The sheer number of options is the best thing about Pathfinder. It's also the worst. : rpgmemes

[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 49 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And yet, human fighter with basic sword and shield feats is still just as satisfying as day 1 :)

edit: Fuck, can I just gush about fighters in PF2e for a sec? Paizo really nailed the "boring normal" class, just by virtue of having them be slightly more accurate in combat - thereby boosting both crit rate for first swings, and offsetting the multi-attack penalty for followup swings. I've never had more fun dropping normal attacks in a ttrpg because each swing was just that much more likely to drop a juicy crit, followed up by a knockdown proc from choosing to be a hammer specialist or a pindown from being a bow specialist, etc. You then have a bunch of action condensers from your feats (which you can actually swap out on a day to day basis if you're so inclined) to do your cool normal attacks more often in a dynamic combat. And reactive strike at level 1 practically doubles your normal attack output right out of the gate if your cool pancake horfing teammates futz with some magic or wrestling bullshit to knock enemies prone.

Normal attacks fucking rule.

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 36 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Pathfinder is for my soul. I live off that crunchy shit.

however 8 different spells from 11 different books that all give +1 to profession (tailor) checks at night time may have been a poor design choice

[–] Shyfer@ttrpg.network 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Haha we used to live for that shit in the days of 3e/3.5

EDIT: I see now you thought they meant Pathfinder 1e, which explains it. Since that's basically the same as 3.5 but better lol.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

what spells are those

[–] sad_detective_man@leminal.space 6 points 1 week ago

so today I realized this meme is about 2e which so far hasn't fallen into the same pattern of content bloat (give it time, we live in a society). so my point is moot, even if I wasn't exaggerating two complaints simultaneously .

but in 1e after years and years of releasing content to keep the business alive, Paizo ended up with spells like False Age, Wizened Appearence, Youthful Appearence, False Face, Transplant Visage, Disguise Self and probably some others that all did the same thing with slight changes. There's a similar abundance of spells to just help your character not read books like Skim, Memorize Page, Perusal, Commune With Texts, and Explode Head (the most redundant spell of all)

Then there's ones with mild bonuses to hyper-specific use cases. Polypurpose Panacea has 5 different effects that are all +1 to sleeping or digestion. Cultural Adaptation is similar but for every check that isn't speaking another language. I can't remember the name of it but there's one that just gives you +1 to checks made to be a Sailorman. Most of these are superseded by other spells that will just give bonuses to entire groups of skills like Crafter's Fortune but still have specific use cases

[–] zakobjoa@lemmy.world 19 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I cannot recommend the Pathbuilder app enough. It narrows everything down to the available options based on what you've chosen so far, without taking the option of house ruling away from you.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

Just keep in mind that cross-referencing options with Archives of Nethys is also super important. I've had 2 players build overly complicated characters and needed a ton of help to unbork them simply because they didn't read anything before making a selection

[–] tyler@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can you link the app? I cannot find it.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's not available yet on iOS (though an iOS port is in development). You can find it on the web at pathbuilder2e.com. Mobile and web apps don't sync, though. The paid versions allow you to save characters to Google Drive, which you can use to sync them.

[–] tyler@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

oh, it's just pathfinder 2? darn. Would love to switch off of PCGen, but there isn't much for just character sheets for pathfinder 1e from what I've found.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 2 points 1 week ago

There's a Pathbuilder 1e, but I think it might only be for Android. I haven't seen a web-based version.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

*if you have donated/bought the premium version

[–] zakobjoa@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Okay, cloud saving, custom items and companions for a single payment of 4.50 EUR. But you can completely disregard the rules and freely give skills, spells and feats with the free version. The app is very well maintained, gets updates at least monthly. They were so fast with the implementation of the remaster. I'd love to gift the app to people in my group, who are struggling a bit more financially, but Google doesn't have a functionality like that unfortunately.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

only 4.5 EUR... it's 20.99 BRL

i hate money :D (or maybe i just hate inflation)

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I got a buddy that rolls randomly for all of those, only rerolling if they gets a combination they already used

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

the fun thing is, you could literally just do everything completely randomly and your build will still be good

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I wouldn't know

I make all my choices based on sheer Rule of Cool-ness -- I start with a vibe and build for that.

BUT. None of my GMs are tryhards, so maybe if I brought my characters to a tryhard session they'd get wiped.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

honestly choosing the coolest thing every time is probably the best way to build a character

maybe, but for tryhard games you'd make a tryhard character anyway

[–] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

maybe, but for tryhard games you’d make a tryhard character anyway

That's the thing though

I have no idea how.

