More broadly, I note that we're seeing one guy who really hates the game, and is willing to spend lots of mental energy insisting that it's horrible, and a bunch of people who rather like it. I'm honestly not sure why he's here. Maybe arguing with people on the...
Copied from a reply to a similar thought:
"I'm always passionate. As for why this outlet... I have a boring job that leaves me with a lot of on-the-clock time in front of a PC. 5e isn't worth discussing, and most other RPG forums are closed down or inactive so I'm here. I wish I enjoyed PF2 as much as you do so I could be a poster full of passionate positive energy instead.
The bottom line is that I don't actually hate Paizo or their staff and I certainly don't dislike any of the posters here. While I may stir the pot more than you'd like I'm just here to enjoy some discussion and see if I can't get a few people to show me why I'm wrong to dislike PF2 the way I do."
More broadly, I note that we're seeing one guy who really hates the game, and is willing to spend lots of mental energy insisting that it's horrible, and a bunch of people who rather like it. I'm honestly not sure why he's here. Maybe arguing with people on the...Copied from a reply to a similar thought:
"I'm always passionate. As for why this outlet... I have a boring job that leaves me with a lot of on-the-clock time in front of a PC. 5e isn't worth discussing, and most other RPG forums are closed down or inactive so I'm here. I wish I enjoyed PF2 as much as you do so I could be a poster full of passionate positive energy instead.
The bottom line is that I don't actually hate Paizo or their staff and I certainly don't dislike any of the posters here. While I may stir the pot more than you'd like I'm just here to enjoy some discussion and see if I can't get a few people to show me why I'm wrong to dislike PF2 the way I do."
Godspeed, soldier! There's a war to be won!
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This illusion of choice argument sounds great in the heads of those making it. But PF1 gave the illusion of choice as well. Builds for doing specific things were the same over and over again. There was no choice. You wanted to build a 2-hander wielder you were taking weapon focus and power attack no matter what. You were going to take two-weapon fighting and the associated feats no matter what.
This idea that PF1 offered all this choice is the illusion. I played PF2 as a player and DM for years. The players took the same feats over and over and over again. They knew what fighting styles were most powerful and how to build them. They knew how to build out casters and what abilities to take to maximize it. There wasn't choice. There was just optimal ways to build that were the same for everyone.
Now those choices take up less of your overall character build than they did in PF1. You can build more into a character now like actual fantasy characters in book who aren't known for doing one thing.
PF1 was designed as if you were mixing the good and the bad together, power attack here, skill focus there so you could knock like 90% off your top-end power builds and still be capable. Given that we both know this to be true, isn't it on your players to switch things up and see if a weaker more versatile build can provide more entertainment?
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Why was the dragon just sitting there waiting to take it? Ancient dragons should invest in anti-scrying protections and have better than even odds of being the one who sneaks up on the party full buffed and eats one of them for a snack.
If you had your monsters as passive threats that didn't play the game every bit as hard as the PCs then it's on you that encounters fell flat.
Because the characters parsed the 30 or so books that were out to find the exact spells to counter anything the dragon could do. They built up their spell DCs so high that even a dragon could not counter them.
Then they teleported in on top of the dragon, surprised him, then unloaded with martials critting on a 15-20 to 17 to 20 swinging 5 times in a round hasted while the Master summoner summoned 50 lantern archons firing their laser beams against touch AC to end him.
Unless the player was playing that same kind of monster, it never got to 3.x levels but there were plenty of monstrous ancestries and templates for PCs to take that worked exactly the same on them as they did on anything the DM cooked up.
Plus, even with racial bonuses, many of which were outlined by the creatures type and/or size all those skill bonuses and bonus feats worked exactly the same for the enemy as they did for the party.
And yet PF2 races can be built in very diverse races because maybe that is more realistic as in every race isn't a cookie cutter just like every human isn't a cookie cutter.
If you want to build super sneaky goblin, you can. If you want to build a buff, take heavy damage goblin you can.
If you want to build a smart orc, you can.
If anything PF2 encourages greater ancestry diversity rather than trying to force every member of every race into the same little cookie cutter build. Real beings aren't that way.
About the only part I agree with you on is I wish they had just let ancestries that fly fly and it's up to the DM to limit them.
As far as the rest, I much prefer that ancestries are no longer cookie cutter ancestries. Each ancestry has different ways to build them that shows a much higher level of diversity in ability like real living things.
