Pathfinder Is Still Bad

saithorthepyro · Post by **saithorthepyro** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:44 pm

Apparently they are selling physical copies of the playtest for money. Including a Deluxe edition for sixty dollars.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:49 pm

They did it before. Why not again?

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 5:55 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:If you're going to have people pick from a list of abilities, you pretty much want to give them access to a new tier periodically. If 'better abilities' come online at 6th level, they'll have picked their top 2 at 2nd and 4th and now they're excited again... The disadvantage is that you have to write more powers.

The intent is that there is a "better" list that comes online at 10th. Things like deep fury are there if there was something in the minor lost you wanted but didn't have enough picks in the first 10 levels.

The general design goal is to have 8 options for the minor list, and ~6 for the major one, not counting the "pick another minor ability" one. I specifically decided on 8 minors so that two characters of the same class could potentially have no overlapping picks.

It's all very WIP as well. I get that making your 4th pick from the same list may be dull, but you're also picking up new maneuvers and other stuff along the way.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 6:12 pm

GnomeWorks wrote:At the risk of ridicule, here is an example of how I've been approaching class design as of late.

So you're going with the "static bonuses at 1st" approach, looks like. I personally think you need more than a +2 to really notice a difference at that point (e.g. 3e skills have a 4-rank difference between specialists and amateurs with similar stats and the specialists feel noticeably better than amateurs, while attack rolls and saves are a +1/+0 or +2/+0 difference between good and poor progressions and feel pretty same-y), but if a small difference works for your players, it's probably fine.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 6:25 pm

In this case, berserkers have crap defense bonuses because they have the largest HP pool of the classes. Usually a class gets one +4 and two +2, or two +4 bonuses.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:17 pm

Axebird wrote:There are a lot of baffling things in that announcement, but directly lifting proficiency bonuses from 5e has got to be one of the weirdest.

It depends how they do it. If it's just the bonus then... whatever. The current PF skill system is a kludge to fix a tiny handful of the major problems of the 3.5/3.0 skill system and generally sucks. They have to do something with it, because 'class bonus of +3' to paper over the '4x skill points at first level' just fucking doesn't cut it- redo from start on skills is pretty necessary for any new D&D or D&D adjacent game. They didn't go far enough in mashing skills together the first time, and having profession: baker on equal footing with 'sneak and ambush' 'detect and avoid ambush' and 'use magic powers that don't belong to you' has to fucking go.

The thing they have to avoid is the empty skill descriptions of 5e. If they have real full page descriptions of what skills do and what the effects of a roll are, they avoid the real pitfall of the 5e system. They can't get away with a generic DC chart buried somewhere in the depths of their book.

Generally, I have a hard time caring about the whole thing. The 'playtest' is going to be a comedy of errors, and but PF2 was inevitable and clearly in the works- they've been doing pure shovelware for the past 2 years (at least), and Starfinder was following the same goddamn pattern as 3.5 ->SW Saga ->4e. It wasn't subtle.

That said, the quality of said shovelware has most recently yielded Starfinder and the shifter class, so it all bodes really poorly. They might well create some game wrecking 4e style atrocity. It will be hilarious to watch.

.
Some specific areas that jumped out at me:

---
the new '3 action, no action types' action economy. Uh... sure. I'm at a loss to pinpoint the actual benefits of this system, but attack-attack-attack rather than move-attack-attack clearly says 'Fuck you, archer edition.' Because more attacks.

And if there are a lot of spells that benefit from multi-action casting like they describe magic missiles, wizards and shit are going to pin their asses to the floor and never move.

----
Classes: +1 for adding more core classes. +1 for the alchemist, which is a fairly good utility class with lots of options and directions to go. But if the other eleven are just the 3.0 D&D classes, they're wasting a huge opportunity.

Regardless, they're going to get spammed with 'why not X class from <advanced whatever>,' so this is going to be a shitstorm.

----
4 spells lists, final destination. Presumably these are cleric, druid, bard and sorcerer/wizard. Presumably paladins and rangers will suckle off clerics and druids but be stuck with shitty progression and low level spells. Whatever, non-issue.

