Sargon's wife's son
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So you're saying I don't have to have that much ancestry to get some of that sweet sweet casino cash
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
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Nah, funnily enough right around the time casino money started rolling in, tribes suddenly started caring about proper enrollment. I know someone who ended up threatening to sue his tribe because he and a bunch of others were taken off the rolls for BS reasons.
TheDarknessGrows
kiwifarms.net
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Any opinions on Dominion? Looks kinda neat.
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- Jun 23, 2015
Everything about them just screams 'grift'.
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- Aug 23, 2018
Does anyone here play StarFinder or follow the drama around Pozzo?
Long story short, I'd heard bad things about Paizo's SF output since 2021. According to the internet, Fly Free or Die adventure path turns to commie nonsense, Tech Revolution Playtest sucked, all the expansions since then sucked, SF1.5 and SF2 is a mess due to OGL, due to being released "too soon", and due to being PF2 with a lazy sci-fi coat of paint to maintain the 100% compatibility with PF2.
Skimming through some of them preparing for a possible future campaign, I'm not really seeing the problem at first glance, so I want to know if anyone knows the issues? I'd also like to know how new editions are handled.
I'll quickly go through the ones I skimmed and give opinions on them.
Which brings me to StarFinder 2e, which is due out in 2025 I think? I don't see the complaint, but I've also not really been around for a RPG edition release like this.
SF was released in 2017 according to wikipedia, and 2020 for the soft cover pocket edition. That's 8 years between editions. The "enhanced" class revision book was late last year. I don't know if that's a bad thing for TTRPGs.
I also don't see how a company having two games is unsustainable. Or that the existance of SF2e makes PF2e obsolete. Pozzo has managed SF and PF simultiously for a while and I don't see how SF2e changes that.
The only complaint I understand is Pozzos claim that SF2e will be 100% compatible with PF2e. Why would Paizo do this? Who's asking for that? Maybe if you're running a time travel themed campaign, but that seems like a pretty niche use case better handled with some DM house ruled monsters and gear. In every game I've run or played, every campaign starts with fresh characters, and maybe a former PC will cameo as a NPC. It's not as if they'll send someone to rip up your PF character sheets and force you to play SF.
Long story short, I'd heard bad things about Paizo's SF output since 2021. According to the internet, Fly Free or Die adventure path turns to commie nonsense, Tech Revolution Playtest sucked, all the expansions since then sucked, SF1.5 and SF2 is a mess due to OGL, due to being released "too soon", and due to being PF2 with a lazy sci-fi coat of paint to maintain the 100% compatibility with PF2.
Skimming through some of them preparing for a possible future campaign, I'm not really seeing the problem at first glance, so I want to know if anyone knows the issues? I'd also like to know how new editions are handled.
I'll quickly go through the ones I skimmed and give opinions on them.
Tech Revolution
Expanded rules for vehicles, including mechs ranging from Aliens style walkers to Pacific Rim. If the playtest rules were awful, then maybe they were fixed? It was a playtest after all. I can't find the attrocious attack forumla that was memed about in playtest, but I could have just missed it. I have no problem with a mechanic that wants a personal vehicle instead of a drone. (PL: I knew someone that played Palladioum RIFTs as a guy who carried the party around in a APC, so clearly this kind of this isn't new.)
Intersellar Species
Expanded lore, art, and I think rules for some of the more memorable SF races like the giant floating brain and uplifted bear, plus a new mutant class. Seems harmless enough though not really essential.
Starfinder Enhanced
This is where things get potentially dicey, and why I'm asking for hot takes. Personally, I don't find this much different from the "unchained" nonsense I had to deal with in PF1. Basically, some of the base classes are rewritten, and others get some minor tweaks. Yes, it's an annoying barrier for noobs and DMs, especially with online character creators. But my skim doesn't find anything too agregious.
Expanded rules for vehicles, including mechs ranging from Aliens style walkers to Pacific Rim. If the playtest rules were awful, then maybe they were fixed? It was a playtest after all. I can't find the attrocious attack forumla that was memed about in playtest, but I could have just missed it. I have no problem with a mechanic that wants a personal vehicle instead of a drone. (PL: I knew someone that played Palladioum RIFTs as a guy who carried the party around in a APC, so clearly this kind of this isn't new.)
