There is nothing new or interesting here. So they might have made playing Pathfinder a tad easier with less idiosyncrasies.
But like, my group has already stopped playing Pathfinder, a slightly better Pathfinder (that we have to relearn) with less content and nothing interesting to offer has just no appeal.
I could take what I like from 2e and just hack it into 1e (just use a bunch of unchained rules, augment automatic bonus progression to allow for weapons and armor special abilities without penalty) and you got a more complete game that still has a neat action economy.
Sadly, I think if Paizo invested their efforts into more 1e content and perhaps another unchained book, they would have done a lot better. My group has already said that we would play another Pathfinder game if they released an "Advanced Class Guide 2"
This new edition already feels like a flop.
I'm not so thrilled with paying for a printed copy of a game that isn't done yet. I did that with the newish Star Wars game from FFG and I wish I had just waited until the thing was done.
Quote from: finarvyn;1051327I'm not so thrilled with paying for a printed copy of a game that isn't done yet. I did that with the newish Star Wars game from FFG and I wish I had just waited until the thing was done.
I'm not going to play it either, but it is free. At this point you actually can't pay for it, they only made enough for the people who really wanted a hard copy.
I'm starting to get edition fatigue yet willing to take a look at the new rules with a fresh open mind. I see no good reason personally to approach PF2 with any significant amount of resentment or negativity. They needed to do something new imo and a rehash, recycled rpg with better production values was imo not going to cut it this time around. Especially not with 5E stealing their market share.
Even C7 with 4E Warhammer kept the rules mostly the same yet made some modifications to the rules.
I downloaded it, even after being extremely disappointed by Starfinder. Not impressed.
I thought 3.x was okay and what I liked about Pathfinder is that it added lots and lots of stuff to it. New classes and new monsters My trouble with new editions is that basically it stops the new stuff cycle. They just sell you the old stuff over, with new stats for the new system.
Quote from: Brad;1051368I downloaded it, even after being extremely disappointed by Starfinder. Not impressed.
I like how Starfinder means sf flipmats I can use for White Star! :)
As for pf2 I think they would be wiser writing for 5e dnd. They have a big back catalogue they could convert.
Quote from: S'mon;1051390I like how Starfinder means sf flipmats I can use for White Star! :)
As for pf2 I think they would be wiser writing for 5e dnd. They have a big back catalogue they could convert.
And that would have been easy enough that they could keep making PF stuff.
But they probably wanted to keep their "We're number 1" staffing levels. So this failed gamble.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1051393But they probably wanted to keep their "We're number 1" staffing levels. So this failed gamble.
Yeah, I think it's a dumb move that will extract more money from hardcore fans but will cut them off from the bulk of new players coming up, which is who they need. They need to go back to basics - a monthly or bi-monthly subscription magazine publishing mass market 5e material, like when they had the licence for 'Dungeon'. And get it in the game stores at a decent price point.
No one is making you.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1051311There is nothing new or interesting here. So they might have made playing Pathfinder a tad easier with less idiosyncrasies.
But like, my group has already stopped playing Pathfinder, a slightly better Pathfinder (that we have to relearn) with less content and nothing interesting to offer has just no appeal.
I could take what I like from 2e and just hack it into 1e (just use a bunch of unchained rules, augment automatic bonus progression to allow for weapons and armor special abilities without penalty) and you got a more complete game that still has a neat action economy.
Sadly, I think if Paizo invested their efforts into more 1e content and perhaps another unchained book, they would have done a lot better. My group has already said that we would play another Pathfinder game if they released an "Advanced Class Guide 2"
This new edition already feels like a flop.
The only reason people even played Pathfinder was because they hated D&D 4e. 4e is gone now. But some players are nostalgic about hating 4e still. So they'll buy Pathfinder 2.0.
Quote from: S'mon;1051465Yeah, I think it's a dumb move that will extract more money from hardcore fans but will cut them off from the bulk of new players coming up, which is who they need. They need to go back to basics - a monthly or bi-monthly subscription magazine publishing mass market 5e material, like when they had the licence for 'Dungeon'. And get it in the game stores at a decent price point.
Idk about that. They had a large chunk of hardcore fans that bought every product they made simply because they were continuing 3.5.
There was a decent amount of people claiming they were cancelling all subscriptions simply because they went to a new edition. I would kind of define people who were buying every product as hardcore fans.
Sure I guess they will keep hardcore Paizo fans, but they will lose their 3.5 fans.
Maybe they shouldn't have over moderated their forum until it became a yes-man echo chamber and maybe then Paizo would be more cautious and humble. Overall Paizo seems to be hostile towards any customers that don't already like them. Heck their "official" stance (it's only what mods and other employees say to people) is that if you have a problem with the term being changed from Race to Ancestries, then you are racist and they don't want your money anyways (I really don't care what they call it, it's just a stupid thing to attack people for).
Quote from: Caesar Slaad;1051471No one is making you.
No, but Paizo needs him to.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1051509Idk about that. They had a large chunk of hardcore fans that bought every product they made simply because they were continuing 3.5.
There was a decent amount of people claiming they were cancelling all subscriptions simply because they went to a new edition. I would kind of define people who were buying every product as hardcore fans.
Sure I guess they will keep hardcore Paizo fans, but they will lose their 3.5 fans.
Maybe they shouldn't have over moderated their forum until it became a yes-man echo chamber and maybe then Paizo would be more cautious and humble. Overall Paizo seems to be hostile towards any customers that don't already like them. Heck their "official" stance (it's only what mods and other employees say to people) is that if you have a problem with the term being changed from Race to Ancestries, then you are racist and they don't want your money anyways (I really don't care what they call it, it's just a stupid thing to attack people for).
Indeed. And the over-arching philosophy behind that sort of thinking is all neatly encapsulated in Pp.5-6, "Gaming Is For All." of their playtest rulebook. The 434 page rulebook. :eek:
I downloaded, though I have no interest in buying PF2 stuff. I'm interested in the game design aspect, but can't stomach another fantasy rpg edition retread.
Quote from: Franky;1051512Indeed. And the over-arching philosophy behind that sort of thinking is all neatly encapsulated in Pp.5-6, "Gaming Is For All." of their playtest rulebook. The 434 page rulebook. :eek:
That was a whole lot of cringe there. It'd be easier to say, "Don't be a dick, and be excellent to each other." I also don't like commandment that GM's have to be able to read the body language and hidden emotions of their players at all times.
Edit: The more I read in the book though, the more I kind of shudder. I think they're heading toward their own sort of 4e situation, there are a lot of changes to the basic formula of D&D in here that seem to make things a little more....Videogamey... the way your "Ancestry" determines your starting HP, the way you get "Boosts" to your attributes depending on your race, class and "Background" instead of the standard rolling. The way the feats are in these overly detailed graphic boxes like tooltips for an ability in World of Warcraft.
I suppose they needed to differentiate themselves from 5e, but where 5e seems to honor it's origins, Pathfinder 2e seems to be going to far sideways.
I feel that Pathfinder is a big pile of bloat that succeeds on the quality if its art.
Quote from: DiscoSoup;1051528I feel that Pathfinder is a big pile of bloat that succeeds on the quality if its art.
It's D&D 3.X with high production values. I will admit that I do like 3rd edition D&D, but when 3.5 came out to "fix all the problems", I was sort of put-off. Then Pathfinder arrived, and it was 3.5 turned up to 11, and I lost interest, even though I got all the books.
Every time I look at Pathfinder I think, wow this is pretty cool!, then I start to make a character and remember why I went back to B/X and AD&D. There is surely a market for such games, but I am not it.
They are so screwed.
Quote from: Brad;1051531Every time I look at Pathfinder I think, wow this is pretty cool!, then I start to make a character and remember why I went back to B/X and AD&D. There is surely a market for such games, but I am not it.
+1 to this. I own a number of Pathfinder books and recently bought Starfinder, and that's my general reaction. I
want to like PF but every time I try to play I am confronted by the 3E fiasco all over again. 3E and 4E were, to me, very dark times in the "evolution" of the game, but the good news is that 3E made me find C&C. :)
I have a friend who is a big fan of Pathfinder, and he was looking forward to the playtest of 2nd ed, so I figured I'd at least grab the PDF. And then I went to the game store that is like a block away from where I see my shrink (depression issues). They had a bunch of the paperback copies and hardcovers, but none of the pseudo-leather bound copies (the store got just enough to cover the pre-orders for that format +1 store copy). I'd sold a bunch of games that I had doubles of (they sell the books on consignment, customer sets the price on the item, when it sells they get 80% of the price in store credit, the store gets the other 20% for acting as seller and providing shelf space), so I had a bunch of store credit, and the owner and I were talking about the rabid fan base of Pathfinder who would go and buy one of each copy of a playtest file, when in walked one of the more frothing regulars, who was there to pick up his limited edition pseudo-leather bound copy of Pathfinder 2. And as the owner went into the back to get his special order He bragged to me about how he had talked the owner down from $60 to 30 on it, and had pre-paid for said book.
The owner came out, and handed him the paperback edition and told him that $30 would only get him the paperback and if he didn't like it, too bad.
The customer then started throwing a tantrum about how he HAD to have the pseudo-leather copy, and couldn't he just return the paper, to add to what he had in store credit?
The owner told him he doesn't take returns on special orders, and the playtest book, in this case, qualified as a special order. If he wanted to he could try to sell the book used , but good luck with that, and he had annoyed all the other regulars so much that none of them would deal with him where money was involved.
So I stepped in and asked how short he was credit wise, and was told $5. I turned to the customer and said, "you give me the paperback and I'll give you the $5 you need in credit"
He told me he wanted the $30 it was worth, and shrugged and started to walk away, then he shouted for me to wait, and the owner sold him the browsing copy, and I got a paperback copy of the book for basically free.
After the regular stomped off, calling us lots of nasty things for ripping him off, the owner said that he has never had so much difficulty in not laughing at that guy.
I haven't really sat down and combed through the book, and I played Pathfinder 1 only a couple times, but the layout is nice, not sure about rules changes, the little diamond things representing how many actions something takes seems nice. Not a lot of art, which is good, for what it needs to be. May never play it, but the price was good.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1051780They are so screwed.
Marketing to the hardcore gearhead char-opping mech-pilot social justice warrior 3e D&D fan... What could possibly go wrong? :D
As I indicated, their big problem is that they are designing this game for a subset of their existing fan base, the people who've been with them since the opening years of the 21st century. Paizo did one great thing aimed at new players, the Pathfinder Beginner Box, but never supported it, and WotC has been eating their lunch for four years now. And instead of admitting defeat and going to a 5e compatible product line that would create an evergreen market (albeit with a smaller base) they are doubling down on failure.
I don't know if it is past success or socjus or both that makes them stupid, or if their initial genius in converting 3e Dungeon & its subscriber base over to the monthly Pathfinder Adventure Path was just a fluke. But they really need to go back to what made them successful in the first place if they are going to survive.
Quote from: Franky;1051512Indeed. And the over-arching philosophy behind that sort of thinking is all neatly encapsulated in Pp.5-6, "Gaming Is For All." of their playtest rulebook. The 434 page rulebook. :eek:
Quote from: Rhedyn;1051509Maybe they shouldn't have over moderated their forum until it became a yes-man echo chamber and maybe then Paizo would be more cautious and humble. Overall Paizo seems to be hostile towards any customers that don't already like them. Heck their "official" stance (it's only what mods and other employees say to people) is that if you have a problem with the term being changed from Race to Ancestries, then you are racist and they don't want your money anyways (I really don't care what they call it, it's just a stupid thing to attack people for).
I never received any impression that as a company they were humble imo. The almost non-apology for the Advanced Class Guide which they slapped together and threw out at Gencon thinking no one would notice that it requires 9 or was it 10 pages of errata for the material to be used properly. When the fans ripped them a new one they seemed defiant and only after the uproar lasted a week did they give a very grudgingly half-assed backhanded apology. After all we should have been happy to receive a book that requires so much errata to use just so Paizo could have had a Gencon release. To one of their own developers going on record stating that anyone who has issues with the Fighter class is someone with a agenda. As for them calling people racist for not liking ancestries it's them pandering to SJW elements who really don't buy gaming. I think the company needs to be humbled and the only way they will learn.
Quote from: Franky;1051512Indeed. And the over-arching philosophy behind that sort of thinking is all neatly encapsulated in Pp.5-6, "Gaming Is For All." of their playtest rulebook. The 434 page rulebook. :eek:
The sad part all they had to do with what they wrote was go " be fair, don't be a dick and allow anyone and everyone who is interested in playing and make sure everyone is having fun. Instead of treating their fanbase with respect it felt like they were talking down to me and pointing a wagging finger in my direction with the unwritten "you will follow these directions to the letter or your a bad DM and person in all respects".
