| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Um, wall of text incoming.
I'm really, really enjoying it. I think it plays easy, is easy enough to customise, and I actually enjoy playing pretty much all of the monsters I throw at my players.
For what it's worth, I've only been a GM so far, with my only previous GMing experience being an accelerated level 1-20 D&D 5e campaign (although my only long term experience as a player was with shadowrun 5e). I'd like to be a player at some point, but I think this system is so fun to GM that I don't really feel the need to any time soon.
Overall with my group the choice of PF2 was a little controversial at first, as while two of the players have been huge fans of the new system, two of them were fairly sad to be leaving D&D 5e. Both of those have since changed their opinion a bit, and while they still like 5e they quite like PF2 as well. The fifth player plays a little less regularly and it's a little harder to gauge his opinions clearly, but it's my understanding that he is completely fine with the system.
Personally I haven't had many issues with the system, with those I have had being small enough to forget, with the exception of hero points. I'm fine with their mechanics, I just don't like them being tied into a meta reward thing.
As for house rules, most of mine were to tailor it to my own setting. So I changed the ancestries and heritages a bit, replaced the pantheon with my own, and added some new advanced weapons (hello flamethrower!). I also let you get language and ancestry feat options from the plane you're from (multiplanar-focused setting) and some ancestry feat options from heritage. I also changed hero points to be a 3/day thing rather than 3/session, with it being a sort of in-setting force of fate thing some NPCs also have. I did make a couple of other changes though.
1) I made it so that background lore skills scale automatically, like with additional lore. For what it's worth I'm also letting players build their own backgrounds for now.
2) I gave every ancestry a fixed bonus feature, which is roughly on par with an ancestry feat or heritage.
3) I ditched half-elf and half-orc as fixed heritages, and mixed them up with adopted ancestry mechanics to let people play mix-and match with different ancestries, where they have an excuse.
4) This is probably the most disruptive change I've made, but I made ancestry feats a subset of general feat and replaced ancestry feat levels with general feat levels. Ancestry feats are usually better, but I'm happy with how it's playing and general feats always exist as a niche pick to round out a build.
Personally at least I think the system handles homebrewing fairly well, so I confess I'm still pumped for the GM's guide.
|
| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
And now from player's perspective.
*vodka, shades, Uncut Gems soundtrack*
In PF1 winning fights was all about how you build your character, how did you pre-buff and what was the initiative roll. Not much else.
In PF2? It's more tactics. It's knowing what you can do and what the enemy can do. It's about positioning. It's about coordination and your team having your back.
It's about making your enemies do exactly what you want them to do.
It's about being one step ahead.
Like some crazy-ass Jew from Brooklyn.
This is how I win.
In PF2? It's more tactics. It's knowing what you can do and what the enemy can do. It's about positioning. It's about coordination and your team having your back.
This, right here, is why I like PF2 so much as a storyteller. I've typically avoided running in the D20 oeuvre because combat encounters felt overly mechanical - resolved less by engaging in it than by having the right pluses in the right place on your sheet. It felt like a separate game that erupted in the middle of my game and had to be completed before I could get back to my game. Combat encounters now feel far more organic, and character focused than they did in the 3.X/PF/4 iterations without being flat and lifeless like 5.
I've really been enjoying the system for our games, its revitalized our tactical play, my players are appreciating the added depth and character building customization, and most importantly as a GM coming from 5e, the encounter guidelines actually work and you don't need to specially massage a boss monster's action economy for it to function as a boss monster- we've had some fights that my players felt really great about.
I enjoy exploration mode conceptually, though we're still ironing out the kinks in terms of how we use it. I bring it up because having explicit rules for it is really helping us have a better experience when crawling through dungeons.
I also like how much more contextual action matters in P2e and how much unique monster abilities change things up. Combats aren't decided before they happen. I've also found that my players have been switching up their tactics a lot on the fly. There's sort of a plan, but when this monster has ferocity but that one has an AoE attack it makes it so fights aren't just smacking a sack of meat.
I think one or two players are starting to realize that getting a good Recall Knowledge off to figure out a creature's capabilities from the start is pretty useful.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
There are a number of varied opinions on this forum, from fully positive to fully negative and a full spectrum in between. One need not look too hard to find someone who has strong opinions either way about the game.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thanks everyone for posting about your experiences. I’m glad to hear that everyone had mostly good things to say.This is Paizo's house forums - consider widening your scope.
I have looked around other places, but I will admit this is the first forum ‘I’ have made on the subject. I mainly chose Paizo’s forums, because it seemed like the safest place to get a lot of comments soon. I also wanted to create forum detailing their actual experiences. Most statements I found, it was hard to determine if they were “I read this and I think it’s good/bad” or “I actually played this and it was good/bad”. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to shut myself off from any negative posts about the game, I just wanted to hear some people’s actual experiences. Trust me, I already decided that I would at least try out this game long before I made this forum.
I have looked around other places, but I will admit this is the first forum ‘I’ have made on the subject. I mainly chose Paizo’s forums, because it seemed like the safest place to get a lot of comments soon. I also wanted to create forum detailing their actual experiences. Most statements I found, it was hard to determine if they were “I read this and I think it’s good/bad” or “I actually played this and it was good/bad”. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to shut myself off from any negative posts about the game, I just wanted to hear some people’s actual experiences. Trust me, I already decided that I would at least try out this game long before I made this forum.
Here is a thread I've been following on EN World, of people's actual play experiences. Might want to check it out, too.
Here is a thread I've been following on EN World, of people's actual play experiences. Might want to check it out, too.
I have looked around other places, but I will admit this is the first forum ‘I’ have made on the subject. I mainly chose Paizo’s forums, because it seemed like the safest place to get a lot of comments soon. I also wanted to create forum detailing their actual experiences. Most statements I found, it was hard to determine if they were “I read this and I think it’s good/bad” or “I actually played this and it was good/bad”. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to shut myself off from any negative posts about the game, I just wanted to hear some people’s actual experiences. Trust me, I already decided that I would at least try out this game long before I made this forum.
There seems to be a missing link
There seems to be a missing linkHere is a thread I've been following on EN World, of people's actual play experiences. Might want to check it out, too.
I have looked around other places, but I will admit this is the first forum ‘I’ have made on the subject. I mainly chose Paizo’s forums, because it seemed like the safest place to get a lot of comments soon. I also wanted to create forum detailing their actual experiences. Most statements I found, it was hard to determine if they were “I read this and I think it’s good/bad” or “I actually played this and it was good/bad”. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m trying to shut myself off from any negative posts about the game, I just wanted to hear some people’s actual experiences. Trust me, I already decided that I would at least try out this game long before I made this forum.
You are right! Sorry about that.
Here's the thread:
Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience
I like PF2e's structure, but the implementation has just sorta failed for my group. Options so far feel very dull/restrained, and while the combat is better than 1e with the new 3 actions system it isn't enough to get us to play it over other games.
We're hoping APG's new options and GMG's variant rules might help.