I think folks are being.a bit harsh here. A person sharing their hobby with their kids is almost always a good thing.

His example doesn't actually show that pf1 game difficulty is severely flawed, as he has taken away all the flawed bits, but nothing wrong with playing this way with his kids. It's still early maths, literacy, cooperation and theatre skills.

Thank you.

My intention was to emphasize that either system has their merits and that it's okay to favor either over the other but all that depends just on the personal taste. PF1 and PF2 advocates have shared very valid points. The only thing we have to keep in mind is, because one system appears to be more accessible to me doesn't mean that has to be the same for everyone else.

Belisar wrote:

Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept.

Wow. Speaking as a player, I doubt I could ever permit such a thing. If a GM floated that idea I'd be like "I'm sitting this one out."

I'm glad it works for your group, but it just takes away too much player autonomy for my tastes. Leveling up for me is half the fun!

If playing with adults I would completely agree. My 6 yrs old daughters are happy telling me their character concepts with cute vivid descriptions and I choose the feats accordingly. They don't have the ambitions in their age to handcraft their chars themselves. With age, they will surely learn to.

Levelling up and choosing your character of choice is the fun in PF1. I mean it’s cool you’re playing it with your family but you have taken away the funnest part of the game. By restricting content and levelling them yourself that really takes away the fun parts of PF1. I still don’t understand why you don’t go with 5e. You can by default get that OP feel and you can let them dip their toes into making character choices. 5e advancement does have very limited advancement but at least there is some with feats vs abilities and the level 3 choice. Plus the game is far more rules light and easy to run as you won’t have to simplify the many clunky systems 3e/PF1 has. But I suppose it’s a good way to guarantee having a PF1 group to GM.

Even my wife (to a degree) and my eldest one are happy that I do their work and mechanically convert their character concepts into numbers and feats and I am happy to oblige them. After all I want to lure them into the hobby. I am sure with advanced player mastery, they will take over that part themselves in time willingly.

If you have a six year old why are you not playing 5e? Then you can be more like a hero and not have the years of complex rules interactions and thousands of feats. I don’t see any six year old spending the time needed to feel like a hero by reading dozens of splat books. I think the decision to DM PF1 says more about you than it does about kids wanting to play as complex a game as PF1. You could have just as easily slapped an elite template on your kids characters in PF2 or just played 5e. That you decided to choose PF1 a game that in no way is attractive to little kids is puzzling.

They love the PF1 Bestiaries and encounters with Goblins, Orcs and the like. They know what they have to add to the D20 and it's a blast for them. I of course narrate the encounters accordingly in a way they find it engaging. PF1 is actually not that difficult if you you limit the content to the main core books. Level advancement is something I of course do for them, based on their character concept. Knowing their characters I also offer them choices what they like to do, so they don't have to juggle with all those feats and options.

In the end it's about the preferences of the group which game style you apply. I mostly play with my family including 6 yrs old kids. They can handle PF1 easily enough with some benevolent guidance and thus feeling like a hero is one of the main intentions. PF2 seems to rely heavily on intricate team work. As mentioned, this is rather a hindrance when you play with young kids.

To each its own, it depends on the situation and I think it's valid to prefer one over the other. So no big deal, I guess.

Also, a thread started yesterday,

Is it just me, or is it way too easy to get hit in this edition? that has many people explaining which tactics are necessary in PF2 and how some PF1 strategies no longer work.

I actually share your impression. PF2 seem to have high hit point pools because the chars are supposed to be hit with a higher frequency and more damage. It's a constant attrition you couldn't overcome if PF2 hadn't those myriad options to quickly heal people up easily.

This is indeed a very interesting topic I closely follow, especially the pros and cons.
I come from 3.5 and jumped on the PF2 train when the playtesting started. Many concepts of PF2 sounded very promising and I really like the 3 actions economy and the wealth of feats for customization in theory.
But then when I played AoA as a thief I ran into some issues. You really have to consider the traits of everything, is it an action, a spell or whatever, it's very easy to overlook details. And especially as a thief I was crushed under the mountain of feats thrown at me at every level up, especially the skill feets. As I progressed into the two digit levels, I actually had all the skill feats I envisioned for my character concept and was forced to choose skill feats as a filler I wasn't interested in from then on, as all skill, class, ancestry, skill feats, general feats... are very segregated from each other with nigh no option to tap into other types of feats if there is nothing interesting in the feat type I was presented with. So to me personally the abundance of choice of feats in PF2 turned into what some others already mentioned as an illusion of choice comparing to PF1.
Funny anectode, when I started the Wrath of the Righteous PC game I took a deeper look at PF1 character advancement and am now buying every PF1 HC I can lay my hands onto.