You never send NPC enemies built the same as PCs after your party? No rival groups, guilds, or cults that aren't just copy-paste stat blocks from the back of the book? Your PCs never fight each other either?
I did it plenty of times. It took hours and hours of work. Often the PCs would just ignore their primary enemy and go for the pigeon.
I still recall building a troll warrior to fight the two-hander warrior and I had some casters built to battle the wizard. But the wizard ignored the casters, let them get hammer the team martials, and took out the opposing martials. Then they went at it while the martials mostly spent their time on the ground in various states of held or immobilized because casters at high level reached a point they just didn't much need martials. They had so many spell options and making scrolls and magic items was so cheap, they eventually had no real counter.
Your games sound pretty dull if your dragons just wait to die and your parties never face anything built like themselves with murder on their minds.
My dragons didn't have much of a choice in PF1 where their actions were limited to a single round of actions against a round of actions by 4 to 6 high level players fully buffed with maxed out magical item Christmas trees and having parsed 30 books for spells, perks, and the like.
I loved it when the Paizo designers added solipsism to the spell repertoire and I didn't read the spell prior to the wizard using it along with his Diviner Henchmen forcing two saves with the creature taking the lower save and the wizard landing it turning a serious encounter against a big bad evil Shoggoth-type monster into something completely trivial with he martials whacking on it while it could do nothing.
I don't know what levels you played up to on average, but the game started to break past lvl 7 or so. It took immense work to keep it even marginally functional given all the player options.
I once built a character around Holy Word that could cast it at +9 levels over the character level stacking on various feats and perks. I called the character the "Holy Destroyer." The character would unleash holy word and the fight was usually over.
I do not miss that type of gaming.
I don't mind you criticizing PF2. You don't like it. Not everyone will like PF2. But at least make your criticisms accurate after playing it enough to know. PF2 takes more than a few sessions to figure out.
It's just starting out. It doesn't have the hundreds of books and options PF1 has after 10 plus years. PF2's core book started off much better than PF1's core book. It has a lot going for it. I'm glad it brought some of the lethality I grew up on back to the game.
PF1 and 3rd edition reached a point of total ridiculousness after ten plus years. Maybe you as a DM limited some of the ridiculousness, but I grew weary of having to spend hours building enemies that I couldn't even guarantee would last a round due to player strategies that were almost a lock against anything they fought. It grew tiresome.
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PF2 is the opposite requiring teamwork, good plays, and good stats or else you fail. The "Gandalf" you mention doesn't really work as well as you make it out to be (friends don't let Wizards stand in melee).
See, that's because Gandalf is a Magus. (Since Gandalf was a Fighter is basically a known like at this point, Magus is actually a pretty safe build.)
That said, I'll agree with this with a few caveats. PF2 is very designed around the principle that two things of the same level are roughly equivalent in capability. Thus, in combats which are built for 4 players of a given level, one player won't usually be able to solo them. If you have four enemies of level-4 against a single character, then odds are that's a pretty even fight for that character, and a race to take them down before weight of numbers takes its toll.
This is very unlike PF1, where you can butcher a character with CR equal to your level in a single round - and the best-known benchmarks literally ranked you on how quickly you can do that and how long you can survive an assault from that.
And to me, that's a good thing.
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Tolkien had Bard merc Smaug with a called shot and a single arrow. Gandalf made a single combat maneuver check to blast the Balrog off the bridge at Moria. The grandfather of D&D showed us that fantasy combat doesn't need to have scenes that drag on for pages to be effective.
Gandalf fought the Balrog for several rounds. He was a 1000 year old wizard angel equivalent. Even destroying the Balrog almost killed him.
Bard had a special arrow, made a single lucky shot into a hole in the armor, after Smaug had defeated an entire dwarf warrior force led by a dwarven warrior after burning and destroying most of a town.
The arrow was a built for doing the job. If Bard hadn't had that arrow, Smaug likely rips the place apart.
In a PF1 game, Smaug would have been taken out trivially in his lair by an invisible, mind blank wizard with hasted warriors in magic item Christmas trees buffed with energy immunity to make his fire breath trivial and hit him for far more damage than he hit them for as they ripped him apart even with his hard scales.
Once again there would have been a small army of lantern archons firing laser beams against Smaug's weak touch AC.
