So who hear still playing Pathfinder 1st Ed, play together in person(not online) with your gaming group?
Me. We have one player who plays remotely, but he started in-person and moved away. We use Roll20, but 4/5 of the players are in the same room.
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A party without a healer is viable if the DM is prepared for that. They have to change the way they write/prepare adventures so that meaningful combat comes at a time when players will have an opportunity to spend days in recovery, or perhaps go through lots of consumable healing. If the DM is running canned material, like an AP, then the material likely assumes all the bases are covered I suspect the DM will feel a healer is necessary, and for some adventures, specifically a cleric. If the players don't want to play a healer, then the DM has two choices: (1) allow one player to make a 2nd character to be a healbot, (2) attach a healbot to the party as a trustworthy NPC.
Starting in early 1978, the Pathfinder RPG lineage for me is... D&D 1e > 2e > 3e > 3.5e > 4e > PF1 > PF2 > PF1 and D&D 5e. Along the way there were (and still are) lots and lots of other games. Honorable mentions: Dragon Quest, Champions, Thieve's Guild, Chivalry & Sorcery, Powers & Perils, Pendragon, Privateers and Gentlemen, Boot Hill, Justice Incorporated, Danger International, Traveller, the Everquest RPG, and more.
At our last gaming session, my group had a discussion about being so frustrated with the Hero Lab Online experience that maybe we should go back to PF1 or even switch to 5E D&D. I do find it odd that you might change games over it, but I do admit that when one of my games bailed on PF2 and switched to D&D 5e several folks remarked how much better they liked D&D Beyond. I find the homebrew features to be appealing. My other game still uses Hero Lab Classic for PF1 and loves it. Again, we've been able to add custom content to HLC, which is a nice feature.
Was this for me?
We played PF2 for around 18-20 months counting the playtest. Familiarity was achieved. Folks are now getting 2 attacks in 5e. We're still pretty new to that system so I wouldn't say we're familiar with it yet and certainly not ready to get into time studies. That game has 6-7 players: I'd say 4 veterans and 2-3 casual players.
With PF1 a house rule had already changed iterative attacks into +5 damage to try to keep combat times reasonable. This was in response to players getting bored waiting on their turn. It worked for us. When we switched to playing PF2, my observation was that the system was easier for our casual players to understand, but player actions again took too long and folks were getting bored. Multiple attacks and decisions related to the third action extended the time. Bored players will do things like start distracting conversations or start surfing the web and tune out. We didn't notice it during the playtest because rules discussions were the point. I wondered if changing the 3-action system to a 1-action system (Each round you get 1 action) would both address boredom and better interleave the actions, but we never tried it because we switched to 5e, instead. I doubt a 1-action system would ultimately be popular, but I'm not afraid to experiment.
So who is still playing first ed? Are you currently playing? If so, what are you playing(AP, Module, Home brew, etc.)and ...? I'm in two regular games. The 1st game stayed with PF1. Its a multi-DM game with a shared world and we rotate which DM is active. Its a game with continuity going back to D&D 2e. We didn't see a path to PF2 or 5e and we're satisfied with PF1. DM1 - Starting Mummy's Mask book 1
The 2nd went from PF1 to PF2 to 5e where it looks like we might stay. Oddly enough, it's 5e in Golarion.
What do people know about the success / popularity of 2E so far? I can only convey what I can see. Two games: Game 1 was running PF1. Took part in the PF2 playtest. Initially went to PF2, but we didn't care for it. Now trying 5e. Game 2 was running PF1, saw PF2 wasn't compatible and stayed with PF1. The last I checked, there's no organized play for PF2 at the local game store. We're not a huge city: ~20,000 permanent residents and ~20,000 university students. There are all sorts of games that take place in the dorms and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some PF2 in there.
> Is continuity between editions, in regards to how mechanics
It depends on the game. I participate in two of them. One game plays through an AP and then throws the characters away. It doesn't need any continuity outside of that AP. My other game has a long history from decades of play, lots of homebrew material and many characters. Continuity is a major appeal to the game. Yes, in that game it matters to me.
