I think the response to this video is in The Rules Lawyer's video. Because this is still focused on the individual and what is the best damage for the individual, and not what is optimal for the party. And when you take into account the party mechanics and things like skill checks and how the +10 -10 crit mechanic works every +1 matters, every -1 matters. And what is optimal for the individual may not be optimal for the group. There is a video from The Rules Lawyer that shows this, where he has the players doing their "rotation" and eventually leading to a "TPK" because each character was focused on how they could maximize their own damage. Then he redid it with a focus on team where they adapted to the situation and focused on setting up the next person using skill checks like grapple, shove, trip, demoralize, providing flanking and it was a won combat. Sometimes the optimal thing isn't doing the most damage. And the 3 action system makes using those other options less costly because you can attack and still perform these other actions.
Its like in Pathfinder 1, the control spells were always the better option than purely damage spells. In my last game the playerd were in a dark dungeon room with a bosss in it. The players were Barbarian and Magus, so what they actually did was pretty genious, the magud started casting light spell and throwing those around the room, leaving the boss no shadows to lurk in and attacm from, allowing the barbarian to see where it is and hit it without penalties.
@@Pasta__Lover they are, demoralize trip, shove, grapple, are all basic actions in Pathfinder and you can do at any point. Everything Justin said is core to Pathfinder 2e.
I find it interesting also how taking 20 tried to deny their existence here, but it is very much there, in the core rulebook under actions you can take, and under skills in the core rulebook there are more actions you can take, like in my foundry vtt there is just a huge scroll bar of different actions my players and I can take. I am sorry but I am so confused as to how Taking 20 thinks there is a illusion of choice in Pathfinder 2e. The options are there, but if you blindly follow only what the options give and dont look up more than that, yeah your gonna feel shoe horned, same can be said about D&D 5e except PF2es rules are more balanced here.
@@dwainedwards615 I also find it interesting that he sits there and states "oh my players don't sit there and take out their calculators to crunch the numbers"......while he proves that "theres an illusion of choice" by sitting there taking out the calculator and crunching the numbers. The entire video all I've heard is "see if you want max damage you have to do this every turn"....as if there aren't other people on your team
@@BjornIdiottsonn www.thetrove.is/Books/Pathfinder%20%5Bmulti%5D/1st%20Edition/Core%20Rules/ Download the core rulebook. That is a players handbook and DM guide in one. Check it out for yourself.
There is no way that I could ever use a "rotation" with our PF2e GM. The enemies just won't let themselves stay in disadvantageous positions if they have any intelligence. They will use positioning and terrain to deprive us of optimal circumstances and they will run away if they need to do so, very possibly to come back later. Every combat is different and it's great.
Hi Cody, I wanted to stop by and leave some thoughts. I did not agree with your first video, but it also really disheartened me to see all the vitriol online about it. I'm sorry that angry people put that weight on you. I really appreciate this follow up video. I still don't necessarily agree, but I have a lot of respect for your opinion now. I guess I needed this level of detail to truly understand your point. That's on me though. I cannot speak for everyone, but my disagreement was partially with game mechanics, but also partially with how it felt as though you were dismissive of Pathfinder 2e, especially in the later half of the first video. For example, the comment about "If you want a style of game where your GM never talks in first person..." That felt a little insulting to me. I understand that it may have been hyperbole or presentation style, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I understand Pathfinder isn't your cup of tea, but to recommend it as a game "without roleplaying" felt disingenuous. You can roleplay and have lots of crunch, I do it in my own game. As a second point, I want to approach your concerns with the codification of Diplomacy from a different angle. I have a very shy player at my table, and though he does not have a silver tongue, he is playing a party face. A rule like the one in Pathfinder allows him to be charismatic without being charismatic in real life. It's an important fantasy for him, it gives him a great feeling. "I got a 26 on my Diplomacy check! This guy is gonna really like us now." In the same way, I don't expect my player to lift 50 pounds to prove he can make a strength check in game. Obviously, I always encourage my shy player to roleplay and I appreciate when he does so (even if it's only in third-person), but it's nice for him to be able to have an impact even if he's not comfortable coming out of his shell. Anyhow, TL;DR ... I really appreciate this video Cody, I'm sorry the internet is full of jerks, I am happy to agree to disagree (civilly) and I hope you continue to make great memories with your group(s).
Yeah but you could do diplomacy like that in 5e too, you just don't HAVE to. Also I get you got a bit offended, but being justifiably offended =/= disagreement. I don't see the the actual disagreement explained.
@@omnisomnia I didn't want to get into the disagreements in combat. I think it's just different strokes for different folks at that point, and that's okay with me. I was just listing the disagreements I felt were worth discussion.
@@omnisomnia Whoops, forgot this part too: You don't HAVE TO in Pathfinder either. Both 5e and Pathfinder specifically state that all rules are open to interpretation and change. I recommend playing both systems by the regular rules, then make the changes you want to make. Whatever's fun for your group.
@@andrewleimer9920 Right but I meant you don't have to as in it's not part of the core of the game. In the end you can change anything in any way that works, PF just foundationally is more hardcore with rules to start. My biggest gripe is with the MMO style rotations and changed attacks of opportunity they are heading in the wrong direction as they iterate.
You can "be more creative" in any system. Your creativity should enhance the baseline game experience, not act as a necessary patch to cover the system's inherent weakness. My creative solution is to play something else.
The problem with Newer Players "Creativity" is they make Characters that arent Plausible then when their Character dies Your automatically a bad GM. I saw so many New Gamers doing crazy stuff and dying In PF2 and D&D 5 ed. I mean If Your taking on an Ancient Red Dragon at 10th Level and expect Your Swashbuckling Rogue to Be able to go Head to Head Your ridiculous. It gets worse I saw a Younger 2o ish Age Player try to use a 1rst Level Fighter on a Lich because He wanted to skip the meat of the adventure ....And expectation to win. Even though the DM stated "Just because You see the castle on the Hill doesnt mean You should immediately try to go inside. I dont understand what they expect I really dont thats why I play with Older seasoned Players or Younger folks that want to Be taught how to Play effectively. Point Is a LOT of the UA-camrs talking trash on Codys perception are those types of Players for the most part,
I know this is been said probably at this point, but just in case someone is still checking this video: Some highlights: -Leaving out that melee attacks add strength to damage, either his ranger had no strength or he chose not to apply it. -Stating that he couldn't add precision damage because he was in melee. The various Hunters Edge features are not locked to bows. You can use them as long as you are hunting prey. -In 5e firing a longbow at an enemy point blank would apply disadvantage to every shot. You cannot, in fact stand in someone's grill and fire with no repercussions. -Tripping then grappling an enemy. Tripping puts them prone which applies flat footed (-2 AC), applies a -2 to attacks, and forces the prone player/enemy to waste an action either standing up or crawling away, both of which would trigger attacks of opportunity from the fighter... meaning he didn't have to try and grapple to hold it down for the fighter. He could have just swung at it with a -4 (because short swords are agile) hit, and potentially crit, then moved to flank it so it stayed flat-footed if it chose to stand. He instead chose to waste an action. -You don't have to go prone to grapple a prone enemy in PF2E. He either misread something or outright made this up. There's more, these are just what immediately stood out to me. TLDR: Cody doesn't actually know how to play this game and is actively refusing to admit it. There's about a dozen responses to this particular video in particular, all fully breaking down everything he did wrong and all of the misinformation that he was peddling.
That was my impression through the entire video. Like, I stopped keeping track of the things that didn’t add up. But, honestly? I think that it highlights an issue with PF2 that I think even us most ardent supporters need to acknowledge: the level of complexity of the rules as written is very high which leads to many cases of people misreading/misremembering the rules which leads to people playing wrong and not having fun. And this is on top the fact that, even if you do understand and remember all the rules perfectly, you may not understand the tactical implications of those rules which leads to the group not having fun. And even if you do, you may not like to play like that. And the system is definitely balanced for people taking advantage of tactical possibilities. And some people just don’t like to play tactically, or at least not to that degree. So there are many layers here where people can drop off. Either because the system was just not for them (which is perfectly fine) or because they just don’t have fun while figuring out all the complexities and don’t stick around long enough to realize that it could be. Personally I think that one of the biggest issues is that the aid action is terribly underpowered, specially at low levels, and that the rules doesn’t push enough doing cool stuff giving you a bonus for what you’re trying to do. As soon as we realized that in our group, combat became a lot more creative and fun. Ironically enough to one of the points in the video, it is only bad when enemies have attacks of opportunity because they limit so much what you can do or you get wrecked so hard that it is really not worth it to deviate from the obvious tactics.
Honestly, based on these replies, I'm staying the away from PF2e. You're talking like Yu-Gi-Oh players when players left. "It's poor deck construction. Just get good" Yeah, okay. Or I could read a book.
What did you mean when you pointed out that DnD5e imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks when someone is up in your grill? Didn't Cody mention that already? The point was that PF2E doesn't have repercussions in the vanilla rules while 5E does, lending to a more interesting situation. I think that's a good point about the tripping and not having to go prone. Cody could have done an attack there. And yeah, the Precision hunter's edge adds more damage to melee and ranged attacks. He should have added that. It probably would have made the action not as terrible. The part about using a STR-based attacked on a character not built for STR is not ideal, but the short sword does have Finesse which is still good for hitting. That is one area that I think pf2e did fairly well - making Dex not as much of a strong stat.
It's so bad and so disingenuous, part of me has always had the conspiracy theory WotC slipped him some marketing cash to sling mud at PF2E or something.
@@hydraphobic_6398 He completely ommited that longbows have volley in pf2e and therefore get -2 to hit if an enemy is within 30 feet of you, in his comparison of shooting a bow in melee range. This entire video is bad faith arguments.
Broooooo. Characters in PF2 are supposed to have lots of magic items unlike 5e's basically optional item system. And making stikes at a -10 is made to be unoptimal but you still went for it twice on the ranger's turn.
Thank you for taking the time to produce an additional response at this level of detail. As a Gamemaster just starting out with PF 2e (my group is close to level 7 for the first time at this point), seeing the arguments and comparisons is a great tool to help my own estimation of the game. For my 10 cents to the discussion, I have a few points: Rotations I think the concept of having a “rotation” in combat can be an advantage. In cases where players are unsure about what to do or what may be a good choice, they will always have a fallback choice to lean on. As you have brought up, most of the fun of making combat related choices comes when building your character. This means you can sit down and analyze your choices in much greater detail than is possible during a combat encounter at the table. I do house rule very easy retraining in my games, so players have an out if they become bored with their build and wany to try something else, and that seems to have helped with handling the feeling of a character growing “stale.” Even without that however, I have experienced the gradually drip feeding of more abilities and feats each level has been enough to make my players engaged with combat as is. Lack of creative skill use in combat While it certainly fits into the argument of “This character is built to do this, so I guess that is what I will do for my turn,” skills do have a big impact and use in combat. Most of these do require some amount of investment in terms of skills feats to be viable, but that is where the skill buckets show their value. Depending on what your skill and skill feat choices are, you can spend an action to: • Roll “Recall Knowledge” as 1 action to learn about a monster. This might tell you about a critical weakness or strength your opponent has the party can take advantage off or needs to be wary about. • Use Battle Medicine to heal an ally as a single action (and probably more to move into range of them). • Use Intimidate to apply the Frightened condition to an enemy, which significantly weakens them. • Use Deception to Feint and potentially make an enemy flat-footed for you and your allies. • Use the Bon Mot feat from Diplomacy to weaken the perception and will saves of an enemy and get some fun roleplay moments with witty quips. The multiple attack penalty heavily disincentives spending all your actions on making attacks with a Strike unless you are fishing for natural 20s or something. While some classes have built in ways to spend their actions outside of Strikes, like your Ranger example shows, many characters can easily fit some other creative skill use into their pool of options. About attacks of opportunity I think the changes 2e made to AoOs are good. Since they are no longer a default assumption of the rules but rather an ability built into certain enemies (and PCs!) battles become much easier to handle and flow quicker. I do agree that more enemies should have it, and that it should be a bit easier for players to get themselves, but the fact that I no longer have to track the Reaction of every single enemy to see if they still have their AoO, not to mention no longer having to resolve all of them it becomes much easier to run fights with several enemies. Complexity Outside of Combat Pf2e very much attempts to appeal to a different crowd than 5e does, and I think you already made the point there very succinctly. I house rule a lot of resolutions more loosely than the rules ask for, but there are some advantages to spelling things out very precisely and not taking the “Let the GM handle this” design approach; writing and balancing adventure content becomes much easier if you can make very clear assumptions on what exactly a player can do with their Diplomacy / Intimidate / Deception / Whatever roll, and how difficult that will be. I also think having clearly defined resolutions for what certain skills and abilities can do helps a player make choices during character creation, which is where I believe the strongest part of pf2e is. In far too many RPG books do you see things like “The Acrobatics skill helps you be agile and make maneuvers” but fail to give good examples about what it can do with a certain level of investment. By having given numbers, it is much easier to see what a +10 gives you, for example. TLDR; I do agree with the point that combat can quickly become routine and filled with “rotation” thinking, but I think that it can be a strength in many respects as well as a weakness. A complex skill system is meant for a certain type of player, but helps in determining what exactly you can do with a given level of investment in an area.
I actually was really disappointed when he mentioned rotations but doesn't even mentioned the actual skills an archer character would want to use. On his second turn his amount of decisions was staggering if he used skills. Since his two attacks were the most of his damage he could use his other actions for great. Even the ability to move+battle medicine+hunted shot is a great example of a very viable action that the player could have done.
The problem you run into yet again is that those skills are simply not rewarding enough to attempt when in combat. There are feat/skill choices that would be intentionally picking poorly to choose and leaning on the rest of the party to pick up your slack. That isn't fair for you to do that to them. The very nature of combat is that you are fighting for your character's life assuming you actually care about your character and the party. If the situation presents itself and if you succeed at a skill use like intimating someone "could" be useful but a failure is a complete waste of the action. Action that you know are better served elsewhere. Frightening someone is swell and all, assuming they could be frightened, but just killing the threat is both quicker and easier. You have better, and by the very nature of the combat system itself, in many cases the only correct choice is it stick to the rotation that got you this far in the game. Playing poorly for sub-optimal skill use not only strains the combat against your party but very likely has the DM having to do the same poor play otherwise the sub-optimal play makes it easier to end in a player's death. The lack of AoO was to point out that once combat starts and things shift around the status of the field of combat rarely changes to reflect combat is taking place. It is static. As in boring. Whatever everyone else did on their turn does not change the battlefield conditions in which you fight in once it is your turn again. Ranged fighters do not need to react to melee having closed the gap and are now on top of them. At least in D&D you needed a feat, to represent being able keep a level head when danger has gotten uncomfortably close, otherwise you fight at a disadvantage once that situation happens. The scene has changed, albeit slightly, to reflect how combat is shaping out. A lack of AoO also means the melee fighters can aim for the best use of their actions, aka their rotation, instead of pausing to make a meaningful choice. Debating to finish off the threat in front of them first and risk not getting to the bigger threat in time or risk the hit to try and deal with a bigger threat now. D&D's combat system isn't that great either but at least it's got some spice on the meat.
@@lordhawkeye Demoralize is far far better than a 3rd attack as long as you do it at the right time on most circumstances. It increase damage by roughly 10-20% on a success and 20-40% on a crit success because of of how crits work in PF2 for your ENTIRE team. This also decreases the enemies damage by the same amount. There are very few times where a skill or reposition wouldn't be better than an attack at max MAP. The nice thing about PF2 is each circumstance is different and not obvious. The other skill actions are far more situational though. AoO in both games are just "okay" imo. I feel they both have their weaknesses but a lot of times both monster/players stand there attacking to not get hit by an AoO just in case the monster has one. I would say AoO are very bad in 5e, pretty much no one even gets hit by them. Casters just cast any save spell and Rangers just switch weapons. 5e players are incentivised to never take an AoO normally by just not moving. I can't even remember any player getting hit by an AoO in my 3 years of 5e unless players were in a horrible situation or new. Bow character are pretty much the only exception because they get disadvantage so it does effect them. Both editions standing there attacking with a bow for all your actions is just bad when a melee monster gets up to you. Also in PF2 the main thing I dislike about AoO in PF2 if a monster does have them they are much more devastating that 5e. When there are no AoO players can freely manipulate the battlefield though since most monsters shouldn't be doing things as smart. So yes I don't I feel they are perfect in PF2 either.
@@youtubenoremac3314 @aF Kayzar If the Ranger used Hunt Prey, then Demoralize, then Hunted Shot, he'd lose 1.85 points of average damage from longbow at close range, or 1.99 average for normal longbow shot, or 1.5 average damage for a shortbow shot. In exchange, he'd deal an average of 12.6 damage with a shortbow, or 13.9 with a longbow. 20% increase in damage with the longbow, or 2.4 average damage increase- he'd gain more than he lost in average damage by taking some other third action. Fully mathed out.
You make PF2 seem so straight forward when it isn't and that is part of the problem. For example you say, "Use Intimidate to apply the Frightened condition to an enemy, which significantly weakens them." The effectiveness of intimidate and the applicability is a massively unknown quantity with rules spread over many pages about how it can be used with a benefit that relies on some team synergy. There are multiple feats and attributes you would likely need to make this actually useful with any consistency because of these rules. During character creation you may have looked at it and decided to invest feats into developing that skill or not. The impact of the condition is also somewhat situational and the value is really unknown with all of that investment. Especially when weighed against the opportunity cost of just attacking again. Compared to say the Fighter Battle Master in 5e which gets an ability to frighten which is provided as an option and explained in a couple sentences. Ultimately at the end of the day Cody's argument is based on the reality of trying to play with a ruleset that is messy while also being finely tuned for difficulty. The players are playing with a character creation system that is messy. The disconnect between the math of PF2 and the players reading the book is going to be massive because of the way the game was designed and the way the rules were communicated. Yes some players are able to navigate the mess and find a satisfying game experience. That doesn't mean the game isn't a mess and everyone will enjoy that process as much as others. Some players will literally delight in the lack of clarity because seeing through it creates some satisfaction in them.
*Editing in, I appreciate people giving like.... actual advice, unlike what I got on Reddit, but the issue is dealt with already. lol I'm more trying to just point out how everyone on Reddit was blatantly ignoring the facts of what was going on, or assuming all my problems are because I'm a "PowEr GaMeR".* Frankly, a lot of the RP world seems to just be really..... bad lately, for lack of better terms. I tried yesterday to get some advice for burnout in D&D, where I clearly said A, the DMs were doing a good job, B, I don't want to just leave my group, and C, No one is interested in learning a new system, I offered. I still got almost entirely comments just saying "The DMs aren't doing a good job and I should call them out, I should just leave, and 'Maybe you should offer to run something else'.". It was honestly maddening to get about 100 comments, all but 2 of which showed that they either didn't even read what I said, or just didn't care. The funniest part was also the automatic assumption that I was a power gamer and I was too bogged down in optimizing the game, meanwhile, I'm here playing janky, multi class disaster characters that I only made for fun, and I literally have hurt my throat before from forcing myself to do a voice that fit the character.
Oh, and for anyone who cares, when I brought my burnout up with my group that same day (was a few hours before I had any replies just due to life and such), turned out most everyone else felt the same way, so we're gonna do a few weeks of random side games of Call of Cthulhu, and Mongoose 2nd Ed Traveller (Being specific to show that we're NOT playing the death in character creation version. lol). Maybe even Hollow Earth or Icons. Short version, vastly different game systems.
@@ArcNeoMasato I've never experienced a burnout when playing DnD but the only thing I can think of is to take a break from the main campaign and do a few high lvl one shots or something or maybe skip a session to force yourself to miss playing. Now that I'm typing this out I think another thing to do would be to watch some videos or read some books to find some inspiration if you're not doing that already. Hope that helps. ^_^
We're flat just gonna play some different games for a couple weeks. Me personally has been playing D&D super regularly for about 6 years, usually multiple games a week even, and I just need a break to do something other than swing a sword, so we're gonna run from Cthulhu or trade cargo in space for a little while. For me at least, it wasn't so much a lack of inspiration or anything, moreso as it just felt like going through the motions, even with the vastly different characters I'm playing right now. It literally comes down to the mechanics of the game itself, cause I'm able to do all kinds of random stuff in RP, but the dice side of things was just..... always the same.
Yeah, people stopped paying attention mostly (my gues) of the increased populairty of the "horror rpg stories" people like those, play some, recodnize some things that might overlap with their own experiences and inmeaditly go to: this guy MUST be a "that guy". It's sad to see
41:56 Why though? Well lets say a DM wanted the opposite, the DM wanted a difficulty check they could look up instead of just winging it. Pathfinder gave that DM an answer and your version would say "sucks to be you". I will never complain about a p&p game giving me too many specific examples especially when I can always ignore it if I don't need them.
This. I love having a system in place when I need it to do work for me. When I don’t need it, I can run the game however I want. When someone wants to move the +1 enchantment from their sword to a new pike they just found, I don’t want to have to make up a minigame on the spot. Or just handwave “it takes four days.” Having systems that players can read and build their characters around allows them to make meaningful decisions around the systems they want to engage with.
Longbows have the volley 30ft trait which means that all ranged attacks within 30 ft suffer a -2 to hit. Also, shortswords have the agile trait which means that the second attack is at a -4 instead of a -5. The wright getting a third attack on the ranger that needs a natural 20 to hit the ranger which wouldn't critical (+2 vs the ranger's AC of 23) might be argued as a good trade off for the fighter not taking all the aggro and possible drain effects from the wright attacks. If the ranger critical success on a grapple action, the target is restrained which means the enemy can't use any actions with the attack trait until they break free. Tripping a wright only DC 16 and if the fighter turn is before that wright, that wright is going to have a bad time if it is prone in front of the fighter. If the ranger player did the last option and really roleplayed well and I was the Game Master, I would give them a hero point (Pathfinder) or Inspiration (Dungeons and Dragons).
Except this isn't an illusion of choice for the players by the system but an illusion by the DM of variety. Here he gives four different monsters in three different environments (a chimera in a mountain pass, mimic in a room, ghouls and ghast somewhere, and some wights that he goes into detail with) and then proceeded to say that the ranger will take the same action in all the situations (maybe with movement) because the system encourages it. But here’s the thing: He hasn’t presented four different scenarios, he’s presented four different variations of one scenario - straight up combat where the monster appears and attacks until dead and hoped that no one noticed this. Now these can be changed to different scenarios. For example: there is high wind in the mountain interfering with ranged attacks, the terrain is difficult so the PCs are slower, and the chimera instead of just attacking performs a fighting retreat after an initial strafe.
My immediate thought was, "so you present all the diferent scenarios and they all turn out to be damage dealing hitpoint sponges in an open room that you need to kill dead to get to the next place. Fun...."
When we got to avernus our DM gave us the option to change classes if we wanted (its our first campaign) The warlock didn't like that he was just eldrich blasting all the time so he wanted to change. He picked rogue. So.. Dagger Dagger Dagger
Just some points. You should have a striking weapon by level 5, you can get one by level 3 so you should have one by 5. That's an extra weapon die of damage. Also you don't use a longbow in that sort of situation, it gives you a negative 2 to hit within 30 feet from the volley trait. At 5th rangers get weapon crit bonus so when you crit with a bow you can actually pin targets in place, gives you more options to control the battlefield. For third actions other then strike again, something only Flurry rangers really should be doing, you can potentially do the following. Aid the fighter, use an action and your reaction to make an aid another check at a standard DC 20 (GM can make it higher) with a result of between -1 and +2(+3 if your master in the skill check, +4 if your legendary) to the fighters next attack. Battle medicine, if you have the feat and training in the skill, you can walk up and heal team mates. Command an animal, if you take the animal companion feat or beast master archetype you get to use one action to have your pet get two actions, give your fighter flanking while your at range and your pet can do damage. Demoralize, if you have the charisma for it and some training in intimidate, you can make an intimidation check to give an opponent the frightened condition that gives -1 to all rolls and checks (including AC). Sneak to get behind cover so ranged enemies don't have a good chance of hitting you or might not even be able to target you at all. Just like building to use your bonus action is a moderate part of 5e, how to use your third action is often a big part of building your PF2 character. I think reading that last bit properly you can start to understand the potential problem that you have to build for options to have those options in PF2. As you level up, you get options that make you better at the things your doing, but out of your 10 class feats from 1-20(11 for most martials, +1 if human), you'll likely only ever spend at most 5 or 6 of them filling out a 'feat tree' and even then there's only like 2 or 3 things in the game that are more then 2 or 3 feats deep. Druid wild morph, animal companions and shield blocking are the most intensive feat lines, most others are like Knockdown attack and improved knockdown attack, and then you need to look at side grades or other feats that can build onto that in other ways. So if you only spend 2 feats getting your primary attack down, maybe another feat for a secondary attack, lets say a third feat for a niche attack, you still have 6-8 feats over the life of your character to diversify and pick up new options. So yes, low level characters don't have many options going for them, but you continue to get more options as you level up. As a ranger who loves bows you can take Gravity weapon to add damage to one attack a round, take Far shot for more range, take Hunters aim for a more accurate attack, Skirmish strike to step and strike for one action, get Disrupt prey for a reaction similar to attack of opportunity and combine it with Snap shot to be able to use your bow for that attack, Deadly aim that works a lot like sharpshooter by giving you a penalty to hit for a bonus to damage, Penetrating shot to shoot through someone to hit your hunted prey, have Distracting shot to have chances of making your prey flat footed, Targeting shot to shoot around corners and objects in your way, Greater distracting shot to make the ability easier to trigger and last longer, Impossible Volley to shoot at all targets in a small AOE and Legendary shot to further increase your firing distance. That's a full character taking nothing but ranged attack options right there. Plenty of different types of attacks for different situations. You could also take Fighter archetype for other ranged based feats, or the Archer dedication, or plenty of other things to give you different options in and out of combat. I think that's one of the key selling points for many players, you can build for diversity of options. While in 5e the only options are your sub class, what feats you can take and multiclass. You can build a dozen PF2 Rangers and they can all be vastly different, Strength based dual weapon ranger with flurry, Dex based bow Ranger with flurry, Dex based crossbow ranger with precision, Polearm skirmish Ranger with precision, Ranger with warden powers for support, Monster hunter Ranger for finding enemy weaknesses and giving bonuses to the group, Dex bow Ranger with animal companion, two weapon Ranger with animal companion (this is rather difficult as it often costs more actions in a round then you have), Strength Dex Ranger with a Bow and natural weapons or monk dedication for a switch hitter, Dex bow Ranger that sets snares in and out of combat to control the battlefield, Outwit Ranger specializing in tracking and defense, Boon and Warden ability focused Ranger that takes Herbalist dedication so they can heal in combat and make natural healing potions, Ranger with Fighter dedication for more accuracy based attacks, Ranger with Rogue dedication for sneak attack, Ranger with any spellcaster dedication for up to 8th level spells, Ranger Vigilante to be wild lands Batman, etc, etc with over 85 dedications to 'multiclass' with to add spice, role play, and combat options to your character. The great thing is most of those options can be delved deep into, or you can mix and match to create your own build. Then add in uncommon or rare options that are adventure specific (Paizo has these or easily homebrew your own) and similar uncommon and unique or artifact/relic weapons and gear and you can play several rangers of the same ancestry and they will all feel and play different. So a big draw to PF2 is being able to make your own character, how you want them to be, you can also change that plan or go with only a vague plan and take new things to see if they work or find new options in the world and when ever you get some downtime (AP's always have downtime between books I think) you can undo nearly any of your choices and make something that might better fit your style.
"oh look, this "apples to apples" comparison between two level 5 characters missed out on half of the rules and ended up not being an accurate example of how the system that's being criticised works" I wish i was more surprised.
@@TheMysticLemur Striking weapons weren't the only rule cody missed. It's weird, it would have been so easy to just say that pathfinder's added complexity didn't add enough to their table's enjoyment to justify the extra time spent on rules. But instead Cody feels the need to double down and create this entire "illusion of choice" argument. I mean, we're using the fact that a ranged build is better at fighting at range than in melee as our prime example. We're already in a pretty weird world of hypothetical arguments.
@@TheMysticLemur Where did you read that I was attempting to disprove anything with noting the missed rules in a reply based on being upset over people commenting on how his players didn't understand the system? Doing an in depth analysis and still missing some core rules makes for the illusion of knowing what your doing. Makes it seem disingenuous even if it's not. To the rules point though, it's almost like building for ranged damage makes you good at that and melee less and less so as you go, or you can spend some extra money to have handwraps or a second weapon if that's what you wanted. Thus the rest of the comment, if you wanted to read it, was about building your character to have various options if you wanted them.
@@orochifuror7148 I see. You were focusing on his lack of system mastery, while I was just looking at his example of how being focused on ranged combat makes you shitty at everything else. Not like 5e where focus doesn't matter because everyone is still decent at everything. 5e is the "better" system for his group because it holds your hand and doesn't punish you for bad decisions.
@@leandersearle5094 Just mentioned Starfinder because Taking20 did -the- best intro guides for it that I still share with people wanting to get into the action and he mentions it again on this video. Consider me a reverse gatekeeper! The more people know about other games, the better.
tbh i find fun in creating nasty encounters and cheering for the party to dismantle them as a demolition derby (i make them intentionaly hard to give some enviromental advantage they can find or set in motion beforehand to reward smart and unconventional thinking). The players and the DM aren't enemies in my book.
Oh don’t get me wrong, i agree. My campaigns a bit of unique homebrew in that it is both fully open world and has had the players participate in huge pitched battles a bunch of times. I just find it funny that my partys barbarian, regardless of the situation or enemy, almost always at one time or another ends up 1v1 with a powerful bad guy and crushing him.
There’s something similar here that happens in video games called ‘dominant strategy’. It’s when the game has an obvious way to deal damage or be effective that’s the easiest and has the beat payoff, so that’s all you end up doing. In fighting games this is like spamming a good move, in other games it could be a specific string of actions or using an ability over and over without really doing much else. It is boring, and it’s a balancing issue, the only options are to ignore it for a self imposed challenge or play something else
The problem to me seems simple. If for example I am playing a class and take the feat good with X and then I don't use anything but X because the drop in power is to much the feat should probably be nerfed.
To be fair its... kinda worse. The problem is not (only) having a dominan strategy, is being actually forced to choose between it and other things without any chance of redoing it. A lot of people say that "if you want diversity then stop taking only the archery feats", but like... if they do it then they'll forever lost that archery power (since its a x-lvl class feat and not a "take whenever you want" power like features in other d20 systems). Ok, now you're suposedly more diversificated. But the dream of your character to be "the best archer" is also dead beyond repair for eternity.
@@albertonishiyama1980 if we're talking pf2e, retraining is part of the core rule so I just want point out that "lost for eternity" is more than a little hyperbolic. But I'm betting you already knew that. A point I didn't hear brought up in the video is that some people just like having the majority of mechanical choice be frontloaded in character creation and like having an optimal rotation to play out in combat. It's not necessarily a negative. I guess that falls under the points he made that some people like pf2e as is. I've kind of broken down my own argument here. Oh well. One of my takeaways is that I might want to give a monster or two AoOs in my pf2 games even though the statblock doesn't have it. Keeping balance in mind of course, don't want those AoOs to have to nasty a rider.
