Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[SlyJohnny]

As for Saturday morning cartoon bit, at the end of the day D&D's supposed to be a game, not a political philosophy exercise. When the orc army is at the border, most players don't want to spend years/decades in negotiations. They want to go personally facestab some orcs.

Yeah, okay, then just say "go and facestab the orcs because they're the enemy and you're being paid to there is no Orc Rights Commission". If we're going to genocide group X because they burned down the village granary and stole some sheep because that's the world we live in and our characters aren't inclined to care about goblins, I'll accept that. We don't have to get weird with this irredeemably evil manifest destiny stuff.

[MGuy]

Why is a hole with no bottom. Is ISP emotionally immature and acting out for attention? Is he projecting his insecurities on others? Is he in grade school and just spamming the newest insult he's learned?

The answer is: who fucking cares? He's never posted anything worth reading anyway. Hit ignore and move on, life richer for it. Then I won't have to read his inane shit when you quote it.

Trolls gonna troll. I haven't read anything ISP has said in a while but dead consistently seems to give more words to the shadzar types than they deserve. It's like his thing.

[infected slut princess]

The URL says TGDMB.com, but the last several posters make me think I have gone to Incel.me....

So what do you guys think isp's deal is?

My chronic, untreated syphilis caused insanity. Let me tell you, insanity in real life is not fun. It's not like in RPG games when you roll d100 and look up your results on an insanity chart and have a good laugh about it and then use your insanity to justify ruining the entire campaign.

[Thaluikhain]

The URL says TGDMB.com, but the last several posters make me think I have gone to Incel.me....

Eh, I think most sites from Montenegro agree on the alignment system being flawed.

[FatR]

I've wanted to check if TGD has anything new to say about PF 2 and got another fucking orc baby discussion instead...

Ultimately, once we have no need to stick to descriptions in the current DnD Monster Manual because DnD has crashed, this matter is simple.

Fantasy settings with a lot of violence and facestabbing - you can safely bet real money that any DnD-influenced game will be such - generally benefit from creatures that PCs may stab in the face without second-guessing themselves, including creatures in the position of everyday raider threats, not just footsoldiers of some demonic, undead, or alien abomination apocalypse.

Therefore such creatures are likely be embedded in the setting one way or another. As evidenced by authors who turn orcs into just simple savages, often immediately inserting some different sort of race/species that is definitely OK to kill on sight. Or authors who like to pretend that their work is morally deep and shit still inserting orc-equivalents, except edgier, into their settings.

And it is not even slightly hard to imagine a species which are effectively self-replicating organic killbots who cannot be negotiated with, and whose babies are just smaller killbots who aren't yet dangerous to a trained and armed human. DnD/PF however managed to largely fail in this task. Perhaps because too many writers wanted to have their cake and eat it too, first writing something like a race of genetically damaged and supernaturally afflicted creatures who routinely rape, torture to death and eat every weaker humanoid they encounter, and then, when you suggest that a race like this should just be wiped the fuck out for the sake of everyone who are not them, getting flustered and saying that this is not how Good-aligned characters are supposed to act. But again, it is not likely anyone here has a reason to give a shit about DnD or PF as written anymore.

[Username17]

But again, it is not likely anyone here has a reason to give a shit about DnD or PF as written anymore.

The only reason the whole Orc baby killing thing came up is that Pathfinder 2 continues to have a code of conduct which can have a character's powers stripped if the MC thinks they have violated it. The first thing on the do not do list is to kill someone in a way that is not justified. Which of course opens up the extremely thorny can of worms "What is a justified killing in D&D land?"

It's not a particularly useful topic to discuss. But as evidenced by the fact that this shit parade keeps marching in time, it's obvious that there is not a singular satisfying answer and won't ever be one. Bringing up the topic of what constitutes "murder" in the eyes of a Pathfinder Paladin is thus obviously fucking terrible and the Pathfinder 2 Paladin code of conduct exists for no purpose other than to cause a non-zero number of games to end in acrimony.

That Paladin Code of Conduct is a crash bug. A significantly worse game design flaw than More Wishes, Thought Bottle, or Shadow Over The Sun.

-Username17

[Zaranthan]

Fantasy settings with a lot of violence and facestabbing - you can safely bet real money that any DnD-influenced game will be such - generally benefit from creatures that PCs may stab in the face without second-guessing themselves, including creatures in the position of everyday raider threats, not just footsoldiers of some demonic, undead, or alien abomination apocalypse.

