Players, Remember, Just Because You CAN Doesn't Mean You SHOULD

When you're playing an RPG, it can sometimes feel like you have nearly absolute freedom. You can be almost anyone, and do practically anything as long as its in accordance with the rules. If you want to play a grumpy, aging gnome barbarian who constantly thwacks people with his walker, that's totally an option! If you want to play a burgeoning elven sorcerer, a peppy halfling warlock, or a sour knight who's just here for the paycheck, there is nothing standing in your way.

Honor and glory? More like dental and retirement benefits.

The same thing applies to actions you take in the game world. Do you want to sneak into the goblin encampment and spirit away the treasure from right under the sentries' noses? Do you want to blast the oncoming horde of ogre warriors with fire and lightning? Do you want to broker a peace treaty between the orcs and the farmsteads, creating a mutually beneficial arrangement that will strengthen the community?

You can certainly try to do any of these things. And if you've got lucky dice, along with a good DM, you can probably pull them off.

However, a lot of the time players can take that freedom a step too far. So before you go haring off into the wilderness, I'd like to ask all the folks out there to keep something in mind when tinkering with the engine; just because something is a legal, mechanical option, that doesn't mean you should pursue it.

Ask How This Benefits You, And Your Concept?

While it's all fine and good to talk about favoring story and roleplaying over mechanics, the facts are that you're still playing a game, and a game has rules. There are going to be certain decisions that make your character better at some things, and worse at others. And while it's true that you don't need to have a completely optimized character to have fun with them, it is important to understand the consequences your choices can have when it comes to your character, and their abilities.

Example time!

 

All right, let's say you're playing Pathfinder Classic, and you want to put together a dwarven sorcerer. You know that a sorcerer's magic is derived from their Charisma, and that as a race dwarves take a -2 to that score. So even if you roll top stats, the best you can manage to start with is a 16. With point buy, you're going to wind up with a lot less, unless you're willing to tank all your other attributes.

Now, do you need an inhumanly high Charisma score to play an effective sorcerer? No, but as I mentioned in No One Wins When You Build A Stupid Wizard, the game's rules are written with the assumption that you're building your characters to be good at things. Having a middling casting stat might not remove your use entirely, but it is going to leave you feeling frustrated when you can't get your enemies to fail their saving throws, or when you don't have access to higher-level spells despite your level (assuming you haven't been able to boost your attributes high enough to cast spells of that level by the time you gain access to them).

These are the challenges you face, and it's your job as a player to figure out how to deal with these challenges. Now, the easy solution is to just play a different race, but that isn't exactly necessary. For example, the Empyreal bloodline allows your sorcerer to cast off of Wisdom rather than Charisma, which is a score dwarves actually get a bonus to. This gives you all the power and benefits of an ideal stat, and lets you keep the class/race combo you started out with. Alternatively, your character could also be an aasimar descended from dwarves, giving them a dwarven appearance but with the traits of these native outsiders (something that cropped up quite a lot in 100 Unusual Aasimar, for those who are interested), which includes a +2 to Charisma as well as a +2 to Wisdom. Or you could stick with a standard dwarven sorcerer, and focus on spells that don't rely on your Charisma modifier for their effectiveness. Spells that buff and protect your allies, for example, rather than a blaster focused on damaging foes.

Wait... what were we talking about?

 

The overall point is that your actions have consequences in an RPG. If your PC starts a fight with the bouncer in the tavern, a possible result is that they get the crap beaten out of them by the retired monk, and the party gets evicted from the bar. And if you choose to squander your resources, or to invest in abilities that just aren't going to be that helpful, the result is often that your character becomes more of a hindrance than a help to their fellow party members.

What Are You Going To Do With It, Once You Have It?

A perfect example of mixing two things because you can comes up when players try out multiclassing. Certain classes just work well together, and offer a lot of synergy. Rogue/barbarian is one of my favorites from 5 Barbarian Multiclass Concepts Your Table Won't See Coming, since your abilities neatly play into each other. A paladin with a dip into swashbuckler can be quite powerful, since both classes rely on a high Charisma score, and you can even get some mileage out of combining ranger and fighter to boost your combat prowess.

Other class combinations though... well, they don't really work out all that well.

The druid/bard just... wasn't thought through all that well.

 

As an example of this, consider the wizard/monk. Can you do this? Sure, but what does it get you? The monk already needs a high Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom score (barring focusing entirely on Dexterity for attacks, combat maneuvers, etc.), and now you're going to add in a need for a high Intelligence as well? Wizards get a very slow base attack bonus progression, and monks are on a less-than-full advancement path to begin with. You lose out on spell progression, and don't really gain any useful abilities to make up for what you're losing. And you're stuck with a lawful alignment to boot.

So what you end up with is sort of a mess that becomes less and less able to tackle the challenges appropriate to their level. Especially when you consider that a wizard who takes the feats Eschew Materials and Improved Unarmed Strike, and leads a life of contemplation and training could have the air of a monk (as well as the fashion sense of one), and still be a much more effective character. You could even flavor your somatic components as full-body kata, if you wanted, and make it into a big, esoteric tradition of warrior mages. There's even an unarmed magus archetype that would play into this style, if you did want to punch things with magic. Either option gives you all the aesthetic, with none of the mechanical drawbacks that the aforementioned multiclassing would stick you with.

