Cessation of Hostilities
Our latest Patreon Poll has come to a close, and the people have handed down a harsh verdict. The question? “It’s time for permadeath! Who’s getting forever removed from the comic?” And let met tall ya folks, it wasn’t even close.
Ever since we me him, Thaumaturge has been confusing his mechanics. Whether it’s mixing editions or implementing bizarre house rules, the bushy-headed weirdo has never quite understood the way the world works. But you know what? That mess is forgivable. When you play for long enough in enough different systems, it all begins to run together a bit. So if I’m honest with myself, I can’t hate him for that. Weird rules and honest confusions are more endearing than enraging. For me, his real crime is his rotten attitude.
Thaumaturge is guilty of one-true-wayism, and I’d be happy to watch that mess burn at the stake. Thaumaturge is the kind of guy that spits in a fury when he meets a new and unfamiliar game mechanic. He bemoans the way it used to be, screams about how his favorite systems did it better, and lets everyone around him know loud and clear that they’re idiots for disagreeing.
Of course we all have our preferred editions, systems, and ways of playing. That’s why game design can split off in so many new and interesting directions. We get rulesets that emphasize player agency, specific emotions, accessibility, or depth. That doesn’t mean you’ve got to raise your fists and shout down the parts of the internet that play differently than you.
There is no one right way to game, and that’s because of a very simple truth. Whenever we launch into the story of, “I play XYZ games because reasons,” we’re talking about what we prefer, not what is objectively best. It’s about finding the right game for the right person, not about finding the right game period. That’s why, when it comes time to compare systems, I always try to speak in terms of “this edition delivers on these design goals,” not “this other edition is trash because it doesn’t do all the things I want.” It’s not trying to do those things. It doesn’t have to. And you aren’t a dadburn shabbaroon for liking it anyway.
Question of the day then! Have you ever met an edition warrior out in the wild? Did you manage to have a productive conversation, or was it all monkey screeching and hot fire? Let’s hear you tales of screaming at strangers online down in the comments!
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Being the guy who’s played for about 30 years now, I kinda am the resident edition warrior. That having been said, I mostly use my powers to point out the flaws in editions that people want to only see the fond memories of.
That and to point out that thac0 was a perfectly fine mechanic, and it’s all these yunguns that can’t do simple math who are wrong.
Wait. You get powers? What else does taking levels in Edition Warrior give you?
Well, Actually…
Starting at 6th level, a Edition Warrior has earned enough respect or acquiescence from the GM to be able to correct them on minor but important conditional bonuses. Once per day, they may reroll or force the gm to reroll any single roll, and either add a +2 or -2 circumstantial bonus. Starting at 12th level, the Edition Warrior may use this ability twice per day
Favored Edition(Ex)
At 1st level, an edition warrior selects an edition type from the edition warrior favored editions table. He gains a +2 bonus on Bluff, Knowledge, Perception, Sense Motive, and Survival checks against rules from his selected edition. However, he gets a -1 penalty against rules from all other editions.
Sure, if you’re using Xth edition like a heathen!
In Best Edition, he gets advantage on saves vs worse editions and a free push against the GM any time they have to check which edition a rule is from.
More concise, more best. =P
The first level of edition warrior requires you to dual class from fighter and gives you a bonus to hit against anyone who doesn’t agree with you.
Taking the second level of the Edition Warrior Prestige class allows you to reflect your line spells off of surfaces out to their full distance.
Your third dot of Edition Warrior allows you to ignore the multiple action penalty for performing 2 actions.
When you get to an Edition Warrior rating of 4 you transcend all bounds of common sense and make your own game.
lol
A friend brought in a “dedicated GM” who “Hadn’t had a group since 2nd Edition”. In retrospect, this should have been a warning, since this was in 2013. Everyone in our group had cosied up to Pathfinder’s ruleset by this point.
So Session Zero starts. A few houserules that we should take into account: Roll your stats with 3d6. Core Rulebook only, no supplemental material. In addition, Monks and sorcerors don’t exist in this campaign, you can’t play them. You start with 100 gold worth of equipment, not whatever your starting chart says. Okay. We roll, end up building around our stat rolls rather than playing what classes we want (which is why our group gave up on stat rolls a long time ago) and we end up with a Half-Orc Barbarian, a Dwarf Fighter (me), A human Wizard, a Human cleric, a halfling rogue and a human rogue.