My question is, why bother converting everything? After this long, I'm sure you're not still playing the same characters you created in AD&D 1E. I don't know about the original poster, but that assumption is wrong in my local Monday game. There are characters who have been around since the beginning that still make appearances or get pulled back into the mix. Older characters also tend to be higher level, with with more abilities and items that make for more contact with the game system. My local Tuesday game can, and did, what you advocated and always makes new characters at the conclusion of an AP. One interesting difference between the two games is that few people in the Tuesday game even remember the names of their previous character since it was essentially discarded. But the Monday game has a rich history and when an old character makes an appearance it can be like running into an old friend.
You're not alone. One of the games I play in (Mondays) is also a very long-term continuing game where characters established years ago make appearances. We value a high degree of continuity. We went from AD&D 2 -> 3 -> 3.5 -> PF1. The move from 3.5 to PF1 involved painful conversions. Going from PF1 to PF2 is a non-starter for that game. Another game I'm in (Tuesdays) tends to play APs. When they're done, the characters are forgotten. That game is trying PF2. Its too early to say if we'll stick with it. There's some interest in going to 5e, instead.
Essentially, the problem is this: Hey! You've show Paizo an opportunity for a 5th result... when the roll exactly matches the DC. Crit Success = +10 and beyond
Barely hit? Shields soak 2x hardness? :)
Tiny screen? I use a laptop. At one game I even have a 2nd monitor. Yes, these are in-person games. One of them just embraces automation perhaps more fully than typical games. Having the program apply all the modifiers, know prerequisites, quick references... its just a time saver all the way around and I'm old enough, and established enough, to have spare cash for such things. I should probably note that Hero Lab Online hasn't been very good with PF2, though I'm hopeful for improvements. When at a college game club, I would often enter other player's characters into Hero Lab for them. About 90% of the time they had made mistakes that a pencil/paper person just made because they were human. Many times the player just left abilities/powers on the table. I'm kind of waiting for a primarily software company (like Roll20 or Lone Wolf) to release a game entirely through applications. I don't really need books anymore.
1) It depends on my character conception. If its close to something the Devs envisioned, then it takes me about an hour... Amending what I said prior... My friend asked me to whip up a Healbot NPC today. Just picking from what was presented to me as options, with the general goal of being a strong healer, it took me around 15 minutes to have a mostly complete frame, around 10 minutes of what-if'ing and looking things up (mostly feat and skill descriptions), and 5 minutes to put the finishing touches on things like equipment. ... so if I start with little to no character conception, it goes pretty fast.
1) It depends on my character conception. If its close to something the Devs envisioned, then it takes me about an hour. If the conception isn't well supported by the rules, then much longer assuming it is possible. My first non-playtest character is a Shadow Weaver concept, with various Rogue and Illusionist goals. It took about 10 hours to settle on a character after what-if'ing around 8 combinations of dedications/multiclassing. None of the combinations was an obvious winner. They all missed the conception in various ways. 2) From the playtest, higher level characters generally took me 2-3 hours. I suffered from a lot of analysis paralysis. 3) Hero Lab Online.
Are combatants aware that a given opponent can perform an Attack of Opportunity? This is a fairly important piece of information, and the rules do not clearly state such a thing. I think its okay to leave this in the realm of a DM discretion. I don't know that all reactions have to be obvious, by I would generally run them that way when the reaction is clearly within the realm of physical possibility or is a well known legend. So I would make AOO's known and many creature reactions too. We experienced surprise reactions during the playtest and the table largely hated them. That said, the DM partly brought this on by repeatedly touting PF2 as a game that encouraged mobility. If you spend time encouraging people to move and then spring surprise reactions on them because they moved, players can become bitter.
Yes, I love the native Hero Lab (Classic). It was expensive to get all/most of the sources, but it was quite flexible and convenient. Hero Lab Online (HLO) wasn't very stable or reliable all through the playtest and hasn't been any better since launch. I'm sure they're scrambling to implement all of PF2. The continued online cost isn't going to break the bank, but the quality of the service is so poor that right now I have no plans to renew once my current subscription runs out.