You have no idea how much I came to hate Lantern Archons in PF1/3E. My goodness what an overused, exploitative creature. It became known as the Lanter Archon battery in my group. Even the other players started to grow weary of Lantern Archons and Master Summoners.
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Because the characters parsed the 30 or so books that were out to find the exact spells to counter anything the dragon could do. They built up their spell DCs so high that even a dragon could not counter them.
Then they teleported in on top of the dragon, surprised him, then unloaded with martials critting on a 15-20 to 17 to 20 swinging 5 times in a round hasted while the Master summoner summoned 50 lantern archons firing their laser beams against touch AC to end him.
So why didn't the dragon use its army of lackeys and massive intellect to do the same research your party did but better? Do Dragons in your games not have high-level spell slots to spend divining threats and creating protections for themselves and the paranoia to do so habitually to defend themselves?
And yet PF2 races can be built in very diverse races because maybe that is more realistic as in every race isn't a cookie cutter just like every human isn't a cookie cutter.
I always felt that PF1 did a good job of letting you trade out racial abilities to get the version of Elf or Dwarf or Catfolk that suits you. It was one of the biggest upgrades over 3.x aside from the system stuff like combat maneuver being a stat and cleaning up the skill chart.
I did it plenty of times. It took hours and hours of work. Often the PCs would just ignore their primary enemy and go for the pigeon.
That can happen as can the example you gave of when you tried that. The solution is to then have the threat the party has ignored actually cast the big ritual or whatever and clue the party into the fact that they're only getting paid because they're supposed to stop stuff like that from happening.
PF1 and 3rd edition reached a point of total ridiculousness after ten plus years. Maybe you as a DM limited some of the ridiculousness, but I grew weary of having to spend hours building enemies that I couldn't even guarantee would last a round due to player strategies that were almost a lock against anything they fought. It grew tiresome.
I can see that, especially with a power-focused group like you seem to have had. My group was build focused but they often wanted to do a specific thing rather than be the most efficient version of whatever archetype they were interested in.
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See, that's because Gandalf is a Magus. (Since Gandalf was a Fighter is basically a known like at this point, Magus is actually a pretty safe build.)
PF2 is the opposite requiring teamwork, good plays, and good stats or else you fail. The "Gandalf" you mention doesn't really work as well as you make it out to be (friends don't let Wizards stand in melee).
Yeah, as far as I can recall Gandalf only casts a handful of spells, most of which are basically just cantrips (he makes acorns light on fire, makes his staff glow, does some kind of ground pound light attack with his staff, he breaks a boulder with his staff, heats up a sword, one time he shoots a beam of light that.... just kind of deters some nazgul, and he talks to moths and birds, and does a flash of light that blinds some goblins. The rest of the time he mostly just hits things with his sword or just yells at things, or just does a bunch of chicanery that looks like magic like timing his arrival with sunrise so that orcs get startled by the light. Gandalf is also, literally a minor deity, and all that gets him is cantrips and 1st level spells. (That's not to say that Gandalf isn't a well done character, LOTR is just a very subtle/low magic setting).
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So why didn't the dragon use its army of lackeys and massive intellect to do the same research your party did but better? Do Dragons in your games not have high-level spell slots to spend divining threats and creating protections for themselves and the paranoia to do so habitually to defend themselves?
Do you actually like playing the game of "hope I got the defense against literally every weird spell combination in existence for literally every enemy I want to be a minor threat"?
Like, why is it good to have to have an encyclopedia open to perform basic game functions?
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I thought gandalf and sauron were two celestials who weren't playing by the same rules. Sauron kind of did his outsider thing while ghandalf tried to be a mover and shaker within a fleshy, limited, person suit. I'm no LotR expert though so I might be generalizing too much.
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I thought gandalf and sauron were two celestials who weren't playing by the same rules. Sauron kind of did his outsider thing while ghandalf tried to be a mover and shaker within a fleshy, limited, person suit. I'm no LotR expert though so I might be generalizing too much.
Nah, that sounds about right to me.
One point I haven’t seen made is that the character levels need to be much closer together in PF2 than in PF1. You really don’t want to be lower level than the rest of the party. There is also a sharper limit on how powerful a boss can be before the numbers are too far against the party.