So the game starts with us having been already enslaved and chained aboard a slave galley. The game progresses and eventually we engineer our escape only to realize that one of the NPCs in the brig with the barbarian is a Monk. I thought those didn’t exist? I end up facing a fighter who we reverse engineered to be about fourth level by his hit points and he had some rogue levels in there due to the sneak attack in a one on one fight and won only by rolling a critical with my dwarven waraxe (x3 is awesome.). The enemy wizard hits us with Hypnotic Pattern, but I managed to make the save. A bloody axe swing later, she leaps overboard and our wizard goes after her, refusing to let her get away because she has his spellbook. We get them both back up on deck and find…his spellbook. Which doesn’t have hypnotic pattern.
It continued from there with insane over-CRed challenges and blatant adversial Gming for three sessions before he ticked the rest of the group off and they asked him not to return. He ranted that we were spoiled, overpowered and didn’t understand how to really play D&D as well as quite a few personal attacks that I won’t repeat here. Needless to say, he is responsible for that group actually being more reluctant to accept new members now.
It is scenarios like this that really get me angry. I believe in equal treatment. If a class or race is banned from players because they do not exist in setting, then they shouldn’t fucking exist in setting as NPC’s or encounters. Or atleast be forthright with it enough to state that race X or class Y exist but are not at this moment available because of reasons X, Y, or Z. For example, Dwarves may not become available as a player race until they are released from an underground prison, where the race as a whole have been laying dormant in hibernation or stasis. Monks, could be a martial discipline not yet taught on the planet, but be instead be newly introduced with the space travelling nomads of the githyanki and githzerai.
Ofcourse, while I am generally okay from banning classes, I am actually less okay with banning concepts. For example, banning the monk class doesn’t prevent the martial monk character concept from being played (unarmed barbarians, fighters, paladins, rogues, or even wizards for the wuxia elemental monk by refluffing spells as bending or chakra manipulation). Even if a concept doesn’t normally fit the setting, whose to say your character is even originally from that setting (Sigil is a thing after all), or maybe your character is among the first of their class (someone had to start the movement, why not you).
I don’t mind “core only,” especially for GMs who are learning the ropes. Consistency is important though. If you declare “thing doesn’t exist,” it should be a plot point if you find “thing” anyway. Maybe galley slave monk was an escapee from Themyscira or whatever.
I’d honestly be curious what horror story GM was even thinking with that mess.
As a GM I sometimes restrict books or classes or whatever but usually for either story/world-building reasons or for “I’m really not familiar with that and not sure how to balance it/give it the attention it deserves.”
For example, in 3.5 I generally viewed that there were either psychics or magic users, but generally not both. I found the balancing of both was just too much of a mechanical headache when the end result (effects) were arguably indiscernible to the average person. If the peasant’s home gets blown up by a psychic blast or an eldritch blast…it’s still a supernatural (or spell-like…or whatever) effect that blew up their house. It could have been super-technological and at the end of the day their house is still blown up.
I think 3.5 grew so much (yay!) you could incorporate most things in one fashion or another mechanically, balancing could be tricky. Story wise I tried to keep thing somewhat consistent and would try to draw from a limited number of books, and for that setting that is what we used. But our group had other DMs other months who would lead so everyone tended to get to play what they wanted. I also made sure there were plenty of story reasons to add or restrict things in the world. It made for some really rich tapestries and the players focusing more on the world and less on the dice.
Yo… Sometimes it goes beyond edition wars into “just being a shitty person.” Good job kicking the nerd!
Can’t say I’ve met one for any tabletop system, but I’ve been hearing ‘edition warriors’ complain about every WoW expansion in succession after the first. Each one appears to have its defenders who will swear that their way of life was the greatest, about how their class was ‘perfect’ then and how the game was ‘never as good as it was then’.
I’d point out that it seems odd that no one can agree which WoW expansion was the best if I feel like a fight, but otherwise I’m just going to nod and continue RPing.
RPing is never nerfed.
