• 2 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: July 1st, 2023
  • LortiantoTabletop Roleplaying Games@kbin.social•Thoughts on D&D 5e vs. Pathfinder 2e?
    1·
    2 years ago

    As a GM, Pathfinder is a delight: encounters are balanced and it’s easy to give your party just the right amount of challenge, rules are specific and easy to find and there’s a myriad of well thought out Adventure Paths to take inspiration from. This makes improvisation extremely simple.

    I find it’s also easier on the players (at least from their feedback, so far have only GMd it): no truly bad character options, characters get incrementally complex, better internal class balance, teamwork is very rewarding, rules and options available freely online to search at any point…

    In my case, I’ve literally not touched 5e again since I first tried Pathfinder, since I feel it fills the heroic medievalish fantasy niche much better…

  • LortiantoTabletop Roleplaying Games@kbin.social•How much is too much?
    1·
    2 years ago

    I feel like “more exhausting than fun” is a good definition for too much 😀

    In my case it depends on what you’re trying to do: i once played a GURPS campaign about a far-future SWAT team taking on an alien secret operation and it was a delight to play, I even remember how fun it was, at a very high stakes moment, to look at my teammate players on my turn and declaring “I’m holding my breath” as my action.

    On the other hand, we later tried to go for a super crunchy low-fantasy medieval game and it was terrible: we all really just wanted to focus more on the choices of our characters and the morality and what was driving them forward and didn’t really care much for what angle the sword was coming from… (The Riddle of Steel).

    So it really is a matter of expectations and seeing if crunchy is a good fit. The latter campaign ended up going in the complete opposite direction and transitioning into a Fate campaign, while the first one just worked amazing for what we wanted.

    Crunchiness is a tool, and it’s a matter of just seeing if it’s the tool you need for the game you want to play 🙃

  • LortiantoTabletop Roleplaying Games@kbin.social•D&D 5e alternatives?
    2·
    2 years ago

    I’d say Pathfinder is way less heavy to run than D&D5e. The amount of pages is mostly due to two things:

    1. Pathfinder ha a “rules over rulings” approach, so a lot of rules are codified and you don’t need to know them: you just need to look them up when you find a situating you don’t know how to resolve (the Archives of Nethys website is incredible for this).
    2. Some things are spelled out multiple times rather than have a million “See page 524” references for a single paragraph rule.

    The only things you need to run a successful Pathfinder game are:

    1. Build the characters, following the order, with your players
    2. Read the game mastering section
    3. Trust that the game is balanced and the encounter builder does not disappoint

    Finally, if you’re still intimidated, just run an Adventure! The Beginner’s Box is a great place to start easily even as a new GM, or if you’re feeling you want a more ambitious campaign you can pick an Adventure Path (I recommend Age of Ashes).

    You’ll see that as soon as you just start paying everything fits quite seamlessly.

    Just word of caution for players coming from 5e: the game expects teamwork and you using other actions than just attacking (Demoralize, in particular is an Action I recommend to new players). Just in general, it rewards you setting up the next player more than just going for them yourself.

  • Lortiantorpg•What's your favorite piece of GM advice?English
    9·
    2 years ago

    Another one I really like is : your players never miss, sometimes their opponents or circumstances make things harder though.

    Examples:

    • Your fighter doesn’t miss the attack, his opponent just barely manages to block it, panic in his eyes.
    • You didn’t miss the jump, you just dodged a shot and rolled the fall perfectly. It seems those guards don’t want to make your escape easy.

    Granted, this works in games where the player characters are presupposed heroic and competent, wouldn’t use it in Dark Heresy or Cal of Cthulhu, probably

  • Lortiantorpg•What's your favorite piece of GM advice?English
    5·
    2 years ago

    My top two rules lf GMing:.

    1. Spend the most time on what your players find interesting and skip over the parts they don’t enjoy. Let the story follow the former and avoid the latter.

    2. The easiest way to know what your players enjoy or want more of is by asking them!