Arakasius's page

Does that logic carry the other way? If they do something clever in combat do you just ignore the roll and give it to them? Because that’s the only way it’s even close to being fair. The way you adjudicate things at your table is not the norm for PF2 and it’s no surprise it makes int and cha worthless stats.

The game is made with the idea that it tries to balance the stats against each other. Dex and Wis are still powerful but not the all powerful stats they were in 1. Cha and Int are mostly out of combat for classes who don’t have it as their primary casting stat. Even the main in combat use of Int is another thing that is very DM dependent in recall knowledge. When you devalue those two stats it just makes it very easy to get everything you want in your four stat ups. Having easy to find stat to damage devalues that even more and pretty much makes stat allocation pointless.

Sure but by playing like that you’re devaluing non combat stats. Which reinforces this behaviour that you should take primary stat and then dex/con/wis, which will feel punishing to people whose main stat isn’t one of the 3 save stats. Turns out if you remove a lot of the usage of int and cha (and much of that is out of combat) then you’re going to make those stats not really good to take. If someone in my game does out of combat stuff the rp matters ofc but so does the skills they use (general plus skill feats) and so does their actual rolls.

Anyway they gave you four stat increases and I agree that having non str to dmg not be common because it forces decisions on which stat to take. If you want that extra dmg you should have a trade off on what you give up, whether that be saves or non combat utility.

I agree here. There are some legacy issues that I think were carried over as sacred cows from PF1 that should have just been simplified. Similarly some rules for balance in tiny small edge cases that weren’t needed.

Sure you can take an archetype that gives improved trip as a feat but then you’re missing out on archetypes that give far more power. And nothing you said really contradicts the fact that maneuvers took serious character investment to even be viable in PF1. If you didn’t make a character choice to opt in to the maneuver feats than they were unusable and thus not in your tactics toolbox. While a character with decent athletics in PF2 is quite capable of pulling off a trip of a situation comes up.

It’s specialization vs generalization. PF1 required specialization due to the nature of feats and how they have so much numeric bonuses. PF2 feats are lower powered but also more open ended. It’s nice there isn’t a whole thing about the “trip guide” or the “demoralize guide” and so on.

Arakasius wrote:

PF2 allows characters to do things baseline with no feats at a much higher level than PF1, hence a character with no trip feats can still function at it.

This isn't quite true. You don't get very far with Disarm, Grapple, Shove, or Trip unless you pick up Titan Wrestler. Then there are a pile of feats that make maneuvers better, combine it with another maneuver or Strike or leverage a weapon too.

Titan wrestler doesn’t give a numeric bonus or change AoO. It just means it can scale to being used on huge characters. If you’re fighting another medium character it doesn’t do anything at all. Most of the monsters in the game are either medium or large so it’s not really necessary.

And even if it becomes so at some point it’s a skill feat which you have more of and won’t conflict with your more powerful class feats. Plus the feats which improve it usually are giving an extra effect or improving action economy not making your accuracy to trip better. Thus they’re more efficient or they get debuffed more but on chances to actually trip you’re still capable.

So yeah there are options to make tactics better in PF1 but they’re pretty much all tied to feat chains. You can specialize in 1-2 things and be almost auto hit on them. PF2 gives a much higher baseline so a player can do things they are not an expert at to a reasonable degree of success. PF1 just didn’t hence it’s not as tactical game because your options are limited. There are just too many feat chains and prerequisites gating common abilities for them to be part of every toolbox. All maneuvers and demoralize were useless without investment.

The problem with generic tactics in PF1 Deriven is the specialty. Basically if you didn’t take the feats to make those good then they weren’t good. No one tripped in PF1 unless you had the trip feats. So unless you went for that feat line you just didn’t do it. Since most people went for the damage buffing lines it just meant you didn’t trip. PF2 allows characters to do things baseline with no feats at a much higher level than PF1, hence a character with no trip feats can still function at it.

Say look at trip. To do it in PF1 you needed improve trip to not provoke AoO. For that you needed combat expertise. For that you needed 13 int or you needed Dirty Fighting from a random splat book that came out years later. So yeah the 13 int was a hard no as a pre req on martials to a mostly useless feat that was a prereq to actually trip. Grapple the same thing.

It’s kind of a boggle that you’re comparing PF1 to PF2 here. We have a 200 post thread that Magus don’t work because 1/4-1/3 of the time they’ll eat an AoO on spellstrike if they cast. Well guess what in PF1 unless you took points in a mostly worthless stat and took a useless feat prereq then you took an AoO on every combat maneuver. Hence unless you were building for that feat line no one ever tripped or grappled. It goes back to specialization if you didn’t have the feats in PF1 you just weren’t good at things and thus didn’t do it. Maybe a fighter would have feats to burn but at a feat every other level certainly no one else did.

I don’t think PF1 at this point has that stuff either. They had some stuff that just kinda worked that came over from 3.5 but that wasn’t legal either even if it did fit the framework. I’m sure give it more time and they will add more rituals and other downtime focused systems which will allow more stuff like this. I don’t think it’s a huge priority compared to getting much loved classes over from PF1 though. Paizo at the end of the day is a small company and they have to choose what they spend time on.