Does anyone think it would have any major effect if these were removed? If removed should they be replaced with something else? Hero Points aren't new to gaming. My preference over the years has been to remove them and not replace them. I don't see a major effect in dropping them. Its one less rule to worry about.
I have no reason to dispute the 2% observation. I was only in one playtest and no single game could ever be representative of the whole. Alas, I personally have only my observations/anecdote on which to use. I suspect we happened to have a good class mix, plus the change to reduce the availability of Clerical healing came after we had played that adventure. The death rules combined with Hero Points, to me, look like good indicators of how lethal it will be. That is, both systems allow players plenty of opportunities to avoid death. That's neither good nor bad. It may, or may not, be what the DM wants for their story, but fortunately all of that is easily changed with house rules.
So, how much dangerous the world is for PCs now? If our local Playtest experience is a gauge, we didn't find PF2 to be very deadly, but I cannot account for DM fudging. Folks at the table appeared to hoard Hero Points to use only with the dying rules and then rarely needed to Spend Hero Points. It seemed like we went through 6 revisions of the dying rules and they were all really forgiving. I recall one of the Playtest adventures included a test to see how long the characters would last through a number of waves. We ran out of waves and still had resources left. I also recall an early adventure where there was a risk of a total party wipe. Part of that was our inexperience with the system, but part of it relates to damage being applied widely across many characters and if those responsible for healing are downed. I assume the final PF2 includes some tweaks.
I see. As a rule I don't ever use automation. Partially because I don't trust them and I've had errors cripple the pacing of games that I've played in. But also because I want people to learn the mechanics of how their characters work, and I've found that having he sheet do all the math for you is a potential barrier to that. Your statement about it making it harder to homebrew deities gives me yet another reason, as I hadn't considered that before. I certainly understand. My friends prefer the time savings that automation affords. My preference is actually for simpler systems where automation isn't needed, mostly because I want to house rule and homebrew and automation has been a significant barrier to that. I'm not saying you're wrong about errors, but my observations have been different. Very few people were able to manually create a PF1 character and get it right. My observation comes from a game club of college students who couldn't afford automation, but did like having a nice character sheet. I'd take their manual work and enter it in for them... and inevitably find a missed opportunity or something taken in error.
I've taken the time to read up on the playtest materials. For the most part I like what I saw, and from what I've seen from the spoilers and reveals on the forums things will only get better. But then I read over the materials for the Clerics and I realized that Pathfinder is rather married to the Galorian setting. Homebrewing PF1 provides some insight that applies to PF2. Dieties was a challenge if your players are using automation for their characters. It can be a lot of work to provide Hero Lab files for your own deities and domains. I kind of punted and made all of the Golarian deities be names for different aspects of my 3 true deities. Homebrewing classes provides a similar dilemma. If your players are using automation, like Hero Lab, its a lot of work to make your own class. Homebrewing a race is pretty simple on paper. Automation, again. PF2 doesn't make any of this easier, nor more difficult. In the playtest I observed folks still wanted to use automation because character generation was still complex enough to be fraught with error when manually attempted. Hero Lab Online even appears to lack features that made some house rules easy to support.
I recall an encounter in the Age of Worms where the main opponent had a number of Liches as minions and that our party effectively dealt with the Liches in a round or two before focusing on the boss du jour. This was disappointing and serves as an example of how I think the combination of character progression and the bestiary make Paizo stories jump the shark.
What I don't get is why anyone wants the band so tight that a large enough pack of level 1 ghouls poses a threat to level 18 PCs. Specifically I was addressing the people who don't want to add level to things so the range would be like -1 to +12. I personally think that would be terrible. That's fair. Each person has their own tastes. I don't personally find adventures where the characters are near-deity super-fantastic entities to be very interesting. Generally speaking, the last two or three books of any Paizo AP are torture. They're so far beyond the common man that the immersion is lost. The upper level creatures feel like bizarre abstractions of Earthly lore. It's also fair for folks to conclude Pathfinder just isn't the game for me. I'm at that point, frankly, but if the system (and supporting automation) will support alternatives/house rules then Paizo can enjoy a wider appeal and maybe I can stick around.