And subbed. Great work!

The feat grants 2 cantrips to a rogue. The neat thing is there is no prerequisite.
Are those cantrips still heightened up to half the character level? And are those cantrips not exhausted, meaning I can cast them as often as I like?

Belisar wrote:

Actually I plan to take on the Age of Ashes AP with only two players (wife and son). How would you approach this endeavor? I was even pondering the idea to run them through the plague stone beginner adventure and then let both start at level 4 in the AP. Is this idea practicable?

Think about halving encounter numbers, and severely reducing boss power level. Possibly have a friendly NPC or two that you run with them. Maybe a friendly professor alchemist that hands them elixirs of healing at the start of the day and has a good medicine check, but who prefers to hide in combat?

I'm assuming they aren't up to running two characters a piece?

They are rather "beginners" so they should better focus on one character each, I think.

Actually I plan to take on the Age of Ashes AP with only two players (wife and son). How would you approach this endeavor? I was even pondering the idea to run them through the plague stone beginner adventure and then let both start at level 4 in the AP. Is this idea practicable?

I get it how Cantrip work and how innate spells work. But I am still a bit confused about innate cantrips. The cantrip entry on pg. 300 of the CRB states that cantrips are not exhausted. The innate entry two pages later states that innate spells are usually once-per-day, but innate cantrips are cast at will.

Now my question would be, are innate cantrips once per day or non exhausted per cantrip definition? Personally I would go with the cantrip entry, but is there an official clarification on that?

I have been developing a Star Wars campaign setting with my home group and other people on the forums and I have finally compiled it into a homebrewery document to make it look nicer and more organized. Here is a link to the homebrewery site (it only works when opened in Chorme): Star Wars Campaign Setting.

And here is a link to the PDF hosted on my Google Drive in case the homebrewery site is buggy. (The caveat is that the file is apparently too large to preview, it must be downloaded to view): Star Wars Campaign Setting PDF.

The Star Wars Campaign Setting includes:

Chapter 1: Galactic Encounters

• Adversaries: The Galactic Empire, Beasts, The Confederacy of Independent Systems, and Fringe Dwellers
  
• Force Vergences - Location Grafts for planets/locations strong in the force
  
• Worlds in Rebellion - Location Grafts for planets/locations to give them a unique feel
  
• Duty - A mechanic to represent the various "jobs" within the Rebellion and how a character performs that job. This is taken from the Age of Rebellion book by Fantasy Flight games.
  
• Now This is Podracing - Podracing / Swoop Racing Rules (a slight change to the chase rules given in the book)

Chapter 2: Starships
Imperial Ships, Rebel Ships, Other Ships, and Vehicles

Chapter 3: Character Options

• 26 Species
  
• Archetypes: Bounty Hunter, Force Adept, Imperial Inquisitor, Mandalorian Warrior, Military Officer, Rebel Recruiter, and Squadron Leader
  
• New Feats
  
• New Skill Uses for Computers and Mysticism

Note: Some Adversaries and Archetypes will refer to (or benefit from) the materials in my other document the Jedi Class.

PLUG: These websites were a huge help in making this document:...

Just love your endeavor! Did you do any additions to your Star Wars conversion, yet?

Huzzuh!! ahem....Hazzoh!!! *cough* Hezzah!!!
Damn, am late anyways! XD

My books aren't here yet. They're still otw. So when do the PDFs drop? Noon tomorrow? Midnight tonight?

Hopefully midnight GMT! :D

As I actually play with only two players (wive and son, me as GM), I wonder if I could level them up to 4th level with the Plagestone adventure and then start the Age of Ashes AP with those 2 4th level chars instead of 4 new 1st level chars?

Any advice on that? Is it doable? Can Age of Ashes be easily scaled with starting chars higher than 1st level if the party is that small?

Hazzuh!!! ....Huzzuh!!! ....meh...Huzzah!!!