That's why PF1 was so hard to make run well. I put in the work to make the players use tactics. It took enormous work to account for all the player options at high level. But I made sure there was no easy win without extreme luck. It burns you out in the long-term. Each new book seemed to add some nutty option that made the characters even more powerful that had to be accounted for.

I don't have to take the same measures to challenge PCs in PF2. That is probably the main reason I decided to move my group to PF2. I can focus more on story and role-playing rather the hours I spent making NPCs and monsters challenging in PF1. NPC design in PF1 was like building characters and even harder the higher level they got. Very time consuming.

Using hero lab (the old xml app one not the web app) was an absolute requirement for DMing PF1. I would take some monsters that seemed reasonable and tweak with them adding templates or changing stats to get the enemies to the level I felt they could be a challenge. Even at level 10-11 I had to bump monsters up to level 15-16 level to be a challenge and I wouldn’t even call the group that optimized. They just took mostly good stuff but were decently well rounded. Without hero lab it would have been impossible and even with that it took about an hour to put together a fight.

Another thing on the tactics issue was how well you could do it at low levels depended a lot on your build. Mainly a lot of builds took multiple feats/levels to come together. For example the last game I played my Inquisitor had power attack, combat expertise, pack flanking, outflank, paired opportunist, etc. We switched over at level 8 and I don’t think I had gotten all my feats yet since I didn’t take human. Anyway the long feat chains leading up to your “press 1” combo really didn’t leave any build choices for alternative tactics. If your DM was nice with retraining it could help but otherwise you’re stuck into waiting a long time for your stuff to come on.

Turns out casual players in my experience don’t like having their character choices dictated to them by the experts in the party or the GM. If I want to get the most out of the PF1 chassis that means I want to be doing cool and crazy stuff. This means they have to as well and turns out people don’t like having choices dictated to them. So either they’re unhappy as their oddball build doesn’t work or the optimizer is upset since they can’t do the cool stuff. And since gaming groups are usually determined by things like “I work with them” or “they’re my friends” that usually doesn’t correlate with gaming approach.

It’s really hard to comprehend a post that goes on about how PF2 combat fails in being tactical and such and touts 5e (oh did you get advantage or impose disadvantage) or PF1 (oh you moved I guess that was a mistake you lost most of your damage) as superior tactical games.

Just from three action system alone PF2 is far more tactical then the other two options. You don’t win the fight on the first turn so inherently the decisions you take in combat matter more. This is supported by new groups being much more successful than PF1 vets because they’d been trained that not to move and fight statically was the best thing.

The question is how to make a d20 ttrpg difficult with high accuracy for the players and low accuracy for the enemies. The turn based rpgs out there that have been mentioned all have issues or forced gameplay paradigms that just don’t work in a game that needs to be as flexible as PF. Theoretically I’m sure it’s possible but I’ve seen no practical suggestions that will actually do it.

PF1 and 5e both could satisfy the feel good accuracy requirements but that meant it failed horribly on difficulty. 5e was forced to invent legendary and lair actions and PF1 never even solved it at all, forcing DMs to massively adjust enemies to be a threat at all and it still led to rocket tag.

I can understand and sympathize with the frustration that high accuracy for enemies and low accuracy for players causes. But people need to realize that a lot of the problems with PF1 was because you could get skills/attacks/defences high enough to be auto successes or close to it. It feels good but it makes the game really hard to balance and make difficult.

That’s the issue, what one player finds as fun and another find fun don’t stomp on each others fun in PF2. Last PF1 game we had a guy who took monk and random monk feats. Then we had optimized wizard and inquisitor (me). Our definitions of fun stepped on each other. It’s not that anyone was even taking any odd feats. Our GM restricted us to core and APG. We weren’t taking any weird splat books. But the wizard could invalidate most fights and the inquisitor did more damage than the monk and had more skills and had spells. Both ended up dominating the table time a lot more than the monk. (Or our cleric who didn’t quit but is also more casual and just tries to RP and ignores the PF1 mechanics)

Eventually the monk went from playing to coming and reading the phone til their turn came around to skipping sessions to quitting. This is not the only time this has happened. Some people want to just play casual and it doesn’t work with people who want to delve all the options that exist. All casual or all optimizer groups can work but I’ve not been able to find such a group. It’s good that you as a DM are trying to make your group has fun but at a lot of points the gulf between characters in PF1 just makes for a bad experience. Generally you just want to play with friends and good luck finding 4-5 friends who play in similar styles.

My point on the narrow hit/crit ranges is I agree raw hit/dmg can look samey. What differentiates monsters in PF2 is their abilities more than raw stats. If you or your dm play monsters as just blobs who swing away then I agree they’re going to look similar. If you lean into their special abilities then they’re not. I also agree that the 10 hit/crit rule tends to make combats more missey and that also feels weird to people coming from PF1 even if the battles are roughly over in the same amount of time.