It’s tough in WoW. Unlike in tabletop, you literally can’t go back and play your favorite game with fellow devotees. New expansions mean your edition is literally dead (unless you’re on one of those vanilla servers).
It honestly makes me wonder if there will ever be an MMO with custom servers. That would probably segment the player base though, threatening the first “M” in MMO.
At the end of the day, I guess that MMO edition change is the cost of doing business. The people demand new content, and that demands global change. If those are my only choices, I guess I’d rather grin and bear it.
A member of my own group has been developing these habits, I’m afraid.
He’s honestly the worst at character-making mechanics and stuff in the group (by a fair bit), and not the best strategist either, and then tends to blame whole systems when it doesn’t work out well for him.
We’ve tried suggestions of ways to improve his characters’ effectiveness at what they do, but if he can’t manage something on its own, he declares it impossible. When reminded that everyone in the group except him is managing it, he’s declared that we’re actually not. The system is so broken that it’s not possible to win, and that our magic powers are affecting the outcome.
He’s sworn off Pathfinder, Starfinder, Mutants & Masterminds, and D&D 5e at this point, which is everything my group actually plays, so I’m not sure if he’s even really a group member any more. He really likes AD&D 2nd edition and is trying to convince the group to switch to it as our sole system, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.
AD&D honestly looks cool, but the guy advocating it here has gotten more and more unpleasant to even discuss RPGs with lately. I don’t think the group really wants to play with him any more.
More flies with honey, you know? If you want to convince your group to try something new, step up and run that system. Show them why you love it. The last thing you want to do is tell them all the things they like are actually crap. That’s the opposite of a persuasive argument.
Out of curiosity, did you have any plans regarding what would’ve happened to any other characters, were they pointed out by the bloodthirsty mob? Or were they all going to get burned at a stake by Cleric, for one reason or another?
And since we’re at it, I though Wizard already trademarked killing folks with fire. Isn’t that a fall-worthy offense for any self respecting worshipper of the almighty CRB?
I try to take it one vote at a time. That said, if Priest had bit the dust, I probably would have had Acolyte step up and assume his name.
Also, killing folks with fire doesn’t seem to make you fall in this universe:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/witchy-ways
It’s a multi-denominational pyre. 😛
So who survived the Patreon poll?
I thought Thaumaturge was mostly fond of bad homebrew as opposed to old editions.
Priest lives!
As for Thaumaturge, the dude has played a lot of editions: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/edition-warrior
Alas, I am the edition warrior in target archery. I loved the sport as it was when I started almost 20 years ago, in the country where I lived at that time. A lot of changes have happened since, and they all reduced the things I liked and introduced ones I didn’t. Especially here, I just don’t like how it works. It’s easier to handle in the real world though: just walk away from the thing you once loved and live in the memories.
I think that tabletop has a special place in that it’s so fractured. Especially if you’ve got a stable home game, it’s easy to ignore the rest of the world and continue playing the thing you like. That’s less true in MMOs or organized sports.
Out of curiosity, how did target archery change for the worse?
There were a series of small changes.
12-arrow total score head to head matches became “best of 5” set matches of 15 arrows. (This was deliberately done to reduce instances of lower ranked archers getting through a round because the higher ranked guy couldn’t deal with the pressure and threw one wide. I used to win so many matches as the lower ranked archer in the old system)
Compound bows switched from 70m 122cm face to 50m 80cm face (Not deliberate, but stats show that the very top guys benefit as 70m was more about shooting, with wind having a bigger impact, and 50m is all about aiming and bow tuning.)
The sport became professionalised, with only people in national team squads desired at the top level competitions. As someone who was competitive with those people but wanted to remain purely amateur, I was definitely excluded. The people changed as well, with the events becoming very cliquey.
Increase in shops sponsoring people for tiny (5%) discounts led to competitors becoming walking billboards, and I missed the smart all-white which I really loved when starting out. Just a silly aesthetic thing that showed how things had changed
In the country I grew up in, all competitions were one format and scores were sent to a national leaderboard which qualified you for championships. It meant that even little local competitions had purpose, and there were club team competitions at various divisions. Here there are dozens of formats, and the only ones which “matter” are only done at the big competitions which are now cliquey and hard to enter. There is no club team thing, which I would find interesting and motivating if it were around.