Hazzuh!! ...ahem...Hazzuh!!!! Huzzuh!!!!

meh...am late anyways :/

Can't wait to get my hands on these goodies.

As I actually play with only two players (wive and son), I wonder if I could level them up to 4th level with the Plagestone adventure and then start the Age of Ashes AP with those 2 4th level chars instead of 4 new 1st level chars?

Any suggestion if that is doable and can be easily scaled accordingly?

Being european I sadly have to wait until August for receiving my copies. But I have a nagging curiosity about what's stated in the subject and hope for some insight of anybody being lucky to already own the books.
In the playtest increased weapon damage was tied to the quality of the weapon (if my memory serves me right or was it by enhancement runes?). There was some discussion about playtesters that increased weapon damage might be better tied to the level of the character to display the growing prowess with growing experience than only to the weapon.

How is this handled in the final product? Is increased weapon damage by additional damage dice still tied to the weapon or was this altered or removed completely?

Thanks in advance! =)

Damn, Paizo is stealing my money right out of my pockets. After peroordering all the 2e stuff now it's Kingmaker I came to value from the PC game. Woe unto them if I go bancrupt!

So I'm wating for "Kingmaker - The Movie" as the foundation of the KCU. With Peter Dinklage as Linzi and Gal Gadot as Amiri!

Belisar wrote:

Thanks for the ideas so far. It came to my mind that maybe a pack of dogs (either 2 or 3 when there are 2 PC) could fill the role?

Maybe you can use dogs (or other reasonable animal) with animal companion rules. Then Handle Animal almost not needed. And the animals will grow with level.

Not very useful if some of your players have class with animal companion. Turns out somehow redundant.

I will have to look that up, thanks. One of the PCs will be a fighter, the other a cleric.

Thanks for the ideas so far. It came to my mind that maybe a pack of dogs (either 2 or 3 when there are 2 PC) could fill the role?

If I wanted to start a standard 4 PCs 1st level adventure with only 2 PC (due to lack of other players in my area), how would you adjust their level to be still up to the task?
For instance, if I wanted to play the beginner box adventure with only two PCs, what would you advise me to scale PC wise without modifying the adventure itself too much? Could 2 3rd level chars be up to the task for usually 4 1st level chars?

If your character starts as a wizard and later decides to reject all magic and spend their life mastering the sword, they still end up with 9-th level casting and worse skill at weapons than the character who started as Fighter and later on spent all their time mastering the arcane arts. And vice versa of course.

If it's the intention to completely reject magic from a narrative perspective, starting a mage nonetheless will always take you in a disadvantegous position.

Personally I love the opportunity to multiclass and still be able to reap the benefits from the primary class, for instance as you mentioned multiclassing into fighter and still later be able to cast 9th level spells.

As I see it, the primary class is not a class, you spontaneously start at level 1 at the beginning of your adventuring career without any experience and learning before. You rather have had to train for years as a wizard apprentice or a military conscript to start as a level 1 wizard or a level 1 fighter. To me a level 1 character is not one that decided to spontaneously be a 1st wizard without having a decent amount of training to back it up.

If you later choose to multiclass into a completely new career, you cannot expect to gain all the advantages of the new class from the minute you choose to delve into unlike those who trained for years to reach level 1 in that class.
So it is just logical that a char who chooses to change profession later in life will always be in disatvantage to those who chose it as the primary class from the start. And this disadvantge is simply the lack of years long training.
Just my 2 cents.

...I might still write down a very early "bridging" version for those who just can't wait.

Call me one of those. =)

The Free RPG Day module "We Be Heroes?" will likely be something of a PF2 preview/quickstart. Mind that due to printing times it maybe will reflect the final ruleset, maybe not.

Quite what I was looking for. Nonetheless it will be difficult to wait until July 1st.

Or are you talking something like the beginner box, which given all the time they are putting into the core book, I'd imagine they wouldn't want to give away free piece of the beginner box for free, before they release the core book. If anything the beginner box would probably be something they write after they get feedback on the actual core rule book and its chapter 1, and any potential errata.

Maybe sdomething like a beginner box (I would gladly pay for it) ahead of the Corebooks like FFG did with their SW RPG would've been great indeed.