But despite those flaws it works for me because you can roll any attack vs any defence. That to me is cool and is a nice part of the system. Would I mind something that makes hit better for martials? Sure but I wouldn’t want to change hit/crits for spells/skills. I wonder has anyone tried tweaking the rules on things like agile weapons? For example making all weapons have improved MAP? (Aka default to -4, -8) and have agile be -3/-6 and so on. That could be a quick fix that improves martial accuracy for people who want to swing a lot but likely wouldn’t unbalance anything.

Like has been said a bunch before PF is just fine with a bunch of casual players who take feats and such. It’s not challenging at all and can be run as is. Problem is with groups of unequal investment. The difference between players is so big when optimization is brought in that it marginalizes players and makes them quit in frustration or at best they just sit as passengers surfing their phone. Expert players dictate to the party what choices they should make in character building and dominate the table. And when that first optimizer steps in the DMs work skyrockets as they now need to both challenge that player and still allow casual players to shine. It’s a balance that needs to be respected for the game to work and no game i’ve ever been involved has pulled it off. And that’s magnified by the huge difference between classes and the fact the game doesn’t scale well into the teens.

I do agree that the +/- 10 does have some issues. Mainly it makes the range an enemy can be used as narrower and it does narrow the range of stats of any kind at a specific level. I still find there is a good range of damage and hit but when it’s like +/- 3 to hit or +/- 10 to damage at a level it doesn’t feel like as much a difference. Of all the things in PF2 that’s new this probably has one of the bigger effects in feel compared to PF1. The gameplay is a lot better but the feel feels weird at times.

Except it is. We’ve all played PF1. Everyone of the things you mentioned fell to whom went first when hit chances were that high. Sure if you’re saying spell effects should have middling accuracy but weapons shouldn’t I suppose that’s one way to do things. However a lot of what I’ve read on complaints on Spellcasting in 2e is also that spell hit chances are too low so I don’t think splitting the rules would solve much. But I think one of the cooler things about PF2 is everything on the same scale. You can roll attacks vs saves and skills against defences.

Generally if you make it easier to hit then by default it makes the game easier. Right now in PF2 at same CR it’s mostly a tossup with slightly better raw numbers on monster side and better multipliers on party side. The game has shifted from who goes first and guaranteeing hits to situational mods and preventing crits. It’s just a fundamentally different type of game.

I can understand not wanting to miss but there is really no way you increase that back to PF1 levels without just bringing back the problems of PF1. Rocket tag existed for a reason because going first meant you won the game. Who cares about situational defenses, more hps, fast healing, etc if you just won the battle on the first turn anyway. I suppose you could take those types of effects out of the game but that’s not fun either.

There i suppose is one way that you can increase the difficulty while keeping easy to hit. Do what 5e does with lair actions and such for bosses/elites. Basically give them a bunch of extra reactions and more actions as a bandaid. And I hate that about 5e where you are much more likely to have your action hit but also guaranteed to have it be failed because of the lair actions telling you no you can’t do that.

Probably the +/- 10 rule has the biggest effect on how the game feels to the previous game. Basically the game switched more from balancing around being hit at all to having being hit be more of the default and preventing crits be more of a thing. Now it does open up crits more to players where before it was only open to specific feat chains. I can see how people might prefer the PF1/5e paradigm where you just give enemies a big bag of hps and you chip away at it more consistently. Even if in the end in 95%+ of cases enemies die in the same amount of time. It’s a very clean solution and it’s really nice how it applies universally but for people used to something else I’m sure it could be a surprise. And if you just tune PF2s enemies down than you’ll get a huge amount of crits so it’s not exactly an easy fix.

Yes you can’t win PF2 at character creation. I think it’s clear that’s an explicit design decision. I can understand that not being able to do that is not for everyone but overall I think it’s a good thing for myself and people I’ve played with. Problem being for you to win at character creation than either someone else in your party loses as you outshine them or if your party plays well together than your DM loses because they have to deal with running your game since at that point no AP or base content is going to challenge you.

Dimity wrote:

N N 959 wrote:

If I have to *constantly* change the difficulty level of the encounters to compensate for the +10 crit mechanics, then I'm not going to GM.

The most common suggestion is to give the players 1 extra level. Done. No further adjustment required.

The average person who buys an AP is not going to search the forums to find out that they need to add a level to any random AP. The overwhelming majority expect to play level 1 at level 1, as they should. When the AP says level 1, expecting a GM to know that's level 2 is nonsensical.

The more burden you put on GMs to have to figure out counter-intuitive changes like adding levels at the start of a level 1 AP, the less people will want to GM.

So? It’s still far better than PF1 where most GMs quit because of the difficulty and amount of work required. There is no argument that holds that PF1 is easier to GM. It can be a very good game with the right GM but balancing, tuning and making PF1 campaigns fun is a ton of work. Like DF has said PF2 is a lot more GM friendly.

I find it really hard to take seriously complaints about adjusting APs or base content in PF2 when PF1 requires massive DM adjustments to keep things reasonable. Now sure if you didn’t mind massive discrepancy in strength between characters and massive issues in tuning throughout campaigns I guess you could just play PF1 APs and content as is.