Since PF2 came out I got by just fine on making unique and fun but entirely unoptimised characters. So I never bothered learning what synergises with what to make a tryhard character.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

oh well you'd just have to play a bunch of characters and see what is strongest

or watch videos about optimizing characters. there are a bunch of those (a couple of youtube channels i'd recommend for that are swingripper and mathfinder)

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Eh, there's at least 1 exception: toxicologist alchemist. Especially if you're about to play Abomination vaults

[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 6 days ago

Toxicology got some buffs in the remaster that let them morph poison damage to acid if its favorable, iirc

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

hmm why is that?

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 days ago

Lots of creature types are immune to poison, such as undead and automatons. And there's a lot of undead in the Abomination Vaults campaign.

Plus, there's a lot of poisons that are very underwhelming. Especially ones that have an onset period; those are essentially useless in combat

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Laughs in GURPS

[–] toothpaste_ostrich@feddit.nl 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Oh man, I really tried it one time.... But I couldn't really wrap my head around it, nor get my players to learn it. Also I wanted some pre-made monsters to toss into an encounter... Couldn't find anything like that. You have to make every monster from scratch? I might be remembering that wrong.

[–] QDgwZjQYdfbnMdMNQ@lemmy.cafe 2 points 4 days ago

There are a few places I've found with lots of prebuilt monsters for GURPS, though they aren't really consolidated in one place. I usually look through one if the following if I want something prebuilt:

the creatures of the night books (mostly solitary monsters you could design an adventure around, with suggestions for each one)
the fantasy bestiary (lots of generic and mythological monsters from all over the world, with stats and descriptions for each one)
dungeon fantasy monsters 1-3 (lots of monsters, kinda built with dungeon fantasy settings and power levels in mind)
the gurps repository also has tons of free and generic statblocks

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago

You can do that in Dungeon Fantasy, which is basically just GURPS with a bunch of pre-made classes and stuff. But the strength of regular GURPS is the ability to handle any idea you can throw at it. It really shines when making your genre-bent homebrew come to life. Once you get comfortable with how the system scales things, you can really just wing it with monsters on the fly.

[–] Ziggurat@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago (6 children)

How easy it is for someone not knowing the game to build or even play a character? It's great to have thousands of option, except when you join a game, don't know yet all the option available and find up latter that your build doesn't work. Is it a risk in pathfinder, or are the options robust enough to neither close path early nor have necessary combo?

[–] Kichae@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 week ago

It's really easy so long as you a) start at level 1 or 2 and avoid building out too far ahead, b) build to a character concept rather than try to optimize mechanically, c) avoid options released in adventures. Oh, and d), understand that retraining is actually baked into the rules.

Adventure character content is less rigorously tested, and mostly amounts to professional homebrew. It's often super focused on the scenarios presented in the adventute and significantly less applicable in general.

Focusing on mechanical optimjzation rather than character concept often leads to madness, since feats are generally well placed within the same power bands (there are few stand out or trap options). For a crunvhy game, it's often best played descriptively.

Characters become mechanically more complex every level or two, so starting at higher levels can be very overwhelming for new players. Building out a higher level character means choosing a lot of feats, and often the utility of those feats is only really understood through play.

[–] optissima@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

Much better than 1st edition, less feat trees (more pools or tracks) and those that are there have less dead ends. I feel like there are less feat traps than 5e proportionally but I am still learning the system myself.

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago

you do not have to worry about anything other than what you'd like to play. you could do everything randomly and you'd still make a pretty good character

[–] Balerion@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

I'd say it's not terrible if you have some experience with TTRPGs and use Pathbuilder (a free character-building site/app). That said, I obsessively research and follow guides while making my characters, so I might not be the best source on vibes-based character creation.

[–] SuperNovaStar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Just play a fighter/rogue. Best way to learn pathfinder 2

[–] zakobjoa@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have a new player in my group who plays a rogue and tbh she still struggles a lot with all the different ways to get enemies off-guard. But it's her first TTRPG overall and Pathfinder is not the best choice for that. Unfortunately for her no one in the group wanted to go back to Hasbro.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Try explaining things to her in more intuitive terms. She gets to do more damage when her opponent has significant trouble defending themselves. That happens when they have to split their attention across a wide distance (flanked), when they're on the ground (prone), when they can't see where they're being attacked from (hidden), or when you fake them out (feint).

Old hats tend to boil away the actual roleplay from combat, but the rules usually directly support a roleplay-based view of battle. Presenting the game this way had my then-9-year-old picking the game up really quickly.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

While there are some dead-end builds, they're pretty rare. As in, avoid the toxicologist subclass for alchemist and you're largely fine.

