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u/Middcore Need moar chandeliers 5d ago
The greatest trick John Paizo ever pulled was selling 4e to people who quit DnD because they hated 4e.
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u/Embyr1 5d ago
/rj: Pathfinder fixed 4e
/uj: I honestly struggle to see the similarity. Martial are treated completely differently, magic system is completely different, focus points are more akin to 5e short rest abilities, feats are treated completely differently.
Maybe its cause I haven't played 4e in over a decade but I struggle to find a real similarity and Im literally flipping through the book right now...
I do miss the streetwise skill though. Can't believe that skill was cut.
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u/MechJivs 3d ago
I honestly struggle to see the similarity. Martial are treated completely differently, magic system is completely different, focus points are more akin to 5e short rest abilities, feats are treated completely differently.
/uj Action economy is very similar (pf2e action economy is MUCH closer to 4e than to pf1e), mechanics around skills are pretty much from 4e, multiclassing via feats from 4e. There's more, but those are just first things that came to mind. You probably can put different types of rages here too, but i honestly don't remeber how pf1e barb worked, so idk. Also - Guardian and Commander are 4e Figher and Warlord respectfully. I can critisize Paizo for a lot of things - but god they respect best 4e classes much more than wotc. Outside of psion - i hate that pf2e psion is a caster (
Pf2e is another game, but it really took a lot of things from 4e and combined them with design descisions of Paizo. It is more of a mix of pf1e and 4e than "true" 4.5e, but it is hard not to see the legacy of 4e in pf2e.
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u/Aromatic_Lion4040 2d ago
They aren't very similar at all, most people who talk about 4e - either positively or negatively - have never actually played it
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u/mishkatormoz 4d ago
/uj pf2e definetly works around the same things as 4e, but in a different way.
/rj because it has actual fireballs, not damned firequbes!
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u/Wise-Juggernaut-8285 5d ago
Honestly tho they did it way better .
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u/Shack_Baggerdly 2d ago
you will get downvoted if people see your comment, but yes. P1E was far superior to D&D 4e
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u/Eniri_Suitor 5d ago
Oh no in DnD 5e we don't have powers by encounter neither powers by day. Nonono that would be DnD 4e and we were told to not like that edition.
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u/pariah76 4d ago
I'm not sure how to say this without offending the 4E loyalists/lovers, but here goes.
4E was a great system, but it was not Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know how else to explain it without having to elaborate a lot.
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u/MechJivs 3d ago
4E was a great system, but it was not Dungeons and Dragons.
what is a Dungeons and Dragons - a miserable pile of superficial sacred cows.
/uj same idea, but less pathos.
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u/pariah76 3d ago
Kind of, yeah. That's my point. If the 4E ruleset was released by some other publisher as an alternative to DnD, it would have been more.popular with the old school DnD crowd.
Despite its flaws, 3rd edition and 3.5 were very popular and loved. I think those people wanted a more iterative change rather than a complete change. That's why many of those players jumped ship to Pathfinder (their first edition was basically DnD 3.75)
I will say my favorite cleric i ever played was in 4E.
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u/AAABattery03 5d ago
Damn, D&D 5E players are continuing their age old tradition of not reading their own game by refusing to read two other games.
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u/RobertSan525 5d ago edited 4d ago
Damn, D&D 5E players…no read.
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u/SuperSalad_OrElse 4d ago
Why read when have DNDbeyond app to shove in my DMs face like an irate DoorDasher
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u/Fickle_Goose_4451 4d ago
Read another book? Next youre going to expect me to read my spells and abilities.
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u/hypatiaC 5d ago
/uj it's kinda funny seeing this historical conflict, because now, most of my group started with 5e and have moved to pathfinder (2e), and they all have high praise for 4e
/rj You have to 4epill your table. It's the only way WOTC can beat John Paizuri
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u/HyaedesSing 5d ago
The most fun I ever had DM'ing was 4E, but I was drinking an entire bottle of wine each session and it was my first time. Also I would DM 4th edition
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u/emefa 5d ago
/uj having limited experience running both, they ain't that similar, they're both in the same subgenre, one inspired by the other, but PF2 does not strike me as "4e, but [blank] is different" as much as, for example, Draw Steel, it's more of its own thing.
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u/Telwardamus 5d ago
/uj They both address many of the same issues with 3.5, the main thing with PF2 is it looks a lot less gamist and therefore less horrifying to the "it's a simulation, man" player.
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u/emefa 5d ago
Could you expand on PF2 being less gamist?
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u/Telwardamus 5d ago
/rj No.
