There are a lot of things Paizo has done to strip options out of their new system. (It's really a completely new system, not an upgrade or continuation of the old system.) For one thing, it's now basically impossible to play a race that isn't in the released materials without having a knock-down drag-out fight with your GM, because your race isn't just a couple of stat bonuses/penalties and a couple of abilities and attributes. Now you have to have a whole list of balanced and tuned ANCESTRY FEATS that you get access to at specific levels. Talk about headache.
And it's the same with classes. You can't throw down a few class-specific abilities and call it a day, no, now you need a massive list of class feats and what level you get access to them all. So, pretty much the only way to play this system is to play STRAIGHT OUTTA THE BOOK. Considering only the most basic of basic material is released thus far, this is kinda rude. Creativity? What creativity? Doing anything outside the cookie-cutter basics means committing to an enormous amount of tedious busy-work that all has to be approved by the GM. You can't mix and match any more.
Also out the window is multi-classing, replaced by the lame system of squandering your feats to get crappier feats from a different class. Woo.
Druid absolutely got reamed. Instead of getting an animal companion AND wild shape that level up on their own and remain relevant throughout the game, now you can pick ONE and spend tons of feats to make it relevant. Oh, and the ability you pick locks you in to a pre-set ethos. Creativity? What creativity?
You don't make YOUR character in this system. You pick which one of PAIZO's characters you feel like playing.
So what the heck does this have to do with World of Prime, you may ask. Assuming you read the post title, that is. In fact, what the heck IS World of Prime?
World of Prime is a book series by M.C. Planck.
It's that rare and wonderful beast, a COMPLETED series. It's a pretty interesting and reasonably well-written series, so I'd say check it out. The important part, though, is that the premise of this series is a world where Dungeons and Dragons rules form the "physics" of the world. Experience points, levels, classes, races, memorizing spells, gods, domains, raising the dead, alignments, it all has an analog. For being based on a game system that has only a sketchy connection with any concepts that apply in reality, it does a good job of examining what all of these rules would actually mean in a world where they really did all apply.
The main character HATES it. He's an "all men are created equal" American and despises the built-in aristocracy that comes with experience points and levels (here called tael and ranks). So he sets out to change it with (surprise) guns that can make an ordinary man able to stand up to a fifth-level fighter or wizard or cleric.
It all works surprisingly well until book 4, Verdict on Crimson Fields. Then Christopher (the protagonist) gets his first taste of what the levels system really means when he takes his New Model Army to face off against a dragon . . . and dragon fear, which none of them can resist simply because they're not high enough level. All the technology in the world won't help you if you can't keep your men around to operate it, and they're simply helpless in the face of high-level magic. And Christopher is forced to confront this fact.
It all works surprisingly well until book 4, Verdict on Crimson Fields. Then Christopher (the protagonist) gets his first taste of what the levels system really means when he takes his New Model Army to face off against a dragon . . . and dragon fear, which none of them can resist simply because they're not high enough level. All the technology in the world won't help you if you can't keep your men around to operate it, and they're simply helpless in the face of high-level magic. And Christopher is forced to confront this fact.
This is a problem that D&D and all of its bastard child systems have had since forever--once you pass a certain threshold, because of the way the system is designed, nothing can fight magic except magic. So the non-casting or semi-casting classes are left without a damn thing to do with themselves while the casters run the entire show.
What boggles me is that the solution is incredibly simple and yet we keep getting utter monstrosities like this Pathfinder 2nd Edition fiasco where they completely castrate the casting classes and make them boring and stupid in order to "balance" them with the non-casting or semi-casting classes. NO. This is a fantasy game. The fantastic elements are the fun part. If you take out all the stuff that MAKES it D&D, guess what, it's NOT D&D ANY MORE.
(I'm not going to get into the fact that spellcasting itself has a weird cycle to it where, due to monster stat inflation and the weird availability of certain types of effects, sometimes your wizard is throwing fireballs, sometimes they're buffing themselves and going toe-to-toe with monsters like a fighter only more effectively, and sometimes they're just opening holes in the planes and yanking stuff out or throwing stuff in like the most insane stage magician ever.)
Put away the damn butcher knife and listen up. The way you fix this problem is not to cut stuff, weaken stuff, or turn every class into a list of a billion special abilities where swinging the weapon in your off hand is some kind of specialized damn effect.