I like your example, well done! It actually points out some of the stuff that you were criticizing last week and makes it understandable. But, also, it shows me that you focus on a very different aspect of the system than I value, and don't seem to recognize the other. So, let me take you up on these points, because I do think that there's a discussion to be had from this. Mind you, I play both systems, but I only GM Pathfinder 2e. So the start with, what I took away from your example: * In D&D 5e the player has a number mostly equivalent options, dealing nearly identical damage. Their strategy is mostly linked to how they position themselves on the battlefield, and what impact that would have on subsequent rounds. If you use the optimal flanking rules, they could help the fighter. Else they could decide between ranged attacks or melee, which each has their advantages or disadvantges. Because of AOO as a constant threat, that initial positioning is very important and influences the dynamic of the whole fight. There is no cookie cutter pattern, but what you choose in the beginning of combat will basically influence the whole fight. * In PF2e, there is a strategy that beats most of the others if all you care about is dealing damage yourself: Hunt Prey and then attack. But, if you actually consider the team as a whole, there are choices: They could have positioned themselves opposite the fighter, forgoing damage themselves to increase the critical hit chance and chance to hit of the fighter, and as you say, that initial damage is really what counts. So, you want to try to enable the biggest damage dealers to be able to Crit. Also, subsequent rounds would differ. Due to the lower chances of getting AOO, players would move around a lot, constantly trying to achieve advantages over their opponents, collaborating in the team to set up the optimal damage dealer to get a good hit. The difference is that 5e is a bit more forgiving. It offers players various choices that each are close to optimal. You example also shows that the interaction between player characters doesn't actually matter much. And that makes the system very beginner friendly. If we really want to argue about illusion of choice, we could argue about it here: On the battlefield, you have a lot of possible strategies, but which one you choose ultimately doesn't matter all that much. Many of them are valid. With PF2e, the say that the choices offered when we create and level-up characters end up being an illusion of choice. We don't really need to argue that 5e has less choice in the level-up process. So the real question is "What does PF2 do with the choices it offers?". And your argument is: nothing meaningful. But, from the example I just made above I would argue quite on the contrary, quite a lot! If a Hunter - instead of trying to be an optimal damage dealer - had gone down the road of support or control character, they would have focused on their ability to craft snares, and taken feats like "Snare Hopping" and "Snare Specialist". Or they could have gotten an animal companion and explored how they can most effectively use the animal in the battlefield. If they then disliked their specialization, you could have let them retrain and let them focus on other aspects of play. The result of this, and I don't disagree with you on that one, is that there is a pattern that will emerge, especially in the first few rounds of combat. But a different ranger character's pattern might be a completely different one. Even though they're also a ranger. So, what I am arguing is, that in Pathfinder the strategy players pursue in the creation of their characters actually matters a lot on the battlefield, and that's an aspect that is not present much in 5e. At my table at least that leads players to identify a lot with their character, spend a lot of downtime pursuing their own activities, and just living in the world. My group values that highly. What is better? Honestly, that's not the point. Both have their advantages. We don't need to argue that 5e is fun to play. I love it. And I honestly don't care about system wars. I just don't agree with your point, because it doesn't hit where it should. And I would be interested to read what you have to respond to me.
See this is the real difference in the systems: In D&D 5e regardless of how you build your character, they will always have multiple good options to choose between during combat, but you have fewer choices when building / levelling up. In Pathfinder 2e you have many good choices in how you build your character, but any particular build will have only 1 or maybe 2 good options to choose between during combat. The thing for me is that typically I spend ~20 hours playing my character, about 1/4-1/2 of which is combat in between each level up. I would much rather have interesting choices during those 5-10 hours of combat playing with my friends, than have more choices during the couple hours I spend alone thinking about what I'm going to do levelling up my character.
Agilemind i hear where you’re going but there really are more than 1 or 2 options and they heavily depend on the creature you’re facing. What are the weaknesses or resistances, does it have reach or not, attack of opportunity? Finding out which character will be at an advantage and what team tactics will be effective differs and finding out what works in what situation is what makes Pathfinder combat interesting. I’m saying this because, yes you are spending more time building your character, but a lack of options in combat is not the result. Because that’s what Cody said, and what I politely disagreed with. If you don’t like spending that time in the books - and I feel you there - 5e is definitely the more accessible game, as part of the fun of pf2e is that aspect of playing out strategies in your head when you build your character. And as I said, I like both, so no judging here. Both work well with the right group.
That's quite a long point so I might try to summarise, let me know if I've summed up your points adequately. You (stefontheair) agree that there are less near-optimal choices in combat in P2E than 5e, no matter which playstyles you choose (e.g. the snare guy only does snares, the arrow guy only shoots arrows). However, you think that the ability to have more options of playstyle (snare guy, arrow guy, animal companion guy etc.) is very important, even if each inevitably creates a set pattern of combat actions taken each and every round. Is that right? Also I'm assuming (as I think you are too) that players don't throw fights in order to do wacky stuff - they will usually choose something near-optimal (near being fairly broad). Just because a player can do option 4 in P2E for example doesn't mean they ever will (hence the "illusion of choice").
jaymz jaymz *lol* There was more than one point! So, you didn’t not get it, but your choice of words also tells me that you read some stuff in there that I didn’t say like this. Can I assume that you play 5e and/or have never played Pathfinder 2e? First of all two things that must be clear before we continue: In Pf2 there are *always* more options than in 5e. Also there is always a bigger range between bad and good options. In 5e the range is maybe between bad and good, and in pf2 they are between terrible and amazing. And before you tell me I’m biased: No. More does not necessarily mean better. This simple difference means that in Pf2 it’s less likely that in a given situation there are many similarly viable options: they will differ in some way. Which means that a beginner can fuck up terribly and a good player do masterfully. The intent behind 5e’s design, by contrast, is *not* allow this, so that beginning players won’t get overwhelmed, while still offering enough options for seasoned players to provide enough depth. It’s very well done. This of course it also means, that some of these options are equally optimal, which is what Cody calls „having a real choice“. I don’t agree that there are less good options in PF2e, there are probably more, but, by design, they will not be equivalent. There will also not be one pattern, but there will be patternS (plural). Fight against skeleton? Favor a support pattern for the melee fighter with bludgeoning damage. Fight against a single boss? Favor a group attack pattern to stack as many buffs and debuffs to increase the chances of the biggest damage dealer to crit. For me, this is what I would call „tactically deep“, because I have to try to figure out which pattern would work best or potentially die. Pf2 monsters are also designed to constantly challenge these patterns, which keeps fights interesting. I may have misread you, but I felt like you’re trying to set me up to confirm Cody’s video, which I won’t do. I would still steer tactically minded folks and those who love customization and want to see their character choices directly translated into game mechanics to pathfinder, and beginners of ttrpgs and/or veterans who have played rpgs for so long that they basically breathe the rules and don’t want to bother with details to 5e. These systems are both great, and one should learn to pick the right system for the right purpose. And yes, about combat: That’s exactly how I see combat. Which is why PF2e is my go-to system for combat. It’s like Checkers vs Go. Both great games. You’ll probably use checkers to get people excited about strategic thinking, but if they really get into it, Go will provide more depth.
@@stefontheair You realize you literally just confirmed Cody's illusion of choice by saying there are more options in combat in PF2e but they range from Terrible to Awesome. This means that you have Terrible, Bad and Good which are the options which will either be not used at all, used situationally or used sometimes. Then you have the Awesome options which will inevitably be the option you mainly use. This is exactly what an illusion of options is, the option is there but you would never or almost never use the option because it is Terrible, Bad or only Good when your characters life is on the line. If PF2e has 20 options but only 5 of them are being used then there aren't really options. D&D5e might have 12 options but if 8 of them are are being used then they in effect have more options. I think the thing that makes the options useable in D&D vs. PF is that Pathfinder punishes you for trying out of the box things due to there being Critical Failure. If your character and your groups characters lives depend on you succeeding you aren't going to pick the out of the box play due to it being riskier.
11:52 bow crit spec is specifically immobilizing a target to a nearby surface. So you’re looking at what enemies might get immobilized, working with your team to position them against those surfaces. In a vacuum as a single player sure you’ve built someone to shoot a bow so that’s what they’re going to do but what is the party doing to synergize?
@@nicowordenweber7476 tbh it gives a good picture of a part of the system, but people like the system (and as Cody said, people can have fun in it) so is worth learning the system by yourself a little if you think is worth trying.
too bad that ranger example is such a waste of time, why a bow ranger should even go melee to prove the point of how badly they perform by going against their build? Cmon
@@Ghilteras it does this: 1.- show the dps impact of your an the enemy positioning, value of strategy 2.- show how impactful is the early feats that aid an specific style (5e lose less if he tries different things than what he specialized because some skills work for both combat styles, PF2e have some problems if he wants to deviate from a set strategy) 3.- show the value of unorthodox attempts (PF2e have more restrictions than 5e to achieve the same effects due the diminishing returns of investing in many actions in the prone>grapple combo) 4.- The importance of enemies strategy for the DM perspective (OA and disadvantage on ranged attacks at close range opens the need of thinking smart, which is a good thing).
@@nicolasvillasecaali7662 it does nothing of the sort. It only shows that in pf2e you can do ONE ranger ultra spec among the tens available. Blaming the system because you can ONLY do that is just pathetic as the system simply gives you deep customization at every level, it's up to you how you want to build your PC and you're to blame if you built it in a way that it can literally only do one thing. In 5e this does not happen because customization is much more general and limited. Cody lost a lot of credibility with these videos. Was it worth for the 5e patreon money?
My favourite counter to "Taking the best option in combat is powergaming" is the fact that I'm Rping an adventurer who would do their best in a life or death situation.
I want to be the adventurer that has a tool in the toolkit for any situation. Versatility, multiple combat styles, maybe a few spells from a multiclass.
The argument is not against taking the best option, but rather: "the best option is the same in most scenarios". For the example: in PF2, the ranger always shoots because it's the most damage per round, while in 5e, you can choose safety(shooting), control (blocking an enemy) or support (flanking with the fighter) and all 3 options have similar damage output.
@@PsychoMachado Depends of your build. If you have picked up some class feats supporting some dual wielding, you'll have the option of blocking and dealing damage in melee instead of shooting, if necessary. If you have an animal companion, you can direct that to block or flank. Also I found, at least for most classes, there's some levels with class feats where you do not get anything to your hyper-specialization, which means you can become more versatile, even if you hyperspecialize. But the game should not really be so difficult you're forced into hyperspecialization.
@@PsychoMachado All of these options but one mean going into melee on a character not built for it. Even 5e Rangers and Fighters can be largely specialized in Ranged or Melee and not be very good at the opposite.
@@OakenTome yes, they can be specialized. But on PF you'll be penalized if you reposition on a turn, since you're not dealing most damage, while on 5E you won't (assuming no enemies nearby). Just look at the example when the wigth gets close. For PF, shooting in melee might give an AoO, but to avoid it you'd have to waste 2 actions and on the next turn the enemy would simply take one move and be on your tail again, so it's best to just tank that and deal craptons of damage. On 5e if you grab a rapier and attack twice, your damage wont drop that much but if you choose to keep going archer with an opponent close you're heavily penalized. And there are scenarios where forgoing ranged and going melee is better on 5e while on PF going rqnged is always best, taking the given example.
One issue with your math is that if your ranger has "the most obvious" build they wouldn't have 10 strength in Pathfinder 2e (as both propulsive ranged weapons as well as finesse weapons benefit from strength with regards to damage unless you are building a charisma or intelligence ranger, you probably will have dumped some points into strength), also you can totally use your hunter's edge with melee weapons. If the ranger uses a longbow (as you said in your scenario), they actually take a penalty to hit any target that is withing 30 feet (longbows have the volley rule). So your math is actually off with regards to the pathfinder scenario and you end up (I assume accidentally) misrepresenting the effects of some combat decisions in pathfinder. And for having done so much reading of monster statblocks and math calculations etc. It's kinda disappointing that you missed some basic rules for the class and equipment you picked for your example. With regards to the complaint that there should be more feat options for each type of build, sure. But the idea that there is a cycle that you go through each combat perhaps especially with a martial class is something that is arguably true for D&D as well and not unique to Pathfinder. I play both systems and I find combat with my fighter in D&D to be equally if not more monotonous than combat with my Pathfinder ranger. Like, I enjoy both systems, I play both systems, I've been a GM with both systems, and it's ok to not like a system, I like both for various reasons, I think they offer slightly different options when it comes to character design etc. But I do think your bias causes you to be a bit unfair to Pathfinder and making it sounds worse that it actually is.
After watching both videos on the subject, playing 5e since it came out and dabbling in PF2 for a while now I can certainly see where Cody is coming from but to answer the question from 40:35 "What's the upside?" it would be "Options that matter". In 5e your build options are very limited and for the most part don't really matter. A diviner plays like a abjurer who plays like a conjurer. Your elf battle master who grew up on the streets of Watterdeep is gonna play the same as the dwarf battlemaster who is a noble from the upper spires of Sharn. Cody said it himself "The players do what their choices push them to do" so in Pathfinder your building choices matter while in DnD it feels like your choices don't matter and the archer who performs just as well with a rapier as he does with a bow proves the point. So, again in my opinion, if you want to jump in a quick game where you have fun and roll some dice play 5e, if you want to really tinker with your class and make it your own play PF.
Totally agree. I play a P2e Goblin Fighter and although my dog slicer goblin sword is my best option I rarely use it. Instead I regularly try to ride whatever monster we are fighting, throw my own poop at it (does no damage and MIGHT blind it if I roll really well), or use my grapnel hook and rope to trip up four legged monsters like they are an ATAT. The best or “most obvious” attack choices are boring in all games after a while. At least in P2E I can drop my shield and equip my grapnel. Run at the sand worm, then use my third action to mount it like Muad'Dib. I wouldn’t be able to do that all in one turn in 5E.
@@StaticElf You absolutely can do all 3 in 5e. Dropping a weapon or shield on the ground and pulling at 1 weapon (grapling hook) is considered a free action. Movement is separate from actions and you can always move 30ft unless stated otherwise. The mount would be a grapple attack with your hook. (Hence “grappling” hook)
@@chetori__ “You can also *interact* with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride towards a foe, or you could *draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack.* If you want to *interact* with a second object you have to use your action.” Doffing a shield is an action yes, but opening your hand to let your sword drop and then attacking with the grappling hook is RAW 1 free action and an attack action. Opening your hand is NOT interacting with your sword. You’re either flat wrong, or you’re conflating dropping your sword with sheathing it, which you shouldn’t be doing. A lenient DM would allow you to sheath your weapon for free and attack with the grapple as part of its action, but this is literally RAW.
@@chetori__The grappling hook also doesnt have the “Thrown” quality, therefore there’s no 100% RAW way of using it either based on that faulty logic. Anything without an explicit definition, specifically reverts to idiomatic English, which is what makes it RAW in this case. RAI is for interpretations of rules that could go either way, or arent entirely clear in their language. Like the fact that dragon breath doesnt break invisibility, per RAI. If you want to run it that way, you’re more than welcome to, but the system is actually fairly open to allowing this him to do this.
Last video his example of "best option" iwas "shape-shifting every fight as a level 12 druid". Everybody pointed out that it's literally not the best option and he got butt hurt. Now he picked one of the simplest builds in the game, on par with the Barbarian (Rage and strike, rage and strike). To try reaffirm his erroneous affirmation while being condesce ding on people who spoke against his assumptions. But oh well.
@@MrGinp wild shaping lol In my game you would be getting tire depending on the animal and you would be making intelligent checks to keep your personality
@@RagingWyvern What's the difference if a week on a horse or a month on foot are skipped over by "you safely reach [insert city name] [insert time] later"
35:03 "the positioning didn't even affect the game 1%" you forgot to mention that the pf2e ranger's longbow is a volley weapon so the rangers attacks with his bow would be at an additional -2. That's a -10% chance to hit on every ranged attack made against an enemy within 30 feet of the archer.
But the wight was already within 30ft. The thing is that the melee range didn't apply any further changes. And I personally feel like there should be a big disadvantage to bringing a bow into a knife fight if the knife is within arm's reach of you versus 15-30ft away.
I do feel in regards to the Age of Ashes adventure path, it needs to be said: The developers did not have the finished rules at the time of writing. Its understandable if the modules as written feel very boring/unfun at times, because they had far less than usual to work with. There's even an encounter in module 5 that the writer even admitted he didn't have any other monster of level available, so he had to make a creative reason for that encounter to even exist. Granted, its kinda an awesome reason, but nonetheless it doesn't mean that it makes it the best decision.
Thats a fair point. I just felt it needed to be said for the sake of the argument is all. Edit: I will add however that given a little more time to let the game grow a bit, some of these issues could be addressed and make the game better. D&D 5E had a similar situation and has since evolved from when it first launched.
@@Jason-ji8ql Considering the example given in the video though, which simply demonstrated basic combat mechanics, nothing has really changed in 5e since its launch. The concept of movement as a resource rather than an action, the performance of the Attack of Opportunity, the way grappling, tripping, and flanking works...those have all been the way they are since launch. More new build options have come out sure, but as far as I'm aware, nothing has changed about the core combat mechanics available to any class. His demonstration proves that in Pathfinder 2e, the class options chosen limit a character's overall effectiveness when applied to the core combat mechanics by a large degree, whereas in DnD 5e, their class build choices when applied to DnD's core combat system, allowed for more versatile and effective choices. TL;DR: I don't think the point of the video was to demonstrate that the module was flawed, but that the flaw lies within the games core combat mechanics and how they interact with character build choices when determining alternative effective options on the part of the player.
@@afilthycasualplays4007 So just to start out everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I think healthy discussions and criticisms are very welcome and healthy for any game. I've been playing 5e for over 8 years now and am currently in both a 5e campaign and a pf2e campaign that we've played through from level 1 to 20 (its actually Age of Ashes, the same campaign as him). I love both of these games but for different reasons. The "example" he gives is just god awful in comparing the 2 systems. It shows 2 things: 1) He has no clue about the rules and structure of pf2e 2) He knows the rules and is just playing ignorant to get the views. Either one is totally fine imo, I know youtube has an algorithm that promotes clickbaity titles, spikes in views, and comments so if I was in his place I doubt I'd do anything different if I don't like pf2e. The problem is I like both. 5e is insanely good at creating a story and allows DM/players to play how they want to in and out of combat by using a great foundation of rules and allowing DMs to build the house. There are a lot of variant rules, houserules are extremely common in every group I've ever played in because they lay down the basics and let the DM decide the flow and pace of the game. CR/Monsters are a very good example of this. Some parties might struggle against one encounter that on paper should be a cakewalk and absolutely destroy a deadly encounter. However, 5e is not super tactics focused so adding and removing monsters to an encounter is super easy to decide on as a DM, you can create tense moments or give your players a sense of accomplishment when they slay the Boss and his underlings run away. It adds a lot to the role play side of the game. On the player combat side of things, martial characters have a foundation of what they can do. Move, Attack, and Class abilities (including Spells)/feats. Within these foundations there are things like Shove, Grapple, AoO, etc. Positioning, buffing/debuffing, limiting/disrupting the enemy's available actions don't really play a pivotal role in an encounter. The system is designed that AoOs aren't that big of a deal in the long run, he even states that in this video in one of the wights options. In 5e combat, those loose rules allow for DMs and players to have "flexibility" and can create some really cool moments. The system is designed with bounded accuracy so a commoner (+2 to attack) can still hit a Pit Fiend (CR 20, 19 AC), it won't do much dmg (avg 2) but they can still hit it. Items boil down to really cool treasure and a sense of accomplishment. You can play through a whole campaign never using a +1 weapon and still come out on top. In pf2e the entire system lays out all the rules, so not just the foundation but the whole building is there. Any action that you want to do has rules and tells you what happens. You and the Monsters you face get 3 Actions. You can get free actions and reactions through feats/abilities/items, that expand on the options you have available but you have to decide what you want to do with your actions. Encounters are built in a way that you know how difficult the encounter is going to be regardless of the actual mosters that are in it. A Severe encounter is going to be a Severe encounter, a Trivial encounter is going to be trivial. They use a level/proficiency focused accuracy system and change how hitting something works, missing by 10 or more is a critical failure and beating the AC by 10 or more is a critical success so +/-1 to hit actually matters. This changes the way the game is played on a fundamental level as tactics become incredibly important in encounters. You (and monsters) only have 3 Actions so positioning and teamwork matter. Melee Monsters getting to attack 3 times a round is actually a big deal as they can actually hit sometimes with the 3rd attack. Knocking a wight prone and grappling them is actually a viable tactic as this allows your Fighter (one of the best crit fishers in pf2e due to their high proficiency) to attack a flat footed target (-2 AC) and most likely critical at least once if not twice. Even if the wight goes before the fighter he has to burn 2 actions just to stand up, by escaping the grapple and actually standing reducing its available actions to 1. Items are incredibly important and pf2e makes encounters built around the fact that your players have at level or lower items. A level 5 ranger would have at the minimum a +1 (lvl 2 rune) striking (lvl 4 rune that adds 1 weapon die) weapon in his "example" so even his basic math is incorrect as the ranger would have a +14 to attack (4 expert prof + 5 level + 4 Dex + 1 item). Thats not the point of his video though I understand as he is talking about the things you can do in combat. In pf2e when you level up your class you get very basic abilities that define the class, e.g. at lvl 1 the Ranger gets Hunt Prey that marks a target and you get bonuses to Seek and Track your prey and Hunters edge that gives you a choice of what you can do against your hunted prey (extra dmg, reduce the penalties on attacking more than once, etc). The other "passives" basically increase your proficiency in areas or add other niche abilities. The other things YOU get to select such as bumping proficiency in a certain skill up to the next level, class feats, skill feats, general feats, and ancestry (race) feats. Ancestry in pf2e actually gives you benefits outside of level 1. For a level 5 ranger you have 12 feats/increases to make not including ability increases. So you have a ton of choices before combat even begins that you can choose from. Now knowing that a +1 to hit is very strong as it equates to an extra 5% to hit/crit there are other options we can use. You can Recall Knowledge as an action which if you pass can give you much needed info on the monster as most of the creatures in pf2e are not just hp punching bags with resistance to non magical damage. They might be weak to something, have resistances, have a really high reflex (dex) save or a low fortitude (con) save, have an aura, or cause debuffs when they hit. Just knowing basic info on the monster helps out the entire party as they know what will have a better chance of working. A wizard knowing a creature has a low will save can use spells that target will or a fighter that knows the monster is weak to slashing dmg can switch weapons. Team tactics and knowledge play a crucial role in combat. You can also Demoralize the monster giving it a -1 to EVERYTHING (attacks, AC, DCs of abilities, saves) or a -2 if it crit fails the save. You can use consumable items to buff yourself or debuff the monster such as special ammunition. You can ready an action to Hunted Shot when the Fighter knocks the wight prone so you're more likely to crit it twice. If you took Medicine feats you can battle medicine a wounded ally, if you took Diplomacy feats you can Bon Mot an enemy to give them a -3(!) to Will saves on a crit success or -2 on a success to aid your spellcaster, if you took Stealth feats you can Sneak, Hide and Hunters Shot so the target is flat footed and gets a -2 to AC. It gives you soooo many options depending on how you built your character that 5e doesn't have. The problem with his "example" is that it looks at pf2e as if it were 5e and its just not 5e. The entire system is completely different so comparing the 2 you'd have to talk about how the way you play each game is different. Not the way he did it by playing pf2e as if it were 5e. Just the fact that the monsters are 30 ft away is a great example as movement actually matters in pf2e so you get less of it to start but can increase it with choices throughout character leveling, with items or a general feat that everyone has access to. I'm not saying he is wrong as literally every TTRPG boils down to move and shoot but his incredibly terrible comparison is very obviously biased and most of his "criticisms" aren't even grounded in the rules of the system. Like I said in the beginning criticisms are very healthy and welcome for any system but they should be actual criticisms not just misunderstanding/ignorance. Like my main issue with pf2e is that you rarely get those moments of "Wow I feel like a boss right now" as almost every encounter is based on your level so you never just get to absolutely destroy monsters. Like we had just fought and killed a dragon and the next town we go to the guards could take on the whole party almost single handedly. There were story reasons of course but it still doesn't feel like thats right. Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions and I'm all for civil discussions about game editions so I don't want you to feel like I'm attacking you or your opinions but this video is just awful and I fear it will drive people away from trying out a different system for no reason. I love both systems! 5e gives you an incredible role play and story with some lite combat and pf2e brings out the tactician in me with its fantastic team play and combat tactics. TLDR: You can't compare 5e and pf2e without talking about how you actually play the different systems and leaving bias out of the conversation. Each system focuses on different things and each has their strengths and weaknesses
I do think, to your point, character building in pathfinder is more rewarding. I think I find the hate for pathfinder 2e is what hurts me. I love the system and the head cannon characters I create with it, but I cannot find anyone to play it with, even as a DM. 5e seems to be the norm, and people (from my own anecdotical experience) don’t want to stray from it.
I honestly don’t recognize the game you’re describing as 2e. It's literally the opposite of my group’s experiences. The genius of 2e is that it gives you the resources to build any character you want, and to continue growing that character every level. If you CHOOSE to build a character that only does one thing really well, it will mean there are not the resources to do another thing equally well too. This is how the game balances the different builds. So, you can CHOOSE to build a PC with a single, very effective “rotation,” but that PC is going to be very flat, and not very versatile. It's going to end up being boring to play, and will have a huge blindspot/weakness somewhere that can be exploited. Or, you CHOOSE to create a versatile character. For example, in our Extinction Curse AP we have a Bard, a Rogue, a Ranger, and an Alchemist. But none of them are built to do one thing, instead they are flexible to cover the needs of the party. For instance, our Alchemist has become our healer and one of our top damage dealers. With his CHOICE of reagents, elixirs…, he can mix up certain things to suit the specific creatures we’re battling. And, he loves tripping things, like maybe too much. Our Rogue has dipped into magic to be able to make herself invisible, or turn into other creatures. As the Bard, I spent the early levels as an in combat healer (usually popping up our rogue), for a few levels I would summon fey creatures specifically CHOSEN to match up well against our foes, and now, she has really come into her own as a full caster and can blast as good as any wizard. At any time, as the situation calls for it, I can easily slip back into one of those roles. The Ranger has also CHOSEN to be balanced between ranged and melee while focusing a lot of her resources on her mount. As a result, in combat, she can CHOSE to ride around and shoot Mongol style, she can charge and have her and her mount attack Cavalier style, or she can do a little of both as the situation changes. Now, because we’ve CHOSEN to built balanced characters, they are not optimized at doing one thing, so we don’t do the same thing over and over again. Instead, they were originally optimized to represent our ideas about who they are as characters. As we’ve progressed through the levels, we’ve CHOSEN to expend our character building resources on fillings gaps in our party, not just getting better and better at whatever our “thing” is. As a result, our party, not our characters, is growing into optimal functionality because of the tremendous CHOICES built into the game. In short, after GMing 100s of session, and playing a character for 40 some more, I find your description of 2e confusing and completely as odds with my experience to an absurd level. If you and your players have CHOSEN to play this game like you described, its only the game’s fault insofar as it gave you the option to do so. CHOOSE differently, and it will be a different game.
@@nickromanthefencer If Trip, Shove, and the rest are never being used by your group just because of MAP, then just remove it. Its a TTRPG, who plays ANY system 100% RAW outside of organized play? And/or use the Hero Points to incentivize solving problems more creatively. Personally, I don't care what he, or anybody else, plays. I just don't like the game misrepresented to the point where it might turn other players off of trying with an open mind, or at all.
@@nickromanthefencer To look at the positive, its generated a lot of response videos and what not that are more balanced. In the end, the "Satanic Panic" actually helped D&D. Maybe this will function similarly for Paizo?
Also just quickly going to mention that for the flaws the system does have, Pathfinder 2e does two things immensely well, that being that you cant just go down and get right back up over and over. That will inevitably get you killed. That and encounter balancing is easy and super well done. Those two caveats alone would keep me from ever playing 5th edition again. It makes the job as a DM really easy. And even with the illusion of choice (that both systems have in different ways) any system that makes prep and my job overall as the DM easier, while offering rules support for the crazy shit my players want to do is going to be my choice.
I never had the pleasure of DMing Pathfinder 2e, but I remember my DM complaining a lot that any time he wanted to know how a monster's abilities work (not monster specific abilities, but abilities that are used by a wide array of creatures), he'd have to reference a glossary of terms because they weren't fleshed out in the stat block of the monster in the Beastiary. For that reason alone, he said he preferred DnD since every monster's ability is explained within the stat block.
@@afilthycasualplays4007 my homies and I come from 3.5 D&D cause I really dont like 5th edition. They killed the tactical aspect of combat imo. So honestly, considering that, pathfinder 2e's conditions are actually a simplification compared to 3.5e's.
I'm sorry but who gives a shit if the encounter is easy to balance if it's boring as hell and you wind up doing the same thing over and over because it's the only choice that isn't garbage.
@@raider363 uhh I mean I haven't ran into that issue with any of my players, and we had that issue in 5th edition on multiple occasions. I dont ever see real "rotations" in my game, nor do my players feel like there is one decent choice. I have players who use the shove/grapple mechanics pretty regularly, and I can actually tell as a DM when an encounter I'm making is going to be their opportunity to be heroes and wipe the floor with the baddies and when it's going to be an epic level encounter. The way you just spoke clearly tells me you dont have a single clue about what the workload going into being a DM is. Any system that makes it clear to judge encounter balance on anything other than previous knowledge or a general knowledge of the rules saves me a lot of time. Plus standardized XP and other things truly make it a breeze. You're talking to the guy who would spend 3 hours per session prepping pathfinder 1e and 3.5e encounters. And while 5th edition is a bit easier than both of those (although their system doesnt work any better) pathfinder 2e has a clear leg up on all of them. And if I can spend 30 minutes rather than 3 hours designing the same encounter, it allows me to spend the rest of those 2 and a half hours working on making unique situations for said encounter, or working on other encounters and plot development. Again I've never had a problem with meaningful choices in combat with pathfinder 2e. And I've ran campaigns to 20. I have had that issue plenty of times with 5th edition and starfinder. And when encounters come down to the wire, or are steamrolled, at least I was expecting that with Pathfinder 2e. I've had tons of fun with my players, and they've been enjoying the shit outta the campaign I'm running, and combat is a heavy focal point in our game. I even brought up Taking20's video with them, and while they all could see what he meant, there wasnt a single person at my table who agreed with him in any major way. You seriously can't argue that balancing encounters being easy is a bad thing. The rest of your point falls flat because I have never experienced what Cody is going through personally.
@@raider363 I think that if your game is boring once initiative is rolled, that's either on the player for never attempting stuff outside the box, or on your DM for making boring encounters.
I do think the exemple in the video spotlight the problem, but to be fair, if i have understood it right, you didn't took in consideration the volley 30 ft trait of the pathfinder longbow. So you would take a 10 percentage point penalty to your hit chance if you fire arrows in melee range with your longbow.