My archery theme song has essentially become “you can’t take the sky from me.”
My entire group was not happy with PF 2.0 (and not just because its announcement put an indefinite halt on Spheres of Might) so I guess in a way we all were like that?
We house-rule too much to be rule monkeys… I mean, that won’t stop me from reminding people of rules that may have been forgotten, but if something is objectively bad or broken cough firearms cough, then we fix it for “us”.
I think there’s a natural negative reaction to “you’re choosing to kill my favorite product in favor of [new thing].” Trying to separate that initial disappointment from an objective review is always a challenge.
I’ve only picked through bits and pieces of PF2e so far, so I don’t have a dog in that fight. Where did it fall short for you?
Too many things were locked behind class restrictions.
Like they took the Alignment template and tried to force it on classes too.
There were some feats in PF that needed specific classes, but more commonly it was X lvl in a specific class, or Y BAB in any other class (like the Monk feats).
It just felt like they were saying in PF2e that each can only ever be this one thing, and these feats and anything else that needs them as a prerequisite are off the table for everyone else.
I like options. I like variety. I like TOO MANY CHOICES! Because somewhere in there, in that mess of feats, skills, traits, class options, etc… is the character I want to build.
I know I say this a lot, but only because it’s true to me. The reason I like Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might is because all those choices that are thrown into the mix just help to flesh out your character even more.
I made a Giant Slayer who actually climbs them with climbing picks, and then sneak attacks to kill them for crying out loud!
Anywho. Maybe SoM will come out with more stuff for PF1e… we’ll see.
I consider myself an edition warrior for 4th. The way I see it, it gets way too much hate and needs a judge advocate. It’s a good system and I think there’s a lot of baseless criticisms of it (ie everyone is a wizard, somehow). I wouldn’t call it the ‘best’ system but I think it has many merits.
I only ever got a few pickup games of 4th in. It’s too bad. I’ve seen some interesting “skill challenge” stuff come out of it, and I’d have liked to see how that worked in the original.
Skill challenges were a very mixed bag. It did some stuff good, like making sure to write/allot a diverse array of things to do for most characters to avoid the ‘left out’ feeling some players would get. Unfortunately the game left a lot of the roleplaying elements in the hand of the GM, so newer GMs weren’t given much to work with.
It definitely over focused on the combat. But that was also part of the fun. I don’t think any edition of DnD has come close to how interesting/dynamic combat could get in 4e. WotC was very creative in giving out abilities.
I actually ended up kicking a dude from my Pathfinder campaign because he was such an Edition Warrior. I usually don’t mind the type; I’m a strictly Pathfinder man myself. However, every chance this guy got, he would abuse our resident 5e player. It started out pretty mildly. He’d just say stuff like “see, this is why Pathfinder is better, you can play a psychic” or some such thing. However, by our fourth session, he said, and I quote, “the only reason you like 5e is because you’re an inbred redneck fuckboy.” Completely out of nowhere and unprovoked.
Shame. Guy had a fun character.
Yo… It doesn’t matter what system you’re pro/against. Being a dick is being a dick. Good job biting the bullet and kicking the nerd.
With the unbalanced homebrewery of Thaumaturge gone, now who’ll join Street Samurai, Awakened Animal (Mouseguard style) and Superhero (Mutants and Masterminds style) as “The GM is asleep party”?
Ranting aboot how everything was better in your day is uncool. Ranting aboot how 5E could take a few more pointers from 4E (I miss you Warlord) is fine. Shitting on 3X is a timeless hobby.
In the spirit of today’s comic, I would appreciate it if you stopped.
If we don’t learn from the mistakes of past editions, how would we keep ourselves from repeating those mistakes?
Given that Pathfinder is pretty much 3.75, it’s arguable that they were mistakes. I mean, if it has a large fan base like that and continues to grow, it’s providing an experience that some people like. Just cause you don’t like it isn’t the end all answer.
That being said, I was against 5E when it first came out, but after a while I just decided it was written for a different theme of game than what I was used to. A single Pathfinder character is capable of very different feats at various levels than a 5E character, and which one you like is probably the one best suited to the stories you like to tell.
