I recommend this video to look more into OSR philosophy regarding the rules: https://www.youtube.com/live/bCxZ3TivVUM?si=aZ-y2U_AVjn9a6Ua
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Nope, I know both. They both suck because of the required over optimization. But pf1 at least didn't have characters constantly at full hp, which is one of the biggest balance issues.
??? Have you ever played 2e? That shit is perfectly balanced. Just because fights are designed around having full hp doesn't mean the players always are.
In pf1 you can ruin a character with an uninformed choice, in pf2 you can't. The gap between minmaxxed or not has become reasonable in my opinion.
I run pf2e and love it, but I really gotta call this out as bullshit. It's actually one of the worst things new people can read about the game, imho. I read this a lot as I was learning the system and parroted it to my players. We're all experienced with TTRPGs, for the record. Despite all the chat from pf2e players that you supposedly cannot ruin a character with bad choices, I assure you it is possible.
It happened to me once, and only because a player wanted to do some stupid shit. It was still an okayish character. The others played what sounded cool to them and had no issues. Relative to pf1 it's night and day
You definitely can screw yourself a lot with uninformed choices, but they are less impactful per choice, and the base kit of classes are good enough that bad feat picks won't make you useless.
The biggest exception here is spell selection, shit spell selection can feel really bad, and there are a decent amount of "trap" spells (not that the spells are bad, but it's easy to misunderstand the intended purpose).
Yes, I've played it. And a lot of other games. PF2 balance is only okay and they had to do several annoying things to do it. Like how do you balance a mixed level party in pf2? The system really doesn't like that, because of it's number inflation.
Either you dislike the bloat of the system or don't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Did I say I still run these games? I hate 5e, pf2, pf1 and wouldn't touch 3/3.5 again. I ran all of these in the past, except pf2 but I've played pf2 plenty to know I hate and will never run it.
I run Hackmaster and other systems (oWoD, Cthulhu, WFRP, ...) which aren't bloated messes. I just think pf1 is slightly better than pf2 because that was my experience. But that seems ridiculous to you, because you feel insulted or something. I really don't care.
Sorry, but your hate just doesn't seem to be based in any real reason outside of your emotions
Can you read? I hate the bloat. I play games that are not bloated. I played these games for years and found that I dislike the game philosophies they have. Those game philosophies directly result in bloat.