The thing is, we already have this. 70% of the Monster Manual is amoral monsters that blindly attack everything they perceive. If you want an encounter with red dots, there's plenty of material that doesn't have the racist overtones of an author born in 1892. Even your demand of low-level threats that form gangs to steal food and shinies exists in the form of stuff like harpies.

[Whipstitch]

DnD/PF however managed to largely fail in this task.

I wouldn't call it a failure given that I don't even think it's a good or interesting idea. I'm fine with playing people that aren't completely up to speed with 21st century moral standards and none of this shit is even remotely a problem until the game takes a time out to ask me if I believe Bob has been naughty or nice.

[Koumei]

A significantly worse game design flaw than More Wishes, Thought Bottle, or Shadow Over The Sun.

What is Shadow Over The Sun? I'm familiar with the first two unintended consequences/exploits/fuck-ups, but not that one.

[Grek]

Shadows (or any spawn undead, really) eat the whole world and turn everything into spawn.

[saithorthepyro]

Reading the blog posts, first things I remember is it appearing to nerf the alchemist for no particular reason and the fact that Ogres now it at +10 to-hit.

Wizards look pretty much the same, which is both surprising and infuriating given how much other classes apparently have. The only things that has really changed is some of the feats available from what I've seen. Also apparently specific types of reactions are now locked behind specific classes? People I've talked to have said that of course you can still make an AOO, but if so why they only mention them in the Fighter preview I have no idea.

The fighter does seem to get some new tricks, pretty much all combat related, but at least some of this sounds like it might see use. 5e style background are in, and so are 5e style-paladins. This plus all the talk of proficiency is making me afraid they're going to come out with talk about bounded accuracy.

[Starmaker]

Shadows (or any spawn undead, really) eat the whole world and turn everything into spawn.

Shadows specifically feature in this scenario because they are incorporeal, apparently nonsapient, immune to sunlight and spawn very fast. Shadow Over The Sun is less of a trick and more of a natural state of the D&D world.

[Orca]

Reading the blog posts, first things I remember is it appearing to nerf the alchemist for no particular reason and the fact that Ogres now it at +10 to-hit.

Wizards look pretty much the same, which is both surprising and infuriating given how much other classes apparently have. The only things that has really changed is some of the feats available from what I've seen. Also apparently specific types of reactions are now locked behind specific classes? People I've talked to have said that of course you can still make an AOO, but if so why they only mention them in the Fighter preview I have no idea.

The fighter does seem to get some new tricks, pretty much all combat related, but at least some of this sounds like it might see use. 5e style background are in, and so are 5e style-paladins. This plus all the talk of proficiency is making me afraid they're going to come out with talk about bounded accuracy.

Fighters get to make AoOs, at least some others can do so with a feat. Non-fighters without that feat don't get to make AoOs as I understand it.

The numbers don't look like the bounded accuracy ones as far as I can tell. Likely they're aimed at keeping the attack/damage numbers on the treadmill, I don't know how successful that has been. Looking at the alchemist they eventually get to do 6x as much damage with alchemical weapons at 19th level. Feats might bring that up so that they do about the same amount of damage relative to enemy HP at 19th as at 1st, but obviously without those your alchemist is doing a much smaller fraction of the enemy HP at 19th level than they are at 1st level.

[saithorthepyro]

Reading the blog posts, first things I remember is it appearing to nerf the alchemist for no particular reason and the fact that Ogres now it at +10 to-hit.

Wizards look pretty much the same, which is both surprising and infuriating given how much other classes apparently have. The only things that has really changed is some of the feats available from what I've seen. Also apparently specific types of reactions are now locked behind specific classes? People I've talked to have said that of course you can still make an AOO, but if so why they only mention them in the Fighter preview I have no idea.

The fighter does seem to get some new tricks, pretty much all combat related, but at least some of this sounds like it might see use. 5e style background are in, and so are 5e style-paladins. This plus all the talk of proficiency is making me afraid they're going to come out with talk about bounded accuracy.

Fighters get to make AoOs, at least some others can do so with a feat. Non-fighters without that feat don't get to make AoOs as I understand it.

The numbers don't look like the bounded accuracy ones as far as I can tell. Likely they're aimed at keeping the attack/damage numbers on the treadmill, I don't know how successful that has been. Looking at the alchemist they eventually get to do 6x as much damage with alchemical weapons at 19th level. Feats might bring that up so that they do about the same amount of damage relative to enemy HP at 19th as at 1st, but obviously without those your alchemist is doing a much smaller fraction of the enemy HP at 19th level than they are at 1st level.

The thing that set my alarm bell ringing was the universal proficiency list given in one of the blog posts, which was part of the bounded accuracy formula in 5e. Admittedly not a huge piece, but it was still enough to make me think they might go down that road. They are taking other things from 5e, like backgrounds, so I wouldn't be completely surprised if it happened.

[merc1138]

Reading the blog posts, first things I remember is it appearing to nerf the alchemist for no particular reason and the fact that Ogres now it at +10 to-hit.

Wizards look pretty much the same, which is both surprising and infuriating given how much other classes apparently have. The only things that has really changed is some of the feats available from what I've seen. Also apparently specific types of reactions are now locked behind specific classes? People I've talked to have said that of course you can still make an AOO, but if so why they only mention them in the Fighter preview I have no idea.

The fighter does seem to get some new tricks, pretty much all combat related, but at least some of this sounds like it might see use. 5e style background are in, and so are 5e style-paladins. This plus all the talk of proficiency is making me afraid they're going to come out with talk about bounded accuracy.

Fighters get to make AoOs, at least some others can do so with a feat. Non-fighters without that feat don't get to make AoOs as I understand it.

The numbers don't look like the bounded accuracy ones as far as I can tell. Likely they're aimed at keeping the attack/damage numbers on the treadmill, I don't know how successful that has been. Looking at the alchemist they eventually get to do 6x as much damage with alchemical weapons at 19th level. Feats might bring that up so that they do about the same amount of damage relative to enemy HP at 19th as at 1st, but obviously without those your alchemist is doing a much smaller fraction of the enemy HP at 19th level than they are at 1st level.

The thing that set my alarm bell ringing was the universal proficiency list given in one of the blog posts, which was part of the bounded accuracy formula in 5e. Admittedly not a huge piece, but it was still enough to make me think they might go down that road. They are taking other things from 5e, like backgrounds, so I wouldn't be completely surprised if it happened.

I doubt that, although I see why someone might make that association. I think the problem really stems from Paizo being unable to explain anything in plain English. They couldn't describe a stop sign in 500 words or less without leaving the reader utterly confused.

The numbers that they have shown off for things don't fall in line with 5e's bounded accuracy(even if 5es own numbers don't fall in line with their own bounded accuracy). Additionally, they seem to be indicating that the skill proficiencies are effectively gates for skill feats(ie: that comment they made about a legendary survival skill feat allowing the character to exist without food, air, or water... just floating in the vacuum of space I guess), but they never explicitly spell that out. Just yesterday in their paizo-con stream they finally pointed out in one sentence that the 20 different types of feats(class feats, race feats, skill feats, weapon feats, class feats, feet feats, regular feats, it's just endless) don't share the same feat slot on level advancement so "a character doesn't have to choose between power attack and crafting"(paraphrasing them). Because they failed to mention something so simple I've seen repeated discussion about how stupid the 15 different kinds of feats are in person and on message boards, which they could have resolved or prevented with one sentence to clarify.

Another absurd example of Paizo's lack of having a real editor would be their choice of wording on the red cap stat block. WTF does "bolster" mean? Oh, in this context it's supposed to mean immune... so why not just say "immune"? Someone at Paizo needs to hide the thesaurus.

On top of all of that nonsense that just makes things difficult to understand, they also stated on their stream that they weren't going to arrange the CRB like a reference book and would instead put what they feel to be "fitting" feats or whatever with what they feel the best choices are and commented about feats that dwarves might most commonly have being found in the section about dwarves. What? I'm sure there will be an index, but to consider the CRB to not be a reference book(which is exactly what it should be, so players can quickly reference the material they need during a game), they want it to be some catered learning experience or some such nonsense.

This whole thing reeks of having some third party creative consultant onboard spewing nonsense about synergistic paradigm shifts, instead of having proper technical editors who understand how to lay out a reference document. Worst case it's not even that, and whichever paizo guy is in charge(sorry, can't be bothered to learn their names) read some bullshit book and saw the word "immune" in a stat block at a meeting and decided to dynamically shift the synergistic axis for innovative deliverables(that sentence hurt to type, but I've seen exactly that happen before in meetings at various companies) by changing a commonly understood word to something exciting(in their mind).