Mastery of transmutation comes with many side benefits.

 

Whatever resource you're spending, whether it's feats, skill points, class levels, etc., you should always ask yourself what you're going to do with it. How is it going to benefit your character, and the party? Because the fighter taking the feat Exotic Weapon Proficiency to wield a bastard sword in one hand so they can use a shield in the other makes total sense. A magus doing the same thing, allowing them to use the huge blade to deliver spellstrikes also make total sense. But what does the wizard gain from doing that? Or the monk? What do you get from putting a handful of points into Sleight of Hand, or Handle Animal, when that task never once falls to you?

Can you do these things? Of course you can, they're legal under the game rules. But before you do, ask yourself what you're going to do with the resources you just spent. How do they impact your character, and what will they add to your repertoire? Because a barbarian who can identify spells is useful, and a druid with contacts in the city's underworld can be an asset... but a paladin who spent points so they could weave baskets really isn't going to help barring an extremely unlikely crafting challenge from the Prince of the Sixth Circle.

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That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. Hopefully you enjoyed, and if you've used run these kinds of games before, leave us a comment to let us know what worked for you!

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My Final Thoughts on The Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest

As most everyone knows, Paizo put out a playtest for their second edition of Pathfinder a while back. When I first heard it was coming out, I made some predictions in What Pathfinder 2.0 Means For Me Personally, and Professionally. Then after I downloaded my own copy of the playtest rules, I gave my thoughts on them over at High Level Games in the post 5 Red Flags in Pathfinder's 2nd Edition Playtest (And What They're Pointing At). Now that I've played through as many of the modules as I and my group could stomach, I wanted to give you my final autopsy on what's going on here, and why this Frankenstein's creature is a flawed, barely-functional attempt that Paizo should be ashamed of.

Let's get started, shall we?

Part One: What This Playtest Is

I said this in my High Level Games review, but this playtest is pretty nakedly an attempt to give 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons the same treatment Paizo gave 3.5 when it was dropped in favor of 4th Edition. And while it is true that the two are not the same game, it is quite clear what popular game Paizo had its sights set on with this playtest. Everything from switching to a proficiency-based system, to altering the way death saves work, to adopting things like weapon attributes shows that the base component of this smoothie is Wizards' extremely popular RPG.

It's not the only thing, but it's the biggest thing.

What Paizo added to that base was an attempt to mix in some of their signature flair and complication. For example, you still have a flat-footed status condition, which is something 5th Ed lacks. In this playtest, your proficiency also adds to your armor class, allowing you to maintain scaling defenses as you level rather than arbitrarily sticking you with lower numbers the way 5th Ed does. They altered the basic actions in combat so that instead of Action, Bonus Action, and Movement, you now just have three Actions to do with as you please. They even tied that to spellcasting so that different spells would have different effects the more Actions you dedicated to them.

Now, before we move onto the next section, I'd like to point out some things that I believe were good ideas, that were not directly lifted from Wizards, or from Pathfinder Classic.

- Racial Hit Points: Depending on your creature's ancestry, you gain a number of bonus hit points at creation. This allows you to avoid accidentally TPKing the whole party at level one, and is generally smart.

- Anathema: Laying out specific things your god does not allow you to do makes for fewer arguments over whether or not your broke a tenet, and should be punished.

- Scaling Paladin Code: Paladins are still LG, and their code explicitly scales now. So if a DM tries to put a player in a Catch-22, the paladin simply upholds the most important tenet, allowing that to guide them. If protecting the innocent is above obeying legal authorities, then you are completely within your right to kick the crap out of that slave owner to stop him from beating his slave, even if that breaks the legitimate slavery laws of the country you're in.

And that's about it.

Part Two: Why It Doesn't Work

The basic idea behind a second edition, if you believe the hype, was that Pathfinder Classic had grown too complex. There were dozens of base classes and prestige classes, hundreds of archetypes, and just so much stuff that it was easy to get overwhelmed by it all. Not only that, but the 3.5+ rule set needed to be slimmed down and adjusted to get rid of some of the unnecessary complication.

I don't buy it, but that was what the claims were.

It ain't broke, but we're gonna fix it anyway!

This wasn't an inherently bad idea. After all, the whole reason behind 5th Edition's much-touted success is its sheer simplicity. To paraphrase a fellow at my table, it's a beer-and-pretzels RPG. The rules are there, but they're so simplified that you can teach anyone to play this game in maybe half an hour or so. That kind of broad appeal, and its pick-up-and-play simplicity, is why 5th Edition is riding high when it comes to market share. Period, full stop, end of story.

The problem with this playtest is that it doesn't simplify Pathfinder in any meaningful way. It's not even the same game, any more than 5th Edition is the same game as DND 3.5. Worse, it only adds complication that has no actual meaning, and which doesn't offer you tools to create additional character depth or customization.

