Pathfinder is 2nd edition (and still bad)

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
tussock
Prince
Posts: 2937
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:28 am
Location: Online
Contact:

Pathfinder is 2nd edition (and still bad)

Post by tussock »

Come on, this deserves a new thread.

http://paizo.com/pathfinderplaytest?utm ... nouncement

Which ... yeah, that's not much, but there's a blog!

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... r-Playtest

So, yeah.
If combat begins, the first two begin with their weapons drawn, ready for a fight, and they roll Perception for their initiative. The skulking character rolls Stealth for initiative, giving them a chance to hide before the fight even begins. The final adventurer rolls Perception for initiative, but also gains some insight as to whether or not there is magic in the room.
That, well, right, OK. Um, that's a pain in the ass. Not much, but it's just slightly worse than having an initiative bonus and rolling that, for no obvious advantage at all. Because obviously what I do between combats is whatever gives me the biggest fucking initiative bonus, all the time, just in case, duh. That's worse than just rolling initiative because it's robbing me of all those other possible inputs into the pre-fight bit.
After initiative is sorted out and it's your turn to act, you get to take three actions on your turn, in any combination.
http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dy ... ut-Actions

On which they expanded next up.

So attack at +0/-5/-10 or something, and using a shield at all is an action, maintaining a spell at all is an action, so, yeah, you have 3 action points and fucking everything costs at least one. Spellcasting costs two actions, except when it costs one. Charging is a feat that uses two actions, so most things can't charge.

That's a very pathfinder solution, have more actions in combat but then split up actions so you need more actions in combat. Maybe better anyway, in this case.

I mean, it's still basically a standard, move, swift, but they said people didn't get that, so OK, it's probably simpler and reasonably hard to fuck that up.
Many classes and monsters have different things they can do with their reactions, making each combat a little bit less predictable and a lot more exciting.
Yuck. Like, yeah, OK, it's a surprise when the Red Dragon reacts to redirect your fire attack, only no it isn't because they already spoiled that one. I think the Kobold shift reaction got old really quick in 4e D&D, special reactions are just annoying and so easy to break the game with. It's relatively easy to just not have them at all, but ah well.
This also makes it easier for us to present monsters, giving us more space to include special abilities and actions that really make a monster unique. Take the fearsome tyrannosaurus, for example; if this terrifying dinosaur gets you in its jaws, it can take an action to fling you up to 20 feet through the air, dealing tremendous damage to you in the process!
Are they seriously trying to appeal to 4th edition grognards? Like, there's all of two of them to appeal to? That reads like an interesting story, but in game it's constant unpredictable bullshit that doesn't mesh well with the players' abilities or standard game functions (seriously, 20' is big damage, compared to a T-Rex bite?), oh, but it's "freed them up to be creative."

:roll: See, standard game functions that the monsters use, it's good for the game, all this 2nd edition D&D era special case bullshit is something players eventually learn to work around but discovering how isn't actually any fun, it's just work, or study. Game designer wankery, really.

OK, late-3.5 and Pathfinder monsters are grossly verbose and the layout is colossally space consuming, but when you change that and save space, don't fill it back up with your wank, please, just put more monsters in the book, because that's actually more new stuff, or make a smaller and cheaper book.

If you want big monsters to have a bite for pick-up and grapple throw for damage, just make them standard fucking combat functions so everything can do them, including the PCs. If it works, use it; if it doesn't work, don't just hide it in one shit monster and say it's OK. Everything big enough chucks PCs around like ragdolls? Sweet! Go with it.

I will review the blog as it continues. :D
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Slade
Knight
Posts: 329
Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2010 6:23 pm

Post by Slade »

Details I learned so far:
Can raise Shield to protect self. Shields grant no AC boost till raise. Also target must break through your hardness to hurt you (and shield).

Agile property means 0/-4/-8 for attacks.
Versatile: A weapon can be used to do more than one type of damage. For instance, a longsword can be used as a slashing or a piercing weapon


Flanking flatfooted target reducing AC by 2

heal spell, CLW?: action is touch, 2 is close ranged, 3 is 30 ft burst

Shield is a cantrip with only a verbal component (so 1 action to cast), this counts as using the raise a shield action to gain a +1 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn, though it doesn’t require a hand to use
While the spell is in effect, you can also use a shield block reaction (the shields hardness is 4). If you use a shield block, the spell is dismissed and can’t be cast again for ten minutes. You may use the shield block as a reaction against magic missiles.
Summoning 3 actions (not 1 rd)

MM (1 action) shoots an additional missile for every action above limit.

Spellcasting usually 1 action per component (with exceptions like summoning)
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH......................................................

They're totally redoing Pathfinder with Starfinder rules.

