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From the experiences that I've had I can make a low level PF2e character significantly faster than I can make a character in PF1e, though that's not really saying too much.
I could make a character level 5 or below taking about 10 minutes in PF2e and about 20-25 min in PF1e, depending on the class.
I find that it does take a bit longer to make a PF2e character as they get up in level given the fact that there are many more choices to each character as they obtain each level.
Spellcasters add additional time to that as it takes time to select spells for my spell repertoire.
Though with all of those delays it seems like it's more of a system mastery issue as I've been playing PF1e for the better part of a decade, and while PF1e did have a lot of "options" the bulk of them tended to be sub-optimal "trap" options that could simply be ignored in 95% of cases.
When you got down to the bottom of everything you were really only making a choice from a small pool of viable abilities about half as often as you would be selecting a new feature in PF2e. Though that could vary from class to class.
With everything said and done though I will say that I've had a MUCH more enjoyable experience putting together characters for PF2e than I have in most of my experience with PF1e.
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With everything said and done though I will say that I've had a MUCH more enjoyable experience putting together characters for PF2e than I have in most of my experience with PF1e.
Isn't part of that because it's new and shiny? <g>
I feel the same effect. And I love that background is a core concept. Even players who never gave a second's thought to their character's backstory now have to decide what profession they were learning before becomming an adventurer.
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Do you have a counterpoint to that other than it being harder for you personally?Counterpoint...okay, I am not just talking about my experiences.
Seems if you do not dig every aspect of PF2, the same half-dozen posters all come down on you (plus the cheerleading), been going on since the playtest started.
Just an idea but it is possible that maybe people just disagree about whether something is a problem or not and aren't just mindlessly backing the company. I mean maybe some are but I personally will not just blindly defend but rather ask question to understand what the problem is and if I don't recognize it as a problem.. well...
I will say If anyone on the forum took the time to do a logical analysis of the game system with math etc before coming to an opinion it's Deadman^
With everything said and done though I will say that I've had a MUCH more enjoyable experience putting together characters for PF2e than I have in most of my experience with PF1e.Isn't part of that because it's new and shiny? <g>
I feel the same effect. And I love that background is a core concept. Even players who never gave a second's thought to their character's backstory now have to decide what profession they were learning before becomming an adventurer.
I mean, I'm sure that's part of it but it's definitely not all of it.
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Counterpoint...okay, I am not just talking about my experiences.
Okay. What experiences? I'm legitimately interested in the details of this since, as I said, it's the first example I've heard of new players finding PF2 harder.
Seems if you do not dig every aspect of PF2, the same half-dozen posters all come down on you (plus the cheerleading), been going on since the playtest started.
Is this directed at me? I actually just did a thread complaining about several aspects of PF2...admittedly they then said they were gonna fix most of my complaints (though I remain worried about Alchemist in a couple of ways), but I hardly knew that at the time.
I also wouldn't characterize disagreeing with you or asking what evidence you have of your points as 'coming down' on you. That's really not how debate or conversation works. Anyone making statements like 'I disagree with you' on anything is definitionally gonna get asked 'why?' and 'what do you base that on?' and similar things.
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What example? This now seems like sealioning.Counterpoint...okay, I am not just talking about my experiences.Okay. What experiences? I'm legitimately interested in the details of this since, as I said, it's the first example I've heard of new players finding PF2 harder.
OMG what are you even doing?
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What example? This now seems like sealioning.Counterpoint...okay, I am not just talking about my experiences.Okay. What experiences? I'm legitimately interested in the details of this since, as I said, it's the first example I've heard of new players finding PF2 harder.
I'm confused.
I said that Malk_Content at least had experience actually teaching new people PF2, while you had only your own experiences. You responded with the above, an indication you had something else.
I thus naturally assumed you had something like having seen new players have trouble with it. And if that's not the case I'm curious what you are talking about.
What part of that chain of events seems unreasonable to you?
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Also the term Ancestry leads some to think of familial ancestors, instead of using Race or Species. Race makes perfect sense, especially in D&D/PF, we are all the Human race (we simply have different ethnicities), so Elves and what-not really are another race/species.