Intersellar Species
Expanded lore, art, and I think rules for some of the more memorable SF races like the giant floating brain and uplifted bear, plus a new mutant class. Seems harmless enough though not really essential.
Starfinder Enhanced
This is where things get potentially dicey, and why I'm asking for hot takes. Personally, I don't find this much different from the "unchained" nonsense I had to deal with in PF1. Basically, some of the base classes are rewritten, and others get some minor tweaks. Yes, it's an annoying barrier for noobs and DMs, especially with online character creators. But my skim doesn't find anything too agregious.
Which brings me to StarFinder 2e, which is due out in 2025 I think? I don't see the complaint, but I've also not really been around for a RPG edition release like this.
SF was released in 2017 according to wikipedia, and 2020 for the soft cover pocket edition. That's 8 years between editions. The "enhanced" class revision book was late last year. I don't know if that's a bad thing for TTRPGs.
I also don't see how a company having two games is unsustainable. Or that the existance of SF2e makes PF2e obsolete. Pozzo has managed SF and PF simultiously for a while and I don't see how SF2e changes that.
The only complaint I understand is Pozzos claim that SF2e will be 100% compatible with PF2e. Why would Paizo do this? Who's asking for that? Maybe if you're running a time travel themed campaign, but that seems like a pretty niche use case better handled with some DM house ruled monsters and gear. In every game I've run or played, every campaign starts with fresh characters, and maybe a former PC will cameo as a NPC. It's not as if they'll send someone to rip up your PF character sheets and force you to play SF.
The old card game?
robobobo
kiwifarms.net
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Starfinder demonstrated that Paizo has no fucking clue how to design a game when it's not just ripping off someone else. It was an utter clusterfuck full of game-breaking rules when it came out with math so bad that PCs at higher levels had worse chances of succeeding skill checks than people of lower levels. They errataed the rules eventually, but anybody who bought the books in the earlier printers is just shit out of luck. After a few years of revisions, Starfinder got to be... okay-ish in that you can play a session of it without being smacked in the face by completely unworkable rules. However, it remains bland as fuck, the classes are uninspired, weapons and gear are locked to your character level for no good reason so even though the corner store has a 20d20 plasma cannon they won't sell it to you until you're 19th level, and it's generally not worth playing.
I have experience with one adventure path, Horizons of the Vast, the one where the players have to harangue an alien college professor because he's saying problematic things about other species. Apart from that bit, the path focuses a lot on founding and running a colony on a mostly unexplored world, and the guy GMing it eventually quit because apparently the path expected the players to be murderhobos and our calmer, more diplomatic approach to the other colonies on the world were veering wildly off of the books' content so he was having to do a lot of work making things up from scratch despite having paid them for these premade adventures.
Seriously, just play one of the non-d20 Star Wars instead.
I have experience with one adventure path, Horizons of the Vast, the one where the players have to harangue an alien college professor because he's saying problematic things about other species. Apart from that bit, the path focuses a lot on founding and running a colony on a mostly unexplored world, and the guy GMing it eventually quit because apparently the path expected the players to be murderhobos and our calmer, more diplomatic approach to the other colonies on the world were veering wildly off of the books' content so he was having to do a lot of work making things up from scratch despite having paid them for these premade adventures.
Seriously, just play one of the non-d20 Star Wars instead.
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- Sep 3, 2014
The Samish are a real tribe native to Washington state; they actually historically got confused with a lot of tribes. I'd actually laugh though if you got it right, since the tribe was always pretty small. He might also be genuine, since they seem to only need one great grandparent to count as lineage from one of the accepted families.
Still higher than what I usually remark with the type, so fair enough.
Yeah, that's a genuine issue for the Cherokee.
Also I don't really expect either of these people to actually deal with the nation they claim descent from unless it benefits them.
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- Nov 4, 2017
@East_Clintwood has it right. Once money was flowing, they really locked down the gates. If Granddad would have said yes I'd have my government-paid for Res trailer and my monthly casino check coming and my American Indian scholarship fund while being able to curb stomp into any diversity circles with "As a Cherokee I..."
