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I find it to be very easy. The system runs equally well at both low and high levels, and the rulebook is pretty intuitively laid out, making it easy to look things up in a pinch. (I still have issues with the layout of the treasure section, but am getting the hang of that, too.)
One thing I have noticed is that an enemy that is on-level or slightly higher than the group can wreck a PC if it just stands there and uses all three actions to attack. Luckily, the system encourages movement, making it easy to switch things up and avoid overwhelming PCs without obviously pulling any punches.
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Requires a lot of reading and memorization to be competent with, but when things stick the systems are so interlocked that everything sticks.
I really like running it as a GM (the party is in the teens now). Balance has stayed very predictable with the encounter building guidelines being the best I have seen from any system, it still requires GM knowledge and artistry but it is at least reliably getting you into the ballpark.
Learning the formula behind level by dc is worthwhile imo, not needing to refer to the chart is great especially when it comes to counteract checks and the like.
It is very much high fantasy power fantasy, but rarely goes to auto win territory like pf1e would. Which makes it very easy to craft a narrative imo.
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The fantasy setting, storytelling drama, and the pacing of encounters in PF2 are the same as PF1.
Building encounters with the relative monster level system is a little easier than using CR (Challenge Rating). A monster of the same level as the party is a trivial threat, because the fight is 4 against 1. Two monsters of the same level as the party are a so-called moderate threat, because 4 against 2 means that the 4 will be a little beaten up. And like the CR system, a monster 2 levels higher is as dangerous as 2 monsters of the same level. Details can be found on page 488-489, Building Encounters, in the PF2 Core Rulebook.
The PF2 Core Rulebook has a lot of actions that say, "The GM determines the DC." That is a pain. In most cases, I simply take the DC from TABLE 10–5: DCS BY LEVEL on page 503 in the Difficulty Classes section. However, for verisimilitude, environmental DCs, such as climbing a cliff, ought to be taken from TABLE 10–4: SIMPLE DCS. The environment ought not have a level.
Combat is different. The PF1 system encouraged the martial characters to stand still and make full attacks and wizards to cast battlefield control spells. The three-action system and Multiple Attack Penalty gives no advantage to standing still. A 1st-level character can make 3 attacks if he or she wants, but the -10 penalty on the 3rd attack makes it close to useless. Therefore, the martial characters benefit more from doing something to debuff their enemy, such as a Demoralize action at the beginning of their turn, rather than saving the action for a 3rd attack. The spellcasters, on the other hand, have effective damage cantrips, so they have less emphasis on using their high-level spells.
In addition, the Treat Wounds activity replaces PF1's Wand of Cure Light Wounds. If the party has PCs trained in Medicine, they can take a 10-minute break for some healing. Thus, even 1st- and 2nd-level parties that cannot afford wands can top off their hit points.
In PF2 the bonuses are less extreme. This changes character design. A character can no longer have a guaranteed hit on a same-level monster nor a guaranteed failed saving throw against his or her spell. The luck of the dice rules. Players accustomed to building optimized characters with high bonuses will be stymied. My players, in contrast, love teamwork and their usual teamwork character designs work fine. The feats available to the PCs are weak compared to PF1 feats, more like the talents given to PF1 rogues. Instead, the real power of each character is level added to proficiencies, which makes the PCs good at everything they are trained in.
The Fall of Plaguestone module and Age of Ashes adventure path were written on the brutal side. I purchased Fall of Plaguestone and the first combat is Severe threat, the equivalent of 3 monsters each as powerful as the party members. That is rough for PCs not practiced in working together. Extinction Curse sounds better balanced, but I read in the forums about some parties still having trouble. I think the players did not master the changes in combat.
The biggest drawback of PF2 is that the GM and players have to learn new rules. Lots of details about attacks and actions have change. Assuming that the features work like PF1 is often a mistake.
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The most important thing is to familiarise yourself with the DC system (static DCs vs level based, and easy/normal/hard DCs) and the Trait system. Train your eyes to look at the Traits of each action, since a lot of the rules of each action are actually just abbreviated there.
Seconding the advice above.
I will add: Be prepared to encounter rules situations where instead of getting something like "A leads to B" you get something like "A may lead to B". The idea here is that your adjudication, as GM, sits at the center of some/many rules situations.
In those moments, try not to feel rushed - even as a lot may hinge on your decision! - instead, take a breath, weigh the different options, search for something that resembles "Give the PCs a fair shot", and move forward with that resolutely.