Quote from: Orphan81;1051519That was a whole lot of cringe there. It'd be easier to say, "Don't be a dick, and be excellent to each other." I also don't like commandment that GM's have to be able to read the body language and hidden emotions of their players at all times.
See above it felt like my mom was talking to me when a 10 year old. I play this is a hobby when it becomes a job is when I leave it or take a break from the gaming table both as a player and DM. I'm not paid to be a part-time or full time psychologist. If a person has a issue I will deal with them one on one. Then I see if the entire table has a issue. If player dfg does not like DRow with black skin and the other five players are good with it DFG is shit of luck and finding a new table. What gets me about that section is the implication if you don't have female, trans-gendered or a non-white, gay player your not trying hard enough. If my area is made up of mostly cis white males and none of the others are interested in playing rpgs. Guess what my group will be made up of that demographic. I cannot force any of the other demographics to join my table.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1051780They are so screwed.
I say wait and see Pundit because if I listened to every gamer who said a new version is shit I would never have tried something new. Gamers said 5E was crap and it's a very successful brand.
Remial it's not just Pathfinder fans. I have always noticed that some a very small subset of tabletop gamers are " special" . A gamer walks in complete stereotype bad body odor, unkempt beard and overall appearance. Tried to sell marked up used 2E material and was getting more and more angry that the store owner was refusing to budge on what he was going to give him. Then the conversation turned to the pricing of 3E the gamers goes on a rant about it. The store owner shut him down by pointing out that it's not the late 1980s anymore and what was priced a certain way at that time is not the same now. Which was early 2000s. The guy blew a gasket because someone ripped apart his carefully constructed personal narrative on how WOTC was a bad company for selling books at proper prices and not 198os prices. Long story short he was no able to sell his books, banned from the story and made to look like a idiot.
Given the (free) work that went into trashing 4E and the (paid) work that went into selling 5E, it's in Paizo's best interest to spend more marketing capital to silence the nay-sayers.
Edit: Rules-wise, both are workable provided you ignore 30-40% of the rules, which is par for course.
I don't play Pathfinder, but I strongly suspect Paizo is going to do just fine with it.
Quote from: Mistwell;1051842I don't play Pathfinder, but I strongly suspect Paizo is going to do just fine with it.
Well, yes. Their main moneymaker is their storefront. They don't need Pathfinder.
I'm never buying an rpg that has more than a 200 page main rule book again.
Quote from: S'mon;1051792Marketing to the hardcore gearhead char-opping mech-pilot social justice warrior 3e D&D fan... What could possibly go wrong? :D
Idk why going hard SJW leads to uninteresting products, but it seems to be a running theme when a company goes too deep down the rabbit hole.
Ironically, I think it stems from a lack of diversity, if you only hire and listen to people that think the same (ever narrowing) way as you do, it's no surprise that you end up regurgitating samey ideas that are uninteresting.
Maybe it has something to do with being overly sensitive to banal difference in regular people that are just uninteresting in fantasy settings. Like your gay trans black dwarf Shaman is not more interesting than a Dragonborn Eldritch Knight or even an Orc Paladin.
Like, I would be playing 5e if they tightened up their language (especially spells), fixed some balance issues that were addressed with bad DM handwaving (summoning, polymorph, ect), had some DM charts with listed examples how skills should work (outside of vague handwave charts vs "difficulty" that isn't defined in game terms), and maybe introduced a variant rule where you add Level/CR to rolls for campaigns that need you to out level things. Idc that Mike Mearls is an SJW, his product is interesting, I just don't like how it plays out in our 7 man groups. (Add another variant rule for multiple concentration spells, maybe bonus concentration or attunement slots and you basically have everything PF2e could ever hope to be).
EDIT: Hell, I would be super down for a 6e that was basically completely compatible with current 5e products
Quote from: Franky;1051512Indeed. And the over-arching philosophy behind that sort of thinking is all neatly encapsulated in Pp.5-6, "Gaming Is For All." of their playtest rulebook.
OK, I have absolutely no interest in PF (which reminds me, I need to sell those copies of Classic Horrors Revisited and Undead Revisited I have), but this provokes morbid curiosity.
I'm not interested in a more complex version of dnd. And if I were, I would go with 13th Age.
QuoteGame Masters
The role of Game Master comes with the responsibility of ensuring that none of your players violate the game's social contract, especially when playing in a public space. Be on the lookout for behavior that's inappropriate, whether intentional or inadvertent, and pay careful attention to players' body language during gameplay. If you notice a player becoming uncomfortable, you are empowered to pause the game, take it in a new direction, privately check in with your players during or after the session, or take any other action you think is appropriate to move the game toward a fun experience for everyone. That said, you should never let players who are uncomfortable with different identities or experiences derail your game.
WTF
QuotePeople of all identities and experiences have a right to be represented in the game, even if they're not necessarily playing at your table.
Does that include Nazi's ?
Does this mean if I am running a pathfinder game at a Con and someone wants to play a black paraplegic squirrel and I refuse will I be banned from running Pathfinder at Cons?. Even if not I can still have some asshole pointing to this shit in the rulebook and making demands. Fucking GM's have enough to do without that shit. Fuck you Piazo you virtue signalling cunts. I look out for my players and make sure no one gets hassled and I don't need some shower of shits libtardsplaining to me.
Quote from: waltshumate;1051908Does this mean if I am running a pathfinder game at a Con and someone wants to play a black paraplegic squirrel and I refuse will I be banned from running Pathfinder at Cons?
No, it's MUCH worse than that. If you are running a Pathfinder game you must include black paraplegic squirrelkin NPCs, whether or not you or the other players want to, because black paraplegic squirrelkin
have a right to be represented in the game.
Quote from: S'mon;1051915No, it's MUCH worse than that. If you are running a Pathfinder game you must include black paraplegic squirrelkin NPCs, whether or not you or the other players want to, because black paraplegic squirrelkin have a right to be represented in the game.
I look forward to seeing Paizo produce products featuring orthodox Catholics in a positive and sympathetic light, as opposed to the exclusion, erasure and cultural appropriation that has dominated the game since WotC took over. :D
I used to like Pathfinder before my tastes matured. Now I find the rules too complicated, disorganized and unbalanced, so I switched to Risus. Not just because the rules are very simple: under Risus, fighters compete on even terms with wizards.
My brief impression of Pathfinder 2e from a doc that my nephew was reviewing was that it shook things up just enough for there to be noticeable differences, but doesn't make a very compelling change. I don't think it seems worth an edition update.
To be clear, I've rarely played Pathfinder or 3.X and am unlikely to in the near future.
But even with games that I play regularly, I dislike the tendency of new editions to be aimed at the pleasing mainly the hard-core dedicated players.
Quote from: jhkim;1051957My brief impression of Pathfinder 2e from a doc that my nephew was reviewing was that it shook things up just enough for there to be noticeable differences, but doesn't make a very compelling change. I don't think it seems worth an edition update.
To be clear, I've rarely played Pathfinder or 3.X and am unlikely to in the near future.
But even with games that I play regularly, I dislike the tendency of new editions to be aimed at the pleasing mainly the hard-core dedicated players.
It reminds me of that bit in Spinal Tap: "their appeal is just becoming more selective."
The new edition does not fix systemic issues with the system, which are many. It is just as complicated as GURPS, but is nowhere near as organized or systematized.
For example: why are spell casters vastly more flexible than martial classes? why do constructs and undead lack constitution scores and have blanket immunity to mind-affecting effects? Why do we have/need monster types like "monstrous humanoid," "magical beast", "fey" and "outsider"?
Quote from: jhkim;1051957But even with games that I play regularly, I dislike the tendency of new editions to be aimed at the pleasing mainly the hard-core dedicated players.
I agree totally. Pathfinder needed a BIG overhaul. I've done a casual review of the game over lunch... it's still not nearly far enough to differentiate itself from 5e. It still has most of the egregious flaws of Pathfinder/3.x
The system has potential - the rulebook could have used more editing, the monster math is off, and the ability design is very conservative but I could see interesting developments come into play.
Edit: Ultimately if they support it with Adventure Paths, people will play it because APs work.
The playtest book is not well organized, at least for a playtest document. Paizo seems to want to test everything at once, at least low level everything, and that will lead to a hot mess. Unless the Paizo peeps know something I don't. The whole thing seems more release candidate rather than a beta.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1051884OK, I have absolutely no interest in PF (which reminds me, I need to sell those copies of Classic Horrors Revisited and Undead Revisited I have), but this provokes morbid curiosity.
Fair enough. Read it at your own risk.
Spoiler
Gaming is for all
Whether you're a player or a Game Master, participating
in a tabletop roleplaying game involves an inherent social
contract: everyone has gathered to have fun together,
and the table is a safe space for everyone. Everyone has
a right to play and enjoy Pathfinder regardless of their
age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other
identities and life experiences. Pathfinder is for everyone,
and Pathfinder games should be as safe, inclusive, and fun
as possible for all.
Players
As a player, it is your responsibility to ensure that you are
not creating or contributing to an environment that makes
any other players feel uncomfortable or unwelcome,
particularly if those players are members of minority
or marginalized communities that haven't always been
welcome or represented in the larger gaming population.
Thus, it's important to consider your character concepts and
roleplaying style and avoid any approach that could cause
harm to another player. A character whose concept and
mannerisms are racist tropes, for example, is exceptionally
harmful and works against the goal of providing fun for
all. A roleplaying style in which a player or character is
constantly interrupting others or treating certain players
or characters with condescension is similarly unacceptable.
Furthermore, standards of respect don't vanish simply
because you're playing a character in a fantasy game.
For example, it's never acceptable to refer to another
person using an offensive term or a slur, and doing so
"in character" is just as bad as doing so directly. If your
character's concept requires you act this way, that's a good
sign your concept is harmful, and you have a responsibility
to change it. Sometimes, you might not realize that your
character concept or roleplaying style is making others
feel unwelcome at the gaming table. If another player
tells you that your character concept or roleplaying style
makes them uncomfortable, you shouldn't argue about
what they should or shouldn't find offensive or say that
what you're doing is common (and therefore okay) among
players or in other media. Instead, you should simply stop
and make sure the game is a fun experience for everyone.
After all, that's what gaming is about!
Game Masters
The role of Game Master comes with the responsibility of
ensuring that none of your players violate the game's social
contract, especially when playing in a public space. Be on
the lookout for behavior that's inappropriate, whether
intentional or inadvertent, and pay careful attention to
players' body language during gameplay. If you notice
a player becoming uncomfortable, you are empowered
to pause the game, take it in a new direction, privately
check in with your players during or after the session, or
take any other action you think is appropriate to move
the game toward a fun experience for everyone. That
said, you should never let players who are uncomfortable
with different identities or experiences derail your game.
People of all identities and experiences have a right to be
represented in the game, even if they're not necessarily
playing at your table.
Otherwise, if a player tells you they're uncomfortable
with something in the game, whether it's content you've
presented as the GM or another player's actions, listen
to them and take steps to ensure they can once again
have fun during your game. If you're preparing written
material and you find the description of a character or a
situation to be inappropriate, you are fully empowered
to change any details as you see fit to best suit your
players. Making sure the game is fun for everyone is your
biggest job!
Quote from: sureshot;1051797I never received any impression that as a company they were humble imo. The almost non-apology for the Advanced Class Guide which they slapped together and threw out at Gencon thinking no one would notice that it requires 9 or was it 10 pages of errata for the material to be used properly. When the fans ripped them a new one they seemed defiant and only after the uproar lasted a week did they give a very grudgingly half-assed backhanded apology. After all we should have been happy to receive a book that requires so much errata to use just so Paizo could have had a Gencon release. To one of their own developers going on record stating that anyone who has issues with the Fighter class is someone with a agenda. As for them calling people racist for not liking ancestries it's them pandering to SJW elements who really don't buy gaming. I think the company needs to be humbled and the only way they will learn.
Oh, they are definitely not humble as a company. Not at all. I went into one of their message boards once, and I was interested in purchasing one of their adventure paths to run- Iron Gods. It appealed because of it's mix of cthulu tech and sci-fi elements. I'm not too interested in the Paizo campaign world, but I was GMing for a group that knew the system and I liked the concept so what the hell.