I preordered all the 2nd edition stuff (every single item and oh boy, my wife will beat me for the expenses :D ) and am giddy with excitement.
Now it's still a couple of months ahead until August and the latest update of the playtest material is apparently far from being close to the final product.

Is there a chance that there will be a kind of quickstart adventure before August to sweeten the time of waiting? (One can dream...)

I see these references about 1.7 in the forums. I have yet to see any release for a 1.7. Where are people getting this info to talk about ? Is it listed somewhere?

If there is a 1.7 I'd love to get my hands on as well! =)

At one point the group I play with, being a bunch of engineers decided to write the formula out for later use (Programming it ;P )

B = S (L+R) + C + I
Moving that out to:
B = S + L + R + C + I
would not change much, makes it simple to read though.

S = (B - C - I) / (L + R)

XD

And in addition, you get the feeling that higher level chars can handle low level threats way better, which I call the Conan-Effect. I want my lvl10 PC to feel significantly more powerful than a bunch of lvl1 critters. That's were +1/lvl truly excels.

I think there are more than enough feat slots to allow for plenty of customization. We really don't need more feats... we need better ones instead.

I would prefer for feats to be designed to scale as opposed to being designed to be taken in chains. Instead of taking three or four class feats to unlock all of your multiclass spellslots, you should only be taking one. The same goes for a combat style. They're the biggest reason customization bottlenecks, as you can only invest in one chain per feat-silo, and the class feats are far-and-away the best silo. If you cannot come up with at least a dozen feats for a given class or archetype without resorting to a feat-chain, it doesn't deserve to exist. Nor would I count any of the 'pick-a-thing-from-this-other-list' feats either, but that's just being picky because they're an uncreative design.

Finally, fill out the remainder of the (now much shorter) list with feats that let a player actually do something; because negligable static benefits in specific circumstances make terrible feats.

And putting those "chain feats" into a single scaling feat would prevent that you have the feeling to miss something. So literally, less feats, less feat slots but way more meaning to each single feat. That would be a great take on the feat concept =)

Hey there folks,

There are some ways that we can look at this, but generally speaking "moar feats" is not always the right answer. We are currently looking at ways that the archetypes might become a bit more broad, speaking to more than just your class feats. This might not change much for some archetypes that want to pull from that resource, but for others it could make a world of difference.

We are still investigating.

Same opinion here.

... The most common suggestion is to switch to "Arcanist casting", where you pick the spells you can use in those slots, but don't assign them to slots. So if you wind up need one of those spells twice, you simply use the slots and don't have to have prepared a second one in advance. That certainly helps, especially with spells like Restoration where you really don't know how many you will need because it depends on how many people get hit by problematic status afflictions. I can tell you I really hate to have to tell someone "you're stuck with that condition today because I didn't prepare a third Restoration", and they don't particularly like it either. IMO, this would help quite a lot since even if I get one selection wrong at a given level, I can still use that slot for the two other spells and thus get some value out of it.

I also wonder if we could go even further and ditch spell slots entirely, in favor of a single casting pool. You get to prepare some spells, and casting them takes from the pool based on the spell level. So if I happen to end up needing eight 2nd level spells and zero 5th level spells, I just go ahead and cast them on the fly from the pool and that's how it goes. This also solves Heighten weirdness, since you simply pay the extra cost when you cast to get the Heightened effect. This is obviously a much more drastic change and I can see some people not liking it, but it would also address the problem.
...

This is my main gripe with the Wizard/Cleric/Druid approach of preparing spells in specific spell slots. This way, many of the niche spells will never be actively prepared to not block spell slots for the more commonly used spells.

A spell points pool would be most flexible of course.

Looks better but I would prefer a different approach than 1/day items just being usable more often with Focus. For example, maybe the Bracers of Missile Deflection could be used all day long for a +1 circumstance bonus but if you use a Focus point, you can get a +2 bonus. That way, there is less to track. This is doubly true since its an Invested item.

Anywho, thanks for this. I appreciate you guys being so responsive. (Goes back to reading through Resonance stuff).

Exactly dito.

Resonance/Focus as pools to invest/supercharge item is a good approach. And I guess it is fun, as you are trying to find out (have to still playtest though).
But less book keeping for the rest regarding magic items would be very helpful to speed gameplay up.