The way you do it, is you take the spell list and the monster manual (ESPECIALLY the monster manual) and you say "for every magic that exists, there must be a NON-MAGICAL COUNTER". You learn from the lesson of Christopher vs. the Dragon and get rid of all the stupid rules that say "this can only be fixed or opposed with magic". Here's a short, NON-COMPREHENSIVE list of things that can ONLY be fixed or opposed with magic in D&D:
What boggles me is that the solution is incredibly simple and yet we keep getting utter monstrosities like this Pathfinder 2nd Edition fiasco where they completely castrate the casting classes and make them boring and stupid in order to "balance" them with the non-casting or semi-casting classes. NO. This is a fantasy game. The fantastic elements are the fun part. If you take out all the stuff that MAKES it D&D, guess what, it's NOT D&D ANY MORE.
(I'm not going to get into the fact that spellcasting itself has a weird cycle to it where, due to monster stat inflation and the weird availability of certain types of effects, sometimes your wizard is throwing fireballs, sometimes they're buffing themselves and going toe-to-toe with monsters like a fighter only more effectively, and sometimes they're just opening holes in the planes and yanking stuff out or throwing stuff in like the most insane stage magician ever.)
Put away the damn butcher knife and listen up. The way you fix this problem is not to cut stuff, weaken stuff, or turn every class into a list of a billion special abilities where swinging the weapon in your off hand is some kind of specialized damn effect.
The way you do it, is you take the spell list and the monster manual (ESPECIALLY the monster manual) and you say "for every magic that exists, there must be a NON-MAGICAL COUNTER". You learn from the lesson of Christopher vs. the Dragon and get rid of all the stupid rules that say "this can only be fixed or opposed with magic". Here's a short, NON-COMPREHENSIVE list of things that can ONLY be fixed or opposed with magic in D&D:
Stat drain
Negative Levels
Curses
Teleportation
Scrying
Identifying Magic Items
Detecting the presence of magic
Petrification
Mind control
Magical diseases
Magical Poisons
Damage Reduction
Just all kinds of crap that comes up ALL. THE. TIME. in any adventure, and if you don't have access to magic, oh well, you can't do crap about it! Many times it's a "game over, make a new character" kind of event.
Pathfinder 2nd edition (and every other crappy bastard version of D&D that's come out, like, say, 4th edition) wants to solve this problem by getting rid of all of that stuff or making it effectively pointless. All you really have to do is to go back through the effect descriptions and everywhere it says "you need a Wish or a Miracle to remove this" or "a remove curse spell is the only cure" you CUT THAT OUT and replace it with something that DOESN'T USE MAGIC and is AVAILABLE TO NON-CASTING CLASSES and DOESN'T COST THE ENTIRE EARNINGS OF TWENTY THOUSAND PEASANTS FOR ONE YEAR.
Freakishly, there's a great video game version of this that does exactly that and it works amazingly well and non-casters are just as badass as casters. No, not kidding, it's called Dungeons and Dragons Online. Here's how it works:
Freakishly, there's a great video game version of this that does exactly that and it works amazingly well and non-casters are just as badass as casters. No, not kidding, it's called Dungeons and Dragons Online. Here's how it works:
Stat Drain--rest and get rid of it. Or drink a potion to get rid of it immediately. And not a magical potion that can only be created by a caster with the spell and is super-expensive and super-rare. We're talking a potion that's as ubiquitous and affordable as Red Bull.
Negative Levels--rest and get rid of them. No, they don't stick around forever and ever and ever and require a relatively high-level spell with extreme restrictions to remove.
Curses--wait and they expire, except for one or two that require you to drink a Red Bull.
Negative Levels--rest and get rid of them. No, they don't stick around forever and ever and ever and require a relatively high-level spell with extreme restrictions to remove.
Curses--wait and they expire, except for one or two that require you to drink a Red Bull.
Teleportation--this one is a special case in Dungeons and Dragons Online because while it exists it has no tactical usefulness. However, I've seen all sorts of books and so forth deal with it by, say, locating buildings underground or criss-crossing a room with wires or even just the way furniture is designed and positioned. Add a caveat that unless there's X number of squares of open space in an area you can't teleport there and voila, it's trivial to defend against it. And as for the recurring villain always teleporting away . . . spell affects an area around you, and you take everyone in it with you whether you like it or not. They all get saving throws, and if even one of them makes the save, guess what, the ENTIRE SPELL fails.
Scrying--the scrying sensor is visible WITHOUT a spell to detect it, and it can't see through fog/darkness/etc., or hear over loud ambient noise.
