Puffin Forest’s In Depth Review of Pathfinder 2e

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I’ve also wondered what misperceptions of game play has been through the years.

Explain? 

[Ragitsu]

The Feat bloat of Pathfinder 2e reveals - I think, anyhow - how good intentions can be warped by the simple passage of time. One fix that could have been instituted from the start way back in 2000 would be more Feats that scale as you level. Toughness, with its one time +3 bonus to HP, is pretty much garbage; Improved Toughness (I think that's what it's called) bestows a bonus of +1 per level. The other fix is to bulk up Feats so that they're not mostly Prestige Class prerequisites. Spycraft 2.0 took D&D 3e's "save" Feats and rescued them big time (e.g., Lightning Reflexes in that system grants you a +3 to your Reflex Save AND lets you re-roll Initiative).

 

  

On 8/10/2020 at 2:34 PM, unclevlad said:

Forcing casters to use items is, IMO, ridiculous. 

 

Mages aren't being forced to use magical items any more than Fighters are being "forced" to continually upgrade their arms & armor as their foes become increasingly formidable or Thieves are being "forced" to accumulate mystical tools that take some of the weight off their shoulders when it comes time to sneak/steal. Like it or not, no matter the edition, Dungeons & Dragons is a system where equipment is important; to a degree, this reliance is mitigated as Character Levels increase, but you never completely abandon it for something else.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Explain? 

Well it’s over 40 years old. I’m sure some people have played a version but not according to the actual rules.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Well it’s over 40 years old. I’m sure some people have played a version but not according to the actual rules.

Well the old rules were so vague, a lot was house ruled. Lots of hand made charts and tables. 

[HeroGM]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Well the old rules were so vague, a lot was house ruled. Lots of hand made charts and tables. 

 

Yeah it was great. Going by the situation and the seat of your pants.

[Scott Ruggels]

14 minutes ago, ChaosDrgn said:

 

Yeah it was great. Going by the situation and the seat of your pants.

Depends on the DMs and the players. Either very sincere or very smart succeeded. Those early games made me a tabletop fan. Because of smart and sincere friends. Mind expanding it was back then. 

[Ninja-Bear]

I have been wondering, was combat the only way to earn XP back in the day? Could you say come across an Orc patrol and totally BS your way past and earn XP?

[Greywind]

As long as you complete the encounter to the GM's satisfaction, yes, you got xp for non-combat victories.

 

Puffin's stuff?

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I have been wondering, was combat the only way to earn XP back in the day? Could you say come across an Orc patrol and totally BS your way past and earn XP?

 

Here are some relevant parts from the AD&D 2e DMG's chapter on Experience.

 

Quote

Story Goals

 

Story goals are objectives the DM sets up for an adventure. Rescue the prince, drive away a band of marauding orcs, cleanse the haunted castle, find the assassin of the late queen, recover the lost Gee-Whiz wand to save the world—these are all story goals.

 

 

Quote

The characters must be victorious over the creature, which is not necessarily synonymous with killing it. Victory can take many forms. Slaying the enemy is obviously victory; accepting surrender is victory; routing the enemy is victory; pressuring the enemy to leave a particular neck of the woods because things are getting too hot is a kind of victory.

A creature needn’t die for the characters to score a victory. If the player characters ingeniously persuade the dragon to leave the village alone, this is as much—if not more—a victory as chopping the beast into dragonburgers!

 

Quote

Finally, you can award points on the basis of survival. The amount awarded is entirely up to you. However, such awards should be kept small and reserved for truly momentous occasions. Survival is its own reward. Since story and survival awards go hand in hand, you may be able to factor the survival bonus into the amount you give for completing the adventure.

 

Quote

Common Individual Awards

Player has a clever idea 50–100
Player has an idea that saves the party 100–500
Player role-plays his character well* 100–200
Player encourages others to participate 100–200
Defeating a creature in a single combat XP value/
creature

 

* This award can be greater if the player character sacrifices some game advantage to role-play his character. A noble fighter who refuses a substantial reward because it would not be in character qualifies.

 

Quote

Individual Class Awards

 

Warrior
Per Hit Die of creature defeated 10 XP/level

Priest
Per successful use of a granted power 100 XP
Spells cast to overcome foes 50 XP/
or problems spell level*
Making potion or scroll XP value
Making permanent magical item XP value

Wizard
Spells cast to overcome foes
or problems 50 XP/spell level
Spells successfully researched 500 XP/spell level
Making potion or scroll XP value
Making permanent magical item XP value

Rogue
Per successful use of a special ability 200 XP
Per gold piece value of treasure obtained 2 XP
Per Hit Die of creatures defeated
(bard only) 5 XP

 

* The priest character gains 100 experience points per spell level for those spells which, when cast, support the beliefs and attitudes of his mythos. Thus, a priest of a woodland deity would gain only 50 x.p. for using an entangle spell to trap a group of orcs who were attacking his party, since this has little to do with the woodlands. If the priest were to use the same spell to trap the same orcs just as they were attempting to set fire to the forest, the character would gain 100 x.p.

