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I don't disagree with you. Dozens of things that I liked got shafted in the almighty name of Balance. It's like they forgot Fun was the primary objective. Not to mention that Roleplaying has been sacrificed on the Balance altar as well, as Balance Almighty has shafted any character concept that doesn't fit one of their narrow class stereotypes. I definitely wouldn't mind a better balanced RPG than PF1, but if it comes at the cost of the R, then I start to question things. Given that they're in this deep though, they're probably unwilling to start from scratch, and the best we can probably do is reach a compromise... Or just play PF1. Playing PF1 instead works too. Px

Instead of specialized magic shields, would the system instead be accepting of having specialized "shield runes" instead? The magic shields that exist now could simply be converted to rune equivalents.

Shields: Expert and better shields have one rune slot, which can only accept runes with the "Shield" tag (Most shield runes would only function on shields, but exceptions could exist). Their rune slots don't increase with their quality. Weapons affixed to the shield are treated like a separate object for the purposes of runes.

Spellguard Rune (Shield): A shield with this rune grants its circumstance bonus to saving throws against spells targeting the user.
Arrow-catching Rune (Shield): Blah blah blah you get the idea. You could basically rune-ify most of the magic shields. Exceptions like the Dragonslayer Shield would remain unique objects.
+1 Sturdy Rune: +2 Hardness, +1 Dent
+2 Sturdy Rune: +4 Hardness, +1 Dent
+3 Sturdy Rune: +6 Hardness, +1 Dent
+4 Sturdy Rune: +8 Hardness, +1 Dent
Sturdy Runes only go up to +4 to not exceed the bounds of current Sturdy Shields, but given how fragile shields are, a +5 version could probably exist without breaking anything. As a bonus, druids can get in on the magic shield action too! Sturdy Runes could also be completely unshackled from shields, for other items you really don't want broken as well. Slap that sucker on the cover of your Legendary spellbook. :) This is just a rough idea of course, but it could potentially enhance shield variety without breaking anything. #Showerthoughts

Oh boy, you guys are right on the money.

I just GM'd the second half of Lost Star for my party yesterday. Our party agreed that the hardest challenge in the second half was the fifteen foot ledge with the secret door on top of it. This part of the dungeon turned into an absolute circus when it took the PCs what felt like a couple dozen rolls, a measly five feet at a time, to get up the ledge. Not only that, a couple crit fails also sent people back down to the bottom (they succeeded their "grab edges" to remove the damage at least). And then once they were on the ledge nobody actually succeeded the check to reveal the secret door's keyhole, preventing them from even trying to open the door and ending in a huge anticlimax! Then it got even better when in the process of climbing back down, one of the PCs crit failed and fell off the ledge from the top (also failing their Acrobatics to save damage), taking more damage from the wall then anyone had taken from the (spoiler) trap! One could say that injury was added to insult. ;)

I know some of this is just down to bad luck, but it also is down to one of the party members having a 15%/45%//35%/5% chance for Cfail/fail//pass/Cpass, with +2 Athletics vs DC 15 (other PCs were marginally higher). Given that the DC for almost everything in the dungeon is 14-16, only a fully optimized character should even bother trying! One character didn't even try at all, because his crit fail chance for the wall was an amazing 40% thanks to Armor Check Penalties. In PF1, the party's armor-less monk could have made it up the same wall in seconds just by taking ten, but wait, taking ten doesn't exist anymore! Am I supposed to believe that no PC can ever climb higher than ten feet unless they've studied their entire life climbing? I've struggled up a 60 foot high (DC 12 surface in PF2 terms, as a Level 0 High DC?) climbing tower personally (it was a one time thing), and if I had a random 5% chance to fall off every literal 2 seconds I'd have never made it to the top. I wouldn't even consider myself Trained in Athletics (on second thought, maybe I was at the time... but IRL skills fade without use), and I don't think I have a feat in Athletics Assurance either. Nevermind that Assurance will cause you to autofail vs anything "trivial" anyway. I'm just a level 0 commoner with 10 strength at best, yet I was somehow a better climber than most level 1 PF2 adventurers! I must be an NPC! (Oh wait...)