@@redrumssam5888 That's the point. You felt like this with one class in 5e. Cody and his players as well as countless others felt like this with the entire system in PF2.
@@draakgast was this in response to something that's now deleted? Because there's no context for it and is confusing. However this touches on a few different things in principle that I would like to address based on the info that I can infer from this comment. However I would argue against that point. "Realistic" in that sense is more meant as, "logically consistent." AKA its addressing the idea of, "does the magic system operate in a way that is logically consistent with itself?" Which in turn means that the magic system has to be defined to the core for every different type of magic. EX: PF2e has divine spells, arcane spells, psychic spells, and primal spells. Divine spells come from deities to their most devout followers, arcane comes from the individual who studied it or has the innate talent for it, psychic spells come from the mind, and primal spells come from the world (think druid or ranger magic). Where the unrealistic part would come from would be if a druid, since they use primal magic in PF2e, suddenly using an arcane spell without multiclassing. Doing so would be logically inconsistent, and therefore would be unrealistic in the game's lore
@@ThePageTurnerPT fucking hel, I think I klicked the wrong comment to awnser to, cause indeed I make little sence like this😅 . But the context was not about internal consistency, or at all about Magic, I think this was about people doing "realistic things" in an RPG, where that usualy doesn't hold up because of the mechanics, examp Expertise, you can get upwards of 35 when rolling. This does not mean it wil succeed all the time but around 95%(?realistic or not?) and how can we say that going above the DC has to be "realistic" when the only ones that can do it are the ones who more amazing things. I Don't have a problem against realism, I just see so many things I can't compare to IRL because there are no IRL wizards or rouges with "+15" and don't know IF I can even draw a line anymore
I fully agree that martial classes in both games tend to do the same rotations, as it's a fundamental flaw in almost any of the top/mainstre tabletop games on the market. Which would favor D&D as it's a less crunchy system. The thing that brought me to Pathfinder 2e over D&D 5e was more about the options available to create a perfect character that the player enjoys. A table of 5 rangers could all be vastly different from one another when you take into account all the choices during creation, level up, and archetypes(38 unique ones, not including multiclassing). Which is not something D&D does very well in this iteration, as the choices are just minor changes to playstyle and flavor, typically.
Funny thing is...after almost 8 years of playing non stop 5e. I feel this exact way about that system. Eventually you feel like every path leads to the same places, nothing feels new, or refreshing, and then...you jump ship, you go trying other systems, and falling in love again with the hobby. I think that's a valid and great thing to happen to every TTRPG gamer. In fifth, my players do the exact same things in and out of combat, going trough 5 different parties, almost no differences, same niche roles, same quirky little builds. The only solution was a shake up by bringing to the table a different System. Good video Cody, I've watched this 2 years ago when it came out, cheering about how you were joining D&D, you know..."one of us! one of us ♪♫" and now I'm here on the other side going into PF2 because 5e has let me down so much. Hahah that's life for you! Hope you're doing great!
Its very interesting to think about like that. I'm just starting to get into Pathfinder alongside my group which consists of a Meta player, a roleplayer and the friend who just wants to hang. The Meta player actually wants to play Pathfinder over 5e, because in their experience its variety of feat choices compared to subclasses in 5e made it too versatile for them to ever feel forced to play characters a specific way each time. I am super excited to show the roleplayer how varied the choices for fighters are and how they can go absurdly deep into one specific playstyle, or take abilities to be good at a bunch of situations, just not godly
I think anyone saying D&D is much different is wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that PF2e is disappointing, regardless of whether any other system is also unsatisfying or also faces problems (or the same exact problem). It's not "Wellll uhhh DND SUCKZ." It's "Damn this system has a major flaw and I can't get around the fact that my players and I are bored." And then there's the question of... if DND and PF are not options for Fantasy TTRPGs at the moment... What are? (Does Cypher fall into the same trap of optimal choices leading to a doom combat rotation?)
@@OperationBartowski1 Sure, we have a phrase here in Argentina that goes something like "Taking comfort in something that affects many of us is a fool's errand" and yes, the solution is probably looking outside the basic D&D-PF shaped box. Cheers!
@@RollCastPodcast funny the timing of this comment as Matt Colville's latest announcement speaks right to this, instead of creating a DnD clone or fork, create the whole game new from the ground up. It will be interesting to see how it goes, I am excited for them.
Sir, I will start thusly: It is actually refreshing to see someone come to a debate fully armed and ready. Well met. Even if I disagree with you (and I do not in this case), I would hope our discourse would be civil.
I've been playing D&D since I was 18 and I'm 56 now. And you can bet your last dollar that when it comes to a life and death combat situation, I'm going to use the optimal actions that exist. Everyone worth their salt as a player figures out what those are.
As he points out, with the wight in the player's face, and depending on the fighter's hitpoints - they might be different in the 5e scenario. In every PF scenario just shooting is the best option
1) More character ability choices necessarily means either a player will identify the optimum choices (in build and action) OR the designers balanced the choices so well that the choice is meaningless. Lowering or omitting feats, skills, bonuses (and HP) creates a vacuum which the players will fill with creative combats. 2) Increase your magic item variety. Randomize it for best results. If you want different characters for which different choices are optimal, give them tools which point them in a different direction. Do both for best results.
What a class act you are Cody. I dont think I could have exhibited that level of restraint, understanding, empathy and openness in the face of everyone being so dismissive, insulting to your players and just straight up not understanding the point. I hope people now understand how heartbreaking the previous video was for you. More power to you man!
A vast majority of the responses he got were well measured, kind and understanding. The issue remains though, he just makes erroneous claims in both videos.
@@momierxorz I certainly hope you aren't being dismissive of his experience. The exact thing he was talking about. Comments and responses, like deeds, are not a ledger. A good one does not cancel out a bad one.
@@invaderzam I say erroneous because he legitimately omits a ton of skills about the system to make his point about repetitive rotations. His experience, valid as it may be, is not a fault of the system, his players didnt use the wide range of options available that are infact more optimal than the rotation he cites in the video, that he never told them about these options and instead opted to make this video leads me to believe Cody legitimately didnt know about what the system had to offer to solve his very complaint.
I admit, I'm pretty biased toward Pathfinder 2e, though I can recognize the validity of all the points this video presents. I'd love to hear at some point what your analysis is of what underlying choices Paizo made about their game mechanic build that leads to the illusion of choice you describe, and the dilemma faced in combat. Thanks for all your videos, they're always great to watch.
One thing that is a problem of both 5e and Pathfinder2 (unless your DM acepts the more fluid evolution in Tasha's... Kinda) is that the Fighting Style isnt really a choice... It's just a buff to the choice you did in character creation. And you cant really change It afterwards easily. If things were more broad it would be great. Like... Turning "Archery" and "Great Weapon" in something that could be used by most (If not all) Weapons... A +2 to hit or a reroll of damage, for whatever weapon you want. NOW you have actual choices (even if the reroll is theorically worse). Between being more acurate or doing more damage, and two fighters with the same weapon can choose different styles and be slightly more "unique".
It's a character creation thing. If you make the character creation sub-game have more interesting choices, then it makes the table game have fewer interesting choices. The 3e line of games (which I firmly place Pathfinder on) allow players to build character optimisation by specialisation to a much greater degree than any other version of D&D, but, for example, if you've specialised in bows you've chosen to be much less effective with swords as a result. This specialisation makes the character much less effective in combat if they choose to deviate from their specialist weapons, or specialist tactics; and thus it makes any choices they have in combat less real. The option to take a 60% drop in damage output and place yourself in greater danger is not much of an option. I think you could probably design around this by making specialisation give you more options rather than more power, but that's not the path the 3e line took.
@@jbaidley But it might make you more HEROIC, which is the point a lot of people forget. An archer who drops their bow and tackles the Hobgoblin about to stick a dagger in their companion's back may not be doing the optimal thing for their character, but they are acting heroically. Tons of people love to optimize, the problem is all too often they optimize the fun out of the game. At the same time, it is the way people work to be specialized in things, if everyone has a generic bonus that they can switch to whatever option they want to do at the moment, then that's what you end up with, a bunch of bland generic characters. This was the problem of 1st and 2nd edition. By and large a fighter was a fighter. Roleplay whatever differences you wanted too, when it came down to it, your Thac0 was the same as their Thac0
@@albertonishiyama1980 that's why I choose only between Defense, Blindsight and Cantrips. This way I can't feel bad about changing weapons. If I know there will be a lot of enemys in the next fight, I might go with a shield. If I drop too low on hp I can runaway and use a bow.
There are two things I can easily see : first the move as an action. It punishes moving, so it constrains the system very heavily, and it makes using the terrain a lot harder because of the opportunity cost this now gives. Second, the large difference in numeric values for a specialized build vs a non-specialized one : this through balance off. Either you build your character well and it will be very effective in combat, or you don't and you will struggle in combat. But if you have both characters in a group, then the ineffective one will be, indeed, very ineffective and you won't be able to balance the encounters. But if you can make a character ineffective, it means that some of the choices he made were not good. It means that some choices were not options but traps, and when the player knows better, he won't make the same mistakes. This is the illusion of choice : when some available choices should actualy NOT be considered. If there are archtypes and all choices have their niche, good, but then don't allow someone to go away from the archtype. Or you are simply making traps for him. This is why the DND5 system is better *in this regard* : it tells you that if you want to do this kind of character, it's here and you get these specific features. Instead of hiding the archtype in a jungle of feat that you have to carefuly select for it to work well.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I absolutely love that even in Texas, an over the top southern accent is used to represent someone saying something irrational.
@@skillganon606 An understandable opinion, but I might have felt the need to make a follow up to defend myself and especially my players too if i were him. I'm not disagreeing with you, just giving a probable reason.
I don't care about all the math and whatever but the thing I can't wrap my head around is if the players did the optimal thing all the time and then they TPK'd then how were those things optimal? The best and most favorable decisions led to all the characters dying doesn't connect for me.
My only issue with the criticism is that 5th Edition is no better. I'm always going to do what's more viable in the moment. The limitation in 5th Edition as to what you can do gives an illusion of urgency. As a Drow Sorlock...better believe my standard action set is to Quickened Darkness into a Booming Blade. Or if there's nothing within 35 feet I'm probably throwing an Eldritch Blast at them. I don't have any special things to use in 5E that gives more flavor, it doesn't have the customization that I feel PF2E has, though I haven't played PF2E. My familiarity before my first 5E game was playing KotOR and reading it's closest similarity - Star Wars Saga Edition, which was based of 3.5E. The lack of choice in character building in 5E drives me up a goddamn wall. If you're not multiclassing you have no choice beyond the first choice you make in the campaign. I'm not saying that PF2E is perfect. Both systems have very clear flaws. I don't like PF2Es spell setup. I especially don't like the Core Rulebook layout. But I don't like 5E Character Creation either. Neither of them have the SciFi theme that I prefer to Fantasy. ...it sounds like I really just need to play Starfinder. Edit: To clarify. I think you, Cody, have the right to your opinion in the matter. Your opinion being, as my takeaway from the last video, that 5E has the same problems but if you have to play two things with the same problems you'd rather play the one that's simpler. That is not my opinion. I would rather play the one that gives me more choices to expand my character in a direction outside of their core identity. But I can respect your opinion. I just don't share it.
The options are nice in PF2, he pretty much ignores the 10 or so options the player can make to make the character more fun though. I haven't played Starfinder, it had such mixed thoughts. There were a few players I played with at PFS that absolutely loved it though so maybe you would like that too.
I definitely have a lot of options playing the beastmaster archetype. I have more an ideal set of attacks but I have to move a lot, I use medicine to heal my party, and I have two different beasts that each play differently depending on which I’m using when an encounter starts. I want to play a beastmaster in DND but comparing the two I’d say pathfinder gives me more options for this subclass. At the very least my beast gets an extra attack. DND offers rangers in general more magic spells so that would add some variety. Idk how you’d play any character in any system and not come upon an optimized sequence of attacks
Not sure about pathfinder, but in 5e, the ranger doesn't have to go prone to grapple the wight, so wight gets disadvantage to attack, and both fighter and ranger get advantage, until the grapple is broken... I have to assume the prone part was for flavour?
Because they take those critics too personaly. Any attack made against their favorite system is, in their mind, directly directed at them. (that works with movie, books, shows,...)
Exactly! I mean, I'm not a *huge* fan of PF2, but I'll run it or play in it and probably have fun. More importantly, I'll probably use pieces of it in other games. I think one of the best things that *any* DM can do is sit down and read a bunch of different systems. There's a lot of great ideas and systems out there, all of which do some things really well, and other things not so well.
Because his previous video criticizing wasn’t well thought-out. It’s also a tiny bit strange to make a big stink over quitting it when he literally only had 3 videos for it previously, one of which was a direct comparison to 5e and the other was just a playtest announcement.
@@OakenTome To be clear, YOU don't think it was well thought out. You have only provided evidence of an opinion here. He is only criticizing the combat system, and nothing else.
Yoooo dude so I get that D&D 5e is your bag here, but the Out of Combat Crunch with In Combat Streamlining makes Pathfinder 2e sound like a really good system and I love this because frankly I feel like I always get the most value out of listening to people talk bad on a system and then processing those criticisms. Mind you your first video also made me look more favorably at D&D 5e (I havent played since Pathfinder 1e) but yeah this one makes P2 sound pretty nice.
So he said in his first video of this he was always a pathfinder fan boy so this isn't coming from a place of loving dnd over pathfinder it's coming from a place of disappointment. He was hoping for a system that would give players true choice, but he kept finding out there was none inside of combat. Outside of combat both games have their moments of great roleplay, but both games have their flaws, in dnd it has the same build the best combat driven character but it allows for more choices in how you do that damage
@@michaeldoyle9354 Yeah I am generally a World of Darkness player so I dont really enjoy Combat overmuch anyways. I prefer mechanics that skew more towards allowing more RP/Narrative elements to them which can mean adding crunch to Out of Combat stuff.
"When given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." There will always be a best way to maximize damage every turn in every single TTRPG that has ever been made or will be made. As a player, resist the urge to do that. You will enjoy this hobby so much more. Simple as.
I'm new to PathFinder 2e, just this year i started. I have played alot of 5e. And i greatly prefer PF2e. To me 5e (as a system) is kinda boring and no where near as good as PF2e.
There is a great Mark Rosewater lecture on all the lessons he's learned designing for magic the gathering and the one that jumps out here is that the way for a player to have fun should be the most optimal thing to do in a game. To say that a player can have more fun by doing unoptimal actions is absolving yourself of guilt of making an unfun game because the player plays the game with the belief that the actions the game designer wants them to make are the actions that will lead to the most fun. You should make the most optimal way to play your game the most fun because otherwise you're punishing your players for being smart.
With the OGL situation, I am looking into PF2e for the first time and watched your two ‘not for me’ vids. The late point in this vid was you rather come up with your own way of dealing with unusual circumstances instead of having to hunt down a crunchy rule that has been published. To each their own. I will say, not knowing PF2e at all, that for DnD, I played Adventures League almost exclusively. For universal understanding of rules, the more crunch there is, the better I am able to plan out my actions, both in and out of combat. As far as combat being a repeat of rotations, I can see that, but I’ve also experienced the same thing in DnD, Star Wars, & L5R. All systems, that I know of, lead players down an optimum path straight from character generation. A player picks a race/heritage = synergies with somethings and not others, the player picks a class = further restricts the tricks a player has in their bag. Background? Tighter. Level choices, then the players are locked into a single repetitive “choice” to produce the best chance for success both in and out of combat. As far as your example goes, my first question is; why not gang up on the target in melee? Depending on the success of the Rangers main attack, and if the melee can likely finish it off, I would think the third action is to move out of single move action range of the free mob, so the choice the GM has is to two action attack the melee PC, presumably more difficult, or single attack the Ranger. Thank you for your thoughts and your work in producing content to aid the community.
The weird thing to me is, that either he has a totally wrong rule understanding or pathfinder 2 rules have changed significantly in every area. At least that he is wrong on the damage calculation already in this video is pretty obvious.
@@js3093 The calcs on damage seemed reasonable for the point, ranged “should” do ranged attacks, to do otherwise means less damage to win the combat. The one example of the 5e Ranger doing more damage, to me, exposed them to far worse damage from being flanked by the free melee, so not a good trade off. I saw another criticism vid where the OP was saying PF2e makes super heroes and not characters. This matches the rotation thing easily, for me as an outsider, because as people synergize, when there is a substantial threat, players will be less inclined to make sub optimal choices.
@@jvoodoochild2755 I wrote another comment on the topic recently. To give a short summary: The ranger has quickdraw as written by himself. Quickdraw let´s you draw and slash with the same action. So the Ranger could actually do Hunt prey, stride, quickdraw. The first attack has the best chance to hit and a precision ranger is all about getting that first good hit in because the damage from this hunters edge only get´s activated once a turn. Which is just one of many mistakes that he made in this video along with ignoring skill feats, proper equipment (longbow get a penalty in this room etc.), not at all factoring in any abilities of the fighter etc. All in all he has made a good couple of mistakes in the rules themselves and ignores a good amount of possible options that he just leaves out which is pretty disingenuous.
@@trashpanda5869 Yeah pretty much. Pathfinder and D&D are no place to make a pacifist character because the entire game is basically fighting crap. Really if you want to play either game you need to really like the combat system. If you don't, you should find a different RPG.
@@taragnor It could be interesting to make a pacifist character if they have a hidden personality that's a combat savant. Like a jekyll and hyde, but they have to roll for which personality is going to take over at the beginning of combat.
Interestingly, the illusion of choice could also be reinterpreted as specialist paths for a more neutral take. In Pf2e it is far easier to make a strong specialist character without any specific min-maxing, than I hear it is in 5e. There also are not really any solo game breakers available to be had - the system/math is very tight on that. Only teams can build those. And agreeing with you on the logic, that whatever path you start stepping down on - that will be your path. Pathfinder does allow for great variety of specialists that do act quite differently in combat - but I do agree that they easily fall into loops. For some that's fine, for some it's not. What really is challenging me positively is to create a more generalist and variable character that can still be incredibly useful in combat with lots of options. Generally that involves the archetypes (aka multiclassing). Though the one thing I really agree with you with few qualifiers is that the alternative actions like Trip, Grab etc are useful only occasionally. Not completely, but by the melee characters more often than not. Shove being the only exception. Trip only seems to work for a whip wielding caster who rolls well from 10ft back. If you specialize in these, then they may be more viable. But prolly not :)
Yup being able to specialize is what make PF2 fun imo. 5e your character is pretty much just a few options and your are "good" at everything and slightly better at one style. PF2 you get to choose to be good at whatever you want. I also feel as you mention archetypes make the options so much better. Out of all the actions in 2e I am unsure why he chose athletics when he could have fit in the other skill actions in his "rotation".
One issue with Shove trip and grab is that in Pathfinder 2nd you get worse at these as you level op unless you make a lot of investments in the skills needed. So if you find yourself in a encounter at later level where these would be a good option you no longer can just switch to them.
@@edwinsuijkerbuijk5106 Yes but once you get higher levels you should have plenty of Ancestry/Class Feats that increase your options even more. Since pretty much every martial can keep getting new actions for combat.
Ideally, every kind of specialist would have a variety of viable tactics for different situations. If you specialize to the point of repeating action sequences, there's something wrong with the design.
PF2e requires much more planning than 5e. A lot of feats you take early may seem weak early on, but by the time you hit higher levels having them creates combos with other options. So what might be optimal at level 2 might end up being pretty suboptimal by level 6. There are _a lot_ of feats and all of them are viable and many open up combos with other players. If your laser focused on whats best right now for you at this moment, you're probably not going to have fun. I say this because both your video and Puffin Forrest's are the reason I avoided going to PF2e when 5e started feeling pretty stale. You want to talk about lack of choice? If someone tells you they're playing a druid in 5e, you know theres a very good chance they're circle of the moon and you can probably list have of their spells off the top of your head. I ran a full 1-20 level campaign in 5e with the same group I'm not running a PF2e game that we've almost finished and while I greatly preferred PF2e as a GM since I no longer have to fight 5e's CR system, I took a vote to see which my players would rafher play going forward, and they unanimously picked PF2e, with the primary reasons being the tree action economy that sped everything up, and the sheer amount of options available. There's plenty of stuff you can do depending on how you build your character. Yeah, if you for some reason build your character so it only has three viable options, you'll be.doing the same things over and over. But if you find yourself in that position, you've done it to yourself.
i like this take i think regarding feat planning it should also be mentioned that even if you mess up it either isnt all that bad as you still have your classes core features or you could use the core retraining rules and a bit of downtime to improve your skill combos
If your players are making the same exact actions each combat then it sounds like your combats are built in a way that the same exact actions resolve them, aka your combats are all the same.
don't understand why everyone was/is so mad at him for saying he doesn't like Pathfinder 2e. Like he isn't allowed to not like it. It's ridiculous. People are allowed to not like things, grow up.
I've left PF2E online groups because they just turned into a bash-Cody-fest. There's really no need to get so vicious because one guy said his opinion.
@@the-wisest-emu luckily the group I'm in wasn't that bad. There was a bit of negative comments when the video dropped but that was it. Idk, this whole I hate you because you disagree with me in today's society is just poisoning everything
@@uncreative_account so true! Civil discussion doesn't seem to be an option for people anymore. (Oh, and just so I'm clear, I haven't left any game groups, just Facebook pages)
It's because he always makes the mistake of getting defensive and arguing with every piece of feedback he gets instead of just ignoring it. In most of his videos, he spends more time pissing and moaning about commenters than actually making the point he's trying to make.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but people were the same level of rude to him that he was to the system and in this video. Not saying that his critique was invalid or that I hated the first video(I liked it), but his critique of the system was harsh. Thus, he inevitably got a lot of harsh feedback. He spent the entire first section of this video simply bashing the arguments that these people made. He also didn't consider the main point most of them made which is that EVERY RPG has this problem. HE EVEN ADMITTED TO THAT IN THE FIRST FUCKING VIDEO! Yet, he was somehow still angry when people criticized him for his double standard. He even got mad when someone tried to criticize the writers. Like, not him, the WRITERS! It was a valid point that he simply disregarded because it didn't agree with him. This video honestly feels more like a complaint against the people who disagreed with him than an actual argument defending his position...
Hey, Hunt Prey bonuses still apply whether you're using melee or ranged, so Option 2 for the PF2 ranger will add a wee bit of damage. A longbow have a volley property, meaning anybody within 3o ft will have a penalty of -2 to attack.
Hunt Pray: You designate a single creature as your prey and focus your attacks against that creature. You must be able to see or hear the prey, or you must be tracking the prey during exploration. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks when you Seek your prey and a +2 circumstance bonus to Survival checks when you Track your prey. You also ignore the penalty for making ranged attacks within your second range increment against the prey you’re hunting. You can have only one creature designated as your prey at a time. If you use Hunt Prey against a creature when you already have a creature designated, the prior creature loses the designation and the new prey gains the designation. Your designation lasts until your next daily preparations. This do nothing for melee attack : "You also ignore the penalty for making ranged attacks within your second range increment against the prey you’re hunting. "
@@patrickhebert8918 Think they meant the Hunter's Edge, which is what gets applied vs hunted targets. Wrong specific rule, right idea. You'd have read that if you were less obsessed with your "gotcha."
@@malkyn9998 No obsession at all , I just show the text for the Hunt pay, but you may have raison about "Wrong specific rule, right idea", English is not my language, I may have miss read ;) Have good day. :D
@@patrickhebert8918 Fair enough, I can see a Google turning up the wrong rule and being confused. Sorry, I took you for misleading, given all the knife fighting taking place in these comments.
Lol It's crazy how the world of TTRPGs has changed so much. It wasn't long ago players loved complexity and crunch. Now the trendy style is more like improv theater where someone threw out a few rules before the director says "go!" To each their own. I think the people paying attention to videos like this, and the responses that followed, are a lot of times the type of people who are just looking for verification they are playing the "right" game. Everyone else is just happy being with their friends playing the game they enjoy. My experience with 2E has been nothing but fun and it's ok if others have a different experience. I for one was always bored with my experiences with 5E and that is ok to. Live and let live people. That reminds me...I never really watched opinion pieces or youtubers that much before the hubbub of all of this "controversy"...and I'd be willing to bet I was happier before doing so...I think I'm going to get back to doing just that.
I actually welcome the improv theatre aspect for the most part. As awesome as many of the combat mechanics are, things like grappling just aren't mechanically viable, so removing them mechanically and having the GM wing it on a case by case basis would lead to higher player satisfaction.
Why not use hunters edge in the second option for melee and use a single strike? Precision applies to any attack that round and it's a straight die and better chance to confirm the damage? Still slightly less damage than the 5e ranger melee option, but not as drastic as presented.
There is a penalty to shoot a Longbow at a creature within 30 feet because of the Volley trait. BTW why wouldn't the shortsword deal the precision damage? Precision edge only says the first time you hit a hunted target in a round.
As a player I sometimes struggle between optimal or fun, fun usually wins out. Example: I was in a situation where a goblin had dropped from the roof and landed on my back and started stabbing me. Optimal choice was to take my sword out and stab at it, instead I chose to grapple the goblin back and attempt to use it to club the other goblin to death with it, I won the grapple but failed to use it as an improvised club.
Back when I played 1st edition, my fighter’s optimal action was “hit it with my sword”. You hoped that hou rolled a good strenth score, and found a good magical sword. But it was basically the same thing every combat because the combats only offered that opportunity.
I think it's like that with every fighter in every system, because let's be real, if you have a sword and know how to use it and you need to fight a monters to the death, why the hell would you do anything but hit it with the sword? It's a no brainer to me. You have a weapon, you kill the monster with the weapon. If you have a chandelier to swing on, a boulder to roll on the enemy, or some other kind of trap, great, but otherwise, your best chance at survival is to murder the monster and that's just it.
I think that's just it. It's only combat what else should a fighter do but swing and hit. Sure you can do some other trick moves but that's it. I think what this guy and others miss is that's it's a roleplaying game. If all you do is combat then your playing a skirmish game.
Trip, barge, overrun their position, disarm, shine sunlight into your opponent’s eyes to blind them, throw dirt in their face, choke, arenust a few tactics that co e to mind. Why would you use them? Well if your opponant was better, stronger or more numerous than you (or your party) you might need to pull some trick to save yourself from getting wrecked.
@@haveswordwilltravel That was sort of my point. If you want to boil it down to optimizing for combat damage then it's no different then swing and hit. Options at least lead to a more narrative combat that you can change up a situation.
I, personally, have never played PF 2e, but I really do feel a lot of what you said about it in tabletop as a whole. In my experience with PF 1e and D&D 5e, I've seen the same kind of thing break down. Unless you're playing a toolbox caster, you really just end up specializing in 1 single thing and doing only that. What do rogues in 5e do? They generally spend their bonus action getting advantage on their attack, then attacking for sneak attack. What do PF 1e rogues do? Well, they have a few more options than 5e rogues, but it all boils down to essentially the same thing: find a way to apply sneak attack as many times as possible. Honestly, I'd say that the most varied class outside of a toolbox caster in PF 1e that I have personally played is Fighter or Brawler, as they both allow you to take so many feats to dip into various different combat abilities that they kinda feel like a toolbox caster, themselves. I really do feel the illusion of choice, though. It's present everywhere, unfortunately. The one game that I've played that really doesn't feel like there's any illusion of choice at all, though, is Lancer. Lancer is a sci-fi mech combat tabletop game built off of the shell of D&D 4e, and I love the system to death.
Thanks for making this video, Taking20! I'll admit I dismissed your first video. I blamed your encounter design, I didn't see how switching to 5E would solve anything, etc. But I'm really glad I watched this because you pretty thoroughly dismantled those counterarguments, provided more concrete evidence, and, I think most importantly, illustrated how reactions exactly like mine affected you personally. I'm going to be taking a closer look at PF2E and how it contributes to the campaign I'm running with it right now, and hopefully I'm also going to be more careful about assuming my gut reactions are more valid than others' experiences.
What are you talking about? The biggest genuine point that he made was that not letting most monsters have AoOs made strategy not as good, while using the homebrew rule of flanking as his direct comparison. If he’s using home brew like that, it’s not unreasonable to suggest a slight homebrew tweak to fix his complaints.
I dislike this line of thinking. I paid good money for a game, maybe I just want to be able to play it in a way thats fun? Sure, I wish it was 'better' on its own, but uh.. quality of game is subjective, formed from consensus of opinion, and some people like stuff that I hate, or hate stuff that I like, so tweaking a game to better resemble what I like, while using the content I enjoy is a great way to get value from a book I otherwise cant stand. AKA: Yes, you can just homebrew all the bad away and there is nothing wrong with it. ..but I suppose people using that as an excuse to never switch systems can be a bit uh.. Hmm. ok yeah, Maybe your right after all.
Long story, short. The PF2 Emperor has no clothes. Pathfinder First Edition is still my favorite edition in forty years of playing. Thanks for the video. Your opinion is well-informed and right on the money.
You are mistaken on the 5e grapple rules. There is no language that states that the ranger needs to be prone to grapple a prone creature. All that is required is ONE free hand and that they are within your reach. As written, the ranger would not be prone, and, as the one wight is prone, that prone wight would also have disadvantage on its attacks against the players ON TOP of the players getting advantage on their attacks on the prone wight.
Since this is a very specific thing the Pathfinder ranger actually does have a choice you are neglecting. Repositioning, an act that happens very rarely in 5E dnd due to how the "Disengage" action eats your main action. If the Ranger takes the stride action they can escape the clutches of the wight and move back to back with their fighter to avoid flank. This sacrifices their third attack at the -10 penalty however it prevents flanking of the wights, allows the ranger and fighter to be close to potentially activate feats and will force the wight to take the stride action and lose one of it's own attacks giving an equal trade of action economy. OR the ranger could run passed the fighter so if the wight followed it would be provoking an attack of opportunity that the fighter gets at first level ensuring their own safety while still getting their two strongest attacks off. Or if they have a decent athletics attempt to trip, stride and then strike so that in order to get in the Wight would have to take the "Stand" and "Stride" actions reducing it to one attack while still plunking an arrow into it with a risk of rolling a critical failure and ending up prone.
This is actually a good example of why I love 2e, when the Wight walks up to the Ranger the Ranger actually has at least 5 equally viable option not using skill feats well 5e doesn't. I really think he was just trying to make 2e look as bad as possible with the attack of opportunity thing. I have some inspiration so I wanted to give examples... If the monster walks up to the Ranger then their turn can be.... -Shoot 4 times (I am pretty sure this is the worst option actually) -Trip the Wight > Hunted Shot > Move to provide flanking for the Fighter (This does decent damage and gives great defense while buffing the Fighter's Damage, I would have done this most likely) -Shoot 3 times > Move to provide flanking for the Fighter (This doesn't provide good defense but ads a little more damage) -Move to provide flanking for the Fighter > Trip the Wight in front of the fighter > Hunted Shot other Wight (This would give the Fighter an attack of oppurtunity most likely. -Move twice > hunted shot (This would be good if you were on like 5 hp, I see players actually sit there in front of monsters at 20% health) Those imo are all viable options not even taking into account the other 10+ skill options he could have had. The best part each option could potentially be good based on the circumstance.