I think it is safe say PF3 is not going to switch to the sort of bounded accuracy you seem to be after, nor will any basic version of Pathfinder. (That is, not counting variant rules systems that might be suggested in something like the game mastery guide or an Unchained type supplement.) That's because Pathfinder has always been about making a system to tell a certain kind of story. You're supposed to be able to tell the same stories across different editions. And a big part of the stories of Golarion/Pathfinder is level scaling. If you say so. I've not been concerned with trying to tell Paizo's story, so continuity with that line hasn't been important to me. I do understand how folks can associate a mathematical range of values with a story. I'm guilty of doing it too from time to time, but I've also been able to take stories from other game systems and adapt them for use, so I also think its not entirely true. If anything, the change to characters from PF1 to PF2 feels to me more like an interruption to story continuity. But that's just me. Obviously, the majority thinks it is passable.
If you remove only level, it's actually easy to use the Bestiary. Monsters have level in the same way as PCs do, so just subtract their level from all their bonuses and you're good to go. I agree, mostly. Usually I have to monkey with monster special abilities and scale their damage even if I don't mess with levels. Its rare that Paizo and I see eye-to-eye on monsters. With ability scores, my range would be more like -1 to +12 as I'd block scores higher than 18 and throw away the ability improvements with leveling. Again, I'd probably end up fighting with Hero Lab Online before it would be ready for players. House rules in the age of automated gaming... ah, modern challenges. This rule seems less than ideal to me both thematically and mechanically, and would be much harder to implement. Mechanically, its easy, but without HLO support it would confuse players. Thematically, it works great, but then I'm not looking to emulate Paizo's superheroic theme. That might come as a shock to a random Pathfinder player joining the group, but it wouldn't be a surprise to my regular players... that is, my audience.
Good news! PF2 is actually way better than PF1 to houserule away level to rolls, if that's the kind of math you want, since you don't have to compensate for fractional bonuses. Yes, that is cool. I'd have to scrap much of the Bestiary, but I'd do that anyways. The option would have to appear in some printed book for Hero Lab Online to make it available before the players at my Tuesday's game table will go for it. With ability scores, my range would be more like -1 to +12 as I'd block scores higher than 18 and throw away the ability improvements with leveling. Again, I'd probably end up fighting with Hero Lab Online before it would be ready for players. House rules in the age of automated gaming... ah, modern challenges.
So we could change the whole +1 per level to +0 per level, and then the game would basically be a range of +0 to +8 on an ability-by-ability basis. I wish I would have more clearly grok'd that during the playtest, but at the time proficiency didn't range up to +8. I guess its too late for that now for PF2, but maybe PF3.
I like the artwork that depicts scenes and the maps. I'm not a fan of the style of the character art, but recognize the anime/cartoony style has been consistently Pathfinder. The layouts look nice.
Alexa sucks, in my experience.Since we're talking about heaps of dice, I suggest you ask your Amazon Echo... "Alexa, roll 1,000 dice." ;)What sort of dice is she rolling o.o she gave me 54 and 690. For 1000 dice. Yeh, the last time I asked her to roll 1,000 dice, she read off the results of each die individually... 2,6,3,4,4,1, etc.
I can see where games that involve 4-6 PCs running through a Paizo AP don't want/need to address a Marshal with more than some Feats. Alas, the game I have in mind doesn't conform to the Paizo adventure conceptual model. We occasionally field warbands and armies. Battles with warbands are resolved using the regular PF1 rules. They take a while to play out, but we like it. Anyways, the D&D 3.5 Marshal worked well in those sessions by enabling squads of low-level characters. In a regular game, nobody would ever take those Feats. I guess my point is the class/ability need somewhat depends on the game and I could see where Paizo never supports what my local game actually needs because its unlike the typical game.