For some people, sure, playtesting isn't for them. For others, they probably simply feel like they're not being heard. So... you come on here to voice this, and are told that, outside of the surveys, why should they listen to this "minority" of people on forums... They're told this BY GAME DEVS as well. It's a good way to disenfranchise a large portion of your player base, in my opinion.

EDIT: Note, I'm speaking towards the structured feedback survey. Yes, you can write whatever you want in the freeform boxes, but there's no reason to believe that that's any more useful than posting on the forums, and it's impossible to get feedback on your statements there.

I understand your point but one should try at least. If your voice is not heard by the devs and the final product is not for you, you did try to convince them at least.

Belisar wrote:

Mark Carlson 255 wrote:

I know of 18-24 groups that have had the same experience as you have. Most of the groups do a fair amount of testing of new rules or have GM's and players looking to create new games.

Honestly?

I personally know 122 to 231 groups and they all enjoy the Playtest so far.
It's okay to not like the playtest but this fantasy novel you bring here is quite amusing and made my day.

It's not like the guy owns a game store and lets groups come to play or simply chats with his most frequent customers, or there's no chance he moderates a Meetup group in a reasonably large town or city, nor is there any real possibility that is a member of a RPG club at a large university or some such.

It's just fantasy?

It's this onesidedness in his statement. If he had mentioned that part of the groups were opposed or unsure, I would have bought it but this total exclusion of any opposing attitude seems a bit unlikely. This would imply that those 100+ people exclusively refuse the playtests unanimously and this is very implausible. Verily so.

I know of 18-24 groups that have had the same experience as you have. Most of the groups do a fair amount of testing of new rules or have GM's and players looking to create new games.

Honestly?

Both groups I play in enjoy the playtest so far. To each its own, I guess.

Just to be clear: I am overall quite positive on the playtest, and optimistic about its final implementation. I think the devs have done a very fine job, and are continuing to admirably put to use feedback and hard data.

There are only a bare handful of sticking points that stop me from saying I would adopt PF2e as it currently stands.

It's honestly pretty silly to count favorites (which aren't supposed to be upvotes anyway) on forum posts in a forum specifically about giving criticism.

Amen. :)

WatersLethe wrote:

It's honestly pretty silly to count favorites (which aren't supposed to be upvotes anyway)

If people use favorites as upvotes then functionally they become upvotes and you can use their number to count effective upvotes, the only difference being said upvotes are in favorites form

As I mentioned above, the post with the most "upvotes" by far is that of Jason Buhlman, so your theory about the majority hating PF2 like you do is quite preposterous.

Honeslty, I've said my piece in other threads, so I'm not going to say it again. Let me offer up the following data. In this thread, looking at only the first page of posts and ignoring neutral ones and repeats from the same individuals, I saww the following:

Negative posts: 11 individuals, With 165 likes, an average of 15 likes per negative post.
Positive posts: 5 individuals, With 37 likes, an average of 7.5 likes per positive post.

My message in short: Instead of repeatedly trying to justify your decisions about PF2, consider the significant negative feedback and decide:
1. If you don't care, you're going to make the game you want to make, whether or not other people like it.
2. If you do care, and you're willing to listen to that feedback, even if it means making significant changes to the underlying system.

Finally, just because I think it's important to say, you are supposedly making Pathfinder 2nd Edition. You've stated you want it to feel like the game we know and love. Question: If you took the world of Golarion, and played in it using 5e rules, would that feel closer to Pathfinder 1st edition than Golarion using 2nd edition rules?

I'm not saying big changes aren't good, particularly where things are significantly broken, but if you're going to make a different game and market it as a second edition, that's extremely misleading. As someone else had said, it's not that the cake tastes bad, it's just that it's not really cake, even though it's marketed as such.

Honestly, the most upvoted post is that of Jason Buhlman on page one with 55 votes. You could presume that those upvotes come from people rather in favour of PF2, so your "Positive posts: 5 individuals, With 37 likes, an average of 7.5 likes per positive post." is a very shacky assumption at best.

Porridge wrote:

HWalsh wrote:

I mean, seriously, it is all but impossible to gimp a character unless you completely drop the ball on stats needed to use the weapon.

