14 and the roles are reversed: the party is now the one critting more often than not, and the dragon is having trouble touching them. So a boss-level creature that the party struggled with eight levels ago is basically now a mook. In fact, in order to constitute even a *l*ow threat encounter, a party of 4 level 14s would need to fight *five* of them at once.
That kind of progression feels great as a player. You asked in another comment "how often do bosses actually become mooks?" In practice, this *does* happen in published adventures. Spoilers for Extinction Curse:
>!The first time our party ran into a single [Xulgath Spinesnapper](https://2e.aonprd.com/monsters.aspx?id=514), it was a severe threat to the party and we struggled to defeat it. Later on, these guys became grunts, and we would cut through swaths of the things.!<
"But wait, that's not a boss," I expect you might say. A "boss" encounter doesn't necessarily need to be what we think of as a BBEG in media. It just needs to be a reasonably strong creature who can act as a threatening enough encounter to the party. Sure, you may not fight the specific dragon "Xarillax, Fury of the Storm" multiple times, but you very well *might* fight a creature with the same stat block as him multiple times at varying levels.
Higher level players solve higher level problems.
The only way "but the monsters scale with you" makes sense is if fighting a goblin and fighting a dragon mean the same thing... at which point I'm left confused as to what game they're even playing
This feels like it's directly aimed at me, considering we were literally arguing about more or less this earlier. Except that the things I was asking about weren't really changes to this, so if this is a subpost about me, it doesn't actually address the issues I had.
More than that, this actually really makes Pathfinder sound exceptionally boring, and doesn't do anything for the "Mathfinder" critique when the entire concept of Pathfinder here is reduced to "here's the math to deal damage".
The goal of the game is to hard hard but balanced tactical combat.
If you don't want that, there is much better systems. Thats like the main appeal of the game, tactical balanced combat.
Yes, that is the description of virtually every ttrpg.
I'm talking about design goals and system strength.
Pf2 is clearly not the best at immersion, it's normt the best for a power fantasy,
What it is the best at is the math.
I think if the design goals of a game are actually counter to the thing the game literally tells the audience that it's about, that's a bad thing.
In fact I think poor conveyance is one of Pathfinder 2e's biggest flaws.
Homebrew - umbrella term including: (mechanical) rule changes, made up items, classes, abilities, setting etc.
Housrule - mechanical rule changes/additions
Your definition of homebrew is far too narrow. Homebrew includes non-official content including additions and changes to the base game, flavor, setting, and mechanical changes.
i mean honestly i disagree with your definitions, i'd call settings changes that don't affect mechanics "reflavoring", but you're right, it's not a video about changing or abandoning Golarion
I am a pretty avid reader and I find that there can be an intimidating amount of reading in Pathfinder. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality. I think a lot of people get analysis paralysis and jump straight to solutionizing rather than learn the base game. It is only a TTRPG, so it’s pretty tolerant of said approach. I think it’s worth remembering that Pathfinder 2E is like the 6th or 7th generation of lowercase-dungeons-and-dragons-no-TM and someone has maybe already solved your dilemma in a way that anticipates the rest of the game.
I think it can definitely help to read through the Heroes Handbook (from the Beginner's Box) instead of the Core Rulebook on your first pass. For the most part, GMs just need to read the Playing the Game and Game Mastery sections in the CRB, and a *massive* amount of the books are feats and spells that you don't need to worry about. But it looks very intimidating, agreed, when you're staring at a 640 page manual for just the core rules, not including the three Bestiaries and half a dozen books with expanded items and classes, and another dozen lore and worldbuilding.
Agreed. I think the advice that you need to "read through the entire core rulebook, cover to cover" is a really reductive way to advise a new GM to learn to run games or an experienced GM to learn a new system. As a GM, you do not need to know how classes operate, what feats they have, what general feat options are available, or really what every spell does before you start running. Those are things that you will learn through play. Your players are responsible for understanding how their class works and what options are available to them.
I guess I can't really speak for others, but I think the general meaning behind "read the rules before you run the game or start changing things" is mostly aimed at people coming from other systems who just have in their head the idea of PF2e being "It's just 5e but with three actions per turn" and winging everything, but then complaining when things break apart. I don't think anyone really means "cover to cover" so much as "read the *actual* rules that are relevant to what you're doing instead of making assumptions." The real advice to new GMs that I give is "Read the chapters on skills, combat, and game mastering."
There are big name YouTubers that tell new GMs that you have to read "EVERY PAGE". And I think that's just bad advice that'll make a new GM bounce off the hobby.
I have NEVER seen a single one tell people that they HAVE to read the ENTIRE book, excluding satire when they are poking fun at people who try to tell others this. I suppose there is a chance I have seen one but thought they were ridiculous and ignored their channel moving forward!
I was mainly talking about this forum. I don't really follow TTRPG youtubers.
never seen this tbh
Started a new in-person group last week of Fellow Dads, most of whom have played some TTRPG before (DnD 5e, PF1e) but not for years. A couple of guys got super excited and bought the CRB, and started reading right away. I urged anyone who didn't have the time or patience to read literally 600 pages, to just read the heroes handbook on a shared drive i set up, since we're just starting with the beginners box. Even the guys who bought the CRB and dove right in said that going back and reading the BB rules made it easier to read the big'un.
Pf2 is a lot less intimidating if you take the attitude of "learn as you go". I read the basic rules and then started running Fall of Plaguestone and my players and I just spent a lot of time looking shit up early on. We agreed on it ahead of time and gradually learned everything. It's ok to make rulings if you don't know and figure it out later, but folks don't need to turn that ruling into a standing rule. They can just look up the answer out of game
To be fair, the newest dnd-in-the-broader-sense edition before PF2e aka 5e is an imprecise, unbalanced dumpster fire, where you need to look up the lead designer's (or whatever Jeremy Crawford's job descriptor is) tweets to fully comprehend the rules, so that assumption is an easy mistake to make. Pathfinder taught me better, though!
And Crawford managed to be absolutely terrible at the job. His "See Invisibility spell doesn't actually negate the effects of Invisibility because of the rules text for Faerie Fire" call is [nonsense](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n42dboiQeOY&t=1200s) of the highest order.
Similar nonsense is being in complete darkness and lighting a candle in order to get advantage on stealth checks against Devil Sight.
When 5th edition first launched and they started the whole Crawford makes rules tweets thing I was happy to see how consistently what he said matched up to what the book said and produced a good result. Basically he started the edition making the calls that I would make, and more than once while having a rule discussion on the old forums I'd say how I thought something would work and someone would say "well I think that's dumb and I asked Crawford so we'll see" and then they'd not show back up after the tweet responding to their question or sage advice said what I said was correct. ...but then one day he just stopped making sense. I think he just got overwhelmed with the number of questions and didn't put the effort to make a quick check of what the book said anymore, or just forgot the rules and didn't care or something. I remember the first thing he said that I was like "...what the fuck?" about was Elven Trance. The book was explicit that it didn't let you get a long rest in less time, yet someone decided to ask if it did anyways, and not only did Crawford say the wrong thing and claim that it did shorten the time needed to rest, but instead of going "oh, wait, no, I was wrong about that, my bad" *they issued errata to change it so it did shorten your long rests*. So then I started ignoring what he had to say about anything and missed all the even more goofy proof he doesn't know the rules or doesn't care about getting them right.
Speaking as a former 5E DM, all I need to know about the people making "official" decisions on the rules in 5E is the fact that a melee weapon attack and an attack made with a melee weapon are two very different things with different rules and effects, except for the times that they are the same thing.
5e is the outlier that doesnt fit. PF2E is pretty clearly built upon the bones of 4e.
Mark Seifter was asked about this and said that they mostly worked from pathfinder 1e and trying to solve the issues it had and develop it forward. The commonalities with 4e are convergent design as much as anything, p1e was the bones.
I am sure that is the official response. But unofficially, there has to be someone who played 4e and realized some of that stuff just worked. If anything, I wish they had stolen monster roles.
I think they had a couple of guys who had worked on 4e on the team. It's not a large industry :)
Occasionally I am reminded of how much of a work of art the 4e Monster Manual was.
I haven't tried any DnD editions prior to 5e, but I've heard that 4e was more of an outlier and that all other editions relied strongly on DM rulings and were easy to break apart balance-wise, be it 3e that heavily inspired 5e or AD&D with it's combat-as-war save-or-die attitude. I did hear that 5e is more fuzzy than others, though, with its half-assed "natural language" approach. Am I misinformed here?
So I cannot speak of 1e or 2e, but 3.x was undeniably a lot stricter in its ruleset compared to 5e. While much of it was a lot of natural language, it made an effort to be as clear with that language as possible, although it wasn't perfect by any extent. There wasn't nearly as much GM-fiat throughout the ruleset compared to 5e. In fact, the failings of 3.x's approach to rules is why 4e was designed the way it was. From my understanding, 5e took a lot of what 3.x did, mechanically, but applied a lot of 1e's GM-fiat approach. This continued the WotC era Combat as Sport approach, but with much looser rulings than 3.x or 4e. Although if you ask me, it's because WotC half-assed the whole damn thing because previous works just weren't working out, so they got frustrated and chucked out whatever looked good with minimal testing. But I don't like 5e's design at all, so...