A lot of this is because of the way the degrees of success interact with the proficiency system. Being two levels behind everyone else means you get critically hit more often, take more severe results from any spells cast at you, and have a much harder time contributing in any meaningful way.
You also have a much tighter range for what makes an effective character. See this discussion for examples of what I mean. Most people feel the need for the primary attribute to be a 16 or 18 in order to feel competent.
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One point I haven’t seen made is that the character levels need to be much closer together in PF2 than in PF1. You really don’t want to be lower level than the rest of the party. There is also a sharper limit on how powerful a boss can be before the numbers are too far against the party.
A lot of this is because of the way the degrees of success interact with the proficiency system. Being two levels behind everyone else means you get critically hit more often, take more severe results from any spells cast at you, and have a much harder time contributing in any meaningful way.
You also have a much tighter range for what makes an effective character. See this discussion for examples of what I mean. Most people feel the need for the primary attribute to be a 16 or 18 in order to feel competent.
In PF2s rules you aren't supposed to be a different level than the rest of the party.
Any XP awarded goes to all members of the group. For instance, if the party wins a battle worth 100 Xp, they each get 100 XP, even if the party's rogue was off in a vault stealing treasure during the battle. But if the rogue collected a splendid and famous gemstone, which you've decided was a moderate accomplishment worth 30 XP, each member of the party gets 30 XP, too.
It's recommended that you keep all the player characters at the same XP total. This makes it much easier to know what challenges are suitable for your players. Having characters at different levels can mean weaker characters die more easily and their players feel less effective, which in turn makes the game less fun for those players.
It's generally not a good practice to allow level variations in a party in any edition. It doesn't add anything of value, makes game balance impossible to maintain, and makes the game feel generally unfair.
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Tolkien had Bard merc Smaug with a called shot and a single arrow. Gandalf made a single combat maneuver check to blast the Balrog off the bridge at Moria. The grandfather of D&D showed us that fantasy combat doesn't need to have scenes that drag on for pages to be effective.
That’s a book not a game, it needs to satisfy a reader and not each player at a table.
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That’s a book not a game, it needs to satisfy a reader and not each player at a table.
Tolkien had Bard merc Smaug with a called shot and a single arrow. Gandalf made a single combat maneuver check to blast the Balrog off the bridge at Moria. The grandfather of D&D showed us that fantasy combat doesn't need to have scenes that drag on for pages to be effective.
Also those are supposed to be climactic moments, not everyday things. It'd be like if every week a Nazgul showed up and Bard drives it off with an arrow.
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Bottom line is that the PF2 Reddit is a better place to ask for this, because there people who have never played the game but feel compelled to "galvanize discussion" are quickly downvoted into oblivion and never heard from again.
Anyone who thinks you can't build a good specialist in PF2 has never played PF2.
What you can't build is a good one-trick pony.
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While I enjoy PF 1E I am interested in buying into 2E. What are the pros and cons of the new edition? Note this is not a bash either edition thread. Only one to inform of 2E.
PF2:
-Your PCs start off as the genetic misfits of their ancestry lacking traits supposedly common to their people.
-Level 1 is once again a meat grinder and the most likely level for a TPK.
-Classes give up every feature they had in PF1e and now buy them back feat by feat to make the game seem like it has actual content.
-Until level 15+ where characters are finally allowed to break the math by a tiny bit, you will be at set brackets to succeed at everything all game long unless weaker encounters are deliberately used to give a sense of progression.
-Your character will, in theory, have many different options for each combat round but the game's simple math will mean that there is always an optimal path to take. For some classes like the Bard, a powerhouse to be sure, this path will often be all-consuming and leave a player feeling like a walking buff pylon who might cast synesthesia against the session's largest threat.
-Magic just isn't. Many spells have been cut, made 'rare', or simply nerfed to where you wonder how magical events in the past ever happened.
-NPCs and monsters cheat. Unlike PF1 everything you face is built using different methods than your character so good luck ever doing that cool thing you saw an NPC of our class and ancestry doing.
-Familiars are worthless. Paizo wrote them weak to begin with and has only made them weaker every time they can be bothered to mention them at all.
So much for "no edition war, please".
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Regarding races/ancestry I am confused. * PF1 races had the race abiities, alt race abilities, racial trait, racial feats, racial items, racial archetypes, racial spells.
