I have looked it over, looks okay so far. We are gonna hold off on wholesale switching over, but we are grabbing a few fun things- like weapon mastery.
Is anyone switching over?
Thoughts on the book?
I’ve not read it yet. Did WotC make a special edition for game shops this time?
Too soon for us. We’ll wait a while here.
But some things look better and some look worse. No surprise.
There are two (or more?) covers. I am not sure who gets which cover. Some fans are buying both.
I like to go for the Game Shop cover. The Outer Limits needs my dollars more than Jeff Bezos does.
I’ve been seeing the usual hand wringing on Reddit. I’m hoping some Dopers will be able to provide a more balanced review.
There are always haters for the #1 in any thing.
Oh yeah - apparently 5E was the biggest mistake ever made and ruined the game forever.
Stranger
I don’t have it but have watched several reviews on it from various YouTube people. They all agree it’s a good version to introduce new people. First section is how to play and how to make a character and supposed to be quite good. I think the only complaint I have seen is no character sheet to photocopy and use in the back pages. It’s apparently well indexed and cross referenced.
Some in my group have picked it up and like it but I have no details. If my group wants something like 5E, I will use Level Up. I also said I’m fine if one of them wants to run it as I will play. If that happens, I might get a book.
My group has two big fans of 5E. It’s the first RPG they played. They would play other games, which was nice. One of those two didn’t like Pathfinder 1E. Complained the entire time we had a campaign in it. Complained when it was brought up for the next campaign. Complained about PF2E. Then we started playing PF2E and he loves it! I’m quite shocked. He said he’s fine with PF2E going forward. This is a big turn around and it is surprising. Not sure if Foundry’s automation of it did this. Maybe the tactics involved with three action economy?
They did put out new statistics for the cartoon characters in an adventure.
- Bobby is a berserker barbarian with the farmer background. He has his thunderous greatclub. Stats are Str 20* Dex 14 Con 16 Int 10 Wis 10 Cha 14. He has the Great Weapon Master, Skilled, and Tough feats. *Str is set to 20 as a feature of his magic weapon.
- Diana is an Open Hand monk with the scribe background. She has her quarterstaff of the acrobat. Her stats are Str 10 Dex 18 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 14 Cha 10. Her feats are Skilled, Tough, and Weapon Master (Quarterstaff).
- Eric is a champion fighter with the noble background. He has his shield of the cavalier. He also has a longsword, a dagger, and a heavy crossbow. His stats are Str 18 Dex 12 Con 14 Int 14 Wis 10 Cha 8. His feats are Defense Fighting Style, Shield Master, Skilled, and Tough.
- Hank is a hunter ranger with the guard background. He has his energy bow. Stats are Str 14 Dex 16 Con 14 Int 10 Wis 14 Cha 10. His feats are Ability Score Improvement (?), Alert, Archery Fighting Style, and Tough.
- Niko is a life cleric with the hermit background. She has a magic weapon called Niko’s mace. Her stats are Str 14 Dex 10 Con 13 Int 8 Wis 18 Cha 14. Her feats are Ability Score Improvement (?), Healer, and Tough.
- Presto is an evoker wizard with the scribe background. He has his hat of many spells. His stats are Str 8 Dex 14 Con 12 Int 18 Wis 10 Cha 14. His feats are Skilled, Spell Sniper, and Tough.
- Shiela is a thief rogue with the farmer background. She has a cloak of invisibility. Her stats are Str 8 Dex 16 Con 12 Int 14 Wis 14 Cha 12. Her feats are Lucky, Skulker, and Tough.
Hmm, Niko is definitely not a main character – was she in an episode?
(also, chars have Tough)
Brian
If she wasn’t (and I don’t find any reference to her), I’d guess they created her for this character set, which otherwise would only have any magical healing from Hank the Ranger (assuming he has those spells).
More hit points, for more forgiveness for beginning players, I’m guessing.
Paladins have quite a bit of healing. However, looks like here, they have made Eric into a fighter. However, to be fair, i was never a fan of that cartoon.
The cartoon was heavily inspired by the Unearthed Arcana supplement for first edition AD&D. That book was mostly a collection of various classes and races (e.g. Drow and High Elf) introduced in Dragon magazine. Barbarian, Cavalier, and Thief-Acrobat were introduced in Dragon and were included in UA. Paladin’s were introduced as a sub-class of Cavalier. From what I remember, Eric never had any healing ability, so it makes sense he wouldn’t be made a Paladin. (Though Cavalier’s did get bonus healing from resting compared to other classes.)
Or, more precisely, when the Cavalier class appeared in UA, TSR retconned the already-existing Paladin class to be a sub-class of Cavalier.
I’m old enough to remember when the 2nd edition was going to “ruin the game”, “dumb down the game” “invalidate all my books” yadda, yadda, yadda.
Weird, I started with D&D, played 1st forever and never heard that about 2nd.
Now 3rd, that got slammed by almost all.
3e was released without proper testing, but they put out 3.5 pretty fast, and 3.5 was fun- altho you could easily build some broken builds.
Too fast, I’d say. A lot of the fundamental changes in 3.5, like swift actions, had to be released in the psionics book (and then again in every subsequent book), because they didn’t make it into the PHB.
Agreed, but I meant 3.0. It also left a bad enough taste in my mouth where I never bought anything from 3.0, 3.5 or 4.0.
5th was the first time since 2nd that I bought books.
Would you be willing to explain what you didn’t like about it?
I like 3E better. I like rules over rulings. I like a basis for both the DM and player to fall back on. I like my game rules to be like natural laws. “Here is how things work.” I think this is because as a semi-forever DM, when I went to play in a 1E/2E game, each table was radically different. Maybe if I had joined groups for a brand new campaign, it wouldn’t have been as bad.
That’s not to say I’m not appreciating 1E/2E more. Perhaps a better word is understanding it better. In a group with friends all trusting each other, any game can be fun. Since I never had that when I played, it pushed me to my forever DM position. I hope I did well by my players.
3.0 to 3.5 is a mixed bag for me. One of the things they did was reduce buffs like Bull’s Strength from hours per level to minutes per level. The reason given was that a belt of strength is not needed if buffs last hours per level. For me, I liked that most low level spells weren’t as effective or damaging at higher levels, so using those slots for buffs made sense.
At the same time, they also realized how front loaded many classes were and tried to spread things out more, so it wasn’t a one level dip to get most of a class’s abilities. It’s not official but due to that, I call levels one to four apprentice, five to ten, heroic, eleven to fifteen paragon, and sixteen or higher epic. How effective they were is a different story but they tried.
One of the things that still doesn’t make sense to me is the iterative attack penalty, now called multiple attack penalty. I used that for years until 5E didn’t. My current PF1 game doesn’t use them and it changes combat. It’s deadlier because attacks hit more often. (AC doesn’t outpace to hit bonuses in my games.)
Of course, combat is tough to balance. If a character has 70 hit points, damage of d8 +5 means it will take lots of hits to bring that character down. I think that’s what 2014 DND tried to do. It’s why spell casters change the course of combat when they drop a 10d6 fireball.
While I’m coming around to PF2, what I really wanted from Paizo was a PF1 revised. I wanted to see things like three action economy from Pathfinder Unchained as standard in revised PF1. That gets rid of all of the different action types, like swift, full, action, and move. Fewer hit points and armor as DR, also in Pathfinder Unchained, or Vitality Points and Wound Points would also have been interesting. Maybe it just plays different enough that it’s still PF1 but familiar enough to feel comfortable to me.
Thanks for the discussion!