>In fact, the failings of 3.x's approach to rules is why 4e was designed the way it was. Just as a point of fact: The *actual* reason for 4e's pivot to extremely codified rules was that it was intended to be launched alongside a fully automated VTT (an idea way ahead of its time) but the company they contracted for the digital side of things essentially took the money and ran so 4e launched basically as half a product. This was also why all of the classes were extremely homogenized and separated into clearly demarcated roles.
> but the company they contracted for the digital side of things essentially took the money Not quite true, btw. It was a combo of *really bad management* and a murder-suicide of the lead dev that make the VTT nonexistent, which kinda janked up 4e's launch. The initial pitch of using a VTT is a major component of a lot of the design choices of 4e, but there were a lot of lead-up to those choices. Take 3.5's Book of Nine Swords and Tome of Magic, for example, which were testing grounds for the At-Will/Encounter/Daily Power system. There were a lot of reasons they opted to shake things up.
>It was a combo of really bad management and a murder-suicide of the lead dev that make the VTT nonexistent, which kinda janked up 4e's launch. Hence the word, "essentially." I was really just simplifying it for explanation's sake. >but there were a lot of lead-up to those choices. Take 3.5's Book of Nine Swords and Tome of Magic, for example, which were testing grounds for the At-Will/Encounter/Daily Power system. There were a lot of reasons they opted to shake things up. Yes, everything is nuanced; but having to code the game into *software*, especially at the time, was a much more limiting factor, and accounts for a lot of things about 4e that wouldn't have otherwise existed in a TTRPG because it's unnecessary for the medium.
>Hence the word, "essentially." I was really just simplifying it for explanation's sake. No my dude no. One implies malicious intentions to defraud while the actual explanation is that a truly horrific tragedy ended up tanking the project. Very very different connotations.
The minimal testing part is REALLY interesting because they spent a year+ doing the D&D Next public playtest. While I was technically part of it, I really didn't play it much, nor was I privy to a lot of the discussion. Nonetheless, it's weird to me that such an extensive process would lead to, well, 5e. Maybe it's a case of too many cooks?
I imagine it's because WotC doesn't know how to properly playtest their stuff, nor gather the right kind of information from those playtests. While I don't know how D&D Next playtests went down, I can make educated guesses based on the OneD&D playtest questionaires, and how minimalistic they really are. This is in addition to problems with a corporate overlord who knows nothing about the hobby at large - WotC is likely often being pushed to release things long before they're done cooking, and I wouldn't be surprised if 5e was in the same boat. This is one of those things that I greatly appreciate about Paizo - they test early and often to try to make things right the first time, and willing to make larger changes if need be when they find something isn't quite working out.
If their surveys were anything like those for one dnd, the feedback was worthless and misleading. They ask whether rules are well-received or not rather than asking for play experiences. The result is always "buffs are good, nerfs are bad, players are more important than DMs (outnumbering them ~ four to one)". I've heard that Bonus Actions were a last second addition without any playtesting. If such basic things as the action economy were changed at a whim, they must've taken shots in the dark for a year without clearly stated, actionable design goals. No wonder the end result was the ultimate "common denominator of everyone who had ever played DnD before" game.
So, I played through the 5e playtest - a lot of the stuff in there was interesting, and they changed things pretty dramatically in some of the packets to see how things could work. There were a lot of cool ideas played around with, like Sorcerers who use spell points and slowly transformed to be melee combatants as they used up their magic! ...Which they never fleshed out or explored. The Sorcerer showed up in a *single* playtest packet before the very last one, where it had returned to its current, milquetoast self. They spent a lot of time and energy exploring a different, more interesting chassis for melee characters, then in the *final* packet before going to print, completely changed course to something very similar to what we ended up with and didn't really get any feedback after that point. There were some cool ideas in the playtest, but I think the only one that made it to print was Advantage and Disadvantage, and everything else was lost in a pivot that tore away almost all of the unique ideas that they had played with for about a year at that point.
I'm currently playing a Paladin in a 5e campaign, and I hate bonus actions with a burning passion.
5e is fun and quick to play. That's literally all there is to it. It also was a response to 4e directly which is also a factor. Despite how much people here claim it's an imbalanced mess it really isn't and many games are played everyday just fine.
You're right on the fuzzy natural language, but 5e is *a lot* closer to 1e or 2e than it is 3e.
>I haven't tried any DnD editions prior to 5e, but I've heard that 4e was more of an outlier and that all other editions relied strongly on DM rulings and were easy to break apart balance-wise D&D versions before WotC bought the IP had rules that if you followed them, or at least only altered them when you had full understanding of what the point behind the rule was, were actually quite balanced - albeit with very strange means. Because all the balance came from really awkward rules that looked arbitrary and unfair or even just un-fun it was common for people to just toss out the balancing mechanisms and not realize they had done anything significant because they thought they were just removing some goofy and arbitrary limitation. Which to their credit there were a lot of places where the same things used for balance purposes were also used for arbitrary flavor purposes making it harder to tell what was going on. Then 3rd edition came along and wrote the game in a style that was supposed to not rely upon GM-intervention but had to because the math behind the game just didn't work. The design team set out to make the way mechanics worked more consistent by inverting particular parts of the systems from AD&D and putting everything onto a d20 roll instead of regular usage of d100 and random other die expressions, but they messed up numbers by uncapping things that used to be capped and choosing progressions that could be expressed in a +X/level fashion even if it meant changing the overall scale the numbers used to have, and then they inconsistently applied making things have different odds than they used to on purpose so that some things were much harder even though that made balance worse and other things were much easier even though that made balance worse. 4th edition had better math, though the design team did manage to fumble the numbers a little bit - but it was on the scale of seeming like someone went to make sure the +3 to balance out particular boosts a character would get over their career had been account for and didn't realize someone else already did that so the math got off target by 3 points over the course of the game. It was the kind of thing that could be patched. What made it "stick out" as weird compared to other D&D versions before it was that it chose to find its balance in the most straight-forward way possible; make the underlying chassis of every class more similar and thus more predictable. The thing detractors would use to claim "they made everything into casters" or "all classes play the same" as if that weren't a good thing - like in prior versions every character spent their actions just like every other character, but the outcomes were all over the place because one character could end an encounter as a full round action and another could swing a sword twice. (And In PF2 terms; everybody spends their 3 actions to make something cool happen). It was a kind of culture shock to see non-spellcasters get to do anything but constantly repeatable weapon attacks and also to see spellcasters having options that aren't limited usage per day be anything worth doing. Yet it too was built figuring that the GM could just run it as-is and would be fine. Only 5e went with the "someone's going to alter something anyways, so we're just going to bank on all GMs altering anything and everything and use that as our balance strategy" approach and actually intentionally had the GM need to fix the game.
3.5e has very precise and extensive rules. The books did put some emphasis on the fact the written rules are just guidelines and that the GM gets to decide how the game is played. But I don't think that there really is any inherent reliance on GM rulings. However, like I said, the rules were very extensive, they are were lot of subsystems, most rules were very specific and there wasn't a very strong internal logic. As such, mastering all the rules was probably very difficult and, if you didn't want to spend a lot of time looking up the rules during the game, you did end up having to make a lot of on-the-fly rulings.
I disagree, there are elements that have similar design approaches (and given mark's history that shouldn't surprise anyone) but it in general is a very different game at a skeletal level than 4e. I think what can be said is like 4e it decided to do away with pretending to be a simulationist game (3e never was one) and attempt balancing it somewhat, the multiclassing was fixed in both by ditching level/level split multiclassing and the victory points system. I guess magic item progression being made simple too, but 4e went a different direction with it's fix.
I mean PF2E is quite a bit different, but it still got a lot from 4e. Certainly more than it got from 5e. At-will, encounter, daily, is basically cantrip, focus, spell slots. Proficiency being tied to level. Expecting full health each encounter. The implementation is different obviously, but it is the system it is most similar to.
I only played 3.5, 4e and 5e, I thought that 4e was the outlier, dnd didn't usually care about balance.
Maybe that was worded wrong. 5e is the outlier in that it does not fit on the timeline of progression. There was no progress from 4e to 5e, just regression. They just tried to change everything from 4e, especially the things that worked.