Ancestry is a much better term for the list of optional things that it gives you to choose from. Some of the different ancestry feats and heritages may imply a biological element, but many of them relate to cultural practices, and even if it was an even 50/50 split, ancestry is the much better catch all category for this element of the character creation process. Leading new players to think of the Ancestry part of character creation as including one's family tree and cultural placement in the campaign is a great addition to the process, and worth spending an extra 5 to 10 minutes on from just choosing a race for mechanical reasons.
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That is what is what I have found with teaching new players, and others I know, and contacts, groups, etc, finding.
So, I guess all we have to go on is everyone's assertions and anecdotes, until we see some hard evidence, one way or the other, as to whether PF1 or PF2 is easier to teach new players.
Okay, see, this is exactly what I was asking.
And sure, we only have anecdotes for the moment, but so far, yours is the only one I've heard where people who were new to RPGs (as opposed to people who'd previously done PF1) found PF2 harder.
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My personal experience so far has been really good, mostly under 10 min for a level one character.
Most of my players are rather new, so some of them have a little bit of PF 1 or PF 2 playtest experience some have never played a pnp RPG ever before.
For level 1 characters we had roughly an hour per person, from scratch.
Level 8 Rogue with a completely new player 3h.
Level 8 Suli Monk, transfer from PF1 (with my custom suli conversion) 1.5 h with a relatively experienced player.
Which roughly mirrors my experience from the playtest, where I introduced ~10 new players to the system.
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1) It depends on my character conception. If its close to something the Devs envisioned, then it takes me about an hour. If the conception isn't well supported by the rules, then much longer assuming it is possible. My first non-playtest character is a Shadow Weaver concept, with various Rogue and Illusionist goals. It took about 10 hours to settle on a character after what-if'ing around 8 combinations of dedications/multiclassing. None of the combinations was an obvious winner. They all missed the conception in various ways.
2) From the playtest, higher level characters generally took me 2-3 hours. I suffered from a lot of analysis paralysis.
3) Hero Lab Online.
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That is what is what I have found with teaching new players, and others I know, and contacts, groups, etc, finding.
So, I guess all we have to go on is everyone's assertions and anecdotes, until we see some hard evidence, one way or the other, as to whether PF1 or PF2 is easier to teach new players.
Okay, see, this is exactly what I was asking.
And sure, we only have anecdotes for the moment, but so far, yours is the only one I've heard where people who were new to RPGs (as opposed to people who'd previously done PF1) found PF2 harder.
Well, that's not entirely true is it? We, as in the posters on this board, don't have access to true data beyond our own experiences and anecdotes.
Paizo, on the other hand, ran internal and external testing for a very long time before releasing this game. Given that one of their top goals was making the game more accessible to new people, I'd say it is safe to assume they took the steps that yielded good data towards that goal. And Jason literally told us on a stream that new players were getting tripped up a lot less than old PF1 players.
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Well, that's not entirely true is it? We, as in the posters on this board, don't have access to true data beyond our own experiences and anecdotes.
Paizo, on the other hand, ran internal and external testing for a very long time before releasing this game. Given that one of their top goals was making the game more accessible to new people, I'd say it is safe to assume they took the steps that yielded good data towards that goal. And Jason literally told us on a stream that new players were getting tripped up a lot less than old PF1 players.
This is true. I was referring purely to what we as players had access to.
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1. 15 minutes with a player, 10 minutes on my own.
2. Converted 4 level 9 characters from PF1 to PF2, with house rule for double feats and an extra level 1 feat. Each took me about an hour, but I've been going back to them and tweaking them here and there since that's what I do for fun. All 4 characters were of common races with easily transferable class choices, so if I had to homebrew races it would take me MUCH MUCH longer.
3. I use Hero Lab Online in conjunction with a Google Docs character sheet to check my work. Hero Lab makes it much faster to sort through options, and book flipping is minimized. Without it, it would take me probably half an hour to make a level 1 character.
4. It's really, really useful to keep track of WHEN you get abilities and proficiency increases. Without my notes on when I achieved a certain boost, I could easily overlook it. Bonus feats are also left out in the cold by default character sheets, and it's important to remember at what level you got them. A bonus feat at level 3 is a BIG difference from a bonus feat at level 17, and retraining is hairy with them.
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It is, I mean, maybe ease to learn was a goal, but whether they have succeeded, remains to be seen. We do not have any hard evidence that PF2 is easier for new players to pick up than PF1.Well, that's not entirely true is it?That is what is what I have found with teaching new players, and others I know, and contacts, groups, etc, finding.