Wasn't the idea of giving the players +level to everything so that they'd be reasonably able to succeed at basic tasks outside their field, even if they weren't trained in them?

/endrant

The problem with the "safe space" speech is that it immediately makes me feel unsafe. Like everything I say or do is going to be Judged, and that if I make one accidental misstep I'm going to irrevocably anger someone, or worse.

I'm just a human trying to enjoy his hobby with his human friends. We know and respect each other and I've even toned down a harrow caster after accidentally crossing a religious boundary.

I think we can all agree "don't be a jerkwad" and "respect other people's boundaries and beliefs" is a pretty good policy. But the way it's presented could be improved.

I don't normally drop into charged threads like these. I won't say anything further than that, for fear of offending someone. But that's my 2cp.

Chiming in here, and agreeing with OP. I've since swapped places with my GM since he doesn't like running prewritten, but when I was playing as a player, one thing I noticed a lot was that challenges vs "not completely optimized" characters seemed completely FeelBad all around. Our first attempt at Lost Star crashed and burned, and when we tried it again we replaced half the party roster with optimized Big Stupid Beatsticks to ensure maximum odds of success. Deciding to make roleplaying-focused character-building decisions can actually endanger your character if it interferes with any of the stats that the game assumes you've maxed out (usually your corresponding offense and defense stats). On the larger meta-level, it also feels like the game expects you have a specific party composition as well, reducing flexibility even further.

It's almost like we need two versions of the game - one where the players are assumed to have optimized to the greatest extremes the system allows, and another where "reasonably good" is the baseline. As the system stands currently, tuning the system for one of those two groups breaks the system for the other group, because every +1 matters a lot more in PF2 than it did in PF1. Two versions of the game obviously isn't feasible, however, so I'm at a loss. Given that loss, I'd rather have a system tuned closer to "characters are reasonably good" standards than "characters are 100% optimized" standards.

I'm at about this point too with my group. I'm a chronic low-roller though, so my group actually defeated the ambush in its entirety before stopping to rest. Logically, I would have Drakus escape and become a recurring foe for later (taking the journal with him and knocking the entire campaign off the rails); but, nothing about the playtest is logical, so I plan on running it as if it were a videogame, which is to say nothing changes during rest. It disappoints me to have to run it this way, but PF2 reeks of videogame anyway every time I read it. I also generally dislike having NPCs (or even most animals) fight to the death either, but the module explicitly forbids any sort of negotiation, and doesn't even mention what you're supposed to do with goblins you've KO'd instead of killing.

The best I can think of is papering over the incongruity by making the goblins too afraid to actually report to Drakus that there's adventurers slowly cutting apart their number. I might also refluff the final encounter slightly without changing its mechanics, throwing in an "I've been wondering where all my minions went; I suppose you're to blame" before combat begins in earnest, playing the trope of "villain who thinks he's stronger than he actually is and doesn't take impending danger seriously". Alternatively, one could also make the excuse that Drakus has been keeping to his lair for the past couple days because it takes time to sort through all the trash he raids, or that he's been trying to decipher additional info from the journal and hasn't even noticed his minions going missing. These suggestions are all without context though, and don't factor in the specifics of how you've ran it. Feel free to season to taste or invent your own excuse.

For the sake of the playtest I would avoid changing mechanical details, so that the data Paizo receives aligns with what they expect. Even something like adding extra goblins to the final encounter would have a dramatic effect on encounter difficulty, and thus, on reports of "number of PCs downed/killed". GMs have already been advised elsewhere to remove the Dire Rat from the final encounter, as it was somehow added in as the result of an editing error and threw off the final encounter difficulty enough to cause TPKs to parties that didn't go in prepared (this can be verified by noticing that the xp budget of the final encounter is slightly off). There's also a section of the surveys that asks how the quality of the module's story was, so significantly editing even the fluff also ends up skewing the data. Overall as a GM you just have very little freedom while you're running this. :\

Oh boy, this is a sore spot for me. Trying out PF2 feels like wearing a straitjacket, especially when as one of my group's two GMs I look through the monster manual and notice that most given monster's stats perfectly represent their fluff, but it's impossible to do the same thing as a player if your square peg doesn't fit the class's round hole.