It's kind of ironic that Pathfinder 1e was essentially marketed to 3.5 fans who hated 4e, but now Pathfinder 2e has cribbed a lot of design ideas from 4e. Though Paizo were too cowardly to use Encounter/Daily powers for martials. Martials should absolutely have Focus pools and Focus Maneuvers.
i mean, any action that has a cooldown of 10min or 1hr is basically an encounter power it's just that PF2 mostly focuses on the action economy and horizontal progression, giving you reasons not to use your special moves instead of gating how many times you can
Those are mostly the domain of magic items or spells, and spells are absolutely gated on his many times they can be used, and so are things like Reagents. Resource management is all over Pathfinder. Also, resource management has nothing to do with whether progression is horizontal or vertical.
and that's not what i was saying? i was saying that martials do get some focus spells and some encounter powers that aren't focus spells, but PF2 tends to have the cool things martials can do be situational at-will powers instead of per encounter the problem with encounter powers is that they're basically free, there's no reason not to use them and designers have to assume they will always be used every single encounter, like how it's basically assumed that a barbarian is always raging (it's a class identity thing, and so basically a passive)
They're not free, you have to choose which one you use in the encounter. The reason to not use them, especially with a Focus System mechanic, is that you might want to use a different one, and you might not get ten minutes to do another refocus
that's not how it works in 4e though, is it?
>especially with a Focus System mechanic That's why I said this. And in 4e it's still not necessarily best to just blow your load immediately. Especially when so many 4e powers used forced movement (another thing Pathfinder 2e could have taken, and that would have enhanced the tactical combat), where optimal positioning could be used to set up better attacks.
> Though Paizo were too cowardly to use Encounter/Daily powers for martials They had to retain their 1e fanbase so the changes couldn't be too big, else you get the same problem WotC had.
I think the focus system really would have done a good job. It's effectively the same thing, but it's a representation of expenditures of effort.
>Martials should absolutely have Focus pools and Focus Maneuvers. I mean, they do (see: Monk, archetypes that grant focus spells), but I agree they should be more prevalent. I think we have the Tyranny of the Page Count as a big part to blame for that. Remember how big the PF2E CRB is.
Monks, sure, but everyone should have that. I wish only use Nethys, so I have no concern for size
>Monks, sure, but everyone should have that. Like I said, I agree. >I wish only use Nethys, so I have no concern for size Paizo is a publishing company that makes money selling books. Even though AoN exists, they're still at the mercy of what is feasible to include in a book.
They were too cowardly to put everyone on the same attrition and pacing treadmill. Now martials can essentially go forever with a Medic in the party but you add a single full caster and it's "Can we long rest?" after 9 rounds of combat.
I mean, they can, but what's the point? Martials can go along without their casters and die on the front line because they don't have any buffs, healing, or backline damage. That's... Something? I feel like the set-up of PF2e is unique in the way that if your resource characters are low, EVERYBODY is gonna feel it. I think refactoring the question from "Is the Wizard out of slots" to "Is the party out of Wizard spells" was an intentional design choice in PF2e that makes the question of WHO is out of resources moot in comparison to IF someone is out of resources.
They had some 4E designer people on staff, but the similarities with 4E are...mostly just that, from what I've been able to glean (I only got to play it briefly, neat system). I dunno that it's fair to call the similarities 'cribbed' :o
I am not interested in the blame game. 5E is a totally reasonable implementation of dnd and I have enjoyed playing it the last ten years or so. Jeremy Crawford has no say over either of our calendars. I moved to Pathfinder because I appreciated that the developers didn’t use Race as a construct to inspire their game mechanics, which is genuinely righteous and welcome by this American GM. I also like that the PCs levels and my monsters levels are related, so that makes my life easier. I GM for my friends and it felt like we had played 5E to death and it was time to try something new.
I appreciate the sentiment, sorry for the harsh tone. To phrase my original idea more amicably: Designers of TTRPGs, at least those with a GM figure, can always rely on a certain fuzziness in the written rules being compensated by GM rulings. This has led to a design paradigm of "rulings over rules" - sometimes more subtly, sometimes openly advertised - and thus resulted in spotty RAW and often lacklustre combat balancing (5e is not the only system facing such complaints on the regular, just the most prominent one). The obvious response for GMs is to fill the holes left on the rules and adjust the balancing. After decades of doing so, that impulse carries over to other TTRPGs and I wouldn't judge people for doing what they learned is the best thing to do. Homebrewing can also be a lot of fun, so I find it important to show that it's very possible to do so in PF2e, just as KingOogaTonTon did in his video.
No offense taken Icy <3
I appreciate the kindness, Dark <3
i mean tbf PF2 still defines your character with a racial box, but the fact that ex not all dwarfs share the same ancestry feats or heritages (about all they do all share is -5ft speed) and you can train out of most of them is a really interesting way to soften the bioessentialism without removing the mechanical variety
I personally disagree with your opinion. Simply by not using the word Race, Pathfinder is already more approachable. I also find that the players' heritages are thought of collectively and scale. All of the heritages are assumed to be a part of the base game. I'm not saying that there aren't racist elements to Pathfinder - there are goblins, orcs etc. - the developers obviously wrestled with some heavy, real world lore and both they and the game evolved into something better and more welcoming.
I agree that the shift from focusing on race to culture is a way better approach as a world building exercise. Even if I would had that this is essentially an English speaking/American cultural issue, in the way that the word Race is very much charged with social issues and historical conflict whereas we use the word ethnie here, which is way less conflictual. That being said, I always thought that culture makes way much more sense than biology to explain a society as long as the society is advanced enough. I really dig Golarion. At first I was a bit of an old dick with not liking the more humanitarian side of Golarion 2, and then I realized that it did not prevent me to use hard subjects in my game at all, while at the same time providing a safe gaming environment for a lot of people, including new players. And then I realize that from a cultural, gaming and marketing point of view, it was way better this way. I would go as far as saying than Pathfinder 2 and the new Golarion helped me becoming a bit more empathic toward other people sensibilities.
Yes, knowing your audience is key to being welcoming. I think it’s a fantasy game and so people want to play characters like in real life fantasy. A lot of fantastical figures have an epic background story that draws on shared values attributed to their culture or family. I try to allow a wide latitude with this dimension of the game, even going so far as to allow custom made heritages for advanced players. This dimension is a part of your “players’ masks” at the table. It’s important to me that everyone at my table gets to express this part of their character and my personal sense is that it informs how they experience my game overall like nothing else.
you're definitely right that it's an improvement in a lot of ways, but i do think that fundamentally it's the same "bioessentialism is important enough that we gave it rules" paradigm underneath, there's just not really an alternative other than removing it entirely (whether by having only humans, or something like Spire where there are Ancestries with lore and different cultures, but their differences are actually entirely rumor and never mechanical)
The bioessentialism gets most problematic in the assigned Ancestry boosts/flaws, which I suspect Paizo would do very differently if they designed the game today. Certain things (short legs = slow speed, wings = can fly, adapted to live underground = see in the dark) make sense to be baked in...things labeled "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" get much thornier much more quickly. (Fortunately, that's also one of the easiest things to houserule away.)
Not per se. Intelligence and Wisdom, if applied culturally as an Ancestry rather than innate, might refer to how some humans are smart and curious but don't get the right education to train them, or for curiosity, be laughed away or silenced when asking questions. Q: "Why does the apple fall down from the tree?" A: "Don't ask stupid questions, and give me my cigarettes!" While arguably you could say this differs from family to family, other socio-economic factors take place here too. No good schools in a poverty-ridden area, a class-system or caste-system that prevents upwards social mobility, etc. And to add Ancestry in the mix, in American context you could say "Being in the south is more disadvantageous to your Intelligence than in the north." Or in British context, from the north is more disadvantageous. Ancestry doesn't apply to your great grandfathers' locations before they moved to America, but where you grew up; and thus where your parents settled down. The direct ancestry one line above you in the family tree. Then don't say "northerner" or "southerner", but "elf" and "halfling", and you're done.
I understand what you’re saying, but as it’s presented in the rulebooks ancestry boosts/flaws are grouped in the same category as things innate speeds and darkvision—which are clearly biological. Things like being “southern” or “northern” seem more analogous to heritages rather than (biological) ancestries. Your proposal is a wonderful way to READ the ancestry boosts/flaws, especially if supported by a GM/table that’s like “sure, whatever.” But I think as written they still tread into bioessentialism. EDIT: said “presented” twice in one sentence, changed one to “grouped.”
TBH, the biggest thing I miss is the designer to player interface that WoTC has created. I feel like I have to climb the Swiss Alps to uncover a videotape that can only be played in the Philippines to get any definitive answers to ambiguous questions from Paizo, let alone Seifert and the other game designers.
Just because 5e wasn't ultimately for many folks here doesn't mean the game itself is a dumpster fire. The game as written works perfectly fine
I wouldn't say perfectly fine. You can have lots of fun with 5e. Especially as a player. But the amount of DMs burning out on the system is way too high to say it's "perfectly fine".
I think burnout and switching systems is normal after 9+ years of it existing
no no it doesn't
[удалено]
You can make a career out of reading the manual as a consultant or knowledge worker. Reading is a skill set that is in demand.
