As frequent readers of this blog know, I have a great preference for tabletop role-playing games that remind me of the heady early days of the hobby when publications were largely amateur and required a lot of creative input from the end user. I call this my "old school perspective" because I associate my preferences in RPGs with tastes and sensibilities I acquired as a college undergrad during the very late 1970's. I have stated my favorite system remains the one I started with, the original version of D&D, which I like to refer to as White Box. (It has taken me forty-some years to figure this game out and I am reluctant to abandon all that effort!)
A year or so ago I started looking at and refereeing, and occasionally playing, the Pathfinder Playtest rules. I liked Playtest. Now that 2e is available, I have played a couple games and have read through the 640 page tome, and I like it. I am not a "one system guy", never have been. I enjoy tabletop games of all types and see no reason to devote myself to playing just one game. Life is too short, and I will never have enough time to enjoy all the games that interest me, but that doesn't keep me from trying.
So what does this "old school" gamer like about Pathfinder 2e? For starters, the three-action combat turn economy. Having three actions at their disposal, a player my announce that their character is moving, attacking, casting, manipulating an item, or taking another action in any combinations that add up to three. Move three times, attack three times, use one, two or three actions to cast magic, or combine two or three different actions, all these are PC options and it all makes combat quick and interesting for all. The resulting tactical play in 2e comes down to being more about your choice of actions and less from the placement of figs. on a display (which is optional).
Shields are meaningfully modeled in Pathfinder 2e. One of your actions can be to "raise your shield" which results in it counting toward armor class and allows you to use it to react to damage, i.e. blocking damage. The original RPG idea of a shield adding a point or two to armor class has always seemed inadequate to me given how important shields have been in military history and I have frequently "house ruled" shields to have additional effects in the systems I have refereed.
Magic comes in four flavors in Pathfinder 2e. Arcane and divine magic represent that of wizards, sorcerers and clerics and is similar to that found in previous editions. Pathfinder 2e strives to be a bit more edgy and adds occult and primal magic. Throwing spells may require one or more actions to cast and some spells have variable effects which are determined by the number of actions used in casting them. (Additional actions are described as adding somatic and material components and this also adds to the fiction associated with using magic.) An example is Magic Missile which creates one, two, or three missiles corresponding to the number of actions used in casting the spell. Casters may also have ritual magic at their disposal for use in non-combat situations. The result is that magic in Pathfinder 2e seems more variable and more flexible and requires a bit more thought on the part of the player. It all adds up to aspects I appreciate in my RPG.
Pathfinder 2e breaks play time into encounter mode, exploration and downtime modes. This is more conceptual than mechanical as the referee can transition through the modes using narrative and need not announce the change. The mode concept is handy for emphasizing that journeys and time in between encounters can be interesting opportunities for skill use, discovery and role-play. I am fresh off reading a lot of The One Ring and perhaps because of the way that game uses Journeys and the Fellowship phase, Pathfinder 2e modes makes a lot of sense to me.
Healing rate is one of the ways that I judge a game's believe-ability. It is purely a personal preference, but I prefer what I term "more realistic healing", which means I prefer slow natural healing of lost hit points, damage and particularly wounds. Barring the use of magic, humans heal in terms of days and weeks, not in minutes. I don't want to belabor this point so let me just say that Pathfinder 2e passes my "sniff-test" in terms of healing mechanics.
Pathfinder 2e is a d20 skill-based system in so much that there are a list of skills for each character which is connected to class as is the feat system and skills are rolled against to determine success or failure in various character activities, usually outside of combat. Relying on dice rolls is not my preferred manner of role-play and I run my Pathfinder table in a way that reflects my roots in the original edition little brown books. That is, I ask a player to tell me what and how you are wanting your character to act, and depending on our conversation, perhaps that will require a dice roll, but maybe not. Skills are useful as a game mechanic as long as they are not overused. Again, "Tell me what you say to the knight." (As a player, please don't just announce a desired outcome and roll a skill check. I find that approach "roll-play" not "role-play".)
Skills in Pathfinder 2e use a proficiency system based on five levels - untrained, trained, expert, master, and legendary. Unskilled tests are resolved on a dice roll adjusted by your ability score value. At trained and above you add your level and proficiency bonus (2, 4, 6, or 8) to the adjusted d20 roll. Degrees of success also matter in determining the outcome. Critical results are those scores either 10 points above or 10 points below the required score or occur on the traditional "natural 1" and "natural 20" die rolls. A crit on an attack means double damage and can result in a "one shot" kill.
Feats are now specifically tied to ancestry and class. Each ancestry and each class in Pathfinder 2e have their own set of feats from which the player may choose when he/she/they levels up their character and this allows players to customize their characters. Regarding multi-classing, Pathfinder 2e allows players to take certain feats from an archetype list including other classes instead of the class feat list of their original class. That is essentially the 2e multi-classing... one feat at a time.
Ability scores in 2e can be determined by rolling dice or through a point-buy, but using the more interesting new system they are built up by choices in ancestry (what we used to call "race"), background and class, making each of these choices meaningful mechanically as well as for role-play. Abilities start at a value of 10 and each ancestry, background and class chosen either adds to or subtracts from one or more of the six ability scores.
A frequent complaint I hear from old school gamers is that modern games "nerf" the danger to player characters and therefore the game feel like playing superheroes rather than believable mortals. Pathfinder 2e is mathematically modern in that the game uses bigger numbers, double digit hit points, double digit damage and double digit skill checks, even with low level and starting out characters. This can produce a shocking effect among players that are used to much smaller values and the game can then feel "odd" or super-powered. There really is very little difference between 1-6 hit points and weapons that do 1-6 damage verses 15-20 hit points and weapons that deal 15-20 damage. Each system can result in "one-hit, one-kill results."
Pathfinder 2e is not all good news for me, however. The "balanced encounter" concept remains in evidence, although it is less restrictive to the referee than in some modern games. Pathfinder 2e gives the referee/GM some freedom to scale the difficulty level of encounters from easy to extreme, but even the extreme levels are supposed to be beatable by a well rested party. There is no provision for the "run away to fight another day" level of challenge which I find is so necessary to maintain a setting's verisimilitude. Pathfinder follows the recent trend in returning to an old school philosophy and states that it is "your game" and changing the rules is permitted (with player consent?).
So in summary, I am liking Pathfinder 2e. It delivers fast, furious combat with the threat of one-shot kills for monsters and characters. The three action combat economy allows for lots of swift movement and tactical choice. Pathfinder 2e is edgy and even shocking, in a good way. The bard class uses occult magic and goblins are among the playable races because some goblins are now trying to move away from being monsters and to fit into civilized society. (This is a situation that presents many role-playing opportunities!) Pathfinder 2e is a thinking person's game that seems to reward clever table play. I am making room on my gaming shelf for Pathfinder 2e.
No comments:
Post a Comment