* PF2 ancestries have heritages and ancestry feats. Maybe they will release ancestry archetypes, spells, and items some day.It sounds like your players are only picking the default and not bothering with any of the other options. Which would not be solved in PF2.
No. They weren't wasting limited feats on abilities that didn't boost their core combat specialization. Remember in PF1 you didn't have room to take feats that didn't boost your core abilities. It was far more specialized than PF2.
As for "buff a lot and scry and fry". Scry and Fry is a lot more difficult than people and GMs realize. Even when the conditions are set, many forget that running things straight from the book is hardly enough. Even in PF2 you are given plenty of leeway to do things outside the book, specially in encounter design.
The difference here is that PF2 has to worry less about high level spells and PCs built purely for maximum damage. (A matter of personal taste).
You didn't need scry and fry anyway. Enemies were against PCs. Single enemies weren't going to do well against 6 or so fully optimized PCs.
Finally, regarding the "Solipsism", I think you were duped by your players. The only "solipsism" spell in the game. There is a 3.5e spell from Spell Compendium, but that does not mean a Pathfinder caster can use it (the GM can straight up just say no).
I see. Solipsism I must be remembering the 3.5 shenanigans.
Here is the PF1 spell I was talking about: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/euphoric-tranquility
Doesn't look like a combat spell until you use it in combat. Find out it has no save until attacked and basically if they miss the saves, they are at the mercy of the PCs. Loved this one when it sprung on me. Sounds so nice and peaceful.
And it guarantees at least one round of no actions by the enemy and possibly quite a few more if it has a weak or average will save. It sits there in a state of tranquility getting killed.
Also the fact that you too created a highly specialized character does not mean the all the good non specialized characters suddenly banished. I say that is one of the benefits of PF1, the players are able to push it, which is itself a con. But PF2 is the opposite and it too is itself a con. Someone will always prefer one type or the other.
The PF feat system encouraged specialization in the extreme. It had feat ladders. You took them or your character was weak. If you're playing some weak, non-specialized PF1 character, then PF2 is much better at allowing a non-specialized character to compete with any other character.
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I see. Solipsism I must be remembering the 3.5 shenanigans.
Here is the PF1 spell I was talking about: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/euphoric-tranquility
Doesn't look like a combat spell until you use it in combat. Find out it has no save until attacked and basically if they miss the saves, they are at the mercy of the PCs. Loved this one when it sprung on me. Sounds so nice and peaceful.
And it guarantees at least one round of no actions by the enemy and possibly quite a few more if it has a weak or average will save. It sits there in a state of tranquility getting killed.
Why were you allowing content from books you hadn't read rather than curating a list of books for the group to use?
You took them or your character was weak. If you're playing some weak, non-specialized PF1 character
Those characters might be weak compared to the theoretical maximum, but that doesn't mean they can't face CR-appropriate challenges. If your group isn't 100% out to power game and nothing else PF1 suddenly acquires a level of depth PF2 isn't designed to achieve.
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"It's not that this ride is unsafe, if you only carefully proceed at speeds that don't break your legs it's perfectly fine".
And that spell is from APG.
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Those characters might be weak compared to the theoretical maximum, but that doesn't mean they can't face CR-appropriate challenges. If your group isn't 100% out to power game and nothing else PF1 suddenly acquires a level of depth PF2 isn't designed to achieve.
I don't have to worry about that in PF2. PF2 naturally encourages less specialization and leads to characters who can do more with their abilities.
I don't have to carefully curate any books or materials in PF2. The balance is an inherent part of the game. The players can't break it by parsing books to find every overpowered or imbalanced option.
They can do all this while still making very robust characters that can simulate a wider variety of characters than PF1.
No Vow of Poverty needed to wear no armor.
Two-weapon fighting and Two-hander fighting and single weapon fighting with or without shield are all equally viable options with different options to build them that also are all very workable and effective.
The game runs easier as a GM. It keeps the players from breaking the game and rules lawyering the GM to make them comply.
PF2 better mirrors the fantasy genre without needing magic item Christmas Trees or being a one-trick pony or casters who can do everything whenever they want.
I'd like to see them improve wizards and tweak some things, but overall PF2 is a pretty great fantasy game. I never thought a party would be able to play without a healer as the way we played 3E/P1/5E and every edition of D&D since 1st edition we needed some kind of dedicated healer. But PF2 is the first edition of a D&D game in years we've been able to play our style of lethal game without a dedicated healer.
