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Wildshape is terrible in this edition.

Spells in pf2 are pathetic. Animal companions, summoning and wildshape are also pathetic. No in my group is remotely interested in pf2 anymore.

Sorcerers are terrible compared to wizards in pf2. They are pointless.

Sorcerers are far worse than wizards in PF2. There is just no reason to play one.

Wildshape is basically pointless in PF2. In addition to the crushing of the animal companion this makes the whole druid class useless.

Animal companions have been nerfed into being useless. PF2 has made everything too much the "same" in search of balance, and made the game worse because of it.

Sorcerers are simply not competitive as is.
Make their bloodline powers at will and they would be.

Paladibs without smite evil are pointless.

Trying to make everything equal has resulted in everything being boring. PF2 just doesn't feel like Pathfinder and that is why my group is not going to play PF2 without major changes.

Sorcerers as written are terrible. In fact the pf2 playtest has made my group seriously look at 5th edition. I don't think that was paizos goal.

Sorcerers Don't get to auto heighten each spell for free.
Sorcerers get two less feats.
Sorcerers get to know far fewer spells.
These items make sorcerers much worse than wizards and fairly pointless.

My group and I played this section last weekend.
While we knew things were going to take longer due to our I experience with the new system, it took a LOT longer than expected.
Combat was not as smooth as we hoped but it was not awful. Spells seemed weaker overall compared to martials.
The heal spell worked well with the casting options.

Overall the game didn't exccite anyone and we aren't playing PF2 anymore. We are adding a lot of the Pathfinder unchained optional rules such as the three actions. In fact unchained has many of the PF2 ideas a the three action system ready to Port to pf1.

This ruling on shields makes them worthless.

Wildshape is just too weak and too limited in PF2. The low duration and number of forms cripples it.

A huge sword should do more damage than a small one otherwise why does a great sword do more damage than a longsword to begin with.

With the duration reduced wild shape is almost useless.
The inability to use magic in wilshaped completely destroys the usability of wildshape at higher levels.
With the concentration addition and action loss of summons those spells are rendered useless as well.
These two changes have made druids too weak to be viable and need to be changed to make the druid a viable class.

Size certainly should increase damage.

It is stupid.
If this is not fixed I would just increase the damage dice size by two.

Another reason sorcerers are inferior. For a while they had a lot of skills, even that is gone.

I agree the paladin in pf2 is just not as fun as a pf1 paladin.

From what I can see it just makes for more book keeping.

I find resonance an unnecessary completely and pointless. Anyone else?

I would say 1 rp per day max to use. I don't like resonance points I find them an unnecessary complication.

The almost complete nerf through the bank of almost every spell is hardest thing for me to swallow in this playtest. Combined with the much more limited daily casting abilities of spellcasters this is quite a demoralizing start. Not to mention that blasting seems to have been essentially gutted as an option as well, with the capped spells and no empower/maximise metamagic possibilities.

I really get the feeling that we are supposed to be brought back into having to clear every room in a dungeon with melee combat, with Wizards/Sorcerers being relegated to softening up the enemies.

I agree. If pf2 spells stay as is my group will never play pf2.

SUMMON MONSTER to me seems like it was nerfed beyond what it needed to be. Can only summon 1 monster now, use an action to give the monster 2 actions, if you don't concentrate to give the monster actions the spell ends because it requires concentration every turn or the spell ends early, monster cant take reactions, and the level scaling seems as bad as in pf1 despite in pf1 being able to summon multiple weaker monsters and not having to deal with the 4 levels of success.

Heightened (2nd) Level 1.
Heightened (3rd) Level 2.
Heightened (4th) Level 3.
Heightened (5th) Level 5.
Heightened (6th) Level 7.
Heightened (7th) Level 9.
Heightened (8th) Level 11.
Heightened (9th) Level 13.
Heightened (10th) Level 15.

So even with a 10th level spell slot you can summon a monster most likely 5 levels lower then anything you're dealing with and with a 9th 7 levels lower. Oh, on a similiar note GATE can no longer be used as a calling spell its just transportation now, and while neither of these are game changers I seriously doubt summon monster will see much use now and gate is only useful because plane shift is an uncommon rarity spell now and all tuning forks for the common planes are uncommon while demiplanes and the less common planes have rare tuning forks.

This spell has been nerfed beyond usability. Having concentration alone made the spell too weak and reducing an action has made it beyond weak.

I would suggest all monsters get a standard attack grouping (such as claw claw bite) that takes two actions and all attacks have a -2 to hit instead of the usual penalties. Otherwise you are going g to see bite bite bite, stab stab stab etc.

Animal companions should not take an action and they should get three actions unless you are doing a trick or something special. Yellibg attack should not require an action.