Anyway, I went on the boards and asked "Do I need all of the individual modules or are some of these just padding to fill out levels? Because I've seen some of these adventure paths before and it seems like it's just level grinding- which I can do without for my players. I can just get the pertinent modules and leave out the others- and adjust monster difficulty as needed."
So- get this- James Jacobs- the creative in charge of the company gives me a lecture stating how all of the stories are intertwined and how this doesn't happen in these adventure paths and is just a perfectly interlocked story arc for the PCs. (Which, if you've read any of Paizo stuff is just bullshit). Basically, the Paizo message boards are a little nanny state. It's not "Hey, this is what we think works- but do what you want with it." Nope, it's "Do this. This is the right way. We know best. Buy our stuff."
That's the vibe I get from Paizo, anyway.
Their boards are just a marketing tool now. It's why they're so dead. 3.X kind'of thrives off forum discussions and op char boards and ranting about class im balance. That's how you keep your enthusiast engaged long enough to teach other people your massive game.
Nuking all that from orbit because you find less than eloquent nerd discussion "problematic" was a great way for them to kill their brand.
I predict Paizo would have started losing customers without 5e. They are actively hostile to enthusiast that are not critical about their game in the right way. So a good portion of people who can run games around the flaws they find are not really given a place to vent/discuss/keep the rules in their head. And then the sycophants can't run a game because they are blind to the flaws.
So the only people running games in PF successfully are those people who love the game enough to keep it in their head and can understand the flaws of the game without discussing them "impolitely" with anyone (and PF discussions outside the main boards are pretty dead too).
Of course they aren't getting new players. A new edition won't help that without simplifying it to 5e levels (which might as just support 5e then)
Meanwhile, 5e only gets hurt by dev rulings and overanalyzing it, so they have no reason to even have a board, let alone moderate one.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1052068Meanwhile, 5e only gets hurt by dev rulings and overanalyzing it, so they have no reason to even have a board, let alone moderate one.
What do you mean?
For me, dev rulings and overanalysis call to attention 5E's very passable design.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1052079What do you mean?
I personally feel that most of the "Sage Advice" is either repeating words in the book or bad houserules.
I also feel like if you really analyze 5e, much of the math is broken, and many of the rules are poorly written. 5e works best when you don't know how it works and DM runs everything the way nostalgia has him remember how it worked in their favorite edition of D&D.
To just make a quick list (not distinguishing between bad SA and bad rules)
-DM picking summons
-Summons in general adding too much HP and attacks to one side.
-Polymorph and wildshape are too strong with the HP bubble they add. HP is very important in this edition (Like it was in BECMI, because HP totals or HD was a way to "balance" encounters if you did that)
-Flamming Sphere is worded poorly
-Paladins save aura
-Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master add way too much damage with advantage (which isn't that hard to get)
-ect but this list is quick.
I admit I'm probably not being fair. Yet After reading p 5-6 if the playtest it just turned me off from reading the rest of it. Those two pages to me came off as trying to guilt trip players/dms into running the game the one true way and only thst way is conductive to myself st least wanting to read more.
I'm a majority rules type of person when it comes to certain decisions. How does one or a few person voices suddenly get to decide how the entire table plays. You show up to a bbq told ahead of time it's going to only be mest or mostly meat then pull a fit it's not vegan friendly yeah no.
Already what I heard about it was a mixed bag. Msybe it's just me but the formula for to find a perception value seems complicated compared to first edition imo.
I don't care your race, gender or sex. I cannot and will not force anypne to play in a game of D@D. It's like the sjws and companies that pander to them refuse to understand.
If the only players in my area that show up are cis white males. Im not going to put my game on hold to be more inclusive and diverse. Not without being paid to do so. I run Drow as is. If everyone or the majority are fine with it st the table joe,jane,z come lately either accepts that or finds another table.
Weird the forum software just changed how I wrote my post.
Perhaps Pathfinder 2E should publish with the slogan "To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"? ;)
Quote from: Rhedyn;1052095I personally feel that most of the "Sage Advice" is either repeating words in the book or bad houserules.
I also feel like if you really analyze 5e, much of the math is broken, and many of the rules are poorly written. 5e works best when you don't know how it works and DM runs everything the way nostalgia has him remember how it worked in their favorite edition of D&D.
To just make a quick list (not distinguishing between bad SA and bad rules)
-DM picking summons
-Summons in general adding too much HP and attacks to one side.
-Polymorph and wildshape are too strong with the HP bubble they add. HP is very important in this edition (Like it was in BECMI, because HP totals or HD was a way to "balance" encounters if you did that)
-Flamming Sphere is worded poorly
-Paladins save aura
-Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master add way too much damage with advantage (which isn't that hard to get)
-ect but this list is quick.
Anything which lets you summon and polymorph into arbitrary monsters is unbalanced. For example, a druid may wildshape into a tressym which has spell turning. This reminds me that the monster type system is stupid. Not just from the perspective of brain-dead world building (e.g. why can't an efreet be both a giant and an elemental? why can't plants be wood elementals? what the heck are fey supposed to be and why are they separate from elementals if Paracelsus listed nymphs and gnomes as elementals? why is dragon a type but not sphinx or chimera? what the hell is a monstrosity?), but because summoning and polymorph spells which key off monster type may become wildly unbalanced depending on what monster books are available to the group.
If we expect game balance then we are better off playing
13th Age or
Mythras.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1052289Perhaps Pathfinder 2E should publish with the slogan "To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"? ;)
LOL maybe they should. I thin it's also edition fatigue. I am behind 5E because it fixed to me at least many of the legacy problems of the 3.5 rules. Pathfinder seems to be as someone posted making the rules both easier and harder to understand imo.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1052095I personally feel that most of the "Sage Advice" is either repeating words in the book or bad houserules.
I also feel like if you really analyze 5e, much of the math is broken, and many of the rules are poorly written. 5e works best when you don't know how it works and DM runs everything the way nostalgia has him remember how it worked in their favorite edition of D&D.
To just make a quick list (not distinguishing between bad SA and bad rules)
-DM picking summons
-Summons in general adding too much HP and attacks to one side.
-Polymorph and wildshape are too strong with the HP bubble they add. HP is very important in this edition (Like it was in BECMI, because HP totals or HD was a way to "balance" encounters if you did that)
-Flamming Sphere is worded poorly
-Paladins save aura
-Sharpshooter and Great Weapon Master add way too much damage with advantage (which isn't that hard to get)
-ect but this list is quick.
Ah yes. I noticed all of those things too. But I think it's a testament to 5e's design that everything is so modular and easy to homebrew or edit out. So you don't really notice these as much as a system problem so much as a specific rule to fix.
Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1052306Ah yes. I noticed all of those things too. But I think it's a testament to 5e's design that everything is so modular and easy to homebrew or edit out. So you don't really notice these as much as a system problem so much as a specific rule to fix.
I think it's totally possible to fix everything I dislike with 5e and the resultant play, just by rewriting specific rules.
A theoretical "5.5e" would be entirely compatible with 5e content without any conversion needed, unless you were really concerned about balance. (My issue with balance problems is when they make things boring, which I feel that many of 5e's balance problems are when a strong but boring combo becomes essential to the party after the DM adjust for it)
I think where we disagree is the extent of specific rules that need touched up. Because for me, every category and maybe 40% of the total rules need a rework for 5e to stand on its on merits, rather than the merits of the DM making it work like his favorite edition
I'm already invested in the current edition with my kids. I don't see the need for a 2E other than lightening my wallet.
Reigning in the RNG is a positive change. I'll wait until the final product but experience tells me the game will not be as good as it could have been.
I just downloaded the Playtest rules for Pathfinder 2.0 and.........um..........ok.
So a couple of things that sort of jump out at me:
- Are they trying to mesh the d20/3.5 system and 4th Edition into some Frankenstein? I mean the entire concept of Class "feats" that you get to pick at the supposed levels simply feels like 4e Powers on a lesser scale without pretty colored boxes. And once chosen, you can't undo them. For example the Paladin can grab a magical mount, but once it's chosen you can't swap that out later. To me that feels highly restrictive for no real bonus or effect.
- Feats that are restrictive to class seem to mirror 4e's earlier issues of not letting people play the way they want within the framework of the class. For example my current Pathfinder Rogue is an expert at Two-Weapon Fighting. Can the PF 2.0 Rogue fight with two weapons? Um.....not really. I mean he *can* in a sense that he can wield a weapon in each hand but that provides zero benefit since he has no "Strikes" that utilize both weapons simultaneously (an oft heavily criticized rule of 4th Edition). And yeah, I can do what I did in 4E and just role-play the multi-attack rules as swinging with both weapons or what-not but it seems as though Paizo didn't fully understand the level of complaints because of the restrictiveness.
- Levels of expertise. I feel that Pathfinder really captures the essence of customization when it retained aspects of 3.5 like Skill Points. Personally I despised the concept because of how much damn time it took and the little rules that followed it: what adds synergy, what cross-class skills apply to which level, what's the maximum/minimum ranks per level, etc. But for many who kept playing Pathfinder, these traits were pretty endearing. They allowed for you to customize the type of character you envisioned even more so with that level of granularity. From what I've read, it seems that proficiency in a skills is simply measured by level (or in terms of Untrained, level -2). While I personally applaud the easy of use and simplistic design, I think it might really lose some of the hard-core players who entrenched themselves with the level of minutia.
I haven't gotten into the spellcasting parts of the classes yet. Some other things that made me do some eye-rolling are the break-up of actions, including Raise Shield, something you have to declare to get the bonus for that round. seems tedious. I think if I were to play a shield-base or bashing character I'd be frank with the DM and say "look, if I don't do anything with said action just assume I'm using my shield" for brevity.
Quote from: Batman;1053242I just downloaded the Playtest rules for Pathfinder 2.0 and.........um..........ok.
So a couple of things that sort of jump out at me:
- Are they trying to mesh the d20/3.5 system and 4th Edition into some Frankenstein? I mean the entire concept of Class "feats" that you get to pick at the supposed levels simply feels like 4e Powers on a lesser scale without pretty colored boxes. And once chosen, you can't undo them. For example the Paladin can grab a magical mount, but once it's chosen you can't swap that out later. To me that feels highly restrictive for no real bonus or effect.
- Feats that are restrictive to class seem to mirror 4e's earlier issues of not letting people play the way they want within the framework of the class. For example my current Pathfinder Rogue is an expert at Two-Weapon Fighting. Can the PF 2.0 Rogue fight with two weapons? Um.....not really. I mean he *can* in a sense that he can wield a weapon in each hand but that provides zero benefit since he has no "Strikes" that utilize both weapons simultaneously (an oft heavily criticized rule of 4th Edition). And yeah, I can do what I did in 4E and just role-play the multi-attack rules as swinging with both weapons or what-not but it seems as though Paizo didn't fully understand the level of complaints because of the restrictiveness.
- Levels of expertise. I feel that Pathfinder really captures the essence of customization when it retained aspects of 3.5 like Skill Points. Personally I despised the concept because of how much damn time it took and the little rules that followed it: what adds synergy, what cross-class skills apply to which level, what's the maximum/minimum ranks per level, etc. But for many who kept playing Pathfinder, these traits were pretty endearing. They allowed for you to customize the type of character you envisioned even more so with that level of granularity. From what I've read, it seems that proficiency in a skills is simply measured by level (or in terms of Untrained, level -2). While I personally applaud the easy of use and simplistic design, I think it might really lose some of the hard-core players who entrenched themselves with the level of minutia.
I haven't gotten into the spellcasting parts of the classes yet. Some other things that made me do some eye-rolling are the break-up of actions, including Raise Shield, something you have to declare to get the bonus for that round. seems tedious. I think if I were to play a shield-base or bashing character I'd be frank with the DM and say "look, if I don't do anything with said action just assume I'm using my shield" for brevity.
3pp has been exploring the idea of custom built classes for years, to the point of using GURPS-style point buy systems. Right now there are loads and loads of extra class and archetypes that would not be necessary if every class could be custom built. I remember reading one of the customizable pathfinder class books, IIRC "The Talented Cleric", and it pretty much took the class features from every cleric-flavored archetype or extra class and offered them as feats so that the PC could be custom designed at every level.
I don't like
Pathfinder because the rules are unnecessarily complicated, poorly organized at the best of times, too restrictive (there are no guidelines for building new classes according to what sounds cool to you, like a divine caster who casts from a prayer book or an arcane caster who casts from wisdom), too bogged down in simulating an arbitrarily detailed reality, and generally too big a headache to work with as a designer much less a player (I tried to make my own monsters and classes and it was a huge nightmare).