The Marshal was a nice class from the D&D 3.5e Miniatures Handbook (IIRC). When we converted characters from D&D 3.5e to PF1 there was no good conversion for a Marshal character that I had. We settled for Cavalier, but it just wasn't the same. A Fighter/Bard was kind of similar, but also not that same. I haven't seen the Mythic version you talk about... probably because the Mythic rules flopped horribly in both games that tried them.
Since we're talking about heaps of dice, I suggest you ask your Amazon Echo... "Alexa, roll 1,000 dice." ;)
What books would you like to see for Pathfinder 2E? The two PF1 books that never seem to leave my desk are Ultimate Campaign and Ultimate Equipment. Both are very handy when I write my own adventures. I'm not planning to buy into PF2, but if they produced something like Ultimate Campaign I could/would likely adapt/use it for other systems. Oddly enough, the least appealing books are Bestiaries (other than those that support an AP). I usually make my own monsters in a free-form manner similar to how PF2 monsters appear to be made.
My concern is, how do I make this work for a mixed level party. If you're designing your adventures/campaign with an eye towards enabling mixed levels, then I think you've got some options. If you've ended up with a party of mixed levels through a twist of fate, then that's another matter. For many years I ran a PF1 game at a University club where your level was determined by your academic year. Freshman = 6th, Sophomore = 7th, Junior = 8th, Senior (or Grad Student) = 9th. To make it work I had to exert more control over magic item bonuses, basically limited to +1. I also had to keep an eye on monster ACs. It worked out pretty well and the game was popular. The range of values between characters was basically a swing of around 6. Setup challenges for roughly level 7. Folks were generally cool with Freshman having to work a little harder and Seniors having it a bit easier. A cooperative PF1 game in which I am still active as both a player and DM has a very large cast of characters from levels 1 through 21 and circumstances can arrange for impromptu mixed-level parties. This takes some care on the part of the DM to leave an avenue for characters that are completely outclassed by the situation. They either need an option to get out of the way, some bite-sized opponents, some object to manipulate, or the player can choose to risk it all and wade in over their head -- and that happens with sometimes tragic results, and sometimes they surprise you. I've not faced either situation in the PF2 Playtest nor in post-playtest play. The only game I'm involved with that might migrate to PF2 is unlikely run into this, but from what I've seen I think a level difference of around 2 would work in PF2. Like most games, not all high level PF2 characters are equal. You can make a worthless high level character if you want. It's harder to do, but quite possible. Limiting access to magic weapons/items would be the key. If you're willing to house-rule the +1 per level part then you'll have a wider range of viable levels.
How do you guys feel about these modes? I can commend Paizo for trying to formalize these rules. Formal rules could be quite handy if somebody wanted to automate this part of play. But, in practice, we fell back into established patterns which felt more natural.
When we're talking "hours to make a character" are we talking about level 1 characters, or like level 7 characters? Either. It is certainly possible to make a 1st level character in around 15 minutes if that's the goal. Just pick stuff. That's just not what I've observed happening. Some players look ahead at prerequisites. The inexperienced players at the table get lost in the Feat descriptions. I tend to have a conception in mind and then struggle to figure out how best to implement it using the rules. This often involves multiclassing and what-if'ing to see which base class works out best. Picking magic items (if the adventure starts you with some) has been a significant bottleneck. You need the book for that as Hero Lab Online can't present you a list based on item level. Then you have to really read the items because there's a lot of useless duds on the list.
DnD 5e or even a Powered by the Apocolypse game might be better for those folks. Of course as long as everyone is still having fun that is what is important. Hence the stress. What has been a coalition of DMs under PF1 is now uncertain where it will go. When the primary DM started looking at D&D 5e, I was very surprised. I've not played D&D 5e, so I don't know if it is a good choice. Oddly enough, I was thinking of Original D&D for a couple of sessions to see how it went.
