They ripped it out because their “backwards compatibility” was literally just grafting an NES to the SNES. I think it even had a toggle switch you had to flip between the two. It was going to make the thing cost tons of money and nobody was ever going to use it, and anyone who cared could just plug their old NES back in whenever they wanted to use it.

But the people who didn’t upgrade never got to play Star Fox. Man, I love Star Fox.

I think one of the biggest things, besides not being owned by WOTC, is that it doesn’t have a million exceptions you have to remember.

D&D5e: Want to use your bonus action? Cool. Is it for a spell? Have you cast a spell this round? Is it a spell that’s allowed to be cast even if you’ve cast a spell?

Pathfinder2e: Do you have enough actions to perform an action? OK, do it.

First edition Pathfinder should be. Second edition is more like 5e, but actually thought out. I don’t think it’s natively compatible with D&D5e though.

Personally speaking, I find Star Fox (and most on-rails shooters) incredibly boring. Visually for the time it’s impressive, but I’ll play Corncob on my PC or any of the Jane’s games because they provide more gameplay.

As far as “nobody was ever going to use it”, that’s incorrect (as the success of the Retron series shows). My parents among others were highly resistant to buying me any console because we were a PC family - Genesis was the only one I could get them to even budge on because it had access to a library of cheaper games in addition to the expensive stuff. Part of the reason I didn’t get a 7800 was because they’d picked the TRS-80 CoCo over the 2600 and we didn’t have the library of software at the ready. If they’d included an NES on a chip, and I could have convinced at least two of my friends to let me borrow their NES carts in addition to SNES stuff, I might have had a SNES.

Oh, 1e Pathfinder is basically 3.75. I have the core book and a few others somewhere, and I lost the 3-ring binder with the thread from the GitP forum laying out the major changes between 3.5 and PF, as well as conversions for books that didn’t exist for PF, and some of the Green Ronin stuff.

It wouldn’t have been just an NES chip. It would’ve had to also include a separate PPU (in addition to the two already in the SNES), a NES cartridge I/O slot, a whole different video out architecture (the NES didn’t support composite out), and maybe more. Those are just the ones I know for sure.

Besides, the SNES was already going to cost significantly more than the Genesis. They were wary of widening that price gap still further when the owners of the older system still owned the older system and could easily plug it back in. Further, they were launching the SNES in North America with five launch titles and eight more on deck over the following month, with a total of thirty games coming out before that Christmas. I don’t think they were worried about having enough content for people to play on that new system.

I’ll play with you.

Seriously.

I haven’t before but I’d love to. Last dnd I played was 3.5. I won’t touch anything else, except pathfinder and other non-dnd games.

How often do pathfinder games do the thing like “The soldiers in the first area attack at +4, but these basically identical soldiers two plot beats later attack at +12, because you’re higher level and I want the math to be challenging”? Because I’ve always disliked that in games. That’s more of a video game trope, but I’ve seen it leak into tabletop games before. I liked the idea of bounded accuracy, and how a goblin is always a goblin. You don’t need to make mega-goblins to fight the higher level party, because even the little ones can still hit and wear you down.

Yeah. I don’t think 1e is underrated, but I do think it’s over-hated. It’s the system I largely got started with for TTRPGs. It’s really not that difficult, but it does let you make things very complex.

I know why people went for D&D 5e over Pathfinder, but I think it should have been seen as an entry point, not the place you stay forever like it’s become for most people. It’s dumbed down, but also with you having to remember a lot of exceptions and things because they dumbed it down too much and tried adding things that didn’t fit exactly into the rules.

What Nintendo was worried about is almost inconsequential compared to what American parents were worried about. And parents were very worried about the investment they’d made into games that still worked.

You’re probably right for D&D 5e 2024 (or whatever it’s being called). The main focus was the virtual table top subscription service. As the other commenter says though, this isn’t true for most other systems.

Also, I don’t even think it’s necessarily a bad thing. Table top inspired video games. It’s not bad for the influence to flow the other way too. It just needs to be considerate of the format.

That’s down to the GM in any system.

Either you send mega-goblins, or you send MORE goblins.

A lower level party might fight 3 goblins fair and square, so 4 levels later they confront 6 goblins and 2 lieutenants.

The idea that the same enemy stays a challenge despite the level increase is actually what I despise in D&D. My character has grown in power, why is the rat from the beginning still able to down me?

Ehh, not really. In D&D 3e-like games, a low level goblin that attacks at +4 can barely hit a mid level character with AC 30. You could have a thousand goblins, and they’d only hit on natural 20 (and for regular, non-crit damage).