But to make a fun game through to later levels than massive DM work was required. You needed to curate feat and ban things from splat books that Paizo hadn’t vetted well, you had to adjust classes for things like the UC reworks since often time Paizo made vastly op or under tuned classes way worse than the diff that exists in PF2. You had to change monster stats constantly to adjust them to the level of the party, you had to tweak enemies/encounters to make it that you could challenge your optimizer while not punishing your more casual players. You had to figure out how to make skill challenges work when you had characters that couldn’t fail it mixed with characters who couldn’t pass it without a 20 and then add in characters that could use magic to bypass it.

So above is all just a part of the things I had to do as a DM to make PF1 work. If you do so then it could be a great game. But that’s a ton of work. In PF2 I can just take a monster out of the bestiary and use it and it works most of the time. At most I stick elite or weak on it and I’m done. If you want players to be more epic than just put a level on the party. If you wanted to make PF1 challenging it was hours of work a session. Just a completely different work requirement needed.

Problem is mastery in PF1 only needed as far as finding a guide. Just go to Zeniths and you’re done. But the gap between people who did that and people who didn’t was huge. So DF is kinda right. If you wanted to get stronger and choose those feats they did make you stronger. But if everyone else knows about them then no it doesn’t you’re back to even playing field. But if you are a person who knows where to look and others in your group don’t than it’s not going to be a pleasant group for players or for the DM. It’s very hard to DM when one guy can’t miss and the other needs to roll a ten to hit. And it’s no fun being that guy missing half the time when your party mate is hitting all the time.

So if you want a game where feats give you that much boost is it because those feats exist or because you found them and your mates didn’t? If it’s the former I can understand being disappointed but it’s necessary to flatten that learning curve so everyone can contribute without having system mastery.

Exactly. Most of the RP I saw in PF1 (myself included) was warping the story to the abilities you chose because they were superior. Now RP comes before numbers. There are a very few number gainers but they’re pretty slight and because of less bonus types fairly well capped. Often you can get them in different ways but because status and circumstance bonuses are all you have really there is a limit. Being superior is more now tied to efficiency and to teamwork, no longer can you just be better because you chose the right feats/combo.

Arakasius wrote:

See to me a game where one player sits on their butt for months doing nothing and then becomes the focus for months or vice versa is kind of a big problem. That’s not balance that’s just a bad game. Like said above there was a reason 5-8 or so was the best, in that spot when casters got third level spells til when caster invalidated the party. PF2 decided that spot should be where the game resides. Every player at all levels should be able to equally contribute and PF1 makes that impossible by design.

Is the DM not giving the less combat-capable PCs spotlight in the RP segments? These games aren't just combat and rolling dice, and that's where you can let the player whose character hasn't yet peaked in their build shine.

Did a PF1 fighter have any non combat abilities? Most of them due to 8 int barely had any skills. They certainly weren’t using feats for skill increases. A PF1 fighter or barbarian or most other martials could basically maybe do at most one non combat thing and generally it was something like intimidate or a str based skill. Casters often had more skill increases on top of spells that could reproduce skills. So sure you could I suppose give a PF1 martial something to do outside of combat provided they didn’t have to roll for it. Because with their stat arrays and limited skills they couldn’t succeed in anything.

So that is another thing PF2 does much better by separating feats. We all know no one took skill feats in PF1 so putting them in their own bucket means a lot less cookie cutter builds. The fact that there isn’t really a zeniths guide to PF2 is a good thing because you can build what you want and know even if you make some poor choices you can still contribute. Optimizers can do better but they won’t be too much ahead of the rest.

See to me a game where one player sits on their butt for months doing nothing and then becomes the focus for months or vice versa is kind of a big problem. That’s not balance that’s just a bad game. Like said above there was a reason 5-8 or so was the best, in that spot when casters got third level spells til when caster invalidated the party. PF2 decided that spot should be where the game resides. Every player at all levels should be able to equally contribute and PF1 makes that impossible by design.

Actually the baseball analogy goes really well if you take it further. Some people just want to see a game played with a pitcher throwing, a batter hitting and fielders making great plays. But just like PF1 baseball has been destroyed in the modern day by optimizers. First the players/teams optimized. They brought the shift, they brought steroids and sticky stuff. They pushed the rules with sign stealing. When things got banned they found new things to push. Then the league (DMs) responded. They banned innovations, they tinker with changes to the game such as runners on in extras, restricting the shift, banned substance uses, etc. This is the DM curating the game. Then the players respond again and it’s an endless back and forth.

But guess what people want to watch baseball want to see hits and defence and fun. Similarly to PF players. They just want to play games with friends without it being an investment. They want to be able to choose their own feats without being told what is the best to take by the party expert. I have been a part of too many group building experiences in PF1. The experts choose their fun toy to destroy the campaign and then tell their less experienced friends the feats they need to take to compete.

It’s a lot of investment that only pays off when the party is of equal skill and is backed up by a DM willing to do that work. Nothing is stopping you from playing that game anymore but I would guess most switched because their friends abandoned PF1 and it’s hard to play a group game by yourself. And in the end they’re playing a solo game in a group setting just really doesn’t work and it’s why most of the people I played PF with years ago quit.