Granddad did say that he was initially confused because he agreed to meet with the tribal reps but the dudes who showed up were suit-wearing whites with typical 50s buzz cuts, and thought they might be lawyers or proxies - nope, that was the sub-tribes Vice President and treasurer. He didn't figure they'd show up on horses dressed in warpaint, feathered headdresses, and leathers, but he wasn't expecting them to look like guys at the Mason lodge either.
Its very fun, the only issue I really take with it being its very complex with a lot of parts. This leads to both reasonably long set up/scoring/clean up. Its also a lot to store. People to focus on the game so its not a super great social time game. The hardcores tend to be powergamers, so if you also have a bunch of dickholes playing they will demoralize and chase off newbies by just curb stomping them.
I stand corrected. I thought he was talking bout the Sami.
I think its less two games and more that SF2e and PF2e are set up to cannibalize from each other, and SF2e is set to cannibalize SF1e. You also don't have the OGL ecosystem anymore, and the
Though just guessing from what I've seen. I haven't really seen anyone give a shit one way or another about SF2e except for around the announcement, and I believe that was just in this thread.
IF SF2e was compatible with WMPRPG 5e people wouldn't complain about sustainability. (other things, yes, but not sustainability)
Also just read @robohobo 's post
So you can toss Scifi window dressing on PF2e adventure paths and run them as SF2e. Simple as.
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- Aug 2, 2021
The PF2e players really, really like the system, and it's arguably the second most popular TTRPG currently. Star finder is not popular. If they can make SF2e a reskin of PF2e, they have the following advantages:
- Don't actually need to make a new system, just new classes and items.
- The entire PF2e already knows how to play, so it's easy for them to try the new system.
- The authors of the APs don't need to learn a new system to write books for it.
- PF2e DMs can steal stuff from SF2e to reskin. I expect a "homebrew" of at least half the SF2e classes reskinned foe PF2e within 2 weeks of release.
- SF2e DMs can steal stuff from PF2e to reskin
- 100% chance a PF2e AP will be set in Numeria and use items from SF2e as loot to force the GMS who buy books to buy the SF2e books
robobobo
kiwifarms.net
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- Nov 21, 2014
I have been in a PF2 game too, and have beef with it as well. I consider it a significant downgrade to PF/3.5:
1. Shit's locked down. In place of the freeform grab bag of classes to pick from, PF2's implementation of multiclassing is that you give up feats on your main class to get watered-down abilities from another class. Every X levels in your main class, you can choose from a handful of abilities. Every Y levels you take a skill feat that will suck balls and you'll forget you took because you'll never use it.
2. Treadmill math. Much like Starfinder's skill DC calculations, PF2 is balanced such that a level 1 PC fighting a level 1 monster has about the exact same chance to hit as a level 19 PC fighting a level 19 monster, so if your DM is picking out monsters matching the party's level, you'll never feel like you've advanced. In adventure content I've seen from Paizo, at higher levels basic things like "convince a street urchin to tell you what's going on in town" suddenly has a 30 DC attached to it, and all of a sudden monsters that would be a walking apocalypse in the earlier books when the party was level 5 are just scattered around the wilderness for everyone to stumble into. Also, since higher-difficulty encounters like boss fights are usually higher levels than the PCs, you'll see the casters' spells just pinging off of them, severely disadvantaging classes with limited-use items and abilities.
Now, the Pathfinder subreddit will jump in at this point and be all, "Oh, you need to intimidate/bon mot/whatever the monsters!" Because there are piles of shitty -1 debuffs in the game that could, in theory, nudge probability away from the standard 50/50 over the course of enough turns. Except to apply them in the first place, you need to beat the monster with a skill check and/or it has to fail a save, neither of which are terribly likely, and a lot of the debuffs only last a round or two, so to enact this cunning plan you'd basically need a dedicated debuffer PC doing nothing aside from constantly inconveniencing a target instead of attacking or spellcasting.