Still not sure how any of that would have mattered. The bow was clearly the best option by a mile. You're getting lost in the weeds and missing the big picture.
@@taragnor The bow is good but you can combine the other things mentioned for interesting turns. There were 5 good options that I listed. It isn't an either or thing you can use all those combinations with a bow. If you weren't aware you still provide flanking with a bow. Luckily PF2 has a lot more than doing as much damage as possible! Also tripping an enemy gives the fighter an opportunity attack so it can be really good.
@@taragnor The bow was the best option when looking at it as an isolated one turn example and if you focus soley on that turn's damage given and care very little for damage taken but battles are multiple turns stacked upon one another where damage carries over from battle to battle. If the ranger just stands and shoots they risk taking unnecessary damage and therefor expending unnecessary resources both in terms of hitpoints and healing items. So taken in terms of a battle or dungeon crawl positioning can be more important than a single round due to the multiple rounds of bonuses you can eek out of it.
@@youtubenoremac3314 A lot of good points! These options are the sort that get me excited to run PF2E as all my D&D 5E games fell into the pattern of "Move to attack enemy, attack enemy, end turn, attack enemy until dead" while Pathfinder 2E just, has more options for both tactics in combat and roleplay in combat through it's mechanics.
The example combat given is fair enough but to be honest it really shows an opposite problem I personally have with D&D5e where the choices you make feel like they don't matter as much even though you built the character to be an excellent archer doing the whole archer thing isn't really much better than your other options in combat which are why I feel like my choices don't really matter. Lets change the class here because ranger is a class about choosing a particular fighting style and probably by design narrows itself what if we made the example class from PF2E be an Alchemist bomber now of course the thing you want to do is throw bombs at the wight obviously but whats not so obvious what bombs should you throw? Well alchemist fire does the most upfront damage at this level being 2d8+4 against a single target so you could throw 3 of those at the one target or you could throw them at the ground and do 6 damage to both Wights, but hold on if you're looking for efficient damage then maybe you want throw an acid flask in place of one of those fires because different sources of persistent damage stack unlike throwing all fire which would effectively throw away 2 damage on additional hits. But WAIT A MINUTE your bombs don't just do damage maybe your alchemist really doesn't want to take damage you could throw a tangle foot bag in place of one of those possibly forcing the wight to spend its turn freeing itself but also guaranteeing the -15 move speed penalty means even if its not stuck to the ground it can't move fast enough to attack the alchemist on its next turn and things get more complex when you also consider the other bombs bottled lightning, frost vials, and thunderstones! And this is just the obvious/most likely choice not to mention you could also take the same alternate actions as the ranger did OR we haven't considered the possibilties of what else the alchemist has for prepared items or even what they could make on the fly with quick alchemy for that turn. (And yes if you make another kind of follow up you may single my comment out)
We had the same problem in our 5e game. Our Warlock made an Hexblade to be a melee warlock, bu the best course of action was to just stay behind and use Eldritch Blast. So, he made a bunch of choices to go melee and still played like any other warlock because his choices didn't make a difference at all.
@@MrGinp This is a pretty niche example, warlock reliance on eldritch blast is a known issue in 5e. That said you can still make a very effective warlock without eldritch blast, you can just make a hexblade and not take that cantrip and still do great. The point isn't that there IS a most optimal choice, it's about the DIFFERENCE between the most optimal and the other choices. In pf2 the difference is so much that it's not really a "choice", whereas in 5e the difference isn't really that bad. Like sure eldritch blast is the Bestest™ choice ever, but the next best choice is still playable. Even the Ranger which everybody says is "So horrible" still gets played a decent amount.
I mean, that's not a very fair comparison. You're choosing a class in PF2 that does not have a direct analog in 5e, so it's technically not comparable. The closest would be an artificier. But ultimately, the comparison in the video is primarily about how the martial characters tend to get pigeonholed into having rotations or lacking options that feel good, not casters or semi-casters who have always had far more options in how they approach an encounter. And, let's be honest, an alchemist is a semi-caster.
@@WeShallLoveOn I don't get your point. How is any of the systems diferent in those aspects. In 5e if I make a Fighter to go into melee with Sword'n'Board he's going to be useless with a bow. In PF2e if I make a Fighter to go into melee with Sword'n'Board he's going to be useless with a bow. The only niche example is 5e character who use DEX. In that case you can also build character in PF2e that go into melee and ranged without losing much. Your logic makes no sense at all. It's like you don't know enough about one of the systems.
@@MrGinp you gave an example of a warlock. I said your example(the warlock) was niche and explained why. That's it. You seem to be arguing with the points made in the video. I'm not gonna write out the whole script of the video but the entire thing is about how the systems are different once you get into combat NOT character creation, which is what you are talking about with your "if I make a str character they'll be garbage with a bow" argument. That's not what the video is talking about. He mentions that multiple times.
Interestingly the responses I saw, and admittedly the parts I agreed with, were saying that the groups who played that game would not roleplay. I admittedly don't have a problem with illusion of choice. Admittedly, as a Pathfinder 1e player, I like being able to choose what I'm good at. You always have the right to play you game you want to play. Different systems for different folks. I am just floored that people decided to go after your players for your video. What a shitty thing for people to do. Thank you for so much awesome content. I look forward to more.
@Urban Development I have tried playing 4e. I actually bought the core books right as it came out and only really got to play it once because anyone else I tried to get to play it found it "too much like an mmo". I do sometimes wish I had been able to give it more of a chance. I did like that you were making a choice about your character every level. I did like that there were ways for martial characters to control the battlefield more. I do think that Pathfinder 1e ended up suiting my needs better, but I would point people to look at 4e if they want more crunch than 5e. It got way too much hate.
The "Breakdown" is done in bad faith. The placements of the characters are done so that it's really disadvantageous to switch(has to use two actions to flank / doesn't start with enemy coming into your melee etc.) The weapon he chooses ( rapier has much better damage for instance, he talks about the versatile trait but the bow can't do slashing and he doesn't have an enemy who has resistance to piercing to justify the use of his versatile weapon in his breakdown ). He ignores the volley trait of the bow. He starts with the bow out and not the melee weapon. He misrepresents the mark and how it needs to be used. He ignores the STR damage you get to add to your melee attacks. He uses a grapple action which doesn't effect the *to hit* on a damage per turn breakdown. He doesn't account in the following turns and how they would be affected by the actions taken. It just feels like a terrible experiment done by a corrupt scientist to prove a point he wanted to prove without fair comparison. NOT to mention you go into a one-dimentional * I WANT A BOW BUILD * , more often than not, using it will be a little better than the melee option. ( Which is good balancing btw ) Very disappointed in his tone and this so-called side-by-side mechanical comparison.
So alraedy a lot of things are wrong with your fighter + ranger vs 2 wights. 1. Quickdraw and Huntersedge: If the Ranger has quick draw then you draw and strike with the same Action. So the Ranger would Hunter Edge, Stride, Quickdraw Resulting in 1 Attack with the full potential precision damage. 2. Longbow: Longbow has the Volley 30ft trait meaning the ranger would have a -2 penalty on every wight in this room with his longbow. 3. Attack of opporunity: Assuming the dwarf had a shortbow. Instead of shooting a third incredibly unlikely shot you could instead move to the right, this forces the wight to either take a longer way to you or risk getting slapped by the fighters attack of opportunity. Which would force the wight to 1 waste 2 actions to move or take an attack from the fighter. b be forced to leave you alone and attack the fighter who might be tank focused. 4. Skill Feats are completely ignored: A level 5 Ranger could easily have expert prof athletics with assurance in athletics giving him an automatic 19 which lets him autosucceed at tripping the wight. Making him prone for his own follow up attack and the fighter. Assurance also ignores MAP making it very easily a strong option against lower leveled mobs like these. 5. Shooting a bow in melee: Wrong again, shooting someone in melee with a ranged weapon takes a -4 penalty.
Once combat is initiated, doesn't every system have an optimal mechanic move set? Wouldn't most people naturally move towards the optimal set of moves as the learned what works? Pathfinder, DnD, call of cthulhu, etc etc. I feel like every system has some "best used when" options, right?
"Players did the best thing possible" So in a combat situation (I know, tabletop combat, but work with me here) Out of all the things they could do, the players did the optimal action(s) to defeat the enemy. In other words, common sense. I was a tank commander in the desert. When facing an enemy tank I could 1. Fire my machine guns at it, hoping to hit something and cause it to explode (not ever going to happen outside of bad movies) 2. Try to get my tank to take off and fly behind the enemy, ambushing him (Never tried it, and the reasons why should be obvious) Or 3. Give the command "Gunner, Sabot, Tank" and put a round moving at a mile a second through my target, killing the crew and hopefully setting off the vehicle ammo supply. Which do you think I did for multiple engagements, and live to ask this question?
Totally correct. But in real life you do the same thing over and over to stay alive. In a game you are trying to have fun, and doing the same thing when your life is not on the thread slowly becomes boring
@@koorssgamer YOu are in a game playing a CHARACTER who wants to stay alive. Unless you play Leroy Jenkins, you might want to try and be reasonable according to your int and wis stats in action. And there really isn't a reason for your ranger, who really only has ranged abilities, to threaten his friends and run into melee. Now there might be a reason why your ranger, who has also some melee abilities, to run in and help his friends. And that is what the DnD 5e ranger seems to have more. And I think that was his point. If you really want to have fun, but still have a little bit of RPG, you might want to have a game with more viable options, so your WISE ranger, doesn't have to behave like an uncharacteristic imbecile for 'fun'.
@@RiesenWuschel honestly, I don't got your point. I wasn't talking about doing something dumb, Just for fun. For me, at least, this isn't fun. He was saying that in real life you don't have much options in combat, you point your gun and go pow pow until the other guy in dead, and there is no problem with that. And I was replying that this is a game, in real life is do or die, so your don't have time to complaint about it being boring, but in a game fun and variety is important. I wasn't saying that your character isn't fighting for his life, so you can go nuts and do dumb shit. I was just saying that a game designer should make more reseanobles choices for you to make, to avoid becoming boring. In the video examples, the rangers do almost the same damage ranged or melee, so, in the roleplay side, you can say that he is as effective lethal with one as the other. So, my high Wis character knows that the two choices are good ideas, and I, the players, can have fun choosing what I want to do. To be clear, I'm not defending either system here, but I just find dumb that a caster can choose between 10 spells each turn, and a pure marcial class can only press the Atack button
The upside of the crunch is the ability to build an interesting character. 5e feels stifling in that it feels like there's very little choice in character build, outside of which class and subclass you pick. Especially for martial characters.
I drastically disagree. The Background allows for huge variety if used properly. You can have two Champion Fighters play completely differently by the choice of background. Is one an urchin who knows the alleys to the best clubs or hide outs? Is one a noble who is adventuring to bring honor to his name? Is one a guild artisan who got tired of making barrels. Your imagination isn’t stifled in 5E, unless you are ignoring all the tools at your disposal.
@@Mauricekaip There are no difference in the battle. You choose your class and archetype and you have no more decision points. You could take a feat at cost of your chances to hit. But that's all your class customisation.
@@chetori__ I disagree. Roleplay and lore are just as important as combat. The skills and the features of every class allow for more flavor for the character, if you choose to bite into it. The ask of 5E is that you use your imagination and you meet it half way. Has your fighter focused his abilities and honed himself to surpass his master? Battle master Has your barbarian been a noble who first felt their rage when their family was assassinated? Ancestral Guardian. Each subclass and class have something intense and vibrate to offer and to chew on. And all you need to do is look at more then just: “What can I do in this round of combat?” Most combats last about a minute in game. What are you doing for the rest of it? Why aren’t you digging into the lore of your feats and skills and powers to enhance your game instead of hand waving it?
One thing I would like to add: On the next round of combat for the 5e ranger in their scenario, if they have a second weapon and begin dual-wielding, they get an extra d6 or d4, depending on if they are using a dagger or shortsword. If they don't lose concentration on Hunter's Mark, they also have that extra d6 for every attack. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
I think he was going by RAW and started with his Bow drawn so he couldn't swap to two weapons as a free action. If he had the Ranger drop his bow and pull out two weapons and attack I'm sure the number of "well, actually....you can't do that" pendantic comments would have drowned out any real conversation.
@@andrewshandle I was actually thinking if the ranger was super big brain, they would use their bonus for hunter's mark, attack action to attack twice, then while moving behind the fighter to prevent flanking he could use a free action to drop the bow and an item interaction to draw 1 sword, letting him two-weapon fight on his next turn.
In 5e, 10 Str and proficiency in Athletics would give the 5th Level Ranger a +3 to Strength (Athletics), which is a fair shot to trip/grapple a Wight who has a +2 to that check. That same Ranger in PF2e - let's also assume basic proficiency and 10 Str - has a +7 to Athletics (+2 proficiency +5 level +0 Str mod) vs. a Reflex DC of 16 on a Wight. So roughly, in both systems, they have the same odds. The difference is that in PF2e, there's a 10% chance for a critical success (netting you +1d6 bludgeoning damage) but also a 5% chance to critically fail (means you get knocked prone instead. So for either game, it should be a fair chance to work.
@@fadeleaf845 Three things. First: D&D 5e with proficiency 53% Pathfinder 2e With proficiency 5% crit fail, 60% Succeed and 10% to crit. D&D 5e without proficiency 38% Pathfinder 2e Without proficiency 30% crit fail, 25% Succeed and 5% to crit. Numbers are similar but the Pathfinder 2e has higher change. Second: D&D 5e Grapple is stronger. It wont end unless something ends it. You can also move grappled targets. Not only that but you can't crit fail so no negative on fail. To end Grapple 1) you can use your action to end it which is another check. 2) Use way to push either one of you out side of the grapple reach which is 5ft usually. 3) The Grappler just let go. 4) You use spell. Like Command "Release" or just Misty Step works fine. 5) You knock them unconscious like dropping them to 0hp. Third: D&D 5e Grapple & shove is easy to minmax 😏 No, you don't take fighter who gets more attacks later on instead: Step 1 get high Strength ~17 is good assumption Step 2 Barbarian Step 3 +2 Strength Step 4 multi class Rogue Step 5 Expertise at Athletics Step 6 RAGE gives you advantage on Grapple and Shove becausue they are ability checks. +10 and advantage to grapple at level 5. Shove and Grapple against someone with +0 to both Athletics and Acrobatics it is ~97% chance to succeed and in this case ~95% chance to succeed against someone with +2 D&D 5e both Expertise and Rage are good with Grapple and Shove 👍 Weakness anything larger or bigger because you can grapple up to huge as Normal Size player. No surplexing a dragon :< There are uses for Grapple beside holding Prone target on the floor. like yeet them off the cliff or force move them inside spike growth. How do you rule Force Moving in D&D 5e? I want to drop the enemy off the cliff. Beside jumping off what are my options you as DM following RAW? My ruling to move the enemy it is 10ft for every 5ft so it takes 20ft to spin him around while spinning the enemy without moving.
OK, I'm a year late to this and there's already a million comments so probably nobody will see it, but here goes. I will agree that a lot of the responses to your previous video and this one haven't done a good job of responding to your actual criticisms. I'll do that now. The problem with this ranger isn't that it's been mix-maxed too much. In fact one big problem is that it hasn't been optimized _enough._ Quick Draw is a feat mostly for two-weapon characters, allowing them to get both of their weapons into their hand without spending most of the first round of combat doing that. For an archer, Quick Draw is saving you _at most_ one action in the majority of combats. And if you're in a dungeon like in the example, there's no reason that ranger shouldn't already have their bow out. It only takes one hand to hold the bow, so it's not like they need to have it slung in order to interact with their environment. So Quick Draw is almost always doing nothing for you. It's a waste of a feat. I'll take a moment here to go over the obligatory rules things others have brought up. The big one is that the longbow has the Volley trait, meaning that your ranger absolutely does want to be keeping distance between himself and his targets in order to avoid a -2 penalty. Or probably he should instead just use a shortbow for these close-quarters combats. The other huge thing you gloss over is that Hunt Prey lasts until the target is dead or you use Hunt Prey on something else. This means that unless you're fighting a bunch of really weak enemies, you're not going to be using Hunt Prey every turn. Or if you drop an enemy with your second action of the turn, you could use your third action to Hunt Prey against another target, potentially freeing up another action on your next turn. But wait! Your complaint wasn't about not having enough actions on your turn, it was having too many! That third action is just a third shot at -10 that almost always misses. And then you spend most of the video comparing firing three arrows to some garbage strawmen that involve putting the archer into melee, as if that were the only other choice. Yeah, those options are worse! But a lot of the other options you don't talk about are not only more interesting than firing a third arrow, they're also more optimal. I don't know what the rest of the ranger's build looks like (specifially which skills they're trained in), so not all of these may be viable, but since a ranger is trained in Nature, Survival, and 4 other skills, I'd sure hope they can do some of these. *Hide:* Please tell me your Dex-based ranger is at least trained in Stealth? If so, this is a big one. You see those pillars on your map there? If the ranger can successfully hide from their target behind one of those pillars before firing, that target is flat-footed to the first shot. So that's a -2 penalty to their AC, making the shot 10 percentage points more likely to hit _and_ 10 percentage points more likely to crit. That's huge, and it's going to be a lot better than firing a third arrow at -10. *Create a Diversion:* This works at most once per combat, but it basically lets you Hide when there's nothing to hide behind. Is your Ranger trained in Deception? If so, they should be using this sometimes. *Demoralize:* You can only try this once per target in a fight, but if you can successfully make a wight Frightened 1, that's -1 to its AC for the rest of your turn, for any of your allies' turns until the wight's turn, and then the wight gets -1 to attacks on its own turn. If you're trained in Intimidation, you should be using this liberally. It's going to be way more effective than taking that third or fourth attack. *Recall Knowledge:* Here's a good one! And now let's circle back around to that wasted Quick Draw feat. What could the ranger have taken at 2nd level instead of Quick Draw? My choice for that character concept would be Monster Hunter. (Yes, you can choose to take 1st-level ranger feats at 2nd level, something you understandably gloss over.) In the video you said it allows you to "point at something to briefly give your team a +1 to hit an enemy one time". Nah, dude. What you're describing is the critical success effect that might maybe happen; it's the lackluster icing on the cake. The main point of the feat is that you get to recall knowledge on a target for free when you use Hunt Prey on it. Usually recalling knowledge takes one action. And now we can segue to another thing you say, that players shouldn't be reading the monster stat blocks. Agreed! Most of all because not knowing all a creature's stats and abilities makes Recall Knowledge useful and fun. Because if the ranger had successfully made a Religion check to Recall Knowledge on the wight, a good GM might tell them about that Final Spite reaction that you briefly mention. Final Spite lets a wight make one last attack against any adjacent creature when the wight drops to 0 HP. Once the party knows about this ability (either because of Recall Knowledge or because they've seen it happen once), suddenly the battle becomes a more interesting game of trying to drop each wight when it isn't next to a PC. Now the ranger is the MVP and gets set up some cool tactical plays. So in some round in the middle of combat, the ranger could have spent his first action using Hunt Prey on a wight that's been duking it out with the fighter, and then spent his other two Actions using the Ready action, specifying that he's going to use Hunted Shot on that wight as soon as the fighter isn't adjacent to it. Then on the fighter's turn, he maybe smacks the wight once or twice and then backs off (perhaps moving to attack the other wight). Immediately the ranger gets his two shots against that wight. If he drops it, it's denied its reaction. Teamwork! So even this sample combat that seems cherry-picked to be boring for the ranger could have been a lot more fun _and_ optimal if you and the ranger's player knew what you were doing. If this all sounded lame to you, then yeah probably stick to D&D. But for those who really enjoy a variety of combat options and know how to use them, Pathfinder can be fantastic. And as for having a bunch of rules around roleplaying stuff, man some non-charismatic players like to be able to play charismatic characters sometimes, I don't know what to tell you. It's nice to have those rules there for them, and you can always ignore them if that's the game you want to play.
What responses are you talking about? Everyone who knew anything about PF2 was talking about how "a druid that only shapeshifts" is not optimized at all. Then the guy come in the first minutes "all responses talking about they are minmaxers". WTF
Yeah that is definitely the weird thing. I think everyone would have understood a Ranger can feel be built to feel like they mostly just want to shoot. Luckily PF2 easily lets you solve this issue if you want with skills/ancestry feats/dedications. Admittingly as a new player it is 100% true that a Ranger could feel this way since they aren't aware of what you can do.
Linking to UA-cam videos will just promote drama, but many of the video responses had a central thesis "Cody's games are unbearable drudgery because he forces high optimization on his table. If he stopped doing that, PF2 will work fine."
@@nicholascarter9158 ignoring what he means, a wizard can contribute more in 5e by stabbing with a dagger (relatively) than an optimized archer ranger can in pathfinder by switching to a rapier.
@@nicholascarter9158 That would make sense if the official AP materials didn't have challenge ratings which basically trounce anything but the most optimized parties.
me, who doesn't consider themself a min/maxer: that 5e ranger couldve taken hex from magic initiate, & then cast it on the Wight giving disadvantage on strength or dexterity checks to increase the chance to shove & grapple.
@@nicholascarter9158 hey, no meta gaming lol But no, cos if the goal is to prevent them from getting to an ally, their speed would still become zero from a grapple. Plus if you had grappler feat you can actually attempt to restrain on a following turn.
Okay, but why would he, as a big-game hunter and a badass archer, pick these feats up in the first place? The ranger just want to be the bestest archer in the world even if it's the most sub-optimal build in Pathfinder. So why would he try to learn a pointless spell or wrestling when he could be learning to shoot his arrows better? Just because he wants to be prepared, just in case he gets this frankly insane idea to wrestle a wight for his fighter friend? An idea that might not even materialize even if he's in the exact same situation that Taking20 described? Remember. He just wants to be an ordinary but badass archer. Not be a magical archer or be a wrestling archer. So why should he waste feats for a random whim that might not even come up?
@@greenhawk3796 So? Just to get out of a single-rotation style, the ranger should just invest his feats for an insane situation that might not even come up in his entire adventuring career? Remember that Taking20 said that the grappling situation is just an insane idea the ranger had on the spot. So why would the ranger prepare for a stupid whim that he might not even think of?
31:30 If I'm not mistaken, for 5E option 4, the range can (RAW) shove and grapple without falling prone. That means that they don't suffer any penalty while the wight attack both the fighter and the ranger at disadvantage.
If you read my comments, then I sincerely hope you're not lumping me into the groups this video is clearly aimed at. When I proposed my contradiction, I did so in the most concise manner I could think of for the sake of brevity. I still won't go into specific details, but that is in no small part because you covered most of the details in your previous video, and I only commented on the specific portion with which I took issue. Reminder: My issue is with the idea that a character, in order to be 'optimal', must perform (or attempt to) the same 3 actions on every turn regardless of the encounter. I propose that is it /intent/ which creates these scenarios, rather than the system itself. The PF2 system absolutely lets you create a character who is only good in one way. Just because this option is dangled in front of players, however, does not mean that you must do so in order to create a good character. I'm not disparaging your players or their creativity. I am saying that they made the characters they wanted to make, and later regretted those choices. It's something we all do in life and in gaming. I /am/ saying that your players absolutely had the option to build characters aimed at variety in combat if their goal was to do more than the same three actions every turn. That isn't a flaw in PF2. It is, frankly, a flaw in any RPG that lets you create a specialized character. Any and every system that lets you make a character who is specialized in their actions will inevitably result in every serious player making a character that only does one thing 99% of the time. Why is this? Because it leads to success. A sniper doesn't spend all that time honing his skill only to run into the fray of combat with a pistol. In PF2, if you decide you want to make a character who specializes (in anything, it doesn't matter), then by definition you are forsaking other available options. The simple intent of making say... "a ranger who uses a bow," despite how vague that is, immediately removes nearly all of your options--particularly in combat. This might not be what you want to hear, but you must see how it begins a chain of effects where you end up with the character you want, but you have effectively removed all of the choices yourself. The game didn't do that to you. You made choices at the very beginning, and it affects what choices you have later on. You have to actively intend to make a character with a lot of in-combat options if you want to actually have in-combat options. EDIT: Ultimately, to summarize, you're looking at all of the complexities of combat in the books and saying, "We're not using any of that! Those choices were just illusion!" I'm saying the system never presented you with an illusion of a character being able to use all of those things. Rather, they are options which MIGHT be available if you intentionally make a character that can use them effectively.
This a cyclical arguement though. Yes, players ultimately choose their character progression, but the game system allows and rewards players who hyperfocus, which then creates a boring gameplay experience. Both and neither sides are to blame.
@@petermain6791 I disagree wholeheartedly, which is the premise of the argument I made. Having played my own share of PF2, the system rewards people equally well for building as versatile as possible. This is the most noteworthy example of where PF2 beats out 5e in my preference. You are not punished at all for not specializing. An optimized character in PF2 is not a black and white proposition. Because you never know what you will or will not be able to do in a given fight, having a character that is never at a disadvantage is itself a form of optimization. So your character that does the same turn every turn is often going to be operating at 50% efficiency because they can't do the exact thing they were built for. This is where not having any dips in your efficacy shines. If you're able to have the same level of impact in the widest number of scenarios, you are going to benefit your party just as much and usually have a lot more combat decisions to make--and your character won't be boring to play.
@@petermain6791 the PF2e system is close to perfection (100 times more optimised than dnd) but in order to play it you need a DM/GM that has read all the books and the Core/GMguide at least 10 times whole (and given exams). The only problem in PF2e is that you need a good GM, because most rolls are in secret and 90% of the game is written in rules. I read PF2e 2 years now and i still dont feel comfortable to start GMing in the system. And then we have fast food GM gamers like this clown in the video, that read 2% of the rules and think they can homebrew the rest 98%. If shit hits the fun, they blame the game and the "illusion of choice"... Muggles and trolls trying to play with true wizardry
just pin this for no reason
You madlad
Democracy
The "illusion of choice" at work lol
Incredible
Charisma: 20
"... a fire elemental, which was pretty cool..."
I think there was something wrong with your elemental.
ok, you got a chuckle
Check it’s thermostat, it might be stuck.
He was chill most of the time, nothing to do with the hot mess the others were.
Ya sayin' all fire elementals should be hot? that's setting some unreasonable expectations and a lot of pressure on them :(
Never thought I'd see the day when someone burned a fire elemental
I think the response to this video is in The Rules Lawyer's video. Because this is still focused on the individual and what is the best damage for the individual, and not what is optimal for the party. And when you take into account the party mechanics and things like skill checks and how the +10 -10 crit mechanic works every +1 matters, every -1 matters. And what is optimal for the individual may not be optimal for the group. There is a video from The Rules Lawyer that shows this, where he has the players doing their "rotation" and eventually leading to a "TPK" because each character was focused on how they could maximize their own damage. Then he redid it with a focus on team where they adapted to the situation and focused on setting up the next person using skill checks like grapple, shove, trip, demoralize, providing flanking and it was a won combat. Sometimes the optimal thing isn't doing the most damage. And the 3 action system makes using those other options less costly because you can attack and still perform these other actions.
Its like in Pathfinder 1, the control spells were always the better option than purely damage spells.
In my last game the playerd were in a dark dungeon room with a bosss in it. The players were Barbarian and Magus, so what they actually did was pretty genious, the magud started casting light spell and throwing those around the room, leaving the boss no shadows to lurk in and attacm from, allowing the barbarian to see where it is and hit it without penalties.
So are these just the feats for the core or is this including the supplement books?
@@Pasta__Lover they are, demoralize trip, shove, grapple, are all basic actions in Pathfinder and you can do at any point. Everything Justin said is core to Pathfinder 2e.
I find it interesting also how taking 20 tried to deny their existence here, but it is very much there, in the core rulebook under actions you can take, and under skills in the core rulebook there are more actions you can take, like in my foundry vtt there is just a huge scroll bar of different actions my players and I can take. I am sorry but I am so confused as to how Taking 20 thinks there is a illusion of choice in Pathfinder 2e. The options are there, but if you blindly follow only what the options give and dont look up more than that, yeah your gonna feel shoe horned, same can be said about D&D 5e except PF2es rules are more balanced here.
@@dwainedwards615 I also find it interesting that he sits there and states "oh my players don't sit there and take out their calculators to crunch the numbers"......while he proves that "theres an illusion of choice" by sitting there taking out the calculator and crunching the numbers. The entire video all I've heard is "see if you want max damage you have to do this every turn"....as if there aren't other people on your team
11:00 "Tell me you've never played a DnD Warlock without telling me"
The Most statistics I’ve done was finding out how many commoners are needed to TPK a party of adventurers
Three hundred will kill a level three party I know from experience but the commoners did need molatofs I don't know how to spell it
@@rasputrees7378 Molotovs
@@YourCrazyDolphin Молотова коктейль
@@jeremieberneche1742 I do not speak any language other than english.
@@YourCrazyDolphin It's just russian for Molotov cocktail! Molotova kokteil' 🌈
I've never even played PF 2e and still listened to this whole thing for some reason.
Me too
This video confirmed my first impressions from flipping through Pathfinder.
Why would I want a PF 2e when 1e is so great?
@@shinmalestat9272 I have no idea what 1e is like, so I can't quite feel you man
@@BjornIdiottsonn www.thetrove.is/Books/Pathfinder%20%5Bmulti%5D/1st%20Edition/Core%20Rules/
Download the core rulebook. That is a players handbook and DM guide in one. Check it out for yourself.
"Next thing you know you'll be putting points in Dex! What a power gamer!" LOL! I died.
I laughed too much kkkkkk
There is no way that I could ever use a "rotation" with our PF2e GM. The enemies just won't let themselves stay in disadvantageous positions if they have any intelligence. They will use positioning and terrain to deprive us of optimal circumstances and they will run away if they need to do so, very possibly to come back later. Every combat is different and it's great.
Hi Cody,
I wanted to stop by and leave some thoughts. I did not agree with your first video, but it also really disheartened me to see all the vitriol online about it. I'm sorry that angry people put that weight on you. I really appreciate this follow up video. I still don't necessarily agree, but I have a lot of respect for your opinion now. I guess I needed this level of detail to truly understand your point. That's on me though.
I cannot speak for everyone, but my disagreement was partially with game mechanics, but also partially with how it felt as though you were dismissive of Pathfinder 2e, especially in the later half of the first video. For example, the comment about "If you want a style of game where your GM never talks in first person..." That felt a little insulting to me. I understand that it may have been hyperbole or presentation style, but it left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I understand Pathfinder isn't your cup of tea, but to recommend it as a game "without roleplaying" felt disingenuous.
You can roleplay and have lots of crunch, I do it in my own game.
As a second point, I want to approach your concerns with the codification of Diplomacy from a different angle. I have a very shy player at my table, and though he does not have a silver tongue, he is playing a party face. A rule like the one in Pathfinder allows him to be charismatic without being charismatic in real life. It's an important fantasy for him, it gives him a great feeling. "I got a 26 on my Diplomacy check! This guy is gonna really like us now." In the same way, I don't expect my player to lift 50 pounds to prove he can make a strength check in game. Obviously, I always encourage my shy player to roleplay and I appreciate when he does so (even if it's only in third-person), but it's nice for him to be able to have an impact even if he's not comfortable coming out of his shell.