---
goblins. PF goblins are a horrifying joke. As the iconic alchemist*, it doesn't even make sense, since they're canonically terrified of writing.

*for all the iconics are a joke, since most people see pictures of them, never realize they're supposed to be important and never interact with or read about them in any way.

----
Ancestry rather than races. Hooo. This strikes me as more problematic than 'fantasy races.' Because their shitty setting is going to be even more tied into the rules, and their shitty setting is choked with expies for real world peoples. Varisians=gypsies, Katapeshi= arabs, Ulfen = Scandinavians and on and on to that one group (Mbebwe?) = all of africa.

So, as soon as you move from 'humans with orcish ancestry tend to be strong but stupid' to people with 'varisian/katapeshi/whomever ancestry tend to be...' you've wandered right into Racistville.

Given that paizo policy on representation is pretty open and reasonable and a high percentage of their actual forum goers have a strong tendency to be... reactionary fuckwits, this is likely to explode in their faces.

Mord · Post by **Mord** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 12:58 am

Emerald wrote:I personally think you need more than a +2 to really notice a difference at that point (e.g. 3e skills have a 4-rank difference between specialists and amateurs with similar stats and the specialists feel noticeably better than amateurs, while attack rolls and saves are a +1/+0 or +2/+0 difference between good and poor progressions and feel pretty same-y), but if a small difference works for your players, it's probably fine.

For your generic DC 10 task, an idiot with +0 and an expert with +2 will only have the expert succeed where the idiot fails 30% of the time and the expert will fail where the idiot succeeds 20% of the time.

As a general rule, you need to be 1σ ahead of someone else before you are really noticeably better. For d20, this means your bonus needs to be something like +5.77 over the other guy's before your performance diverges noticeably. There is no level where +2 over someone else makes you "feel" better than them.

In the same example, if you bump that +2 up to a +6, you have the expert succeeding where the idiot fails 40% of the time and the idiot succeeding where the expert fails only 10% of the time.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 1:04 am

Hey, Voss? Gypsy is a derogatory term, We're trying to stop using it.

But more on topic, D&D's always had shitty racist expies, so to call Pathfinder out on it rings a little unfair.
Edit: which is not to condone said shitty racist expies, I'm just saying it's not unique to Pf.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 1:49 am

But its ubiquitous with PF, and they're specifically taking the dive into 'ancestry' as a thing that defines your character.

Its pretty hard to call anyone else out on it since there is a lack of 'anyone else' beyond 5e D&D, which is basically settingless (or a tiny corner of the FR that is thousands of miles from their terrible expies and never references them).

Hey, Voss? Gypsy is a derogatory term, We're trying to stop using it.

That's... kinda the point. The Pathfinder 'Varisian' is specifically the gypsy caricature and nothing else. It's literally why I'm pointing out the 'ancestry' thing is problematic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 2:11 am

I mean, sure, 5e is basically settingless, but even then, they managed to be racist.

And my point was, you know, maybe not say gypsy? Say, like, Roma/Romani?

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 2:38 am

Sure. I'll whitewash any issues, just for you. Tom and Jerry had a 'maid' rather than a mammie. Weinstein was just going for the old 'slap and tickle.' Not much point on calling people out on their actions if pointing out the problem is just going to offend people.

*spits*

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:32 am

Voss wrote: the new '3 action, no action types' action economy. Uh... sure. I'm at a loss to pinpoint the actual benefits of this system, but attack-attack-attack rather than move-attack-attack clearly says 'Fuck you, archer edition.' Because more attacks.

And if there are a lot of spells that benefit from multi-action casting like they describe magic missiles, wizards and shit are going to pin their asses to the floor and never move.

The new big thing will be hirelings with small carts/sleds, so they drag you into position and you get your full turn as normal.

(I don't even know why I haven't tried this in D&D with a regular "you hate having to move" character.)

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:39 am

I kinda feel like Prak is how the racists are gonna win.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 3:43 am

Because I'm aware of derogatory terms the people they're applied to don't want used?