Edduarco
Those are excellent ideas and would really help!
Xenocrat
Why don't you like the ideas?

As of now my whole group is so turned off by the magic changed we would never play pf2 as is.

We use spell points. Just count up all of your total spell levels and then cast as you wish. If you want to cast tons of first level spells fine or a few high level instead. Spontaneous casters could cast whatever, prepared casters casted from their prepared spell list. It did give prepared casters more flexibility, but it was no big deal.

Have all classes get three ancestry feats at first level and replace the later ancestry feats with class feats. Give the sorcerer two more class feats on top of that.
That should be more work able and gets rid of the weird higher level ancestry strangeness.

I like the art as is. I think it is nicely done.

I would think there is a market for 3.8 or whatever you want to call it.
Paizo should produce both Pathfinder 2 and a continuation of Pathfinder 1 that way the people that are upset about this direction stay with Pathfinder. I would think an upgrade would be far easier to do than a whole new game and if people here are enlisted for ideas a new edition could be pretty painless to accomplish. It could even include ideas from pf2 and maybe "bridge the gap". Backwards compatibility is the key.
The "new edition" could even be a supplement of rules (more extensive than unchained) instead of a wholesale rulebook, maybe this would be easier.
If the Pathfinder 1 rulebook is available as an editable PDF maybe posting that and letting people have at could work.
I know paizo has to do something to bring in new players, but losing too many of the old ones will kill them too.
Just a thought

Wildshape pretty much stinks now due to the duration. The strength cost should be changed to wisdom as that means every wildshape druid will need an 18 strength, which is pigeonholing. In addition the combat forms are far too limited their needs to be a greater choice of forms. As of now wildshape needs a bunch of work.

I’m seeing a lot of flattening of spells, with them being stronger at first level and weaker at later levels. In pf1, summoning by spell is super limited at level 1, with a measly one round duration and not even coming into effect till the next round. In pf2, I can use my summon on the round I cast it and I can use it for 10 rounds, as long as I can maintain my concentration.

Mage armor may give a smaller bonus, but it lasts all day at level 1 now.

I have. Concentration was enough of a Nerf, 3 actions reduced to 2 and 10 round max is too much.

I mean yeah the first time a group runs a "Prison break" section or any other events that see a loss of gear for a bit, your damage goes right back down to level 1 basically.

Some feats might be able to boost it but nothing like a full die of it.

Also how do you balance this against weapon wielding enemies? I mean, you might have a magic weapon around level 4-5. So let's just say it's a longsword for 2d8.

So how is an enemy for that level that uses weapons, let's say Gnoll, supposed to keep up with that damage if they are using the same tools as the PC. Only way to do so is to give them Magic weapons themselves but that wrecks the wealth table.

Wait a minute..., why does Gnoll Sergent have 2d6 on it's 1d6 Scimitar?

I found a plot hole! NURSE!

I agree

Kodyboy wrote:

Sorcerers need to be redone fairly extensively.

They cast too few spells, way too few spells and scaling cantrips don't fix that.
Changing the bloodline powers from spell points to at will should fix that mistake. It may not be enough but it would flavor the sorcerer differently.
Having to learn the same spell at different levels is idiotic and needs to be removed.
Bloodline spells should be innate powers requiring to verbal, sonatic or material components.

When I saw the new “Spell Points” mechanic for the spontaneous use of “Powers,” I found myself wondering why this mechanic was not applied to all spontaneous casting. Why not give a Sorcerer a pool of Spell Points, and let them use those Spell Points to cast whatever spells they know — obviously with each spell “costing” a number of Spell Points tied to its level?

I’ve always thought it didn’t make a lot of sense for a spontaneous caster to be limited to casting a certain number of high-level spells a day. Why not let them cast however many they want, until their Spell Points are exhausted?

That would make spontaneous casting very different from prepared casting, fit with the flexibility that is the hallmark of spontaneous casting classes, and simplify the system by using the Spell Points mechanic for all spontaneous casting.

I agree. We have used this approach in 3.5 and pf1 and it worked very well. It makes sorcerers a great magic using class for new players.

I think just removing the "It counts as two attacks" verbage on power attack would fix it.

Yep making it one action would fix it.

I agree there seems to be too much homogination between the classes and the result is a loss of many character classes. Wildshape is useless now, summon monster (not that powerful to begin with) is too bad to be viable, animal companion has been hamstrung and spells in general are far too weak compared to martial characters.

First of all, 2e seems alright. There's problems but somethings are really cool and are a much needed update from 1e. Honestly I feel as if the playtest is, overall, a step in the right direction.