Have fun!
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The hardest part is that there are so many places where the rules are very similar to PF1 but just that little bit different.
It is especially problematic if you're still playing/running PF1 while GMing for PF2.
At least 2 or 3 times a session I'll either use the rule from the wrong system or go
"I forget. In this version, do I <insert one thing> or b <insert another thing>?"
But as long as you and your players are happy with correcting your occassional mistakes or lapses its no big deal.
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If you run 3.5 or PF1, you should have an easy time with PF2.
Basic Tips:
1. Remember your conditions, understand how they work. They will be applied a lot. Make sure you know the difference between circumstance, status, and item bonuses.
2. Prep time is much easier because you don't have to modify creatures to be challenging.
3. The game is heavily balanced. If you play with power gamers, they may not like this game. PF2 is a lot of choices, but they don't alter your power a great deal.
4. You should think outside the box when building characters. Casters have no trouble using weapons, especially early on. You don't need to get so focused on what you think your character is that you can't build to do other things.
5. Get used to increased failure against powerful enemies and increased success by powerful monsters against your group. PF2 is not easy. Your players might freak out at hard it is to hit and damage creatures in PF2. The game is built to be challenging.
6. Death is a real possibility in PF2. You don't want to stay at low hit points long. All it takes is two crits that drop you and you're dead.
I find that running APs in PF2 is about the same as running them in PF1, but homebrewing content for PF2, and adding content to existing materials if you are running APs is 100% easier in PF2 than in PF1.
As much as APs are what brought me to Pathfinder to begin with, the homebrew campaign I am running is the most fun I have had GMing in decades. Homebrewing content on Golarion is an absolute blast with all the great lost omen lore material and adding interesting and unique content has never been easier.
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I rather like GMing in it. Because the math is better balanced, it's easier as a GM to do something without extensive preparation and still have it turn out like you want.
For example encounters: monsters of the same level are much more similar in strength now than they were in first edition, so when you use the encounter building guidelines you have a pretty good idea of how hard it's going to be. As a general rule, each level of difference between the party and the monster makes a big difference. Players will quickly notice the difference between a level+0, +1 and +2 monster.
Level+3 monsters should be used only very rarely. But if there's a conceptually cool level+3 monster that makes perfect sense in your adventure, then it's quite easy to just weaken it to level+2 by applying a Weak template (Bestiary 1, page 6) to it, and then it should be a reasonably tough but not absurd challenge. Likewise, level-1 monsters are kind of puny, but if there's a really neat one, it's easy to bump it up to a level+0 monster with an Elite template and that'll be less of a pushover. So scaling monsters up and down is quite easy.
Another way that the balanced math is helpful is when players come up with a weird solution to a problem you had in mind. Because all the skills, saves and attacks scale at similar speeds, it's easy to change "here the players must make a save" to "here they use this skill to bypass the problem" with a similar DC.
One of the key things I think is knowing when to ask for a die roll. In this edition, you should only ask for a die roll when the outcome should be in question. So if something is really easy for the PCs, even if they could potentially still fail on a 1, you can just ignore that. Likewise, if there's no real consequence for failure and the PCs can just keep trying again and again, no need for a die roll.
The flip side of that is, when you do ask for a roll, be prepared for the PCs to fail it. Perception check to find a clue? It's possible they don't find it, and what happens to your story then? Diplomacy check to get the king to let them go into the royal crypt for some adventuring? What if they fail? Will your adventure run into the wall?
This is something you have to keep in mind when coming up with an adventure. Success should feel better than failure, but failure shouldn't be the end of the story either. It's just a setback, that eventually the party will recover from or find a way around. In the long run the dice math favors the players, but in the short run sometimes luck is against them.
You do want to maintain an overall success rate that's high enough - hard to put an exact number on this, but I guess about 2/3rds or so. And during the campaign, the success rate will gradually increase a bit, because everyone is getting better at their specialties. You get that because going up to Expert+ skills puts you on the "your skill goes up faster per level than the DC" track. This is intended, it allows players to feel good about their heroic characters.
Again awesome in 2E, maintaining that success rate doesn't require you to be a math genius. The hard work has already been done for you. The DC table on page 503 lists appropriate DCs for challenges of a certain level. When you mostly use the DC appropriate to the PCs' levels, you get into this sweet spot. For example, a level 3 party would expect to run into a lot of DC 18 checks to overcome challenges, with a couple lower and higher DCs to add variety.