The 3.x era and reading fairy tales again as an adult has ruined my tastes in RPGs. I read an Armenian fairy tale where what I can only assume was a first-level ranger killed a giant many times his size with a single arrow, threw household objects that turned into entire landscapes, and tons of other insanely awesome stuff (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46944/46944-h/46944-h.htm#t21). I cannot pull anything even remotely as cool as that fairy tale in any fantasy role playing game I have ever heard of.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1052313I think it's totally possible to fix everything I dislike with 5e and the resultant play, just by rewriting specific rules.
A theoretical "5.5e" would be entirely compatible with 5e content without any conversion needed, unless you were really concerned about balance. (My issue with balance problems is when they make things boring, which I feel that many of 5e's balance problems are when a strong but boring combo becomes essential to the party after the DM adjust for it)
I think where we disagree is the extent of specific rules that need touched up. Because for me, every category and maybe 40% of the total rules need a rework for 5e to stand on its on merits, rather than the merits of the DM making it work like his favorite edition
Think they best thing for 5ed would be to just let the edition treadmill rest for a while, if you count essentials there have been 5 editions of WotC-D&D in under two decades. Give 5ed 10-12 years to get some stability back.
Quote from: Daztur;1053272Think they best thing for 5ed would be to just let the edition treadmill rest for a while, if you count essentials there have been 5 editions of WotC-D&D in under two decades. Give 5ed 10-12 years to get some stability back.
That's the thinking of the last decade (or the one before that), but it's not really how things work today. If it gets 'stability' it also gets stagnant.
Quote from: Daztur;1053272Think they best thing for 5ed would be to just let the edition treadmill rest for a while, if you count essentials there have been 5 editions of WotC-D&D in under two decades. Give 5ed 10-12 years to get some stability back.
The Older editions get to be stable.
I know I can't root against something like an edition change because I won't play the current version.
Quote from: DeadUematsu;1051999Ultimately if they support it with Adventure Paths, people will play it because APs work.
Does anyone know why there haven't been any good copycats of this model? Even with lesser production values, the model should work.
Quote from: joewolz;1053316Does anyone know why there haven't been any good copycats of this model? Even with lesser production values, the model should work.
For many companies, the idea of putting out products at the rate that Paizo pushes adventure paths is frightening. Some, like FFG, have trouble getting out more than a handful of RPG products in a year (having to get Lucasfilm/Diney approval for everything doesn't help, but it's mainly a printing and shipping issue).
My group does not play bookkeeper oops I mean pathfinder. I see no reason to fill their pockets with my money.
Quote from: joewolz;1053316Does anyone know why there haven't been any good copycats of this model? Even with lesser production values, the model should work.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1053317For many companies, the idea of putting out products at the rate that Paizo pushes adventure paths is frightening. Some, like FFG, have trouble getting out more than a handful of RPG products in a year (having to get Lucasfilm/Diney approval for everything doesn't help, but it's mainly a printing and shipping issue).
I think Paizo running Dumgeon/Dragon magazines for a while under WOTC gave them a leg up in this format. Their APs are just 6 monthly magazines, with a single adventure (Dungeon) and extra campaign world info/new rules systems (Dragon) inside. When you look closely at a number of the individual adventures, they are very generic with a coat of "Current AP" paint on them. This doesn't make them bad as such, it just shows the periodical format. Other companies could do it. I just think Paizo has an advantage due to experience.
As for 2E. I think they are a couple of years too late. They should have started when they released "Unchained". 2e Pathfinder isn't going to attract new players (in any meaningful numbers) and this will only divide their base between players who don't want to pony up the cash for a new edition and those who have to have the "new" version. They will get more people to switch because of Society play, but that isn't adding NEW people.
Quote from: moonsweeper;1053330I think Paizo running Dumgeon/Dragon magazines for a while under WOTC gave them a leg up in this format. Their APs are just 6 monthly magazines, with a single adventure (Dungeon) and extra campaign world info/new rules systems (Dragon) inside. When you look closely at a number of the individual adventures, they are very generic with a coat of "Current AP" paint on them. This doesn't make them bad as such, it just shows the periodical format. Other companies could do it. I just think Paizo has an advantage due to experience.
Yeah. Exactly. The reason is their subscriber base, inherited from when they ran Dragon & Dungeon. They are able to publish what is effectively Dungeon magazine, and charge for it like it was Keep on the Borderlands/Isle of Dread/Castle Amber. Which at the time cost around 5 times as much as a magazine issue (in the UK £4.95, vs 95p for Dragon) for a third the page count. Of course, those are high quality modules packed with content, whereas Pathfinder Adventure Path... :D ...well PF #1
Burnt Offerings was quite good, but the overall average quality is mediocre at best.
The whole thing with the APs looks good at first. It gets expensive REALLY fast imo. The whole AP plus maps comes out to at least for me 130-140$ plus tax. One two three aps how many people do anyone here know who can keep buying them on a regular basis. Not to mention 8, 9, 10 aps their is a point where one has enough to last them for a lifetime of gaming. The issue with the APs is that the npcs in most of them are so poorly designed imo that even a minimally optmized group can mop the floor with most encounter. Yes I can houserule and modify as needed BUT I bought the APS to reduce prep time not increase it. Yes they are helpful just not worth the price tag imo.
It's so funny they so want to make Goblin a playable race that they are going against the lore of their own rpg. +2 to DEx makes sense since Goblins at least in PF1 have always been nimble insane bastards. The +2 to Cha it's like a big WTF moment for me. If you read the lore of the world they are deranged, sociopathic, psychotic, bloodthirsty more than insane maniacs. That no one in the right mind and not in the right mind likes. Yet now they make the best race for Paladins. I would have made Kobolds a playable race given that they are almost nothing like Goblins and Lawful Evil vs putting the Crazy Chaotic back into Chaotic evil. Then again they ruined a iconic monster in Pathfinder the Ogre. Think a cross between Deliverance and the Hills have eyes. I can only assume they thought no one would notice.
Quote from: S'mon;1053340Yeah. Exactly. The reason is their subscriber base, inherited from when they ran Dragon & Dungeon.
Exactly. I recall reading an interview with Lisa Stevens a few years ago, and she said straight out that the making of Paizo happened when WotC decided to let them take the Dragon and Dungeon subscriber lists with them. She said that those lists were worth their (virtual) weight in gold.
As well the fanbase have repeatedly asked that they don't make specific style feats once again they don't and most likely won't listen. It's nice that their is a ancestry ability that a +2 bonus to Perception checks. Not so great imo when it's only to notice charmed or possessed creatures. My preference is more to something that will be useful all the time like a +1 bonus to damage with slings.
Quote from: sureshot;1053414The whole thing with the APs looks good at first. It gets expensive REALLY fast imo. The whole AP plus maps comes out to at least for me 130-140$ plus tax. One two three aps how many people do anyone here know who can keep buying them on a regular basis. Not to mention 8, 9, 10 aps their is a point where one has enough to last them for a lifetime of gaming. The issue with the APs is that the npcs in most of them are so poorly designed imo that even a minimally optmized group can mop the floor with most encounter. Yes I can houserule and modify as needed BUT I bought the APS to reduce prep time not increase it. Yes they are helpful just not worth the price tag imo.
I agree with the number of APs.
Another issue that I constantly came across, later in the line, is that the description of the feats are scattered everywhere. At some point I have to make notes on what all of the feats do for a particular NPC. That is the opposite of time saving. And there is no solution, except possibly a web site, as new books bring out new feats which show up in new adventure paths. Sometimes I did not own the book.
In this sense, D&D 4E was actually better because they printed the properties of abilities in the stat block so it was easy to figure out what an NPC could do.
From the playtest material, this game is going to be utter shit. And it won't please most current Pathfinder players either. It's a recipe for reducing one's market, just to get some up-front rulebook sales (at the cost of long-term bankruptcy). These are people who learned nothing at all from White Wolf's mistakes.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1053273That's the thinking of the last decade (or the one before that), but it's not really how things work today. If it gets 'stability' it also gets stagnant.
Well there's a middle ground between standant an edition treadmill. You want a situation in which the bulk of the playerbase is ready for a new edition and relatively unified about what they want fixed otherwise you'll lose too may people.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1053568From the playtest material, this game is going to be utter shit. And it won't please most current Pathfinder players either. It's a recipe for reducing one's market, just to get some up-front rulebook sales (at the cost of long-term bankruptcy). These are people who learned nothing at all from White Wolf's mistakes.
I'm just not sure what I'd do in their shoes. They got a big influx of new players who were pissed at 4ed and 3.5ed with some bells and whistles was enough for them. But that's not a constant source of new customers and I don't see PF well-positioned to bring in people who started with 5ed and are ready for something new without pissing off the 3.5ed diehards. If they don't make a new edition they'll slowly wither away, if they do make a new edition they at least get and influx of cash before withering away so I'm not sure that doing a new edition of PF is a bad idea as their raison de etre is going away in either case as 4ed becomes just a memory.
Of coures "make their design not suck so much" would help but from a business perspective I'm not sure what course they have going forward to avoid bleeding marketshare.
Quote from: Daztur;1053569Well there's a middle ground between standant an edition treadmill. You want a situation in which the bulk of the playerbase is ready for a new edition and relatively unified about what they want fixed otherwise you'll lose too may people.
I'm just not sure what I'd do in their shoes. They got a big influx of new players who were pissed at 4ed and 3.5ed with some bells and whistles was enough for them. But that's not a constant source of new customers and I don't see PF well-positioned to bring in people who started with 5ed and are ready for something new without pissing off the 3.5ed diehards. If they don't make a new edition they'll slowly wither away, if they do make a new edition they at least get and influx of cash before withering away so I'm not sure that doing a new edition of PF is a bad idea as their raison de etre is going away in either case as 4ed becomes just a memory.
Of coures "make their design not suck so much" would help but from a business perspective I'm not sure what course they have going forward to avoid bleeding marketshare.
They're a D&D publisher. They do D&D. 5e D&D has an SRD. 5e is very popular. If they want to stay in business long term they should be publishing for 5e, just as they published for 3e.
Paizo's strength is pumping out glossing looking adventures at a fast rate and getting people to buy them. Their strength has certainly never been at rules-fu. They correctly decided not to support 4e because there was no OGL or SRD for 4e, just a terrible licence. 5e reversed course and is hugely successful, but WoTC's 5e adventures are still not very good. That's where the gap in the market is - back where they started.
Quote from: S'mon;1053576They're a D&D publisher. They do D&D. 5e D&D has an SRD. 5e is very popular. If they want to stay in business long term they should be publishing for 5e, just as they published for 3e.
Paizo's strength is pumping out glossing looking adventures at a fast rate and getting people to buy them. Their strength has certainly never been at rules-fu. They correctly decided not to support 4e because there was no OGL or SRD for 4e, just a terrible licence. 5e reversed course and is hugely successful, but WoTC's 5e adventures are still not very good. That's where the gap in the market is - back where they started.
I just wish they had just done a somewhat simpler version of Pathfinder, it's not bad, but it's too clunky.
I think there's a publishing gap for that. Smooth out and condense some of the skills, simplify a few of the feats, improve the fighter, eliminate Darkvision from the core races- low light vision only- a pet peeve of mine (so that going into the dungeon is actually scary- any race that has Darkvision should automatically have light sensitivity), cut out some of the wasteful "do nothing" feats that are nonsense prereq's, simplify encumbrance (use either the LoTF or Starfinder system- both are easy to use in game to track), maybe make AoOs something that only fighters/warriors do as a class ability or certain monsters so the whole damn combat isn't taken up with trying to position your mini and track your squares...
Or just play another system. Whichever.
I think they could have done an Unchained Core Rulebook with a baked in new action economy, a baked in inherent bonus system to create math parity with the rest of the game and prevent the need of GM to manage WBL, along with reworked classes, spells, and feats to be simpler and cooler without adding much math. They have 10 years of designing to rethink in one book, they can drop most of the feat chains.
Paizo could have appeased their fans by converting their oldest APs to 5e and contracting out most of that work, while at the same time eating some 5e money.
Instead they did this... It's not what I wanted a second edition to be. It's not a system interesting enough to bother learning. It doesn't fill a different niche like 1e does compared to my primary game Savage Worlds. It's not different enough to be appealing for it's differences like 4e.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1053585Paizo could have appeased their fans by converting their oldest APs to 5e and contracting out most of that work, while at the same time eating some 5e money.