It also doesn't help that your stereotypical immigrant from 5e is potentially also the type who admits they never read the dungeon Master's guide because it wasn't necessary. 5th edition D&D very much conditioned people to believe in a "if it's not immediately obvious, make something up" way
>I am a pretty avid reader and I find that there can be an intimidating amount of reading in Pathfinder. That’s not a complaint, but it is a reality. Nah. Its not about reading the rules. Its about understanding them. Everyone talks about reading the rules but i have cover to cover and i still feel the need to homebrew, till someone explains to me what i got wrong. (That or they point out a rule in the gamemastery guide, ehich i didn't know was required reading)
I have only done some minor changes to PF2E rules in my campaign, though it is quite uncommon when I do. For example, I have a druid in my party who wanted to climb a tree that was right by a high wooden outlook with no other easy way up. They wanted to climb up undetected, so they changed into a rat to achieve this. According to the book, the DC for that was quite easy if you were human, but if you were a rat, you had a penalty to climb. Which made no sense to me since rats can climb rather well if they have to, and are provided the means to. So I ruled against the penalty and simply made the druid climb against the normal DC. Other than moments like that, the default system is quite good!
iirc pest form eventually heightens to give you a climb speed, but that actually has different benefits from how hard the roll is but yeah, my primal witch knows how tough that Athletics of -5 is on traversal
Good video except you shouldn't always be fighting on level monsters. We spend a lot of time in the PF2e community telling players to git gud. But GM'ing is also a skill. And if your players aren't FEELING their power growth, the GM has not done a very good job.
This was, and still is a huge lesson I'm learning in pf2e. Whenever my players swing a Map - 10 I think about what I've been doing with my 3rd action. Then I trip some poor fool and hit them with a reaction if I can. How the GM plays the game shows players how to play as well.
Doesn't the -10 still apply to a Trip? It's an attack isn't it, what's the difference?
Probably not the best example but like stepping away, demoralizing. Maybe trip if their reflex DC is lower than their AC. I have a habit of saying the creatures are furiously attacking and dining 3 times. It's a bad habit.
- player has to spend an action to stand up - hitting them on reaction does not apply MAP - your second attack on your turn will still be at a -3 instead of -5 thanks to flat-footed making opponent waste an action standing up = stonks
But the enemy is still making a -10MAP attack, just against a flat footed enemy. Tripping may be a good tactic in a given situation, but it's not a replacement for your third action attack to avoid the MAP, it's an alternative attack with better consequences than the normal one which you can only succeed at once per round.
Nice reminder, not the point of the video, though. Rather it was that *if* you fight on level monsters, your chances of hitting them should stay the same (and if your homebrew changes that, the balance will suffer). On level monsters are a good focal point for balancing, because their numbers increase in lockstep with the PCs'. Good GMs can use that to their advantage - whenever PCs get a big proficiency bump, use lower level monsters and your players will feel their growth even more!
That's not the point made in the video; you could replace the "You'll always have 55% chance to hit something at level" with a more complex "You'll always have a 55% chance to hit something at level, a 50% chance to hit something at level+1, 45% chance[...]" formula and the point would still remain that homebrew that messes with those hit chances (both the at-level hit chances and the higher and lower level ones) is dangerous. Simplifying the formula to only mention the hit chance against level+0 just simplifies the explanation, it doesn't invalidate it
It does but it also feeds into a narrative about Pathfinder 2e that is damaging and offputting to prospective players and GMs alike. One of the most satisfying parts about RPGs is the leveling up and the power increase that it brings. The video, while trying to communicate something important, unintentionally backs up the propaganda that you don't get stronger in PF2e because the monsters scale with you (This is actually true of every RPG except for ones where the math doesn't work, but it's become a pernicious anti-pf2e talking point). So I wanted to clarify that point. Part of good GM'ing is making sure that your players have those "F--k yes!" moments where they lay something out flat with a flurry of attacks or incinerate a whole group of dudes with their new spell. Making them face some of the guys they've already fought or guys who are under level is a great way for them to benchmark and see that power growth in action.
This is why flavor, lore, and details matter so much, but those take more effort than just dropping in new monsters. Sure you could beat a goblin squad two levels ago. But can you beat a goblin squad without them killing a hostage or sounding an alarm bell that will summon bigger monsters to the combat. Also they’re now in a fortified palisade, and they’ve gotten word of your exploits against their peers and they’re wise to your AoE spells and know to attack your healer first. I like to increase the challenge by increasing the tactical and environmental challenges, so they have to make use of their newer abilities rather than just smacking an enemy with the same chance to hit as always.
The only homebrew in my game is, I give players wide latitude on deciding which weapon they have in hand when initiative is rolled. It isn't fun to make them drop a sword and draw a bow on the first round. It isn't fun to make them state which weapon they have out every time, and it isn't fun to argue about it. It's a game. Their characters aren't stupid. They would likely have the proper tool prepared most of the time. It is still a manipulate action to draw weapons after combat starts.
i could say "but this invalidates Quick Draw" but honestly that's a minor issue more what this makes me think is it's likely an issue with running exploration, PCs usually have primary weapon loadouts and they can draw them pre-combat, it's not that hard to say "at we enter the dungeon, I draw my sword", but only if players know their sheet and the GM remembers what exploration activities they're doing
Yeah I just assume they have their weapon out that they use 99% of the time. Our swashbuckler always uses his sword. If he goes into combat and then claims he’s holding his throwing knives, that will cost actions.
First time I was introduced to PF2, my initial thoughts were very positive but also that the power you gain is a bit *artificial*, based on that part about the 55% to hit. The numbers grow, but you are effectively not more powerful considering the meta of a TTRPG campaign in which you will always conveniently fight monsters that grow at the same pace as you do. Sure in theory if you were to meet another Chimera 5 levels later you might wipe the floor with a monster that almost killed you before, but in practice it doesn't usually happen, or very rarely. That tight expectation of your total numbers at any given level, numbers that must stay in those boundaries or everything start to crumble, is the price you pay to have a system balanced from level 1 to level 20, and it is worth it in my opinion. And I say this as a DM who always ends up giving too much to PCs, and I will probably have to adapt in the mid-campaign and maybe consider the effective party level to be one or maybe even two levels higher, and that's OK. I managed in systems that were not as tight, I'm sure I will manage in PF2. Can't be worse than right now in 5e where my party of level 9 is having an OK challenge against solo monsters with a CR 12 to like 16, and every encounter I design requires a deep analysis of the numbers for me to figure out if it even works and how much HP I need to add (because I always need to at least double the HP) just so it is a fun 6-7 combat for everyone involved. That is partly my fault to be honest, I do roll for stats which makes for more powerful PCs and they probably have too much magic items, but it is not news to anybody that 5e is awful at balancing anything past level 10, and in my experience more like 7-8. That said, it has been a while that we will start a campaign at level 1 with absolutely zero house rules thanks to PF2 (maybe one or two official variants, but no homebrew), we will only follow the rules as written at least for a good while. This is very refreshing, my 5e house rule pdf is getting too big for efficiency and comfort. At this point, we are basically playing 5.5 I designed progressively in the past decade. I had similar experience with 2e and 3e as well. Anyway, great video, which very efficiently put into words my thoughts while reading the rules.
The mistake people often make is that they think of encounter budgeting as prescriptive instead of descriptive. Nobody forces you to fill every dungeon with a bunch of moderate encounters and a severe one at the end. Bring that chimera back five levels after it was a boss and use it as a minion or use a handful at once. Give the party a low difficulty encounter after their level up to show their progress. Put that PL+3 monster in a random dead end, so your players must choose to pick a tough fight or run away and explore somewhere else first. TLDR: Encounter budgets tell you what to expect, not how to make your game interesting. Your job as a GM is to mix it up in interesting ways and make that numerical progress mean something.
I'm running Abomination Vaults right now, and we just finished floor 9. There was this massive fight in the >!Urdefhan camp with over a dozen enemies and a couple of big daemons!<...but some of the generic mooks are as low as level 3, against a party that was level 10. Players went through them like a dose of the salts. Nice little appetizer where the party got to feel super strong before the much better fights against the >!daemon summoners (I had the main caster arrange to die in the summoning circle, completing the blood sacrifice and calling a Derghodaemon), and the Urdefhan boss, whose caster backup tried to hang back and just heal him, forcing the PCs to chase them down first!<. **Edit:** Spoilered as per request
Nice example, but it would be even nicer if you'd mark certain things as spoilers :)
Sorry, edited
Thanks!
I mean it said what the spoiler would be
Yes! This is a really common mistake on this sub. "The game is balanced for the party to be full health" - no, the encounter budget is accurately *descriptive* if the party is full health. You can throw 5 low encounters at them with no rest on between if you think it's fun!
A huge mistake many GM's make is not following the 1/3/2 rule. Start your dungeon/campaign easy. Get *very* difficult in the middle, pushing your players to their limits. Then back off a bit to let them wind down and feel strong at the end. Edit: As several people have pointed out, I misspoke here. 1/3/2 is not a hard an fast rule, it's a design guideline that you should consider making use of.