The problem Malleus with that game is that almost no one played it. There is a reason in PF1 that most parties stopped by level 7, most short form campaigns were made for low levels, PFS capped early, etc. PF1 can be a wonderful game when played between players of similar skill and dedication backed up by a DM willing to do a bunch of work. But that’s a very high bar to clear and most games stopped at seven or below for all the scaling issues PF1 had. Someone said it earlier in the thread but they figured out the most desired PF1 feel was heroic and leaned in on that. They cut out the high end and all the problems it caused.

Your points on murder machines and grumbling about inequality of casters/martials just shows you don’t get it or were in that 1% lucky enough to find the perfect group of like minded folk. That ability to create the murder machine ties directly into the inequality of players at the table which sinks most games. It is a group game after all and casters ability to dominate the game and invalidate most other classes was a huge failing of PF1. Sorry you don’t get to feel like a god but generally that just ended up with you feeling godlike while the rest of your group checked their phone or wondered why they were even wasting their time playing.

Yeah PF1 is a great game once we curate out the half dozen broken or useless classes, another 1-2 dozen OP archetypes and about 50-100 feats or spells across the game. After that it’s mostly fine other than a whole bunch of warts like static combats (full attack issues), combat maneuvers, overly complex rules and so on.

Pathfinder 1 is like nuclear treaties. Everything sorta works if everyone respects the balance. Like if everyone agrees that random stuff and whatever sounds cool is good then it’s okay because you can play with a bunch of crap feats. Or if everyone just plays with decent/good stuff it similarly works. If everyone optimizes to extreme levels then it can work but the DM has their job cut out for them. It’s extremely difficult for them to balance PC nova tactics without stepping into being an antagonist DM that is meta gaming against your parties OP combos. Which is what DF says. When I DMd even with level 10ish party I had to specifically make encounters that could live long enough to not get crushed but not do enough damage to wipe them out.

But that goes back to the first point, the party has to agree to stay at similar power levels. And that almost never works either because the one guy who takes random feats or the couple who found Zeniths guide and took all the gold feats. Just like nuclear deterrence once the first person breaks it the game breaks. Players get upset that they’re useless or just become spectators. Players get smug and dominate the game, GM suddenly has to balance a game with players of wildly different capabilities. It’s an unwritten contract that has to be followed for campaigns to work and every one I’ve ever been involved in failed for that reason in the end.

I agree PF1 has more room for player customization but it always fails because the inter party dynamics and how poorly the DM/Party dynamics with difficulty scales past level 9 or so. If you can get a DM willing to do the work and a party willing to agree to that contract PF1 can be amazing but that almost never happens.

On the pure quality of life side on the PF2 side I think having skills and saves be able to be rolled in the same scale as attacks/defenses and the three action system are the biggest game changers PF2 brings.

This thread should just get closed. Any comments on not starting a flame/bash war on editions was pointless at the start since the question was inevitably going to start it. We’ve had this discussion a hundred times before with no point to it. Just use the search function and read one of the previous closed threads.

Geez this is tedious. Just flag and move on it’s not worth arguing.

I don’t see why Summoner wouldn’t evoke what we have. Most people thinking of that would think of Final Fantasy and a summoner there is a magic user that summons some big scary monster from an alternate plane/world and then fights alongside it. Basically Yuna. And PF2 summoner works perfectly for that.

Ofc it should. Pathfinder 2 is a direct response to the lessons they learned from PF1. There was a balance between casters and martials in PF1. It was decided it wasn’t a fair balance and they made a new balance point where martials got more unique things that casters couldn’t coop through spells.

I’d consider four stat boosts in general to be more important than one feat. Two stat boosts to me is probably the break even point but now I can’t be optimized at my int/cha skills. That could be like 2-3 to knowledge checks or diplomacy/intimidation along with other benefits. If you are an archer who plans on making multiple attacks a round you definitely want one of the options that pushed the damage up, whether it be propulsive or extra damage dice. It’s not like you are going to find many feats out there that are going to boost your pure damage numbers.

You overrate what one feat will give you when plenty of classes and builds don’t have must have options. If you are one of the players who doesn’t care for a ton of options and just wants to push the attack button it’s a reasonable choice that increases your damage. I see you listed 3 different archetype options as your feats well the rules are that you really can’t multidip unless you take that one half elf trait. This is what I see with my players they take one multiclass archetype and maybe one other thing in that archetype they want and then stop because they don’t want to put more in there to qualify for a second.

Heck comparing to PF1 there were a lot of builds that gave up feats or class options to go up one damage dice on their weapons, and feats in PF1 were generally more scarce a resource. This is one of the few ways to do the same in PF2.

No not all classes are starved for feats. I have players in my game who don’t generally have a great option to take when levelling. You can’t make blanket statements like that since for some classes feats matter a lot more than others. Since most feats in this game just give more options not power there are plenty of builds with space to include an extra feat or two.

And yes I know that at minimum it requires one feat to make it work. I don’t think a feat is worth more than four stat boosts and a dice step in all circumstances. (Yes there is deadly but range and no volley also balance that) If you are a character that wants to be a party face or spec in demoralize or have an odd hankering for more knowledge skills it’s not a bad trade off. It’s certainly not a trade off worth the hyperbole shown in this thread. You generally only have one floating stat boost since dex/wis/con are generally musts to boost and of the remaining three strength really has only one good usage.