I have one of those players. I just asked them what they wanted in a character, built 2-3 versions of it and asked them which they liked best. Yeh, exactly. We know their tastes. We usually premake a Barbarian, an Archer, and a Healbot. Sometimes that doesn't scratch the itch and they want to consider some adjustments or try something new. Then we can't pull out an rename an old character. This then leads to the 60-something person who spends most of their time caring for an elderly parent just making quick choices for things that seem unrelated to their conception. They made the big decisions of Race, Class, Abilities, Armor, Weapon, Skills, and just want Feats to go away.
Trying to get back to skills as I fear I've taken things off-topic trying to explain my observations... I suspect some of the players at my table will be interested in other Skill Feats so long as the bonuses are generally applicable and offer some obvious improvement. Feats that deliver a meaningless bonus only during an eclipse will get ignored.
To follow up on my previous message, some of these uninvested players actually prefer we make characters for them. When this happens, we have to keep them simple. Complex Feats are ignored Feats. Characters with spells are no good. Characters with Reactions are no good. These are very casual players. They're fun to play with, but they do not have an interest in the underlying system.
I wouldn't say their choice is permanent. Any of the DMs would let them rejigger their character. These players don't invest in games, so they cannot work on characters outside of the play sessions. These players usually just want a character made so they can play them. They're not into extensive crafting, nor having lots of options once play begins. The time pressure comes from the notion that it would be nice to have to have finished a character in the four-hour session set aside for character generation, and if they finish more quickly they can play something that night.
To be fair, now that trained now gets you from +0 to +lvl, skill training feat now is a lot more attractive. I'm certain that will figure into people's thinking about their choices. The situation at the table is usually related to time pressure. The newer players face analysis paralysis with most of the Feats. They say there are too many Feats with elaborate or obscure conditions on them and skill training offers a constant bonus and more carefree play. They don't have to hold up play to spend a couple of minutes reading their abilities. At least that's my interpretation of what they say. I have myself, as part of the playtest, been asked to make many characters. We use Hero Lab Online. It usually takes me about 2 hours to make a character, most of it spent parsing the nuances of Feats. I can see where they're coming from. As much as skill rolls are called for, as challenging as DCs can be, as simple as the Skill Training Feat is to understand... it has a lot of appeal.
I think your experience is unusual, partially because of the number of characters, but equally because people are actually taking Skill Training as a Feat. I literally never saw that taken in Doomsday Dawn, and my players like Skills quite a bit. I think it became much more clear over the past year to me, to everyone, that yes I do look for different things and that my needs and Paizo's direction are diverging. And, more obvious these last couple of months, these changes are causing stress at the game table in the form of changing group dynamics. Game #1 participated in the playtest. The players started out with enthusiasm, but didn't collectively end up there. As this game has multiple DMs, we have had to come to grips with the differences in our approaches and the effects changing systems has on those DMs. At this point, Game #1 is basically in a holding pattern. The active DM is using the PF2 playtest rules. But, In the gap between now and PF2's release other DMs are sort of taking the opportunity to look around at other games. I can't predict if we'll come back together as a group with 5 DMs (and 3 non-DM players) running from the same world (as it has been), or if the table will be 5 DMs running their own worlds potentially using different systems. I honestly cannot read the table and make a good prediction. I would have said the table went with PF2 because the primary DM really likes Golarion, but in the last week he has started to show an interest in D&D 5e. He's considering remaining active in Pathfinder organized play, but that perhaps 5e is a better fit for the available time the DMs have and the inexperience of the non-DM players. I didn't see that coming. Anyways, yes, my needs are not typical. I hope the masses get what they want. I'm probably being cast adrift from Paizo, which is kind of okay. It is kind of freeing. In terms of Game #1, I might not even have to use PF1 any more. Not that PF1 is bad. It just hasn't always been a good fit either. Game #2 is much easier. They're not changing; life goes on.
Probably a good call. I probably should've done something similar with my initial post to make it less confrontational. Yeh, it is cool. The internet is odd, and first readings aren't always good readings. We're all usually under time pressures, plus there's a desire for brevity. It's a recipe for poor writing and reading.