Anyhow, TL;DR ... I really appreciate this video Cody, I'm sorry the internet is full of jerks, I am happy to agree to disagree (civilly) and I hope you continue to make great memories with your group(s).
Great comment that deserves to be seen.
Yeah but you could do diplomacy like that in 5e too, you just don't HAVE to. Also I get you got a bit offended, but being justifiably offended =/= disagreement. I don't see the the actual disagreement explained.
@@omnisomnia I didn't want to get into the disagreements in combat. I think it's just different strokes for different folks at that point, and that's okay with me. I was just listing the disagreements I felt were worth discussion.
@@omnisomnia Whoops, forgot this part too: You don't HAVE TO in Pathfinder either. Both 5e and Pathfinder specifically state that all rules are open to interpretation and change. I recommend playing both systems by the regular rules, then make the changes you want to make. Whatever's fun for your group.
@@andrewleimer9920 Right but I meant you don't have to as in it's not part of the core of the game. In the end you can change anything in any way that works, PF just foundationally is more hardcore with rules to start. My biggest gripe is with the MMO style rotations and changed attacks of opportunity they are heading in the wrong direction as they iterate.
The start of your video was completely uncalled for. Thanks for being one of the reasons I didn't get into a great game for far too long.
You can "be more creative" in any system. Your creativity should enhance the baseline game experience, not act as a necessary patch to cover the system's inherent weakness. My creative solution is to play something else.
This sums it up so simply
The problem with Newer Players "Creativity" is they make Characters that arent Plausible then when their Character dies Your automatically a bad GM. I saw so many New Gamers doing crazy stuff and dying In PF2 and D&D 5 ed. I mean If Your taking on an Ancient Red Dragon at 10th Level and expect Your Swashbuckling Rogue to Be able to go Head to Head Your ridiculous. It gets worse I saw a Younger 2o ish Age Player try to use a 1rst Level Fighter on a Lich because He wanted to skip the meat of the adventure ....And expectation to win. Even though the DM stated "Just because You see the castle on the Hill doesnt mean You should immediately try to go inside. I dont understand what they expect I really dont thats why I play with Older seasoned Players or Younger folks that want to Be taught how to Play effectively. Point Is a LOT of the UA-camrs talking trash on Codys perception are those types of Players for the most part,
I'd like to add that Dungeon Craft put out a response video saying that he totally gets it and agrees with Cody.
Yes!
yeah fleem gets it. Those new players that die in inane ways had it coming lol
I know this is been said probably at this point, but just in case someone is still checking this video:
Some highlights:
-Leaving out that melee attacks add strength to damage, either his ranger had no strength or he chose not to apply it.
-Stating that he couldn't add precision damage because he was in melee. The various Hunters Edge features are not locked to bows. You can use them as long as you are hunting prey.
-In 5e firing a longbow at an enemy point blank would apply disadvantage to every shot. You cannot, in fact stand in someone's grill and fire with no repercussions.
-Tripping then grappling an enemy. Tripping puts them prone which applies flat footed (-2 AC), applies a -2 to attacks, and forces the prone player/enemy to waste an action either standing up or crawling away, both of which would trigger attacks of opportunity from the fighter... meaning he didn't have to try and grapple to hold it down for the fighter. He could have just swung at it with a -4 (because short swords are agile) hit, and potentially crit, then moved to flank it so it stayed flat-footed if it chose to stand. He instead chose to waste an action.
-You don't have to go prone to grapple a prone enemy in PF2E. He either misread something or outright made this up.
There's more, these are just what immediately stood out to me.
TLDR: Cody doesn't actually know how to play this game and is actively refusing to admit it. There's about a dozen responses to this particular video in particular, all fully breaking down everything he did wrong and all of the misinformation that he was peddling.
That was my impression through the entire video. Like, I stopped keeping track of the things that didn’t add up. But, honestly? I think that it highlights an issue with PF2 that I think even us most ardent supporters need to acknowledge: the level of complexity of the rules as written is very high which leads to many cases of people misreading/misremembering the rules which leads to people playing wrong and not having fun.
And this is on top the fact that, even if you do understand and remember all the rules perfectly, you may not understand the tactical implications of those rules which leads to the group not having fun.
And even if you do, you may not like to play like that. And the system is definitely balanced for people taking advantage of tactical possibilities. And some people just don’t like to play tactically, or at least not to that degree.
So there are many layers here where people can drop off. Either because the system was just not for them (which is perfectly fine) or because they just don’t have fun while figuring out all the complexities and don’t stick around long enough to realize that it could be.
Personally I think that one of the biggest issues is that the aid action is terribly underpowered, specially at low levels, and that the rules doesn’t push enough doing cool stuff giving you a bonus for what you’re trying to do.
As soon as we realized that in our group, combat became a lot more creative and fun.
Ironically enough to one of the points in the video, it is only bad when enemies have attacks of opportunity because they limit so much what you can do or you get wrecked so hard that it is really not worth it to deviate from the obvious tactics.
Honestly, based on these replies, I'm staying the away from PF2e. You're talking like Yu-Gi-Oh players when players left. "It's poor deck construction. Just get good" Yeah, okay. Or I could read a book.
What did you mean when you pointed out that DnD5e imposes disadvantage on ranged attacks when someone is up in your grill? Didn't Cody mention that already? The point was that PF2E doesn't have repercussions in the vanilla rules while 5E does, lending to a more interesting situation.
I think that's a good point about the tripping and not having to go prone. Cody could have done an attack there.
And yeah, the Precision hunter's edge adds more damage to melee and ranged attacks. He should have added that. It probably would have made the action not as terrible.
The part about using a STR-based attacked on a character not built for STR is not ideal, but the short sword does have Finesse which is still good for hitting. That is one area that I think pf2e did fairly well - making Dex not as much of a strong stat.
It's so bad and so disingenuous, part of me has always had the conspiracy theory WotC slipped him some marketing cash to sling mud at PF2E or something.
@@hydraphobic_6398 He completely ommited that longbows have volley in pf2e and therefore get -2 to hit if an enemy is within 30 feet of you, in his comparison of shooting a bow in melee range. This entire video is bad faith arguments.
Broooooo. Characters in PF2 are supposed to have lots of magic items unlike 5e's basically optional item system.
And making stikes at a -10 is made to be unoptimal but you still went for it twice on the ranger's turn.
Thank you for taking the time to produce an additional response at this level of detail. As a Gamemaster just starting out with PF 2e (my group is close to level 7 for the first time at this point), seeing the arguments and comparisons is a great tool to help my own estimation of the game.
For my 10 cents to the discussion, I have a few points:
Rotations
I think the concept of having a “rotation” in combat can be an advantage. In cases where players are unsure about what to do or what may be a good choice, they will always have a fallback choice to lean on. As you have brought up, most of the fun of making combat related choices comes when building your character. This means you can sit down and analyze your choices in much greater detail than is possible during a combat encounter at the table.
I do house rule very easy retraining in my games, so players have an out if they become bored with their build and wany to try something else, and that seems to have helped with handling the feeling of a character growing “stale.” Even without that however, I have experienced the gradually drip feeding of more abilities and feats each level has been enough to make my players engaged with combat as is.
Lack of creative skill use in combat
While it certainly fits into the argument of “This character is built to do this, so I guess that is what I will do for my turn,” skills do have a big impact and use in combat. Most of these do require some amount of investment in terms of skills feats to be viable, but that is where the skill buckets show their value. Depending on what your skill and skill feat choices are, you can spend an action to:
• Roll “Recall Knowledge” as 1 action to learn about a monster. This might tell you about a critical weakness or strength your opponent has the party can take advantage off or needs to be wary about.
• Use Battle Medicine to heal an ally as a single action (and probably more to move into range of them).
• Use Intimidate to apply the Frightened condition to an enemy, which significantly weakens them.
• Use Deception to Feint and potentially make an enemy flat-footed for you and your allies.
• Use the Bon Mot feat from Diplomacy to weaken the perception and will saves of an enemy and get some fun roleplay moments with witty quips.
The multiple attack penalty heavily disincentives spending all your actions on making attacks with a Strike unless you are fishing for natural 20s or something. While some classes have built in ways to spend their actions outside of Strikes, like your Ranger example shows, many characters can easily fit some other creative skill use into their pool of options.
About attacks of opportunity
I think the changes 2e made to AoOs are good. Since they are no longer a default assumption of the rules but rather an ability built into certain enemies (and PCs!) battles become much easier to handle and flow quicker. I do agree that more enemies should have it, and that it should be a bit easier for players to get themselves, but the fact that I no longer have to track the Reaction of every single enemy to see if they still have their AoO, not to mention no longer having to resolve all of them it becomes much easier to run fights with several enemies.
Complexity Outside of Combat
Pf2e very much attempts to appeal to a different crowd than 5e does, and I think you already made the point there very succinctly. I house rule a lot of resolutions more loosely than the rules ask for, but there are some advantages to spelling things out very precisely and not taking the “Let the GM handle this” design approach; writing and balancing adventure content becomes much easier if you can make very clear assumptions on what exactly a player can do with their Diplomacy / Intimidate / Deception / Whatever roll, and how difficult that will be.
I also think having clearly defined resolutions for what certain skills and abilities can do helps a player make choices during character creation, which is where I believe the strongest part of pf2e is. In far too many RPG books do you see things like “The Acrobatics skill helps you be agile and make maneuvers” but fail to give good examples about what it can do with a certain level of investment. By having given numbers, it is much easier to see what a +10 gives you, for example.
TLDR; I do agree with the point that combat can quickly become routine and filled with “rotation” thinking, but I think that it can be a strength in many respects as well as a weakness. A complex skill system is meant for a certain type of player, but helps in determining what exactly you can do with a given level of investment in an area.
I actually was really disappointed when he mentioned rotations but doesn't even mentioned the actual skills an archer character would want to use. On his second turn his amount of decisions was staggering if he used skills. Since his two attacks were the most of his damage he could use his other actions for great. Even the ability to move+battle medicine+hunted shot is a great example of a very viable action that the player could have done.
The problem you run into yet again is that those skills are simply not rewarding enough to attempt when in combat. There are feat/skill choices that would be intentionally picking poorly to choose and leaning on the rest of the party to pick up your slack. That isn't fair for you to do that to them. The very nature of combat is that you are fighting for your character's life assuming you actually care about your character and the party. If the situation presents itself and if you succeed at a skill use like intimating someone "could" be useful but a failure is a complete waste of the action. Action that you know are better served elsewhere. Frightening someone is swell and all, assuming they could be frightened, but just killing the threat is both quicker and easier. You have better, and by the very nature of the combat system itself, in many cases the only correct choice is it stick to the rotation that got you this far in the game. Playing poorly for sub-optimal skill use not only strains the combat against your party but very likely has the DM having to do the same poor play otherwise the sub-optimal play makes it easier to end in a player's death.
The lack of AoO was to point out that once combat starts and things shift around the status of the field of combat rarely changes to reflect combat is taking place. It is static. As in boring. Whatever everyone else did on their turn does not change the battlefield conditions in which you fight in once it is your turn again. Ranged fighters do not need to react to melee having closed the gap and are now on top of them. At least in D&D you needed a feat, to represent being able keep a level head when danger has gotten uncomfortably close, otherwise you fight at a disadvantage once that situation happens. The scene has changed, albeit slightly, to reflect how combat is shaping out. A lack of AoO also means the melee fighters can aim for the best use of their actions, aka their rotation, instead of pausing to make a meaningful choice. Debating to finish off the threat in front of them first and risk not getting to the bigger threat in time or risk the hit to try and deal with a bigger threat now. D&D's combat system isn't that great either but at least it's got some spice on the meat.
@@lordhawkeye Demoralize is far far better than a 3rd attack as long as you do it at the right time on most circumstances. It increase damage by roughly 10-20% on a success and 20-40% on a crit success because of of how crits work in PF2 for your ENTIRE team. This also decreases the enemies damage by the same amount.
There are very few times where a skill or reposition wouldn't be better than an attack at max MAP. The nice thing about PF2 is each circumstance is different and not obvious. The other skill actions are far more situational though.
AoO in both games are just "okay" imo. I feel they both have their weaknesses but a lot of times both monster/players stand there attacking to not get hit by an AoO just in case the monster has one.
I would say AoO are very bad in 5e, pretty much no one even gets hit by them. Casters just cast any save spell and Rangers just switch weapons. 5e players are incentivised to never take an AoO normally by just not moving. I can't even remember any player getting hit by an AoO in my 3 years of 5e unless players were in a horrible situation or new. Bow character are pretty much the only exception because they get disadvantage so it does effect them.
Both editions standing there attacking with a bow for all your actions is just bad when a melee monster gets up to you.
Also in PF2 the main thing I dislike about AoO in PF2 if a monster does have them they are much more devastating that 5e. When there are no AoO players can freely manipulate the battlefield though since most monsters shouldn't be doing things as smart. So yes I don't I feel they are perfect in PF2 either.
@@youtubenoremac3314 @aF Kayzar If the Ranger used Hunt Prey, then Demoralize, then Hunted Shot, he'd lose 1.85 points of average damage from longbow at close range, or 1.99 average for normal longbow shot, or 1.5 average damage for a shortbow shot. In exchange, he'd deal an average of 12.6 damage with a shortbow, or 13.9 with a longbow. 20% increase in damage with the longbow, or 2.4 average damage increase- he'd gain more than he lost in average damage by taking some other third action. Fully mathed out.
You make PF2 seem so straight forward when it isn't and that is part of the problem. For example you say, "Use Intimidate to apply the Frightened condition to an enemy, which significantly weakens them." The effectiveness of intimidate and the applicability is a massively unknown quantity with rules spread over many pages about how it can be used with a benefit that relies on some team synergy. There are multiple feats and attributes you would likely need to make this actually useful with any consistency because of these rules. During character creation you may have looked at it and decided to invest feats into developing that skill or not. The impact of the condition is also somewhat situational and the value is really unknown with all of that investment. Especially when weighed against the opportunity cost of just attacking again.
Compared to say the Fighter Battle Master in 5e which gets an ability to frighten which is provided as an option and explained in a couple sentences.
Ultimately at the end of the day Cody's argument is based on the reality of trying to play with a ruleset that is messy while also being finely tuned for difficulty. The players are playing with a character creation system that is messy. The disconnect between the math of PF2 and the players reading the book is going to be massive because of the way the game was designed and the way the rules were communicated. Yes some players are able to navigate the mess and find a satisfying game experience. That doesn't mean the game isn't a mess and everyone will enjoy that process as much as others. Some players will literally delight in the lack of clarity because seeing through it creates some satisfaction in them.
*Editing in, I appreciate people giving like.... actual advice, unlike what I got on Reddit, but the issue is dealt with already. lol
I'm more trying to just point out how everyone on Reddit was blatantly ignoring the facts of what was going on, or assuming all my problems are because I'm a "PowEr GaMeR".*
Frankly, a lot of the RP world seems to just be really..... bad lately, for lack of better terms. I tried yesterday to get some advice for burnout in D&D, where I clearly said A, the DMs were doing a good job, B, I don't want to just leave my group, and C, No one is interested in learning a new system, I offered. I still got almost entirely comments just saying "The DMs aren't doing a good job and I should call them out, I should just leave, and 'Maybe you should offer to run something else'.". It was honestly maddening to get about 100 comments, all but 2 of which showed that they either didn't even read what I said, or just didn't care. The funniest part was also the automatic assumption that I was a power gamer and I was too bogged down in optimizing the game, meanwhile, I'm here playing janky, multi class disaster characters that I only made for fun, and I literally have hurt my throat before from forcing myself to do a voice that fit the character.
Oh, and for anyone who cares, when I brought my burnout up with my group that same day (was a few hours before I had any replies just due to life and such), turned out most everyone else felt the same way, so we're gonna do a few weeks of random side games of Call of Cthulhu, and Mongoose 2nd Ed Traveller (Being specific to show that we're NOT playing the death in character creation version. lol). Maybe even Hollow Earth or Icons. Short version, vastly different game systems.
@@ArcNeoMasato I've never experienced a burnout when playing DnD but the only thing I can think of is to take a break from the main campaign and do a few high lvl one shots or something or maybe skip a session to force yourself to miss playing. Now that I'm typing this out I think another thing to do would be to watch some videos or read some books to find some inspiration if you're not doing that already. Hope that helps. ^_^
For sure it's a time off thing, we've been playing just D&D for several years now, so we're gonna just take a short break with some weird systems.
We're flat just gonna play some different games for a couple weeks. Me personally has been playing D&D super regularly for about 6 years, usually multiple games a week even, and I just need a break to do something other than swing a sword, so we're gonna run from Cthulhu or trade cargo in space for a little while. For me at least, it wasn't so much a lack of inspiration or anything, moreso as it just felt like going through the motions, even with the vastly different characters I'm playing right now. It literally comes down to the mechanics of the game itself, cause I'm able to do all kinds of random stuff in RP, but the dice side of things was just..... always the same.
Yeah, people stopped paying attention mostly (my gues) of the increased populairty of the "horror rpg stories" people like those, play some, recodnize some things that might overlap with their own experiences and inmeaditly go to: this guy MUST be a "that guy". It's sad to see
Who else noticed that cody moved one more square thaan he needed to so he will need to step instead of using hunt prey?
41:56 Why though? Well lets say a DM wanted the opposite, the DM wanted a difficulty check they could look up instead of just winging it. Pathfinder gave that DM an answer and your version would say "sucks to be you". I will never complain about a p&p game giving me too many specific examples especially when I can always ignore it if I don't need them.
This. I love having a system in place when I need it to do work for me. When I don’t need it, I can run the game however I want. When someone wants to move the +1 enchantment from their sword to a new pike they just found, I don’t want to have to make up a minigame on the spot. Or just handwave “it takes four days.” Having systems that players can read and build their characters around allows them to make meaningful decisions around the systems they want to engage with.
Longbows have the volley 30ft trait which means that all ranged attacks within 30 ft suffer a -2 to hit. Also, shortswords have the agile trait which means that the second attack is at a -4 instead of a -5. The wright getting a third attack on the ranger that needs a natural 20 to hit the ranger which wouldn't critical (+2 vs the ranger's AC of 23) might be argued as a good trade off for the fighter not taking all the aggro and possible drain effects from the wright attacks. If the ranger critical success on a grapple action, the target is restrained which means the enemy can't use any actions with the attack trait until they break free. Tripping a wright only DC 16 and if the fighter turn is before that wright, that wright is going to have a bad time if it is prone in front of the fighter. If the ranger player did the last option and really roleplayed well and I was the Game Master, I would give them a hero point (Pathfinder) or Inspiration (Dungeons and Dragons).
Except this isn't an illusion of choice for the players by the system but an illusion by the DM of variety.
Here he gives four different monsters in three different environments (a chimera in a mountain pass, mimic in a room, ghouls and ghast somewhere, and some wights that he goes into detail with) and then proceeded to say that the ranger will take the same action in all the situations (maybe with movement) because the system encourages it. But here’s the thing: He hasn’t presented four different scenarios, he’s presented four different variations of one scenario - straight up combat where the monster appears and attacks until dead and hoped that no one noticed this. Now these can be changed to different scenarios. For example: there is high wind in the mountain interfering with ranged attacks, the terrain is difficult so the PCs are slower, and the chimera instead of just attacking performs a fighting retreat after an initial strafe.
My immediate thought was, "so you present all the diferent scenarios and they all turn out to be damage dealing hitpoint sponges in an open room that you need to kill dead to get to the next place. Fun...."
I actually preferred this longer form content than your shorter stuff.
Bump
No joke, this video was great and convinced me.
Yesssss!!!!
No joke WebDM is my favorite D&D show because they release D&D videos that are more akin to a college seminar then the average DM tips video.
@@OldSchoolGM94 I'll have to check em out. If you like big brain ideas check out Zipperon Disney. He regularly blows my mind with his insight
When we got to avernus our DM gave us the option to change classes if we wanted (its our first campaign) The warlock didn't like that he was just eldrich blasting all the time so he wanted to change. He picked rogue. So.. Dagger Dagger Dagger
I mean there's also crossbow/short bow, whip and boomerang
Just some points. You should have a striking weapon by level 5, you can get one by level 3 so you should have one by 5. That's an extra weapon die of damage. Also you don't use a longbow in that sort of situation, it gives you a negative 2 to hit within 30 feet from the volley trait. At 5th rangers get weapon crit bonus so when you crit with a bow you can actually pin targets in place, gives you more options to control the battlefield.
For third actions other then strike again, something only Flurry rangers really should be doing, you can potentially do the following. Aid the fighter, use an action and your reaction to make an aid another check at a standard DC 20 (GM can make it higher) with a result of between -1 and +2(+3 if your master in the skill check, +4 if your legendary) to the fighters next attack. Battle medicine, if you have the feat and training in the skill, you can walk up and heal team mates. Command an animal, if you take the animal companion feat or beast master archetype you get to use one action to have your pet get two actions, give your fighter flanking while your at range and your pet can do damage. Demoralize, if you have the charisma for it and some training in intimidate, you can make an intimidation check to give an opponent the frightened condition that gives -1 to all rolls and checks (including AC). Sneak to get behind cover so ranged enemies don't have a good chance of hitting you or might not even be able to target you at all. Just like building to use your bonus action is a moderate part of 5e, how to use your third action is often a big part of building your PF2 character.
I think reading that last bit properly you can start to understand the potential problem that you have to build for options to have those options in PF2. As you level up, you get options that make you better at the things your doing, but out of your 10 class feats from 1-20(11 for most martials, +1 if human), you'll likely only ever spend at most 5 or 6 of them filling out a 'feat tree' and even then there's only like 2 or 3 things in the game that are more then 2 or 3 feats deep. Druid wild morph, animal companions and shield blocking are the most intensive feat lines, most others are like Knockdown attack and improved knockdown attack, and then you need to look at side grades or other feats that can build onto that in other ways. So if you only spend 2 feats getting your primary attack down, maybe another feat for a secondary attack, lets say a third feat for a niche attack, you still have 6-8 feats over the life of your character to diversify and pick up new options. So yes, low level characters don't have many options going for them, but you continue to get more options as you level up.
As a ranger who loves bows you can take Gravity weapon to add damage to one attack a round, take Far shot for more range, take Hunters aim for a more accurate attack, Skirmish strike to step and strike for one action, get Disrupt prey for a reaction similar to attack of opportunity and combine it with Snap shot to be able to use your bow for that attack, Deadly aim that works a lot like sharpshooter by giving you a penalty to hit for a bonus to damage, Penetrating shot to shoot through someone to hit your hunted prey, have Distracting shot to have chances of making your prey flat footed, Targeting shot to shoot around corners and objects in your way, Greater distracting shot to make the ability easier to trigger and last longer, Impossible Volley to shoot at all targets in a small AOE and Legendary shot to further increase your firing distance. That's a full character taking nothing but ranged attack options right there. Plenty of different types of attacks for different situations. You could also take Fighter archetype for other ranged based feats, or the Archer dedication, or plenty of other things to give you different options in and out of combat.
I think that's one of the key selling points for many players, you can build for diversity of options. While in 5e the only options are your sub class, what feats you can take and multiclass. You can build a dozen PF2 Rangers and they can all be vastly different, Strength based dual weapon ranger with flurry, Dex based bow Ranger with flurry, Dex based crossbow ranger with precision, Polearm skirmish Ranger with precision, Ranger with warden powers for support, Monster hunter Ranger for finding enemy weaknesses and giving bonuses to the group, Dex bow Ranger with animal companion, two weapon Ranger with animal companion (this is rather difficult as it often costs more actions in a round then you have), Strength Dex Ranger with a Bow and natural weapons or monk dedication for a switch hitter, Dex bow Ranger that sets snares in and out of combat to control the battlefield, Outwit Ranger specializing in tracking and defense, Boon and Warden ability focused Ranger that takes Herbalist dedication so they can heal in combat and make natural healing potions, Ranger with Fighter dedication for more accuracy based attacks, Ranger with Rogue dedication for sneak attack, Ranger with any spellcaster dedication for up to 8th level spells, Ranger Vigilante to be wild lands Batman, etc, etc with over 85 dedications to 'multiclass' with to add spice, role play, and combat options to your character.
The great thing is most of those options can be delved deep into, or you can mix and match to create your own build. Then add in uncommon or rare options that are adventure specific (Paizo has these or easily homebrew your own) and similar uncommon and unique or artifact/relic weapons and gear and you can play several rangers of the same ancestry and they will all feel and play different. So a big draw to PF2 is being able to make your own character, how you want them to be, you can also change that plan or go with only a vague plan and take new things to see if they work or find new options in the world and when ever you get some downtime (AP's always have downtime between books I think) you can undo nearly any of your choices and make something that might better fit your style.
"oh look, this "apples to apples" comparison between two level 5 characters missed out on half of the rules and ended up not being an accurate example of how the system that's being criticised works"
I wish i was more surprised.
Adding a striking ranged weapon just makes the melee attack even less efficient. Not really disproving his point, there.
@@TheMysticLemur Striking weapons weren't the only rule cody missed.
It's weird, it would have been so easy to just say that pathfinder's added complexity didn't add enough to their table's enjoyment to justify the extra time spent on rules. But instead Cody feels the need to double down and create this entire "illusion of choice" argument.
I mean, we're using the fact that a ranged build is better at fighting at range than in melee as our prime example. We're already in a pretty weird world of hypothetical arguments.
@@TheMysticLemur Where did you read that I was attempting to disprove anything with noting the missed rules in a reply based on being upset over people commenting on how his players didn't understand the system? Doing an in depth analysis and still missing some core rules makes for the illusion of knowing what your doing. Makes it seem disingenuous even if it's not.
To the rules point though, it's almost like building for ranged damage makes you good at that and melee less and less so as you go, or you can spend some extra money to have handwraps or a second weapon if that's what you wanted. Thus the rest of the comment, if you wanted to read it, was about building your character to have various options if you wanted them.
@@orochifuror7148 I see. You were focusing on his lack of system mastery, while I was just looking at his example of how being focused on ranged combat makes you shitty at everything else. Not like 5e where focus doesn't matter because everyone is still decent at everything. 5e is the "better" system for his group because it holds your hand and doesn't punish you for bad decisions.
Does this mean we getting more Starfinder content?
That game needs more love.
A lot of games need more love, frankly. I hope they get them. I'm always shocked how many people think D&D is the only game out there.
@@leandersearle5094 Just mentioned Starfinder because Taking20 did -the- best intro guides for it that I still share with people wanting to get into the action and he mentions it again on this video.
Consider me a reverse gatekeeper! The more people know about other games, the better.
@@AKImeru Agreed.
Problem is, if the setting is fun, starfinder is a rather bad scifi rpg in terms of gameplay and mechanics.
I'd frankly like ANY content for games that aren't based on dnd
I don't pick on my players, my barbarian picks on my monsters
tbh i find fun in creating nasty encounters and cheering for the party to dismantle them as a demolition derby (i make them intentionaly hard to give some enviromental advantage they can find or set in motion beforehand to reward smart and unconventional thinking). The players and the DM aren't enemies in my book.
Oh don’t get me wrong, i agree. My campaigns a bit of unique homebrew in that it is both fully open world and has had the players participate in huge pitched battles a bunch of times.
I just find it funny that my partys barbarian, regardless of the situation or enemy, almost always at one time or another ends up 1v1 with a powerful bad guy and crushing him.
@@gamerkiller117 sounds like a barbarian up to make Conan and He-man proud
There’s something similar here that happens in video games called ‘dominant strategy’. It’s when the game has an obvious way to deal damage or be effective that’s the easiest and has the beat payoff, so that’s all you end up doing. In fighting games this is like spamming a good move, in other games it could be a specific string of actions or using an ability over and over without really doing much else. It is boring, and it’s a balancing issue, the only options are to ignore it for a self imposed challenge or play something else
The problem to me seems simple. If for example I am playing a class and take the feat good with X and then I don't use anything but X because the drop in power is to much the feat should probably be nerfed.
I see you played stealth archer too
To be fair its... kinda worse.
The problem is not (only) having a dominan strategy, is being actually forced to choose between it and other things without any chance of redoing it.
A lot of people say that "if you want diversity then stop taking only the archery feats", but like... if they do it then they'll forever lost that archery power (since its a x-lvl class feat and not a "take whenever you want" power like features in other d20 systems).
Ok, now you're suposedly more diversificated. But the dream of your character to be "the best archer" is also dead beyond repair for eternity.
@@albertonishiyama1980 if we're talking pf2e, retraining is part of the core rule so I just want point out that "lost for eternity" is more than a little hyperbolic. But I'm betting you already knew that.
A point I didn't hear brought up in the video is that some people just like having the majority of mechanical choice be frontloaded in character creation and like having an optimal rotation to play out in combat. It's not necessarily a negative. I guess that falls under the points he made that some people like pf2e as is. I've kind of broken down my own argument here. Oh well.
One of my takeaways is that I might want to give a monster or two AoOs in my pf2 games even though the statblock doesn't have it. Keeping balance in mind of course, don't want those AoOs to have to nasty a rider.
Very true, no matter how hard I try to play a dagger-based assassin in Skyrim, I end up drifting to being a stealth archer.
Cody, you should play the game you have the most fun with, and make content about what you are most passionate about. So sad that needs to be said.
I like your example, well done! It actually points out some of the stuff that you were criticizing last week and makes it understandable. But, also, it shows me that you focus on a very different aspect of the system than I value, and don't seem to recognize the other. So, let me take you up on these points, because I do think that there's a discussion to be had from this. Mind you, I play both systems, but I only GM Pathfinder 2e.
So the start with, what I took away from your example:
* In D&D 5e the player has a number mostly equivalent options, dealing nearly identical damage. Their strategy is mostly linked to how they position themselves on the battlefield, and what impact that would have on subsequent rounds. If you use the optimal flanking rules, they could help the fighter. Else they could decide between ranged attacks or melee, which each has their advantages or disadvantges. Because of AOO as a constant threat, that initial positioning is very important and influences the dynamic of the whole fight. There is no cookie cutter pattern, but what you choose in the beginning of combat will basically influence the whole fight.
* In PF2e, there is a strategy that beats most of the others if all you care about is dealing damage yourself: Hunt Prey and then attack. But, if you actually consider the team as a whole, there are choices: They could have positioned themselves opposite the fighter, forgoing damage themselves to increase the critical hit chance and chance to hit of the fighter, and as you say, that initial damage is really what counts. So, you want to try to enable the biggest damage dealers to be able to Crit. Also, subsequent rounds would differ. Due to the lower chances of getting AOO, players would move around a lot, constantly trying to achieve advantages over their opponents, collaborating in the team to set up the optimal damage dealer to get a good hit.
The difference is that 5e is a bit more forgiving. It offers players various choices that each are close to optimal. You example also shows that the interaction between player characters doesn't actually matter much. And that makes the system very beginner friendly. If we really want to argue about illusion of choice, we could argue about it here: On the battlefield, you have a lot of possible strategies, but which one you choose ultimately doesn't matter all that much. Many of them are valid.
