No, I don’t care that ‘it’s more book keeping’; when 5e has kineticists, then we can talk.
I don’t love Pathfinder’s “a class for everything” design, but I think I like 5e’s “barely any choices to make” less.
I recently came to understand that 5e’s shallowness is a strength. It’s hard to make a bad character in 5e. But it’s also hard to make a mechanically strong one. There just aren’t enough choices to make. But that’s really good for a lot of players who aren’t going to develop any system mastery, and many of them frankly don’t want to. They just want to sit down and play, and don’t want to worry about “I need 13 Dex so I can take combat reflexes so I can take improved feint at 5th level” or whatever.
I dunno. When I was reading through PF2e, at a certain point it clicked for me that a lot of the rules actually make it easier to play a character by ear.
Take feats. There are tons, of different kinds, with different levels, sometimes with prerequisites. It seems like a lot of rules overhead, but that also means that you’re not picking from the whole list every time you get one. If a player doesn’t want to make a ton of choices, they can just pick one of the highest level feats they qualify for and have a pretty decent build. Maybe not optimized, but if they don’t want to dig into the nitty gritty, that wasn’t a priority anyway.
Plus, if a player wants to change their mind, the rules explicitly say you can swap things around. I know that works in 5e anyway by DM fiat, but still, it’s nice to have a “don’t worry too much” clause written in the books.
Ultimately a matter of personal preference, of course. I just think PF2e actually scales pretty well with player investment in the system, whether someone’s really into character builds or just wants to follow some steps and get into the action.
Pf2e is very well made in that optimisation generally adds up to a few points of damage difference in a white room, while good tactics on the battlefield can make for literally hundreds of points of damage difference. It really frees you up to take feats because you think they’ll be interesting or add to your character, instead of being pigeonholed by optimal choices.
It’s hard to make a bad character in 5e. But it’s also hard to make a mechanically strong one.
i don’t fully understand this argument. each character has 1 main stat + god stat of dex. if you don’t max = bad. if you do max = strong. it’s that simple tbh.
5e is legit a great casual system to just sit down and go. i do not mean this in a bad way - it’s a great introductory system for casuals or rp’ers who don’t wanna be a stat nerd
See, I’m one of those who had a folder chock full of character concepts I’d built and kitted out without knowing if I’d ever run them; so the folder was a ‘so long as I stick with the same GM for a long while, literally any of thees concepts can be wheeled out and minimally retooled to fit whatever we’re doing’. I don’t feel half the same urge to do that for 5e because of what you call the ‘barely any choices to make’ issue.
5e’s bounded accuracy is why you “can’t” make a mechanically strong character, not the lack of choices. The rolls matter that much more than your bonuses that a character who is mechanically strong on paper can be outdone by a mechanically weak character that rolls slightly better.
Try PF2 and you’ll see how mandatory balance and simplicity of play can be combined with lots of choices.More choices could allow you to make a mechanically strong character even with bounded accuracy. You could, off the top of my head, do more with the advantage system. It’s real close to being a dice pool system, so you could just give that a nudge. You could give players choices that result in “roll X times and take the best result” to make them more effective without breaking the bounds. Elven Accuracy already sets precedent for this.
You could also do more with action economy. Have choices that result in extra reactions. Have choices that give players legendary actions.
You could tinker with damage, because that’s not constrained by bounded accuracy. Give more options to change damage types, to exploit weaknesses, or just “reroll and take better”
Just off the top of my head. There’s a lot of ways to increase character power and competence without giving bigger bonuses to the d20 check.
However, I think they want to keep the game very simple because a lot of players aren’t, well, very good at rules.
Imagine pigeonholing your character in a class.
Imagine not being a condescending, non-contributing tool in an until now, constructive thread. I’m sorry if it offends you that after 15 years tabletopping, I find basic sword-and-boards and basic wizards a little bit mechanically trite; but you didn’t need to come up in here acting like a redditor.
Good grief, it was just a joke, dude. In the same spirit of the post, I may add. Take your righteous anger elsewhere.
“Buhhhh it was just a joke” nice Schrodinger’s Douchebag manuever. If I didn’t think you were a redditor before, I would now.
