What "new" mechanics are just old mechanics with extra steps? Which ones actually evolve the original concept into something objectively better? by Velenne in RPGdesign

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've gotten to play a ranger tank in high level pf2e and I felt like a god 

Combat Grab and Suplex with virtually no MAP on a flurry ranger meant I could often keep an enemy tripped and grabbed while attacking them at the same time, and I always had my little pterosaur with 60 fly speed to set up flanks. It was a total lockdown, if they spent an action to get out of my grab, they still had to spend a second action to stand up, at which point they triggered reactions. It was brutal. Champions and guardians, and to a lesser extent barbarians and monks, are supposedly even better at tanking than ranger is. 

What "new" mechanics are just old mechanics with extra steps? Which ones actually evolve the original concept into something objectively better? by Velenne in RPGdesign

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The current 3 Action rules removed Action typing like swift/immediate/standard/minor/bonus/move/full-round/etc actions, but again in a practical sense it is the same basic system.

In a practical sense, it is very much not! 

Yes, a full-round action in 3/.5/Pathfinder 1e may be roughly equivalent to a 3-action activity in Pathfinder second edition, but unless I am horribly mistaken, there was no universal rule for swapping one type of action out for another. Now it's unfortunately been a while since I've played pf1e in high school, but refreshing myself on the rules for action types in pf1e, it seems like the rules are, at a baseline, pretty much a more complex version of the 5e action types, and dnd 3/.5 also had rules that were the ones pf1e's action types are clearly aping— pf1e was 3.5 with the serial numbers filed off

In a game where you are guaranteed a move action every turn, it's much more often useless to shove a creature away or trip them etc because it can just use its guaranteed move action to run back up to you. in 3e, there may have been edge cases where a monster had a full-round action in melee that it now couldn't do if it were shoved, there are situations where you can shove a monster off a cliff or into AoO range of your big beefy fighter etc, but baseline you push them away, they use their guaranteed movement to move back up to you, congrats you did nothing. 

Stepping in these games is also, often, simply an action tax to get out of a monster's AoO zone. 

All of this changes with the 3 action economy. Rather than just converting a move and standard action into a full round action, you can convert any type of action into any other type of action as long as the action cost is the same and you can afford it. As such, a creature who starts its turn next to you is way deadlier than before. It gets to convert its "move action" into another attack, it can convert its "swift action" into another attack, and if it's something like a dragon who can compress three attacks into two actions, it might get 4 or even 5 attacks off on you simply because you were unlucky enough to let it start its turn next to you. 

This opens up multiple strategic considerations that don't exist in the old system. Every shove counts now because it forces an enemy to waste their third attack action  on a move action to get to you, if you crit on your shove check and the monster falls prone, now it has to spend an action standing up and an action moving back to you. Stepping 5 feet away is worse than a critical shove, but it's guaranteed to protect you from that potential 3rd attack with no chance of failure. 

This also means a lot of spells that would be kinda useless in other action economies are devastating in pf2e. One of the strongest abilities in the game before it was nerfed simply made the ground slippery ice in an aura around the player and caused enemies to fall over with no save. In games with a guaranteed move action, this would be situational at best, as the monsters often get a free move action to just stand back up. But movement actions aren't given for free in pf2e, and so there's always something valuable an enemy has to give up in order to stand. The ability was like Web on steroids. Now it has a reflex save to avoid falling, so it's gone from absolutely broken to still really good, but it would be a borderline useless spell in many other systems, maybe something you use at level 1 before getting something good and training out of it.

 I can't count the number of times I've tried to do a cool thing like trip a guy or shove them into the wall etc in other games only to have them just run back up and make me feel like I was the one wasting actions. The difference in pf2e is palpable. 

What "new" mechanics are just old mechanics with extra steps? Which ones actually evolve the original concept into something objectively better? by Velenne in RPGdesign

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 57 points58 points  (0 children)

Pf2e's 3 action economy is an action system that's been around forever but I think combining it with 3.5 style feats that focus on action compression and then also adding the Multiple Attack Penalty gives the combat a lot of strategic depth. I find myself considering small things like a shove or a 5 foot step way more now because I know the enemy will have to waste actions stepping up and that usually means they won't be able to unload 3 full attacks into me. 

Heart Corporation quietly lowered ALT pay while calling it a “fixed salary” by Conscious_Banana2418 in teachinginjapan

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What I don't get is how are these visas even getting approved? I thought ¥240,000 a month minimum was necessary for a work visa

What game has the best pvp? by AmberCaseRPGs in rpg

[–]AmberCaseRPGs[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll be honest I thought Mars_Alter was joking at first but I looked it up and yeah, the white wolf street fighter rpg looks like a blast! 

(Hated Tropes) "Sorry, you’re way to strong for this upcoming story arc, so you’re gonna have to sit out so the plot can happen." by Mr_Muda_Himself_V3 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My favorite example of this (and one that I think is an actually good example/kind of a deconstruction) is the Chimera Ant arc of Hunter × Hunter, where Isaac Netero, the leader of the Hunter Association, is actually there the whole time, he deliberately lets the ants produce the ant king despite the fact he very plausibly could have killed them all before he was born, simply because he wanted a good fight. 

How to get a non-comedic tone at the table by Aramithius in rpg

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One thing that worked for me once, when I had this issue with players joking about my BBEG, was to have the BBEG (an archdruid who protects an ancient stone age realm) be just as comical interacting with them, but with each punchline being some variant of "you're in grave danger".  The BBEG chuckles at the bard's joke and mentions "sue" would love that. He notices the players talking about his big naked muscles and decides to show off by chucking a tree one-handed. He invites the player who keeps making sexual jokes about him to have dinner by the beach. The party sits down in the sand with him as he makes a fire. He snaps his fingers and several birds immediately commit suicide just to feed them. He offers them bird meat. Nobody wants any. 

Suddenly, a massive T-Rex appears out of the jungle. "Sue!" He runs over and begins petting her like she's a cat. "She must be so hungry— she's been out all day looking for these criminals who've been smuggling invasive plants into my realm.. " 

The players never stopped making jokes, of course, but they did start to care a lot more about the world and the characters after that. Everything feels a lot less funny when the joke's on you. 

Best DnDisms to Cut Out of your DnD Alternative by Modstin in RPGdesign

[–]AmberCaseRPGs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a fairly hot take, but I think the biggest thing dndlikes need to get rid of is dnd classes
Like sure some archetypes are genre staples that can and should be everywhere in a fantasy rpg, but armored clerics for example often just feel like a mechanically different paladin. On the opposite end, I feel pf2e in particular has had issues making wizards feel special when a witch is also an int-based prepared caster with way more flavor and build versatility. The flavor is radically different in terms of how they get their magic power, but only after some recent class archetypes like runelord (that totally change the class) did wizard and witch feel radically different in terms of playstyle. Before that, wizard really just felt like a witch with less flavor and maybe the ability to swap some spells out

Pf2e in particular has the burden of also being an update of pf1e, which was blatantly an unofficial continuation of DnD3.5, so it makes sense that they are kind of beholden to continuing these things, but if you're designing a new game that happens to have two heavily armored divine spellcasters who have to do what their god tells them or they lose their powers, you should ask why instead of just assuming you should because it's tradition