I tend to be a bit of one myself, but I’ve got a friend that really champions 3.P and will crusade against 5E any time he hears a person in our circle is considering playing the latter. This is an in-person group.
For a few mature enough players, he’ll tend to not go to war about it, but he generally considers 5E to be one of those games that caters to role-players more than roll-players. Since most people that we play with want roll-playing, he greatly prefers Pathfinder and 3.5. He’ll cite other reasons as well, but I can’t think of them atm.
The guy can definitely be more aggressive in his edition warring with other people than with others. For people that meet an arbitrary level of rpg-maturity (able to mix role and roll playing into a character that feels human and not cookie-cutter), he tends to gain a respect that limits his argumentativeness.
Online, it’s definitely not hard to find edition-warriors. The easiest one to find is the Edition-Crusader, the ones that want to eliminate a certain community entirely and pull the “Not True D&D” argument out of their butts at every given chance. I’m talking about 4E, of course. Almost the entirety of the D&D gaming community online has a collective agreement that, “if we’re not certain which edition is the RIGHT way to play the game, we know which one is the WRONG way to play.”
It is hard to have an intelligent conversation about that edition in the wild, though thankfully, Matt Colville’s endorsement of the edition has brought some level of legitimacy to the discussions.
That move right there, “Our group likes this kind of game, therefore we prefer X kind of system,” seems like a fair assessment. It’s important to know what you like and to be able to articulate why. That’s how you build a solid home game group.
However, this bit raises some red flags:
Judging other people based on your personal preferences is a sure-fire way to shrink the community. “Aggressive edition-warring” sounds like the kind of thing that makes me want to pack up and play board games for a while.
I guess I’m a bit of an edition warrior myself, and I’ll fully admit to looking down my nose at any DnD edition after 3.5 a couple times. I did have one player though, who was genuinely the worst for a number of reasons but the one most relevant to today’s discussion is that any time something didn’t work how he thought it would, he’d grouch about how in previous editions it was easier, or that hackmaster had better this or that, or he’d complain that the skill checks made no sense when he couldn’t rope-tie someone into a fourty foot tall tree at level two without rolling a high climb check. It always deflected his lack of knowledge about the system onto the system itself.
I’ll definitely say that my group has a serious problem if being addicted to classic, vanilla Pathfinder. More than half my group refuses to even learn 5th edition dnd, or Monster Of The Week, or any more rules-light system that might allow us to play without the graph paper and fifty dice apiece.
Huh. I usually associated the “fifty dice apiece” thing with Exalted. d10s as far as the eye can see!
I would say Shadowrun beats Exalted here.
No, but can i initiate a huge discussion about the different editions. I love when people in internet rage like a wildfire 🙂
WHY YOU DO THIS THING!?
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ForTheEvulz
Is that answer enough? How about this one:
Some players aren’t looking for anything logical, like loot or XP. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some players just want to watch the setting burn.
-My DM about me 🙂
Found your theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWYCS6k1IOA
As a matter of fact, my Evil Deeds Soundtrack™ is full of Ludwig van Beethoven. I like more classical music over rock or metal 🙂
The droogies perform a bit of the the old ultra-violence better with the divine Ludwig Van? Not game related, but I found that the 7th symphony recorded at the 2012 PROMS to be transcendant.
Despite hating D&D, the only time I’ve ever ‘edition warred’ was for 4e during its initial playtests. And only to really get under the skin of the 3e edition warriors that were poo-pooing it before it was even finalised.
My favorite claim I made at the time was “It feels like playing OD&D (1974) all over again! Can’t wait to get the hardbacks!”
Ah good times, good times.
I am not certain that throwing gas on a fire teaches the fire a valuable life lesson. :/
I think some systems definitely have some advantages over others for terms of granularity and differences for mechanical reasons versus smooth cinematic play. I’m a big fan of the FFG Star Wars RPG system (even if it requires basically proprietary dice) because it is very easy for new players to get into it and roll dice.
I very much like the hyper-customization “can fit any setting”ness of GURPS, but it’s very hard as a newer GM to figure out how to make balanced encounters for players since there seems to be less info on that.