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 4:04 am

No, because you somehow managed to stumble ass backwards into "Well, D&D has always been racist" apologetics while scolding Voss for actually caring enough about the topic enough to say exactly how fucking bad this shit is.

FFS, behold the Czarni crimelord!

Part of the problem is that in a very real way that fucker isn't really representative of the Romani. He's representative of a fucking stereotype that exists only because people have been specifically discriminating against the Romani since before any of us were born. I'm not going to bother faulting Voss for using the term gypsy in this context given that it's pretty obvious he was speaking from a place of empathy.

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 4:08 am

Nonsense about the PF2 action economy.

The fighter, for example, has a feat that you can select called Sudden Charge, which costs two actions but lets you to move twice your speed and attack once, allowing fighters to get right into the fray!

So... a feat that lets you charge, which used to be a thing anybody could do. K.

Concentrating on a spell might be vital, but not if you need to move away, draw a potion, and drink it. Maybe you could wait to drink it until your next turn to keep the spell going, or maybe you could not move and hope the monster does not eat you.

At least in 4e, there was the idea that you could only convert some actions into others. Standards to moves, yes, but not moves to standards.

I feel like that might be a useful thing to have in a system where you want people to spend actions sustaining powers. Specifically, if you have say three powers you want to use that all have "sustain: swift," that means their ongoing stuff is less awesome than powers with "sustain: move." So this seems like it's kind of shoehorning all sustainable powers into the same power level (for a given level, at any rate).

As an aside, why the fuck are they going to 10 levels worth of spells? Was 9 simply not granular enough? I have a hard time these days distinguishing between 7th and 8th level spells, you want me to add another layer on top of that? What the fuck?

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 5:42 am

I would guess because spell levels increasing every odd level except 19 bothered someone? If the half-casters are getting half casting off of set lists (like Starfinder I think) then going to 10 levels means they can literally get half of that.

Also yeah, that was more Keystone Kops than Social Justice, Prak. Please think before you speak for the marginalized.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 5:53 am

Voss wrote:Generally, I have a hard time caring about the whole thing. The 'playtest' is going to be a comedy of errors, and but PF2 was inevitable and clearly in the works- they've been doing pure shovelware for the past 2 years (at least), and Starfinder was following the same goddamn pattern as 3.5 ->SW Saga ->4e. It wasn't subtle.

That said, the quality of said shovelware has most recently yielded Starfinder and the shifter class, so it all bodes really poorly. They might well create some game wrecking 4e style atrocity. It will be hilarious to watch.

For Starfinder they actually dug up some folks who worked on the WotC Star Wars trainwreck and had them make the game. It was always going to be exactly as shit as Saga because it was made by people who made Saga with the intention of being like Saga.

-Username17

GnomeWorks · Post by **GnomeWorks** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 5:57 am

Mask_De_H wrote:I would guess because spell levels increasing every odd level except 19 bothered someone? If the half-casters are getting half casting off of set lists (like Starfinder I think) then going to 10 levels means they can literally get half of that.

I guess I've just been under the impression that people really enjoyed the partial, 6-SL casters, and that - if they were to do a 2e - that was the direction the casters were going.

Just seems a step backwards to go to 10. I get that it's more mathematically pleasing, but... that's not a good enough reason to go to that much more granularity.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 6:34 am

@Whipstitch: I'm torn between "why are my posts always misrepresented?" and "why do I even fucking try anymore, my posts are always misrepresented"

Ok, here's the fucking thing-
1: Gypsy is a fucking slur. There was literally no reason for Voss to say it when they could have said Romani. The point would have been exactly the fucking same.