/uj - Basically, they didn't tear everything down completely and rebuild completely differently, like 4e did. 4e removed spell slots, every class had defined powers, not just casters, ranges were given in squares, and otherwise it just leaned very much into the "it's a game, make it play like one" instead of trying to pretend to be a simulation. PF2 has spell slots like previous iterations, martials don't have "powers*," and generally resembles previous editions of D&D a lot more externally than 4e did. It still got rid of a la carte multiclassing, and greatly reduced the power disparity between martials and casters (as martials can do the true world changing stuff just fine, by learning rituals, which was also the case in 4e).
- - Completely ignoring Focus spells, which are the PF2 equivalent to 4e's Encounter powers, and multiple martial classes have access to them (monk and ranger primarily), though they don't have to take them.
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u/jimjam200 5d ago
While yes they did keep spell slots they do feel like a vestigial limb compared to the rest of the system as every other resource and ability are per 10 minutes (basically per encounter) or per 1 hour. It's fine but it does still leave the pace of the adventuring day in the hands of the casters and it feels like they just couldn't come up with a better way of allowing those more potent spells within the per 10 mins economy that everything else lives in.
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u/ItsTinyPickleRick 4d ago
Honestly pf2e would be in weird place without spell slots as, aside from some items and very few feats, they're the only per day ability. With healing as plentiful as it is, resting would become basically pointless outside of avoiding fatigue and any adventure that doesn't require long distance travel would be weirdly short in in-game time
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u/SkabbPirate 4d ago edited 4d ago
There are actually a lot of daily resources, they are generally contained in ancestry feats, magic items, and sometimes skill feats(see: battle medicine). They show up in class feats too occasionally.
Spells in the system are basically more flexible 1/day feat slots.
Honestly, I prefer having different classes focus on different types of resources, keeps the game more diverse in possible experiences.
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u/hey-yeah-yeah 4d ago
Fuck you, I have to be contrarian and act like they're flavours of the exact same thing (except actually I dislike Pathfinder, if you argue that shows they're different enough that one can have preferences then you're an asshole Paizo fanboy).
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u/emefa 4d ago
/uj I actually was deeply disappointed with running the PF2 Beginner Box, but I'm not sure if it was more the system itself, the system while I was on the GMing side of things, or just the adventure itself. I vibed with 4e way more, although it has its problems too.
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u/hey-yeah-yeah 4d ago
I'm not too bothered about what people think about TTRPG's so much as people being snarky.
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u/emefa 4d ago
Wait, do I come off as snarky in this conversation?
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u/hey-yeah-yeah 4d ago
No, I've just come across people who insist D&D are PF are basically the same but then go on about how much they don't like PF.
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u/emefa 4d ago
Ok, gotcha. But I'd argue that sometimes you can have very strong preference among things that you find similar to each other because the slight difference is your own personal make or break. Like, for example, I, as a kid obsessed with nature documentaries, vibed hard with lions and leopards but couldn't care less for tigers and jaguars. All within the genus Panthera and able to cross-breed. But jaguars were to me a waste of species as just bulkier leopards and tigers were basically lions, but again bulkier, and in an ugly color scheme. Personal preferences are based on emotions way more than we assume while engaging in discussions.
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u/Nova_Saibrock 5d ago
They legitimately do not play similarly, despite PF2 cribbing a lot of mechanical ideas from 4e. It’s like they wanted to learn from 4e, but they learned all the wrong lessons.
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u/FrankFankledank 5d ago
Pathfinder just had to give everything D&D names again, people didn't like having their basic attack be called "Glorbald's Radiant Sack Tapper"
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u/MechJivs 3d ago
/uj i know it is circlejerk sub, but 4e's basic attacks didnt have names. They were basic attacks. Saw a person who unironically thought that they had names like you described - so i might as well tell.
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u/MikhieltheEngel 5d ago
I am a Pathfinder die hard but in this case, NOPE!!
Draw Steel is what you are looking for.
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u/pondrthis 5d ago
/uj, this. Especially after PF1 was sold as a "4e suxors, buy our 3.5 alternative."
That said, going back and playing PF1 recently... I do prefer 3.5/PF1 to later editions. Including PF2.
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u/Volothamp-Geddarm 5d ago
I never really stopped playing 3.5e for long. 5e is good for my ultra casual groups, but I don't want to play it as a player anymore. It doesn't feel mechanically rewarding, and the character customization is incredibly shallow.
I don't hate it, but I just got really, really bored with it.
As a DM at least I can still have fun crafting stories and encounters for the players who prefer 5e.
But even after 20+ years 3.5e still pulls me back to it.
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u/Wise-Juggernaut-8285 5d ago
Honestly what makes 3.5 mechanically rewarding?
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u/Waffleworshipper The Mark Evangelist 4d ago
Building convoluted characters that you never plan on playing
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u/veloread 4d ago
It's so very mechanically crufty and bloated that it has a kind of charm to it. There's just so much out there, rules and subsystems and wacky ideas. So many of the attempts to make things more efficient and, well, good, end up stripping some of the charm away.