So, I’m not sure what you have in mind. But if you look at the expected damage calculations done here, you’ll see that (for example) a generic ranged combatant who uses a crossbow or a sling will do significantly less damage than they would using a composite shortbow. (In the “8-to-hit” version of the calculation, the composite shortbow user will do almost double the expected damage of a crossbow or sling user.)

Simple vs Martial weapon could be why. The Crossbow has several disadvantages compared to the Short Bow, perhaps too many (it does have better range though). The sling is in the same predicament. It is possible they need to be reviewed (I am not sure why the sling has a reload of 1 while the Shortbow is 0, myself).

If you are in a class that gets Martial Weapons, you should probably choose the composite shortbow. If you only get simple weapons, well then you probably aren't using the weapon all that much anyway? I don't think it is gimp to use a crossbow as a backup/range weapon if your class is not proficient with Composite shortbows. You should have other class features that make up for that lack of martial proficiency.

A Ranger who uses the Crossbow does come out a feat behind to only be almost as good as if they just chose the Comp Shortbow. I don't think that is gimp, but it surely is weaker unnecessarily.

Actually especially regarding the crossbow, this was historicaly not a weapon with much dedication in mind. Bowmen were "expensive" to train, it took years over years of training to train a decent bowman while crossbows were ranged weapons you could put into the hands of fairly inexperienced soldiers, it was never intended to be the weapon of choice of ranged specialists. Experienced bowmen where always superior to crossbow wielding men. That's why the crossbow is a simple ranged weapon.

Belisar wrote:

Alchemaic wrote:

Belisar wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I guess this particular concept is not so tough in PF2, but I think it would feel like a pretty garbage character. If I want to get faster crossbow reload on a cleric it's gonna be a mess and will probably lose most cleric abilities in the way.

This is because clerics are not mainly about being expert sharpshooters? It is doable but it tied to costs. Wanting to be as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character all the same sounds like a contradiction. At least if you create a cleric with a fighter multiclass archetype you do not lose any spell progression like you would by multiclassing in PF1 where you would also forgo cleric class abilities.

I don't feel like "a cleric who can reload a crossbow faster" equals "as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character".

But then I didn't find any feat in the Rulebook to reload quicker than usual for non cleric classes, not even amongst the fighter feats. So why should a cleric be more capable of reloading a crossbow quicker than a dedicated fighter?

Better question, why can't a Fighter reload a crossbow quicker?

Well, that is a valid question I sadly cannot answer. Maybe if Paizo expands on feats in the final product, there will be a rapid reload.

Alchemaic wrote:

Belisar wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I guess this particular concept is not so tough in PF2, but I think it would feel like a pretty garbage character. If I want to get faster crossbow reload on a cleric it's gonna be a mess and will probably lose most cleric abilities in the way.

This is because clerics are not mainly about being expert sharpshooters? It is doable but it tied to costs. Wanting to be as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character all the same sounds like a contradiction. At least if you create a cleric with a fighter multiclass archetype you do not lose any spell progression like you would by multiclassing in PF1 where you would also forgo cleric class abilities.

I don't feel like "a cleric who can reload a crossbow faster" equals "as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character".

Me neither. If a base cleric in PF2e can pick up a bow and be effective with it, as many people have suggested they can, then Paizo is obviously able to hit a balance between "useful" and "as good as a fighter". I can easily imagine there being a scale between the two.

Furthermore, they could design combat feats that grant you bonuses with a weapon style that aren't totally numeric. It'd be tricky, but a handful of trick shot feats would technically fulfill my requirement for someone to be distinguished as an archer more than their same class peers.

There could be prestige dedications later in a cleric slpatbook or class feats for the deity’s favored weapon later on. That would be reasonable.

Belisar wrote:

ChibiNyan wrote:

I guess this particular concept is not so tough in PF2, but I think it would feel like a pretty garbage character. If I want to get faster crossbow reload on a cleric it's gonna be a mess and will probably lose most cleric abilities in the way.

This is because clerics are not mainly about being expert sharpshooters? It is doable but it tied to costs. Wanting to be as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character all the same sounds like a contradiction. At least if you create a cleric with a fighter multiclass archetype you do not lose any spell progression like you would by multiclassing in PF1 where you would also forgo cleric class abilities.

I don't feel like "a cleric who can reload a crossbow faster" equals "as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character".