So take unconventional weaponry then and the feat cost is lessened although that forces you to human.

Anyway a Daikyu with the same point blank feat is still superior to a shortbow as the weapon now is 1d8+2. Sure if you want to pump strength to 18 then sure composite is good but that could be four stat boosts going to something more useful than strength. Yes the deadly on bows can be useful but it’s just inferior to the bigger damage die you get.

Like I agree it’s not the best use ever but I hardly see the outrage. Look at the list Exorcist posted. The bonuses the Daikyu give you are way more relevant than most advanced weapons. Is it worth the feats? Maybe I haven’t done all the maths but going up a damage dice has benefits and there is absolutely benefits to never having to pump strength a mostly useless stat. Some builds are starved for feats and some are starved for stats. I wouldn’t take this if I was the first but I would consider it for the second.

Like I I was a human that had no plans to take fighter or archer I’d use a feat for this from ancestry and use my stats for something else. (Likely to either invest in Cha or Int). Most fights in the early game take place within thirty feet and most fights late game feature enemies with such extremely mobility that you usually can’t get out of 30 feet range.

I think people showed that already here provided the reload thing is a typo.

Higher base damage then shortbow and no short range penalty and allows a build to not devote anything to strength. Sure crits matter but hits come up a lot more often in gameplay. Wasn’t it already shown up threat that it beat a shortbow? Lots of builds have room for a feat or two. This one unlike most actually does get a numerical advantage from the higher base damage.

Doesn’t Advance Weapon Training or Advancd Bow Training get rid of the proficiency issue? (Provided you had martial proficiency in bows) Maybe I’m missing something here. Obv you don’t take this unless you take one of those feats.

Sure not supposed to be pre buffed but if you start the two a reasonable distance from each other just a round will get a lot of annoying defences up. At high level the only way a martial party would win is if they started at close quarters.

Anyway I feel this discussion has been argued multiple times before on this forum. Martials are better at low levels and casters at high. This was the same in PF1 but the difference there was greater in both ways, so PF1 had a bigger swing as you levelled. I’m not sure what they do with spell DCs. I can see item bonus for spell attack rolls but like it or not true strike exists and that has to be taken into account. I don’t expect to get any general caster dc items unless they truly feel there is an imbalance. If there is maybe there would be a +1 to Spell DC item at level 10 or so.

Yeah basically 5e has it that an ancient dragon is basically not much better stat wise than a player with magic items. (Maybe 1 bonus in a couple stats) but they have a three times a day “no you fail player” button. I don’t think that’s fun to have a boss who is really no better than a player but has multiple “I win” abilities. It feels like that DM in PF who fights a group and rolls a save (behind screen) for the save or die spell and is wondering what to do when he rolls a 3 and now has to just let his boss die.

I prefer my bosses to be threatening and that is something that PF1 and 5e have more in common then they do with PF2. In the former case you either had monsters with multiple get out of jail free cards or in PF1 you had to either give them that or turn them into PF2 bosses by cranking their stats up to the point where they could reliably make that save. PF2 is nice to know that if you give the party a +3 level enemy it’s going to be a tough and brutal fight. Now I do agree with whomever said it’s the DMs job to let the players know that, whether that be through narrative or by having dice rolls be public for attacks which will show how high the monsters to hit bonus is.

Yeah I don’t really love 5e and it’s legendary actions. It always feels so arbitrary. So I’ve been fighting monsters and they do this when hit and they act mostly like players. Then you fight a boss and whamo you’re seeing enemies act twice or more a turn, have them trigger reactions on things like going to half health and so on. The only thing that really does something similar in PF is contingency, which is far more limited. Anyway put me down as someone who likes all the monsters to be built with similar rules.

As a DM I somehow like it that I don’t have to tweak every fight and monster anymore to not make the game a joke/pushover. Now sure if you played 1e vanilla and liked that then yeah you’re going to have to do the opposite and put in time similar to what I had to in 1e. But I think the base default being challenging is more fun than the base challenge being no challenge.

Claxon wrote:

PF2 does not at all have the same feel as PF1. In PF1 you were a BigDamnHero after about level 5, and almost nothing could touch you unless your GM modified it to make it a more credible threat.

I think this is quite an interesting point. I'm not sure how universal my experience is, but between PFS and APs not finishing, the majority of my PF1 experience is below 10th level - I'd say close to a majority of it is below level 7, even. On top of that, when I'm running or playing in an AP, a challenge is desired - it's difficult to do that by the time you get to high levels in PF1, but it's certainly a goal. I'll modify encounters with the intent of making them an interesting challenge where possible, including rebuilding an encounter from the ground up if I have the time to do so. Most of my GMs do the same thing, and I think this definitely affects my perception of PF1's difficulty. It's definitely an easier game than PF2 is, no doubt about that, but I find the difference between the two isn't as significant as most of the talk I see here on the forums. I wonder how much of the difference in this perspective on the forums is caused by how we experienced PF1?

