why would you undermine socialist organizers in paizo by using wizards of the coast, the corporate devil of the tabletop world?
why would you undermine socialist organizers in paizo by using wizards of the coast, the corporate devil of the tabletop world?
Frankly: Because the Pathfinder rules aren't good. the 3 action economy is good on paper, but leads to you always doing the same thing on your turn without fail, because deviating is just mechanically worse by such a wide margin that being creative becomes suboptimal. Also, the buff and bonus stacking is terrible as soon as you have a few casters in your party.
You can just google all the 5E rules you will ever need to play it.
You could say the exact same thing about the standard action-move action economy in 5e, where if you're doing anything but casting a relevant spell of the highest level available to you (or using an equivalent class ability), you're losing massive amounts of efficiency.
D&D 5e "solved" the problem of buff stacking by hyper-simplifying bonuses and penalties, but I'm not the biggest fan of that solution. Keeping track of a lot of +1s and +2s is easier than ever before with the rise of programs like Foundry and Fantasy Grounds, and PF2e reduced the number of bonus types so that you can't have more than 4 stacked at any given time - it's not like when 3.5 was fresh and you needed have scratch paper to keep track of all your relevant modifiers as you played.
You can say 'there is a best way to do X' to any situation in a TTRPG. But if there is an optimal way to do damage, I would rather it be quick then not and one action in D&D 5E is quicker then three in Pathfinder 2E.
I disagree about D&D simplifying things. They cut a lot of stuff out and were left with just a few mechanics that govern everything. Either you get advantage, or you get a bonus dice, or both.
That is far more fun to me and also far easier then finding the however many bonuses that boost you the most and taking them. Or just not caring where your boost comes from, as long as your number is higher. I have looked at mid-level characters in Pathfinder having a +15 or something silly like that to their 'main thing' and that is just a silly level of bonus stacking even before we consider spells and other stuff. Not to mention that it leads to super specialized characters, because your stats can go above 20 and you have one main stat you usually want to boost.
Are you saying this with regard to non-strike actions? Because there's definitely a variance in strategy based on terrain or special circumstance. Shoving someone off the side of a bridge is generally more effective than hitting them with your weapon, for instance. Tripping someone is an excellent way of capturing a character you want to slow down or disable rather than kill. Dropping Prone or Taking Cover is still a great way to quickly boost your AC against ranged attacks. Leaping allows you to circumvent hazards and terrain impediments. Point Out lets you leverage a high perception check or special ability to remove the Undetected status. Etc. I don't see anything on the list that's always worse than your standard strike.
The game is much friendlier to martial characters in that regard. I noticed a lot of the Debuff/Control Wizard suite of powers was nerfed as well, which left a bad taste in the mouth of plenty of career casters.
But I've generally heard good things about 3 action economy as an alternative to standard/move/swift. You're the first person I've heard claim it makes more creative maneuvers less appealing.
Friendlier to martial characters? Ok maybe I’m in
martial characters are objectively the strongest in pf2e. theyre actually balanced with spellcasters, with a slight edge to things like fighter and gunslinger
its almost like paizo hired someone to do math and balance it
I am pointing it out in regards to DPS optimization. Yes you can do many things, but most things that get you anywhere are worse then others for a given character. In your normal fight in a game, in a room with some obstacles, you may be able to use one of your actions now and again to do something cool, but as soon as it comes to the question of 'how do I do damage to this guy?', then there is one way that is mathematically the best and so everyone ends up using it. Importantly: you do decide what that way is via your feats, but it still ends up shoehorning you into one particular attack pattern.
Obviously if your DM finagles each encounter to have many ways to influence outcomes, then using those is a good idea, but that is something you could do in any system. I don't have top play Pathfinder 2E to shove a guy off a bridge or take cover behind a wall from archer fire.
Arguably it's a problem even without casters, but casters just make it a lot worse because things become a pain to track. the high bonuses you accrue as a Pathfinder character do not help matters either though. If you don't stack something to high heaven, you might as well ignore the stat and try not to have it come up for you. Which is a problem 5E D&D also runs into, but at a far higher level one rarely reaches in normal play.
No. But I don't see anything in PF2e that makes the standard feint-roll-stab pattern a more appealing approach than swinging in on a chandelier and kicking a guy off a balcony. You do need the opportunity, but finding those moments is as much a part of the game as picking your feats.
Part of being a good DM is creating exciting venues and scenarios for play. If you're just in the hallway scene from Old Boy for 20 levels, no wonder the system feels a bit dull.
Putting your players on the top of a train or in the belly of a whale or on a slender bridge arching over an active volcano gives them opportunities to try something other than basic combat tricks.
I thought one of the better aspects of PF2e and 5e was how they cleaned up higher level play. I know back in 3.5e, you'd run into characters with ACs so high that it was virtually impossible to hit them. And this became annoying when two such characters got in a fight - rolling d20+40 to hit AC 60 for an indefinite amount of time. My impression from friends who played high level games in the newer systems was that this was far less common.
In my experience, the "sweet spot" for these games tends to be in the 5th-11th level range, as you get to play a fully realized character concept (a wizard that can fly and throw fireballs, a fighter that can whirlwind attack, etc) without reaching that absurdist demigod status where characters can't physically interact with each other anymore.
yea 1e was a straight improvement over 3.5 but the same really can't be said for 2e.
incorrect: 2e is better. :xi-gun: