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Or “This is 5th level?”
So at this most recent gencon, I was able to run the playtest module for Pathfinder 2nd edition. The adventure itself was serviceable, pretty standard for a con module, no real problems aside from things being pretty abrupt (even for said con standards).
I started the adventure as a Barbarian, Amiri. When I looked over the sheet, I saw a lot of information, but almost none of it factored into what I could do in the adventure. I’m 5th level, and by this point in PF 1e, you basically have hit your stride as far as your concept goes, especially build wise (complain if you want that I say build, not gonna stop me). Because we were 5th level, I felt like I was going to really get the chance to get into the system, to pull things apart, and get a great idea of how a 5th level character could play.
This was not the situation.
Amiri had 2 combat options aside from rage (and rage was just spend an action to get some benefits); sudden charge (move up to 2x your speed and attack, so effectively a bonus move action) and Wolf’s Bite (deal strength mod on a trip attack). There was no information on how to trip, so I didn’t have the necessary tools to even know how to use my only other unique option, so that was fun. So much information just felt superfluous on the sheet, to the point that my eyes were starting to glaze over it. This felt weird, since with how many new mechanics needed to be included, I had none.
There was also some ability that if I shook off influence of mind control, it was a critical success. There was one instance of mind control in the module, so I didn’t have a chance to try it out, but it felt very limiting. Rage itself felt fine enough, like it did what it said on the tin, but without an accuracy boost, which was annoying. I was accurate enough, felt as though I had the same accuracy as everyone else at the table, which for a barbarian felt unsatisfying considering I was using an action to buff myself.
Enemy damage made sense, they were doing 5%-20% a hit, combat felt like it was trying to last longer due to how many enemies there were, but in combat? I was bored. Like legit “what am I supposed to do?” bored. I had 2 combat options, and to make me feel even less special, the fighter in the group also had sudden charge, so my one unique thing felt all the more boring. The entire first combat consisted of me activating rage, walking up with sudden charge (assuming they weren’t in my normal movement range) and attacking twice after I’d activated rage. This was the exact same thing I assumed would happen with the new action economy, and I’m not happy to be right here.
I had nothing else to do, I tried tripping once, succeeded, but didn’t really feel like I’d gained an advantage. Tripping has effectively become “-2 AC until your round (+1 to ranged), and -1 action” rather than how it felt before. Flanking wasn’t satisfying, movement felt entirely without value without AOOs, and positioning was effectively worthless for melee as all we did was move into position to attack…and attack twice. There were quite a few times I saw people 3x attack because they had nothing else to do, despite the fact that this 3rd attack is virtually worthless.
As expected, the +10 to crit caused bosses (of which there was 3 in the adventure; a golem, a sniper and mage) to crit more often, skewing the balance of combat in their favor at times, but a friend of mine was running a healing paladin, so it wasn’t really a huge issue. I had absolutely nothing to do with my reaction (to the point that it might as well have not existed), and my offensive routine was painfully stale. At 1st level, this would have made sense, I didn’t have the abilities to do anything, so of course I’m only doing one simple thing (despite other systems such as Path of War or Spheres of Might giving unique options at 1st level).
The golem battle had some vaguely interesting mechanics, but its offense was straightforward and lacking in polish, to the point where I actually almost forgot about it while writing this.
But this was 5th level, I should have had options, I should have had exciting things to do. The fighter had one ability where they could attack two people if they missed one, but only if they were being flanked, so an ability that at best puts you into a bad situation to use. And they had sudden charge, like me, so that was basically most rounds.
The only interesting part of combat was the second boss’s spells, which managed to actually give value to positioning and make combat feel more unique than ‘trade full attacks’. Our own caster had some fun spells in that respect too, again feeling like a fleshed out character rather than my full attack machine. I deeply regret not playing a caster for this, because just like in 1e, they had unique options that actually felt like they changed the flow of combat rather than a DPS race like what we already had.
Positively, I did like how the ‘slow’ mechanic interacted with the action economy. As a whole, I did enjoy the new statuses, as they kept up a varied combat situation without being as overwhelming as the 1e statuses, which was a solid step forward. Being able to stack them is almost certainly something I’d like to do in the future, but those were out of my reach, as I was a humble martial, and not a world changing caster.
I also like how hardness worked for constructs, it was a nice way of giving them more durability without going with straight up resistance. I’d say that was one of the things I liked most about the entire session, which was a depressingly low bar.
Speaking from what I saw from the other players, our alchemist felt like their bombs were lacking, and requiring resonance to use them was a draining and unfun experience, leading to them being tapped on bombs after a single encounter (there were only 3 encounters, but in a standard game, this would be an issue). The fighter’s only unique ability was available while poorly positioning themselves, and both the fighter as well as the paladin were often full attacking due to other options being nonexistent. Our fighter raised his shield maybe twice, feeling like using it wasn’t really worth it due to how fragile it was.
As a whole, I was disappointed. This was how 1st level should have played (and as stated above, other systems manage to break up that monotony), not 5th level. We all had fun at the table, cracking jokes and playing up goofy situations, but the actual game was far less engaging that I would have hoped, and lead to me zoning out at times. I informed my friend that at times, I was on auto-pilot, and this was no exaggeration.
Pathfinder 2e has not done nearly enough to make martials feel fun or interesting. While one can claim other abilities would have done this, I was given a character sheet that they had created, designed to show off the system. If this was their way of introducing me to a 5th level character, I am not impressed, and cannot say I would play a martial character again. I’d consider a caster, but that puts us right back to where we started in 1e, and that was supposedly something that was going to be fixed.
In summation, while there are some mechanics which I really do enjoy, the majority of it felt like not enough effort was put into advancing it as a system, the action economy did not encourage anything but repetition, and I can’t say I enjoyed combat, at least anymore than I enjoy 1st level 1e combat.
It was an express design goal for PF2 to be playable at higher levels than PF1, which got very cumbersome in the double digits. So I think they've moved the gameplay complexity to higher levels by gating most of the interesting feats behind Expert / Master / Legendary proficiency, which doesn't kick in until much later. Whether or not they meant to do exactly this, I don't see it as a good thing.
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It was an express design goal for PF2 to be playable at higher levels than PF1, which got very cumbersome in the double digits. So I think they've moved the gameplay complexity to higher levels by gating most of the interesting feats behind Expert / Master / Legendary proficiency, which doesn't kick in until much later. Whether or not they meant to do exactly this, I don't see it as a good thing.
Doing this has made early levels (the ones that will be most played) so painfully static that it gives me little incentive to level up. Having to wait until post 10th level to feel like I've increased my ability with a weapon for a Barbarian doesn't give me a goal to build towards, it makes me feel like the rest of the leveling up process lacks that same goal. These low complexity pre 10th levels are painfully mundane, making me feel like I'm waiting to be cool rather than being given the option of being cool, which is straight up depressing.
I wonder how much of this is a specific problem with the Barbarian, since low level barbarian feats don't seem to add a lot in terms of "interesting combat options" whereas the fighter gets to do things like pin people down or move them around with 1st or 2nd level feats.