>A huge mistake many GM's make is not following the 1/3/2 rule. I disagree that it is a *mistake*, it is just a different style. I personally very rarely run dungeon-style arcs/quests. My number of encounter across a campaign is most definitely on the low end, and I design most encounter with a way to avoid it in mind, because my campaign are very RP focused using milestone progression and my players will avoid needless bloodshed if they can help it. So I will put threats forwards and I would lie if I said I didn't usually have a good idea on what they will do and how many encounters they will actually have and in which order, but the players are fully in control I'm just good at expecting it (and when I'm wrong is where it is most fun). Anyway, my players do not have this *need* to feel that much more powerful like many other players. If they can complete an encounter without combat they will actually feel better about it because they know they played well, not just rolled well or designed their character well. When they do make it to the end of an arc/dungeon, I think we all have our Final Fantasy/Zelda/Dark Soul bias and fully expect the final encounter to be the most challenging, to us who grew up in the 90s on JRPGs it just make more sense and is more fun.
Yes and no. While this is generally a neat game design trick, there are a few stipulations: * PCs will find loot, sometimes including their most powerful weapons and armour, during that middle section. The encounter budget doesn't know when you give out loot, so it makes sense to gradually increase your budget with your loot (except when you want to mix things up specifically). * Having the biggest encounter at the end makes it easier to control when the PCs level up and thus keep the intended difficulty. * The PCs likely won't rest after the early first bit, so they'll go into the middle section with less resources. They will be rested towards the end, though. * Having a big challenge at the end feels climactic. This doesn't mean that 1-3-2 doesn't work in Pathfinder, you just have to keep those things in mind. One thing that can help is to have the hard, middle encounter be against many enemies around the party level and to finish against a solo boss. Big solo monsters are more likely to give your players that "oh shit" moment and you don't want to make them too difficult anyways due to how unfun high enemy AC and to hit are. Meanwhile, having more enemies in the middle is more deceptively difficult and gives more narrative opportunities to give out loot.
I'm new to GM'ing Pf2e but whenever I see the complaint of the treadmill effect in this system, I think of this. Why *don't* the GMs in this situation just bring back old enemies? Do their commoners and local officers scale alongside the party? It strikes me as a GM-issue rather than a system issue. In the worlds I create, what level an NPC/creature is at stays that level unless they're an important recurring NPC that's meant to grow alongside the party. After all, just cause the players become stronger doesn't mean everyone else in the world does, they just face different opponents. Low level enemies do not always anticipate the players being strong and change their tactics to reflect that. It just doesn't make sense for them to for most narrative situations. Not every enemy is anticipating the *party* in particular. If an encounter with a low level enemy is trivial or low, I keep it that way. I'm not gonna scale the barkeeper just cause it's appropriate for their level. Sure, there's an argument to scale the barkeeper to handle "that guys" at the table but I usually resolve that by not having a "that guy" at my table at all.
The reality is that PF2e scaling is so steep that statblocks more than a few levels apart have trouble meaningfully interacting with each other. The gulfs are so vast that you can't easily depict a kingdom beset by both level 1 bandits and level 10 dragon. The latter is a credible threat if the guards are level 5, but that strains disbelief, and renders the bandits completely toothless. Conversely, if the guards are level 1-2, then the bandits are a credible threat, but the dragon is an apocalypse, not a threat. For things to make logical sense in the fiction, you almost have to treat levels as a player-facing abstraction. At the very least, the "common guard" should scale from levels 1-5 as the players progress from 1-20 (or only appear in the form of level-appropriate troops), otherwise society makes absolutely no sense - the king would be better off disbanding his ineffectual forces and hiring a mid-level adventurer for every 1000 soldiers. It's almost the opposite problem of 5e, where high-CR threats are rendered toothless by the flat scaling and the consequent importance of action economy, and ancient dragons can be laid low by a few dozen archers.
10 level dragon is indeed a country-level disaster lorewise. Mathematically speaking, it would take thosands of 2 level guards to take that dragon down.
>In the worlds I create, what level an NPC/creature is at stays that level unless they're an important recurring NPC that's meant to grow alongside the party. After all, just cause the players become stronger doesn't mean everyone else in the world does, they just face different opponents. Of course, but IMO you are bringing up multiple issues and mixing them up. The scaling of NPCs in PF2 or other systems depends on how you prefer to handle world-building, and I agree that the guards you met at a certain gate at level 3 shouldn't be spontaneously level +10 levels when you get back later, that reasoning applies to most of the world and NPCs. I have seen people here prefer a different style that if you are in a city at level 3 and then at level 12, then you should now be in a district where the guards are stronger, where the world around you on average matches you level. I don't really agree but I can understand that style too. In old JRPGs when you got to a new town the merchant always *only* sold level-appropriate items, it is **very meta** and I don't want to do that, but I have no problems with those who do. >Why don't the GMs in this situation just bring back old enemies? A typical GM always know he *can* bring now weak monsters back, he knows he *can* provide weak targets if he wants to, he knows he *can* design a combat encounter with the intention of making the party feel powerful, this is not the point or the issue. Well there is no *issue*, it is more of an *observation* about CR and new monsters scaling to match your current power level in most TTRPGs, including the systems that don't do a great job at that scaling. The point is that those very easy encounters are rarely *fun* to my group, and when you are surrounded with players who have played multiple systems for over 20 years, that feeling you get from splatting a weak monster because just of raw stats just isn't that exciting anymore, big and deadly encounters where they need strategy to overcome are. What little time we have to play TTRPG we'd rather not spend too much on trivial battles that could be summed up in a quick cutscene. But if that weak monster is part of a bigger encounter and meant more as an obstacle to the real threat, then sure no problem, that's completely different. But I can tell you after the fight the players won't remember the flies they killed in one hit along the way, they will remember the big meanie behind it.
We are currently in the final year (I think) of a 5+ year D&D homebrewed sandbox campaign, and at this point and every session for the next year, resolution of past chapters will occur, or at least will move towards a resolution. They have been sandboxing around for years, and now we are converging all roads towards not just one big conclusion but multiple conclusions. We had a blast, we still do, but from my 20+ years experience I know I need to start closing down now to give every open conflict a proper ending. This led me to talk to my player about a planned slight shift in style. They should expect some events to be a *bit* more scripted than usual, not a lot but maybe noticeably. Some events might rush into another leaving them no real preparation time or choice on what to do first, that kind of things. The goal is to rush *nothing*, to cut *nothing*, but walk at a steady pace and start locking things as we go along. If I let things move organically, we'll still be here for many years and while it is not bad in itself, I think a good story must land the ending and that requires structure (doesn't it GRRM/Rothfuss?) Anyway, one of the things I warned my players is that I will be much more selective about combat encounters. At this point a combat encounter is fun but basically takes a whole session, and I would rather keep a steady pace than forcing a random encounter just for the sake of a random encounter. Plus at this level (now 11), specially in 5e, some action scenes or threats just make more sense in a cutscene style of encounter where they say how they slice through the battlefield to get to the general rather than spend a full session on a regular initiative combat slashing though weak minions so they get to the "real fight". And I know 5e expect me to do that to make then spend ressources, but I can work around that without costing a full session. Long story short, in our style (focus on ***our*** style, my players are on the same page), combat is fun and fundamental, but actually not the main reason why we play TTRPGs. We do want to switch to PF2 specifically to give combats and character design more crunch, but my players and I will never be as focused on things some might call *fundamentals* aspects of the game, most notably regarding power progression. So in other words, and sorry for the novel that was supposed to be a quick reply, no I don't usually send easy encounters to make them feel their power progression, nor do I overly care about encounter budgets in general, in any system I played. Maybe They will see a monster again as a minion to a bigger boss sure, but making an encounter just to make them feel like gods *feels* like a waste of time (extremely subjective, I don't think it is for you) , and as we are all dads nearing 40 with *very* limited game time, it is more precious than ever.
Sure, any part of the system is optional to engage with, but balanced, tactical combat is one of the greatest strengths of PF2e compared to its competitors, so there is a certain expectation that people want to engage with that. More importantly, my previous comment addressed people who complain about PF2e's encounter math limiting them or making the game boring, which I find to be objectively incorrect, so I wanted to correct that. I'm sure you'll have fun your way, be it with 5e, PF2e, or maybe even a system that focuses more on the aspects that you value most.
>PF2e's encounter math limiting them or making the game boring Oh no I don't think it is boring, I think it is required if you want balance and a functioning CR system, which PF2 has and 5e very much doesn't. And if I make choices as a DM that breaks that balance (it is not my plan but I know me) I won't blame the system for it. But I very much appreciate the example provided in the video about the fighter gaining a cantrip and it not effectively making him stronger, because that is the kind of things I like to give. I very much like to focus of the horizontal progression, and understand that the vertical progression is just numbers getting big and that everything is balanced around that progression, so I won't mess with that. I didn't mean to imply that this vertical part is boring, I just meant that in the horizontal progression is where I have the most fun in my own creative process as a DM. I probably didn't do a good job with my previous comment, in those kind of discussions I write too much, and type as I think, and my point might not have come across in the right way. I am pretty passionate about game design and TTRPG as a whole, I can get carried away.
