Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[MGuy]

Having a swingy RNG does not make anything more tactical. People like gambling for whatever reason so when something is more uncertain it excites people more. Chess springs immediately to mind whenever someone thinks of tactical gameplay and there is no dice in it. An RNG is just another variable if gameplay people can make tactical decisions around and overcoming that can, itself, be a tactic. Most people in any card game lean heavily toward making decks that minimize the impact of the random elements of the game because that is the winning strategy.

In the context of TTRPGS the only reason I see to have people roll the dice is that you want that character to be able to fail a task or you want to determine degrees of success (at whatever value that success might represent). It provides possibly some element of risk you may or may not value. In combat you might want to have players or Npcs fail at various times to make combat more dramatic but you could have tactical combat without any dice rolling elements at the possible cost of some excitement or variance. However when players line up to climb a rope just to get on with a dungeon you likely don't need any of that uncertainty to enhance the situation. Not rolling things to determine an outcome definitely is not something that just upsets paizoids given some of the arguments made here.

[tussock]

Tactics isn't quite the right word, but, it can make players respond.

With dice, it's not a clicker, you have to pay attention to the outputs of the game and react to them, is what randomisation can do. If your action options are better than fucking 4e at least, because it's also possible to roll dice for no reason at all and that is horrible.

At lower abstraction, it also shares around the spotlight now and then, because one character fails a lot and another succeeds greatly all at random, which even feels better for the person who gets less of the spotlight, ironically, due to humans remembering peak events most clearly.

[maglag]

Having a swingy RNG does not make anything more tactical. People like gambling for whatever reason so when something is more uncertain it excites people more. Chess springs immediately to mind whenever someone thinks of tactical gameplay and there is no dice in it. An RNG is just another variable if gameplay people can make tactical decisions around and overcoming that can, itself, be a tactic.

Chess quite has a RNG, it's called human attention. Each player has 16 individual pieces that each can move in different ways and your opponent also has 16 individual pieces so there's a lot of possible scenarions and no human brain can properly remember them all. There's a reason why in D&D the standard party size is about 4 players and enemies come in similar numbers while your average wargame has each player only control about half a dozen or so separate units.

And thing with chess is that you can just distil chess into a simple alghorytm that allows a sufficiently advanced computer to stomp over the best human players no problem.

Ditto for Go, another diceless table game where recently computers have surpassed the top humie champions. With no dice/cards there is one true alghorytm of promised victory, us humies simply can't run it, but computers can.

Ditto for high-speed games like popular fighters and Starcraft. Technically all the attacks do the same amount of damage and there's no miss chances or saves in the engine, however human reflexes are only so fast.

Most people in any card game lean heavily toward making decks that minimize the impact of the random elements of the game because that is the winning strategy.

Sure you don't just throw 60 random cards into a deck and call it a day, just like in D&D you don't just randomly assign your stats/gears/skill/feats/level. But lots of MTG players will go for riskier strategies to get that extra edge. There's plenty of "safer" cards that are less likely to screw you, but in tournaments you see stuff like players sacrifice their life like there's no tomorrow and hope the other player didn't pack any direct burn in their deck. Or pack maindeck artifact removal when artifacts are popular even if you risk running into an artifact-less deck and suddenly you have a bunch of dead draws. And every MTG player has been faced with several cases of "man this starting hand would be just perfect IF I draw another land in my next two turns, keep it or mulligan?"

[MGuy]

Having a swingy RNG does not make anything more tactical. People like gambling for whatever reason so when something is more uncertain it excites people more. Chess springs immediately to mind whenever someone thinks of tactical gameplay and there is no dice in it. An RNG is just another variable if gameplay people can make tactical decisions around and overcoming that can, itself, be a tactic.

Chess quite has a RNG, it's called human attention. Each player has 16 individual pieces that each can move in different ways and your opponent also has 16 individual pieces so there's a lot of possible scenarions and no human brain can properly remember them all. There's a reason why in D&D the standard party size is about 4 players and enemies come in similar numbers while your average wargame has each player only control about half a dozen or so separate units.

And thing with chess is that you can just distil chess into a simple alghorytm that allows a sufficiently advanced computer to stomp over the best human players no problem.

Ditto for Go, another diceless table game where recently computers have surpassed the top humie champions. With no dice/cards there is one true alghorytm of promised victory, us humies simply can't run it, but computers can.

Ditto for high-speed games like popular fighters and Starcraft. Technically all the attacks do the same amount of damage and there's no miss chances or saves in the engine, however human reflexes are only so fast.

Most people in any card game lean heavily toward making decks that minimize the impact of the random elements of the game because that is the winning strategy.

Sure you don't just throw 60 random cards into a deck and call it a day, just like in D&D you don't just randomly assign your stats/gears/skill/feats/level. But lots of MTG players will go for riskier strategies to get that extra edge. There's plenty of "safer" cards that are less likely to screw you, but in tournaments you see stuff like players sacrifice their life like there's no tomorrow and hope the other player didn't pack any direct burn in their deck. Or pack maindeck artifact removal when artifacts are popular even if you risk running into an artifact-less deck and suddenly you have a bunch of dead draws. And every MTG player has been faced with several cases of "man this starting hand would be just perfect IF I draw another land in my next two turns, keep it or mulligan?"

So the first half what you're talking about is 'skill'. I don't know why you're equating that to an RNG especially considering the topic but 'skill' is the word you're looking for. What I think you are saying here is that Player choices cause variance in actual game play which is true (and something I have talked about in the past) so I don't disagree with that idea but it doesn't really weigh heavily on what is being talked about (d20 games and designer's decisions about dice rolling) which makes it weird that you would bring it up.

As for the latter bit my point about people who play CCGs is that people 'do' like to gamble but when actually playing the game they tend toward strategies that mitigate actual risk. I mentioned that because I was making a point about the fact that while people 'like' gambling to some degree it just becomes yet another mechanic that people try to work around not really depend on.

[Slade]

So, while I don't trust he means it: Vic says he wants actual playtesting not funtesting this time.
Maybe they learned how hard it was to make a game by not ACTUALLY playtesting it.

very important goal for this playtest is receiving real experiential feedback on specific game systems that the designers wish to test. To do this efficiently, the playtest adventure sets up specific situations and asks you to answer specific questions via a series of surveys. (For example, we might ask about whether characters survived particular hazards, or met particular goals, or ran out of resonance, or felt a particular challenge was too easy.)

If you are introducing additional variables to those situations, then your answers to any of those questions will potentially be misleading. I'll just say it flat out: If you're using house rules, do not provide feedback via those surveys.

You're still welcome to provide feedback in the forums, of course, but please ensure that you contextualize it, and realize that your feedback will be more difficult for us to use than feedback from people who are working within the test environment we have defined.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2v989?Homeb ... eedback#11

So now they actually care... maybe.

[tussock]

There's too many variables to properly playtest a game like Pathfinder this late when they've made changes to the core mechanics.

Like, the three action thing in combat, the initiative thing, the spell prep changes, that seems like the sort of changes you want a "does this feel OK?" question on as first priority, about a year or two ago when they first published it. Not in the Mike Mearls way where you're just passive-aggressively getting people to debate that feelings is all that matters and that's the DM's job anyway, but genuinely trying to find if people like the way the rules as written run compared to the previous edition.

Probably by just running the exact same encounter ten times with a few different classes and other options on low level PCs to disguise the fact you're really asking about the underlying feel of it. Plus "can people outside our inner circle even read this".

The public playtest they're aiming at now it's all too late for core mechanics, mostly too late for numbers on the monsters, even. This sort of "all hands to the pumps" is better for finding the most broken combinations among the billions that exist, and getting the game as written to conform to the game as the designers think it's written. Also just binning the odd thing that turned out to be anti-fun and covering the gap with some tidy minimalism.

So there's lots they can do, but it's edge cases and wording and unforseen combinations, while a huge amount of the numbers on things, the basic way you roll dice, changing that after you've already written the bloody thing is crazy talk.

Like, 4e did a late numbers change in the dev cycle, dramatically reduced player damage values. Effectively killed the whole edition, left it completely unsalvageable. There's just no safe way to do that sort of thing. The 5e playtest by comparison was just Mearls telling everyone how to feel about his not writing a D&D game.