Yes, the easy money route is in converting their best received APs to 5e hardbacks, while continuing to support 3e/Pathfinder, perhaps put out a very mildly revised version with back-compatible statting (like 1e AD&D to 2e AD&D). Going over to a new incompatible 2nd edition of Pathfinder is just splitting their player base and giving less committed adherents a good jumping off point to go over to (mostly) 5e; ie a short term revenue boost for long term loss.
Quote from: S'mon;1053586Yes, the easy money route is in converting their best received APs to 5e hardbacks, while continuing to support 3e/Pathfinder, perhaps put out a very mildly revised version with back-compatible statting (like 1e AD&D to 2e AD&D). Going over to a new incompatible 2nd edition of Pathfinder is just splitting their player base and giving less committed adherents a good jumping off point to go over to (mostly) 5e; ie a short term revenue boost for long term loss.
Man, if only Paizo had some conservative, hesitant of change, diverse perspectives in their meeting rooms, they might have taken a more measured approach to living with 5e rather than spending 3(?) years or so dumping talent and effort trying to reinvent the RPG wheel with 2e.
I see what they tried to do and imo they failed. They tried to make a easier version of Pathfinder and in some cases they did then they made it also more complicated. I also have little to zero faith in them to fix anything. When the gun rules first were released for PF 1E people pointed out, pleaded and begged them not to release them as is. You have a ranged weapon that is better than the others because it targets Touch AC. They told the fans they would take their feedback under advisement just when the book with those rules was released. They gave us a polite "too bad so sad the gun rules stay as is". Making the Gunslinger class so much better depending on the Adventure Path your running. Generally better imo than bows, crossbows and other ranged weapons. Proving to myself at least that their play-test is a complete and utter sham and more a public relations exercise to fool the masses into thinking they have a say. They kept repeating the same behavior. Too many Feats and archetypes that are fit only to rip the page out of the book and to be used as spare toilet paper.
Quote from: sureshot;1053595I see what they tried to do and imo they failed. They tried to make a easier version of Pathfinder and in some cases they did then they made it also more complicated. I also have little to zero faith in them to fix anything. When the gun rules first were released for PF 1E people pointed out, pleaded and begged them not to release them as is. You have a ranged weapon that is better than the others because it targets Touch AC. They told the fans they would take their feedback under advisement just when the book with those rules was released. They gave us a polite "too bad so sad the gun rules stay as is". Making the Gunslinger class so much better depending on the Adventure Path your running. Generally better imo than bows, crossbows and other ranged weapons. Proving to myself at least that their play-test is a complete and utter sham and more a public relations exercise to fool the masses into thinking they have a say. They kept repeating the same behavior. Too many Feats and archetypes that are fit only to rip the page out of the book and to be used as spare toilet paper.
That is a bad example. In real life guns revolutionized warfare. They are vastly superior to bows and arrows. If people did not want them to break a fantasy setting, they should not have introduced guns at all.
Anyhow, Paizo could easily make money by converting their bestiaries, classes, adventure paths, etc to 5e. Unless you plan to fight an edition war, 5e and PF are not all that different since they are both built on the d20 mechanic. 5e just has way simpler rules to accomplish the same thing.
Onyx Path released
Scarred Lands for both PF and 5e in order to hedge their bets. I looked at the 5e book and I was fairly impressed by the creativity. I might even run it someday once I can find a decent Tome of Battle substitute.
D&D was never meant to be realistic imo. Yes in the real world guns did revolutionize warfare. In PF 1E all it does is make one class of ranged weapon much better than the rest. In PF 1E Giants or large creatures have low touch AC. Both times running and playing games with a Gunslinger it was a turkey shoot with them almost never missing.
Quote from: sureshot;1053611D&D was never meant to be realistic imo. Yes in the real world guns did revolutionize warfare. In PF 1E all it does is make one class of ranged weapon much better than the rest. In PF 1E Giants or large creatures have low touch AC. Both times running and playing games with a Gunslinger it was a turkey shoot with them almost never missing.
If guns have no advantage over a stone age weapon like bows and arrows, there is no point to introducing guns. Just make an archer and fluff them as a gunslinger.
Or play another system with rules so simple that it does not have to worry about game balance.
It's one thing to give guns a advantage it's another to make them hands down the best ranged weapon in PF 1E.
Their is no good reason to.me at least for the Paizo devs to have done so. By that logic shortbows should do better damage at close range. Longbows should have double or triple the ranges listed. Crossbow should have the ability to bypass armour. Again you will never convince me it was a good idea.
I'm sure nobody else cares, but I have a longstanding problem with Paizo's monster manuals. The writers like to claim that, when they rip monsters from myth and folklore, they are more faithful to the original roots. They are not.
Aside from some names, their monster lore is fabricated. Several of their monsters are lifted more or less directly from the Monster Girl Encyclopedia (e.g. alraune, jorogumo, thriae).
For example, they turned the mandrake into a generic man-eating demonic plant. In medieval bestiaries, the mandrake was defenseless aside from its cry, was contained by a circle of iron, was ground to make miracle cures and love potions, and sprouted from the earth where it was watered by the drippings of a hanged man. All awesome qualities, all absent from Pathfinder.
Quote from: sureshot;1053625It's one thing to give guns a advantage it's another to make them hands down the best ranged weapon in PF 1E.
Their is no good reason to.me at least for the Paizo devs to have done so. By that logic shortbows should do better damage at close range. Longbows should have double or triple the ranges listed. Crossbow should have the ability to bypass armour. Again you will never convince me it was a good idea.
The problem is PFs math and how armor deflects damage rather than reduces damage.
Paizo devs thought bypassing armor was more "realistic". All guns really needed to do was more damage to both be more useful than bows (at least for the untrained non Hercules strength people) and not break the math engine.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1053589Man, if only Paizo had some conservative, hesitant of change, diverse perspectives in their meeting rooms, they might have taken a more measured approach to living with 5e rather than spending 3(?) years or so dumping talent and effort trying to reinvent the RPG wheel with 2e.
Let me just say I loved this post. :D
Reading over the revised rules for building monsters, I am overjoyed that Paizo finally stopped treating monster "types" as monster classes. What annoys me is that they still have monster types and did not take this opportunity to overhaul the mechanic because it is a silly mechanic. 5e's type mechanic still suffers from the types being arbitrarily and vaguely defined, but it is still better than 3e.
Why do we need a distinction between humanoids and monstrous humanoids? Animals and vermin and magical beasts? Aberrations and outsiders? Couldn't a lot of the baggage attached to types be represented in a better way? The baggage results in the types being pigeonholed and restricts creativity in monster design.
For example, the extraplanar subtype should be changed to a condition rather than treated as a subtype. Conditions are temporary things that may change, whereas you would think subtypes are integral to a statblock. Additionally, the "native outsider" type/subtype/PC race option should really be replaced with a "planetouched humanoid" subtype. The outsider type could be split into separate types for each alignment or something.
Of course, I would prefer if the type mechanic was replaced with a simple tagging system that could also be better integrated with the special qualities mechanic. For example, [mindless] could be treated as a tag and special quality. The body/soul duality thing (which is important for obscure spells like possession) could be a tag/quality applied to ghosts and demons and whatever.
Ideally, I want to be able to label genies as elementals and have animal companions from the elemental planes and similarly creative ideas which the rules arbitrarily bar.
Really??
Oh for pity's sake !
Why play the playtest scenario? - Because you might have FUN dammit!! - Thats Why.
This past Sunday I had to work a double at the store and the local Pathfinder Society has scheduled Playtest game sessions at our store. It was just quiet enough at times that I could watch and listen in while still doing retail stuff like straightening shelves and ringing up people.
Those 6 or 7 people were having fun. The GM was being very fair and would explain things that might be different. I remember humorous encounters with Goblins that they had. (ONe player was foolishly a tad loud wile walking in a tunnel - his shield scraped the walls)
They all seemed to have a good time, there even appeared to be a bit of immersion going on.
- Ed C.
Quote from: Koltar;1053754Really??
Oh for pity's sake !
Why play the playtest scenario? - Because you might have FUN dammit!! - Thats Why.
This past Sunday I had to work a double at the store and the local Pathfinder Society has scheduled Playtest game sessions at our store. It was just quiet enough at ti,es that I could watch and listen in while still doing retail stuff like straightening shelves and ringing up people.
Those 6 or 7 people were having fun. The GM was being very fair and would explain things that might be different. I remember humorous encounters with Goblins that they had. (ONe player was foolishly a tad loud wile walking in a tunnel - his shield scraped the walls)
They all seemed to have a good time, there even appeared to be a bit of immersion going on.
- Ed C.
Far be it for me to criticize people having fun. I like some of the design concepts. But I freely admit to being a 4E fan and they do utilize some 4E elements. What I find hilarious is that quite a few "h4ters" are some of the out spoken voices over at Paizo cheering on change and the new direction. I'm finding Immense enjoyment at their fans basically at each others throats
Quote from: S'mon;1053576They're a D&D publisher. They do D&D. 5e D&D has an SRD. 5e is very popular. If they want to stay in business long term they should be publishing for 5e, just as they published for 3e.
Paizo's strength is pumping out glossing looking adventures at a fast rate and getting people to buy them. Their strength has certainly never been at rules-fu. They correctly decided not to support 4e because there was no OGL or SRD for 4e, just a terrible licence. 5e reversed course and is hugely successful, but WoTC's 5e adventures are still not very good. That's where the gap in the market is - back where they started.
I was under the impression that 5ed's OGL is a lot more restrictive than 3ed's which would make it harder for them to go back to their 3ed role. Think that would be good for both camps, it'd let PF do what they're good at and help lead PF players back to D&D.
Maybe I'm wrong about the legalities, I haven't followed 5ed that closely mostly thinknig "eh, it's fine, I guess."
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1053610That is a bad example. In real life guns revolutionized warfare. They are vastly superior to bows and arrows. If people did not want them to break a fantasy setting, they should not have introduced guns at all.
Anyhow, Paizo could easily make money by converting their bestiaries, classes, adventure paths, etc to 5e. Unless you plan to fight an edition war, 5e and PF are not all that different since they are both built on the d20 mechanic. 5e just has way simpler rules to accomplish the same thing.
Onyx Path released Scarred Lands for both PF and 5e in order to hedge their bets. I looked at the 5e book and I was fairly impressed by the creativity. I might even run it someday once I can find a decent Tome of Battle substitute.
Well for a long time guns were used not because they were better than longbows but because it was a hell of a lot easier to teach a bunch of peasants how to use guns half-way decently than it was to teach them to use bows half-way decently. It took a long time for a well-trained guy with a gun to be more effective than a well-trained guy with a bow (mostly because of rate of fire).
But of course gameplay trumps historical accuracy anyway.
Quote from: Daztur;1053761I was under the impression that 5ed's OGL is a lot more restrictive than 3ed's which would make it harder for them to go back to their 3ed role. Think that would be good for both camps, it'd let PF do what they're good at and help lead PF players back to D&D.
Maybe I'm wrong about the legalities, I haven't followed 5ed that closely mostly thinknig "eh, it's fine, I guess."
It's the exact same OGL from 2000 - look at page 1 of the 5e SRD - http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/SRD-OGL_V5.1.pdf
Paizo could perfectly well produce a 5e based game called Trackfinder off this SRD if they wanted.
Quote from: Daztur;1053761Well for a long time guns were used not because they were better than longbows but because it was a hell of a lot easier to teach a bunch of peasants how to use guns half-way decently than it was to teach them to use bows half-way decently. It took a long time for a well-trained guy with a gun to be more effective than a well-trained guy with a bow (mostly because of rate of fire).
Hmm. A long bow can shoot several times faster than an early hand gun can load and fire, and likely more accurate too. But the gun will penetrate almost any armour, while the bow definitely will not.
Hand guns really occupied more the crossbow niche, being both slow loading and requiring relatively little practice, but the gun is vastly superior at armour penetration.
We have the tale of the early United States debating adopting the longbow, because on the late 18th century battlefield with almost no armour the long bow in trained hands certainly would have been generally superior. But apart from the months of practice (muscle development) needed to effectively use a war bow, the result of an army adopting the bow would have been for their enemies to simply put on armour again, negating the advantage.
The armor penetration of early crossbows and gun compared to an English longbow is overplayed.
The issue was feeding longbowmen to be strong enough to pull the bow plus all the training they needed to do. It was a full time job. Musketeers much less so.
Bows could punch through armor too, but when the poor man also switched to range weapons, armor stopped being worth the weight due to a severe lack of melee threats.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1053778The armor penetration of early crossbows and gun compared to an English longbow is overplayed.
