Power Attack is very situational, and best served with a high damage dice weapon, it is the inverse of what it used to be, you now want it against high AC targets were the follow on attacks are marginal, or the target has DR, either via shield blocking or some other method. It's PF1e Vital Strike basically. Betting the farm on one roll e (and for high strength characters, or someone with a magic weapon it becomes obsolete fairly fast)
I, too, worry that the new Power Attack being the inverse of the old Power Attack is sowing confusion.
Suppose the elf fighter had access to a feat that, like the PF1 Power Attack, gave a =1 to hit and +2 damage per hit. Let's call it Piranha Strike. Then her damage would be:
Two Strikes with Shortsword with Piranha Strike
(50%+35%)(1d6+3) + (10%+5%)(2d6+6) = (1.15)(1d6+3) = 7.475 damage
That is even better than Double Strike with Two Shortswords (7.2 damage), and she could still use a shield. PF1 Power Attack is known as a mandatory feat for martial characters in Pathfinder 1st Edition not because it is a feat tax (it's necessary for some feat chains) but because it is so powerful.
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Whatever the math, if a tabletop RPG punishes combat suboptimal characters because they decided to invest points in Role Play abilities/skills/feats rather than combat, this is not a tabletop RPG anymore. It's a stupid videogame. IMHO.
The whole PF2 idea is to lower the exponential progression of characters so that supposedly suboptimal characters can matter in combat anyway.
Let's make it happen.
Except that when you have a "tight math paradigm" where everything is constrained to be in a very specific window, if you fall below that window, you are going to have a very bad time.
There's a lot less room for optimizing than there used to be, but the flip side of that is that you pretty much have to do it to be at the expected power level now.
Pathfinder the roll-playing game? :/
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There's a lot less room for optimizing than there used to be, but the flip side of that is that you pretty much have to do it to be at the expected power level now.
My point exactly: I HATE that.
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There's a lot less room for optimizing than there used to be, but the flip side of that is that you pretty much have to do it to be at the expected power level now.My point exactly: I HATE that.
In PF1 - people would go stupid over 10 point builds or 20 point builds or 25 point builds - and how they stomp the adventure paths. The only time it really made a difference was for the *really MAD* characters like a core monk. Most classes had 1 or 2 stats and even a 10 point build makes it possible to have a viable build.
The differences were only a couple of +2's - and PF1 math was loose enough that it didn't make a huge swing at early levels (assuming you didn't stat dump con) and at higher levels you could make up for it, and yes - it might have made you 10% more likely to fail a save - but it wasn't the end of the road.
In PF2 - the math is so tight that having a 16 instead of an 18 in your prime stat feels like you have hurt your character. At low levels anyway - it didn't seem that dramatic when planning a character out (due to the numerous stat bumps) - but 5 levels is a long time to feel gimped.
And at the end - a +2 difference in a prime stat in PF2 is *HUGE* - so far I don't see a way to overcome it - or ignore it - at the end - it feels like even having the ability to make a character with a 16 in the prime stat is a mistake.
Main takeaways from the campaign so far
1) No one except the monk felt truly heroic. Most felt like they were barely getting by as optimized characters instead of feeling like they should be dominating trash mobs like goblins
Only the Monk Character appears to be at all optimised for combat. Melee characters need Strength for damage especially at low level. A party of 5 should have at least 2 melee specialists.
Thats not to say the game is unbalanced, but your GM should be aware of it and adjust encounters slightly. Normally our GM has to adjust the other way. Don't take this as a negative, please play the game the way your players want. More empahsis on characterisation is actually a very good thing.
3) The monster math is very overpowered. Goblins hit too easily with a +6 and thanks to the new AOO rules they went for flanks every time creating a +8 to hit. Monster reflex saves were crazy with a +5 to save it virtually guaranteed that a monster could not crit fail a reflex save unless it rolled a 1. Very poor designs for both monster offense and defense.
Yes I wasn't that happy that monsters can just run around players. The only way to form a defensive line is to block every square.
4) The encounters had to be too easy. Normal and easy encounters were no challenge and the party felt bored. When the encounters were bumped up they became TOO challenging and the party became frustrated with heal bot action and getting hammered. There never seemed to be a just right feel for the combats.
We found them for the most part too easy. Healing is very strong for clerics.
I agree there is a bit of scaling problem in PF2. If you are fighting a boss monster a couple of levels above you he is going to be criting a lot.5) Afterwards everyone commented that next time we should start at third level and that way we can avoid the 10 minute work day syndrome. Only the monk really seemed to enjoy his character. Everyone else was clearly unimpressed.
We all had fun. We have been running through the modules with none or only one rest so far. We had to withdraw from a couple of fights but I think the Lake Monster was the first one to really challenge the party.
6) The poor healing and healbot is definitely an issue but I think this is a combo of poor spells and inflated monster stats for attack and defense. If the goblins were brought down to +3 to hit and +2 on reflex saves then the combats would have been much smoother and the heal bot mode would not be needed. I could not imagine what it would be in a party not allowed to channel positive energy. Ouch
Yeah there are some good spells but many of the spells are very bad. Thats a big problem. Please Paizo clean up the crap spells so they all have their place.
There's definitely a healing problem. Jason mentioned it on the Twitch stream on Friday but sounded to me like he was leaning towards healers healing more. That's not necessarily what I - as someone who loves playing healers - wants. I'd much rather have reliable out of combat healing available independent of class (my personal preference is one hour healing rituals but rests, better first aid, or item spam are functional) and more dynamic in combat healing options (more healing spells cast as reactions would help).
Really, I've found the clerical healing to be excessive. It could be toned down.
Though I'd approve of skill based healing being a bit more effective and some of the DCs being easier. Critically failing a Battle Medic check is normally going to kill a PC.