What does that mean in layman's terms? Well, let's look at feats. In Pathfinder Classic there are hundreds of feats for you to choose from, but the point is that feat is a category that means something very specific. In this playtest you have ancestry feats, you have class feats, and you have... uh... feat feats? In Classic you get a feat every odd level. In the playtest you get different feats of different types at different levels. Why? What does this add other than giving you three different lists of stuff to remember when you could previously just pick what you wanted when you qualified for it?

This kind of needless complication happens all over the place in this playtest. You now have a bulk system instead of carrying capacity. So now you have to figure out your total item bulk, and run that through a formula to figure out how much bulk you can carry. In the Classic edition you just look at your Strength score, and that tells you how many pounds of stuff you can haul. Simple, straightforward, no problems. The playtest gives you resonance points that you now have to use in order to activate and use magic items, potions, etc. All this does is limit your ability to use magic items you find or buy, and give you yet another pool of points to keep track of for no reason. In the Classic edition your race gives you certain inherent characteristics (half-orcs can see in the dark, elves are immune to magical sleep, etc., etc.). These are things you are born with, and are an inherent part of you. In the playtest these abilities are parceled out to you as you gain levels... because I guess it takes a certain amount of combat before your half-orc's eyes spontaneously function in pitch blackness?

Also, half-elves and half-orcs are directly connected to humans in this playtest, which makes it clear in this edition those are the only possible races your parentage could have come from. Another limiting of your options and creativity for seemingly no real reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not shy about rules complexity... but those rules need to add an aspect to the game that is worth pursuing, or which adds to your options as a player. Practically every decision in this playtest is to take a simple system, chop it up into multiple pieces, and then present those pieces as if they are somehow easier, or more useful, than the single, functional, unified whole it was before. Or, even worse, new systems and point pools are introduced to limit your options.

Part Three: What Was The Goal?

The question that kept recurring to me as I read the book, built characters, and played through the modules was simple. What is this game trying to do?

The stated goal of the playtest in many corners was to simplify Pathfinder as a game. But when you compare the two editions core book to core book, the Classic edition is just a lot simpler to understand and explain. It gives you more options, things are less restricted, and there is just more you can do. Not saying it's a simple game, but compared to the playtest it's at least sensical, and easy to follow. Some of that is likely due to the playtest being a rough draft, but that can't explain all of it.

So the next question is did this playtest simply get carried away and fail in its goal to be a simpler, easier-to-play game? Personally, I don't think so.

I don't think the problem was, "Our game needs to be simplified." Paizo built their entire following on gamers who like 3.5, and who refused to pick up 4th Edition DND (and 4th Edition was super simple to play). Rather, I have a sneaking suspicion that the question was either, "How do we steal some of 5th Edition's thunder?" or, "How do we sell a whole crap ton of books?"

Wait, I've got it!

It's true that you could just download the free PDF of the playtest, read it, and play from your phone or tablet. But Paizo put up both softcover and hardcover copies of the Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook for sale. I'm going to repeat that. Paizo put out for-sale copies of a book that will never be used in official game play, and which is guaranteed to be obsolete as soon as the playtest is over and the actual edition rules come out.

That is not a good look for a company. It makes you look less like you're trying to provide your player base with the best product you can, and more like you're trying to make a quick buck off of their good faith effort to test your game. And I get it, publishing isn't cheap and there are costs involved... but game books are already a big investment. Selling a version that's going to be obsolete in less than a year? Why?

But let's talk about that other question. Because for a while there, Paizo was king of the heap while 4th Edition was a screaming garbage fire, numbers and popularity wise. But then Wizards regrouped, and they made a game that had broad appeal to a specific base. Their genuinely simplified game allows anyone to play, and it appeals more to players who want bare bones rules, ease of use, and who are more focused on the other aspects of the game. If you're a Pathfinder player, and you are one of those folks who genuinely prefers it over simpler systems, that isn't going to sell you! Because chances are good that you, like me, love the wealth of options and creative potential the 3.5+ engine offers you.

5th Edition already exists. It has a huge fan base. It has that fan base because it is simple, straightforward, and easy to play. It has lots of flaws and failings, but those are the strengths that make it popular. If you want to appeal to that fan base, and try to siphon off players from that game, more power to you. But that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what appeals to the audience you already have, the brand you've created, and what people playing your game expect in your product.

If I wanted to play 5th Edition, I would play 5th Edition. While I won't say that Classic is perfect and can't be improved, I can say with authority there is no reason for anyone to play this 2nd Edition as it stands over either the Pathfinder we know, or the current edition of Dungeons and Dragons. It gives you all the negatives of both, but without the strengths of either.

That's all for this Crunch installment. Apologies if I got any bile on you, but this is likely the last I'll have to say about this edition for a while and I wanted to be sure it was all out. For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or just go to my Gamers profile to see all my tabletop stuff. Also, you should check out the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio where I work with other gamers to make content for dungeon masters and players alike. To stay on top of all my releases be sure to follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. If you'd like to support my work, consider leaving a tip by Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or becoming a patron over on The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page.

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