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I had seven players sit in on my inaugural session of PF2 this past Saturday. We played for four hours and had two encounters. The party was Level 1.
A bit of background - I finished my last Pathfinder campaign about a year ago; it ran from levels 12-20, plus one Mythic Tier. It was epic and over the top in every way that only high level Pathfinder can be. If you've played high level Pathfinder, then you know of which I speak. It was a glorious mess, indeed!
My campaign coincidentally ended just as the 2e playtest began and we eagerly dug into the playtest .... but I ran out of steam about 3/4 of the way through and we left the rest of the playtest and further development to the good people of Paizo. I did get to participate in most of the surveys, though. At that point I was pretty down on 2e.
The playtest finishes and as the hype starts for 2e I find myself getting more and more excited by what I am hearing. When the game dropped, I picked up the CRB, GM screen, Bestiary; and preordered that Lost Omens guides, as well as the as-then-very-incomplete Fantasy Grounds ruleset.
Flash forward two months, and after reading the rules cover to cover, felt ready to start play testing the various systems to see how they feel.
Here are my impressions:
The party consisted of a sword and board fighter; bard; monk (stances, no ki), ranger; elementalist sorcerer; cleric, and storm druid.
I am VERY PLEASED to announce that the session went GREAT! We had to refer to the rules a few times throughout the session, but by and large, the information in the GM screen was enough to keep the session rolling with virtually no pauses.
The first encounter was against two River Drakes while they were in gliders traveling through a massive gorge. The second encounter was against a handful of skeletons.
My take aways thus far:
1 - it still feels like Pathfinder! I was secretly dreading that PF2 would end up feeling like 5e with it's veneer of awesome but in fact leading to the most monotonous combats. The 3 action economy really created natural drama and the players quickly learned that the third action is not something to be squandered .
2 - it's a very intuitive ruleset; just about everything I thought felt balanced, really was, without having to check a bunch of math first.
3 - the players absolutely loved feeling like they could do multiple things during an encounter, besides fighting; it didn't take long for them to start utilizing the Delay action to set up synergies within the party based on certain triggers.
4 - as much as I loved the critical failure/success mechanic on paper, it paled compared to the way it played at the table. It created so much drama and excitement, it adds a nice little gambling mechanic to every roll.
Overall, the session went super-smooth, even with such a large party, and never dragged once. I'm really looking forward to exploring the rules some more at the next session!
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Wow, glider battle over a massive gorge against river drakes is a really epic first encounter to start on a high note!
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Wow, glider battle over a massive gorge against river drakes is a really epic first encounter to start on a high note!
I agree. Taking notes for my campaign lol
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Wow, glider battle over a massive gorge against river drakes is a really epic first encounter to start on a high note!
Well, thanks to you, Mark and the other designers, for keeping true to what Pathfinder means to so many of us and making a game that allows epic, crazy ideas to be brought to life with a robust rules set that doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator!
(It was a lot of fun to run! I tend to plan encounters around terrain ideas; I think of a cool set piece to build, and then the encounter kinda springs out of that. I've been playing for four decades now so I tend to think in term of, 'hmm, what have I not seen happen yet?')
Sounds amazing! So how does the Stride action work when you're stuck to the confines of a little glider?
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Sounds amazing! So how does the Stride action work when you're stuck to the confines of a little glider?
Abstraction. :)
You have to move a minimum of 5 ft, or the glider starts to fall. After two rounds, the glider falls to the gorge floor, 75 feet below — you probably don’t want to do that. That made healing a primary concern.Maximum movement is 30 feet. You are suspended in a harness, so once you are within reach, you can attack as normal. I also had areas with loose rock and shale that the PCs could pick up and drop on opponents or knock loose to fall on an opponent chasing them.
This is what it looked like, in-game:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/3L9sJzYQ61gKTZb77
SO cool!
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That glider fight is what RPG dreams are made of - if the group had any newish players you probably blew their minds.
That is a really neat encounter, man.
Do you find that the game scales up to 7 players well? I am running a game with just 5 players and I already feel like combat rounds tend to take a little while.
Wow, glider battle over a massive gorge against river drakes is a really epic first encounter to start on a high note!
Right? I did three kobold scouts on a forest path
One must wonder though, why was there a need to glide over the gorge in the first place?
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One must wonder though, why was there a need to glide over the gorge in the first place?
well, the session started a high note right? how else were they gonna get down
That is a really neat encounter, man.
Do you find that the game scales up to 7 players well? I am running a game with just 5 players and I already feel like combat rounds tend to take a little while.
I'm used to running large groups, and compared to first edition, this flowed really quick. I don't usually plan on encounters taking X amount of minutes to run; for PFS I could see this being a concern, but for a home-brew game if the combat takes an hour, it takes an hour. It didn't feel like a slog at any point, though.
One must wonder though, why was there a need to glide over the gorge in the first place?
Ah, therein lies the hook. :)
They had three options: (1) walk through the gorge, which has a mineral mine, and is in three sections; this would require a caravan and constant watch for the gnoll raiders who have been poaching the mine for slaves; (2) walk through the Osirion desert with all of its inherent dangers; (3) Take the express route via glider. Due to an anomaly in the way the gorge was cut, there are strong thermal gusts which form from the heat of the ground above colliding with the cooler gorge and mine entrances. Even more curious, the thermal flows' direction changes depending on the phase of the moon, kinda like a wind-tide. The PCs waited until the last 3 days of the current phase of the moon to ride the thermals out, allowing them 28 days to fly back to the outpost if need be.
They are investigating one of the sky pyramids which has crashed; that's a whole other big map/terain piece that I made for the rest of this playtest. :p
I'm used to running large groups, and compared to first edition, this flowed really quick. I don't usually plan on encounters taking X amount of minutes to run; for PFS I could see this being a concern, but for a home-brew game if the combat takes an hour, it takes an hour. It didn't feel like a slog at any point, though.That is a really neat encounter, man.
Do you find that the game scales up to 7 players well? I am running a game with just 5 players and I already feel like combat rounds tend to take a little while.
That is good. In my own experience, any given round of combat is shorter in 2e but fights last more rounds; this tends to mean that fights last a little while. As a GM, it is a little challenging for me to keep combat interesting in the later rounds of combat (I end up making enemies run away or surrender more often), but perhaps that is only due to the fact that I have not incorporated any daring handglider maneuvers into my fights.
LOL, yeah! Gotta up the ante! The players want an arms race, I'll give em an arms race lol.
Any tips for folks looking to run their first PF2 session?
Any tips for folks looking to run their first PF2 session?
Yes, I have a few. EDIT: These are things that worked for me; YMMV.
Personally, I think it's probably harder for an experienced Pathfinder GM to just port over to PF2 than someone who's only run another edition of D&D or a different rpg. A lot of things have the same names but behave differently, so my first tip is to read the CRB cover to cover; it took me about a month and a half, but I actually read it straight through, from the intro through the appendix. It really helped me get an overview to the design aesthetic, particularly how magic and magic items fit into the new edition.
Second tip, run simulations. I made purposely OP/min-max'd PCs to test encounters; almost all of the builds used flaws and had max'd out key Ability scores. I took time, especially, to study the reactions for each class and tested how they synergize with other classes; an unwary GM will get his or her clock cleaned if you aren't watching the PCs, especially when they start using the Delay action to set up synergies. EDIT: To Paizo's credit, they've actually made it REALLY difficult to make broken characters with this edition.
Third tip, the monsters have lots of fun, quirky abilities in this edition. Try to use all of them, it keeps the players guessing what else they have up their sleeves and will definitely invite caution on the part of the PCs.
Fourth tip, have a good look at your player's choice in weapons for their characters -- the traits of weapons can be used to set up synergies as well, so be aware of who's got what: trip, fatal, reach, forceful, etc, and what those traits mean.
Final tip, don't deny the players these opportunities to synergize; this edition of Pathfinder, even moreso than first edition, lets PCs do some bananas things -- embrace it and lose gracefully.
EDIT: REALLY final tip -- get the GM screen! It's a life saver!
I hope you find these helpful!
Nice thanks. Rather surprised to see someone who likes a gm screen. may have to check it out. My experience has been gm screens are a bit rubbish at anything other than being a screen.
I've personally found a lot of GM screens have certain sections that I don't really need and are missing a few of the things I look up the most. This screen has the highest density of things I need; I think Logan did a great job choosing them. I am obviously biased though, check it out for yourself!
The GM screen is solid, yeah. The DC tables alone are worth it.