This is my daily nightly newsletter and I can write about whatever I want! And today, I just want an easy little newsletter with very little research (lmao, as if anything I did before was researched). If there’s one thing I know about, it’s TTRPGs. So tonight, I’m going to complain about one that I’ve been playing in a long-term campaign with since first year.

Pathfinder 2e

Pathfinder 2e is a fantasy fighting-monsters tabletop roleplaying game created by Paizo (a company who got their start making adventures and supplements for Dungeons and Dragons) and is the second edition of Pathfinder—a splinter of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5—which has recently received a remaster. You’re not getting citation links for this one, and I know that was kinda crazy to follow, that’s intentional :D. But basically, Pathfinder 2e has descended from Dungeons and Dragons, but it’s been quite a while, and it has evolved into its own game since then.

The Good Stuff

One of the criticisms of Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition (the current edition of D&D¹ ) is that the “fighting monsters” part of the system, which is a big draw of the game, is somewhat bland. If you are playing a Fighter, you’d expect to be the best at fighting! But let’s play out a pretty standard fighter turn:

The thing is, there was very little else Kalin could have done. If you’re a fighter (or any other weapon-using class, with some subclass exceptions), your options are basically:

• Attack with your weapon. Roll a twenty-sided die. You have about a 40% chance to entirely miss your turn and do nothing.

• Do something extra, like moving a little bit more or making yourself harder to hit. You don’t actually make progress in the battle though.

Pathfinder fixes this by introducing a much more dynamic action system (where everything from moving to attacking to changing your grip on your weapon costs one of your 3 action points). Additionally, you gain additional abilities as you level up that do more than just damage. You could make a strike that frightens the enemy, then follow it up with one that lowers its defences while frightened. Just as a normal fighter. And these abilities cost different numbers of actions based on how powerful they are. It’s pretty snazzy.

Additionally, in D&D 5e, your progression is pretty much set (especially if you can’t cast spells). What I mean by this is that once you choose your ancestry and class, you don’t really make decisions as you level up. Maybe every 4 levels you’ll get to chose between a flat numerical increase or a flavourful bonus feature, but that’s it. Pathfinder on the other hand, you get feats (like a tiny feature bundle) at every level. You get class feats, ancestry feats, skill feats, general feats. It’s a foot fetishist’s wet dream! You’re constantly evolving your character and can choose to take them in new directions mechanically as they grow.

Also, Paizo—the makers of Pathfinder 2e—is unionized and also doesn’t hire the Pinkerton’s to intimidate customers, like the makers of Dungeons and Dragons do.

Why I Don’t Like It

Listen. I’ve been playing this game for like 2-3 years. And I had a ton of fun with it at the start. But now? We’re at level 12 and the game is getting crufty. I’m just gonna bullet point this:

• Keeping Track of Things. After 12 levels of Directing a Pathfinder game, you’d think I would be better at keeping track of all the effects flying around during combat. But this is what the condition list looks like. For ONE CREATURE. That’s 7 conditions, which all have different rules. And some of which stack with each other and some of which don’t stack and arrrgggggg

• The Choices Aren’t Meaningful. You get to choose from a lot of feats, but that means that they aren’t super impactful. For example, you can use your Eye for Numbers feat to… accurately estimate the number of countable items in a collection to 1 significant digit. So if I was holding 483 illegal votes I’m going to cast in the AMS Presidential election, you could estimate I was holding 500. Big. But wait, there’s more. If you use Eye for Numbers to count someone’s equipment and then within the next minute attempt to Create a Diversion against them you get……….. drumroll ………… a +1 bonus. Yay. It gets worse at higher levels. At 7th level, you can take the Influence Nature feat, which allows you to spend a couple days of downtime to try to influence nature. With the following caveat: “While you can't directly control how you've influenced nature, you can hope for certain effects“. YOU CAN HOPE FOR EFFECTS. Bruh, why even have this. Anyway, Pathfinder for you.

• Adventuring Days are Weird. So in D&D, you fight throughout the day, and as you do so, you lose resources. You can cast less spells, use less fancy attack maneuvers, and you lose health. In Pathfinder 2e… kinda all these? You lose health in a combat, sure, but given like 40 minutes and the correct feat, you can be back up at completely full health. But at the same time, people who cast spells don’t get their spells back until the rest for the night. So you’ve got some members in your group that are getting weaker as time goes on, and others that are staying the same as time goes on. This makes it tough to present a dramatic day of adventure because half your party will be good as new, but the other half will be slinging weak cantrips that deal half as much damage as the fighter and have a 20% higher chance to miss.

• Paizo is Less Based Than You’d Hope. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Paizo pays simply so fucking little for art it’s embarrassing.

• There Are Other Reasons. I could go on about weird “miss your turn mechanics,” monsters with fuck you design, and so much more. But I won’t. You folks didn’t come here for TTRPGs, and I’ve put you through enough misery. Needless to say, I’m excited for my Pathfinder campaign to wrap up Soon™️.

Other News

I guess there’s a Reddit section of this newsletter now

This is the most I’ve ever regularly commented on Reddit. It used to be a once a quarter type treat. Now I’m doing this shit every day. I’m having fun though. I like being a joke candidate who has a bunch of knowledge about the systems, but also can just say jokes (I don’t think Reddit likes the says jokes part. I think they’d prefer I was a joke candidate with a fully serious platform. Which would just be… a normal candidate).

Anyways, my fiancé owned this person

Beehiiv is crazy

Beehiiv is the service I (and The Kissable Ubyssey) use for my mailing list—the one you’re on now. And there are some wild features. One of them is that I can… resubscribe people who have unsubscribed?????? Which is such fascinating functionality to give me. Like… I shouldn’t be able to do that.

Also, I can see when people open this email and click things. In fact, I get a little graph about when you nerds open this email and it’s wild. Like… I can’t imagine this is the distribution for 90%+ of mailing lists. You folks are the best for staying up until like midnight for these :D

I May Be Canvassing

I think I’m gonna canvas on Tuesday. Just give out honey and remind people to vote, that kind of thing. I certainly don’t want people to vote for me. Even though people whose opinions I value on this matter think I’d be good as president.

So yeah, if you see me say hi :). I’ll have honey sticks and hopefully stickers. Sure to be a fun time. Except for the fact that my social anxiety is… A Thing. But that’s where pretending to be a bee will help! (sweet jesus I sound like a loser)

That’s It

So… I guess the Pathfinder section by word count was mostly a story about how Kalin sucks at D&D. But I’m not editing this newsletter, I’m only writing it. Though I’d probably be pretty good as an editor at a really cool and kissable organization of some kind if I were tapped for that, just saying. Anyways, you nerds signed up for this. And I warned you. There will be more TTRPG nerd bullshit before I’m through with y’all.

Until tomorrow at 10:03 pm, buzz on, my busy bees!

1  Let’s not even talk about D&D (2014) vs D&D (2024). That’s a can of worms for another day.