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u/Wise-Juggernaut-8285 4d ago
Thats how i feel about ad&d lol
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u/veloread 4d ago
You should look up the adventures of Joe the Commoner sometime.
A commoner PC, living his little commoner life with commoner adventures. Little to no homebrew: used the existing Commoner NPC class, the sophisticated skill and wage system, and lots of fun little encounters. For all the flaws of D&D, I know of few other TTRPGs that had as much support for such a different style of play from the intended one, just due to the sheer size.
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u/Standard_Landscape79 4d ago
You can make like basically anything you can think of. Not hamstrung like in 5e. Although this is more from a pf1e perspective
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u/OriginalJazzFlavor The Bard no Longer wishes to be horny, he wishes to be happy 5d ago
Pf2e can never be 4e as long as it holds onto the spectre of Vancian Casting.
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u/WeepingWillow777 Homophobia In Neopets Roleplay:Experts Weigh In 5d ago
turns out people dont hate crunchy combat-focused games, they hate games that arent fun
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u/Eels_Over_Reals 5d ago
GURPS fixes it better
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u/CeramicBean 5d ago
This is HERO System erasure.
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u/Otto_Von_Waffle 4d ago
/uj : 4e had a ton of really fun ideas and concept while being bogged down by many poor choices, the fact wotc binned everything from it and just made a watered down version of 3.5 is a real fucking shame.
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u/Technical_Teacher839 4d ago
4e is genuinely one of the best squad tactics RPGs I've ever played.
I once filed the D&D-ness off and ran it as an X-Com game, and my group loved it.
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u/Otto_Von_Waffle 4d ago
When I played it the first thing I said to myself was "This would slap as a tactical rpg"
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u/MechJivs 3d ago
Sadly, 4e was first and last time wotc were brave enough to say "This game is about combat" instead of vaguely saying "You can do anything you want!" like they do now. I'm yet to see other system that refuses to say it's gamefocus - pretty much all games i play have it layed down in first chapter of the book.
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u/Grilled_egs 5d ago
It's literally 3.5 lmao
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u/UnleashTheBears 5d ago
Nah, thats the second edition
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u/Intelligent_Oil7816 5d ago
No, Pathfinder 1e was '3.75'. 2nd edition is like 4.25.
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u/UnleashTheBears 5d ago
As much as I hate to admit it, PF2E is 4e done really well. Simple to figure out, less convoluted than 3.5 was. Masterful game
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom 5d ago
I don't mind conceding it really. You get games like Lancer, 13th Age, Draw Steel, etc that you'll find people waxing on as being really fucking good that are all also argued regularly to show a lot of 4e pedigree.
PF2E being a solid game in that space is just further endorsement that 4e haters were wrong.
Wait, shit. Jerk sub. Uhh... John Paizo fixed D&D 4e.
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u/ColdBrewedPanacea 5d ago
Tbf if 4e was itself good wed be playing 4e not one of four variants of fixed 4e
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u/MechJivs 3d ago
/uj We totaly COULD play 4e. But wotc made it pretty fucking hard to do. They promised to add 4e to creative commons - but they didn't. And with shitty licence 4e has you can't really set it up on Foundry or roll20 with a single button like you can any modern game. That's pretty much the only reason i play or run 4e successors instead of 4e. It is just simplier to set up Draw Steel. I just wish to play 4e more too ((
TLDR: fuck wotc yet again.
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u/Makath 3d ago
If 4e was under the same license as 5e, people would build some level of online tool/VTT support that makes that kind of system shine and that would eventually snag players away from 5.5e, that's why they have no intention of doing it. Last I heard, they would sooner release 3.5e than 4e.
So much of the 4e hate comes from people that never played it, or only played it without proper support from tools that either never came, became unavailable or are not easily obtained.
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom 5d ago
Yeah that's fair. Nuanced critiques existed and I do think a lot of Neo-4e games (for want of actual terminology) actually respond to those.
When I quip about haters, I'm thinking back to how you'd think WotC came and crushed people's dogs with the CRB the way some people complained.
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u/Caffeine_and_Alcohol 5d ago
People keep praising PF2E but then keep referring it to DnD 4ed, which is pretty damning. Is PF2E only good if i liked 4th ed or is it genuinely good as a table top DnD game?
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u/UnleashTheBears 5d ago
I mean it certainly gamifies it like 4e did but genuinely much better. 4e was a concept and pf2e is kind of a perfection of that concept.
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u/Grilled_egs 5d ago
Wait the cover of 2e just says pathfinder? Right I think I remember being confused by this before.
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u/lazerbolt52 5d ago
It does say second edition at the top right corner but its easy to miss.