With PF2e, the say that the choices offered when we create and level-up characters end up being an illusion of choice. We don't really need to argue that 5e has less choice in the level-up process. So the real question is "What does PF2 do with the choices it offers?". And your argument is: nothing meaningful. But, from the example I just made above I would argue quite on the contrary, quite a lot! If a Hunter - instead of trying to be an optimal damage dealer - had gone down the road of support or control character, they would have focused on their ability to craft snares, and taken feats like "Snare Hopping" and "Snare Specialist". Or they could have gotten an animal companion and explored how they can most effectively use the animal in the battlefield. If they then disliked their specialization, you could have let them retrain and let them focus on other aspects of play. The result of this, and I don't disagree with you on that one, is that there is a pattern that will emerge, especially in the first few rounds of combat. But a different ranger character's pattern might be a completely different one. Even though they're also a ranger. So, what I am arguing is, that in Pathfinder the strategy players pursue in the creation of their characters actually matters a lot on the battlefield, and that's an aspect that is not present much in 5e. At my table at least that leads players to identify a lot with their character, spend a lot of downtime pursuing their own activities, and just living in the world. My group values that highly.
What is better? Honestly, that's not the point. Both have their advantages. We don't need to argue that 5e is fun to play. I love it. And I honestly don't care about system wars. I just don't agree with your point, because it doesn't hit where it should. And I would be interested to read what you have to respond to me.
See this is the real difference in the systems:
In D&D 5e regardless of how you build your character, they will always have multiple good options to choose between during combat, but you have fewer choices when building / levelling up.
In Pathfinder 2e you have many good choices in how you build your character, but any particular build will have only 1 or maybe 2 good options to choose between during combat.
The thing for me is that typically I spend ~20 hours playing my character, about 1/4-1/2 of which is combat in between each level up. I would much rather have interesting choices during those 5-10 hours of combat playing with my friends, than have more choices during the couple hours I spend alone thinking about what I'm going to do levelling up my character.
Agilemind i hear where you’re going but there really are more than 1 or 2 options and they heavily depend on the creature you’re facing. What are the weaknesses or resistances, does it have reach or not, attack of opportunity? Finding out which character will be at an advantage and what team tactics will be effective differs and finding out what works in what situation is what makes Pathfinder combat interesting.
I’m saying this because, yes you are spending more time building your character, but a lack of options in combat is not the result. Because that’s what Cody said, and what I politely disagreed with. If you don’t like spending that time in the books - and I feel you there - 5e is definitely the more accessible game, as part of the fun of pf2e is that aspect of playing out strategies in your head when you build your character. And as I said, I like both, so no judging here. Both work well with the right group.
That's quite a long point so I might try to summarise, let me know if I've summed up your points adequately.
You (stefontheair) agree that there are less near-optimal choices in combat in P2E than 5e, no matter which playstyles you choose (e.g. the snare guy only does snares, the arrow guy only shoots arrows). However, you think that the ability to have more options of playstyle (snare guy, arrow guy, animal companion guy etc.) is very important, even if each inevitably creates a set pattern of combat actions taken each and every round.
Is that right?
Also I'm assuming (as I think you are too) that players don't throw fights in order to do wacky stuff - they will usually choose something near-optimal (near being fairly broad). Just because a player can do option 4 in P2E for example doesn't mean they ever will (hence the "illusion of choice").
jaymz jaymz *lol* There was more than one point!
So, you didn’t not get it, but your choice of words also tells me that you read some stuff in there that I didn’t say like this. Can I assume that you play 5e and/or have never played Pathfinder 2e?
First of all two things that must be clear before we continue:
In Pf2 there are *always* more options than in 5e. Also there is always a bigger range between bad and good options. In 5e the range is maybe between bad and good, and in pf2 they are between terrible and amazing. And before you tell me I’m biased: No. More does not necessarily mean better.
This simple difference means that in Pf2 it’s less likely that in a given situation there are many similarly viable options: they will differ in some way. Which means that a beginner can fuck up terribly and a good player do masterfully. The intent behind 5e’s design, by contrast, is *not* allow this, so that beginning players won’t get overwhelmed, while still offering enough options for seasoned players to provide enough depth. It’s very well done. This of course it also means, that some of these options are equally optimal, which is what Cody calls „having a real choice“.
I don’t agree that there are less good options in PF2e, there are probably more, but, by design, they will not be equivalent. There will also not be one pattern, but there will be patternS (plural). Fight against skeleton? Favor a support pattern for the melee fighter with bludgeoning damage. Fight against a single boss? Favor a group attack pattern to stack as many buffs and debuffs to increase the chances of the biggest damage dealer to crit. For me, this is what I would call „tactically deep“, because I have to try to figure out which pattern would work best or potentially die. Pf2 monsters are also designed to constantly challenge these patterns, which keeps fights interesting.
I may have misread you, but I felt like you’re trying to set me up to confirm Cody’s video, which I won’t do.
I would still steer tactically minded folks and those who love customization and want to see their character choices directly translated into game mechanics to pathfinder, and beginners of ttrpgs and/or veterans who have played rpgs for so long that they basically breathe the rules and don’t want to bother with details to 5e. These systems are both great, and one should learn to pick the right system for the right purpose.
And yes, about combat: That’s exactly how I see combat. Which is why PF2e is my go-to system for combat. It’s like Checkers vs Go. Both great games. You’ll probably use checkers to get people excited about strategic thinking, but if they really get into it, Go will provide more depth.
@@stefontheair You realize you literally just confirmed Cody's illusion of choice by saying there are more options in combat in PF2e but they range from Terrible to Awesome. This means that you have Terrible, Bad and Good which are the options which will either be not used at all, used situationally or used sometimes. Then you have the Awesome options which will inevitably be the option you mainly use. This is exactly what an illusion of options is, the option is there but you would never or almost never use the option because it is Terrible, Bad or only Good when your characters life is on the line.
If PF2e has 20 options but only 5 of them are being used then there aren't really options. D&D5e might have 12 options but if 8 of them are are being used then they in effect have more options. I think the thing that makes the options useable in D&D vs. PF is that Pathfinder punishes you for trying out of the box things due to there being Critical Failure. If your character and your groups characters lives depend on you succeeding you aren't going to pick the out of the box play due to it being riskier.
11:52 bow crit spec is specifically immobilizing a target to a nearby surface. So you’re looking at what enemies might get immobilized, working with your team to position them against those surfaces. In a vacuum as a single player sure you’ve built someone to shoot a bow so that’s what they’re going to do but what is the party doing to synergize?
Cody: *does a 1 hour video explaining his thoughts on PF2e*
Me: Fuck yeah I'm going to watch the shit out of this
Taking a step further: Fuck yeah, I'm gonna watch it although I'm not playing PF2 :-)
@@nicowordenweber7476 tbh it gives a good picture of a part of the system, but people like the system (and as Cody said, people can have fun in it) so is worth learning the system by yourself a little if you think is worth trying.
too bad that ranger example is such a waste of time, why a bow ranger should even go melee to prove the point of how badly they perform by going against their build? Cmon
@@Ghilteras it does this:
1.- show the dps impact of your an the enemy positioning, value of strategy
2.- show how impactful is the early feats that aid an specific style (5e lose less if he tries different things than what he specialized because some skills work for both combat styles, PF2e have some problems if he wants to deviate from a set strategy)
3.- show the value of unorthodox attempts (PF2e have more restrictions than 5e to achieve the same effects due the diminishing returns of investing in many actions in the prone>grapple combo)
4.- The importance of enemies strategy for the DM perspective (OA and disadvantage on ranged attacks at close range opens the need of thinking smart, which is a good thing).
@@nicolasvillasecaali7662 it does nothing of the sort. It only shows that in pf2e you can do ONE ranger ultra spec among the tens available. Blaming the system because you can ONLY do that is just pathetic as the system simply gives you deep customization at every level, it's up to you how you want to build your PC and you're to blame if you built it in a way that it can literally only do one thing. In 5e this does not happen because customization is much more general and limited. Cody lost a lot of credibility with these videos. Was it worth for the 5e patreon money?
My favourite counter to "Taking the best option in combat is powergaming" is the fact that I'm Rping an adventurer who would do their best in a life or death situation.
I want to be the adventurer that has a tool in the toolkit for any situation. Versatility, multiple combat styles, maybe a few spells from a multiclass.
The argument is not against taking the best option, but rather: "the best option is the same in most scenarios".
For the example: in PF2, the ranger always shoots because it's the most damage per round, while in 5e, you can choose safety(shooting), control (blocking an enemy) or support (flanking with the fighter) and all 3 options have similar damage output.
@@PsychoMachado Depends of your build. If you have picked up some class feats supporting some dual wielding, you'll have the option of blocking and dealing damage in melee instead of shooting, if necessary. If you have an animal companion, you can direct that to block or flank. Also I found, at least for most classes, there's some levels with class feats where you do not get anything to your hyper-specialization, which means you can become more versatile, even if you hyperspecialize. But the game should not really be so difficult you're forced into hyperspecialization.
@@PsychoMachado All of these options but one mean going into melee on a character not built for it. Even 5e Rangers and Fighters can be largely specialized in Ranged or Melee and not be very good at the opposite.
@@OakenTome yes, they can be specialized. But on PF you'll be penalized if you reposition on a turn, since you're not dealing most damage, while on 5E you won't (assuming no enemies nearby). Just look at the example when the wigth gets close.
For PF, shooting in melee might give an AoO, but to avoid it you'd have to waste 2 actions and on the next turn the enemy would simply take one move and be on your tail again, so it's best to just tank that and deal craptons of damage.
On 5e if you grab a rapier and attack twice, your damage wont drop that much but if you choose to keep going archer with an opponent close you're heavily penalized.
And there are scenarios where forgoing ranged and going melee is better on 5e while on PF going rqnged is always best, taking the given example.
One issue with your math is that if your ranger has "the most obvious" build they wouldn't have 10 strength in Pathfinder 2e (as both propulsive ranged weapons as well as finesse weapons benefit from strength with regards to damage unless you are building a charisma or intelligence ranger, you probably will have dumped some points into strength), also you can totally use your hunter's edge with melee weapons. If the ranger uses a longbow (as you said in your scenario), they actually take a penalty to hit any target that is withing 30 feet (longbows have the volley rule). So your math is actually off with regards to the pathfinder scenario and you end up (I assume accidentally) misrepresenting the effects of some combat decisions in pathfinder. And for having done so much reading of monster statblocks and math calculations etc. It's kinda disappointing that you missed some basic rules for the class and equipment you picked for your example.
With regards to the complaint that there should be more feat options for each type of build, sure. But the idea that there is a cycle that you go through each combat perhaps especially with a martial class is something that is arguably true for D&D as well and not unique to Pathfinder. I play both systems and I find combat with my fighter in D&D to be equally if not more monotonous than combat with my Pathfinder ranger.
Like, I enjoy both systems, I play both systems, I've been a GM with both systems, and it's ok to not like a system, I like both for various reasons, I think they offer slightly different options when it comes to character design etc. But I do think your bias causes you to be a bit unfair to Pathfinder and making it sounds worse that it actually is.
After watching both videos on the subject, playing 5e since it came out and dabbling in PF2 for a while now I can certainly see where Cody is coming from but to answer the question from 40:35 "What's the upside?" it would be "Options that matter". In 5e your build options are very limited and for the most part don't really matter. A diviner plays like a abjurer who plays like a conjurer. Your elf battle master who grew up on the streets of Watterdeep is gonna play the same as the dwarf battlemaster who is a noble from the upper spires of Sharn.
Cody said it himself "The players do what their choices push them to do" so in Pathfinder your building choices matter while in DnD it feels like your choices don't matter and the archer who performs just as well with a rapier as he does with a bow proves the point.
So, again in my opinion, if you want to jump in a quick game where you have fun and roll some dice play 5e, if you want to really tinker with your class and make it your own play PF.
6:47 may the gods have mercy upon you XD
Smh gonna be on the couch for a month
The Bards will ask, "What possessed this poor wretch to say such a foolish thing?"
Speak the truth man. Truth.
Haha had the same thought
I feel like you just need to be more creative. Have you tried that?
Totally agree. I play a P2e Goblin Fighter and although my dog slicer goblin sword is my best option I rarely use it. Instead I regularly try to ride whatever monster we are fighting, throw my own poop at it (does no damage and MIGHT blind it if I roll really well), or use my grapnel hook and rope to trip up four legged monsters like they are an ATAT. The best or “most obvious” attack choices are boring in all games after a while. At least in P2E I can drop my shield and equip my grapnel. Run at the sand worm, then use my third action to mount it like Muad'Dib. I wouldn’t be able to do that all in one turn in 5E.
@@StaticElf You absolutely can do all 3 in 5e.
Dropping a weapon or shield on the ground and pulling at 1 weapon (grapling hook) is considered a free action.
Movement is separate from actions and you can always move 30ft unless stated otherwise.
The mount would be a grapple attack with your hook. (Hence “grappling” hook)
@@chetori__ No, dropping a weapon and pulling out another is ONE free action. So yes, you can most definitely do it in 5e.
@@chetori__ “You can also *interact* with one object or feature of the environment for free, during either your move or your action. For example, you could open a door during your move as you stride towards a foe, or you could *draw your weapon as part of the same action you use to attack.*
If you want to *interact* with a second object you have to use your action.”
Doffing a shield is an action yes, but opening your hand to let your sword drop and then attacking with the grappling hook is RAW 1 free action and an attack action. Opening your hand is NOT interacting with your sword.
You’re either flat wrong, or you’re conflating dropping your sword with sheathing it, which you shouldn’t be doing. A lenient DM would allow you to sheath your weapon for free and attack with the grapple as part of its action, but this is literally RAW.
@@chetori__The grappling hook also doesnt have the “Thrown” quality, therefore there’s no 100% RAW way of using it either based on that faulty logic.
Anything without an explicit definition, specifically reverts to idiomatic English, which is what makes it RAW in this case. RAI is for interpretations of rules that could go either way, or arent entirely clear in their language. Like the fact that dragon breath doesnt break invisibility, per RAI.
If you want to run it that way, you’re more than welcome to, but the system is actually fairly open to allowing this him to do this.
"best option"
We got em bois
always trying not to die in combat, what a powergamer
@@SergioLeRoux lol, i actually was accused like that at least twice :D
ua-cam.com/video/6okxuiiHx2w/v-deo.html
Last video his example of "best option" iwas "shape-shifting every fight as a level 12 druid". Everybody pointed out that it's literally not the best option and he got butt hurt.
Now he picked one of the simplest builds in the game, on par with the Barbarian (Rage and strike, rage and strike). To try reaffirm his erroneous affirmation while being condesce ding on people who spoke against his assumptions.
But oh well.
@@MrGinp wild shaping lol
In my game you would be getting tire depending on the animal and you would be making intelligent checks to keep your personality
Ahh, beating a dead horse. A time honored classic, especially in RPGs where characters are prone to losing their mounts. 😂😂😂
Losing*
🤣🤣
You get mounts?
@@RagingWyvern What's the difference if a week on a horse or a month on foot are skipped over by "you safely reach [insert city name] [insert time] later"
@@jeremieberneche1742 3 weeks
35:03 "the positioning didn't even affect the game 1%" you forgot to mention that the pf2e ranger's longbow is a volley weapon so the rangers attacks with his bow would be at an additional -2. That's a -10% chance to hit on every ranged attack made against an enemy within 30 feet of the archer.
So how does that make everything else they said irrelevant?
There's still a lot more to be considered than a -2.
@@SpringRockerPSN When and where he nullified others things he said?
not putting a single boost in str even one for wearing armor without penality and choosing weapon on the lower side in terms of dmg
how convenient
But the wight was already within 30ft. The thing is that the melee range didn't apply any further changes. And I personally feel like there should be a big disadvantage to bringing a bow into a knife fight if the knife is within arm's reach of you versus 15-30ft away.
I do feel in regards to the Age of Ashes adventure path, it needs to be said: The developers did not have the finished rules at the time of writing. Its understandable if the modules as written feel very boring/unfun at times, because they had far less than usual to work with. There's even an encounter in module 5 that the writer even admitted he didn't have any other monster of level available, so he had to make a creative reason for that encounter to even exist. Granted, its kinda an awesome reason, but nonetheless it doesn't mean that it makes it the best decision.
That kind of comes back to criticisms of the playtest (and incorporation of playtest data) though - it's a choice to push out an unfinished product.
Thats a fair point. I just felt it needed to be said for the sake of the argument is all.
Edit: I will add however that given a little more time to let the game grow a bit, some of these issues could be addressed and make the game better. D&D 5E had a similar situation and has since evolved from when it first launched.
@@Jason-ji8ql Considering the example given in the video though, which simply demonstrated basic combat mechanics, nothing has really changed in 5e since its launch. The concept of movement as a resource rather than an action, the performance of the Attack of Opportunity, the way grappling, tripping, and flanking works...those have all been the way they are since launch. More new build options have come out sure, but as far as I'm aware, nothing has changed about the core combat mechanics available to any class. His demonstration proves that in Pathfinder 2e, the class options chosen limit a character's overall effectiveness when applied to the core combat mechanics by a large degree, whereas in DnD 5e, their class build choices when applied to DnD's core combat system, allowed for more versatile and effective choices.
TL;DR: I don't think the point of the video was to demonstrate that the module was flawed, but that the flaw lies within the games core combat mechanics and how they interact with character build choices when determining alternative effective options on the part of the player.
@@afilthycasualplays4007 So just to start out everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I think healthy discussions and criticisms are very welcome and healthy for any game.
I've been playing 5e for over 8 years now and am currently in both a 5e campaign and a pf2e campaign that we've played through from level 1 to 20 (its actually Age of Ashes, the same campaign as him). I love both of these games but for different reasons.
The "example" he gives is just god awful in comparing the 2 systems. It shows 2 things:
1) He has no clue about the rules and structure of pf2e
2) He knows the rules and is just playing ignorant to get the views.
Either one is totally fine imo, I know youtube has an algorithm that promotes clickbaity titles, spikes in views, and comments so if I was in his place I doubt I'd do anything different if I don't like pf2e. The problem is I like both.
5e is insanely good at creating a story and allows DM/players to play how they want to in and out of combat by using a great foundation of rules and allowing DMs to build the house. There are a lot of variant rules, houserules are extremely common in every group I've ever played in because they lay down the basics and let the DM decide the flow and pace of the game. CR/Monsters are a very good example of this. Some parties might struggle against one encounter that on paper should be a cakewalk and absolutely destroy a deadly encounter. However, 5e is not super tactics focused so adding and removing monsters to an encounter is super easy to decide on as a DM, you can create tense moments or give your players a sense of accomplishment when they slay the Boss and his underlings run away. It adds a lot to the role play side of the game.
On the player combat side of things, martial characters have a foundation of what they can do. Move, Attack, and Class abilities (including Spells)/feats. Within these foundations there are things like Shove, Grapple, AoO, etc. Positioning, buffing/debuffing, limiting/disrupting the enemy's available actions don't really play a pivotal role in an encounter. The system is designed that AoOs aren't that big of a deal in the long run, he even states that in this video in one of the wights options.
In 5e combat, those loose rules allow for DMs and players to have "flexibility" and can create some really cool moments.
The system is designed with bounded accuracy so a commoner (+2 to attack) can still hit a Pit Fiend (CR 20, 19 AC), it won't do much dmg (avg 2) but they can still hit it.
Items boil down to really cool treasure and a sense of accomplishment. You can play through a whole campaign never using a +1 weapon and still come out on top.
In pf2e the entire system lays out all the rules, so not just the foundation but the whole building is there. Any action that you want to do has rules and tells you what happens. You and the Monsters you face get 3 Actions. You can get free actions and reactions through feats/abilities/items, that expand on the options you have available but you have to decide what you want to do with your actions.
Encounters are built in a way that you know how difficult the encounter is going to be regardless of the actual mosters that are in it. A Severe encounter is going to be a Severe encounter, a Trivial encounter is going to be trivial. They use a level/proficiency focused accuracy system and change how hitting something works, missing by 10 or more is a critical failure and beating the AC by 10 or more is a critical success so +/-1 to hit actually matters.
This changes the way the game is played on a fundamental level as tactics become incredibly important in encounters. You (and monsters) only have 3 Actions so positioning and teamwork matter. Melee Monsters getting to attack 3 times a round is actually a big deal as they can actually hit sometimes with the 3rd attack. Knocking a wight prone and grappling them is actually a viable tactic as this allows your Fighter (one of the best crit fishers in pf2e due to their high proficiency) to attack a flat footed target (-2 AC) and most likely critical at least once if not twice. Even if the wight goes before the fighter he has to burn 2 actions just to stand up, by escaping the grapple and actually standing reducing its available actions to 1.
Items are incredibly important and pf2e makes encounters built around the fact that your players have at level or lower items. A level 5 ranger would have at the minimum a +1 (lvl 2 rune) striking (lvl 4 rune that adds 1 weapon die) weapon in his "example" so even his basic math is incorrect as the ranger would have a +14 to attack (4 expert prof + 5 level + 4 Dex + 1 item). Thats not the point of his video though I understand as he is talking about the things you can do in combat.
In pf2e when you level up your class you get very basic abilities that define the class, e.g. at lvl 1 the Ranger gets Hunt Prey that marks a target and you get bonuses to Seek and Track your prey and Hunters edge that gives you a choice of what you can do against your hunted prey (extra dmg, reduce the penalties on attacking more than once, etc). The other "passives" basically increase your proficiency in areas or add other niche abilities. The other things YOU get to select such as bumping proficiency in a certain skill up to the next level, class feats, skill feats, general feats, and ancestry (race) feats. Ancestry in pf2e actually gives you benefits outside of level 1. For a level 5 ranger you have 12 feats/increases to make not including ability increases. So you have a ton of choices before combat even begins that you can choose from.
Now knowing that a +1 to hit is very strong as it equates to an extra 5% to hit/crit there are other options we can use. You can Recall Knowledge as an action which if you pass can give you much needed info on the monster as most of the creatures in pf2e are not just hp punching bags with resistance to non magical damage. They might be weak to something, have resistances, have a really high reflex (dex) save or a low fortitude (con) save, have an aura, or cause debuffs when they hit. Just knowing basic info on the monster helps out the entire party as they know what will have a better chance of working. A wizard knowing a creature has a low will save can use spells that target will or a fighter that knows the monster is weak to slashing dmg can switch weapons. Team tactics and knowledge play a crucial role in combat. You can also Demoralize the monster giving it a -1 to EVERYTHING (attacks, AC, DCs of abilities, saves) or a -2 if it crit fails the save. You can use consumable items to buff yourself or debuff the monster such as special ammunition. You can ready an action to Hunted Shot when the Fighter knocks the wight prone so you're more likely to crit it twice. If you took Medicine feats you can battle medicine a wounded ally, if you took Diplomacy feats you can Bon Mot an enemy to give them a -3(!) to Will saves on a crit success or -2 on a success to aid your spellcaster, if you took Stealth feats you can Sneak, Hide and Hunters Shot so the target is flat footed and gets a -2 to AC. It gives you soooo many options depending on how you built your character that 5e doesn't have.
The problem with his "example" is that it looks at pf2e as if it were 5e and its just not 5e. The entire system is completely different so comparing the 2 you'd have to talk about how the way you play each game is different. Not the way he did it by playing pf2e as if it were 5e. Just the fact that the monsters are 30 ft away is a great example as movement actually matters in pf2e so you get less of it to start but can increase it with choices throughout character leveling, with items or a general feat that everyone has access to.
I'm not saying he is wrong as literally every TTRPG boils down to move and shoot but his incredibly terrible comparison is very obviously biased and most of his "criticisms" aren't even grounded in the rules of the system.
Like I said in the beginning criticisms are very healthy and welcome for any system but they should be actual criticisms not just misunderstanding/ignorance.
Like my main issue with pf2e is that you rarely get those moments of "Wow I feel like a boss right now" as almost every encounter is based on your level so you never just get to absolutely destroy monsters. Like we had just fought and killed a dragon and the next town we go to the guards could take on the whole party almost single handedly. There were story reasons of course but it still doesn't feel like thats right.
Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions and I'm all for civil discussions about game editions so I don't want you to feel like I'm attacking you or your opinions but this video is just awful and I fear it will drive people away from trying out a different system for no reason. I love both systems! 5e gives you an incredible role play and story with some lite combat and pf2e brings out the tactician in me with its fantastic team play and combat tactics.
TLDR:
You can't compare 5e and pf2e without talking about how you actually play the different systems and leaving bias out of the conversation. Each system focuses on different things and each has their strengths and weaknesses
@@Sneakasaurus Thank you. A great summary indeed
I do think, to your point, character building in pathfinder is more rewarding.
I think I find the hate for pathfinder 2e is what hurts me. I love the system and the head cannon characters I create with it, but I cannot find anyone to play it with, even as a DM. 5e seems to be the norm, and people (from my own anecdotical experience) don’t want to stray from it.
I know right? Still FEELS so nice. Totally agree
Check PF discord. Tons of ppl to play with
I've wanted to try PF2e but my group is fixated on 1e, so I haven't had the chance to try PF2e and would love the chance to
@@Hettikus Do you have a link?
@@ThePageTurnerPT discord.gg/pathfinder
I honestly don’t recognize the game you’re describing as 2e. It's literally the opposite of my group’s experiences.
The genius of 2e is that it gives you the resources to build any character you want, and to continue growing that character every level. If you CHOOSE to build a character that only does one thing really well, it will mean there are not the resources to do another thing equally well too. This is how the game balances the different builds. So, you can CHOOSE to build a PC with a single, very effective “rotation,” but that PC is going to be very flat, and not very versatile. It's going to end up being boring to play, and will have a huge blindspot/weakness somewhere that can be exploited.
Or, you CHOOSE to create a versatile character. For example, in our Extinction Curse AP we have a Bard, a Rogue, a Ranger, and an Alchemist. But none of them are built to do one thing, instead they are flexible to cover the needs of the party.
For instance, our Alchemist has become our healer and one of our top damage dealers. With his CHOICE of reagents, elixirs…, he can mix up certain things to suit the specific creatures we’re battling. And, he loves tripping things, like maybe too much. Our Rogue has dipped into magic to be able to make herself invisible, or turn into other creatures. As the Bard, I spent the early levels as an in combat healer (usually popping up our rogue), for a few levels I would summon fey creatures specifically CHOSEN to match up well against our foes, and now, she has really come into her own as a full caster and can blast as good as any wizard. At any time, as the situation calls for it, I can easily slip back into one of those roles. The Ranger has also CHOSEN to be balanced between ranged and melee while focusing a lot of her resources on her mount. As a result, in combat, she can CHOSE to ride around and shoot Mongol style, she can charge and have her and her mount attack Cavalier style, or she can do a little of both as the situation changes.
Now, because we’ve CHOSEN to built balanced characters, they are not optimized at doing one thing, so we don’t do the same thing over and over again. Instead, they were originally optimized to represent our ideas about who they are as characters. As we’ve progressed through the levels, we’ve CHOSEN to expend our character building resources on fillings gaps in our party, not just getting better and better at whatever our “thing” is. As a result, our party, not our characters, is growing into optimal functionality because of the tremendous CHOICES built into the game.
In short, after GMing 100s of session, and playing a character for 40 some more, I find your description of 2e confusing and completely as odds with my experience to an absurd level. If you and your players have CHOSEN to play this game like you described, its only the game’s fault insofar as it gave you the option to do so. CHOOSE differently, and it will be a different game.
@@nickromanthefencer If Trip, Shove, and the rest are never being used by your group just because of MAP, then just remove it. Its a TTRPG, who plays ANY system 100% RAW outside of organized play? And/or use the Hero Points to incentivize solving problems more creatively. Personally, I don't care what he, or anybody else, plays. I just don't like the game misrepresented to the point where it might turn other players off of trying with an open mind, or at all.
@@nickromanthefencer To look at the positive, its generated a lot of response videos and what not that are more balanced. In the end, the "Satanic Panic" actually helped D&D. Maybe this will function similarly for Paizo?
Also just quickly going to mention that for the flaws the system does have, Pathfinder 2e does two things immensely well, that being that you cant just go down and get right back up over and over. That will inevitably get you killed. That and encounter balancing is easy and super well done. Those two caveats alone would keep me from ever playing 5th edition again. It makes the job as a DM really easy. And even with the illusion of choice (that both systems have in different ways) any system that makes prep and my job overall as the DM easier, while offering rules support for the crazy shit my players want to do is going to be my choice.
I never had the pleasure of DMing Pathfinder 2e, but I remember my DM complaining a lot that any time he wanted to know how a monster's abilities work (not monster specific abilities, but abilities that are used by a wide array of creatures), he'd have to reference a glossary of terms because they weren't fleshed out in the stat block of the monster in the Beastiary. For that reason alone, he said he preferred DnD since every monster's ability is explained within the stat block.
@@afilthycasualplays4007 my homies and I come from 3.5 D&D cause I really dont like 5th edition. They killed the tactical aspect of combat imo. So honestly, considering that, pathfinder 2e's conditions are actually a simplification compared to 3.5e's.
I'm sorry but who gives a shit if the encounter is easy to balance if it's boring as hell and you wind up doing the same thing over and over because it's the only choice that isn't garbage.
@@raider363 uhh I mean I haven't ran into that issue with any of my players, and we had that issue in 5th edition on multiple occasions. I dont ever see real "rotations" in my game, nor do my players feel like there is one decent choice. I have players who use the shove/grapple mechanics pretty regularly, and I can actually tell as a DM when an encounter I'm making is going to be their opportunity to be heroes and wipe the floor with the baddies and when it's going to be an epic level encounter. The way you just spoke clearly tells me you dont have a single clue about what the workload going into being a DM is. Any system that makes it clear to judge encounter balance on anything other than previous knowledge or a general knowledge of the rules saves me a lot of time. Plus standardized XP and other things truly make it a breeze. You're talking to the guy who would spend 3 hours per session prepping pathfinder 1e and 3.5e encounters. And while 5th edition is a bit easier than both of those (although their system doesnt work any better) pathfinder 2e has a clear leg up on all of them. And if I can spend 30 minutes rather than 3 hours designing the same encounter, it allows me to spend the rest of those 2 and a half hours working on making unique situations for said encounter, or working on other encounters and plot development. Again I've never had a problem with meaningful choices in combat with pathfinder 2e. And I've ran campaigns to 20. I have had that issue plenty of times with 5th edition and starfinder. And when encounters come down to the wire, or are steamrolled, at least I was expecting that with Pathfinder 2e. I've had tons of fun with my players, and they've been enjoying the shit outta the campaign I'm running, and combat is a heavy focal point in our game. I even brought up Taking20's video with them, and while they all could see what he meant, there wasnt a single person at my table who agreed with him in any major way. You seriously can't argue that balancing encounters being easy is a bad thing. The rest of your point falls flat because I have never experienced what Cody is going through personally.