One character I play regularly is a Magus, mechanically. For all in-world purposes though, he's a Bard, complete with corresponding skills. Such a thing is literally impossible if I were to try to make the same character in PF2. In the same party is also a Bard, who for all in-world purposes is a preacher, a "Cleric" if you wanted to throw him in a stereotype bin. This character is also impossible to play in PF2. Many other characters simply don't fit any single stereotype at all.

Signature skills shouldn't exist. If they must exist, they should only exist as a number representing how many unique skills you can raise above Master, rather than telling you which skills are your signature skills beforehand.

Don't even get me started on the mess that's class-specific combat and metamagic feats. That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish, and an equally unpleasant one at that.

Yeah, the general expectation that you're going to have maxed out what your class specialization is without question bothers me. The party I tried the first module with crashed and burned because the Cleric was the only character that was 100% mechanically optimized. Even having 2 lower than max in an offense stat not only decreases your to-hit by 5% but also your to-crit by 5%. Having a less-than-optimized defense stat does the same thing but with your defense numbers, increasing your incoming hits AND crits. I shouldn't feel punished if I want to start with 14int (bonus lang!) and the background I want (fluff!) instead of selecting background purely on how the stats line up and ignoring any stat that isn't my main class stats (to get that "perfect" 18 16 12 12 10 10 array), but that's how I felt.

I get that PF2 is "core only" for now and I don't begrudge it. There's plenty of content in the PF2 corebook... But most characters can't access near as much of that content now, because the amount of class-exclusive content has gone up. No universal combat or metamagic feat list, Signature Skills artificially prevent you from breaking out of your class stereotype, etc. Multiclassing can help both those issues some, but that just papers over the problem instead of actually solving it.

I feel like this problem is endemic with PF2 in general. There's no space for you to color outside the lines.

I think the point is to not gimp multiclassing (every primary feature uses the same resource), but also give every class that uses it their own specialized use of the SP pool (keeping their individual abilities and such). One pool to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them...

The point of making things like Wild Shape and such run on a separate pool from SP is they'd quickly drain your SP if you had them linked with the main pool as mentioned above.

The previous two things said, Alchemists should totally have their own "craft points" pool instead of their main class feature eating all their resonance.

Given that optimising and roleplaying don't exactly conflict, and that I enjoy being able to have control over what my character is actually good at, I like this. A lot.

They conflict when I want to have Draconic as a level 1 language but the class I'm playing is perfectly happy with a 10 in INT and really wants that 18/16/14 in the primary/secondary/tertiary stats (call it STR DEX CON in any combination for a martial). This isn't really aimed at you and more aimed at the system expecting nothing less than fully optimized characters.

In my group's playtest game we had a cleric nat 20 on his third iterative while making a desperation swing. It turned a miss into a hit (at least if we understood it correctly, which we're not sure of), but didn't have a meaningful affect on the encounter outcome, which was still a dead cleric and a dead animal companion, basically bringing the adventure to a screeching halt.

Back on topic, a simpler way to word it would be to just say that nat 20's increase your success degree by one and nat 1's decrease your success degree by one in most cases? It would work the same as it is now in 99% of cases?

+++++ ^This. I'd love a background with Multilingual so I don't have to sacrifice character stats to start with my extra fluff languages, but there isn't one. In the end only having a preselected set of backgrounds is a straitjacket. At least include a sidebar for home games. :)

Since you guys seemed amenable to fixing Stealth, any chances Intimidation could get a second look?

Intimidating Glare should not be a feat. It should be a part of the core skill. I get you want languages to be more important but Intimidating Glare being a feat stifles roleplaying. I don't have to speak Goblin in order to scare a few of them witless.

Intimidating Prowess should only require Trained intimidation instead of Expert. It's impossible to actually get at level 2 because you can't get Expert skills until level 3.