I really matured as a gamer with 3.5 and like the easy concept/modularity of the system but the amount of math can quickly get overwhelming and the dice can become somewhat irrelevant. (1dX for a result doesn’t mean much if you’re adding +14 to it and trying to beat an 18 or whatever)
I have only played a very little bit of 5ed, but I like how it built enough on 3.5 that I was able to pick it up, read a few things, and run an intro game fairly competently and in a fun manner for some really new players.
Love the breakdown, Lendys. I think that kind of clear-eyed pros/cons analysis is the way we ought to talk about game systems. Beats nine hells out of flame wars and tribalism anyway. 🙂
Oh god yeah. Albeit, he mostly bitches about warhammer 40k and AoS, he does bitch about d&d. He sometimes bitches about editions, but he mostly bitches about things not going his way and complains about certain things being weak, despite him going into the character knowing they will be weak (i.e. a kobold barbarian with absurdly low INT). I can’t remember if he talks about old editions being better or not, but I do know that I am never playing warhammer with him ever again.
Did you… Did you mean to reply to someone? Because right now I’m assuming you’re talking about Thaumaturge, which is causing me some concern over the stability of ludo-corporeal divide.
I think Papa Nurgle was just replying to your question at the end of the column:
“Question of the day then! Have you ever met an edition warrior out in the wild?”
It’s my policy not to listen to anything I write. I would advise everyone else to adopt it as well. 😛
The most rational defense I’ve ever heard made on behalf of a specific edition (3.5) over a proposed game in a new system (Pathfinder) was provided to our group by a friend and former gm when approached with the idea of beginning a campaign with a new/different system. He said something to this effect: “Do you know how much money we have collectively sunk into 3.5 – sourcebooks, modules, maps, minis, etc.? Look at the shelves – there must be three dozen hardbound books. It’s thousands of dollars. And now you want to go out and spend that again?”
Some gamers just change systems for the sake of change and don’t count the cost. Some gamers just have to chase every squirrel in the park up every tree and run around barking at them. The primary reasons there are five editions+ of just d&d (let alone variants) are marketing and business rationales, not issues of playability.
Nobody launches a product because they want it to be a failure. And in the case of 5e and Pathfinder 2e respectively, I think there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. 4e was getting its lunch eaten by Pathfinder, and Pathfinder is now getting its lunch eaten by 5e.
But when it comes to things like Apocalypse World or even something as silly as Honey Heist, I think that game systems can make a real difference in the feel of play. Rolling a bucket of dice in Exalted, a system where most NPCs are referred to as “extras,” has a different feel than chucking the same old d20 at the same old human bandits.
There’s a mental burden in switching systems, but the tradeoff is in new experiences. The question we’ve each got to ask ourselves is whether that tradeoff is worth it.
Is… is Thaumaturge quoting rules from Scion now?
He gets around.
A few years ago, we invited a new player to join our 3.5 game, taught him the ropes, and he got really into it. Half a year later, we were wondering what we were going to do after we finished the campaign, and the formerly-new player suggesting 5e. He’d read the player’s handbook online and thought it was really nice, and told us some of its perks. We quickly jumped to 3.5s defence, talking about how just because its new doesn’t mean it’s better, and too many spells have concentration, yada yada. Eventually, however, many factors, such as relatives ordering me the 5e PHB by mistake (we don’t have a gaming store round here, and just used pdfs), a D&D 5e club opening, and the 5e friend running a one-shot for us, resulted in us switching to 5e.
And I think that we learnt a valuable lesson then: don’t be an edition warrior of 3.5, blindly crusading against 5e. BE A 5E EDITION WARRIOR, OF WHAT IS CLEARLY THE RIGHT WAY TO PLAY, AND ANYONE ELSE IS HAVING BAD WRONG FUN! Don’t bothering reading up on the games you’re hating, either; you already know they’ll be bad, don’t waste precious ranting time on confirmations.
I suspect you of sarcasm.
Colin: you asked how I did the pingback thing on my blog. I think it’s just how WordPress is doing things now, though it may be linked to an SEO thing.
If anyone knows, please let us know!
Technology is a strange and mysterious place.