@@raider363 I think that if your game is boring once initiative is rolled, that's either on the player for never attempting stuff outside the box, or on your DM for making boring encounters.
I do think the exemple in the video spotlight the problem, but to be fair, if i have understood it right, you didn't took in consideration the volley 30 ft trait of the pathfinder longbow. So you would take a 10 percentage point penalty to your hit chance if you fire arrows in melee range with your longbow.
His character was always within 30 feet in the encounter.
So what you're saying is PF2E is like how I feel when I play a warlock in 5E
We feel a bit better than 1st edition wizards
Yes, but unfortunately the complaint of a class (barring hexblade of course) is the complaint of a whole system and that's not a good look.
@@RashidMBey I only felt like this when playing warlock
@@redrumssam5888 That's the point. You felt like this with one class in 5e. Cody and his players as well as countless others felt like this with the entire system in PF2.
@@RashidMBey Cody especially mentions he only has this feeling about martial classes. Still, that´s way too much.
Sees video uploaded, remembers last video. Looks at video length, oh no.........
Unrealistic means little in a world where dragons raom the sky and peeps throwing fireballs left and right
@@draakgast was this in response to something that's now deleted? Because there's no context for it and is confusing. However this touches on a few different things in principle that I would like to address based on the info that I can infer from this comment.
However I would argue against that point. "Realistic" in that sense is more meant as, "logically consistent." AKA its addressing the idea of, "does the magic system operate in a way that is logically consistent with itself?"
Which in turn means that the magic system has to be defined to the core for every different type of magic. EX: PF2e has divine spells, arcane spells, psychic spells, and primal spells. Divine spells come from deities to their most devout followers, arcane comes from the individual who studied it or has the innate talent for it, psychic spells come from the mind, and primal spells come from the world (think druid or ranger magic).
Where the unrealistic part would come from would be if a druid, since they use primal magic in PF2e, suddenly using an arcane spell without multiclassing. Doing so would be logically inconsistent, and therefore would be unrealistic in the game's lore
@@ThePageTurnerPT fucking hel, I think I klicked the wrong comment to awnser to, cause indeed I make little sence like this😅 .
But the context was not about internal consistency, or at all about Magic, I think this was about people doing "realistic things" in an RPG, where that usualy doesn't hold up because of the mechanics, examp
Expertise, you can get upwards of 35 when rolling. This does not mean it wil succeed all the time but around 95%(?realistic or not?) and how can we say that going above the DC has to be "realistic" when the only ones that can do it are the ones who more amazing things.
I Don't have a problem against realism, I just see so many things I can't compare to IRL because there are no IRL wizards or rouges with "+15" and don't know IF I can even draw a line anymore
I fully agree that martial classes in both games tend to do the same rotations, as it's a fundamental flaw in almost any of the top/mainstre tabletop games on the market. Which would favor D&D as it's a less crunchy system.
The thing that brought me to Pathfinder 2e over D&D 5e was more about the options available to create a perfect character that the player enjoys.
A table of 5 rangers could all be vastly different from one another when you take into account all the choices during creation, level up, and archetypes(38 unique ones, not including multiclassing). Which is not something D&D does very well in this iteration, as the choices are just minor changes to playstyle and flavor, typically.
Funny thing is...after almost 8 years of playing non stop 5e. I feel this exact way about that system.
Eventually you feel like every path leads to the same places, nothing feels new, or refreshing, and then...you jump ship, you go trying other systems, and falling in love again with the hobby. I think that's a valid and great thing to happen to every TTRPG gamer. In fifth, my players do the exact same things in and out of combat, going trough 5 different parties, almost no differences, same niche roles, same quirky little builds. The only solution was a shake up by bringing to the table a different System.
Good video Cody, I've watched this 2 years ago when it came out, cheering about how you were joining D&D, you know..."one of us! one of us ♪♫" and now I'm here on the other side going into PF2 because 5e has let me down so much. Hahah that's life for you! Hope you're doing great!
Its very interesting to think about like that. I'm just starting to get into Pathfinder alongside my group which consists of a Meta player, a roleplayer and the friend who just wants to hang. The Meta player actually wants to play Pathfinder over 5e, because in their experience its variety of feat choices compared to subclasses in 5e made it too versatile for them to ever feel forced to play characters a specific way each time. I am super excited to show the roleplayer how varied the choices for fighters are and how they can go absurdly deep into one specific playstyle, or take abilities to be good at a bunch of situations, just not godly
@@Hary_Half-Mast Yeah, pretty much that over here too.
I think anyone saying D&D is much different is wrong, but that's not the point. The point is that PF2e is disappointing, regardless of whether any other system is also unsatisfying or also faces problems (or the same exact problem). It's not "Wellll uhhh DND SUCKZ." It's "Damn this system has a major flaw and I can't get around the fact that my players and I are bored." And then there's the question of... if DND and PF are not options for Fantasy TTRPGs at the moment... What are? (Does Cypher fall into the same trap of optimal choices leading to a doom combat rotation?)
@@OperationBartowski1 Sure, we have a phrase here in Argentina that goes something like "Taking comfort in something that affects many of us is a fool's errand" and yes, the solution is probably looking outside the basic D&D-PF shaped box. Cheers!
@@RollCastPodcast funny the timing of this comment as Matt Colville's latest announcement speaks right to this, instead of creating a DnD clone or fork, create the whole game new from the ground up. It will be interesting to see how it goes, I am excited for them.
Sir, I will start thusly: It is actually refreshing to see someone come to a debate fully armed and ready. Well met.
Even if I disagree with you (and I do not in this case), I would hope our discourse would be civil.
I've been playing D&D since I was 18 and I'm 56 now. And you can bet your last dollar that when it comes to a life and death combat situation, I'm going to use the optimal actions that exist. Everyone worth their salt as a player figures out what those are.
ua-cam.com/video/92gP2J0CUjc/v-deo.html
Correct!
As he points out, with the wight in the player's face, and depending on the fighter's hitpoints - they might be different in the 5e scenario. In every PF scenario just shooting is the best option
@@override367 The funny part is that this is just factually wrong, as the best actions in PF2e are ones that set up the rest of the party to succeed.
1) More character ability choices necessarily means either a player will identify the optimum choices (in build and action) OR the designers balanced the choices so well that the choice is meaningless. Lowering or omitting feats, skills, bonuses (and HP) creates a vacuum which the players will fill with creative combats.
2) Increase your magic item variety. Randomize it for best results. If you want different characters for which different choices are optimal, give them tools which point them in a different direction.
Do both for best results.
What a class act you are Cody. I dont think I could have exhibited that level of restraint, understanding, empathy and openness in the face of everyone being so dismissive, insulting to your players and just straight up not understanding the point. I hope people now understand how heartbreaking the previous video was for you. More power to you man!
A vast majority of the responses he got were well measured, kind and understanding. The issue remains though, he just makes erroneous claims in both videos.
@@momierxorz I certainly hope you aren't being dismissive of his experience. The exact thing he was talking about. Comments and responses, like deeds, are not a ledger. A good one does not cancel out a bad one.
@@invaderzam I say erroneous because he legitimately omits a ton of skills about the system to make his point about repetitive rotations. His experience, valid as it may be, is not a fault of the system, his players didnt use the wide range of options available that are infact more optimal than the rotation he cites in the video, that he never told them about these options and instead opted to make this video leads me to believe Cody legitimately didnt know about what the system had to offer to solve his very complaint.
I admit, I'm pretty biased toward Pathfinder 2e, though I can recognize the validity of all the points this video presents. I'd love to hear at some point what your analysis is of what underlying choices Paizo made about their game mechanic build that leads to the illusion of choice you describe, and the dilemma faced in combat. Thanks for all your videos, they're always great to watch.
One thing that is a problem of both 5e and Pathfinder2 (unless your DM acepts the more fluid evolution in Tasha's... Kinda) is that the Fighting Style isnt really a choice... It's just a buff to the choice you did in character creation. And you cant really change It afterwards easily.
If things were more broad it would be great. Like... Turning "Archery" and "Great Weapon" in something that could be used by most (If not all) Weapons... A +2 to hit or a reroll of damage, for whatever weapon you want.
NOW you have actual choices (even if the reroll is theorically worse). Between being more acurate or doing more damage, and two fighters with the same weapon can choose different styles and be slightly more "unique".
It's a character creation thing. If you make the character creation sub-game have more interesting choices, then it makes the table game have fewer interesting choices. The 3e line of games (which I firmly place Pathfinder on) allow players to build character optimisation by specialisation to a much greater degree than any other version of D&D, but, for example, if you've specialised in bows you've chosen to be much less effective with swords as a result. This specialisation makes the character much less effective in combat if they choose to deviate from their specialist weapons, or specialist tactics; and thus it makes any choices they have in combat less real. The option to take a 60% drop in damage output and place yourself in greater danger is not much of an option.
I think you could probably design around this by making specialisation give you more options rather than more power, but that's not the path the 3e line took.
@@jbaidley But it might make you more HEROIC, which is the point a lot of people forget. An archer who drops their bow and tackles the Hobgoblin about to stick a dagger in their companion's back may not be doing the optimal thing for their character, but they are acting heroically. Tons of people love to optimize, the problem is all too often they optimize the fun out of the game. At the same time, it is the way people work to be specialized in things, if everyone has a generic bonus that they can switch to whatever option they want to do at the moment, then that's what you end up with, a bunch of bland generic characters. This was the problem of 1st and 2nd edition. By and large a fighter was a fighter. Roleplay whatever differences you wanted too, when it came down to it, your Thac0 was the same as their Thac0
@@albertonishiyama1980 that's why I choose only between Defense, Blindsight and Cantrips. This way I can't feel bad about changing weapons. If I know there will be a lot of enemys in the next fight, I might go with a shield. If I drop too low on hp I can runaway and use a bow.
There are two things I can easily see : first the move as an action. It punishes moving, so it constrains the system very heavily, and it makes using the terrain a lot harder because of the opportunity cost this now gives.
Second, the large difference in numeric values for a specialized build vs a non-specialized one : this through balance off. Either you build your character well and it will be very effective in combat, or you don't and you will struggle in combat. But if you have both characters in a group, then the ineffective one will be, indeed, very ineffective and you won't be able to balance the encounters. But if you can make a character ineffective, it means that some of the choices he made were not good. It means that some choices were not options but traps, and when the player knows better, he won't make the same mistakes. This is the illusion of choice : when some available choices should actualy NOT be considered.
If there are archtypes and all choices have their niche, good, but then don't allow someone to go away from the archtype. Or you are simply making traps for him. This is why the DND5 system is better *in this regard* : it tells you that if you want to do this kind of character, it's here and you get these specific features. Instead of hiding the archtype in a jungle of feat that you have to carefuly select for it to work well.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I absolutely love that even in Texas, an over the top southern accent is used to represent someone saying something irrational.
We Texans don’t actually have a Southern accent.
@@geektome4781 Yeah, it's like a german/irish descendent dialect. Southern accent is more Irish/British descendant.
These are my favorite kinds of videos. I have no stakes in the argument so I get to enjoy criticism on both ends (as long as they’re in good faith)
Haha, I never thought of it that way, but that's the fun for me too! Thanks for pointing it out for me!
@@skillganon606 he has a right to his opinion, and he also has a right to be wrong. If you believe so
@@skillganon606 An understandable opinion, but I might have felt the need to make a follow up to defend myself and especially my players too if i were him. I'm not disagreeing with you, just giving a probable reason.
I don't care about all the math and whatever but the thing I can't wrap my head around is if the players did the optimal thing all the time and then they TPK'd then how were those things optimal? The best and most favorable decisions led to all the characters dying doesn't connect for me.
@@Pistonrager so not very optimal.
My only issue with the criticism is that 5th Edition is no better. I'm always going to do what's more viable in the moment. The limitation in 5th Edition as to what you can do gives an illusion of urgency. As a Drow Sorlock...better believe my standard action set is to Quickened Darkness into a Booming Blade. Or if there's nothing within 35 feet I'm probably throwing an Eldritch Blast at them.
I don't have any special things to use in 5E that gives more flavor, it doesn't have the customization that I feel PF2E has, though I haven't played PF2E. My familiarity before my first 5E game was playing KotOR and reading it's closest similarity - Star Wars Saga Edition, which was based of 3.5E.
The lack of choice in character building in 5E drives me up a goddamn wall. If you're not multiclassing you have no choice beyond the first choice you make in the campaign.
I'm not saying that PF2E is perfect. Both systems have very clear flaws. I don't like PF2Es spell setup. I especially don't like the Core Rulebook layout. But I don't like 5E Character Creation either.
Neither of them have the SciFi theme that I prefer to Fantasy.
...it sounds like I really just need to play Starfinder.
Edit: To clarify. I think you, Cody, have the right to your opinion in the matter. Your opinion being, as my takeaway from the last video, that 5E has the same problems but if you have to play two things with the same problems you'd rather play the one that's simpler.
That is not my opinion. I would rather play the one that gives me more choices to expand my character in a direction outside of their core identity. But I can respect your opinion. I just don't share it.
The options are nice in PF2, he pretty much ignores the 10 or so options the player can make to make the character more fun though. I haven't played Starfinder, it had such mixed thoughts. There were a few players I played with at PFS that absolutely loved it though so maybe you would like that too.
I definitely have a lot of options playing the beastmaster archetype. I have more an ideal set of attacks but I have to move a lot, I use medicine to heal my party, and I have two different beasts that each play differently depending on which I’m using when an encounter starts. I want to play a beastmaster in DND but comparing the two I’d say pathfinder gives me more options for this subclass. At the very least my beast gets an extra attack. DND offers rangers in general more magic spells so that would add some variety. Idk how you’d play any character in any system and not come upon an optimized sequence of attacks
Not sure about pathfinder, but in 5e, the ranger doesn't have to go prone to grapple the wight, so wight gets disadvantage to attack, and both fighter and ranger get advantage, until the grapple is broken...
I have to assume the prone part was for flavour?
Why can't people just accept that some systems have different flaws, and that's why there are so many systems.
Because they take those critics too personaly. Any attack made against their favorite system is, in their mind, directly directed at them. (that works with movie, books, shows,...)
Exactly! I mean, I'm not a *huge* fan of PF2, but I'll run it or play in it and probably have fun. More importantly, I'll probably use pieces of it in other games. I think one of the best things that *any* DM can do is sit down and read a bunch of different systems. There's a lot of great ideas and systems out there, all of which do some things really well, and other things not so well.
Because his previous video criticizing wasn’t well thought-out.
It’s also a tiny bit strange to make a big stink over quitting it when he literally only had 3 videos for it previously, one of which was a direct comparison to 5e and the other was just a playtest announcement.
@@OakenTome To be clear, YOU don't think it was well thought out. You have only provided evidence of an opinion here. He is only criticizing the combat system, and nothing else.
@@OakenTome one actual video claimed pathfinder as the victor mechanically. It shows he is trying to be objective and not personal about it.
Yoooo dude so I get that D&D 5e is your bag here, but the Out of Combat Crunch with In Combat Streamlining makes Pathfinder 2e sound like a really good system and I love this because frankly I feel like I always get the most value out of listening to people talk bad on a system and then processing those criticisms. Mind you your first video also made me look more favorably at D&D 5e (I havent played since Pathfinder 1e) but yeah this one makes P2 sound pretty nice.
So he said in his first video of this he was always a pathfinder fan boy so this isn't coming from a place of loving dnd over pathfinder it's coming from a place of disappointment. He was hoping for a system that would give players true choice, but he kept finding out there was none inside of combat. Outside of combat both games have their moments of great roleplay, but both games have their flaws, in dnd it has the same build the best combat driven character but it allows for more choices in how you do that damage
@@michaeldoyle9354 Yeah I am generally a World of Darkness player so I dont really enjoy Combat overmuch anyways. I prefer mechanics that skew more towards allowing more RP/Narrative elements to them which can mean adding crunch to Out of Combat stuff.
"When given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." There will always be a best way to maximize damage every turn in every single TTRPG that has ever been made or will be made. As a player, resist the urge to do that. You will enjoy this hobby so much more. Simple as.
I'm new to PathFinder 2e, just this year i started. I have played alot of 5e. And i greatly prefer PF2e. To me 5e (as a system) is kinda boring and no where near as good as PF2e.
There is a great Mark Rosewater lecture on all the lessons he's learned designing for magic the gathering and the one that jumps out here is that the way for a player to have fun should be the most optimal thing to do in a game. To say that a player can have more fun by doing unoptimal actions is absolving yourself of guilt of making an unfun game because the player plays the game with the belief that the actions the game designer wants them to make are the actions that will lead to the most fun. You should make the most optimal way to play your game the most fun because otherwise you're punishing your players for being smart.
With the OGL situation, I am looking into PF2e for the first time and watched your two ‘not for me’ vids.
The late point in this vid was you rather come up with your own way of dealing with unusual circumstances instead of having to hunt down a crunchy rule that has been published. To each their own. I will say, not knowing PF2e at all, that for DnD, I played Adventures League almost exclusively. For universal understanding of rules, the more crunch there is, the better I am able to plan out my actions, both in and out of combat.
As far as combat being a repeat of rotations, I can see that, but I’ve also experienced the same thing in DnD, Star Wars, & L5R. All systems, that I know of, lead players down an optimum path straight from character generation. A player picks a race/heritage = synergies with somethings and not others, the player picks a class = further restricts the tricks a player has in their bag. Background? Tighter. Level choices, then the players are locked into a single repetitive “choice” to produce the best chance for success both in and out of combat.
As far as your example goes, my first question is; why not gang up on the target in melee? Depending on the success of the Rangers main attack, and if the melee can likely finish it off, I would think the third action is to move out of single move action range of the free mob, so the choice the GM has is to two action attack the melee PC, presumably more difficult, or single attack the Ranger.
Thank you for your thoughts and your work in producing content to aid the community.
The weird thing to me is, that either he has a totally wrong rule understanding or pathfinder 2 rules have changed significantly in every area. At least that he is wrong on the damage calculation already in this video is pretty obvious.
@@js3093 The calcs on damage seemed reasonable for the point, ranged “should” do ranged attacks, to do otherwise means less damage to win the combat. The one example of the 5e Ranger doing more damage, to me, exposed them to far worse damage from being flanked by the free melee, so not a good trade off.
I saw another criticism vid where the OP was saying PF2e makes super heroes and not characters. This matches the rotation thing easily, for me as an outsider, because as people synergize, when there is a substantial threat, players will be less inclined to make sub optimal choices.
@@jvoodoochild2755 I wrote another comment on the topic recently. To give a short summary:
The ranger has quickdraw as written by himself. Quickdraw let´s you draw and slash with the same action. So the Ranger could actually do Hunt prey, stride, quickdraw. The first attack has the best chance to hit and a precision ranger is all about getting that first good hit in because the damage from this hunters edge only get´s activated once a turn.
Which is just one of many mistakes that he made in this video along with ignoring skill feats, proper equipment (longbow get a penalty in this room etc.), not at all factoring in any abilities of the fighter etc.
All in all he has made a good couple of mistakes in the rules themselves and ignores a good amount of possible options that he just leaves out which is pretty disingenuous.
@@js3093 And those mistakes were on things that would've completely changed the flow of combat.
Cody: quits pathfinder 2e because combat is boring
Me: Plays a pacifist so I can ignore combat
I'm ok with this
If you’re ignoring combat in such a combat focused game you’re probably playing the wrong game for you.
@@trashpanda5869 I dunno, I'd want to see what happens if one of my players starts hugging a dragon to prevent combat...
@@trashpanda5869 Yeah pretty much. Pathfinder and D&D are no place to make a pacifist character because the entire game is basically fighting crap. Really if you want to play either game you need to really like the combat system. If you don't, you should find a different RPG.
@@taragnor It could be interesting to make a pacifist character if they have a hidden personality that's a combat savant. Like a jekyll and hyde, but they have to roll for which personality is going to take over at the beginning of combat.
Interestingly, the illusion of choice could also be reinterpreted as specialist paths for a more neutral take.
In Pf2e it is far easier to make a strong specialist character without any specific min-maxing, than I hear it is in 5e. There also are not really any solo game breakers available to be had - the system/math is very tight on that. Only teams can build those. And agreeing with you on the logic, that whatever path you start stepping down on - that will be your path.
Pathfinder does allow for great variety of specialists that do act quite differently in combat - but I do agree that they easily fall into loops. For some that's fine, for some it's not.
What really is challenging me positively is to create a more generalist and variable character that can still be incredibly useful in combat with lots of options. Generally that involves the archetypes (aka multiclassing).
Though the one thing I really agree with you with few qualifiers is that the alternative actions like Trip, Grab etc are useful only occasionally. Not completely, but by the melee characters more often than not. Shove being the only exception. Trip only seems to work for a whip wielding caster who rolls well from 10ft back. If you specialize in these, then they may be more viable. But prolly not :)
Dont take me wrong , but that is very similar to 4e. I had the same experiance witj D&D 4e
Yup being able to specialize is what make PF2 fun imo. 5e your character is pretty much just a few options and your are "good" at everything and slightly better at one style. PF2 you get to choose to be good at whatever you want. I also feel as you mention archetypes make the options so much better. Out of all the actions in 2e I am unsure why he chose athletics when he could have fit in the other skill actions in his "rotation".
One issue with Shove trip and grab is that in Pathfinder 2nd you get worse at these as you level op unless you make a lot of investments in the skills needed.
So if you find yourself in a encounter at later level where these would be a good option you no longer can just switch to them.
@@edwinsuijkerbuijk5106 Yes but once you get higher levels you should have plenty of Ancestry/Class Feats that increase your options even more. Since pretty much every martial can keep getting new actions for combat.
Ideally, every kind of specialist would have a variety of viable tactics for different situations. If you specialize to the point of repeating action sequences, there's something wrong with the design.
PF2e requires much more planning than 5e. A lot of feats you take early may seem weak early on, but by the time you hit higher levels having them creates combos with other options. So what might be optimal at level 2 might end up being pretty suboptimal by level 6. There are _a lot_ of feats and all of them are viable and many open up combos with other players. If your laser focused on whats best right now for you at this moment, you're probably not going to have fun.
I say this because both your video and Puffin Forrest's are the reason I avoided going to PF2e when 5e started feeling pretty stale. You want to talk about lack of choice? If someone tells you they're playing a druid in 5e, you know theres a very good chance they're circle of the moon and you can probably list have of their spells off the top of your head.
I ran a full 1-20 level campaign in 5e with the same group I'm not running a PF2e game that we've almost finished and while I greatly preferred PF2e as a GM since I no longer have to fight 5e's CR system, I took a vote to see which my players would rafher play going forward, and they unanimously picked PF2e, with the primary reasons being the tree action economy that sped everything up, and the sheer amount of options available. There's plenty of stuff you can do depending on how you build your character. Yeah, if you for some reason build your character so it only has three viable options, you'll be.doing the same things over and over. But if you find yourself in that position, you've done it to yourself.
i like this take
i think regarding feat planning it should also be mentioned that even if you mess up
it either isnt all that bad as you still have your classes core features
or you could use the core retraining rules and a bit of downtime to improve your skill combos
If your players are making the same exact actions each combat then it sounds like your combats are built in a way that the same exact actions resolve them, aka your combats are all the same.
don't understand why everyone was/is so mad at him for saying he doesn't like Pathfinder 2e. Like he isn't allowed to not like it. It's ridiculous. People are allowed to not like things, grow up.
I've left PF2E online groups because they just turned into a bash-Cody-fest.
There's really no need to get so vicious because one guy said his opinion.
@@the-wisest-emu luckily the group I'm in wasn't that bad. There was a bit of negative comments when the video dropped but that was it. Idk, this whole I hate you because you disagree with me in today's society is just poisoning everything
@@uncreative_account so true! Civil discussion doesn't seem to be an option for people anymore.
(Oh, and just so I'm clear, I haven't left any game groups, just Facebook pages)
It's because he always makes the mistake of getting defensive and arguing with every piece of feedback he gets instead of just ignoring it. In most of his videos, he spends more time pissing and moaning about commenters than actually making the point he's trying to make.
Yeah, I'm sorry, but people were the same level of rude to him that he was to the system and in this video. Not saying that his critique was invalid or that I hated the first video(I liked it), but his critique of the system was harsh. Thus, he inevitably got a lot of harsh feedback. He spent the entire first section of this video simply bashing the arguments that these people made. He also didn't consider the main point most of them made which is that EVERY RPG has this problem. HE EVEN ADMITTED TO THAT IN THE FIRST FUCKING VIDEO! Yet, he was somehow still angry when people criticized him for his double standard. He even got mad when someone tried to criticize the writers. Like, not him, the WRITERS! It was a valid point that he simply disregarded because it didn't agree with him. This video honestly feels more like a complaint against the people who disagreed with him than an actual argument defending his position...
Hey, Hunt Prey bonuses still apply whether you're using melee or ranged, so Option 2 for the PF2 ranger will add a wee bit of damage.
A longbow have a volley property, meaning anybody within 3o ft will have a penalty of -2 to attack.
Hunt Pray:
You designate a single creature as your prey and focus your attacks against that creature. You must be able to see or hear the prey, or you must be tracking the prey during exploration.
You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Perception checks when you Seek your prey and a +2 circumstance bonus to Survival checks when you Track your prey. You also ignore the penalty for making ranged attacks within your second range increment against the prey you’re hunting.
You can have only one creature designated as your prey at a time. If you use Hunt Prey against a creature when you already have a creature designated, the prior creature loses the designation and the new prey gains the designation. Your designation lasts until your next daily preparations.
This do nothing for melee attack : "You also ignore the penalty for making ranged attacks within your second range increment against the prey you’re hunting.
"
@@patrickhebert8918 Think they meant the Hunter's Edge, which is what gets applied vs hunted targets. Wrong specific rule, right idea. You'd have read that if you were less obsessed with your "gotcha."
@@malkyn9998 No obsession at all , I just show the text for the Hunt pay, but you may have raison about "Wrong specific rule, right idea", English is not my language, I may have miss read ;) Have good day. :D
@@patrickhebert8918
Fair enough, I can see a Google turning up the wrong rule and being confused. Sorry, I took you for misleading, given all the knife fighting taking place in these comments.
Long form is a need for something this big.
Lol
It's crazy how the world of TTRPGs has changed so much. It wasn't long ago players loved complexity and crunch. Now the trendy style is more like improv theater where someone threw out a few rules before the director says "go!"
To each their own. I think the people paying attention to videos like this, and the responses that followed, are a lot of times the type of people who are just looking for verification they are playing the "right" game. Everyone else is just happy being with their friends playing the game they enjoy. My experience with 2E has been nothing but fun and it's ok if others have a different experience. I for one was always bored with my experiences with 5E and that is ok to. Live and let live people.
That reminds me...I never really watched opinion pieces or youtubers that much before the hubbub of all of this "controversy"...and I'd be willing to bet I was happier before doing so...I think I'm going to get back to doing just that.
I actually welcome the improv theatre aspect for the most part.
As awesome as many of the combat mechanics are, things like grappling just aren't mechanically viable, so removing them mechanically and having the GM wing it on a case by case basis would lead to higher player satisfaction.
Sir this is a role playing game, not a board game.
Why not use hunters edge in the second option for melee and use a single strike? Precision applies to any attack that round and it's a straight die and better chance to confirm the damage? Still slightly less damage than the 5e ranger melee option, but not as drastic as presented.
Yeah I was shocked he didn’t include it.
@@valmerie seems just a tiny bit cherry picked.
The Hunter's Edge precision damage only applies to the first hit that does damage that round.
@@stephenjennings6594 which is more a d6+d8 or 2d6?
@@andrewhatcher4487 Which is more 2d8 or 2d8?
There is a penalty to shoot a Longbow at a creature within 30 feet because of the Volley trait. BTW why wouldn't the shortsword deal the precision damage? Precision edge only says the first time you hit a hunted target in a round.
Precision damage did not apply because Hunt Prey was not used in the short sword scenario. The Hunter's Edge only applies to a Hunted Prey
I think the author might have forgotten about the Volley 30ft trait in longbows (or was using a shortbow for the example, not sure)
@@Edersons83 damage was d8s if i remember correctly
@@hehecactusboy4312 he mentions the Deadly trait, is a short bow
@@nicolasvillasecaali7662 Wrong. Both long and shortbow have deadly d10.
As a player I sometimes struggle between optimal or fun, fun usually wins out. Example: I was in a situation where a goblin had dropped from the roof and landed on my back and started stabbing me. Optimal choice was to take my sword out and stab at it, instead I chose to grapple the goblin back and attempt to use it to club the other goblin to death with it, I won the grapple but failed to use it as an improvised club.
Back when I played 1st edition, my fighter’s optimal action was “hit it with my sword”. You hoped that hou rolled a good strenth score, and found a good magical sword. But it was basically the same thing every combat because the combats only offered that opportunity.
I think it's like that with every fighter in every system, because let's be real, if you have a sword and know how to use it and you need to fight a monters to the death, why the hell would you do anything but hit it with the sword? It's a no brainer to me. You have a weapon, you kill the monster with the weapon. If you have a chandelier to swing on, a boulder to roll on the enemy, or some other kind of trap, great, but otherwise, your best chance at survival is to murder the monster and that's just it.
I think that's just it. It's only combat what else should a fighter do but swing and hit. Sure you can do some other trick moves but that's it. I think what this guy and others miss is that's it's a roleplaying game. If all you do is combat then your playing a skirmish game.
Trip, barge, overrun their position, disarm, shine sunlight into your opponent’s eyes to blind them, throw dirt in their face, choke, arenust a few tactics that co e to mind. Why would you use them? Well if your opponant was better, stronger or more numerous than you (or your party) you might need to pull some trick to save yourself from getting wrecked.
@@haveswordwilltravel That was sort of my point. If you want to boil it down to optimizing for combat damage then it's no different then swing and hit. Options at least lead to a more narrative combat that you can change up a situation.
I, personally, have never played PF 2e, but I really do feel a lot of what you said about it in tabletop as a whole. In my experience with PF 1e and D&D 5e, I've seen the same kind of thing break down. Unless you're playing a toolbox caster, you really just end up specializing in 1 single thing and doing only that. What do rogues in 5e do? They generally spend their bonus action getting advantage on their attack, then attacking for sneak attack. What do PF 1e rogues do? Well, they have a few more options than 5e rogues, but it all boils down to essentially the same thing: find a way to apply sneak attack as many times as possible. Honestly, I'd say that the most varied class outside of a toolbox caster in PF 1e that I have personally played is Fighter or Brawler, as they both allow you to take so many feats to dip into various different combat abilities that they kinda feel like a toolbox caster, themselves. I really do feel the illusion of choice, though. It's present everywhere, unfortunately. The one game that I've played that really doesn't feel like there's any illusion of choice at all, though, is Lancer. Lancer is a sci-fi mech combat tabletop game built off of the shell of D&D 4e, and I love the system to death.
Thanks for making this video, Taking20! I'll admit I dismissed your first video. I blamed your encounter design, I didn't see how switching to 5E would solve anything, etc. But I'm really glad I watched this because you pretty thoroughly dismantled those counterarguments, provided more concrete evidence, and, I think most importantly, illustrated how reactions exactly like mine affected you personally. I'm going to be taking a closer look at PF2E and how it contributes to the campaign I'm running with it right now, and hopefully I'm also going to be more careful about assuming my gut reactions are more valid than others' experiences.
