Now, I have boxed up Pathfinder 2 because the game was too much for me. You had mechanics and feats for races, every class had unique mechanics, keywords for actions, trackable resources, and I felt you had to deep dive just to be able to play one well. Pets were their own set of rules. The action system was heavily hashtagged with trait keywords, along with the spells. Every time I tried to learn the game, my reference for even a simple action would take me minutes. Do I want to walk over and open a door during combat?
The game taught me to say, stop! Reference the book first to see if you are allowed to do that!
Is the door within 5 feet? Step action with the Move keyword does not trigger AoO, uses an action (one of three). Door farther than that? Stride action with the Move keyword (which does trigger an AoO) and uses an action. To open the door, spend an action, Interact action, uses an action, has the Manipulate keyword. What do the Move and Manipulate keywords mean?
manipulate (trait) You must physically manipulate an item or make gestures to use an action with this trait. Creatures without a suitable appendage can’t perform actions with this trait. Manipulate actions often trigger reactions.
move (trait) An action with this trait involves moving from one space to another.
Okay, now I am coding in Java again and learning object-oriented theory. My brain could not take it (given my life at the moment), and I instantly felt if I were more social and had a group to play this "fantasy wargame" I would fit right in. I did like D&D 4E and this seems to fit right in that mold of a complex, deep set of fantasy wargaming rules. For me, Pathfinder 2E felt like a great game to play with a group, since someone playing fighter had a lot to learn and memorize, and could be the domain expert at fighters at the table and bring that knowledge to the game.
And the keyword-hashtag system is about the best implementation of the D&D 3.5 "rules interrupt" sort of gaming since everything is clearly laid out and tagged. Now, do you like that sort of game...?
I do, but not right now.
As for refereeing Pathfinder 2E? I feel I would want to be a player in a few games before trying it, just because there are so many "coding practices" to remember and get right. I am sure if you were "in the game" enough you would start to pick up the lingo and flow, but for starting out I felt sufficiently intimidated that I stopped trying to play and canceled by rulebook subscriptions - for now.
Life may change here and I may find a group, so I did not sell my books. Gaming is not this absolute "this game sucks!" sort of thing. Your life may suck at the moment and the game is not right for you at this time. The game is fine. Things change, and I still like the 4E style wargame mechanics of Pathfinder 2, so I put the game on pause for a while as things work out.
Palladium Fantasy
Okay, no comparison between Pathfinder 2 versus Palladium Fantasy organization-wise. Pathfinder 2 does donuts around Palladium Fantasy in ease-of-use, clarity, and speed of reference. Old School Essentials does donuts around them both and is the industry standard in simplicity and ease-of-use.
It is not hard to figure that out, and Palladium has always been an Aftermath-style mess of rules here and there. Part of that is the game's charm.
But to use the argument that Palladium Fantasy is complicated? Hard to learn, I can see that due to the book's organization and a few confusing parts of character generation. The hardest part about Palladium character creation is picking skills and doing a little math around percentages and the effects of skills on attributes. With Pathfinder 2 there is a lot more to decide and choose, so I would say Palladium's character creation is easier since the overall choices are fewer.
In Pathfinder 2 the classes feel like they have the same mechanical complexity. Every class has detail and depth, unique terminology, trackable resources, and special class features - but they feel like they are the same in high overall complexity. In Palladium Fantasy the classes have varying complexity, some are incredibly deep while others are simple.
The one issue I see with Pathfinder 2 is the amount of learning of the special mechanics behind each class. Each one feels like its own minigame (a good thing, but I would hesitate to run four characters as one person in a solo adventure). With Palladium Fantasy (or even B/X) the classes internally work mostly the same, and diverse when it comes to things like spells, thief abilities, and the extra bits.
Palladium does the "modifier list" thing like few old-school games do, like +2 to parry, +1 to this, +3 to that, etc. A lot of the differences between classes are not mechanics but skills. The heavier classes have detail in special powers.
Pathfinder 2's book is 600 pages with many special terms and systems to learn, while Palladium Fantasy is about half the size. Pathfinder 2's "playing the game" section (which includes combat) is 40 pages long of detailed rules, whereas Palladium Fantasy has less than 10 pages of "playing the game" and combat rules that are mostly guidelines and contain a lot of random charts.
But once you get through a character creation (the bulk of the time with skills), Palladium Fantasy's systems are completely old-school. You don't have the wargaming rules, the action tagging and economy, and all of the detail around movement and combat interaction. The combat rules are fun in Palladium, and the flexibility around mixing and matching characters and worlds is second to none.
Why Play Either?
Pathfinder 2 is still a game I want to play, and this sounds like a fun game to join in a group that loves the wargame elements, figures, battle maps, and letting tactics and my character build interact. I loved the battle-chess feel of D&D 4 (not really the RP elements) so this game still appeals strongly to me.
Running Pathfinder 2 solo as four different classes? I do not feel I could do that myself and do it right.
