Pathfinder Is Still Bad

[deaddmwalking]

I remember participating and being very excited. I went to GenCon to get my BetaRules. It was shortly after that I became disillusioned. Frequently the developers asked for 'play experience' and discounted experiments (like making a 5th level party and running encounters) and essentially were limiting themsleves to 1st-4th level feedback. The time it would take to develop campaigns to the point where high-level feedback would have been after the 'playtest' ended - further it would have been very limited - running a 10th level encounter with every combination of classes is valuable feedback because you can say what worked and what didn't as a result of direct comparison. If you run one and I run another with completely different players, we can't determine which variables caused the problem - even to ssy if it was personalities at the table or the rules.

What a missed opportunity.

[Axebird]

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... g-the-Game
We're doing this again, apparently. Fuck everything.

[rasmuswagner]

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... g-the-Game
We're doing this again, apparently. Fuck everything.

4E style DCs based on PC level. Oh joy.

[angelfromanotherpin]

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... g-the-Game
We're doing this again, apparently. Fuck everything.

4E style DCs based on PC level. Oh joy.

It's both better and worse than that. They acknowledge that the exact same activity shouldn't actually have a varying DC, but that higher-level characters require higher DC activities to challenge them. The bad part is where they refuse to set objective benchmarks for characters to overcome organically, because that would be too much like work.

[tussock]

They could probably have done something interesting with that.

Like, have some modifiers that change the level of the challenge, and others that change the difficulty, and arranged so you want some of both working for you for maximum benefit, but so you explicitly want to counter the same class of penalties first.

So a super-slick wall is level 6, but having grapnels and bracing and picks makes it Easy level 6, and what you really want next is a way to lower the level, like plant growth on the wall or whatever.

But eh, it's a table and those are rarely worth the trouble, especially if they aren't logarithms in disguise.

[WiserOdin032402]

Wait, how is this going to interact with the tiny and rather static skill proficiencies? Are challenges going to scale up and your static bonuses stay static?

[tussock]

They'll have a level bonus, surely.

[Ignimortis]

While these aren't the cold hard static numbers I'd hoped for, because fuck worldbuilding, apparently, they do seem to understand that actual static DCs need to exist. It's just that they haven't given any examples of those.

[Orca]

They have a level bonus. It's +level, God help us.

[GâtFromKI]

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... g-the-Game
We're doing this again, apparently. Fuck everything.

A level 1 "extreme" challenge has a DC of 18. This means a level 1 untrained character with average ability may succeed at anything "extreme".

Fuck that shit.


A level 1 "trivial" challenge has a DC of 10. This means a trained level 1 character with max ability fails at "trivial" task 20% of the time. Those difficulty labels mean nothing.

Fuck that shit.


So when a PC has to check something, the MC has to pull somm level from his ass, then pull a random label from his ass ("high", "severe", etc), then look at a table with no apparent logic to get the DC.

Fuck that shit.

Fuck that shit.

Fuck that shit, fuck that shit, fuck that shit.

There's nothing good or playable in P2. D&D 4 is a better game by any reasonable measure, I wouldn't be surprised if FATAL was a better game. Fuck that shit, fuck that shit, fuck that fucking shit.

[CapnTthePirateG]

As 5e ripped from Pathfinder, so PF rips from 5e. The cycle of incompetence is complete. Once Mearls was the apprentice, now he is the master.

[FatR]

You know, the problem of random peasants being able to succeed on heroic tasks, and heroes being able to fail trivial tasks is pretty serious when your main randomizer is 1d20, skills go up by +1 per level and you are supposed to be well into the superhero realm by level 6. It caused me some consternation in the process of writing my own hearbreaker.

Looks like Paizo decided to solve it with its typical approach to problems, i.e. pretending it does not exist.

[Grek]

That's not a hard problem, it's just a problem that has traditionally had a lot of stupid answers.

New Take 10/Take 20 rule: If you are Untrained in a skill, you roll 1d20+Mod, no special rules. If you are Proficient in a skill, you can Take Twenty instead of rolling, getting a result of 20+Mod at the cost of taking twenty times as long. If you are an Expert in a skill and roll a ten or less on your die roll, you can Take Ten to add 10 to your modifier at no extra cost.