Crossbow bolts don't go through plate armour. Same as longbow arrows.
Bullets & musket balls do go through plate armour, as a general rule. 'Bullet proofing' really wasn't (they'd use an under-charged pistol for demonstration purposes). Youtube channels Scholagladiatoria & Metatron I recall have good stuff on this, Shadiversity might also.
Quote from: Batman;1053760Far be it for me to criticize people having fun. I like some of the design concepts. But I freely admit to being a 4E fan and they do utilize some 4E elements. What I find hilarious is that quite a few "h4ters" are some of the out spoken voices over at Paizo cheering on change and the new direction. I'm finding Immense enjoyment at their fans basically at each others throats
If Paizo really cared about fixing the rules they would take cues from d20 derivatives like
True20,
FantasyCraft,
Trailblazer,
Fantasy Concepts by Jason Kemp, easydamus.com's
Basic d20, and so forth.
I can see why they added level to everything.
I'm working on tables for moderately optimized character progression for 3.5. Basically what I held myself too when making characters. And man, the math is pretty flat.
Like I would always hold myself to the "don't murder the party" standard by at least having a will save equal to my level. And AC increases after armor is basically +1 per level (optimal wbl would maximise that sooner rather than later).
My goal is too make a simpler rules set to play with existing 3.X material (with Pathfinder as the benchmark) so I'm not making it flat increases everywhere. But I see why 4e and PF2e went that route.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1053815My goal is too make a simpler rules set to play with existing 3.X material (with Pathfinder as the benchmark) so I'm not making it flat increases everywhere. But I see why 4e and PF2e went that route.
Despite the advertising, Pathfinder was never perfectly compatible with other 3.x material. Every 3pp needs some conversions between different implementations of the d20 rules.
Quote from: Daztur;1053569Well there's a middle ground between standant an edition treadmill. You want a situation in which the bulk of the playerbase is ready for a new edition and relatively unified about what they want fixed otherwise you'll lose too may people.
I'm just not sure what I'd do in their shoes. They got a big influx of new players who were pissed at 4ed and 3.5ed with some bells and whistles was enough for them. But that's not a constant source of new customers and I don't see PF well-positioned to bring in people who started with 5ed and are ready for something new without pissing off the 3.5ed diehards. If they don't make a new edition they'll slowly wither away, if they do make a new edition they at least get and influx of cash before withering away so I'm not sure that doing a new edition of PF is a bad idea as their raison de etre is going away in either case as 4ed becomes just a memory.
Of coures "make their design not suck so much" would help but from a business perspective I'm not sure what course they have going forward to avoid bleeding marketshare.
This is an oft repeated fallacy thats used to justify the edition treadmill and the damn 5 year plan.
The reality is it doesnt work unless the new edition is about say 90% the same. Maybee better organization, new art or such. But aside from TSR and Palladium hardly anyone does this. The marketing idiots keep convincing companies that you have to make huge changes so the older customer base must buy the new book. Except they wont. You lose a huge chunk of customers instead.
And all you had to do was just keep printing the current book and draw in new players and maintain your established customer base rather than telling them to either buy the game all over again or fuck off and die and then wonder why their market keeps shrinking.
"But but we NEEEEEEED a new edition with new rules to draw in new customers!" is a lie.
Pazio is likely about to find this out the hard way.
Yeah Savage Worlds books made during its 2e work just fine now (in its 3e or 4e depending on how you are counting)
Sometimes setting crunch will 'graduate" into the core rules, but new editions tend to be pretty similar. The only drastic changes I've seen were to the chase rules.
But Pinnacle Entertainment is a decentralized company of mainly Southerners. They don't have to pay Seattle office space rent so the amount of money they need to make is probably far lower.
I don't mind new editions as long as *recognized* problems get cleaned up. Most of these issues in D&D and it's later-edition derivatives are emergent issues that people don't notice on a casual examination of the rules. Some are so deep that only by referencing the original design concepts of the earlier editions that you realize *why* the original editions didn't go that route either by intent or "uncommon sense".
Pathfinder is a luxury-liner, dragster, capital-scale fighter, tugboat, hosting a beauty-pageant on the Lido-deck, with Hogwarts below-deck, while doing the trench-run on the Death Star, as Captained by Judge Dredd and co-piloted by Vegetarian Cookie Monster, who is running his election to become an Ombudsmen for Sesame Street against Ben Grimm of Yancy Street... all at the same time.
Pathfinder 2e appears to be wallowing in the same 3.x issues that bogged that system down unnecessarily. In fact the entire premise of *why* Pathfinder 1e was created has been rendered moot for the fact that 5e exists. The costs of going a different route should have been mitigated by a proper creation of a new game that should have been Starfinder, using a new ruleset as a testbed. Instead they just regurgitated some tweaks to an already bloated behemoth and re-skinned it.
@Rhedyn - Good points. Savage Worlds editions are updates to rules that inherently didn't work well, or broke other conditions of the core rules (see: Staggered rules, Chase, etc). Plus the literal hundreds of rules questions and clarifications made to Clint over the years in the intervals of the editions. Top that off with the fact you can easily ignore any of these changes and all the editions are 98% perfectly compatible. And they only cost $8<--- see that? That.
Quote from: Daztur;1053761I was under the impression that 5ed's OGL is a lot more restrictive than 3ed's
It's literally the same OGL as 3e's OGL. There is no "new 5e OGL" it's just the same OGL as before that they dumped their IP into.
Quote from: tenbones;1053908I don't mind new editions as long as *recognized* problems get cleaned up. Most of these issues in D&D and it's later-edition derivatives are emergent issues that people don't notice on a casual examination of the rules. Some are so deep that only by referencing the original design concepts of the earlier editions that you realize *why* the original editions didn't go that route either by intent or "uncommon sense".
Pathfinder is a luxury-liner, dragster, capital-scale fighter, tugboat, hosting a beauty-pageant on the Lido-deck, with Hogwarts below-deck, while doing the trench-run on the Death Star, as Captained by Judge Dredd and co-piloted by Vegetarian Cookie Monster, who is running his election to become an Ombudsmen for Sesame Street against Ben Grimm of Yancy Street... all at the same time.
Pathfinder 2e appears to be wallowing in the same 3.x issues that bogged that system down unnecessarily. In fact the entire premise of *why* Pathfinder 1e was created has been rendered moot for the fact that 5e exists. The costs of going a different route should have been mitigated by a proper creation of a new game that should have been Starfinder, using a new ruleset as a testbed. Instead they just regurgitated some tweaks to an already bloated behemoth and re-skinned it.
@Rhedyn - Good points. Savage Worlds editions are updates to rules that inherently didn't work well, or broke other conditions of the core rules (see: Staggered rules, Chase, etc). Plus the literal hundreds of rules questions and clarifications made to Clint over the years in the intervals of the editions. Top that off with the fact you can easily ignore any of these changes and all the editions are 98% perfectly compatible. And they only cost $8<--- see that? That.
Does anybody have a convenient list of the outstanding issues with 3.x? I have heard so many that I cannot keep track of them all.
Agreed and seconded on Tenbones lengthy post. I don't mind a new edition as long as it fixes major and or minor issues thst the core rpg has. You can keep your recycled, redundant, rehashes with better production values. Decking and Righing for Shadowrun was for our group at least a problem. Almost no one except myself and a handful of players wanted to run tjem. Along came 4e where they fixed them and thst number doubled. Slowly af first but it did.
The other issue about keeping the rpg the same is that everyone likes the setting but hste the rules like Palladium. Or their is no incentive to buy anything new imo. I only need one maybe two core boojs and one of each desired sourcebook.
Quote from: joewolz;1053316Does anyone know why there haven't been any good copycats of this model? Even with lesser production values, the model should work.
Because they aren't profitable. There's a reason Paizo is a storefront as well as as a gaming company.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1053928Does anybody have a convenient list of the outstanding issues with 3.x? I have heard so many that I cannot keep track of them all.
All of the outstanding issues and grievances for 3.X are subjective and may not be felt or seen by other people who play the system. That said, here's mine which might or not not coincide with others (and I still play and fiddle with 3.5 so in the end its a system I enjoy playing)...
- class design and balance. Its a mess frankly. From the linear fighter, quadratic wizard to Druids and their (I can do it all) to clerics and turn undead shenanigans....it really shows a disparity compared to your basic Fighter or Monk.
All spellcasters get spell bumps at higher levels but also lower level spells get better. The Fighter's entire shtick is basically meh feats that don't progress with level (save a few) and exception based design. Not only do the special attacks (trip, disarm, etc) lose potency due to sizing issues, they require significant investment for minimal gains.
- wealth by level and the assumptions this has on the system. Basically you're not only expected to have certain amount of magical bonuses but the challenges often require them. This, to me, diminished magical items uniqueness and flavor. Not to mention destroy in-game currency.
- Poor adventures. Lets face it, aside from The Sunless Citadel and maybe Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil most of the modules are poop compared to TSR-days.
- monster and NPC design. Why do they *
HAVE* to function the same?? This is a concept that only exists in 3.5 as TSR-era, 4E, and 5E all take more liberal routes to making them. And giving all of them class levels at higher levels....please...
- Save or Suck really is just Save vs Boredom. When my players tune out, leave to get pizza, or go on their phones at the table because their character got paralyzed for 5 minutes (whole battles) and battles take 45+ minutes to finish, it sucks and isn't fun. A DM can change this (rolling every round to save or reducing the time to say 1d4 rounds) but that's a "fix".
- magic wins in later levels, putting a stringent hold over specific game plays. When your spellcasters can in whole encounters from say 2-3 spells and they get dozens per day....it loses a certain something. And it puts those who can't cast magic further away from the action.
Those are my biggest peeves. Some are easil fixed. Some tske time. But it also shows what PF 2e could've avoided.
Quote from: Batman;1054002- monster and NPC design. Why do they *HAVE[\I]* to function the same?? This is a concept that only exists in 3.5 as TSR-era, 4E, and 5E all take more liberal routes to making them. And giving all of them class levels at higher levels....please...
This is compounded by 3.5 also trying to give classes something new at every single level. I can kind of see having monsters working likd PC work okay in something like B/X, where you can whip up a PC in a few minutes and special abilities are limited, but it is nightmare in 3.5.
I feel this is one of the strongest signs of how the game was driven by marketing research. Dancey loved to brag about all the polling they did for 3E, and what a bunch of dummies everyone else was for not doing this. There is some value in this kind of research, but you still need to have the designers make tough choice at the end of the day and design a solid game. With 3E, they just took every single thing that everyone said they wanted and put it all in the game, even when it was clearly a terrible combination, like making NPCs work like PCs at the same time you greatly complicate the complexity of PCs.
I'd say this one thing did more to ruin the game for me than anything else. It was a chore to prep, and a headache to run past anything but the lowest levels.
That also raises another issue. I hate 3E more because none of the problems are really all the apparent at first level on either the GM or player side. It's a game where everyone plays a session and decides they really like. Only once everyone is invested in the campaign do the problems all manifest, leading you into a sunk cost fallacy where you keep running the thing even after you realized what a mess it is.
NPC and PC parity is very important to me. It's important for immersion.
I see no reason to create two subsystems when one should suffice.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054020NPC and PC parity is very important to me. It's important for immersion.
I see no reason to create two subsystems when one should suffice.
I like it too, but it can only work if the system is concise enough to stay manageable. If the stats for a PC or NPC require me to reference the book (or set of books) over and over again because I can't remember what a talent/feat/perk does, then make sure characters don't have dozens of them.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054020NPC and PC parity is very important to me. It's important for immersion.
I see no reason to create two subsystems when one should suffice.
Quote from: HappyDaze;1054054I like it too, but it can only work if the system is concise enough to stay manageable. If the stats for a PC or NPC require me to reference the book (or set of books) over and over again because I can't remember what a talent/feat/perk does, then make sure characters don't have dozens of them.
I like it as well, but I do think that the NPC classes should be simpler - with only bosses (or whatever) actually using the PC classes.
Even using weaker/simpler NPC classes they would still be made with the same rules.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054020NPC and PC parity is very important to me. It's important for immersion.
I see no reason to create two subsystems when one should suffice.
Parity is.....flexible. The problem arises when the conceptual design is significantly different, and a lot of that is derived from the limitations of the Action Economy. Having only one enemy in a battle is almost certainly going to result in a quick death because the adventure party takes 4-5 actions to just one of their own.