--

Anyway, If the basic PF2 numbers don't already work, it means they didn't do the math, or did some but completely misjudged player expectations on results. Either way they're just gunna miss again if they change them this late.

[infected slut princess]

Here's the thing. The actual fun is twofold - planning ahead to get to that 100% success rate and not having challenges which depend on one fucking singular die roll.

I dunno about that second thing. Very often the most EXCITING and hence the most FUN moments in RPG gaming occur when important success or failure hinges on that one critical roll.

Honestly, I think that's better. Otherwise you get trash like 4e where challenges depend on 100 die rolls (as you hack through a big bad monster's 5000 hit points). Often the result is known well in advance but you have to go through the motions of rolling ten bazillion times. That is the WORST.

[WiserOdin032402]

Well. The PF2 playtest is upon us. You can get the PDF for free, but I'd actually recommend going to play 5e D&D, because it'd be better for just about anyone's mental health. It feels like everything's a boat feat.

[GâtFromKI]

Reading the playtest document requires a Very Hard Linguistic check for non-native English speakers. Or is it a Decipher Script check ?

[WiserOdin032402]

It uses the same skill check it takes to read any rules made by Chaosium.

[GâtFromKI]

Hum. Rules made by chaosium make less sense, but they have a better organization. Even the necronomicon has a better organization than Pathfinder 2.

[K]

So, while I don't trust he means it: Vic says he wants actual playtesting not funtesting this time.
Maybe they learned how hard it was to make a game by not ACTUALLY playtesting it.

very important goal for this playtest is receiving real experiential feedback on specific game systems that the designers wish to test. To do this efficiently, the playtest adventure sets up specific situations and asks you to answer specific questions via a series of surveys. (For example, we might ask about whether characters survived particular hazards, or met particular goals, or ran out of resonance, or felt a particular challenge was too easy.)

If you are introducing additional variables to those situations, then your answers to any of those questions will potentially be misleading. I'll just say it flat out: If you're using house rules, do not provide feedback via those surveys.

You're still welcome to provide feedback in the forums, of course, but please ensure that you contextualize it, and realize that your feedback will be more difficult for us to use than feedback from people who are working within the test environment we have defined.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2v989?Homeb ... #11quality

So now they actually care... maybe.

Wow. They start caring about design after their game has been abandoned by the people who care about design. It's almost like Paizo didn't run a concerted campaign to drive design-leaning players away from the game a few years ago.

Maybe in another five years they might actually start taking the freely-offered constructive criticism, offered in good faith, by people who are willing and able to think about design?

Nah, this is probably someone trying to keep their job after sales numbers go down again because they've produced an inferior product to the previous edition once again.

[Orca]

Some annoying differences which remind me of D&D 4e. Spells with short durations and very limited effects, feats intended only for very narrow and predefined character paths, some hit point inflation especially for 1st level monsters and major enemies like dragons.

At least the poor book organisation can probably be dealt with via the playtest and they haven't gone down the path of removing skill rules. There's still lots which hasn't been inspired by 4e, don't get me wrong, but the bits which look to have been stand out to me.

[Username17]

Wow. They start caring about design after their game has been abandoned by the people who care about design. It's almost like Paizo didn't run a concerted campaign to drive design-leaning players away from the game a few years ago.

Maybe in another five years they might actually start taking the freely-offered constructive criticism, offered in good faith, by people who are willing and able to think about design?

Nah, this is probably someone trying to keep their job after sales numbers go down again because they've produced an inferior product to the previous edition once again.

Surprisingly, it's not a few years ago. The drumbeat of 4e started in 2008. Pathfinder did their big purge of people who suggested objective metrics in May of 2009. It has been over9 years ago since the big "We don't care about meeting targets, we care about being felated by our fanbase!" rant. The people graduating college with a masters in history who are joining up to write for Pathfinder today were in Junior High when the forum wars of 4th edition and Pathfinder playtest happened.