1. Shit's locked down. In place of the freeform grab bag of classes to pick from, PF2's implementation of multiclassing is that you give up feats on your main class to get watered-down abilities from another class. Every X levels in your main class, you can choose from a handful of abilities. Every Y levels you take a skill feat that will suck balls and you'll forget you took because you'll never use it.
2. Treadmill math. Much like Starfinder's skill DC calculations, PF2 is balanced such that a level 1 PC fighting a level 1 monster has about the exact same chance to hit as a level 19 PC fighting a level 19 monster, so if your DM is picking out monsters matching the party's level, you'll never feel like you've advanced. In adventure content I've seen from Paizo, at higher levels basic things like "convince a street urchin to tell you what's going on in town" suddenly has a 30 DC attached to it, and all of a sudden monsters that would be a walking apocalypse in the earlier books when the party was level 5 are just scattered around the wilderness for everyone to stumble into. Also, since higher-difficulty encounters like boss fights are usually higher levels than the PCs, you'll see the casters' spells just pinging off of them, severely disadvantaging classes with limited-use items and abilities.
Now, the Pathfinder subreddit will jump in at this point and be all, "Oh, you need to intimidate/bon mot/whatever the monsters!" Because there are piles of shitty -1 debuffs in the game that could, in theory, nudge probability away from the standard 50/50 over the course of enough turns. Except to apply them in the first place, you need to beat the monster with a skill check and/or it has to fail a save, neither of which are terribly likely, and a lot of the debuffs only last a round or two, so to enact this cunning plan you'd basically need a dedicated debuffer PC doing nothing aside from constantly inconveniencing a target instead of attacking or spellcasting.
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- Nov 4, 2017
From personal experience its like 5e far and away #1, then PF1, 3.5 (homebrewed of course), CoC, Cyberpunk or Shadowrun, the regional OSR contender (usually a retroclone), and then Non-5e/non-3.5 hold outs (4e, 2e, Dark Sun [any edition]) and then PF2e, and then 'all other games' - savage worlds, traveller, FATE, Darkeye, etc
And as we've learned from the recently discussed C&C, sales doesn't necessarily equate players.
(I'd also be curious if Sales mean "bought by retailers" or "POS sales". Also Pozzo did a humble bundle for PWYW for PF2e, so I imagine that's got the numbers up)
All the wrong lessons learned from 4e.
Broken though it was, I did appreciate 3.5 having "static DCs" for certain actions, and you could potentially have absolutely wild successes as you leveled. I understand 4e was more about "Play the game, roll the die with standard yardsticks, don't consult tables" but I really feel it went too far in the wrong direction when, as you said, You have a lvl 25 demigod who still had like 30% chance of failing to convince a street urchin to give up the goods.
At least with 4e the official modules were pretty good about making sure when skill checks came into play, it was against level-appropriate threats. i.e. when climbing was something in a lvl 15 skill challenge, there was a reason the DC was immensely higher than the norm.
And of course when you'd gotten that high up in level, you had bullshit on tap to adjust odds in your favor.
Also I give no fucks about multiclassing getting nerfed. That's always been the domain of min-max munchkins, sorry not sorry.
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- Aug 23, 2018
That's crazy if that's their plan, because-
It depends who you mean by cannibalize in this context. But it could be worse than that.
The main problem with doing that is they risk turning Starfinder from it's own thing into PathFinder's version of Spelljammer. What's more, PathFinder already has it's own Barrier Peaks like region.
I don't mind them taking a successful base and building on it. Starfinder is interesting in part because there's a lot of things that would go on to be refined into solid PF2 mechanics. If it's just PF2 with "bow" replaced with "gun", then you could do that with any system anyway, PF2 included.
Sure the PF2 fans might buy it, but anyone wanting a sci-fi game will basically be SoL, or stick to the original rules. eg. One of the appeals to me of SF is that magic is capped at level 5, and guns beat magic when it come to straight damage. This (in theory) means casters wouldn't be just "zap" with different elements attached. There's no point in fireball when rocket launchers exist, and the lack of top tier spells like Wish removes game breaking complications. This got no end of whining on Reddit, but to me it's a positive. I don't play Shadowrun because magic overpowers sci-fi, making the sci-fi elements pointless. It's just DnD with neon lights. But people refuse to play any other cyberpunk setting.