I admit to being a bit of an edition warrior for Pathfinder. I just love the excessive customizability and the fact that there are rules published for pretty much everything at this point so I don’t have to worry about homebrewing and accidentally breaking the game. However, most of my friends have less experience than I do and are doing 5E now, and I’m cool with that. 5E is much easier to teach to beginners and Pathfinder can be pretty intimidating, so even though I miss having some of my favorite Pathfinder race and class options available, I can still enjoy a 5E game if it means getting to play and bring some friends into the hobby (who I can later convert to Pathfinder after they have some 5E experience. ;P)
I do wonder about that with 5e. How much trickle-down player-nomics will actually happen? When something has such a dominate market share (I think 5e is about 85% of industry sales), will that market stick with its guns or wander? I guess we’ll find out around the time 6e comes out.
Apparently Pathfinder 2e sold 8 months of Core Rulebooks in 2 weeks when the OGL drama reared its head over in DnD-land. https://twitter.com/paizo/status/1618670416712667137?s=20
That’s probably still not that much in the long run, especially given Wizards of the Coast ended up hard backtracking (at least for 5e, jury’s out on 6e/OneDnD), but I can anecdotally say that the drama pushed me from “man, I’m really enjoying PF2e as a player and it fixes a bunch of potential GM problems, but it might be iffy for my 5e table” to “heck it, after Lost Mines of Phandelver finishes I’m having y’all try the Beginner Box to see if you like it, my existing plans for post-LMoP adventures likely be damned.”
So…time will tell if it sticks, especially if OneDnD ends up as a walled garden next to a bunch of ORC systems.
I like 5e for being a fairly simple system to play with easy character gen. Starting to feel burnt out on it though since it’s the only thing my available game groups want to run and there’s not a lot of complexity.
I like Savage Worlds for being a very simple system with massive setting flexibility.
I liked 4e for a while as a mindless pick-up-and-go system, but got burnt out on it since the only games available were D&D encounters and after the third run through of that every character starts feeling very samey.
My current fave is most definitely Pathfinder. I cut my teeth of RPGs with 3.5 and I love Pathfinder’s evolutionary refinement of the ruleset. The backwards compatibility also really helps.
I’m not liking what I see for PF2 so far. To me it feels like it takes too many of the mechanics I don’t like about 4e and 5e and smushes them together in an effort to solve problems in the PF chassis that aren’t.
The one thing I’d like to see PF2 do well is hammer out high-level play. After 12th level or so it becomes a bit of a slog to prep combat encounters. I tend to enjoy the Starfinder trajectory of giving monsters a couple of interesting abilities rather than a full suite of spell-like options, but I’m not certain we’re seeing that in PF2.
Ironically, this exact same thing will happen to Cleric in a few decades. Such is the way of fate.
Personally, I prefer Pathfinder (my first system) to 5e (its main competitor), but for reasons other than “first system best”. I like Pathfinder’s massive amount of content, rulesets and build options (mechanics-wise, 5e builds strike me as pretty limited). Building Unarmed Swashbucklers and Paladin Musket Snipers and and Card-Throwing Witches and Wizard-Witch-Oracle-Sorcerer-Wizard-Sorcerers (don’t ask) is my favorite part of gaming. But I respect that 5e is more user-friendly and built for improvisor GMs. That helps everyone find a system that works for their needs. I have been able to get plenty of newbie players into Pathfinder, but they need a GM who already knows most of the rules and someone to help them sort through character options to create their character. Pathfinder 2e has some interesting ideas, but it will be a LONG time before it acquires its predecessor’s main advantage – the massive amount of content. So we’ll have to see there, but I’m probably sticking to Mk. I Pathfinder for a while.
I am an edition warrior for L5R 4th edition. Even with FFG’s L5R fifth edition out, I will not leave a perfectly fine fantasy noblemen game for That edition.
I’ll become a perma GM for this system and find a group of people who aren’t adverse to regular math and who can make their own characters act in compelling ways, without using their dice as crutches.
Special dice to be rolled can stay the heck away from my table.
Rest in peace, Thaumaturge. You were 3-4 years too early to get a first-party class in Pathfinder 2e, if a quick google search for Dark Archive’s release date (apparently August 2022) is any indication.
May any future Thaumaturges that show up with the PF2e version of your class learn from your mistakes, and not needlessly edition war.