At this point, they could probably answer a third of the questions that keep appearing in the comments of their blog posts simply by posting an example and subject to change level chart for a single class.

[Chamomile]

The problem with bounded accuracy is that the difference between 1st level and 20th level is, for almost every character, six points. You start at +5 and you end at +11. Characters with expertise can squeeze an actually respectable bonus by getting up to +17, a 12 point advantage over level 1, but that is just Bards and Rogues. This is still nominally supposed to be a game where you start out fighting goblins and end up fighting dragons, with the exact same progression of ogres, manticores, storm giants, and mariliths in between, but the actual between level 1 and level 20 is pitiful. Damage and health increase at a higher rate, but damage and health are also things you can linearly improve by just having more guys, which is why the key to power in 5e is having lots of zero-level mooks. Not even a whole ton of them, either. Several dragons can be killed by fifty zero-level yeomen with longbows, and all of them can be killed with a couple hundred (and that's including the fact that they may panic and flee if they start taking significant casualties - in a fight to the death, I'm pretty sure the number to take down an ancient red was something like 120). Forget a kingdom, ancient red dragons require careful planning and hit and run tactics to be a threat to a county, because if the local count masses his forces, he can pincushion the dragon in just one or two rounds.

The thing where attack bonuses, saves, and skills all work on the same math is defensible, though. There's tradeoffs, in that there are some skills you want to be influenced primarily by how high level you are and some skills you want influenced primarily by how much training you have, and you can't have that if it's all the same formula. Granularity is lost in exchange for simplicity.

But 3.X totally failed to use its granularity anyway. Skills, saves, and attack bonuses all ran on completely different math, even though attack bonuses and saves are both things you want to be strongly level-dependent and may as well use the same formula, while skills are a grab-bag of some things you do want strongly level dependent (perception) and some things you want strongly training dependent (diplomacy, athletics). 3.X had a decisively stronger skill system overall, but that's because 1) the bonuses went up fast enough that being a level 20 dragon slayer was a bigger deal than being a backwoods viscount and 2) there were actual rules for the skills.

[Username17]

I knew that 5e bounded accuracy was going to be a train wreck when Mearles did his "math is hard" rant. His claim was that changes in damage output, hit points, damage reduction, attack bonus, and armor class made it practically impossible to design level progressions. This is, of course, total horseshit. I mean, not only is that reasonably simple multi-variable algebra, but there are only 20 levels and you could jolly well fucking brute force some numbers. It wouldn't even take that long.

So obviously the 5e bounded accuracy is a foundation of sand and shit. And I have every reason to believe that Pathfinder's math will continue to get shittier as it diverges more and more from the 3e math that someone actually applied some fucking algebra to back in 1999.

But honestly, there's no reason you couldn't have a system that had bounded accuracy and used toughness and damage output as its level gating. Just as there's no reason you couldn't have a system that used bounded toughness and used accuracy and defense as its level gating mechanism. You could imagine a system in which regular spearmen regularly "hit" dragons and it just didn't fucking matter because of the disparity between the damage output of non-heroic spears and the toughness of dragons. You could also imagine a system where a mighty champion would die if struck in the neck by a dagger but was able to consistently fight their way through groups of mooks by simply always blocking the neck stabs from non-heroic opposition. You can easily rattle off several books and movies that appear to follow either of those systems and you could imagine wanting to design an RPG that did that.

The issue is that the people at Pathfinder don't seem to understand 3e math. It's not especially surprising, Andy Collins didn't understand it either and the big math changes in 3.5 were in general bad changes when taken in aggregate. So I see Pathfinder flirting with new math progressions for PF2 and all I can do is shake my head. I have no reason for optimism about any of this.

-Username17

[Slade]

Another absurd example of Paizo's lack of having a real editor would be their choice of wording on the red cap stat block. WTF does "bolster" mean? Oh, in this context it's supposed to mean immune... so why not just say "immune"? Someone at Paizo needs to hide the thesaurus.

Are we sure it means immunity?
Maybe it means advantage like 5E? They get to twice and take better?

[merc1138]

Another absurd example of Paizo's lack of having a real editor would be their choice of wording on the red cap stat block. WTF does "bolster" mean? Oh, in this context it's supposed to mean immune... so why not just say "immune"? Someone at Paizo needs to hide the thesaurus.