That being said one thing I'm praying to Nethys to change is the nerfing of spells and spellcasters. I've been following the playtest ever since it was announced and have read the rulebook. At first I was pretty apprehensive because I saw that every spellcaster was being limited to 3-4 spells per day. I then looked through the spells and noticed that they are so weak compared to a basic sword swing(an unlimited resource that only costs one action) and this was the case throughout the first few levels of spells. A perfect example of this is Barkskin, a really good spell in 1e that is unusable in 2e. Why does it have a downside when it basically doesn't do anything? Why does the downside then increase when you heighten it? Why does it only last for 1 minute? I'm genuinely confused by its existence.

Another thing is why not give wizard something to make up for the fact its not even trained in simple weapons, not trained in any armor and is the only prepared caster that can't heal others?

Without a strong change to magic I don't see my group being interested in this edition.

Terrordactyl wrote:

It's funny, because I thought that they wanted to steer away from magical bonuses and enhancements which were almost required to make some good character builds in 1e...but it seems they did the opposite?

they wanted to steer away from the big 6 (magic weapon, magic armor, attribute + items, cape of resistance, ring and amulet of armor) they have only weapons and armor, the cape is folded into the armor and the attribute items are lategame and (theoretically) somewhat optional

Well they made magic weapons and armor virtual required as the character advances, even more so than PF1.

It's funny, because I thought that they wanted to steer away from magical bonuses and enhancements which were almost required to make some good character builds in 1e...but it seems they did the opposite?

Same here.

Has anybody participated in a PF1 game where a player wanted to do damage with weapons or their body (not, like, spells or bombs or SLAs) in which the players did not acquire a magical weapon or AoMF or similar as soon as was reasonable and use it (or an upgraded version of it) for the rest of their careers?

Since that's pretty much my standard experience.

It does feel like if we disarm the mighty warrior from their noteworthy flaming magical greatsword, they should be significantly less dangerous with the less famous weapon.

I remember one barbarian with a large adamantine great axe (not magical but a special material) that kept that weapon up until 17th level when the campaign ended. He always did the most damage.

A big tough martial could have used mundane weapons to hit hard enough to bypass damage reduction and still be effective.
With the dice multiplyer mechanic you simply can't do that or do that well enough to be useful.
A way to do that would be to add feats that allow you to double/tripple etc. Your dice but make them not stack with magical effects.
This would be a good way to get the "barbarian smash" and keep power attack for other classes.

I agree on many of the points mentioned here.

I find resonance a needless rule. Why bother it just leads to more book keeping?
Magic has been changed too much. Sorcerers are inferior to wizards and lack some of their special flavor. Increasing their number of spells per day, or letting g them use their bloodline powers at will would help the problem.
Many spells need an increased duration.
Wildshape desperately needs an increased duration (indefinitely or maybe 12 hours) otherwise it just is not that useful.
Wildshape is too constrained there need to be either more form choices.
The +1 to everything per level seems too high, maybe +1/2 levels?
Armor is not worth enough, maybe increase all armors by a point or 2.
Monsters need a base action sequence, such as a tiger having claw/claw/bite with either zero or a minor (-2,) multiple attack penalty otherwise why not make 3 bites or whatever better attack the monster has.
Animal companions need to have 3 actions not 2.
Summoned monsters need 3 actions not 2, they are weak enough as is.
Sorcerers need the Bard feat for extra spontaneous heightening, or just get rid of it and let anything be heightened like wizards.
Not all spell lists are equal some need more help than others.
Why the change to the skill sstem? Points worked fine before.

I agree wizards should start out with more skills, maybe 6.

Why are characters who are untrained in x skill still able to not only do the skill but only be (at nax 5 point difference) slightly better than a legendary proficient individual? This makes some sense with certain skills such as swimming or jumping, but makes no sense for knowledge skills. I would either suggest making trained, expert, master, legendary worth more, make the untrained penalty greater (-5 or -6). Another option would be to simply not include class level for certain untrained skills (suck as knowledge) or add half the class level to proficiencies.

Every +1 to hit also adds a +5% to their crit rate. So each step of difference has more overall power than it did before.

edit: Also, those +5% are a big deal while crit rates are low. If a wizard needs a 20 to crit, then a fighter with +3 over the wizard crits on a 17-20 or 4x as often as the wizard.

A 10th level wizard using a mace gets +10 to hit, plus str + wpn magic etc.

Actually, in real life wooden shield WERE the disposable part of equipment. Considering that every disposed shield saves one's life, ppl never minded to have an extra one in their luggage :)

True but it will be annoying in game play to always have to carry around piles of shields.

With the bonus adding damage dice magic weapons are now basically required to be an effective character at medium to high levels and have a huge impact in damage, far more than in P1.
A character with a +2 sword is now doing an extra 2d8 damage. This is a huge improvement over -2 damage. Combine this with more common crits and the non magic using Conan type is almost non-vuable.
This is a cool mechanic and interesting but it does make magic weapons far more of a requirement than before.