I’m doing my part

There’s literally a book called How to be a GURPS GM that’s a pretty good blend of system agnostic and GURPS specific advice. Additionally, Chris Normand has a pretty good Intro to GURPS video series on YouTube

My character has grown in power, why is the rat from the beginning still able to down me?

I read an article online somewhere about bounded accuracy, and it brought a question like that as a litmus test for if you like the idea. Should a novice archer, no matter how lucky they are, be able to shoot the ominous black knight? For a scratch? Or a lucky hit in the throat?

D&D 3e says no. You can only hit them on a natural 20. I think PF2e also says no in the same way.

D&D 5e tried to say yes, the archer should be able to hit the knight. The knight’s armor is probably ~22, and the archer is rolling at +5, so there’s decent odds. But he certainly won’t be able to kill him, because HP is what scales up with power.

Other systems are more deadly.

Personally, I don’t like the “these goblins can’t even touch me anymore” mode that much. I prefer less superhero heroics, where a goblin with a knife can be a real threat

i do have a group that we’ve been playing since covid lockdowns via roll20 and later foundry and Unfortunately i don’t have blocks of time for more games (i wish i did!). My comment was mostly just aimed at that all local my friends play d&d and don’t want to switch.

But if you’re looking to play pathfinder2e online there are communities like the pathfinder2e subreddit which has an active discord community. Foundryvtt has a very active pathfinder2e community (but LFG is done through main foundry discord).

And if you’re not opposed to Organized Play (paizos version of adventurers league) then they have in store and online one-shots you can join. It’s actually how i met my group but we branched off and did our own thing.

I have never seen that happen in PF2e printed adventures. A lot of the time they use monsters straight out of the Bestiary without modification, and when they don’t they usually put the statblocks in the back of the AP so that they can all be referenced from wherever they need to be.

I just pulled down my copy of “The Enmity Cycle” (the closest Paizo adventure I have at hand). It’s a level 4-6 adventure published in 2023. I haven’t read it since shortly after I bought it, but the encounters go like this:

• The first encounter is with 4 bandits, and it references the Gamemastery Guide directly for their statblocks (though you can also get them on AoN). There is a note about a change to their favored terrain and what skill they roll for initiative (in PF2e, you can roll different stats for initiative depending on what you’re doing; usually it’s perception, but in this case, the bandits roll their stealth for initiative). It also notes their tactics (they try to threaten the party before attacking, and if you kill or capture two of them, the other two flee). This is standard for any encounter.

• The second encounter is with two sand wolves, the stat block for which is printed in the back of the module.

• The third encounter is with four gnoll hunters, taken straight from the Bestiary, page 178. If this were a more recent, post-OGL book, it would’ve referenced the Monster Core instead (page 208).

Then the party enters a temple (read: dungeon). Here the encounters are themed, but they don’t pull any shenanigans like you mentioned. There are encounters…

• with two Scorching Sun Cultists (stat block inline with the adventure, mechanically and visually distinct from previous enemies) and a Filth Fire (Bestiary 2, page 110);

• with three cultists (this refers GMs back to the statblock printed above);

• with two cultists (again, reference back to the previous page) and a named priest of the cult (who is similar to the cultists, but also has some unique features befitting his position);

• with an atajma (an undead cleric monster who honestly looks super cool; reference to Book of the Dead p112, though I can’t find it on AoN for some reason), and two more cultists;

• and an elite poltergeist (reference Bestiary, page 264). “Elite” is a template you can use to make a regular poltergeist more scary, so in fairness that is a way that they could do what you’re saying, but they don’t here.

That’s the end of chapter one. Characters are supposed to level up around this time. In chapter 2, you fight:

• four elite nuglubs;
• a named jinkin boss;
• elite jinkin mooks;
• Usij cultists;
• sand wolves;
• several Scrapborn;
• two Scrapborn with the “weak” template;
• a named Ceustodaemon;
• a clockwork soldier;
• and a named gnoll priestess

…in various configurations, both before and in the dungeon. All of the enemies here refer to the same statblocks each time they appear, with the exception of the ones that have the “weak” template (which is like the “elite” template above, but in reverse). The sand wolves are the only repeated monster from chapter one, and they seem to be used as a power level indicator to show how much stronger you are, so they also appear with the same stats.

In chapter three there are more sand wolves and more cultists, some new creatures, some creatures that have been seen before, but none of them are reskinned soldiers dealing suspiciously different damage.

That was fun, incidentally. Makes me want to run this adventure I bought two years ago. Alas, the enemy of every campaign is the schedule.

And as we all know, Nintendo suffered for their terrible decision. /s

I mean, yeah, it wasn’t the most consumer-friendly choice. I’m just saying I get why they made it.