 

 

No longer are you primarily (or only, for the truly oldest of old school DMs) awarded XP for combat and retrieving treasures. This is one reason I prefer AD&D 2e over AD&D 1e: the shift towards encouraging loftier, romantic adventuring. You can still play an avaricious killing machine, but it isn't the only route to advancement.

 

--- --- ---

 

Here's something I found interesting.

 

Quote

A 7th-level player character who needs one more experience point to advance in level can’t just gather his friends together and hunt down a single orc. That orc wouldn’t stand a chance, so the player character was never at any particular risk. If the same character had gone off on his own, thus risking ambush at the hands of a band of orcs, the DM could rule that the character had earned the experience.

 

This is effectively an "anti-grinding" measure. Very cool.

[Scott Ruggels]

57 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Puffin's stuff?

 

"Who's your friend when things get rough!"

 

... that flute with the black, souless pits for eyes creeped me out as a child...

[Ninja-Bear]

7 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Here are some relevant parts from the AD&D 2e DMG's chapter on Experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

No longer are you primarily (or only, for the truly oldest of old school DMs) awarded XP for combat and retrieving treasures. This is one reason I prefer AD&D 2e over AD&D 1e: the shift towards encouraging loftier, romantic adventuring. You can still play an avaricious killing machine, but it isn't the only route to advancement.

 

--- --- ---

 

Here's something I found interesting.

 

 

This is effectively an "anti-grinding" measure. Very cool.

Here then is an example of what I’m talking about Scott.  D&D is snynominous with Hack and Slash because you must kill to get XP.

[Hugh Neilson]

20 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Okay then. So the hardbacks with the lurid covers were 1st Edition? What we then referred to as AD&D?  
 

I skipped 3 and 3.5 until a friend from Germany on Second Life invited me a couple of years ago to play Pathfinder 1, and then came 5e which in enjoyable and plays  quickly enough in combat. Pathfinder had better character customization, but it falls apart above 20th level. 5e feels more solid.

 

It only became "1st Edition" when 2nd Edition AD&D was released, clearly labelled as "2nd Edition".  From there, we have seen sequential numbering of later editions.

 

In 1e, xp for endeavours other than killing and looting was most definitely a house rule.

 

There was a UK module ("Beyond the Crystal Cave"?) that set a scenario where killing was not the goal, and it discussed awarding xp for nonviolent resolution of encounters due to that module's structure, an the likely frustration (probably sen in playtesting) of "success" in the adventure not being paralleled with "reward" of character advancement.

[Greywind]

11 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

"Who's your friend when things get rough!"

 

... that flute with the black, souless pits for eyes creeped me out as a child...

 

[zslane]

One of the reasons XP was given for treasure in the earliest versions of the game was to encourage players to find more efficient ways of getting that treasure than combat. The number of XPs you got for killing monsters was orders of magnitude less than for gaining treasure, and so smart adventuring parties looked for ways to avoid costly combat and get the treasure by other, more creative means. While this was an interesting design notion, I think Gygax forgot that early D&D players were all wargamers who enjoyed combat for the tactical challenge of it, and so were going to seek it out simply because combat game play was mostly the point for them. He also didn't foresee his game being played by teens looking to work through their testosterone-drenched angst by killing everything they encountered.

[Ninja-Bear]

Well I looked at Basic Fantasy and apparently the only way to gain XP is Combat whereas Gold as XP is optional.  The creator isn’t against other forms of gaining XP but that’s an individual DM decision. I like combat and all but I can see the value of what Ragitsu posted. All conjecture but if PC’s were given full XP for routing the enemy and not needing to slay each one for XP for example that should encourage more RP aspects to it. On the side note of Gold = XP, I believe it’s safe to say that the unintended consequence was that players become more murderous. “Hey let’s kill it and hope that there’s also gold so as to gain more XP to level up quicker.” And let’s face it at first level no one wants to stick around all that long. 

[Scott Ruggels]

40 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Dammit!

 

Lucky I saw this in the morning... Ugh. (Like finding a spider in the shower...)

[Ragitsu]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Here then is an example of what I’m talking about Scott.  D&D is snynominous with Hack and Slash because you must kill to get XP.

 

The shift away from that (widely adopted, but perhaps not actually intended?) style of gameplay began in the mid to late 1980s. Is it truly D&D's fault that people forget there are other (core and enshrined) ways to gain that sweet XP?

[zslane]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

On the side note of Gold = XP, I believe it’s safe to say that the unintended consequence was that players become more murderous. “Hey let’s kill it and hope that there’s also gold so as to gain more XP to level up quicker.”

 

That doesn't happen if the DM is making encounters properly challenging.