The main issue is that PAthfinder does not hold the position it used to. Back in 2009, WotC had just stopped supporting the OGL. They had closed Dungeon and Dragon, and put out a board game with WoW allusions that they wanted us to call D&D. Paizo was the only company positioned to say that they were continuing to support 3rd edition in any meaningful way. It was obvious that 4th edition was the wrong direction for the hobby, and even if it worked financially (which it did not), it would have been a disaster for role players. Paizo was in possession of all the IP that anyone gave a shit about moving forward. Their licenses to use all the monsters that 4e claimed were off limits were non-revokable. They owned all the art assets you could want and had the operating capital to maintain a decently paced book line. People like us were willing to help them - for free - because they were in a position to save Dungeons & Dragons from the chopping block.

Well... they didn't do that. They put out a glossy but kind of stupid "Some Dude on the Internet's House Rules" edition for 3rd edition. And that's... pretty much it.

So nine years later, why would we work for them for free? It's not just that "they" slapped us away when we offered help the first time. It's that we offered help in the first place because they were in a position to save D&D. To keep the best edition of D&D alive. To move forward instead of backward. To light a torch of hope in the darkness. Well fuck it. The dark ages of RPGs came anyway, and Paizo isn't psoitioned to do shit.They are just one bottom feeding publishing house out of many.

It's like NuNuWhite Wolf. The brand is fucking dead, and no one is particularly or uniquely situated to keep it alive. You can't keep it alive, because it already died. Nearly a decade ago in both cases. Someone can make a new gothic horror or fantasy adventure RPG that's good and fills the void. But no one has the unique right to do that. No brand or intellectual property rights are the key to make this happen.

Paizo simply doesn't have the right to make me care that they are working on a game. And because of that, I'm not going to volunteer to do their jobs for them. If they want me, they know where to find me.

-Username17

[FatR]

A few notes after reading the first chapter of the playtest rulebook:

- Managing three actions (and one reaction) each round, with some of the possible actions costing more than one action (totally not confusing because they named those "activities", you see) is likely to cause no end of minor delays, accumulating into a major pointless vaste of time. I'm particularly wary of the impact on the GM's end. Also, if you feel the need to use not-particularly-intuitive special symbols for various sort of actions, you proably should reconsider viability of the whole system.

- Numeric values of abilities and their actual are still different things, despite being linearly mapped to each other for the fourth edition now (starting from 3.0). Really, Paizo, the idea of abolishing this distinction is not something I invented for my own heartbreaker, indeed, I saw it mentioned around the time of 3.5's release.

- You automatically add your level, with some modifiers for degrees of proficiency to most rolls. I agree with this idea, but I don't agree with five distinct proficiency levels, where the difference between the lowest and the highest (described as "so high that you’ll go down in history") amounts to only 5 points. If you've obtained basic training in a skill, just so you aren't blocked from attempting all the good stuff by being untrained, the difference between it and the legendary expertise is +3 points. This definitely doesn't put Joe Average out of the league of the supposed legendary expert! Also, proficiency rank and proficiency modifier in the same system already managed to confuse me once.

- The rarity system, applying not only to magic items, but also to spells, feats, etc, seems to be designed to cockblock PCs from good stuff. Also, who the fuck colorcodes increasing severity by black -> red -> orange -> blue?

- We're on character generation now, and "race" is now replaced with "ancestry", I guess because the old DnD term for "species" was not confusing enough. Half-orcs and half-elves are banished to being human feats, but there are no full orcs to compensate. There are goblins, even though we already have two races of hyperactive midgets. Also "Goblins are a short, scrappy, energetic people who have spent millennia maligned and feared." Gee, I dunno, Paizo, may this have something to do with the fact that you've wrote them as puppy-kicking psychopaths, whose sole positive contribution to the world was dying in hilarious ways? Also "There is no wrong way to build a character!" I'm pretty sure there is.

- The game hands ability boosts much more liberally (four every 5th level). "Ability boost" is your good old +2 to score, unless you already have 18, in which case you only get +1. Yeah, ability increases laser-focused on your key ability were not very good for the game, but this feels like swinging too far in a different direction and attempting to produce characters which aren't much different from each other ability-wise. Also, at chargen you have compile ability boosts from your race, background, class, and free picks to determine your ability scores, because just putting points where you wanted and adjusting for race is no longer in vogue, I guess. The example characters get Str 18, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 10/Str 18, Dex 12, Con 16, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8. No wrong way to build a character, eh? (It's impossible to get above 18 at chargen.) Also, it is clear that overall you will have higher basic stats in PF2.