In other words, if they make it a PF2 splatbook, they might get PF2 players on board, but they lose any reason for people who want a sci-fi game to buy it.
It might have been me.
I had the same problem with Against The Aeon Throne. The first book was great, but was rediculously over tuned to the point where those that didn't powergame couldn't hit anything if played RAW.
I tried the adventure path again using Savage Worlds, and it went well. Space combat sucked because I didn't realise SWs space rules have never been playtested. But one unexpected problem is players kept getting rules mixed up. We were playing Savage Worlds, but they kept trying to apply Starfinder rules, level ups, etc.
After the first book, it goes off the rails a bit and expects very specific actions on the PCs part. A PF2 adventure path I wanted to run had a similar problem.
I don't think there was any third party stuff for Starfinder, and very little for PF2 outside of shovelware (or whatever the TTRPG term for that is). Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.
This also works backwards. In my PF2 campaign, the party (what's left of it) is at an inpass because they're overleveled. Nothing a few levels lower than them can hurt them. Even the druid is walking around with 26ac. Kobolds and goblins need a nat 20 just to hit them. Even then they do 2d4 damage, which is nothing to their 100+ hp.
This is good and bad. There's the feeling walking up to creatures that nearly tpk'ed them early game and chopping them to bits with ease. But the reverse problem is I can't challenge them without doing the treadmill thing.
At least you didn't suggest Traveller.
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- Nov 4, 2017
By cannibalize, I mean woo players from one system to another, but the systems they are targeting are already their customers.
If you can turn a 5e player to your system, that's a new customer & player base. If you just get them to go from one version of your product to another, your customer base isn't expanding. And that's the only people I've talked to who have been excited for PF2e which are Pozzo/PF1e fanboys.
That's very possibly a result.
I think the fans wanting a sci-fi game are going to be SoL. You can hope for PF2e with different classes, better space combat, and maybe a rejiggered ranged combat.
I also dislike Shadowrun for what you describe: Neon D&D.
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- Apr 25, 2020
So... looks to me they basically just did the same thing bounded accuracy is supposed to do: keep the number you have to roll on the dice the same as you level up.
Wasn't that the big thing everybody was bitching about and claiming they'd be moving on to PF2e for?
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I like how they have you scold an academic for doing a heckin' racism and send you on a genocide quest to colonize the savages in the same campaign.
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- Sep 29, 2018
The way I understand it yes.
There's an optional rule 'proficiency without level' that removes adding level to everything to break this constraint. I've never heard of anybody actually using it though. I suppose at that point you're doing PF1 with extra steps and 4e design ethos.
The scaling with level seems like a great idea at the start for how it appropriately scales creatures up for their threat level, but the PCs also scale up the same way. So you end up with the scenario described by @Judge Dredd that players now cannot be hit by creatures 4+ levels below them unless some shenanigans ensue. The possibility also arises of the adventure mandated level 14 town guards that can beat up the dragonslaying heroes or the planeswalking party. It feels like a contrivance for system balance that completely undermines the purpose of leveling up if everything else is just going to auto scale to your level anyway else they cannot damage you at all.
My experience with PF2 has been thusly: Great and interesting to read about and start, a couple cracks start appearing at the lower levels, cracks are exacerbated in the mid range levels. Casters are at the mercy of the 'still works on failure' effect, where spells are still considered good because they do a pittance of damage or a minor debuff on a failure, of which will be happening very frequently due to creature statting. The third action problem is omnipresent since if you don't have a debuffing 3rd action or a shield there's not much to it. It's a very love-hate swingy relationship. Both my own and my friends' PCs always feel like we're performing well but never truly excelling at anything unless the dice are particularly generous.
I think I'd be having more fun playing PF1 or 3.5, but that's a personal preference.
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- Aug 2, 2021
On PF2's treadmill:
All ttrpgs are going to have a treadmill of some kind if there's a level system. In 5e, the treadmill is very short, and consists of just proficiency, damage and health. in pf1/pf2, it's basically everything. "Balance" is when you can't outrun the treadmill.