There are some classes I wouldn't recommend for new players due to complexity, like the alchemist and the psychic, but that's only because they're complicated.

Another thing to keep in mind is that martial and caster classes are actually balanced against each other now, and melee characters are going to do more damage than ranged characters due to them being on the front lines and taking more risks. This isn't critical for effective gameplay, I'm just trying to let you know what to expect.

While you go about making a character in Pathbuilder, I recommend also looking up the same options in Archives of Nethys, which is the semi-official source of game rules. It will have everything available on there except for adventure paths and lore books, with the full text of every option and rule. There's chapters available on there on how to play the game and I recommend reading it.

Another reason to use Archives of Nethys is because it gives more context on options. You could build a character that is a rare ancestry like a Conrasu or Goloma, but without a picture and full description you're not going to know what your character actually is.

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Call me when they have prestige classes

[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I miss prestige classes. Actually no I don't they're implemented in the form of archetypes (Dragon Disciple's actually kinda handy for some builds unlike in 1e), I just miss the idea of prestige classes.

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

PF1 was already designed to deal with mistakes like prestige classes, and they're especially not going to regress back to 3.x design now they're on a second edition that even further solves the mistakes of WotC.

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Imo bloat and power creep were the problem, not prestige classes. I still love prestige classes and 3/3.5 overall.

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, prestige classes were one of the things contributing to bloat and power creep, especially as they weren't even a particularly elegant solution to the problem they were solving - archetypes actually let you do mixed or more specific character ideas in the way prestige classes were meant to, and dedications open that customisation even further. As much as I love 3.x I'm not blind to its many failings.

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I'm not either, I just don't think prestige classes were the failure. Yes, later prestige were one way power creep and bloat happened, but they aren't inherent to the state.

That being said, I must admit I've only dabbled in PF1 very briefly, so I guess I need to ask for clarity - are archetypes different than subclasses? It was my understand (again, from very far outside) that that was just what PF2 was calling subclasses, and if so, that's a very different thing than a prestige class in my mind. A part of the appeal of prestige classes to me is worldbuilding groups built of a prestige classes made up of many different classes; I love that Arcane Trickster might have wizard levels, or sorcerer levels, or bard levels, etc... So maybe I'm just out of the loop here - are archetypes class specific or they actually the PF2 class-agnostic viable replacement for prestige and I really should give PF2 a look?

[–] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

PF1e archetypes are similar to subclasses - many functionally are - but are more about using one class as a base and replacing the parts you don't want with parts of other classes you do want. Each archetype is linked to a specific class (which contributed to PF1e's bloat), but you can stack any that don't affect the same class features, and most classes have equivalent archetypes - for example, nearly all the non-companion classes have an archetype to replace something with an animal companion, most of the casters have a martial archetype and the martials a caster archetype etc. You can still multiclass on top and add archetypes to the new class(es), but they're not quite class agnostic so I guess I can see why you wouldn't like them.

PF2es archetypes/dedication feats are fully class agnostic replacements for PF1e archetypes/3.x prestige classes/multiclassing in general - you take them in place of class feats, and have to take a certain number from the same archetype before you can choose a new one. Medic is very popular because feats like battle medicine and ward medic lets any character replace a dedicated healer. Because of PF2es feat-centric design your initial choice of class gives you quite a loose framework of abilities to choose from, which you can then expand with dedications in more agnostic directions, like healing, duel wielding, archaeology, or becoming a lich.

[–] kichae@wanderingadventure.party 2 points 1 week ago

No, archetypes are not subclasses. They're a whole system of character modifications, most of which can be taken by any character as long as they meet the prerequisites. They usually modify some base element of your class (eg the Flexible Spellcaster archetype changes how casters select their spells, use their spell slots, and how many spells they get). There are a subset of archetypes (Class Archetypes) which are locked to specific classes, and which more deeply alter the class's base abilities. The changes can be quite significant. This is where the presteige classes are rearing their heads.

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[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Paladium has entered the chat

[–] festnt@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

what's paladium? (i only play pf2e)

[–] otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

OG publisher of notoriously crunchtastic system Rifts

FWIW, G.U.R.P.S., by Steve Jackson, is a very close tie, if not more so. (I misremembered them both being Paladium publications when posting above, honestly.)

If you don't see the Matrix as endless spreadsheets, these are not the systems you're looking for.

p.s. Sorry for the link to that other place, but it's hard to find non-paid/ad RPG posts from the 90s without it. 🙇🏽‍♂️

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