Trivial is 5, Easy is 10, Trained is 15, Difficult is 20, Expert is 25.

[tussock]

It completely depends on how and when you roll skills, what cooperation does, and what the results do in terms of harming the character.

Take-20 is generally just a very fussy way of saying "yes, that always works outside combat". One might suggest some traps not be found, some even go off when searching for them, and some are harder to find than others, but that would be a thing where you could not re-roll, and the DC was 10.

And if you think of it that a trap might kill you, then a normal untrained person might be killed half the time when they search for traps and that is very high indeed and so they probably just won't poke around in there at all.

And if you ask, "but what if I force twenty kobolds to search", well, yes, then you can raise them as zombies and they won't even have to search for the next trap they can just set it off by walking into it, and that is another reason search DCs should be much lower and individuals should not be able to retry.

But at least the default 3e rules for searching work, they just say "yes, that automatically works outside combat, as long as you put points in it, and you can't do that in combat because it takes too long".

[FatR]

If you are an Expert in a skill and roll a ten or less on your die roll, you can Take Ten to add 10 to your modifier at no extra cost.

A pretty interesting idea compared to my current +4 for specialization. Mind if I maybe steal it?

[maglag]

You know, the problem of random peasants being able to succeed on heroic tasks, and heroes being able to fail trivial tasks is pretty serious when your main randomizer is 1d20, skills go up by +1 per level and you are supposed to be well into the superhero realm by level 6. It caused me some consternation in the process of writing my own hearbreaker.

Looks like Paizo decided to solve it with its typical approach to problems, i.e. pretending it does not exist.

Eeerr, lv 6 is hardly super-hero, if anything is just considered peak human (but still human). A lucky crit from a lv1 enemy may still one-shot you and the really crazy stuff like polymorphs and long range teleports are sill some levels away. Level 6 not being superhero is the whole reason behind the whole E6 rules after all.

[deaddmwalking]

You know, the problem of random peasants being able to succeed on heroic tasks, and heroes being able to fail trivial tasks is pretty serious when your main randomizer is 1d20, skills go up by +1 per level and you are supposed to be well into the superhero realm by level 6. It caused me some consternation in the process of writing my own hearbreaker.

Looks like Paizo decided to solve it with its typical approach to problems, i.e. pretending it does not exist.

Eeerr, lv 6 is hardly super-hero, if anything is just considered peak human (but still human). A lucky crit from a lv1 enemy may still one-shot you and the really crazy stuff like polymorphs and long range teleports are sill some levels away. Level 6 not being superhero is the whole reason behind the whole E6 rules after all.

Level 6 isn't Superman, but Level 3 is Hawkeye. Level 6 is definitely compatible with 'super heroic' play.

[nockermensch]

You know, the problem of random peasants being able to succeed on heroic tasks, and heroes being able to fail trivial tasks is pretty serious when your main randomizer is 1d20, skills go up by +1 per level and you are supposed to be well into the superhero realm by level 6. It caused me some consternation in the process of writing my own hearbreaker.

Looks like Paizo decided to solve it with its typical approach to problems, i.e. pretending it does not exist.

Eeerr, lv 6 is hardly super-hero, if anything is just considered peak human (but still human). A lucky crit from a lv1 enemy may still one-shot you and the really crazy stuff like polymorphs and long range teleports are sill some levels away. Level 6 not being superhero is the whole reason behind the whole E6 rules after all.

Level 6 isn't Superman, but Level 3 is Hawkeye. Level 6 is definitely compatible with 'super heroic' play.

Level 6 is greek mythology heroes, like Perseus.
Level 11 is greek mythology gods and so fully into superhero territory.

[infected slut princess]

Hawkeye is like level 1 Fighter with Weapon Focus LONG BOW. He's basically a low-level minion of the real superheroes. Level 6 characters should be hacking down SQUADS of Hawkeyes. Fuck Hawkeye.

[maglag]

Level 6 is greek mythology heroes, like Perseus.
Level 11 is greek mythology gods and so fully into superhero territory.

Yeah, something like that. Lv 6 is pretty badass but you can still seriously screw up relatively mundane tasks like accidentally killing people during a simple sports event.