Barbarian-specific: Raging Intimidation shouldn't exist either. Demoralize should just gain the rage trait by default, as part of the Rage rules the same way Seek does. As a replacement feat, Raging Intimidation v2 could let Intimidate key off of STR (str-1 because Intimidating prowess exists? or maybe just let it be the "Finesse Striker" of barbarian? Or simple solution I guess: forbid it from comboing with Prowess. idk, try all 3?) while raging, and give Scare To Death for free when its requirements are met. Class feats should do more than give you a couple discounted skill feats.

Frightened should affect attack bonuses to half the amount rounded up (fear 1 or 2 = -1 atk). Otherwise it's only useful if you have a spellcaster in the party, which isn't always a given.

I'm annoyed at intimidate for the same reason everyone else was annoyed at stealth: It seems unnecessarily restricted and unrealistic. The best character for intimidate actually seems to be a sorcerer (high cha+immediately follow up with a SoS spell)... And I'm not even a barbarian main, I'm more of a wizard guy myself. I feel bad for my muscle buddies. :3

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On the topic of character creation, there should be an example of how a fully bulked out character works in the equipment section. People are misinterpreting how backpacks and light bulk work (I'm not one of them but I can see how it happens). The ideal example character would be almost encumbered.

Adventurer's kits for each class should be in core too, instead of having to wait for "ultimate equipment 2". It makes creating a character so much easier and so much faster it's not even funny. It'd also help PF2 be more newbie-friendly, which seems like a major design goal.

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Re: Weapon traits. Weapon traits are one of the best things about PF2. But yes, Bastard Swords being slashing-only crushes my immersion (or does it slash it?). The volley trait bothers me as well, I'm in the "remove Volley and give shortbows Agile to keep them competitive" camp, but then I realize that Shurikens are the "Agile ranged weapon". Maybe just shorten Volley to something reasonable, like 30-35 feet so archers can at least sit on the same battlemat? I feel like we can find a balance between "realism", "balance" and "fun". :)

Necroing this. Made two characters so far and sighed both times as I calculated their kit out manually. I'm sure we can handle an extra page for kits, considering that premade kits massively speed up character creation, along with lessening confusion for newcomers. Just because it wasn't core in PF1, doesn't mean it can't be core in PF2! If we don't get class-specific kits, we should at least get a listing for a "basic" kit covering the things literally every character will buy:

Adventurer's kit, barebones (5sp 5cp, 6L):
Backpack (1sp, 0 bulk [4 bulk carry])
Belt Pouch (4cp, 0 bulk [4 L carry])
Bedroll (1cp, L bulk)
Ordinary Clothing (1sp, 0 bulk)
Flint and Steel (5cp, 0 bulk)
Rations, 4 days (2sp, 4L bulk)
Waterskin (5 cp, L bulk)

Before I get there, an aside. Bears seem to be the clear favourite for animal companion of choice. Out of 4 characters with animal companions, ALL have take bear. This implies that it may be slightly overpowered.

My knee-jerk reaction is that the companions aren't too balanced either. For my level 1 playtest character I made a druid, and sorely wished I could take the Dromeosaur fluff with the Cat stats. Bear, Cat, and Horse seem to be the real winners.