But then I didn't find any feat in the Rulebook to reload quicker than usual for non cleric classes, not even amongst the fighter feats. So why should a cleric be more capable of reloading a crossbow quicker than a dedicated fighter?

I guess this particular concept is not so tough in PF2, but I think it would feel like a pretty garbage character. If I want to get faster crossbow reload on a cleric it's gonna be a mess and will probably lose most cleric abilities in the way.

This is because clerics are not mainly about being expert sharpshooters? It is doable but it tied to costs. Wanting to be as good as a single fighter and single cleric, but in one character all the same sounds like a contradiction. At least if you create a cleric with a fighter multiclass archetype you do not lose any spell progression like you would by multiclassing in PF1 where you would also forgo cleric class abilities.

Cyouni wrote:

Point of order: general/skill feats effectively existed in PF1 as well, just it was rare to see someone take them because they were by and large worse than taking more class features.

Very true. Which also served to reduce choice in PF1e because you were pressured to take the more impactful combat feats.

That's why if PF2e can loosen up Class Feats (sort them into larger level brackets, for example) and make general feats more impactful (by introducing combat feats), I think PF2e will be well positioned to hit most of the good points of PF1e *and* provide skill customization through skill feats too.

I would be all on board for that system.

But here is the issue, if you solely make combat feats free for all to choose, you take distinct capabilities from the the fighter class whose focus lies in melee and ranged combats while iconic abilities from other classes like spellcasting or rogue skills still remain gated behind those classes.

Dreamtime2k9 wrote:

Your choice in pathfinder 1e would already let you draw from a bigger pool; not only because there was more content but also because you were free to make your own choice in what type of feat you wanted for your general feats.

While I personally like the distinction of class feats (as choosable class abilities rather than fixed abilities), general and skill feats I agree that the pools of those feats are smaller compared to PF1. I guess expanding those pools might help supporting the new approach in PF2.

I tend to agree. Still this is just playtest material and I guess/hope there will be substancially more feats in the final product.

Belisar wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Belisar wrote:

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.

Not agreeing does make the other party dishonest.

Okay then, Vic, let numbers speak why it is dishonest in an objective way. The PF1 fighter has "tons of feats", from level 1 to 20 he gains 21 feats. The PF2 fighter, though, gets 31 feats, that's 10 feats in addition to what a PF1 fighter gets. Even if PF1 classes get more fixed abilities, the amount of choices in PF2 is way superior. In fact in PF2 I can decide myself to chose the abilities while PF1 simply lacks this choice. Before this background, yes, claiming that PF1 is more flexible is objectively dishonest.

it gets 31 things called feats..a lot of which go on buying back ancestry abilities you used to get baked in, and on the really lackluster general and skill feats, so claiming that a Playtest Feat is the same as a PF1 feat, is to use your own words, 'very dishonest'

PF1 and PF2 ought to be distinct games, PF2 is not intended to be a mere PF1 clone with some minor tweaks. So comparing PF1 feats with their PF2 "pendants" is comparing lemons to apples.

Belisar wrote:

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.

Not agreeing does make the other party dishonest.

Okay then, Vic, let numbers speak why it is dishonest in an objective way. The PF1 fighter has "tons of feats", from level 1 to 20 he gains 21 feats. The PF2 fighter, though, gets 31 feats, that's 10 feats in addition to what a PF1 fighter gets. Even if PF1 classes get more fixed abilities, the amount of choices in PF2 is way superior. In fact in PF2 I can decide myself to chose the abilities while PF1 simply lacks this choice. Before this background, yes, claiming that PF1 is more flexible is objectively dishonest.

So instead of, say, playing a Druid who spends some feats on useful Two Handed Weapon stuff as in PF1e, I am playing a partial druid who trades out what should be flavorful class abilities for skill with the weapon.

No, not really. You overlook that in PF2 when you multiclass by multiclass archetypes your druid spell progression still advances with every level. This is not the case when you multiclass in PF1 where your spell progression is on hold when taking some fighter levels for instance.

So this is just another myth, in fact multiclassing chars in PF1 are way more partial class characters than in PF2.
Same is the myth about the superior flexibility in PF1, many mention. In PF1 the classes have level fixed class abilities, where in PF2 you can choose your class abilities amongst several class feats.

Those claims about the superior flexibility in char advancement in PF1 are very dishonest.