How would I, for example, make an Orc Chieftain/Warrior that wields two battle axes, has some sort of menacing aura, gets a bite attack, and make it hard for enemies to flee him when he's within striking range AND do all of this for a group of level 5 player characters? Because in 4th and 5th edition I could whip this up in about 25 minutes using just one book. In 3.5, it'd be a damn nightmare. From class levels to figuring out how he gets a "Bite" attack without significant attack penalties and wielding two one-handed weapons, what feats and skills to the aura part, etc AND keeping him in the CR 5-7 Range that doesn't fall into either Camp A: dead in one turn OR Camp B: instant TPK. Not to mention that even were I to pull this off, this BBEG is still bound to 1 attack per turn after moving 5-feet unless I just randomly give him pounce (just cause....).
I get that for some reason having them "build" by the same means puts everyone on equal footing and that might lend it self to feeling "realistic", however I don't think it makes the game better.
But not really.
3.5 has the same custom monster tables. You pick a CR move up and down on the table depending on stat, you get what your average damage per round is and DC of your ability and you are done.
Just because I prefer parity doesn't mean I won't also respect having rules for ad hoc monster generation because sometimes you just need to think quick on your feat.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054099But not really.
3.5 has the same custom monster tables. You pick a CR move up and down on the table depending on stat, you get what your average damage per round is and DC of your ability and you are done.
Just because I prefer parity doesn't mean I won't also respect having rules for ad hoc monster generation because sometimes you just need to think quick on your feat.
I'm not sure what table you're referring to? Increasing an Orc to a CR 7 would be to give them levels in classes if you look at their Advancement. I could've missed the table though, so I am curious.
Quote from: Batman;1054105I'm not sure what table you're referring to? Increasing an Orc to a CR 7 would be to give them levels in classes if you look at their Advancement. I could've missed the table though, so I am curious.
Or you just make a CR 7 creature and call it an Orc.
Parity is great. But that doesn't mean 3e didn't have rules for doing things quickly instead. I've ran a few one shots pretty much ad hoc off that table.
The Pathfinder one is here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/monster-creation/
Maybe the 3e one doesn't exist, but that would mean Paizo made that take by themselves which I doubt.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054109Maybe the 3e one doesn't exist, but that would mean Paizo made that take by themselves which I doubt.
Paizo does actually do design stuff. There is no such 3e table, certainly not in the core books. It was a 4e innovation.
Building 3e NPCs like PCs is an insane thing to do for anyone who is actually GMing a regular game. Even running off the shelf NPCs is pretty horrible at higher level.
Quote from: S'mon;1054127Paizo does actually do design stuff. There is no such 3e table, certainly not in the core books. It was a 4e innovation.
Building 3e NPCs like PCs is an insane thing to do for anyone who is actually GMing a regular game. Even running off the shelf NPCs is pretty horrible at higher level.
Yeah, 3/3.5 doesn't have any sort of table like this but I have to admit, it's pretty awesome. Because I was bored I actually "build" the Orc Chieftain/Warrior in my example. It was about an hours work and I'm someone that knows most of the core basics of the 3.5 system. He ended up being a Barbarian 1 (lion totem)/ paladin of slaughter 4/ crusader 2 for a CR of 7. He has an evil aura, keeps enemies from running away (thicket of blades stance), can wield two battleaxes (Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting feat), and can Pounce for better action economy. To make it work I had to give him 32 point buy, two flaws for extra feats, and make sure he had lots of extra mechanics to say alive long (pot of healing, rage, etc). I also had to references 7 different books, 5 outside the Core ones. (the monster manual, player's handbook, tome of battle, unearthed arcana, complete champion, complete warrior, and the spell compendium).
All in all it was a fun exercise but it could've been easier done. I like Pathfinder's version so I'm thinking i'll be using that quite often if/when I plan to run 3.5 again.
Quote from: Batman;1054167All in all it was a fun exercise but it could've been easier done.
I like systems where I can do my conversion at the table. Eg yesterday running Stonehell the PCs go in an unexpected direction, as usual. I can convert the Labyrinth Lord/BX D&D stats over to 5e no problem during play. With 3e/PF I'd be dependent on published stats. And even using those is tough when the NPCs and monsters have a bunch of Feats I need to look up.
When I tried designing monsters without class levels the 3.x system really created huge headaches. Every monster type was treated as a class with levels, feats, skills, etc, and there were numerous fiddly bits that were not even necessary to most monster concepts. Pathfinder only simplified this in Unchained and I still heard people complaining about it not being complicated enough.
I absolutely hated this. 5e fixed it finally, but 5e still has the stupid restriction that every monster can only have one type regardless of the fluff logic. Rules Cyclopedia, which invented the first type mechanic, allowed monsters to have as many types as applicable. For example, the chimera was typed dragon because it had a dragon's head and wings.
I'm a tad confused. If you want simpler monster creation, why not just bullshit your way through?
Why ask for a lack of PC/NPC parity, when it's really easy to just make up abilities and roll with it?
Because from a player perspective, bullshit and monsters just not working like PCs feels exactly the same.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054208I'm a tad confused. If you want simpler monster creation, why not just bullshit your way through?
Why ask for a lack of PC/NPC parity, when it's really easy to just make up abilities and roll with it?
Because from a player perspective, bullshit and monsters just not working like PCs feels exactly the same.
It's not easy for most people to go against the system. And players may call bullshit - as you are doing!
Quote from: S'mon;1054228It's not easy for most people to go against the system. And players may call bullshit - as you are doing!
Yeah but NPCs using different mechanics is also BS.
Their website being offline is becoming embarrassing imo. Either the software and/or servers they are using are REALLY out of date or they were victims of a hack. It's becoming a joke and a bad one even on their Facebook. My question is why would one not download and keep the PDFs of products they brought on their own PC or USB key. Apparently some of their fanbase no longer have access to their PDFS because they unlike myself did not download them and make a copy.
As for the second edition I have never been so uninterested in a new edition of rpg. Nothing in the rules made me excited. I have too much old edition material like almost a shelf and a half. With their "were woke and SJW as a rpg company and want to pander as much as to that demographic so were going to tell you how you have run games at your table" in the worst way possible at the beginning of the new edition.
Quote from: sureshot;1054258As for the second edition I have never been so uninterested in a new edition of rpg. Nothing in the rules made me excited. I have too much old edition material like almost a shelf and a half. With their "were woke and SJW as a rpg company and want to pander as much as to that demographic so were going to tell you how you have run games at your table" in the worst way possible at the beginning of the new edition.
I don't really get the whole "I have too much older edition material" complaint with RPGs? If the new mechanics and rules aren't interesting then fair enough, just continue to to use the old Mechanics as usual. From all reports they're still continuing to produce stuff for 1e anyways.
Also, who's the SJW crowed they're pandering to? Honestly don't know because I don't buy Pathfinder material, I just use their SRD to make characters lol.
Quote from: sureshot;1054258Their website being offline is becoming embarrassing imo. Either the software and/or servers they are using are REALLY out of date or they were victims of a hack. It's becoming a joke and a bad one even on their Facebook. My question is why would one not download and keep the PDFs of products they brought on their own PC or USB key.
I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that the unlimited downloads feature doesn't require an immediate response to having a hard drive crash or losing a USB cube. Part of what you paid for was the back-up storage. Sure, it could one day go away (like now, it seems) but it is fine for a customer to be miffed that the back-up they thought they had is now unavailable.
Quote from: Omega;1053903This is an oft repeated fallacy thats used to justify the edition treadmill and the damn 5 year plan.
The reality is it doesnt work unless the new edition is about say 90% the same. Maybee better organization, new art or such. But aside from TSR and Palladium hardly anyone does this. The marketing idiots keep convincing companies that you have to make huge changes so the older customer base must buy the new book. Except they wont. You lose a huge chunk of customers instead.
And all you had to do was just keep printing the current book and draw in new players and maintain your established customer base rather than telling them to either buy the game all over again or fuck off and die and then wonder why their market keeps shrinking.
"But but we NEEEEEEED a new edition with new rules to draw in new customers!" is a lie.
Pazio is likely about to find this out the hard way.
I'm a HERO player. I can testify to this. :D
JG
Quote from: Batman;1054325I don't really get the whole "I have too much older edition material" complaint with RPGs? If the new mechanics and rules aren't interesting then fair enough, just continue to to use the old Mechanics as usual. From all reports they're still continuing to produce stuff for 1e anyways.
It's not about having older material so much as not really enthusiastic with the new set of rules and mechanics. I just can't get excited and plan to use PF 1E material. As for them planning to publish 1E material I will believe it once I see it
Quote from: Batman;1054325Also, who's the SJW crowed they're pandering to? Honestly don't know because I don't buy Pathfinder material, I just use their SRD to make characters lol.
Most rpg companies in their books usually write some suggestions to the DM along the lines of " don't be a jerk, be fair, allow anyone and everyone into your game/table no matter their gender, creed or race. Be fair and make sure everyone is comfortable and having fun". In 2E Paizo to show how "woke" they took that section and went "
YOU will be inclusive and diverse at your tables. You will bend over backwards to accommodate your player desires. You will be a part time or was it a full time psychologist as well a mind reader because players are not obliged to tell you if they are uncomfortable with something". Written in a very heavy handed manner smacking you over the head with it. Picture someone talking down to you instead of at you poking a finger in your chest and wagging it in your face. I just found it disrespectful of the company and for what to pander to a demographic that usually does not play rpgs imo.
It was not a new edition that killed Hero. It was a company that did sweet mother of nothing to try and drawn in new fans. While catering only and I mean only to new fans. Did absolutely nothing to try and draw in new blood. Took what was already a big rpg book and made it into two. With a fanbase that wanted nothing to change yet expected to draw disenchanted Hero fans back into the fold. With a rpg community who imo are more interested in less rules heavy, crunchy complex rpgs by...giving them more of the same. If your going to offer more recycled, rehash with better production values and people are not buying well don't be surprised. I am a Hero fan yet I put blame where it is due imo. Blaming a new edition is the easy way out because it makes it easier to swallow then actually look at the root causes. Hell even SJG cut back on Gurps because the last two release sold poorly.
Quote from: sureshot;1054630It's not about having older material so much as not really enthusiastic with the new set of rules and mechanics. I just can't get excited and plan to use PF 1E material. As for them planning to publish 1E material I will believe it once I see it.
I hear that. I'm on the fence as to the game so far. We haven't tried using the rules yet but reading them over is.....meh. Some things I like (class feats aka 4e powers lol) but some not so much (cant change them ever??). Actually playing it and tinkering with the game is needed before I discard it to the "never play pile" lol
Quote from: sureshot;1054630Most rpg companies in their books usually write some suggestions to the DM along the lines of " don't be a jerk, be fair, allow anyone and everyone into your game/table no matter their gender, creed or race. Be fair and make sure everyone is comfortable and having fun". In 2E Paizo to show how "woke" they took that section and went "YOU will be inclusive and diverse at your tables. You will bend over backwards to accommodate your player desires. You will be a part time or was it a full time psychologist as well a mind reader because players are not obliged to tell you if they are uncomfortable with something". Written in a very heavy handed manner smacking you over the head with it. Picture someone talking down to you instead of at you poking a finger in your chest and wagging it in your face. I just found it disrespectful of the company and for what to pander to a demographic that usually does not play rpgs imo.
I completely skipped over that section of the PDF I downloaded haha. After going through and reading it, it simply seems to be a reminder to players "Don't be a fucking turd" and to DMs "keep an eye out for fucking turds". I thought it was funny they mentioned players doing or saying shitty things "in character" as a way to escape any backlash. Ive seen that in person, dude was booted - easy peasy. I find it unfortunate that reminders even "need" mentioned in the book to begin with
Quote from: Batman;1054648After going through and reading it, it simply seems to be a reminder to players
This has to be the biggest understatement of all time. Either you are too woke to have noticed or your head is well buried in the sand.
If Paizo really cared about social justice, they would rewrite monsters like orcs, drow and lamia to be less racist/sexist/whateverist compared to the goody two shoes PC races. Tolkien compared orcs to asians (he called them mongoloids), so clearly orcs are "problematic" or whatever.
Instead, Paizo labels all female lords of hell as "whore queens" and makes passive misogyny demons lower on the totem pole than rapist demons. Also, they associate chaos with femininity and order with masculinity... just like Jordan Peterson!
They're insane and have no consistent political ideology. They just pay lip service to the radical left for brownie points.
It's always a bad business strategy to attempt to appeal or appease hate groups.