All of his complaints could easily be applied to 5e as well, though. That's the problem.
"You can just house-rule all the rules that don't work" is textbook rule-0-fallacy.
yeah and those books are pretty expensive if you're going to ignore them
I mean it is a point in the sense, that a simpler system like 5e is much easier to fix.
What are you talking about? The biggest genuine point that he made was that not letting most monsters have AoOs made strategy not as good, while using the homebrew rule of flanking as his direct comparison. If he’s using home brew like that, it’s not unreasonable to suggest a slight homebrew tweak to fix his complaints.
@@AlexPBenton Flanking isn't homebrew, it's an optional official rule. Just to be precise.
I dislike this line of thinking. I paid good money for a game, maybe I just want to be able to play it in a way thats fun? Sure, I wish it was 'better' on its own, but uh.. quality of game is subjective, formed from consensus of opinion, and some people like stuff that I hate, or hate stuff that I like, so tweaking a game to better resemble what I like, while using the content I enjoy is a great way to get value from a book I otherwise cant stand.
AKA: Yes, you can just homebrew all the bad away and there is nothing wrong with it.
..but I suppose people using that as an excuse to never switch systems can be a bit uh.. Hmm. ok yeah, Maybe your right after all.
Long story, short. The PF2 Emperor has no clothes. Pathfinder First Edition is still my favorite edition in forty years of playing. Thanks for the video. Your opinion is well-informed and right on the money.
You are mistaken on the 5e grapple rules. There is no language that states that the ranger needs to be prone to grapple a prone creature. All that is required is ONE free hand and that they are within your reach.
As written, the ranger would not be prone, and, as the one wight is prone, that prone wight would also have disadvantage on its attacks against the players ON TOP of the players getting advantage on their attacks on the prone wight.
Yes, this is exactly how I've run/played the rules in all of the games I've been in.
Since this is a very specific thing the Pathfinder ranger actually does have a choice you are neglecting.
Repositioning, an act that happens very rarely in 5E dnd due to how the "Disengage" action eats your main action.
If the Ranger takes the stride action they can escape the clutches of the wight and move back to back with their fighter to avoid flank. This sacrifices their third attack at the -10 penalty however it prevents flanking of the wights, allows the ranger and fighter to be close to potentially activate feats and will force the wight to take the stride action and lose one of it's own attacks giving an equal trade of action economy.
OR the ranger could run passed the fighter so if the wight followed it would be provoking an attack of opportunity that the fighter gets at first level ensuring their own safety while still getting their two strongest attacks off.
Or if they have a decent athletics attempt to trip, stride and then strike so that in order to get in the Wight would have to take the "Stand" and "Stride" actions reducing it to one attack while still plunking an arrow into it with a risk of rolling a critical failure and ending up prone.
This is actually a good example of why I love 2e, when the Wight walks up to the Ranger the Ranger actually has at least 5 equally viable option not using skill feats well 5e doesn't. I really think he was just trying to make 2e look as bad as possible with the attack of opportunity thing. I have some inspiration so I wanted to give examples...
If the monster walks up to the Ranger then their turn can be....
-Shoot 4 times (I am pretty sure this is the worst option actually)
-Trip the Wight > Hunted Shot > Move to provide flanking for the Fighter (This does decent damage and gives great defense while buffing the Fighter's Damage, I would have done this most likely)
-Shoot 3 times > Move to provide flanking for the Fighter (This doesn't provide good defense but ads a little more damage)
-Move to provide flanking for the Fighter > Trip the Wight in front of the fighter > Hunted Shot other Wight (This would give the Fighter an attack of oppurtunity most likely.
-Move twice > hunted shot (This would be good if you were on like 5 hp, I see players actually sit there in front of monsters at 20% health)
Those imo are all viable options not even taking into account the other 10+ skill options he could have had. The best part each option could potentially be good based on the circumstance.
Still not sure how any of that would have mattered. The bow was clearly the best option by a mile. You're getting lost in the weeds and missing the big picture.
@@taragnor The bow is good but you can combine the other things mentioned for interesting turns. There were 5 good options that I listed. It isn't an either or thing you can use all those combinations with a bow.
If you weren't aware you still provide flanking with a bow.
Luckily PF2 has a lot more than doing as much damage as possible! Also tripping an enemy gives the fighter an opportunity attack so it can be really good.
@@taragnor The bow was the best option when looking at it as an isolated one turn example and if you focus soley on that turn's damage given and care very little for damage taken but battles are multiple turns stacked upon one another where damage carries over from battle to battle.
If the ranger just stands and shoots they risk taking unnecessary damage and therefor expending unnecessary resources both in terms of hitpoints and healing items. So taken in terms of a battle or dungeon crawl positioning can be more important than a single round due to the multiple rounds of bonuses you can eek out of it.
@@youtubenoremac3314 A lot of good points! These options are the sort that get me excited to run PF2E as all my D&D 5E games fell into the pattern of "Move to attack enemy, attack enemy, end turn, attack enemy until dead" while Pathfinder 2E just, has more options for both tactics in combat and roleplay in combat through it's mechanics.
Imagine thinking that d&d is a roleplay first narrative game or that pf 2e is a crunchy simulation game.
With how simple the 5e rules are, yes. With the legacy of 3.5e on pathfinder, yes.
The example combat given is fair enough but to be honest it really shows an opposite problem I personally have with D&D5e where the choices you make feel like they don't matter as much even though you built the character to be an excellent archer doing the whole archer thing isn't really much better than your other options in combat which are why I feel like my choices don't really matter.
Lets change the class here because ranger is a class about choosing a particular fighting style and probably by design narrows itself what if we made the example class from PF2E be an Alchemist bomber now of course the thing you want to do is throw bombs at the wight obviously but whats not so obvious what bombs should you throw? Well alchemist fire does the most upfront damage at this level being 2d8+4 against a single target so you could throw 3 of those at the one target or you could throw them at the ground and do 6 damage to both Wights, but hold on if you're looking for efficient damage then maybe you want throw an acid flask in place of one of those fires because different sources of persistent damage stack unlike throwing all fire which would effectively throw away 2 damage on additional hits. But WAIT A MINUTE your bombs don't just do damage maybe your alchemist really doesn't want to take damage you could throw a tangle foot bag in place of one of those possibly forcing the wight to spend its turn freeing itself but also guaranteeing the -15 move speed penalty means even if its not stuck to the ground it can't move fast enough to attack the alchemist on its next turn and things get more complex when you also consider the other bombs bottled lightning, frost vials, and thunderstones! And this is just the obvious/most likely choice not to mention you could also take the same alternate actions as the ranger did OR we haven't considered the possibilties of what else the alchemist has for prepared items or even what they could make on the fly with quick alchemy for that turn.
(And yes if you make another kind of follow up you may single my comment out)
We had the same problem in our 5e game. Our Warlock made an Hexblade to be a melee warlock, bu the best course of action was to just stay behind and use Eldritch Blast. So, he made a bunch of choices to go melee and still played like any other warlock because his choices didn't make a difference at all.
@@MrGinp This is a pretty niche example, warlock reliance on eldritch blast is a known issue in 5e. That said you can still make a very effective warlock without eldritch blast, you can just make a hexblade and not take that cantrip and still do great. The point isn't that there IS a most optimal choice, it's about the DIFFERENCE between the most optimal and the other choices. In pf2 the difference is so much that it's not really a "choice", whereas in 5e the difference isn't really that bad. Like sure eldritch blast is the Bestest™ choice ever, but the next best choice is still playable. Even the Ranger which everybody says is "So horrible" still gets played a decent amount.
I mean, that's not a very fair comparison. You're choosing a class in PF2 that does not have a direct analog in 5e, so it's technically not comparable. The closest would be an artificier. But ultimately, the comparison in the video is primarily about how the martial characters tend to get pigeonholed into having rotations or lacking options that feel good, not casters or semi-casters who have always had far more options in how they approach an encounter. And, let's be honest, an alchemist is a semi-caster.
@@WeShallLoveOn I don't get your point. How is any of the systems diferent in those aspects.
In 5e if I make a Fighter to go into melee with Sword'n'Board he's going to be useless with a bow.
In PF2e if I make a Fighter to go into melee with Sword'n'Board he's going to be useless with a bow.
The only niche example is 5e character who use DEX. In that case you can also build character in PF2e that go into melee and ranged without losing much.
Your logic makes no sense at all. It's like you don't know enough about one of the systems.
@@MrGinp you gave an example of a warlock. I said your example(the warlock) was niche and explained why. That's it. You seem to be arguing with the points made in the video. I'm not gonna write out the whole script of the video but the entire thing is about how the systems are different once you get into combat NOT character creation, which is what you are talking about with your "if I make a str character they'll be garbage with a bow" argument. That's not what the video is talking about. He mentions that multiple times.
Interestingly the responses I saw, and admittedly the parts I agreed with, were saying that the groups who played that game would not roleplay. I admittedly don't have a problem with illusion of choice. Admittedly, as a Pathfinder 1e player, I like being able to choose what I'm good at. You always have the right to play you game you want to play. Different systems for different folks. I am just floored that people decided to go after your players for your video. What a shitty thing for people to do. Thank you for so much awesome content. I look forward to more.
@Urban Development I have tried playing 4e. I actually bought the core books right as it came out and only really got to play it once because anyone else I tried to get to play it found it "too much like an mmo". I do sometimes wish I had been able to give it more of a chance. I did like that you were making a choice about your character every level. I did like that there were ways for martial characters to control the battlefield more. I do think that Pathfinder 1e ended up suiting my needs better, but I would point people to look at 4e if they want more crunch than 5e. It got way too much hate.
an hour of talking about a core mechanic for a pen and paper game? YOUR THREE DAYS EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS BUT ILL TAKE IT!
The "Breakdown" is done in bad faith. The placements of the characters are done so that it's really disadvantageous to switch(has to use two actions to flank / doesn't start with enemy coming into your melee etc.) The weapon he chooses ( rapier has much better damage for instance, he talks about the versatile trait but the bow can't do slashing and he doesn't have an enemy who has resistance to piercing to justify the use of his versatile weapon in his breakdown ). He ignores the volley trait of the bow. He starts with the bow out and not the melee weapon. He misrepresents the mark and how it needs to be used. He ignores the STR damage you get to add to your melee attacks. He uses a grapple action which doesn't effect the *to hit* on a damage per turn breakdown. He doesn't account in the following turns and how they would be affected by the actions taken. It just feels like a terrible experiment done by a corrupt scientist to prove a point he wanted to prove without fair comparison. NOT to mention you go into a one-dimentional * I WANT A BOW BUILD * , more often than not, using it will be a little better than the melee option. ( Which is good balancing btw ) Very disappointed in his tone and this so-called side-by-side mechanical comparison.
Cody "I'm just going to leave this outrage response bait right here...."
So alraedy a lot of things are wrong with your fighter + ranger vs 2 wights.
1. Quickdraw and Huntersedge: If the Ranger has quick draw then you draw and strike with the same Action. So the Ranger would Hunter Edge, Stride, Quickdraw Resulting in 1 Attack with the full potential precision damage.
2. Longbow: Longbow has the Volley 30ft trait meaning the ranger would have a -2 penalty on every wight in this room with his longbow.
3. Attack of opporunity: Assuming the dwarf had a shortbow. Instead of shooting a third incredibly unlikely shot you could instead move to the right, this forces the wight to either take a longer way to you or risk getting slapped by the fighters attack of opportunity. Which would force the wight to 1 waste 2 actions to move or take an attack from the fighter. b be forced to leave you alone and attack the fighter who might be tank focused.
4. Skill Feats are completely ignored: A level 5 Ranger could easily have expert prof athletics with assurance in athletics giving him an automatic 19 which lets him autosucceed at tripping the wight. Making him prone for his own follow up attack and the fighter. Assurance also ignores MAP making it very easily a strong option against lower leveled mobs like these.
5. Shooting a bow in melee: Wrong again, shooting someone in melee with a ranged weapon takes a -4 penalty.
Once combat is initiated, doesn't every system have an optimal mechanic move set? Wouldn't most people naturally move towards the optimal set of moves as the learned what works? Pathfinder, DnD, call of cthulhu, etc etc. I feel like every system has some "best used when" options, right?
"Players did the best thing possible" So in a combat situation (I know, tabletop combat, but work with me here) Out of all the things they could do, the players did the optimal action(s) to defeat the enemy. In other words, common sense. I was a tank commander in the desert. When facing an enemy tank I could 1. Fire my machine guns at it, hoping to hit something and cause it to explode (not ever going to happen outside of bad movies) 2. Try to get my tank to take off and fly behind the enemy, ambushing him (Never tried it, and the reasons why should be obvious) Or 3. Give the command "Gunner, Sabot, Tank" and put a round moving at a mile a second through my target, killing the crew and hopefully setting off the vehicle ammo supply. Which do you think I did for multiple engagements, and live to ask this question?
Totally correct. But in real life you do the same thing over and over to stay alive. In a game you are trying to have fun, and doing the same thing when your life is not on the thread slowly becomes boring
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
@@koorssgamer YOu are in a game playing a CHARACTER who wants to stay alive. Unless you play Leroy Jenkins, you might want to try and be reasonable according to your int and wis stats in action. And there really isn't a reason for your ranger, who really only has ranged abilities, to threaten his friends and run into melee.
Now there might be a reason why your ranger, who has also some melee abilities, to run in and help his friends. And that is what the DnD 5e ranger seems to have more. And I think that was his point.
If you really want to have fun, but still have a little bit of RPG, you might want to have a game with more viable options, so your WISE ranger, doesn't have to behave like an uncharacteristic imbecile for 'fun'.
@@RiesenWuschel honestly, I don't got your point. I wasn't talking about doing something dumb, Just for fun. For me, at least, this isn't fun. He was saying that in real life you don't have much options in combat, you point your gun and go pow pow until the other guy in dead, and there is no problem with that. And I was replying that this is a game, in real life is do or die, so your don't have time to complaint about it being boring, but in a game fun and variety is important. I wasn't saying that your character isn't fighting for his life, so you can go nuts and do dumb shit. I was just saying that a game designer should make more reseanobles choices for you to make, to avoid becoming boring. In the video examples, the rangers do almost the same damage ranged or melee, so, in the roleplay side, you can say that he is as effective lethal with one as the other. So, my high Wis character knows that the two choices are good ideas, and I, the players, can have fun choosing what I want to do. To be clear, I'm not defending either system here, but I just find dumb that a caster can choose between 10 spells each turn, and a pure marcial class can only press the Atack button
The upside of the crunch is the ability to build an interesting character. 5e feels stifling in that it feels like there's very little choice in character build, outside of which class and subclass you pick. Especially for martial characters.
I drastically disagree. The Background allows for huge variety if used properly. You can have two Champion Fighters play completely differently by the choice of background. Is one an urchin who knows the alleys to the best clubs or hide outs? Is one a noble who is adventuring to bring honor to his name? Is one a guild artisan who got tired of making barrels.
Your imagination isn’t stifled in 5E, unless you are ignoring all the tools at your disposal.
@@Mauricekaip There are no difference in the battle.
You choose your class and archetype and you have no more decision points.
You could take a feat at cost of your chances to hit. But that's all your class customisation.
@@rastraman1 Battle is only one pillar of the game, to me you are only playing 1/3 of the game if you only care about combat.
@@chetori__ I disagree. Roleplay and lore are just as important as combat. The skills and the features of every class allow for more flavor for the character, if you choose to bite into it. The ask of 5E is that you use your imagination and you meet it half way.
Has your fighter focused his abilities and honed himself to surpass his master? Battle master
Has your barbarian been a noble who first felt their rage when their family was assassinated? Ancestral Guardian.
Each subclass and class have something intense and vibrate to offer and to chew on. And all you need to do is look at more then just:
“What can I do in this round of combat?”
Most combats last about a minute in game. What are you doing for the rest of it? Why aren’t you digging into the lore of your feats and skills and powers to enhance your game instead of hand waving it?
@@Mauricekaip Good luck to play this 2/3 using barbarian.
One thing I would like to add: On the next round of combat for the 5e ranger in their scenario, if they have a second weapon and begin dual-wielding, they get an extra d6 or d4, depending on if they are using a dagger or shortsword. If they don't lose concentration on Hunter's Mark, they also have that extra d6 for every attack. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
I think he was going by RAW and started with his Bow drawn so he couldn't swap to two weapons as a free action. If he had the Ranger drop his bow and pull out two weapons and attack I'm sure the number of "well, actually....you can't do that" pendantic comments would have drowned out any real conversation.
@@andrewshandle I was actually thinking if the ranger was super big brain, they would use their bonus for hunter's mark, attack action to attack twice, then while moving behind the fighter to prevent flanking he could use a free action to drop the bow and an item interaction to draw 1 sword, letting him two-weapon fight on his next turn.
Going to grapple/trip with a ranger full dex is the equivalent of a full str barbarian studying arcane runes
In 5e, 10 Str and proficiency in Athletics would give the 5th Level Ranger a +3 to Strength (Athletics), which is a fair shot to trip/grapple a Wight who has a +2 to that check. That same Ranger in PF2e - let's also assume basic proficiency and 10 Str - has a +7 to Athletics (+2 proficiency +5 level +0 Str mod) vs. a Reflex DC of 16 on a Wight. So roughly, in both systems, they have the same odds. The difference is that in PF2e, there's a 10% chance for a critical success (netting you +1d6 bludgeoning damage) but also a 5% chance to critically fail (means you get knocked prone instead. So for either game, it should be a fair chance to work.
@@fadeleaf845 Three things.
First:
D&D 5e with proficiency 53%
Pathfinder 2e With proficiency 5% crit fail, 60% Succeed and 10% to crit.
D&D 5e without proficiency 38%
Pathfinder 2e Without proficiency 30% crit fail, 25% Succeed and 5% to crit.
Numbers are similar but the Pathfinder 2e has higher change.
Second:
D&D 5e Grapple is stronger.
It wont end unless something ends it.
You can also move grappled targets.
Not only that but you can't crit fail so no negative on fail.
To end Grapple
1) you can use your action to end it which is another check.
2) Use way to push either one of you out side of the grapple reach which is 5ft usually.
3) The Grappler just let go.
4) You use spell. Like Command "Release" or just Misty Step works fine.
5) You knock them unconscious like dropping them to 0hp.
Third:
D&D 5e Grapple & shove is easy to minmax 😏 No, you don't take fighter who gets more attacks later on instead:
Step 1 get high Strength ~17 is good assumption
Step 2 Barbarian
Step 3 +2 Strength
Step 4 multi class Rogue
Step 5 Expertise at Athletics
Step 6 RAGE gives you advantage on Grapple and Shove becausue they are ability checks.
+10 and advantage to grapple at level 5.
Shove and Grapple against someone with +0 to both Athletics and Acrobatics it is ~97% chance to succeed and in this case ~95% chance to succeed against someone with +2
D&D 5e both Expertise and Rage are good with Grapple and Shove 👍
Weakness anything larger or bigger because you can grapple up to huge as Normal Size player. No surplexing a dragon :<
There are uses for Grapple beside holding Prone target on the floor.
like yeet them off the cliff or force move them inside spike growth.
How do you rule Force Moving in D&D 5e?
I want to drop the enemy off the cliff.
Beside jumping off what are my options you as DM following RAW?
My ruling to move the enemy it is 10ft for every 5ft so it takes 20ft to spin him around while spinning the enemy without moving.
OK, I'm a year late to this and there's already a million comments so probably nobody will see it, but here goes. I will agree that a lot of the responses to your previous video and this one haven't done a good job of responding to your actual criticisms. I'll do that now.
The problem with this ranger isn't that it's been mix-maxed too much. In fact one big problem is that it hasn't been optimized _enough._ Quick Draw is a feat mostly for two-weapon characters, allowing them to get both of their weapons into their hand without spending most of the first round of combat doing that. For an archer, Quick Draw is saving you _at most_ one action in the majority of combats. And if you're in a dungeon like in the example, there's no reason that ranger shouldn't already have their bow out. It only takes one hand to hold the bow, so it's not like they need to have it slung in order to interact with their environment. So Quick Draw is almost always doing nothing for you. It's a waste of a feat.
I'll take a moment here to go over the obligatory rules things others have brought up. The big one is that the longbow has the Volley trait, meaning that your ranger absolutely does want to be keeping distance between himself and his targets in order to avoid a -2 penalty. Or probably he should instead just use a shortbow for these close-quarters combats. The other huge thing you gloss over is that Hunt Prey lasts until the target is dead or you use Hunt Prey on something else. This means that unless you're fighting a bunch of really weak enemies, you're not going to be using Hunt Prey every turn. Or if you drop an enemy with your second action of the turn, you could use your third action to Hunt Prey against another target, potentially freeing up another action on your next turn.
But wait! Your complaint wasn't about not having enough actions on your turn, it was having too many! That third action is just a third shot at -10 that almost always misses. And then you spend most of the video comparing firing three arrows to some garbage strawmen that involve putting the archer into melee, as if that were the only other choice. Yeah, those options are worse! But a lot of the other options you don't talk about are not only more interesting than firing a third arrow, they're also more optimal. I don't know what the rest of the ranger's build looks like (specifially which skills they're trained in), so not all of these may be viable, but since a ranger is trained in Nature, Survival, and 4 other skills, I'd sure hope they can do some of these.
*Hide:* Please tell me your Dex-based ranger is at least trained in Stealth? If so, this is a big one. You see those pillars on your map there? If the ranger can successfully hide from their target behind one of those pillars before firing, that target is flat-footed to the first shot. So that's a -2 penalty to their AC, making the shot 10 percentage points more likely to hit _and_ 10 percentage points more likely to crit. That's huge, and it's going to be a lot better than firing a third arrow at -10.
*Create a Diversion:* This works at most once per combat, but it basically lets you Hide when there's nothing to hide behind. Is your Ranger trained in Deception? If so, they should be using this sometimes.
*Demoralize:* You can only try this once per target in a fight, but if you can successfully make a wight Frightened 1, that's -1 to its AC for the rest of your turn, for any of your allies' turns until the wight's turn, and then the wight gets -1 to attacks on its own turn. If you're trained in Intimidation, you should be using this liberally. It's going to be way more effective than taking that third or fourth attack.
*Recall Knowledge:* Here's a good one! And now let's circle back around to that wasted Quick Draw feat. What could the ranger have taken at 2nd level instead of Quick Draw? My choice for that character concept would be Monster Hunter. (Yes, you can choose to take 1st-level ranger feats at 2nd level, something you understandably gloss over.) In the video you said it allows you to "point at something to briefly give your team a +1 to hit an enemy one time". Nah, dude. What you're describing is the critical success effect that might maybe happen; it's the lackluster icing on the cake. The main point of the feat is that you get to recall knowledge on a target for free when you use Hunt Prey on it. Usually recalling knowledge takes one action.
And now we can segue to another thing you say, that players shouldn't be reading the monster stat blocks. Agreed! Most of all because not knowing all a creature's stats and abilities makes Recall Knowledge useful and fun. Because if the ranger had successfully made a Religion check to Recall Knowledge on the wight, a good GM might tell them about that Final Spite reaction that you briefly mention. Final Spite lets a wight make one last attack against any adjacent creature when the wight drops to 0 HP. Once the party knows about this ability (either because of Recall Knowledge or because they've seen it happen once), suddenly the battle becomes a more interesting game of trying to drop each wight when it isn't next to a PC. Now the ranger is the MVP and gets set up some cool tactical plays.
So in some round in the middle of combat, the ranger could have spent his first action using Hunt Prey on a wight that's been duking it out with the fighter, and then spent his other two Actions using the Ready action, specifying that he's going to use Hunted Shot on that wight as soon as the fighter isn't adjacent to it. Then on the fighter's turn, he maybe smacks the wight once or twice and then backs off (perhaps moving to attack the other wight). Immediately the ranger gets his two shots against that wight. If he drops it, it's denied its reaction. Teamwork!
So even this sample combat that seems cherry-picked to be boring for the ranger could have been a lot more fun _and_ optimal if you and the ranger's player knew what you were doing. If this all sounded lame to you, then yeah probably stick to D&D. But for those who really enjoy a variety of combat options and know how to use them, Pathfinder can be fantastic.
And as for having a bunch of rules around roleplaying stuff, man some non-charismatic players like to be able to play charismatic characters sometimes, I don't know what to tell you. It's nice to have those rules there for them, and you can always ignore them if that's the game you want to play.
Hey man, i saw this.
Hey I know that guy!
Oh my god it's you! From the video!
How many actions and time in-dialog with you does it take to confirm that it is in fact me? I don't have the book on me rn
It's that guy XD
liked and subscribed
Shh, its an "illusion of choice" to know someone.. hahahahahahahahhaa
What responses are you talking about?
Everyone who knew anything about PF2 was talking about how "a druid that only shapeshifts" is not optimized at all. Then the guy come in the first minutes "all responses talking about they are minmaxers".
WTF
Yeah that is definitely the weird thing. I think everyone would have understood a Ranger can feel be built to feel like they mostly just want to shoot. Luckily PF2 easily lets you solve this issue if you want with skills/ancestry feats/dedications. Admittingly as a new player it is 100% true that a Ranger could feel this way since they aren't aware of what you can do.
Linking to UA-cam videos will just promote drama, but many of the video responses had a central thesis "Cody's games are unbearable drudgery because he forces high optimization on his table. If he stopped doing that, PF2 will work fine."
@@nicholascarter9158 ignoring what he means, a wizard can contribute more in 5e by stabbing with a dagger (relatively) than an optimized archer ranger can in pathfinder by switching to a rapier.
@@nicholascarter9158 That would make sense if the official AP materials didn't have challenge ratings which basically trounce anything but the most optimized parties.
me, who doesn't consider themself a min/maxer: that 5e ranger couldve taken hex from magic initiate, & then cast it on the Wight giving disadvantage on strength or dexterity checks to increase the chance to shove & grapple.
Isn't it pointless to grapple a Wight? Their attack is just touching you, they're at no disadvantage to attack in the grapple.
@@nicholascarter9158 hey, no meta gaming lol
But no, cos if the goal is to prevent them from getting to an ally, their speed would still become zero from a grapple. Plus if you had grappler feat you can actually attempt to restrain on a following turn.
Okay, but why would he, as a big-game hunter and a badass archer, pick these feats up in the first place?
The ranger just want to be the bestest archer in the world even if it's the most sub-optimal build in Pathfinder.
So why would he try to learn a pointless spell or wrestling when he could be learning to shoot his arrows better? Just because he wants to be prepared, just in case he gets this frankly insane idea to wrestle a wight for his fighter friend? An idea that might not even materialize even if he's in the exact same situation that Taking20 described?
Remember. He just wants to be an ordinary but badass archer. Not be a magical archer or be a wrestling archer.
So why should he waste feats for a random whim that might not even come up?
@@zakuhtet3775 because it adds options. Youre literally doing exactly what the vid is about, playing into a single rotation/style.
@@greenhawk3796 So?
Just to get out of a single-rotation style, the ranger should just invest his feats for an insane situation that might not even come up in his entire adventuring career?
Remember that Taking20 said that the grappling situation is just an insane idea the ranger had on the spot. So why would the ranger prepare for a stupid whim that he might not even think of?
31:30 If I'm not mistaken, for 5E option 4, the range can (RAW) shove and grapple without falling prone. That means that they don't suffer any penalty while the wight attack both the fighter and the ranger at disadvantage.
If you read my comments, then I sincerely hope you're not lumping me into the groups this video is clearly aimed at. When I proposed my contradiction, I did so in the most concise manner I could think of for the sake of brevity. I still won't go into specific details, but that is in no small part because you covered most of the details in your previous video, and I only commented on the specific portion with which I took issue.
Reminder: My issue is with the idea that a character, in order to be 'optimal', must perform (or attempt to) the same 3 actions on every turn regardless of the encounter. I propose that is it /intent/ which creates these scenarios, rather than the system itself. The PF2 system absolutely lets you create a character who is only good in one way. Just because this option is dangled in front of players, however, does not mean that you must do so in order to create a good character.
I'm not disparaging your players or their creativity. I am saying that they made the characters they wanted to make, and later regretted those choices. It's something we all do in life and in gaming. I /am/ saying that your players absolutely had the option to build characters aimed at variety in combat if their goal was to do more than the same three actions every turn.
That isn't a flaw in PF2. It is, frankly, a flaw in any RPG that lets you create a specialized character. Any and every system that lets you make a character who is specialized in their actions will inevitably result in every serious player making a character that only does one thing 99% of the time. Why is this? Because it leads to success. A sniper doesn't spend all that time honing his skill only to run into the fray of combat with a pistol.
In PF2, if you decide you want to make a character who specializes (in anything, it doesn't matter), then by definition you are forsaking other available options. The simple intent of making say... "a ranger who uses a bow," despite how vague that is, immediately removes nearly all of your options--particularly in combat. This might not be what you want to hear, but you must see how it begins a chain of effects where you end up with the character you want, but you have effectively removed all of the choices yourself. The game didn't do that to you. You made choices at the very beginning, and it affects what choices you have later on. You have to actively intend to make a character with a lot of in-combat options if you want to actually have in-combat options.
EDIT: Ultimately, to summarize, you're looking at all of the complexities of combat in the books and saying, "We're not using any of that! Those choices were just illusion!" I'm saying the system never presented you with an illusion of a character being able to use all of those things. Rather, they are options which MIGHT be available if you intentionally make a character that can use them effectively.
This a cyclical arguement though. Yes, players ultimately choose their character progression, but the game system allows and rewards players who hyperfocus, which then creates a boring gameplay experience. Both and neither sides are to blame.
@@petermain6791 I disagree wholeheartedly, which is the premise of the argument I made. Having played my own share of PF2, the system rewards people equally well for building as versatile as possible.
This is the most noteworthy example of where PF2 beats out 5e in my preference. You are not punished at all for not specializing. An optimized character in PF2 is not a black and white proposition. Because you never know what you will or will not be able to do in a given fight, having a character that is never at a disadvantage is itself a form of optimization.
So your character that does the same turn every turn is often going to be operating at 50% efficiency because they can't do the exact thing they were built for. This is where not having any dips in your efficacy shines. If you're able to have the same level of impact in the widest number of scenarios, you are going to benefit your party just as much and usually have a lot more combat decisions to make--and your character won't be boring to play.
@@petermain6791 the PF2e system is close to perfection (100 times more optimised than dnd) but in order to play it you need a DM/GM that has read all the books and the Core/GMguide at least 10 times whole (and given exams). The only problem in PF2e is that you need a good GM, because most rolls are in secret and 90% of the game is written in rules. I read PF2e 2 years now and i still dont feel comfortable to start GMing in the system. And then we have fast food GM gamers like this clown in the video, that read 2% of the rules and think they can homebrew the rest 98%. If shit hits the fun, they blame the game and the "illusion of choice"... Muggles and trolls trying to play with true wizardry
@@questmarq7901 I don't think you know what optimized means.