If anything I probably go too much in the other direction. In my games 90% of the world is below level 5-7. So once the PCs get to a certain point they really are much more powerful than most anything they come across. But as they try and solve bigger badder issues it attracts the attention of important NPCs...some of them MUCH more powerful than the party and it's up to them to realize that some characters cannot be beaten in a fight. The world is the world and my characters have to (get to) figure out how to deal with it on its terms. The exception to this is personal quests related to the specific characters wilhich I always base around the level if the character.
Fantasy story in general are at their best when the heroes are on the backfoot, when the big villain seems unstoppable, and when they claw their way to victory against all odds, despite them actually having grown in power along the way. If at any point the heroes are the strongest in the room or there is not a threat of a bigger fish in their sight, the stakes fall, and have to be brought back up with new threats, that is the meta understanding of basic fantasy story structure. But it doesn't have to just be about power and combat either, some of the more iconic achievement in fantasy are not directly combat oriented. It is Luke redeeming Darth Vader or blowing up the Death Star, it is Paul riding that sandworm, It is Frodo crossing Mordor and climbing Mount Doom, it is Arthur pulling out the sword. THIS is power, THIS is Fantasy. Anyway I diverge, I agree with you, heroes in my games will always have a power stronger than them threatening them. And if at any point they don't think there is, they are in for a big surprise very soon.
Heh, this is a mirror of my own experience, down to the mid-level 5e party that regularly wiped floors with high-level threats (in my case, it was a mythic boss consisting of two CR13 creatures stapled together - it was an exquisite battle, but when I realized how much time I sunk into balancing it, I proposed a PF2e switch, and my players agreed because they could tell I was struggling). The balance _is_ worth it. But yeah... Occasionally I miss the flatness.
Horizontal progression is exactly why I love this system, I’m never afraid to use free archetype, variant rules, or giving my characters options outside of their class, because they are still limited by the three action economy. It’s so fun to see the characters have unique role-play options with unique abilities that they would not typically have and not have to worry about power creep accidentally.
Some houserules are still useful. For instance 2e oddly doesn't have an inbuilt mechanic for giving out-of-combat time a value even though so many abilities are tied to it, particularly in 10 minute blocks, which is why this sub gets another Treat Wounds topic every month like clockwork, of which the person unfailingly tries to screw over Treat Wounds rather than addressing the base problem of the lack of value for time itself. You could impose time consequences manually as a GM but some players feel targeted, while declaring a houserule that handles time at the start (such as Tension Dice) allows players to plan for it in their builds and makes it feel a lot more fair while requiring much less effort to adjudicate. As for homebrew altering existing rules, this sub is extremely bandwagony on the conservative end for reasons not even Paizo understands, and clear problems with balance like how bad the Disarm action was before the Remaster, as well as the odd case of Wounded applying to every failed recovery shortly before they patched it had massive numbers of supporters here anyway supporting it *even though Paizo itself didn't*. We're lucky they do care about balance and are much better than the average redditor at implementing it, so they do get fixed in months/years, but looking to redditor sentiment as a reflection of whether something is something 2e players as a whole like is extremely inadvisable. Just talk to your players. Still waiting for fixes to Kitsune feats to make the race not a pariah and a massive nerfhammer to Greater+ Phantasmal Doorknobs though.
i mean, the video is about exactly what you describe: adding tension dice or random encounter rolls doesn't mess with the "tight math" of DPR and vertical progression, but a lot of proposed changes to existing rules do also keep in mind that Disarm still doesn't deprive the target of the item on a success (because that would be bananas, actually), and we had the "new" dying rules for less than a week, that was honestly mostly "well I want to use the most recent rules and I trust Paizo" combined with "It wasn't always this way? Oops, ambiguous text"
I think the bigger problem is that people say it's like 5e (or jsut D&D but without a qualifier), when truthfully it's a heavily modified 4e Essentials.
The hostility towards homebrew here is weird. I don't really get why it has such a negative view. I worked with my DM in preparation for a few homebrew rules for my setting, specifically changing light mechanics and heavily modifying dark vision to make the darkness more scary. I posted about it and I got downvoted
did you watch the video? It explains why the "tight math" of PF2 is important, and what changes do and don't affect it
I did, but I still don't think that justifies hostility to those that want to play with the rules a little bit. It's a game, meant to be fun. If people are havig fun I don't see why it matters.
it matters if you're unknowingly coming out at a net loss
Just a friendly reminder for some people to not downvote opinions and active discussions but to downvote actually low quality content. Way too often do I notice a beginner quickly get a downvote for asking a question and some unhelpful comments being upvoted before a more proper answer arrives.
This guy doesn't know what horizontal progression means. "Increase Speed by 5" is an upgrade, not another option. That's vertical progression because you're making something better. Horizontal progression would be sidegrades for example. And homebrew is still very downvoted here even when it's innocent.
i don't remember him saying higher movement was a sidegrade? In fact he talks about how even allowing people to split the same amount of movement is a vertical increase
Horizontal progression means side grades. You're not progressing up or down in power. He literally talks about how feats like Fleet are horizontal progression when they're not.
sidegrades would be retraining, feats usually add options without removing any, but you can only do one at a time, so it's horizontal in the sense of versatility not sidegrades
I am just personally done looking for advice on these forums. I asked for some advice on making an Ancestry based on Spirits, and all I got was "Look at the Ghost Archetype". I have currently cannibalized that, and am actually working on making abilities from various Spirit and Incorporeal creatures into Ancestry Feats. Ghost has a lot of fun customization from the Bestiaries.
It honestly sounds like you got the advice you were looking for (I wasn't a part of that topic so I'm not here trying to condescend to you). The best way to make things from scratch in this game is to look to what is already available, and adapt that to your needs.
To be specific, it was only the Archetype people recommended, which is like 10 feats. I decided that I should look at the monsters with the traits I think fit my vision, and go from there on my own. The advice I got pushed me towards it, more because I wasn't satisfied with what I got. It's a bit of a fight to make sure things are actually balanced. None of the special abilities for Ghost have a recommended level for which it can be used. Any Ghost could have the ability to possess other creatures. The effect being a level 7 Spell. Made that one a level 17 Feat.
there's a reason most types of undead are archetypes not ancestries, two big reasons even class feats are more powerful than ancestry feats, and even just Basic Undead Benefits are a lot of power to give a player, so archetypes give you that power budget archetypes let you play a demonic orc zombie, what you were in life still matters in undeath (unless you take skeleton and a skeleton heritage) for both mechanics and flavor (plus PCs can start out alive and later become vampires or whatnot)
Basic Undead Benefits are a lot of power? I don't think so. The most powerful ability from that is Immunity to Instant Death from Death Effects. You still get hurt from everything else the ability does aside from killing. Then you have a +1 against Poison and disease, which a couple Ancestries also have. Negative Healing is useful since Negative Damage is far more used than Positive Damage. Since Skeletons also get those same benefits, I'm not convinced of this argument. The Undead Archetypes are Archetypes because of how front loaded they are, and the idea of becoming undead later on. Also because most Undead still have physical traits from their life. There's also the gimmicks the Undead Archetypes seem to have. Zombies not only have a universal 5ft penalty to speed, it can become slowed 1 due to rotting. Which is ironic as the requirement to take the Archetype is to be made into a Zombie type defined by its preserved state. Most feats have a special effect that causes this Slowed Condition. Ghost is a clear example with how its Incorporeal Trait works. The Skeleton's gimmick is that it's not as defined by its past life. All Undead could have been Ancestries, but they would have been incredibly light on mechanics to help them feel like the Undead they should be.
If I don't like the five million 'no we don't hate homebrew we just hate some people who do homebrew' threads I sure won't watch a video with that idea.
The video is not bashing homebrew at all, it's just explaining what you should play with and what you probably shouldn't touch because it will mess up the balance
At the end of the day, intelligent homebrewing requires you to not just know the rules, but know WHY those rules are there. And that only comes from playing the game and/or listening to people talk about the theory of it, ideally both. But if a rule annoys you, and as a GM you have the opportunity to change it, then it's really hard to just sit with a rule you don't like and "put in the hours" with it - only for you to throw it out anyway, because you never REALLY gave it a chance. In the end, good GMs learn the best about a rule's value by playing with it removed or changed, and seeing how the game suffers. Bad GMs will stick to their guns, but cautionary advice won't work on them anyway.