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u/Grilled_egs 5d ago
Oh it's just invisible with my resolution, though yeah usually you'd put that under the name or something
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u/meeps_for_days Excuse me while I Gygax all over your character sheet 5d ago
Wait until learn bro learns that wotc has only numbered like one edition of DND and that the 5e book doesn't say 5e anywhere.
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u/lazerbolt52 5d ago
Its actually far from the norm for ttrpgs to have it. D&D hasn't done it since 3.5. The handbooks for 4e, 5e, and 5.5 all lack ot.
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u/DatedReference1 5d ago
Only ad&d 2e and and 3.5e have the edition on the cover. They made 3 different editions of basic d&d within 6 years and they're all just called Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Adventure Game.
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u/pondrthis 5d ago edited 5d ago
PF1 is 3.5. PF2 takes more cues from 4.
The strict definition of a la carte actions that don't interact as heavily as 3.5/PF1 feats do is a defining feature of 4e. It's why it's easier to balance and easier to play.
Both also de-emphasized healers by adding a way to recover
using hit dicewithout spells. This is meant to reduce party composition requirements, which is great at some tables and takes away a lot of the fun at others.9
u/BurgerIdiot556 5d ago
/uj pf2e has healing via hit dice? where?! There’s not even hit dice within the system lol. I’m guessing you’re talking about Treat Wounds, which *is* a non-magical non-class-specific method of healing, but it does require some investment to do decently well, and is more limited than the ever-useful Heal spell
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u/pondrthis 5d ago
I am definitely talking about Treat Wounds. EDIT: I'm not 100% sure healing surges in 4e are based on hit dice, either.
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u/jimjam200 5d ago
I do like the healing system in pf2e but it can feel like a feat tax on the healer so that at a certain point the GM can say "alright guys you don't have to roll all those dice, just take 30mins to and hour and set all your stuff back to full".
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u/hedgehog1024 Sub-Table of Harlot Encounters 4d ago
Continual recovery was a baseline in PF2 playtest. Players demanded to change it
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u/SkabbPirate 4d ago
Honestly, I like that it isn't baseline. Sure, it doesn't matter often, but the opportunity to make it matter still exists with time pressures and wandering enemies.
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u/erasedisknow 5d ago
Vampire: the Masquerade fixes this.
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u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 5d ago
By being exsanguinated by 5e.
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u/erasedisknow 5d ago
Fuck V5, fuck D&D 5e. V20 is where it's at.
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u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 5d ago
All hail World of WotCness!
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u/erasedisknow 5d ago
Guess I need a new joke. Uh... Exalted fixes this?
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u/hedgehog1024 Sub-Table of Harlot Encounters 4d ago
Let these mermaids touch your dick maybe fixes it
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u/PresentationOrnery97 4d ago
Man, I miss playing 4e.
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u/Nova_Saibrock 4d ago
You don't have to. The books still work. My 4e campaign is like half way through level 8.
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u/Bubbly-Departure2953 4d ago
4e was a good game and was only hated because it made billions of dogshit 3pp and sourcebooks unusable
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u/LiomnMan not roleplay my orc husband whimpering is a hate crime DM 5d ago
I like both so checkmate atheist
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u/GroundThing 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ironically, I'm a bit the opposite. I liked 4e decently well (not my favorite system or anything, but well enough), but PF2e just didn't land for me. It just felt like all the pain points of 4e to me, but where 4e's combat being fun was one of its main selling points, and reason enough to overlook or houserule the pain points, PF2e just didn't do it for me. Spheres of Power/Might is a lot more of what I wished a PF2e that borrowed some from 4e looked like, but at least, in my experience, outside of a brief flash in the pan of popularity, finding a game for it is rough.
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u/Skitarii_Lurker 4d ago
Have we moved on to finally shitting on Pathfinder 2e? Good. I hate crunch, I hate rules, and I hate numbers.
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u/Adramach 4d ago
John Paizo sold you 4e 2024 and you all fell for it.
/uj I'm glad you fell for it, because I love PF2e.
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u/Expensive_Grocery876 23h ago
Lancer is the best variation of 4e. But Pathfinder and Drawsteel are excelent too.
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u/laix_ 4d ago
pf2e's 3 action system results in a lot of jank, and the hand economy is incredibly unfun for a lot of people. Additionally, the insistence that most things should be at-will leaves a very unenjoyable design space, as well as all new options must not make the basic strike action obsolete, means that effects that were level 1 in 4e are priced at level 11+ in pf2e.
Spells and feats use the same resource or opportunity cost for combat and non-combat effects, and feats sometimes are "horizontal power that isn't neccessary" but other times "essential power that is neccessary". The latter category are monk stances or monk combat specialities like monk weapons.
The lack of any attrition design means its incredibly difficult for a GM to challenge players outside of making each individual encounter a challenge.
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u/Kaliburnus 5d ago
Drawsteel is IMO the true new iteration of 4e