Palladium Fantasy has this great old-school feeling. The alignment system is one of the most interesting in gaming. The world-building is excellent. And it has unique "evil classes" that make great enemies and NPCs. The evil classes are also good for "evil campaigns," which I hope we do not lose if this game ever goes to a 3rd edition.
I could run Palladium Fantasy (or B/X) solo with four characters pretty easily. B/X would probably be the easiest because of the character generation simplicity.
The "you are the good guys" assumption is one thing that bothered me a little about the base book of Savage Worlds: Rifts. Palladium Fantasy (and every Palladium game) needs that moral ambiguity, a mix of good and evil classes, and neutral presentation because this is what creates the great conflict and stories in the setting. This is not today's "community standards" sort of roleplaying as presented in Pathfinder 2, where the game goes out of its way to enforce a certain standard of play on every group.
In Palladium Fantasy we have more of the old-school sensibility where if a group wanted to play an evil campaign or have a few evil characters in the group, then so be it. I see a lot of referees who tend to shy away from this and discourage evil characters and classes from playing in groups as it causes group tension and potential fights.
I am of the mind where "if it would happen in fiction, let it happen" and the players are free to make their own choices - even to their detriment. Yes, a group that is all good-aligned won't likely have intra-party conflict. But letting the players have that option, accept the consequences, and live with the outcome is very old-school.
Put an assassin in a group with a good-aligned paladin and you likely will have a problem later. Is that a bad thing? Should we redesign the assassin and rename the class to be "less evil' and play better with others?
Social Engineering
Once you ask that last question now you realize what this article is about. Some games go out of their way to redesign classes to play better with other people, and social engineer the game for less inter-player conflict and problems. They renamed paladin in Pathfinder 2 to a less religious and less crusader-ish "champion" style of name. The word race was taken out and replaced with a more neutral term, and the concept of forced servitude (slavery) was eliminated from world lore entirely. You see a lot of little changes to make the game less and less objectionable, and it almost feels like an AD&D 2nd Edition sort of "make it mainstream" sort of feeling to the game.
In an OSR game, you put a paladin and a thief in a group? Yes, you are likely to have an issue come up between those players when it comes to pickpocketing and other nefarious activities. Rename the class rogue and you have fewer problems.
Pathfinder 2 feels like it is designed to not push buttons and reduce inter-party conflict. All the pieces work well together. None of the classes really have a reason to be at odds with each other. I get it, and I am cool with this, and I do like AD&D 2nd Edition and know why they sanitized the game. It is sort of a Monopoly-style of game design where you make the base game appeal to a wide audience and let groups take their individual games as far as they want to go.
The design theory is to remove as much objectionable content from the game and leave it up to individual groups. This is one of the things that happens to games that push for mainstream audiences, and we saw this before with AD&D 2nd.
Pathfinder 2 still has the same nine classic alignments and does not by default limit you to good, but I get this feeling the game works better if the characters are more towards the good and lawful sides or ignore alignment completely (as mentioned in the GM's guide). They ultimately do not say too much about alignment and say "it is up to the GM." You also see this frictionless design theory being done in the newer versions of D&D 5E where they are deemphasizing alignment as a game concept.
I can see a day where both D&D and Pathfinder get rid of alignment because it causes more problems for the game than it solves - in the new school game designer sort of mainstream commercial design philosophies.
Old School Style
With Palladium Fantasy, and this is about the best Palladium game since the evil classes are evil alignment exclusive (along with the good), the training wheels come off. You are allowed to pick classes that will put players into conflict with each other. Some groups will forbid certain classes because of this possibility, but that is up to them. You could say the evil classes are NPC-only.
Or you could allow them and let the chips fall where they may. You could play an all evil-group and watch the train wreck as everyone backstabs each other.
But that decision is up to me and my group. And the classes are not designed for an adventuring common ground where they can all get along in the pursuit of treasure and glory. Even within the non-evil classes, I could create an "evil ranger" by choosing an evil alignment.
This is very old school. In a newer game, I get the feeling if I choose to play an evil ranger, I will probably get pushback from the group for making my playing piece "work less good with others."
With old-school games, the choice is there, make it and live with it. Nobody will hold your hand. The tools are there and presented as options, and it is up to you to use them or not.
Your group may ban evil alignments for PCs because they are tired of the drama and party infighting, and I get it. But the game isn't designed to avoid the question entirely.
I do worry if a newer edition of Palladium Fantasy comes out we will lose this old-school design theory. The fact a lot of the newer editions of Palladium games are so "cut and paste" is actually a good thing since the fundamental principles of the old-school design did not change. With a system rewrite, I fear that the possible mainstreaming of the game means we will lose what makes Palladium Fantasy so cool.
I have no idea if the 3rd edition of this game will ever happen, I hope it does, but I hope the designers stay true to the same things that make the game so cool and resist the mainstream pressure to sanitize and assume the good guy faction is the default mode of play.
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