It really depends how much you lean into options that are available. About 90% of feats are non combat or don’t help in combat (either being just pure flavor or in some cases leading you into suboptimal strategies.) another 5-7% are solid feats that are good. That last 3% are gold and lead to very strong characters, especially when paired with archetypes. For example my optimized sacred huntmaster inquisitor who out damaged our party while being the skill monkey/face. And inquisitors are not even considered that strong. When you bust out ninth level casters that gets crazy. So a party of optimizers (class guide readers) can do some super powerful things like killing monsters 5-6 levels higher than them. And that like others have said just turns into rocket tag where the GM has to escalate to keep the game a challenge at all. Or give monsters massive defense/hit points but don’t pump up the power which is what 5e does with bags of hit points.

Arakasius wrote:

The problem is you just don’t play the game so your assumptions on white room math are quite insufficient. Also the answer to every ruling in the game doesn’t have to be the most restrictive ruling that punishes the players. You know what happens to DMs who run games like that? They soon aren’t DMs since their players will go elsewhere. We’re not asking for the DM to just give in to the players and make it all easy for them, but the DMs job is to be fair and balanced. And part of that job is making an environment where the players do actions having those actions be reasonably effective. The DMs job is not to make recall knowledge useless.

The thing is that not every group has a grandfatherly, benevolent GM and most of them are probably still playing. Going from my own experience, most GM's are not outright antagonistic in the sense of wanting to put you to the ground at all costs (which would for sure make their players abandon them), however many have the desire to not make things too easy for the PC's (especially if they played PF1 before). A challenge that somebody has put into his adventure still has to be a challenge, not a totally meaningless walkover. As such, being restrictive with the information given by Recall Knowledge or playing even stupid monsters surprisingly smart are nothing unheared of. Rats and Skeletons flanking for to-hit bonusses? Monsters avoiding Fighter or Champion reactions by attacking or conducting actions out of their reach whenever possible? Been there, done that...

Arakasius wrote:

To add something to the original post, it’s part of the DMs job to know their players. And if their players have certain tendencies and such then it’s in everyone’s best interest to give them a chance for them to shine doing it. Don’t give it to them for free but let them try it out. For example my players had a fight where they were stuck in separate rooms against equal or lvl -1 foes. The player against the rune giant got killed but there was a player with

...

Player driven before meant doing something that made dice rolls irrelevant. Generally casters setting up some horrible save or die spells with metamagic and voila fight is won. Rest of party might as well not show up. I know I’ve been the spellcaster many times in this example and it’s not particularly fun for anyone. The dm doesn’t get much use out of the content he built and there is resentment between players.

Now given that in 2e the math is such that you’re not going to get that guarantee then the DM has some responsibility. I completely disagree with some of your comments. If your DM deliberately maps out the champions reaction and the squares from him so as to deliberately never trigger his main reactions your DM is ruining your players chance to stand out. It’s like when Gandalf stood at the bridge if the Balrog was like “”Nah I got wings I can fly I’m just going to avoid that fool and attack the hobbits in the back.” Similarly if they treat recall knowledge as a place to give players fluff backstory and nothing chewy to act on. If your DM meta games their abilities against the party than yes players will not get the chance to stand out. Now for sure dice rolls influence whether the players tactics work, but it is the DMs job to give a fair chance for players to use their chosen abilities.

Edit: There is a wide range of DM ways here, but what many of you describe as what is fair for the DM to allow comes off as very antagonistic on the DMs part. It’s not the job of the DM to be a pushover. If the challenge is not real players will read into it and not enjoy it. But at the same time you can’t just treat DMing like it’s a tactical war game without understanding that running the games like that comes with a real cost. It can work with the right party but if you’re spending all your time as a DM meta gaming against your players choices then don’t be surprised if they won’t find it very fun.

The Druid is definitely the strongest character in the party. Between being quite strong with feral and elemental forms he can also switch and bust out high level damage spells as good as the sorcerer. I’d say overall he’s been the strongest of the 2e characters in our party. Champion does have some insane mitigation but falls in damage a little behind the sorcerer.

Temperans wrote:

You are assuming that the GM will tell you the monster's saves, that the saves will line up with the creatures look, that you have learned the spell, that you have it prepared in the right slot, that you have every one of those feats you mentioned, and that they are close enough to hit with the spell you are using.

If all of that is right, then maybe they can crit.

Not to mention that you are comparing two level 19 creatures. When we know casters are better vs creatures of equal or lower level.

Btw most martials have a +35 to hit, meaning they hit the Terotricus on an 8 and crit on an 18. Fighters can hit on a 6 and crit on a 16. Assuming that they are not getting buffed by a Bard, in which case the values are the same.

How have casters fared in your games? Mine are doing well, but also we have a "dedicated damage" caster who the group expects to be dishing out damage. The other two casters (three casters, one martial team) support the damage caster with debuffs. Two sorcerers, a cleric, and a barbarian. Casters have been just fine in my game, but also my players did take the time to grok the system, even if we had a few hurdles.

How do you GM Recall Knowledge? Or how does your GM handle it?