[Ice9]

Referring to DCs in a level-based way doesn't inherently make it crap, although I have very little confidence that Paizo won't use them in the lazy treadmill way that's obvious.

What does make it crap is how small the differences between difficulty types are - seriously, 8 points between trivial and extreme?

But it's not unexpected, and it's not for no reason - it's just for (IMO) a shitty reason. There's apparently a number of people out there who just hate the idea that a character might be good (or bad) enough at anything that no roll is required. Taking 10 makes them irked. Rolling a "1" and still succeeding makes them disgusted. And Paizo has decided to cater to this group. Hence bonuses all being smaller, difficulties closer together, anything that could give a character consistent abilities being in the crosshairs.

Because rolling the d20 is fucking king, it's the reason to come to the table - fuck roleplaying, fuck tactics, fuck planning, it's all about rolling that die and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of that.


...
And I don't even mind having this exist in a rare enough way, like a dice pool where you could theoretically roll no hits on a dozen dice. But even 5% is too much in some cases, much less the 15-20% people seem to demand.

[maglag]

Actually some people will claim that the RNG increases tactics and planning.

For example the devs for Battle for Wesnoth have quite a swingy RNG where you never get a better than 80% chance to hit an attack (and that's with the special marksman ability that only some dudes get and only works on the offensive), and said devs specifically say it's precisely to motivate tactics and planning.

For something more mainstream, Magic the gathering is a pretty popular table game with plenty of strategy and planning and worlwide money tournaments where the RNG can still completely fuck your day if your deck decides to draw no lands (or only lands), whereas virtually every other table card game for the last decades has mechanics to prevent mana screw/flood. But Magic The Gathering remains the king of table card games.

Because if you know that you'll succeed with 100% chance, that's when you're actually telling tactics and planning to fuck themselves, because you can just mindlessly charge ahead. No need for plan b, no need to worry about what the other dudes are doing, just shout your catch phrase and win the day with your special move like it's some cartoon.

[rasmuswagner]

Referring to DCs in a level-based way doesn't inherently make it crap, although I have very little confidence that Paizo won't use them in the lazy treadmill way that's obvious.

What does make it crap is how small the differences between difficulty types are - seriously, 8 points between trivial and extreme?

But it's not unexpected, and it's not for no reason - it's just for (IMO) a shitty reason. There's apparently a number of people out there who just hate the idea that a character might be good (or bad) enough at anything that no roll is required. Taking 10 makes them irked. Rolling a "1" and still succeeding makes them disgusted. And Paizo has decided to cater to this group. Hence bonuses all being smaller, difficulties closer together, anything that could give a character consistent abilities being in the crosshairs.

Because rolling the d20 is fucking king, it's the reason to come to the table - fuck roleplaying, fuck tactics, fuck planning, it's all about rolling that die and nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of that.


...
And I don't even mind having this exist in a rare enough way, like a dice pool where you could theoretically roll no hits on a dozen dice. But even 5% is too much in some cases, much less the 15-20% people seem to demand.

I think you hit the nail on the head there. These are the same mouth breathers who clog up every forum with the story about that one time they rolled a "1" or "20" and something retarded happened.

[Ignimortis]

Because if you know that you'll succeed with 100% chance, that's when you're actually telling tactics and planning to fuck themselves, because you can just mindlessly charge ahead. No need for plan b, no need to worry about what the other dudes are doing, just shout your catch phrase and win the day with your special move like it's some cartoon.

Lol, no. That's the typical argument for people who dislike anything being off the RNG, "uhhh that's not fun, you just do the thing without trying".

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.

If you can hit an enemy on a 1, then he's probably designed to die very quickly anyway, but that doesn't help if you can't actually get to him or don't have anything to pierce his DR/fuckyou.

Actual challenges tend to be manifold, and if one aspect can be trivialized by someone with a +bajillion modifier, then either it's appropriate or only part of a solution.

[Slade]

Hawkeye is like level 1 Fighter with Weapon Focus LONG BOW. He's basically a low-level minion of the real superheroes. Level 6 characters should be hacking down SQUADS of Hawkeyes. Fuck Hawkeye.

Nah, he has way too much wealth. I can see level 3 if put all wealth into special arrows.