2: D&D is fucking full of racist bullshit, and it has been since OD&D. Varisians are not nearly the first fucking "Fantasy Roma" in D&D. There were the Rhenee in Greyhawk, and it honestly would not surprise me in the least if there were another group before that. And this is true of every Golarion culture Voss called out- the Katepeshi are predated by Greyhawk's Baklunish, the Ulfen are predated by Greyhawk's Suel, and the Mbebwe are predated, sort of, by how fucking often orcs are a straight up expy of the worst stereotypes of black people. I am not saying this to say it's ok, I'm saying this because calling out Golarion on the Varisians is fucking disingenuous, especially when you're doing so to say "this new way of doing race is going to be problematic" when D&D has always had offensive expies of stereotypes of real world cultures.

If you want to fucking call someone out on racism in tabletop gaming, the seniors are just as fucking guilty as the new kid.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 6:43 am

On the one hand, I can see the point in it being better to call out racism by not explicitly using the slur. On the other hand, isn't Prak being hypocritical by using the slur in the same context they're calling out Voss on?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 6:47 am

Yeah, I had to make a decision there, and there wasn't a good way to go. I edit the word, and I'm mocked for being overly precious and then ignored save for how people can mock me. I use it, and I'm being hypocritical. I went with the one where maybe people actually look at what the fuck I'm saying.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 8:00 am

Prak wrote:I'm torn between "why are my posts always misrepresented?" and "why do I even fucking try anymore, my posts are always misrepresented"

Look man, I'm talking about the results here, not the intent. I don't think you're racist or anything but you did do this kinda weird thing where you managed to concern troll yourself into saying it's unfair to single out Pathfinder even though from here it looks super duper fair to single out Pathfinder in a Pathfinder thread about Pathfinder's specific super racist failures. You're at least vaguely aware of this given that you felt the need to immediately edit it in that you didn't really intend to communicate what you were communicating. I feel like the net effect here is that you're inadvertently downplaying the portrayal of the Romani as thieving gypsies even as you object to the use of the slur itself. That's not entirely wrong, exactly, but it hits me as kinda misguided given that Voss was making a pretty decent point rather than just getting his jollies at the expense of the Other.

Prak wrote: Ok, here's the fucking thing-
1: Gypsy is a fucking slur. There was literally no reason for Voss to say it when they could have said Romani. The point would have been exactly the fucking same.

I'd argue that in this case the use of the slur was actually pretty informative because it says a lot about the tone and nature of the stereotypes being talked about. Sure, he could have said "offensive Roma stereotypes" instead and that'd be safer and just as useful but at the end of the day I'd still be thinking "Oh, he's talking about that awful gypsy bullshit." I'm willing to stop using the term from here out in recognition of how there's better ways of going about things but overall I found the way you asked Voss to knock it off to be rather condescending.

Prak wrote:2: D&D is fucking full of racist bullshit, and it has been since OD&D. Varisians are not nearly the first fucking "Fantasy Roma" in D&D. There were the Rhenee in Greyhawk, and it honestly would not surprise me in the least if there were another group before that. And this is true of every Golarion culture Voss called out- the Katepeshi are predated by Greyhawk's Baklunish, the Ulfen are predated by Greyhawk's Suel, and the Mbebwe are predated, sort of, by how fucking often orcs are a straight up expy of the worst stereotypes of black people. I am not saying this to say it's ok, I'm saying this because calling out Golarion on the Varisians is fucking disingenuous, especially when you're doing so to say "this new way of doing race is going to be problematic" when D&D has always had offensive expies of stereotypes of real world cultures.

I don't really see it as disingenuous, so much as I think it's an acknowledgement that it's no longer the 1970s and Pathfinder doesn't even have the excuse that they're just grandfathering in decades old content.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 8:35 am

Koumei wrote: The new big thing will be hirelings with small carts/sleds, so they drag you into position and you get your full turn as normal.

(I don't even know why I haven't tried this in D&D with a regular "you hate having to move" character.)

Because they would die to the first aoe monster you find, and eventually you start developing the reputation of the "adventurer" who hires hirelings, takes them in the wilderness and they're never seen again?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Thu Mar 08, 2018 9:25 am

@Whipstitch: you make a very good point, I hadn't considered. This is a pathfinder thread. So, ok, yeah, it's totally fair to talk about pathfinder casual racism without targeting the rest of D&D's racism. Fair point.