Identifying Items--why is this even a thing. I haven't played with a DM in ages who was willing to sit through that nonsense, they just tell us what the damn items are. Because people putting on cursed items is fun? Whatever. Heck, even video games realized this was B.S. and dropped the concept ages ago.
Detecting the presence of magic--basically all magic should be bloody obvious to anyone with half a brain. Even high-quality, well-crafted illusions should only work briefly and only on the unsuspecting or on those (like a scrying sensor) who have no ability to verify what they're observing. Yeah, okay, that momentary advantage may be all you need. It should also be all you GET.
Scrying--the scrying sensor is visible WITHOUT a spell to detect it, and it can't see through fog/darkness/etc., or hear over loud ambient noise.
Identifying Items--why is this even a thing. I haven't played with a DM in ages who was willing to sit through that nonsense, they just tell us what the damn items are. Because people putting on cursed items is fun? Whatever. Heck, even video games realized this was B.S. and dropped the concept ages ago.
Detecting the presence of magic--basically all magic should be bloody obvious to anyone with half a brain. Even high-quality, well-crafted illusions should only work briefly and only on the unsuspecting or on those (like a scrying sensor) who have no ability to verify what they're observing. Yeah, okay, that momentary advantage may be all you need. It should also be all you GET.
Petrification--should be either temporary, or have the good old smooch loophole or something like that.
Mind control--should be friggin obvious and wear off quite quickly.
Magical Diseases/poisons--Maybe if you made actual diseases and poisons as nasty as they really are you wouldn't have to invent this B.S.
Damage Reduction--if you want the monster to be tougher but have a weird vulnerability, just give it more hit points and lower saving throws, sheesh.
Get creative. Then go back and review the non-casting classes and give them whatever they need to have access to all the non-magical solutions to stuff. Here's some GREAT stuff:
Non-casters get higher saving throws than casters and don't fail on a roll of 1 if they'd otherwise make the save.
Non-casters get higher saving throws than casters and don't fail on a roll of 1 if they'd otherwise make the save.
The least-skilled non-caster class gets more skill points than the MOST-skilled caster class. Like, TWICE as many. And they ALL get a huge number of class skills and bonuses to skills.
Special materials and crafting methods are WAY better than magical enchantments on weapons and armor. Armor doesn't cease being relevant after level 5 because IT HAS ZERO SCALING. In DDO, they have this thing called +[w]. Periodically you get weapon upgrades that simply do more damage because they get more dice of damage. So that bow that was doing 1d8 damage now does 2[1d8] or 3[1d8] or more. Spells often add dice of damage with levels, why don't weapon attacks?! And not your special attacks, your BASIC attack, the one you use every time you roll!
Some moron at WotC once said about third edition D&D that getting a feat was considered equivalent to getting a new level of spells. Okay, no, getting the ability to SOMETIMES swing your weapon an extra time (like, say, cleave) is NOT THE SAME as getting access to a dozen new spells that can drop an entire ROOM full of enemies IN ONE GO. Hand these suckers out to the non-casters. Hand them out to the semi-casters! Instead, who gets more bonus feats than they know what to do with? FRIGGIN WIZARDS. Meanwhile the poor paladin is looking at their 3 smite evils per day and crying into their beer.
Quit over-rewarding specializing in one weapon style. You use the right damn tool for the job.
Get rid of the silly notion of weapons being "bludgeoning", "slashing", or "piercing" weapons. Ain't you ever seen a movie where someone got clubbed with the butt of a gun? Ever see someone get cut in a boxing match? The WHOLE THING is a weapon, not just two inches at the very tip, dammit. Do you not think that in a world where people EXPECT to go from fighting zombies to fighting skeletons at a moment's notice they'd put a damn heavy pommel on that sword?! Or just use the flat?!
Let the wizards be wizards. And let the rogue sneak in, disarm all the alarms, blind the magical eyeball, and throttle that sucker in his sleep.
Quit over-rewarding specializing in one weapon style. You use the right damn tool for the job.
Get rid of the silly notion of weapons being "bludgeoning", "slashing", or "piercing" weapons. Ain't you ever seen a movie where someone got clubbed with the butt of a gun? Ever see someone get cut in a boxing match? The WHOLE THING is a weapon, not just two inches at the very tip, dammit. Do you not think that in a world where people EXPECT to go from fighting zombies to fighting skeletons at a moment's notice they'd put a damn heavy pommel on that sword?! Or just use the flat?!
Let the wizards be wizards. And let the rogue sneak in, disarm all the alarms, blind the magical eyeball, and throttle that sucker in his sleep.
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