Quote from: Gagarth;1054657This has to be the biggest understatement of all time. Either you are too woke to have noticed or your head is well buried in the sand.
Batman's always "woke". Besides, you should know they always write to the lowest common denominator. It's hard to get mad at notions I already do so...
Quote from: Batman;1054672Batman's always "woke". Besides, you should know they always write to the lowest common denominator. It's hard to get mad at notions I already do so...
SJWs are not the lowest common denominator. They are a lunatic fringe with unwarranted authority.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1054674SJWs are not the lowest common denominator. They are a lunatic fringe with unwarranted authority.
No. They are a hate group.
It doesn't matter what percent they are, if they ever have fun it's not as an SJW. You are only an SJW when you are attacking someone. It's not market nor is it something you can ever really appease.
Quote from: Batman;1054648I completely skipped over that section of the PDF I downloaded haha. After going through and reading it, it simply seems to be a reminder to players "Don't be a fucking turd" and to DMs "keep an eye out for fucking turds". I thought it was funny they mentioned players doing or saying shitty things "in character" as a way to escape any backlash. Ive seen that in person, dude was booted - easy peasy. I find it unfortunate that reminders even "need" mentioned in the book to begin with
The D&D Players' Handbook also mentioned inclusivity, as it should have, but it didn't hit you over the head with it.
JG
Quote from: James Gillen;1054729The D&D Players' Handbook also mentioned inclusivity, as it should have, but it didn't hit you over the head with it.
JG
Yeah, that might be the wrong way to get a bumpy forehead...
- Ed C.
Quote from: James Gillen;1054729The D&D Players' Handbook also mentioned inclusivity, as it should have, but it didn't hit you over the head with it.
JG
Yeah I'm just not seeing how this is either A) Bad or B) pandering to SJWs? Is the notion of calling out poor behavior at the table somehow only held by SJWs? If someone's being an ass-hat player or disruptive or making others feel uncomfortable and another calls that person out or makes them leave a SJW?
It's not the message it's how Paizo wrote it in the book. Writing it in such a way as has been pointed out unnecessarily heavy handed. While trying to make sure they crossed all their t and dotted all their i on being woke. I wonder how their new found wokeness will impact society play.
Given what i have seen on their forums and others. Any and all topics can apparently set off everyone and anyone. Membership in society play will drop badly imo. No one likes walking on eggshells.
If I'm running a game where red dragons are the villians and not tell me that anything fire is a phobia at the start. You either try to bear with the game. Or find another table. I'm willing to change some minor elements of a campaign
Not a entire campaign especially for one person.
Quote from: Batman;1054739Yeah I'm just not seeing how this is either A) Bad or B) pandering to SJWs? Is the notion of calling out poor behavior at the table somehow only held by SJWs? If someone's being an ass-hat player or disruptive or making others feel uncomfortable and another calls that person out or makes them leave a SJW?
What about the parts where it implies inclusion is mandatory regardless of the composition or preferences of the group, or that some types of discomfort should not be respected?
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1054746What about the parts where it implies inclusion is mandatory regardless of the composition or preferences of the group, or that some types of discomfort should not be respected?
I took that to mean if you're running sanctioned Society groups and games. Obviously Paizo isn't sending Seal Team 6 into your home because you didn't invite Kendra (who was originally Keith) from the office to do the new Pathfinder 2e playtest.
If you're going to a Society event as a player, there might be gay people or trans or whatever. So if that's not your cup of tea, don't play there. If you do and someone makes an inappropriate reference to (in or out of game) them about that, it shouldn't fly.
But all of this BS is basically why I only do home games with my friends.
Quote from: Batman;1054739Yeah I'm just not seeing how this is either A) Bad or B) pandering to SJWs? Is the notion of calling out poor behavior at the table somehow only held by SJWs? If someone's being an ass-hat player or disruptive or making others feel uncomfortable and another calls that person out or makes them leave a SJW?
The way it's written, it feels like poor behaviour is judged by who it is behaving badly. They aren't just saying "don't be an asshat" and "don't tolerate asshats".
I prefer the "5 Geek Social Fallacies" and I think people should play with people they like playing with. Of course if playing at a public event they should abide by the social norms appropriate to the event and the venue. That normally means being accommodating to a wide variety of fellow players - but those players in turn should be equally accommodating.*
Because Paizo push a particular political slant IMO their advice is actually going to encourage some people such as SJW types to be asshats in games. There are always people looking for justification to be asshats, and Paizo's tone-setting certainly will.
*I've GM'd for I think a few hundred people over the past ten years and while a few have been obnoxious, it's almost always in traditional RPG-nerd ways that would not fall into Paizo's protected categories. But I can recall one player 5 years ago who was looking to be offended by stuff, and I can imagine Paizo's advice would have been encouragement to do that even more.
Quote from: Batman;1054749I took that to mean if you're running sanctioned Society groups and games.
Such advice should then be in Pathfinder Society rules and guidance, not in their core rulebook.
Anyway I won't be buying Pathfinder 2e. I am a little bit concerned if someone should want to run it at my D&D Meetup.
Let's not even get into despite how "woke" the proclaim themselves some of the material in their own book a very unsafe in the so called safe spaces they want at tables. A friend pointed out to me the hypocrisy between them telling people how to run games. Yet have a iconic monster like Ogres which they ruined by the way. Act like a cross between the mutants from hills have eyes and the hillbillies from Deliverance cranked up to a factor of 20. Typical a company that in their quest to pander to SJWs forgets that they have questionable printed in their own books.
Quote from: sureshot;1054794Let's not even get into despite how "woke" the proclaim themselves some of the material in their own book a very unsafe in the so called safe spaces they want at tables. A friend pointed out to me the hypocrisy between them telling people how to run games. Yet have a iconic monster like Ogres which they ruined by the way. Act like a cross between the mutants from hills have eyes and the hillbillies from Deliverance cranked up to a factor of 20. Typical a company that in their quest to pander to SJWs forgets that they have questionable printed in their own books.
It's ok, they only rape and devour Straight White Cisgender Men.
I think the Black Arrow Rangers of Fort Rannick was the only group in Golarion not to have any female members - very convenient!
To be fair he did have a Dryad or was it a Nymph lover on the side. I think they should release a new poster for PF 2E. "PF 2E Social Justice Thrives! ".
Thanks to them being woke they need to clarify and have concise rules on what is acceptable behavior and topics at organized play tables. A blanket anything and everything is going to be a fiasco. I can just see a player running a melee class such as Fighter having a lucky night with the dice. Be called out on being insensitive for enjoying killing imaginary creatures.
Then again I have never been a fan of society play. PFS were responsible for too many unpopular nerfs to the rules. Oh no Crane Wing is broken yet Sacred Geometry is a-okay.
Paizo MMO balancing approach was the beginning of the end.
It was the start of their desire to Nerf everything into the ground because they don't want to be developing for 3e.
If they were not so equally heavy handed in their nerfing of stuff on the rpg it would not be so bad. Something thst requires nerfing is ignored or the nerfs are nuke it from orbit style nerfs.
Let's not be too hard on the system. We need to remember, they've never designed a system from the ground up before, so let's cut them some slack there.
:D
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1054834Let's not be too hard on the system. We need to remember, they've never designed a system from the ground up before, so let's cut them some slack there.
:D
(I really want to believe you're doing the e-equiv of tapping your nose and winking here... but in case you're not...)
Errr... NOOO!
That's not how 'dis shit works. They've built up an RPG company, 'have had time to figure out what works and what doesn't. A limp-wristed attempt to draw in the 3.5e gamers while circumscribing that actual influence AND THEN having the audacity to act like this is their system that they're totally re-doing it all and revampin' 'n' shit. Nahhhh...
*Hall & Oates time* I can't go for that, go for that, nooo no!
Quote from: S'mon;1054769Such advice should then be in Pathfinder Society rules and guidance, not in their core rulebook.
Anyway I won't be buying Pathfinder 2e. I am a little bit concerned if someone should want to run it at my D&D Meetup.
I find purging with fire works wonders. Their screams as their skin crispens and flesh burns settle my stomach much more nicely than Tums after they've just introduced their bullshit to my table.
Quote from: S'mon;1054769Such advice should then be in Pathfinder Society rules and guidance, not in their core rulebook.
Anyway I won't be buying Pathfinder 2e. I am a little bit concerned if someone should want to run it at my D&D Meetup.
I find purging with fire works wonders. Their screams as their skin crispens and flesh burns settle my stomach much more nicely than Tums after they've just introduced their bullshit to my table.
Quote from: PrometheanVigil;1054836(I really want to believe you're doing the e-equiv of tapping your nose and winking here... but in case you're not...)
Errr... NOOO!
That's not how 'dis shit works. They've built up an RPG company, 'have had time to figure out what works and what doesn't. A limp-wristed attempt to draw in the 3.5e gamers while circumscribing that actual influence AND THEN having the audacity to act like this is their system that they're totally re-doing it all and revampin' 'n' shit. Nahhhh...
*Hall & Oates time* I can't go for that, go for that, nooo no!
I was being facetious, if accurate. I mean, they have never built a system up from the ground, they stole the 3.5 stuff and bolted their house rules and 4e adds that they liked. But I'm not going to give them a pass, and neither should anyone.
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1054869I was being facetious, if accurate. I mean, they have never built a system up from the ground, they stole the 3.5 stuff and bolted their house rules and 4e adds that they liked. But I'm not going to give them a pass, and neither should anyone.
I struggle to understand why 3.5 is good, but I really enjoy it and certain massive changes evaporate that special magic.
One could probably just rewrite the core Rulebook for Pathfinder and make a pretty good edition. I'm struggling on what to change, but if my livelihood depended on it, I would probably give the thought more effort.
Quote from: Rhedyn;1054892I struggle to understand why 3.5 is good, but I really enjoy it and certain massive changes evaporate that special magic.
One could probably just rewrite the core Rulebook for Pathfinder and make a pretty good edition. I'm struggling on what to change, but if my livelihood depended on it, I would probably give the thought more effort.
Yeah there is something appealing about 3.5ed despite all its clunkiness that's hard to put a finger on. A big part of it (at least for me) isn't the rules themselves so much as the fact that I know the rules well enough that I can run it quickly. Pathfinder is hard for me that it's similar enough to 3.5ed that I default to 3.5ed rules but different enough from 3.5ed that I can't do that and have to keep all of the changes straight, which makes it harder for me to run than a whole new game or a lightly houseruled 3.5ed.
If you haven't take a look at Mongoose Conan d20 (2nd edition). It's the cleanest version of 3.5ed and the magic system is great.
Quote from: sureshot;1054794Let's not even get into despite how "woke" the proclaim themselves some of the material in their own book a very unsafe in the so called safe spaces they want at tables. A friend pointed out to me the hypocrisy between them telling people how to run games. Yet have a iconic monster like Ogres which they ruined by the way. Act like a cross between the mutants from hills have eyes and the hillbillies from Deliverance cranked up to a factor of 20. Typical a company that in their quest to pander to SJWs forgets that they have questionable printed in their own books.
I'm not an SJW and I still found this disgustingly sexist, racist, etc. The way another book describes half-ogres (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Half-Ogre#Pathfinder) as "polluted" is reminiscent of old racist propaganda about the one-drop rule. (Tieflings are not described in anywhere near the same negative manner, even though their ancestors are demons, because tieflings are seen as cool and edgy. Their poster child is Annah-of-the-Shadows (http://torment.wikia.com/wiki/Annah), a CGI supermodel!)
There are over a dozen monsters whose shtick is pretending to be a beautiful woman to lure heterosexual cismales so she can either eat them if she's evil (lamia, jorogumo, vouivre, alraune, succubus, harpy, etc) or play house if she's
not evil (siren, thriae, nymph, dryad, etc). A single generic "monster temptress" which fits this MO is fine, but a trend like that is indicative of either misogyny or sexual fetishism. In fact, the alraune was pulled directly from
Monster Girl Encyclopedia.
Oh my God, I just realized that Golarion is Paizo's magical realm (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Magical_realm)!
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1055061I'm not an SJW and I still found this disgustingly sexist, racist, etc. The way another book describes half-ogres (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Half-Ogre#Pathfinder) as "polluted" is reminiscent of old racist propaganda about the one-drop rule.
They're not very bright. They based their half ogres off Hollywood
Deliverance style tropes of inbred Appalachians, reckoning that hillbillies are an acceptable target for racism, but didn't consider that by having the half ogres be the result of human settlers raped by ogres they were actually reversing the trope into HP Lovecraft territory.