There's a couple of pitfalls with that though, which IMO the GMG doesn't explain well enough.
The first of these is when to use higher DCs. Ostensibly, the level-based DCs are based on the level of the opposition. So if your adventure used a lot of solo enemies of higher level than the PCs, you'd end up with a lot of high DCs because you use the enemy level to set the DC. But this can lead to a low success rate on checks and have the players feel like their characters aren't competent. So be careful how often you do this - strive to use more DCs in tune with the PCs' own levels.
The second is "everyone checks" - checks where the whole party has to use a skill. Those should have much lower DCs than checks where only one person has to do the check, and the party can push their best specialist forward to do it. If everyone has to jump over a ravine, then the strength 8 wizard without Athletics trained is in real trouble. If only one person has to jump over to attach some ropes and set up a rope bridge, then the barbarian can flex her muscles and feel awesome.
There's a variant of "everyone checks" where the successes of all the characters get pooled, so that the best characters can compensate for the worst. For example, the characters get an audience with the king and they each have to introduce themselves (Diplomacy). The boorish barbarian dwarf is terrible at this but the funny gnome bard injects some humor and covers for them. The pitfall here is that the difference in skill between these characters is going to get bigger and bigger at higher levels. For example, at level 1, the barbarian has a -1 (8 charisma) and the bard a +7 (18 charisma and trained). At level 10, the barbarian still has a -1, and the bard now has a 5+10+4+1=20 (20 charisma, master, item). An appropriate level-based DC for level 10 is 27 so the bard is doing okay, but the barbarian can only not critically fail on a 20.
Conclusion: "everyone must roll" checks work worse and worse at higher levels.
But you have to consider why is everyone rolling, and the possibile consequences of failure.
When you have to jump over a ravine, well, you really don't want to fail. But the DCs are rather static in such a case, and if you have some character who isn't confident in making it, you can usually look for alternatives. The GM has the power of not making their party face a very long jump over a deadly fall, while in a hurry and with no suitable magic at their disposal.
Impressing the king is probably a Master level task, DC 30 shouldn't be far off; so the bard specialist has a fair chance of succeeding.
If the king wants to talk with everyone instead, the other party members will have to roll too. It's likely that some of them will fail. But even then, the king probably didn't really expect to find a whole group of professional orators, and only wanted to know each of them better. If some of them doesn't impress him, that's fine. A critical failure could perhaps put more pressure on the group, as the king comes to not really trusting that PC, and will ask for some guarantees before accepting the group's request.
Its the most fun I've had GMing. Level based DC chart makes adjucating things on the fly a breeze, and the system has enough defined parts that generally, no matter what a player wants to do you can find a "nearest equivalent" and make it work - which is extremely helpful for keeping play moving and fun, while remaining fairly narrative.
The balance of the game means player options can be kept open without a lot of worry, and things don't break down at high level play like they have in all other DnD variants I've played (3.5 onward).
Actually running encounters is fun, because of how creatures are built to interact with the action system. Its easy to either resolve appropriate attacks, or pick the creatures pre-built multiple action routines as appropriate that keep them "in character" and efficient.
In general, id say GMing it is pretty great.
It has been a joy to run, honestly. It runs smooth and fast during play. Once you get the few key principles, basically most things work similar to these principles.
Also, actually read the entry for whatever you are checking out. I think you will often find that the entry tells you what you need.
At first things may seem complicated, but ultimately the system is pretty straightforward. Just play, do your best, and note some things you have to look up later on.
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6. Death is a real possibility in PF2. You don't want to stay at low hit points long. All it takes is two crits that drop you and you're dead.Just to clarify this point, your PCs aren't actually dead, just dropped for the combat. PF2E's math is swingier, and the death rules are I want to say slightly more forgiving, so be prepared to see PCs drop a fair bit in encounters, particularly while they are getting used to the system, but actual PC death should be relatively rare.
Be careful running with this assumption. It feels that way at first, but as soon as a character drops with persistent damage on, they are in grave peril. And if the character dropped from a critical hit, the could easily be dead by the next round, especially if they get healed, but only for a few HP.
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I love DMING PF2, i have being a DM since AD&D and went into Pathfinder after 3.5
I love the action economy, the monsters stats, the now few types of bonus/penaltys and i do love how higher level fights are resolved and not taking forever to run one.
Also love the humor in this edition!
I am running Age of Ashes doing the 5th book now.