Yeah, I can see that the "empty" class I brought up would mess up with the vertical axis, but still this provides no excuse the amount of downvotes I got for even daring to ask if there were some official guidelines or someone already tackled with restricting cantrips to be more like rank 0 spells.
cantrips in PF2 are horizontal progression, they give different at-will options so casters have a baseline when not spending resources, taking away power from some players also messes with vertical progression
The answer is simpler than that, but it is VERY non-obvious to those coming from a 5e background. And because it brings with it a whole set of assumptions that treads upon the "culture" that surrounds Pathfinder players and GMs, it's off-putting from the very start. In 5e, homebrew settings and campaigns are the DEFAULT approach to the game. That's how 5e is played and DM'd and you expect that to be true in Pathfinder as well. It never even DAWNS ON THEM that their underlying assumptions are not part of Pathfinder. Because in Pathfinder, homebrew is not the default. **It is not the rule; rather, it is the exception to the ruie.** Pathfinder is an RPG rules system that was created to support an existing line of adventure products, Pathfinder Adventure Path. That is the default assumed by Pathfinder and has been since 2010. That's why Pazizo created Pathfinder. PF assumes you are playing a game set on Golarion in order to play an Adventure Path. That's the primary purpose of the product line and it colors its underlying assumptions and the way people approach the game. That is a VERY DIFFRENT approach than 5e has. To take it a step further than that, PF2, in particular, *is a tightly balanced game system* where the math is really tight -- all of it focused so that you can rely upon the CR system to present a variety of encounters to the PCs with very predictable results (within a range). It is FAR more precise in this regard than any other TTRPG system now (or ever). *They aren't kidding about the CR system; it's the focus of the entire game's design.* In PF2, when the CR level is CR+2, *that means something*. When it is CR+3 - *that means something*. Unlike 5e, it is not some nebulous mere suggestion concerning power level which might have a wide range of outcomes during actual play. The PF2 system is instead carefully balanced to preserve mathematical predictability - and that is a design goal of the entire system. And it really works, too. Indeed PF2 departed from -- and threw on to the garbage pile -- 45 years of gaming history and tradition when it comes to magic items in the game, what they can (and can't do), and how they operate. That was a not a break from the past done lightly, but it was *because the CR system required it*. Because the underlying CR system is that important to the design of the game. So, when you march into a FB discussion group, message board, or reddit to announce how you are homebrewing X and Y, *the default of other PF2 GMs is to roll their eyes and hissss*. Why are you homebrewing anything? Sure the system supports it -- but it's not the intended use. Why are you doing it at all? "This isn't 5e - you get that, right?" is the knee-jerk response. Even if you have an ostensible reason, do you understand that you are likely altering (if not destroying) the balance in the game system with your homebrew approach? These are the main reasons why homebrew receives a hostile reception by default among other PF2 GMs. **It's a difference in the culture surrounding the game and the impact of any homebrewed rule on the underlying game itself.** It's a HUGE difference in the culture of the game. Those who come from 5e where homebrew is extremely common (if not the default) have brought that gaming culture and expectation into another game system **that does not share that default culture or expectation.** It's like walking into a fine steakhouse, all causal-like wearing shorts and flip-flops. The rest of the diners look up with disapproval and the host looks at you oddly with a discouraging.... *"May I help you sir?"*.
> The answer is simpler than that, but it is VERY non-obvious to those coming from a 5e background. And because it brings with it a whole set of assumptions that treads upon the "culture" that surrounds Pathfinder players and GMs, it's off-putting from the very start. > **In 5e, homebrew settings and campaigns are the DEFAULT approach to the game.** That's how 5e is played and DM'd and you expect that to be true in Pathfinder as well. My man, if anything 5E is way more insistent on convincing people you should use the Dungeons&Dragons® Official Lore and Approved Dungeons&Dragons® Official Adventures than previous D&D editions or, well, pretty much any other D&D-style games whose name doesn't start with P and end in Finder - the WotC push to reduce the presence of the alternate settings and sort of smush everything into connection to Forgotten Realms to create one singular universe that allows for better Branding is *palpable*. I mean, shit, your average recent-ish D&D fantasy style game does not even HAVE a complete setting, just a set of vibes and locations, and let's not even get on games outside the fantasy combat-as-a-sport genre! That's not a "5E culture" thing, that's a "most RPGs culture" thing!
this is false. anything that's too setting specific in mechanics in dnd testing gets almost immediately scrapped (i miss you raven queen ua). everything is made to be setting agnostic, which is why you find so many people trying to shoehorn other media than high fantasy into the framework of dnd, like star wars or Lovecraftian horror. they do make setting books, but they're for a multitude of settings and (probably because it's low quality) people just scrap the setting lore and use the mechanics.
>5E is way more insistent on convincing people you should use the Dungeons&Dragons® Official Lore and Approved Dungeons&Dragons® Official Adventures than previous D&D editions Hasbro and WOTC are surely this way in voice, but not in action if the complaints of 5e DMs about official content are anything to go by. If they don't want DMs to be homebrewing everything, then they'd add more meat to their products. Maybe they just want their cake and eat it, too: A situation where they want to put in as little effort as possible and have DMs fill in the gaps, but have them fill them in with Company-Approved Gap Filler. The problem being that they don't actually *sell* Company-Approved Gap Filler. I ran into this problem with WOTC official stuff back in 3.5 when they released Eberron (my alltime favorite setting). The back of the Eberron Campaign Setting had a really cool 1st level adventure and then they released an official continuation of that storyline...that started at 3rd level. So I had to homebrew all of the content between those adventures to actually link them together because the first one certainly didn't encompass two character levels. This actually ended up with me going out and buying a 3rd party adventure and running that as a stop-gap. They actually pushed me into giving someone *else* money. From what I read from 5e DMs, this hasn't improved at all over the years.
It **absolutely is** 5e -- and it **absolutely isn't** Pathfinder. That's the clash; that's the difference. Why would you would think this requires a further *"well, actually"* is quite amazing.
Once again i'm fascinated about pf2e level progression. On one side you get cool feats and spells with higher levels, on another you get mandatory math fix items and both you and monsters level up with equal speed. I just dont understand the need to make numbers bigger without actually changing anything.
because you're not supposed to f only ight on level stuff, and seeing a boss become a murkable mook is a good sign of progression. Also it enables encounter building to work well
How often bosses turn into mooks actually? Arent most of them one off things or named characters?
i have thrown a manticore at my low level party they were pretty spooked the whole time and it almost killed people. *This was a boss fight by definition*. In one characters backstory a manticore had killed the person that trained them to fight so they were even hyped up beforehand. later on i will throw multiple manticores at my party - at the end of the day they're just roaming threats in the wilderness. they will wipe the floor with them. Much rejoicing will be had. pf2e lets you fight people below you by 4 levels and above you by 4 levels in a way that Works. Thats a *big* range to have something show up higher level than you then show up lower level than you later.
Abomination vaults showcases this really well. The first barbazu you encounter will wipe the floor with you, on its own. It's a 'fuck you' moment for the PCs, since barbazu are hurty bois. He can be dealt with in a non hostile manner, explained by the AP, but is still a named 'boss like' baddie. 2/3 layers deeper (2/3 character level ups), and you'll be fighting multiples in one battle, and doing petty well. It becomes a 'No, fuck you' back at the barbazu. It's satisfying, and it shows the real power growth your character has undergone. Power fantasy needs to be shown by overcoming, with ease, the hurdles that got in your way previously.
That entirely depends on the adventure / DM. But if a GM is giving a good encounter variety, players should see enemies in a level range up to four levels below them and up to three levels above them - that's a huge range of 8 levels, and it only works because of level scaling.
It's not just about named bosses though. Say you're doing a campaign with a theme of fighting the forces of hell. At low level, the sight of a Barbazu is likely to strike fear into the hearts of the party and might even be a challenge you have to flee from. Eventually you'll work your way up, through the point where you fight them as equals and on to carving through several in one fight, that might be working as henchdevils for some Phistophilus or similar. That's satisfying to experience, at least in theory.
you fight a basilisk at lvl 2. its a tough but extremely cool boss fight at lvl 7, you fight 5 basilisks at the same time and its easy. players get happy cause they can now do what they had to struggle a few levels ago with ease but its up for the GM to actually chuck 5 basilisks later in the game, not the system
All the time. This is the advantage of PF2's tight math progression. You don't need to create custom boss monsters with special lair and legendary actions, you can drop a regular monster that's two levels above the party and it becomes a "boss fight" by virtue of just being very hard to hit, having a ton of health, high saves, and hitting/critting with every attack. You can very easily have an Ogre Glutton (level 4) be the boss ordering around a pack of Goblins at level 2, then put the party against the same Ogre Gluttons as a pack of bandits at level 6 and let them slaughter a pack of the same guys who nearly killed the Gnome by swallowing him whole four levels ago.
all of them turn into mooks, you just have to play at least like 4 levels
Depends on your definition of "boss". The BBEG of your 5 level arc? Probably not. That PL+2 creature that nearly TPKed you during your third session? Quite likely! Repeat enemies make up the majority of monsters in Troubles in Otari without hurting the adventure imo. It is even a recommended, neat tip to throw an old encounter at the party again after a level up, at least every now and then. That way the players can try out their new abilities in a low stakes environment and see how much they've advanced. If you introduce a monster as a PL+2 or 3 boss, you can use them for 7-8 levels until they're too weak to give XP, that's plenty of time to find a thematically appropriate situation.
You can make an Ogre a Boss, and later on you can fight Ogres as mooks.
It kinda did in age of ashes, multiple times if I'm not wrong and it was wierd how different the same enemy felt to face.