The first problem with allowing the players to outrun the treadmill is that if everyone outruns the treadmill, you need to compensate by also making the monsters outrun the treadmill, which means it's just the DM setting numbers by fiat instead of by CR in order to pose a challenge. If anyone dies, it's because the DM overtuned the challenge.
The second, worse problem with allowing players to outrun the treadmill is if only one guy outruns the treadmill. You can balance in favor of that guy, and then everyone else is useless, or you can balance in favor of the rest of the party, and then the one guy is so good the other players may as well not play.
Assuming you're not letting people outrun the treadmill, or at least trying not to:
The advantage of something like 5e is that low level monsters are still usable, the disadvantage is that high level monsters still get overrun by action economy.
The advantage of something like pf2 is that high level monsters can be a lone boss with the same number of actions as a player and still threaten the players, the disadvantage is you can't use low level monsters. I think pf2 has the advantage unless you're trying to do something that's very open world with prewritten encounters.
If you're playing pf2 and want to keep using the low level monsters, you could run "proficiency without level." There won't be any prewritten adventures for that, but you don't need it for prewritten adventures because those adventures won't be making the level 10 party fight level 1 goblins.
You could also just not let the players level out of the bounds of the adventure you've written.
All ttrpgs are going to have a treadmill of some kind if there's a level system. In 5e, the treadmill is very short, and consists of just proficiency, damage and health. in pf1/pf2, it's basically everything. "Balance" is when you can't outrun the treadmill.
The first problem with allowing the players to outrun the treadmill is that if everyone outruns the treadmill, you need to compensate by also making the monsters outrun the treadmill, which means it's just the DM setting numbers by fiat instead of by CR in order to pose a challenge. If anyone dies, it's because the DM overtuned the challenge.
The second, worse problem with allowing players to outrun the treadmill is if only one guy outruns the treadmill. You can balance in favor of that guy, and then everyone else is useless, or you can balance in favor of the rest of the party, and then the one guy is so good the other players may as well not play.
Assuming you're not letting people outrun the treadmill, or at least trying not to:
The advantage of something like 5e is that low level monsters are still usable, the disadvantage is that high level monsters still get overrun by action economy.
The advantage of something like pf2 is that high level monsters can be a lone boss with the same number of actions as a player and still threaten the players, the disadvantage is you can't use low level monsters. I think pf2 has the advantage unless you're trying to do something that's very open world with prewritten encounters.
If you're playing pf2 and want to keep using the low level monsters, you could run "proficiency without level." There won't be any prewritten adventures for that, but you don't need it for prewritten adventures because those adventures won't be making the level 10 party fight level 1 goblins.
You could also just not let the players level out of the bounds of the adventure you've written.
TheDarknessGrows
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 28, 2021
A tabletop ccg from 2008.
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- Aug 2, 2021
It's pretty fun. It was the first "deck-building" game, arguably the best one. Played it religiously with my wife for a long time with just the base game and an expansion or two.
Wouldn't call it a CCG though, it's a deckbuilder. The base set always has the same cards, and each expansion has the same cards, and you don't keep or build a deck in between games. Closer to Slay the Spire than Magic the Gathering, but you're going for the most victory points when the game ends. Most games the only interaction between players is trying to time the end of the game correctly.
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- Nov 15, 2021
Bounded accuracy wasn't a problem to be solved. It was just autistic screeching from people who automatically hate new things. Rolling a d20 + 19 to try and hit AC 30 is not actually more fun than rolling a d20 + 9 to hit AC 20. Nearly everybody who sperged out about this ended up having fun in 5e, because the theorycraft scenario of 500 kindergarteners kicking a dragon to death never actually happens in real games.
You know what actually is fun? Being able to give a larger, threatening enemy some minions that die in 1-2 hits but are not utterly, completely useless. Being able to use a high-level monster as a boss which the players can actually hit instead of relying on some kind deus ex machina.
You know what actually is fun? Being able to give a larger, threatening enemy some minions that die in 1-2 hits but are not utterly, completely useless. Being able to use a high-level monster as a boss which the players can actually hit instead of relying on some kind deus ex machina.