Be careful running with this assumption. It feels that way at first, but as soon as a character drops with persistent damage on, they are in grave peril. And if the character dropped from a critical hit, the could easily be dead by the next round, especially if they get healed, but only for a few HP.
6. Death is a real possibility in PF2. You don't want to stay at low hit points long. All it takes is two crits that drop you and you're dead.Just to clarify this point, your PCs aren't actually dead, just dropped for the combat. PF2E's math is swingier, and the death rules are I want to say slightly more forgiving, so be prepared to see PCs drop a fair bit in encounters, particularly while they are getting used to the system, but actual PC death should be relatively rare.
And don't forget the death trait.
Be careful running with this assumption. It feels that way at first, but as soon as a character drops with persistent damage on, they are in grave peril. And if the character dropped from a critical hit, the could easily be dead by the next round, especially if they get healed, but only for a few HP.
6. Death is a real possibility in PF2. You don't want to stay at low hit points long. All it takes is two crits that drop you and you're dead.Just to clarify this point, your PCs aren't actually dead, just dropped for the combat. PF2E's math is swingier, and the death rules are I want to say slightly more forgiving, so be prepared to see PCs drop a fair bit in encounters, particularly while they are getting used to the system, but actual PC death should be relatively rare.
For further clarification, while persistant damage is indeed deadly, you only get wounded 1 when you lose the dying Condition for the first time, regardless of whether you are at dying 2. So you can't be killed just from being knocked out by two crits in a row. A third crit would do it though.
And don't forget the death trait.Be careful running with this assumption. It feels that way at first, but as soon as a character drops with persistent damage on, they are in grave peril. And if the character dropped from a critical hit, the could easily be dead by the next round, especially if they get healed, but only for a few HP.
6. Death is a real possibility in PF2. You don't want to stay at low hit points long. All it takes is two crits that drop you and you're dead.Just to clarify this point, your PCs aren't actually dead, just dropped for the combat. PF2E's math is swingier, and the death rules are I want to say slightly more forgiving, so be prepared to see PCs drop a fair bit in encounters, particularly while they are getting used to the system, but actual PC death should be relatively rare.
And the wounded condition.
I find I have to take the axe of lots of bits when running PF2.
Skill actions get majorly hand-waved by me very very often. I often find myself treating non-combat stuff as a sort of skill challenge - I dont like dealing with diplomatic states or having basic functionality that everyone should have locked behind skill feats (Ala- Quick/Group Coercion/Impression).
Exploration activities are mostly ignored at my table and only really brought out on occasion. I also ignore silly bits like bulk limits of containers and the like.
I largely ignore how stealth is supposed to work too because tracking varying stealth states on a token against all nearby targets is a hassle that has very little return in DM investment.
I use multi-stage afflictions very sparingly and ask that my players do the same. Having multiple afflicted tokens on the board is alot to track. One or two is alright though.
I suspect that alot of these complex bits are due to developers wanting to have a ton of "design space" to allow them to create oodles of items, feats and archetypes. Unfortunately alot of this stuff can feel super situational and can, at times, feel like complexity for complexity's sake. I think this is why they went with strict vancian rather than 5e/arcanist preparation too (another bit I had to house rule away).
Once I tamp down all the bits of PF2 that result in unnecessary book-keeping and I get the game to a place where I can run it a couple beers in, then I find it a joy to GM for. The 3 action economy, degrees of success, +10 crit and other bits really add alot to the experience for all involved. You get lots of info on that everywhere, so I will focus on the my favorite bit about PF2 as a DM: Monsters.
Monsters are super cool in PF2. I don't find that folks touch on this enough in PF2 reviews. One negative: some stat-blocks are badly made (lots of page flipping to figure out how monster abilities work at times). Still, once you get a hang of running and making your own monsters, you may find that PF2 monsters rival those of those found in 13th Age. 5e monsters are really just bags of hp by comparison.
Anywho, in closing...
With some work, PF2 can be the most enjoyable, balanced and fun to run Fantasy d20 game out there. But theres no way I would run it stock.
I have had a much easier time GMing with PF2e. One note that has tripped me up for a while is spell saves. There is a definition of a basic save some where in the core rule book. You need to pay close attention to the wording on the spell because if it says basic save then that spell has all 4 degrees of success with it, as listed under basic save. If it doesn't say basic save then you only follow what is listed under the spell. I forgot about this some where along the way in my Society Sessions and had a player recently do some digging and bring it back up.