So, I guess all we have to go on is everyone's assertions and anecdotes, until we see some hard evidence, one way or the other, as to whether PF1 or PF2 is easier to teach new players.
Okay, see, this is exactly what I was asking.
And sure, we only have anecdotes for the moment, but so far, yours is the only one I've heard where people who were new to RPGs (as opposed to people who'd previously done PF1) found PF2 harder.
No, but Paizo almost certainly does. Jason explicitly said their data showed that people who were extremely used to PF1 had more trip ups than new players did. I don't remember Jason explicitly saying that those same new players had a harder time picking up PF1 than PF2. But it seems pretty bizarre not to assume they have hard evidence that this is the case, given they spent years on the project and their general trend towards testing it and gathering data. Like, if they didn't have strong reason to believe this was the case, why would they have made the game this way? That's a lot of money down the drain.
In PF1 it was an exercise in me often going "eeeh that doesn't really work, sorry."
I know exactly what you mean and have faced that phenomenon numerous times myself.
Why not? This seems like the thread for it.And you base your disbelief of Malk_Content on?Several reasons, but I'm not going to go into that here.
It really isn't. This thread is a discussion about the quality and efficiency of P2E's character creation system. It is not necessarily a comparison to P1E, and certainly shouldn't be grounds for an edition war.
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I say the true tests will come 5 and 10 years down the line when PF2e is closer to the amount of options PF1e has.
Likely so.
I predict that, provided Paizo sticks to their current framework for newly established content rather than bolting on new rules systems as they did in P1E, it's going to be much better than previous.
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I say the true tests will come 5 and 10 years down the line when PF2e is closer to the amount of options PF1e has.Likely so.
I predict that, provided Paizo sticks to their current framework for newly established content rather than bolting on new rules systems as they did in P1E, it's going to be much better than previous.
I think it helps that the entire character build process is essentially a series of dropdown menus with a manageable number of options.
Rather than having everything organized by:
Feat choice at any level -> 1 million options, check prerequisites manually
Feat choice at level X -> Handful of options, with room to expand, fewer prerequisites
Just the fact that things are organized better makes a huge difference. You don't have to scroll through metamagic feats while planning a barbarian.
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I think maybe trying to read it front to cover may be a bit more challenging then pf1 but I think teaching people it will be easier for me and my group. I have a good handle on it and I feel some things will be easier to convey.
The CRB definitely does feel like more of a "user manual" than a "teaching tool" a lot of the time. It feels like PF2 is a game that is very easy for a GM who already knows the game to teach it to players, but it's probably pretty tough for an entirely new group to pick up on their own.
I hope they have something like the Beginner's Box 2 planned.
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That has nothing to do with what is being discussed. I bought the original playtest book, took part in all the surveys, it was more about fine-tuning what was already set.So Paizo has collected data that shows people that are extremely used to PF1 have a harder time picking it up than those that are brand new to the hobby? When and how did they collect that data?Playtest. Surveys.
You asked, I answered.
And a lot more than fine tuning ended up occurring.
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That has nothing to do with what is being discussed. I bought the original playtest book, took part in all the surveys, it was more about fine-tuning what was already set.So Paizo has collected data that shows people that are extremely used to PF1 have a harder time picking it up than those that are brand new to the hobby? When and how did they collect that data?Playtest. Surveys.
The surveys all included questions on how experienced you are with Pathfinder and how long it took you to build a character for any given section. That sounds exactly like what is being discussed to me.
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I dig it and have been able to build characters faster. Some points I enjoy.
-Love the integration of stats into the ABC. Saves time by removing a step (Figuring out ability scores) and interrogates into the choices of your character. Feels intuitive .
-The block approach speeds things up as well in my opinion. When it tells you to pick a Ancestry (or Class or Skill) feat they are all there easily laid out in one place, enabling you to make faster decisions. (No more flipping through pages of feats, taking notes of what will work.. etc) (Only exception to this would be spells, which sit in there own chapter and organized alphabetically rather than by level, which does make sense for the data/spells needed to be presented)
-Character sheet took a little while to get use to, but after use I find it to be well designed (Functionally) with a place/location for everything you need to record.
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Seems if you do not dig every aspect of PF2, the same half-dozen posters all come down on you (plus the cheerleading), been going on since the playtest started.
I know right? How dare people disagree with your assertions or question why you feel the way you do.