Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[xoth.publishing]

In 5E, gold is essentially worthless once you leave tier 1 or so (because now you can afford to purchase the finest food, clothing, wine & women, etc). The inexplicable nature of adventures still awarding you thousands of gold for completing adventures, even though there is no longer anything play groups uninterested in downtime (something exactly zero adventures focus on) can use it for, is something WotC has to its shame never acknowledged, even six years after the game's release.

Can this be fixed by using old-school "XP for gold" rules? Basically require lots of gold (and training time) to advance to higher levels. It fixes the "there is nothing to spend gold on" problem, and forces some downtime between adventures (avoiding the "my PC is just 17 years old but already level 20" problem).

 

[kenada]

Can this be fixed by using old-school "XP for gold" rules? Basically require lots of gold (and training time) to advance to higher levels. It fixes the "there is nothing to spend gold on" problem, and forces some downtime between adventures (avoiding the "my PC is just 17 years old but already level 20" problem).

It depends on the approach. Not all XP-for-gold systems required you to spend it. B/X just required you bring it back. Moreover, there is a dearth of ways to spend it by the book.

Speaking of “XP for gold” systems, something I’ve been wondering is whether they are or can be an automatic balancing factor. If the system expects you to have so much gear at a certain level, does tying XP to that make it easier to have PCs be at a appropriate level for the gear? I suppose it depends so the approach (and it’s wildly off-topic for this thread).

 

[xoth.publishing]

It depends on the approach. Not all XP-for-gold systems required you to spend it. B/X just required you bring it back. Moreover, there is a dearth of ways to spend it by the book.

Some thoughts on how I would do this:

• You need to spend the gold to get the XP (essentially, you are "buying XP").
• You can buy XP only with gold/items designated as "treasure" by the GM. (The point of this is to avoid the PCs grabbing every bit of furniture, livestock, used weapons and armor, etc and selling it -- essentially turning everything around them into an empty wasteland in their quest for XP. Groups who think this sounds like fun -- and it does sound somewhat fun! -- can ignore this rule.)
• You can't gain more than one level at a time regardless of how much gold you find. Once you spend gold to level up, all the other gold you have at that moment becomes "normal gold" which cannot be used to buy XP ever again.
• Leveling up needs to happen in a moderately "safe haven" (see below), it can't happen overnight in a dungeon.
• The exact way the gold is spent can vary between classes and PCs. It will take time (more time for higher levels). Some ideas:
  • Barbarians offer the treasure in barbaric rituals to the savage gods of the north, or spend it in drunken revelry and bar-brawling.
  • Clerics donate wealth to the temple in return for access to religious texts, mentors, etc. and spend the time studying and praying.
  • Fighters set up a "gym" and/or seek out a sword-master for personal swordfighting lessons.
  • Monks donate wealth to a monastic order to get access to wise mystics and martial arts masters.
  • Rangers spend the wealth on animals (and/or animal food) and supplies, and go on long travels in the wilderness.
  • Rogues give money to a guild to receive training, and/or bribe corrupt officials to learn secrets.
  • Warlocks and wizards spend money on old books and grimoires, weird crystals, etc and study the arcane mysteries.

There should be plenty of ways to immerse the PCs in the world here, forcing them to take breaks away from the dungeoncrawling to level up. (Or the whole process can be handwaved away by just saying "you spend X gold and Y weeks to level up, and you are back in the dungeon".)

The only thing the GM needs to figure out is the exact "gp to XP ratio" (perhaps 5 or 10 gp per XP?) and the time needed to level up (perhaps only a few days at low levels, up to several months at high levels?).

 

[CapnZapp]

Sure, Xoth, only my point is that the natural and obvious solution is to again offer utility-based magic item pricing [emoji846]


Something PF2 to it's credit does

 

[xoth.publishing]

Sure, Xoth, only my point is that the natural and obvious solution is to again offer utility-based magic item pricing [emoji846]


Something PF2 to it's credit does

Fine, if you really want the PCs to buy and sell magic items. I personally don't like that. It "takes away the magic from the magic", so to speak. IMHO, magic should be something you find or take, not something you buy from Ye Local Magic Shoppe.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I see there are two arguments about feats...

• When performing Character Creation, you only see a small portion of the feats, so it is manageable.
• When running the game, you have to keep in mind all the rules hidden away within the feats, which is not so manageable.

Cheers!

Well, I don't think its expecting too much to think players can keep track of their own damn feats and remind you at need, and in PF2e most NPCs, in practice, don't have feats per se (they may have a small number of feat-like abilities, but those are normally spelled out in their stat block, and there's not usually that many).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm not sure how many of you are actually defending Pathfinder 2 and how many of you that just need to be contrary.

The fact that people disagree with your premises and/or conclusions is not a sign of them being contrary; its a sign that people don't agree with you. If you can't live with that, get used to frustration.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It depends on the approach. Not all XP-for-gold systems required you to spend it. B/X just required you bring it back. Moreover, there is a dearth of ways to spend it by the book.

Same in OD&D. If you were not interested in the whole "save up to build a stronghold" game, there was very little to do with gold.

Speaking of “XP for gold” systems, something I’ve been wondering is whether they are or can be an automatic balancing factor. If the system expects you to have so much gear at a certain level, does tying XP to that make it easier to have PCs be at a appropriate level for the gear? I suppose it depends so the approach (and it’s wildly off-topic for this thread).

I suspect it'd go off the rails severely just often enough not to be a good idea.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fine, if you really want the PCs to buy and sell magic items. I personally don't like that. It "takes away the magic from the magic", so to speak. IMHO, magic should be something you find or take, not something you buy from Ye Local Magic Shoppe.

That only works if you have very minimal magic-items-as-treasure (and make them so hard to make its questionable why anyone ever bothers). It was obviously silly even back in OD&D, given the treasure tables. If you had more than one PC group operating in a given campaign setting +1 swords were going to be around in droves after a while, for example.

 

[xoth.publishing]

That only works if you have very minimal magic-items-as-treasure (and make them so hard to make its questionable why anyone ever bothers). It was obviously silly even back in OD&D, given the treasure tables. If you had more than one PC group operating in a given campaign setting +1 swords were going to be around in droves after a while, for example.

My viewpoint is quite far from the vanilla D&D / high fantasy default. I prefer swords & sorcery, where no PCs (and no current NPCs for that matter) are able to create magic items; such items are all leftovers from fallen civilizations. Most items found as treasure tend to be potions or other one-off items. Finding a +1 sword is a big deal. That "puts the magic back in magic items". Not just a yawn of "oh, another +1 sword? let's sell it...".