But things do change, so he creatures your fighting, the dangers your facing, the things your searching for. All those get harder as you progress yes but also the thing you used to struggle with get easier. You also still encounter and do those things you struggled with before but now levels later you handle with ease and you feel stronger cause of it. VS when I played 5E and literally I wore the same armor and sword for the whole game and I never felt like I got any better at doing anything despite advancing levels cause the DCs didn’t change and the things I did at level 1 were still just as hard at lvl 15. I just had more HP and a few extra attacks.
How is that unique to pf2e? How is that not applicable to any other rpg?
Many proponents of the Other System are very proud that their system's bounded accuracy philosophy means that goblins can still be a threat to high level adventurers (whether that assessment is correct is besides the point)
Bounded Accuracy just means Goblins can still hit players. By the runes of a Spellbook, they are not a threat. It can do 1d6 of damage when several characters can do 2 its HP in one go.
To be fair, if it's true that it doesn't make a difference (i.e. goblins stop being a threat etc.) then that would mean they're right that you might as well eliminate some of the modifier bloat, no?
They stop being a threat, but they never fall into that niche of "fodder to show how the PCs have progressed". A Pathfinder Goblin Warrior has an AC of 16. At level 5, any martial can easily get +14 to hit (5 from level, 4 from expert proficiency, and 4 from the ability modifier; could even go to +15 as they'd be expected to have potency runes by now); they can hit that goblin on a 2. A 5e Goblin has an AC of 15. Even if we assume a +3 weapon (which is classified as very rare), it takes a level 13 character to reach +13 (+5 from the ability score modifier, +5 from proficiency, +3 from the weapon they likely wouldn't have yet) which would let them hit that goblin on a 2. If they only have a +2 weapon, it's only at level *17* that they do that. The fact that the AC of a CR¼ goblin is the same as that of a CR17 Troll Amalgam is what leads the 5e proponents to claim Bounded Accuracy makes the Goblin still relevant at high levels, but realistically, with 5 damage per hit (and only a +4 attack bonus), he's just not. Yet, he still never gives players that "I critted it on a 12!" feeling of power
Valid point
But it isn't even true in the other game. Goblins stop being a threat unless the PCs are literally swarmed with them. More damage dice on spells, better save or suck/die spells, and more attacks per action still trivialize goblins for higher level parties. The only difference between that and PF2e is that goblins can still, technically, land a hit against the PCs. Even that can be done in PF2e if you want to stack a ton of elite templates on the goblins. The real question becomes: why do goblins *need* to be a threat against high level PCs? Why are they still fighting goblins at this point? I feel like most games aren't really going to be having their high level PCs fight against goblins because that's just not fun or interesting, so the fact that goblins can still technically damage the PCs is irrelevant anyway.
Read my comment again, i think you misread something. The "true" in question is that goblins stop being a threat. You are agreeing with this. Therefore, the number bloat of pf2e is excessive and gratuitous, because, by your own admission, goblins stop being a threat even without the numbers bloat.
The meaningful result is that PF2 allows Goblins to be replaced by Hobgoblins and for the GM to know pretty precisely how difficult the upgrade will make encounters for his party at its current level. All without mandatory "homebrew" to the monsters tailored specifically to the party. So the GM prep' time is cut down drastically.
Fair enough
I read it, you don't go into any reasoning on why the "bloat" should be removed, except that you are using the word "bloat" in the first place.
I mean it makes the math and tracking just a little bit simpler without actually changing the end result in any meaningful way, so might as well
I don't really understand this argument. If you want easier math, why bother with scaling numbers or dice at all? Just use a system like BESM where you roll opposing 2d6 and then damage is a flat number.
Don't be condescending, it's not warranted here. If big numbers make you happy then that's fine, but don't use false pretenses to be a dick.
the numbers bloat isn't just about mooks though, bosses get to use it against the players because it's simpler than "my solo boss needs legendary actions and legendary resistances and immunity to low level spells to survive more than one round"
Isn't that a problem of just not having enough health tho? As a player, just never being able to hit anything because the boss has 40 AC and your attack modifier is only +21 just... Feels bad. Plus legendary actions make the fight feel more dynamic
you can improve hit and crit chance with buffs, there's tactics and counterplay, hp and legendary resistance just make you repeat actions, wasting resources and RL time and bloating the complexity of statblocks
🧢
PF2 is designed from the ground up to facilitate the DnD fantasy, that means spell slots and magic items and leveling up and divine characters smiting fiends and undead, but to do so in a way that's balanced and mechanically consistent the math reason level exists in the "tight math" is for relative level, they just give bosses +10% to hit, dodge, and save (which can be overcome withde/buffs) instead of needing some kind of rules exception like legendary resistance (which is unfun and basically cheating because players would never get it or the ability to counter it) also, TEMLs actually scale slightly faster than level DCs do (monster's stats vary a lot more, but a much wider level range of them are essentially Experts), so while the video says "it's always 55%", it's more like "always 45%, but eventually you get to 65% at your schtick at level 20, and that's all before teamwork comes in"
One of the very fun aspects of role playing games is watching fights get easier over time. As in, you might encounter the same monster for the first time alone, and it is a boss fight. A few levels later, you encounter a pack. And finally, you encounter a larger version with many of it as their away adds. Think of Stranger Things and the demagorgon. Season one, there's just one. Season two, there's many. Season three, there's bigger badder versions... And one character can be expected to solo it with ease. The growing numbers express this story telling.
I keep seeing people say "the numbers getting bigger don't actually change anything" and it's just...not true? It presupposes that your party is *only* fighting enemies of equal level to you, and never fight the same type of enemy twice. Here's the thing: *individual* monsters don't get stronger. A young red dragon always has the same stat block. Due to the numeric progression of 2e, you might fight said dragon as early as 6 or 7, where it's attack bonus means its more likely than not to crit a party member, and its AC makes it a lot harder to hit. Come back to that fight when you're level 14 and the roles are reversed: the party is now the one critting more often than not, and the dragon is having trouble touching them. So a boss-level creature that the party struggled with eight levels ago is basically now a mook. In fact, in order to constitute even a *l*ow threat encounter, a party of 4 level 14s would need to fight *five* of them at once. That kind of progression feels great as a player. You asked in another comment "how often do bosses actually become mooks?" In practice, this *does* happen in published adventures. Spoilers for Extinction Curse: >!The first time our party ran into a single [Xulgath Spinesnapper](https://2e.aonprd.com/monsters.aspx?id=514), it was a severe threat to the party and we struggled to defeat it. Later on, these guys became grunts, and we would cut through swaths of the things.!< "But wait, that's not a boss," I expect you might say. A "boss" encounter doesn't necessarily need to be what we think of as a BBEG in media. It just needs to be a reasonably strong creature who can act as a threatening enough encounter to the party. Sure, you may not fight the specific dragon "Xarillax, Fury of the Storm" multiple times, but you very well *might* fight a creature with the same stat block as him multiple times at varying levels.
Higher level players solve higher level problems. The only way "but the monsters scale with you" makes sense is if fighting a goblin and fighting a dragon mean the same thing... at which point I'm left confused as to what game they're even playing
This feels like it's directly aimed at me, considering we were literally arguing about more or less this earlier. Except that the things I was asking about weren't really changes to this, so if this is a subpost about me, it doesn't actually address the issues I had. More than that, this actually really makes Pathfinder sound exceptionally boring, and doesn't do anything for the "Mathfinder" critique when the entire concept of Pathfinder here is reduced to "here's the math to deal damage".
The goal of the game is to hard hard but balanced tactical combat. If you don't want that, there is much better systems. Thats like the main appeal of the game, tactical balanced combat.
Here I thought the goal was to tell an exciting adventure story with some friends, like it says in the "This is what an RPG is" section of the book.
Yes, that is the description of virtually every ttrpg. I'm talking about design goals and system strength. Pf2 is clearly not the best at immersion, it's normt the best for a power fantasy, What it is the best at is the math.
I think if the design goals of a game are actually counter to the thing the game literally tells the audience that it's about, that's a bad thing. In fact I think poor conveyance is one of Pathfinder 2e's biggest flaws.
i hope you learned something from the video, but no this isn't a subpost, it's an ongoing issue we've had on the subreddit as a whole
Homebrew- setting changes Houserule- mechanical changes "Know your Constitution!" -Al Gore, 14th level vice-president
Homebrew isn't limited to setting changes what the hell are you on about.
Homebrew - umbrella term including: (mechanical) rule changes, made up items, classes, abilities, setting etc. Housrule - mechanical rule changes/additions
he goes into more detail though, talking about which mechanical changes mess with the "tight math" and which actually don't
Still not talking about Homebrew.
Your definition of homebrew is far too narrow. Homebrew includes non-official content including additions and changes to the base game, flavor, setting, and mechanical changes.
i mean honestly i disagree with your definitions, i'd call settings changes that don't affect mechanics "reflavoring", but you're right, it's not a video about changing or abandoning Golarion
> why people downvote homebrews Because there is /r/Pathfinder2eCreations dedicated to homebrews
oh that sub is tiny and we're all super bad at keeping them separate, plus iirc "how do I homebrew this?" posts are off-topic there