So there'll be no effective dual wielding, I'm sure, if you have more than two arms, don't expect it to be of any benefit, ancestries are going to be laid out asinine-ly, etc etc.
Last edited by Prak on Sat Mar 10, 2018 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3463
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

Look, we already knew it was going to be disappointing. I was all-in on Alpha and bought the Beta at Gen Con. It was clear that any 'suggestions' that they weren't already planning would be dismissed as 'not backward compatible' and everything they changed - even if it made things WORSE or failed to address any problems at all - were only going to accept observations that were based entirely on 'feels' without rigorous playtest.

Like, actually playing with their rules and finding the breakpoints was dismissed as 'doing it wrong', and avoiding using the broken bits was seen as 'doing it right'. So, yeah, not only could it NOT be good, their methodology for divining good and bad has been broken from before the beginning.
-This space intentionally left blank
User avatar
Dogbert
Duke
Posts: 1133
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2011 3:17 am
Contact:

Post by Dogbert »

Yet another way 5E harmed the hobby... by lowering standards.

Its payola-powered "popularity" seemingly convinced the competition that the d&d demographic will just play any piece of shit anyone cobbles together.

Not that PF was that great to begin with, but it was at least the playable choice.
Image
Orca
Knight-Baron
Posts: 877
Joined: Sun Jul 12, 2009 1:31 am

Post by Orca »

It looks like the plan for the playtest involves a premade adventure. I guess people paying for those have always been Paizo's bread and butter, but this also looks tailor-made to miss problems that don't occur in the situations in that adventure.
Mask_De_H
Duke
Posts: 1995
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:17 pm

Post by Mask_De_H »

Dogbert wrote:Yet another way 5E harmed the hobby... by lowering standards.

Its payola-powered "popularity" seemingly convinced the competition that the d&d demographic will just play any piece of shit anyone cobbles together.

Not that PF was that great to begin with, but it was at least the playable choice.
Convinced nothing, it confirmed it. Hell, 3.5 was a weird side/downgrade from 3.0 and people still played the shit out of it. After that it was two steps forward and giant leaps back.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
FatR
Duke
Posts: 1221
Joined: Tue Dec 16, 2008 7:36 am

Post by FatR »

All in all, reading the existing bits of information gives me no hope for any significant improvement in PF 2.0 whatsoever.

(1) The biggest problem of 3.X/PF was crunch overload that made the game unwieldy to play, and doubly so to run, past level 7 or so. Generating a two-digit level character was a tremendous chore. And often running it too. The list of spells available to 14th-level caster was clearly excessive, and prepared casters in particular just did not work in actual play no DM could be bothered to strictly monitor preparation lists of this size, and even players often just forgot what exactly they had today as well. Preparations for adventures, with their planning, shopping, and memorizing, routinely took longer than actual adventures. The difference between a character who exploited all the right combinations of class bits and magic item options by planning the build from level 1 and one who didn't was huge.

There is no indication this is even seen as a problem. For example, judging by what they said about magic items, they are probably just shifting fiddly bits around, from having a lot of simpler magic items on each character to a few more complex and "exciting" ones. They're still keeping both Vancian casting and 10 levels of spells. Etc.

(2) The second biggest problem was fundamental disparity between caster and non-caster classes. Almost certainly it stays, given that the list of classes in the same and they indicated no intention of putting fighting magic in the core.

(3) The third biggest problem, not of 3.X, but of DnD entire past Rules Cyclopedia, seen in both evolution from 3.0 to 5E, and in evolution from 3.0 to PF were and are attempts to fix this disparity by dragging caster classes to the level of non-caster classes - while at the same time slapping down any non-casters who managed to accumulate sufficient numbers to annihilate everything in Monster Manual that allowed itself to be charged or subjected to ranged attacks. While I can speak for everyone, but I'm not particularly attached to DnD brand in itself. There are billion gazillion RPGs out there which allow me to play low fantasy, whether of gritty or action hero variety. DnD's existence is only meaningful insofar as it allows to play fantasy superheroes. Only Exalted also seriously tried to fill this niche, and it is miles worse than the worst version of DnD (pick your unfavorite).
There is no indication that PF 2.0 is trying to reverse this trend, say, by giving all martial classes real powers, or by folding their "mythic" power tier into the core 20 levels.

(4) And the fourth biggest problem is lack of tools for interaction with the game world beyond doing small-unit skirmishing and selling loot; such as rules for followers, castles, and domains (that don't suck dick and benefit you on the skirmishing front instead of punishing you). Not only there is no indication we're getting those, the part about monsters now generated by different rules (which now means you cannot make a monster join your party whether by beating him in combat and befriending him without risking breaking the game; which means every last one of my DnD campaigns for the last 5 years or so is unworkable under PF 2.0) strongly indicates a move away from that.
Last edited by FatR on Wed Mar 14, 2018 9:02 am, edited 3 times in total.
Post Reply