 

You have to remember that in the early days of (A)D&D, combat was costly. It cost hit points (which were a much smaller and harder to recover resource than in today's CareBear-oriented systems). It cost arrows and crossbow bolts. It cost memorized spells (especially healing spells). It cost spell components. It cost potions and scrolls. It cost henchmen (which cost gold). It cost magic item charges. Combat was not something you entered into unprepared or exhausted from a recent combat. And a good DM made it difficult, if not impossible, to recover and recharge effectively while in the dark, unforgiving depths of a dungeon. It took very little time underground before combat became the least popular way to overcome an enemy (and steal their stuff) among party members. Especially when players got wise to the fact that, if they were really clever and resourceful, they could earn all the treasure XP without having to put their lives at risk and expending a lot of their valuable consumables in the process.

[unclevlad]

D&D is also synonymous with hack'n'slash because its skill systems were terrible.  That pretty much left combat as the only objective resolution mechanism.  

 

I'll also argue that awarding XP for treasure was connected to the VERY LOW XP awards for most critters, especially once you got a few levels, and XP to level skyrocketed.  IIIRC, another factor might've been that our lower-level combats took forever, or so it seemed.  Remember, nothing did very much damage.  Even if monster hit points weren't very high, hacking through them took a lot of time...and quite often, that also meant the party took a beating.  Which meant LONG breaks while healing, particularly if you had a mediocre roll on your higher-end healing spells.

[zslane]

Skills aren't necessary for coming up with and executing a clever plan to avoid combat and still achieve your objectives. In fact, the standard of play at the time allowed characters to do most mundane things without having to make skill rolls, so long as the player described what their character was attempting in a plausible manner. This notion that it's all about the player's abilities rather than the character's abilities (outside of magic or combat, for the most part) is what distinguishes "old school gaming" from contemporary RPGing. Combat was not the only objective resolution mechanism, and in fact, it was probably the least efficient in most cases, unless a poor GM left no other options open to the players.

 

Giving monsters low XP awards was to disincentivize combat. Awarding high treasure XP was to get players to focus on the objective rather than the obstacle. Destroying an obstacle was to be viewed merely as a means to an end (attaining the objective), not an objective in and of itself, hence the low XP awards for that. If there are other means to the same end that don't require such heavy expenditures in blood and treasure, then smart players are always going to take them. But this design approach requires sophisticated DMs that understand this design ethos and mature players willing and able to align their play style to it. That's why it worked for Gygax and his gaming group--and others of similar ilk of that era--but quickly fell apart when the game landed in the hands of 1980s teens and tweens.

 

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

Skills aren't necessary for coming up with and executing a clever plan to avoid combat and still achieve your objectives. In fact, the standard of play at the time allowed characters to do most mundane things without having to make skill rolls, so long as the player described what their character was attempting in a plausible manner. This notion that it's all about the player's abilities rather than the character's abilities (outside of magic or combat, for the most part) is what distinguishes "old school gaming" from contemporary RPGing. Combat was not the only objective resolution mechanism, and in fact, it was probably the least efficient in most cases, unless a poor GM left no other options open to the players.

 

"Bilbo meets Smaug" is what happens when the player has to talk to the DM and cannot depend on Diplomacy/Bluff.

[zslane]

Well, to be fair, in The Hobbit the DM had the charitable sense to give the hapless 3rd level Halfling Rogue an enchanted short sword and a mythril mail shirt, and to make a Ring of Invisibility available during the quest, knowing full well that the climax of the campaign was going to be an encounter with an ancient red dragon and a large-scale battle involving five armies and a huge werebear. And yet despite all that wonderful gear, said Halfling Rogue talked his way out of his encounter with the dragon rather than trying to fight his way out of it. And in an Old School game, this would be resolved through in-character conversation between player and DM, not a "skill roll".

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, zslane said:

Well, to be fair, in The Hobbit the DM had the charitable sense to give the hapless 3rd level Halfling Rogue an enchanted short sword and a mythril mail shirt, and to make a Ring of Invisibility available during the quest, knowing full well that the climax of the campaign was going to be an encounter with an ancient red dragon and a large-scale battle involving five armies and a huge werebear. And yet despite all that wonderful gear, said Halfling Rogue talked his way out of his encounter with the dragon rather than trying to fight his way out of it. And in an Old School game, this would be resolved through in-character conversation between player and DM, not a "skill roll".

 

That's the beauty of the encounter; Bilbo's player put forth a good effort, but it wasn't perfect. The situation was organic. Who could flawlessly match or exceed wits with a dragon unless they themselves were similarly ancient and/or well traveled? Had the player been able to steamroll ahead with a single toss of the die, I imagine the confrontation would have played out significantly differently.

[Ninja-Bear]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

 And in an Old School game, this would be resolved through in-character conversation between player and DM, not a "skill roll".

And the problem with that is, was the Player a good talker or the character a good talker? Skill rolls allow the character to know and do stuff a player doesn’t need to know or doesn’t.

[HeroGM]

Just as an aside, has anyone played Castles & Crusades? Answer in private if you like.