Are we sure it means immunity?
Maybe it means advantage like 5E? They get to twice and take better?

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... Stat-Block

Once a redcap has to attempt a save against a brandished holy symbol, it is bolstered against brandished holy symbols for the next 10 minutes.

Then just browse down to the comments section:

Logan Bonner Designer Fri, May 18, 2018, 01:09 pm
7 people marked this as a favorite.
Logan Bonner

NielsenE wrote:
Is "bolstered" the new term of art for "immune to effect for the next 24 hours"?

You guessed it!

See what I mean? They could have used a perfectly understandable word, instead they decided to use a seemingly random word, and immediately had to explain themselves in the comments of their own blog post. This is the same blog post where they attempt to claim that they've clarified monster stat blocks, and would have been completely unnecessary if they had just used the same word anyone else would have. A very large portion of the information that Paizo has released from PF2 comes from Paizo staff having to clarify crap after the fact with regard to still having skill points(so the proficiency really does barely mean anything with regard to the total bonus for a skill, rather serves as a gate for skill feats), the dozen different feat types coming from different pools, and so on.

So if you apply this nonsensical way of attempting to convey information that they're willing to put in their blog posts, it's no wonder that people are so concerned about PF2(I'm not saying it isn't justified, it clearly is when they're this incompetent about making things understandable). I don't believe it's outside the realm of possibility for the CRB to be written like these blog entries based on their comments on the stream about how they want to organize it(the CRB), leaving everyone utterly confused as to what the rules are supposed to be, with a 50 page errata to come after 6 months of youtube hype(seeing as how dry the 5e content desert is, I already saw a suggestion on youtube today for people discussing 6e... because they already ran out of ideas to make videos about that mordenkainen bestiary. These guys could live off of a CRB for at least 6 months).

[CapnTthePirateG]

I gotta raise the "what the fuck did you expect" banner again. Remember the PF playtests when Frank and others went into Paizo forums with math and logic and were informed that monk was a totally valuable caster killer class as is, or that evocation was perfectly viable?

The fact that they are regressing to unviable bullshit should surprise no one.

[Kaelik]

I love that redcaps are immune to holy symbols for the next 24 hours for the next 10 minutes.

That's a great touch.

[erik]

I love that redcaps are immune to holy symbols for the next 24 hours for the next 10 minutes.

That's a great touch.

No, see it is immune for the next 24 hours to holy symbols brandished during the next 10 minutes. So if a new holy symbol is brandished on minute 11, it's affected.

Either that, or they're idiots.

[Slade]

See this is why I assumed Advantage, Immune for 24 hr for 10 minutes is silly.

But getting to roll twice but take better for 10 minutes makes sense.

[Axebird]

Seems like bad wording on Seifter's part. It's pretty clear that what he meant is that "Bolstered" is a keyword that replaces the couple sentences of boilerplate text they used on a bunch of monster and class abilities you only have to save against once before getting conditional immunity for a period of time. It's still kinda stupid, but circlejerking about "24 hours for the next 10 minutes" is lame too.

[merc1138]

See this is why I assumed Advantage, Immune for 24 hr for 10 minutes is silly.

But getting to roll twice but take better for 10 minutes makes sense.

I don't believe they're retarded enough to have actually meant immune for 24hr for 10min, but this really does show how terrible they are at conveying information. Odds are that Logan guy didn't even read the entire post he was responding to and just felt that he needed to explain wtf "bolstered" was supposed to mean with the plain English word they should have just used in the first place.

Why do I think that? Because if you change the text

Once a redcap has to attempt a save against a brandished holy symbol, it is immune against brandished holy symbols for the next 10 minutes.

It makes sense unless there is going to be a hard definition for immunity meaning 24 hours somewhere in the book(and we haven't seen that yet).

Seems like bad wording on Seifter's part. It's pretty clear that what he meant is that "Bolstered" is a keyword that replaces the couple sentences of boilerplate text they used on a bunch of monster and class abilities you only have to save against once before getting conditional immunity for a period of time. It's still kinda stupid, but circlejerking about "24 hours for the next 10 minutes" is lame too.

Pretty much, it's not like they showed up at paizocon on their stream wearing their pants on their heads. There's a difference between failing to hire appropriate people to do the job and having terrible ideas(which is what seems to be going on), and missing chromosomes(that's not to say getting a laugh out of their obvious errors isn't fun).