Hi,
I have started the first adventure with only two characters a dwarven barbarian and a goblin sorcerer. As they didn't have any healer Keleri lent them a magical glove that can restore d8+1 HP three times per day. And I have also halved the number of monsters at each encounter. I thought that this will be enough to run the dungeon without serious modifications.
Well it didn't go too well.
The monster stats in the bestiary are ridiculous.
Level 0 goblin warrior with +6 attack? Seriously? The barbarian with +4 str had only +5! It made the PCs feel weak compared to the cannon fodder goblins. Especially the goblin PC who is coming from the same tribe, has level 1 and still has lower attack then the basic goblins. His words: "Ok, can I change my attack to +6 as well?"
With these inflated attack scores the monsters kept hitting the PCs all the time thus they quickly run out of HP and used up most of their healing to get back to around 2/3 of their max HP.
But that is not enough. Turns out a single lucky shot from goblin warrior's shortbow can easily deal 15 points of damage (deadly d10) and sent the barbarian two dying 2.
BTW: I think the class DC for monsters are missing from the bestiary. At least I wasn't able to find it. I could calculate it for a goblin warrior, but what is the class DC of a sewer ooze?
The PCs managed to retreat and kill the 2 goblin warriors and the commando (I have reduced the encounter) but the sorcerer also managed to hit 0 HP in the process, while the barbarian knocked out the goblin commando.
The basic playable monsters are not following the rules from the rulebook. Why? AC and attacks are misscalculated a lot of places. Just check the entries for Orcs, Goblins and Hobgoblins.
We also had a lot of trouble finding rules in the book. Despite the fact we used the PDF version where we could easily search. We had trouble with:
- How long does it take to draw a sword? (I ruled it as an interact action)
- You can ready an attack, but you can't ready a typical spell. As spells are usually two actions the ready action is not working for them.
- We didn't find the rules for grapple as they were not part of the list of actions. I have later found them under athletics. Nice that these special actions are listed under relevant skill but it would be really nice to have a table with all possible actions listed with short reminder stats/rules.
- Identifying a magic item. Again I found it under the arcana/nature/religion skill that you can use it like this. But does this mean that only a priest (or someone with the religion skill) can identify a potion of healing? Which means a typical sorcerer won't be able to do that? Is this the only way to identify magic items?
- We used the pdf that could theoretically have links in it, but it doesn't. So for example to look up what the fear spell does, you have to read the spell. Then flip over to the conditions to read the frightened condition and then flip over to the fleeing one. And a lot of spells have similar effects. Not to mention when a conditions refers to another condition (flat footed is typical).
- We spent around an hour trying to find out the stats for small weapons or some explicit rule saying that they have the same stats as the normal one. We gave up.
We didn't really made friends with the resonance points.
The dwarven barbarian had chr -1. Which means he has 0 resonance points. After they found a healing potion in the dungeon (I decided that the potion had a label, as they had no chance of identifying it) it was very strange that he basically couldn't drink it. I mean he could, but there is 50% chance that it won't work. Which sounds strange. So they decided that the sorcerer gets to potion, but it really broke immersion.
We loved the combat with the new 3 action system. It really simplified things. Although finding the rules for actions and conditions weren't easy.
One strange thing is the complete absence of attacks of opportunity. With no fighter in the group and among the monsters. Everyone moved happily around the battlefield without having to worry about generating extra attacks. No more defensive casting in front of the enemy, just fire the spell and move back. This felt strange after PF1. I am not sure I like it. With the 3 actions and the step action I don't see the reason to basically remove the AoO from the game.
All in all: We have mixed feelings.
We like the character creation, the 3 action combat system, but the PCs feel powerless. Compared to the monsters they have lower stats. They have fewer abilities. Races usually gave more abilities in PF1 now they only get a single Ancestry feet at level 1. Same for classes. A lot of class abilities turned into class feats. And you only get 1 per 2 levels. For some classes like wizard and cleric this is an improvement. But for others like monk and paladin this is a significant downgrade. So converting these characters or recreating them in PF2 would mean that they lose powers and capabilities in the process.
Currently I am not sure if we are going to transfer to PF2 at all.
One more thing. We also had trouble trying to select spells for the sorcerer.
A lot of Cantrips were upgraded to give the casters the ability attack with magic any number of times, but some of the 1st level spells were nerfed so hard that they are much worse than cantrips now.
Command: It takes away 1 action from the target. 2 if you choose the action correctly.
How does that compare to a cantrip that does d8 points of damage on a touch attack?
Mage armor providing 1 armor only? Now every random monster can easily smash the sorcerer into the ground with their bloated attacks. Even a puny goblin warrior crits him 25% of the time! No wonder my player felt powerless during the whole session.