Temperans iirc from previous posts doesn’t even play 2e. This seems to be a common issue for many people who think casters are weak, either that or playing mostly at low levels where casters are weaker comparatively. As for the game I run with level 17 party our casters are definitely quite a bit stronger than our martial even against even level foes. Ofc 7+ level spells will do that as martials don’t have much that can contend with that. The party is also a 3ish caster team with feral druid, Paladin/fighter, flame oracle and imperial sorc.

It can work if everyone at the table is on the same viewpoint. If everyone optimized and the DM appropriately responds to it it can make amazing game. Everyone is doing broken stuff but you’re fighting against +5/6 level encounters and it’s this great struggle. Now sure it’s still a bit too much rocket tag in about who goes first, but there is enough play in there to have some good back and forth.

But it’s when you mix players of different views on optimization where things quickly breakdown and players feel marginalized and useless. It’s like an arms race and it just doesn’t play nice. Players sit around being annoyed at others. The casual player doesn’t like feeling useless and the optimizer doesn’t like having to pull their punches. Even worse if the casual players figure out that the optimizer isn’t doing their best stuff, since people often do not like being babysit like that. Just go look at the angel sunmoner video and how bmx bandit feels. Also many players don’t want to have to look at guides and feat trees to keep their characters up with the optimizers.

PF2 brings down the gap between optimizers and casual players where everyone can still contribute. Does it come with costs to the character building experience? Sure but i also agree with midnight that it leads more often to concept coming before features rather than features before concept.

Arakasius wrote:

The issue Temperans is the difference between viable and optimal in the 2 editions. If someone makes suboptimal feat choices in PF2 it might make them 25% (just a number I pulled but not that far off) worse than the optimized player. In PF1 it was orders of magnitudes. Thus the reward for optimizing in PF1 are far greater. When the best choices are only a bit better it’s far more acceptable to take less best choices. Which is why power attack was a must have feat. If you didn’t take it you gimped your character.

Oh yes I can agree with that. PF2 is a lot tighter on the difference between max and min. But that is not to say the mentality I speak off is gone. Also not taking power attack is not gimping your character, its just not maximum damage.

Power attack is a pretty huge damage difference in PF1. It can be something in the order of 20-30 damage a round for a character at mid levels, more so if optimized.

I do agree the mentality of optimizing won’t change. That’s perfectly fine, but now the optimized will play well with the rest of their party. I don’t think anyone minds someone showing system mastery as long as they can feel they can contribute using reasonable choices. I knew some players who hated to look at guides or get help for their character and just took what seemed cool or good. But in PF1 that led to some pretty bad characters. Now those players can play with their optimizer friends and the optimizer doesn’t have to hold back and the casual player can just build their character however they want.

Yeah vital strike is mostly a trash feat line just like 95% or more of PF1 feats. As for power strike if it’s so much a foundation then it should be built into all the melee classes. However it’s not so it’s an obvious and blatant feat tax that is required on every character who attacks with strength. Oh and they made a dex version of if (piranha strike) which is just as required for dex melee characters.

As explained above vital strike in PF2 (the new power strike) is definitely more fun than vital strike because it just makes you take two actions. You can still move or attack with the third or if you get haste. It’s a lot less restrictive and also not nearly as powerful as old power attack. It is better than vital strike though but that’s not really hard to do.

As for the argument on optimal vs not that works when playing with players of the same mindset. You get a group of optimal players and well the DM will have to raise everyone’s levels a bunch to compete but it can be amazing fun with contrasting OP characters vs way over levelled encounters. Or you can have a group of regular friends players who don’t optimize and then again things are balanced. But if you mix the groups that is when issues come in. Optimal vs non in PF2 is still a thing, the optimized player will absolutely perform better, but it won’t be anywhere close to what optimization does in PF1. And that’s how it should be with everyone getting to shine even if someone shines a bit brighter.

In my last PF1 campaign my sacred huntmaster inquisitor basically delivered as much damage as our arcane archer + monk + alchemist combined. Heck my tiger alone out dps’d any of them. Our wizard was more of a generalist mage so while being very effective at times also wasn’t doing much damage and didn’t seem to like using battlefield control spells. Oh and I also had more skills than most of them and was the face of the party.

That sort of inequality can make gaming tables very uncomfortable as players take the spotlight. And PF1 is ripe with that. Ultra specialized characters can very much steal the spotlight and run the show and it can wreck lots of tables. Worst of all though is the well played spell caster (usually wizard but druid or cleric can also do it) that through spells can replace every other party members utility while also ending battles with 1-2 well placed control spells. At that point the rest of the party is just permanently on mop up duty. Angel summoner vs BMX bandit indeed. Not many people want to be marginalized like that. It’s not fun to spend hours every week playing a game where your actions basically don’t matter.

But it’s not like PF1 didn’t have to do the same thing. As someone who GM’d there you had to do heavy modification of enemies and campaigns to even make it a challenge. I basically had to give templates to every monster to even make it not a joke for my players, and they still would beat CR+4/5 encounters easily. At the end things like CR and such is just a guideline. At level CR is clearly tougher in PF2. PF2 starts at a higher difficulty level (lower hit rates and all that) so I don’t view any meaningful difference between me raising levels in PF1 to make fights challenging at all and lowering levels in PF2 to make PF2 fights feel like PF1.