But, in general animal companions are just shafted anyway; the least that could happen is they could all be equally shafted instead of some of them getting super-shafted.

~~~~~

Badger Rage seems like a good way to kill your badger since companions have chronically low AC, and this makes it even lower while not even granting rage HP.

Dromeosaur's work-together benefit is entirely replaced with a feat once you hit level 10, and could really use a different work-together. Darting attack would be better if it were a step+strike/strike+step, but as is, it pales in comparison to Cat Pounce's stride+strike.

Snake's work-together benefit is incredibly specific, and could be modified to be more generic-ally useful. Additionally, constrict only really "works" on large (savage) companions since it doesn't work on equal-size.

Wolf's work-together is a little undercooked compared to work-togethers that add damage or cause stronger conditions than hampered. They eye the bird and bear work-togethers jealously. It'd also be cool if they saw the Mount trait. Wolf Trip is decent at least.

A creature with the Minion trait can only take 2 actions a turn, can't use reactions, and only acts when commanded. (p416 for full ver)
Animal Companions, Familiars, Summoned Creatures, and Controlled Undead are all minions.

Really, Animal Companions are just shafted. When you turn a major class feature into a feat, it's only allowed to be as strong as a feat...

I'd rather have a separate nature class whose primary class features go into having an AC that's a proper AC. We could call it the Hunter or something.

Whenever I read the playtest document, PF2's design *screams* this. Dozens of decisions were made that champion game balance as more important than anything else, even more important than roleplaying or world-simulation. And that... Disappoints me. I was expecting an edition of the game that would be much more balanced while still respecting roleplaying and verisimilitude, but instead, PF2 reads more like "PF2: we balanced it like a videogame edition". This gets reinforced by things like chevrons for actions and color-coded item/spell rarities. I don't crack open a PF book because I want to play a videogame.

PF2 is balanced to a tee, but sucks the fun out of everything and artificially constrains players from playing who they want to play. Which also feels like I've been cheated a little, since the blogs were all championing "freedom of choice! play what you want but without ten years of cruft attached! raahh!". One of the most basic examples is the artificial parceling out of martial feats. Rogues can't double slice.. why? Barbarians can't power attack... why? Because Fighter hoovered up half the martial feats and refuses to share them. Animal companions are lobotomized, literally unable to think for themselves. Many things that shouldn't be actions, are actions (recall knowledge, change grip, etc). Staring someone down apparently takes a feat instead of being intrinsic to Intimidate. Some time-honored spells are overnerfed (mending, guidance) or have vanished altogether (where's Reincarnate?). All of Stealth makes no sense. Signature skills artificially pigeonhole your character and make it literally impossible to avoid your class stereotype. The list goes on and on and on.

The worst part is, I really admire PF2's underlying design. It's simple and elegant, but it gets muddied by unnecessary balance-first decisions. The 3 action system is elegant. +Level to everything feels like overkill but I could get behind +1/2 or +1/4 level to everything; it sells the high-fantasy feel and emphasizes that you're above and beyond normal humans. ABCD character generation is great and means I finally don't have to help anyone build their characters, which is mandatory in PF1. I never liked rolling for health either, and I'm glad to see it go. The way metamagic is handled is innovative, along with the way many spells can be customized on-the-fly by changing their components. Resonance is a brilliant concept for item handling, albeit one that doesn't treat the Alchemist (or bags of holding) kindly. Spell Points aren't bad either (even if the name bugs me). Anathemas lend a fun dimension to characters that used to be alignment-restricted. Monster entries are as flavorful as ever. The way weapons are handled is great, barring a few verisimilitude-breaking oddities like the bastard sword. There's a lot to like here, really there is, but it just gets outweighed.

PF2 to me seems a lot like a padded cell. No matter how hard I throw myself at it, it won't break, but it also doesn't allow any room for self-expression, creativity, or realism. Ultimately, I (and my group) value roleplaying just a little bit more than overstrict game balance. Balance doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be "close enough". I've never played PF "to win" - however, if the PF2 playtest book is anything to go by, my group and I have been having badwrongfun this entire time. I was expecting something akin to PF1.5, but instead I got something closer to 4.5e or 5.5e (and I *like* 5e in addition to PF, it's decent but simple). I'll still hold out hope that the developers mean it when they say they're going to listen to feedback; yet I'm also fully aware that I'm just one voice out of many, and I'm not going to agree with all of the changes PF2 makes. But in the end, if the final version of PF2 ends up just a little friendlier toward roleplaying, I'll consider that a win.

(I'll get off my soapbox now... sorry... didn't intend to write a wall of text but all my pent up feelings about PF2 just kinda spilled out there, ya know?)

MY knee jerk reaction: The blogs led me to believe PF2 would be a system that integrates the best of PF1 with the best of 5e, but instead I got the worst parts of both. PF1's obtuse technical nature combined with 5e's artificially restricted characters.

So far I can look forward to: something as simple as staring someone down requiring a feat, animal companions being literally lobotomized and unable to think for themselves, *thinking* being an action, combat feats being artificially parceled out between classes, and more.

I feel like the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. Consider the gamist-narrativist-simulation triangle. PF1 might not have been the best game balancewise (far from it) but it's a ruleset that happily accomodates narrative and simulation. PF2 on the other hand feels focused squarely on the "game" part, making tons of decisions that don't make sense from a narrative or simulation standpoint in order to reinforce game balance.

I'm still willing to at least give it a fair chance in playtesting (I hope I'm wrong, really), but my initial once-over of the rules isn't impressing me in the least. PF2 just might not be the system for me and my group.

I like this, but the more I think about it, the more a few minor niggles get me:

The opportunity cost for multiclassing into a class that shares the same primary stat as you is pretty low. For a wizard, 16 strength to multiclass fighter might be a huge investment, but for a barbarian or strength-druid, it's a non-investment. If you don't intend on actually multiclassing, you can just take the entry feat for its strong bonuses. Likewise, I see a lot of Alchemists learning cantrips.

A spellcasting class multiclassing into a second spellcasting class gets more spell slots than either class alone would normally have. It more or less reverses PF2's nerf to spells per day if say, a druid takes the cleric multiclass and solely uses it to gain more spells, or a Bard takes the (not-yet-existent) Sorcerer multiclass.

Otherwise, I really like where this is going. Featifying races was a bad idea, but featifying multiclassing is great. I really like not losing progression in my main class if I want to multiclass. It's like VMC, but actually good!

I hate the way half-races were implemented, but I love this implementation for half-classes. It's like VMC but actually good and more customizable to boot. I'm totally going to try to make a monk/wizard "Muscle Wizard" at least once, just to see how viable it turns out to be. I CAST FIST!

After all the conversation that's happened so far; I've come to the conclusion that if PF2 is all about being able to "make the choices you want", then having no choices at first level if you want to play a half-X runs contrary to that. I feel like at least the major half-X's should get their own base race. That being said I'm still intrigued by the idea of an "X-touched ancestry" feat opening up more options for "human with pointy ears" and the like, so perhaps... perhaps the two options could exist side by side, having both "half elf" and "elfy human" on the table. Now that'd be freedom of choice.

I'm going to chime in and say that while 80% of what I see in PF2 excites me, the way half-races are treated is part of the 20% that doesn't excite me. I'd much rather have them be their own distinct starting race instead of a feat tax appended to human, at least for such important and iconic races like half-elf and half-orc.

But, I only play home games (and I'm that one guy who always insists on playing a lizardfolk or kobold), so I don't really have a horse in this race anyway.

Spell Points aren't used to fuel Spells. They're used to fuel "Powers" in all cases shown so far, which are only similar to spells in some ways. Why not cut down on potential confusion and call them Power Points? "Spell Points" sounds incredibly game-y and isn't natural-sounding anyway.

