Which Action System Do You Like Best?

[Dragon78]

So which action system do you like best, 1E(standard, move, etc.) or 2E(3 action + reaction)?

Keep in mind I am only talking about the action system itself, not other aspects of the combat systems.

[Gorbacz]

2E hands down.

The exception-based PF1 system is: hard to explain for newbies, promotes a static "stand and full attack" gameplay and makes monster design harder as it's a binary choice of "cast a spell/use an ability OR full attack".

There's literally no advantage of PF1 action system.

[avr]

If it was just standard, move, swift, AoO(s), option of full round combining the first two I'd say PF1. PF2 reaction congestion gets worse than swift action congestion, and there's some benefit to having different kinds of actions defined.

Trouble is there's a lot more fiddliness on top of that; 1 round actions, free, immediate, free actions you can take only once a turn that aren't swift or immediate (this is rare but exists), 5' step and the interactions of that with move actions, and which actions you can take during a full round action. It's too much.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

I like the PF2 system in theory. Have no idea how it actually plays. Haven't noticed any problems with PF1's, but I do exclusively PbP so taking time to check what kind of action something is or taking time to decide what actions you can do in a round doesn't really affect game speed.

[SheepishEidolon]

I wouldn't call the latter just "2E", because it has been around since PF1 Unchained. I find it irritating that the feature PF2 gets most praise for (impression from some threads) is actually a legacy thing. Though I readily admit it's now deep-rooted in the system and got further polishment.

In my first campaign (~20 sessions) I used a variant of Unchained's action economy, in my second (~70 sessions) I switched to the standard model. My impressions:

Learning
Given that the standard model still raises questions among my players after 70+ questions, Unchained seems vastly superior here. Depends on the players of course - veterans very familiar with the oddities of the standard model are likely less interested in switching.

Balance
Unchained removes the increasing disparity between single and full attacks, but the increased number of attacks (from level 1) results in more rocket-tag.

Necessary tweaks
All the combat options were created with the standard model in mind, so tweaks are only necessary for balance, if it all. Unchained authors put a lot of effort into converting actions, but there are still some corner cases left.

For my third campaign I stick with standard, mostly because I don't want to deal with the hassle of reintroducing Unchained and caring about corner cases. Still I hold Unchained's version in high regards.