Your argument is framed as only people who are relatively casual about the setting would convert, but I assure you that's simply not the case. I think PF2's rules probably do a fine job of representing the world of Golarion, and that's all that's really necessary to make such a conversion for me, since the world and story are my primary concern. No. You framed my words into an argument that "only people who are relatively casual about the setting would convert." What I did was relay an example. If you want a broad rule or position, then... I would summarize my position as each game needs to evaluate its own situation. This involves considering the work involved to convert, how the characters will feel after conversion, changes to the magic system, magic items, changes to the setting, and much more. Game #2 in my examples has weighed the conversion and decided against it. The word we choose to convey why is "continuity" as we think it best describes the collective reasons. EDIT : The original message was edited to be less wordy and perhaps more civil.
Did anyone complain about the reduction in skills beyond Thievery? And while there were folks who complained about Disable Device being lumped in with Sleight of Hand, I'd bet the vast majority of people either were in favor or didn't care. Though I don't remember if there was a survey question on skill consolidation specifically. I did. I admit it puts me into the minority. The pattern we saw during the playtest, and during the post-playtest play still going on, is that there isn't a lot of separation between characters. They're all equally good at all skills. This is a mix of the +Level approach, the small number of skills, and that players don't find a lot of value in the Feats, so they load up on skill training. This strategy generally means the party can make the skill rolls required of the adventures even if the individual characters cannot consistently hit the target numbers. I guess that's a long way of saying that taken as a whole I've not been happy with the skill system. Oddly enough, I'm surprised PF2 has an Acrobatics skill. To me, Acrobatics would be better as a feature offered to an Expert or Master level in Athletics. I also admit that I didn't understand the Lore skill at the beginning. I don't mind its function now. I still don't care for the name. Anyways, most of my troubles related back to wanting to run games that don't fit with Paizo's conceptions of character/party make up. One of my friends has to remind me from time to time that Paizo assumes there will be just four characters. I tend to envision adventures for 8-12. At that game table, there also tends to be 5-8 players.
Will switching a character from Pathfinder to Second Edition be easy or difficult? It really depends on your game. Examples: I'm part of two different PF1 games. One game generally plays APs and characters are largely forgotten at the end of the APs. There is little continuity other than the framework Golarion provides and loose integration with an in-game adventuring house similar to the Pathfinder Society. This game is not necessarily tied to the game system and can switch to PF2, or any other game system, which captures the imagination of those involved. The other game values continuity, has a great many continuing characters and lots of customized settings. Changing game systems is a lot of work and characters lose something in the translation. (We've done it before: D&D 2 -> D&D 3 -> PF1.) Those involved with the game do not want to change to an incompatible game system. There is no desire among those involved to change to PF2, just as there was no support to change to D&D 4e.
By all means stream. I don't buy a video game anymore without watching somebody on YouTube or Twitch play it. I can see people doing that with RPGs too. I'm sure Paizo's marketing folks are aware that entertaining streamers don't always translate into sales. Etalyx is fun and entertaining, but he's only ever sold me on one video game. He plays a lot of games that I know I wouldn't enjoy playing, but he's funny. I don't know that PF2 is any more stream-worthy than anything else. I could enjoy watching folks play Avalon Hill's Third Reich. I suspect its the performance of the players that makes the stream more than anything.
The newbs in our game using the PF2 Playtest rules are largely playing Fighters and Rangers. The saving grace for high level Feat complications tends to be that few of the Feats are worth remembering. Ranger appears to be simpler for them to play as they get a few more skills and never worry about Hunt Target, etc. You can make a character that focuses on taking mostly easy-to-administer Feats. For instance, we see many of our players take Feats that give their characters more trained skills. Frankly speaking, many folks at our table are happily playing at all levels by just picking a decent weapon, some armor, a couple of interesting magic items, and then mostly just Move-Attack-Attack. They're content not knowing most of the rules. Personally, I'm hoping that the final PF2 fixes things, else I'll likely devolve into Move-Attack-Attack Fighter too. |