~~~~~

As an aside, the heighten wording on a lot of spells is concise and short, but at the cost of some of them being somewhat confusing. The math for heightened missiles didn't make sense to me until I noticed "with each action you spend" also counts the initial action used to fire the spell, not just the "extra" actions.

Let me try rewriting that Redcap to make a little more sense to me...

The way Paizo formatted it was already good, the way it's formatted here is even better. I wish I could favorite this post twice.

I’m not blind... but I still blow up everything to large print so that I can read it. Please... respect my poor aged gnomish eyes!

Perception = Wis based. Doesn't your eyesight get better as you age?? xP

I kid, I kid, accessibility is no joke.

"This tenet doesn't force you to take action against possible harm to innocents or to sacrifice your life and future potential in an attempt to protect an innocent."

I know this clause only exists to satisfy rules lawyers more or less, but the first half (everything before the "or") confuses me. What's the RAI here?

This is pretty neat. The sleep poison raises one concern for me, though. At a DC 13, I wouldn't expect it to be useful for very long. Will there be ways for characters (alchemists or otherwise) to improve the saving throw DCs for poisons or other alchemical items with saving throws?

IIRC a previous blog says Alchemists have a class feat for that.

Edit: Yeah. 6th Level Alchemist Feat, "Powerful Alchemy".

I've liked 80% of what I've read about P2E up to this point, but I had to make an account just to say this:

Please call "Spell Points" literally anything else. "Mana Points", "Power Points", "Toast Points", I don't care what. Just something. Thank you.