- The nine alignments are still with us. I don't know, if I had to include them, I would have kept them as theatrical personas, that provide a shorthand designation on NPCs' intended plot role and behavior towards the party.

- I hope you like fate points in your Pathfinder.

- AC now auto-scales with level too. A good change.

[Slade]

Now, I like the bard got actually damaging cantrips, and a 1st level spell that deals cool negative damage and bleeding, all no save.

But then there are issue like most spells don't work as well without Crit fails. Colorspray just blinds and dazzles with a normal fail.

They give bard his own CLW: Soothe because heal is Cleric only?

So, I like some of the class changes like Bard, Barb, and so forth...but others not as much.

Going to try playtesting to see how bad it gets.

[RelentlessImp]

- AC now auto-scales with level too. A good change.

I'd want more details on that, because we've done this before in d20, in Star Wars Saga Edition, where at low levels everyone wore armor and at high levels everyone *didn't* wear armor because Gear bonuses were not cumulative with Defense bonuses (except for one particular talent build), which sort of fucked with the overarching fantasy. So if at high levels everyone's running around bare-assed naked because that's superior to putting on a suit of armor then that's not good because it's going to fuck with just how serious you can take the game.

[Foxwarrior]

That seems like an odd complaint to level at Star Wars specifically, in which the running joke is that only the guys wearing armor ever get hit (usually phrased backwards). PF2 armor gives an Item Bonus though, so it probably stacks.

[K]

Surprisingly, it's not a few years ago. The drumbeat of 4e started in 2008. Pathfinder did their big purge of people who suggested objective metrics in May of 2009.

Shit, am I a grognard now? Am I going to be forced to play the edition of my youth? Am I developing a neckbeard?

[Koumei]

We were described as grognards (according to Something Awful or whatever) pretty much the moment 4E hit the shelves with a wet "plop" sort of noise. We (quite rightly) hated the new thing, therefore instantly became irrational old cantankerous assholes.

[MGuy]

Those were better days.

[CapnTthePirateG]

Heh, Something Awful is still screaming about how 4e is the one true way after it got shitcanned.

See, Mike Mearls really wanted to make 3e and not 4e so when he took over he sabotaged the bestest most selling edition ever by releasing essentials.

This is what they're saying on the SA boards.

The funny thing is here and SA is where most of the design minded people hang out, so when we scream about 5e being MTP trash and they scream about 5e being MTP trash, well...

[Username17]

Heh, Something Awful is still screaming about how 4e is the one true way after it got shitcanned.

See, Mike Mearls really wanted to make 3e and not 4e so when he took over he sabotaged the bestest most selling edition ever by releasing essentials.

This is what they're saying on the SA boards.

The funny thing is here and SA is where most of the design minded people hang out, so when we scream about 5e being MTP trash and they scream about 5e being MTP trash, well...

Seriously? I thought the fact that we haven't had any goon invasions for a while meant that they'd actually given up trying to convince people that 4e was the way and the future.

On account of the fact that the entire game line died due to terrible sales after having the head of the department fired every single year for having terrible sales.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

Heh, Something Awful is still screaming about how 4e is the one true way after it got shitcanned.

See, Mike Mearls really wanted to make 3e and not 4e so when he took over he sabotaged the bestest most selling edition ever by releasing essentials.

This is what they're saying on the SA boards.

The funny thing is here and SA is where most of the design minded people hang out, so when we scream about 5e being MTP trash and they scream about 5e being MTP trash, well...

Seriously? I thought the fact that we haven't had any goon invasions for a while meant that they'd actually given up trying to convince people that 4e was the way and the future.

On account of the fact that the entire game line died due to terrible sales after having the head of the department fired every single year for having terrible sales.

-Username17

The last time I was on SA, the 4e thread was subtitled "Looks like we're the grognards now," so yeah. It's the hill to die on. Used to be WW/Onyx Path too, but I don't think that'd be the case now.

[Koumei]

You still see them complaining about how 5E is too much like 3E. Some rank it worse than 3E because it's just a hybrid of "some ideas here and there" from everything, some rank it better because "at least it's not pure undiluted 3E", but regardless, to many the real problem with 5E is simply that there's too much 3E in it.