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I see. Solipsism I must be remembering the 3.5 shenanigans.
Here is the PF1 spell I was talking about: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/euphoric-tranquility
Doesn't look like a combat spell until you use it in combat. Find out it has no save until attacked and basically if they miss the saves, they are at the mercy of the PCs. Loved this one when it sprung on me. Sounds so nice and peaceful.
And it guarantees at least one round of no actions by the enemy and possibly quite a few more if it has a weak or average will save. It sits there in a state of tranquility getting killed.
Why were you allowing content from books you hadn't read rather than curating a list of books for the group to use?
You took them or your character was weak. If you're playing some weak, non-specialized PF1 characterThose characters might be weak compared to the theoretical maximum, but that doesn't mean they can't face CR-appropriate challenges. If your group isn't 100% out to power game and nothing else PF1 suddenly acquires a level of depth PF2 isn't designed to achieve.
Because PF1 lacked a consistent means to ban stuff you needed to curate a lot and do a bunch of extra work for the DM. Actually this statement is the biggest reason my group had to change from 3.5 to pf2.
Might seem silly but it's quite hard to tell your player that cool spell isn't able to be used because i said so. The rarity system makes it so the player asks you for it what makes the job a lot easier normally.| 11 people marked this as a favorite. |
I really love Pathfinder 1, and strongly dislike Pathfinder 2. But sometimes PF1 take away your will to live, and there is a world where I want to love PF2 with all my hearth but it seems I am unable to do it.
Bakckground:
- PF1: Played and Dmed Iron Gods, Hell's Rebells, Rise of the Runelords, Mummy's Mask, Reign of Winter, Jade Regent, and homebrew one shot.
- PF2: Played and DMed Plaguestone, Extinction Curse, and a Hombrew Campaign of 8 scenarios.
- Other: Played and Dmed a lot in Warhammer, Demon Lord, L5R, Cypher System, Star Wars Edge, 5e (a loooot) and many other in one shot or 2-3 shots.
Pathfinder 1:
- I played a Brawler with an Automail from Full Metal Alchimyst and Hook Fightning. It was awesome.
- I killed as a DM my cleric player in our first campaign with grapple/grab/constrict in 2 rounds and the group was powerless to stop me.
- We run Iron Gods with a Summoner in the group and his eidolon became a diety, fitting with the fact that it was the most powerfull member of the group, it was awesome.
- One day I played a Barbarian/Alchymyst Orc in a Hombrew level 4, and I made the DM quitt. It was terrible.
- As a DM, one Psychic player of mine Possessed in one spell the three big dragons of the campaign (at 3 different time of the story) with a stupid DC and Persistent Metamagic. It was awesome. He killed the henchman of the Dragons with the Dragons, and made them bow to suffer coup de grace from the group. Awesome.
- One of my noob player made once a Knife Master Rogue, and realized that he was a noob looking at the Vivisectionist and oversized kukri. That was terrible.
- I TPK my party in Rise of the Runelords at the end boss, winning Initiative and Casting Mage Disjunction on the group. It is as of today my biggest failure as a DM, and the most anticlimatic end of a campaign.
- One of my player in the current campaign is a Witch with the SLumber Hex. She can make every boss fall to sleep with an awesome catchphrase, it is awesome, and the whole group love her.
- One of my player in the current campaign is a Witch with the SLumber Hex. She can make every boss fall to sleep with an awesome catchphrase, it is terrible gameplay and spammy.
Pathfinder 2:
- The character creation, and moving the different part of who you are, is probably the best in all RPGs except L5R. It is by far the most flavorfull, rp and rule wise, and it is awesome. So was our Monkey Goblin Rogue multiclass Alchemyst with his prehensible tail and his high Acrobatics skill.
- Our more martially inclined players love PF2 so much. Especially our Barbarian Matheus, who scared to death the Extinction Curse. And our Figther Rondelio, with his Halfling Fork.
- At the second volume of the campaign, all our group had reroll Martials, with casting only coming from archetype. I think my eyes bleed when I read Pass without Traces in PF2, having never seen a spell so bad in my entire life.
- I DMed the Homebrew campaign, and I had the blast of my life as a DM. Like the system was so MUCH my ally.PF2 is the best system to create the challenge you want in a thematic way. I did a "Sylvan Greveknigth" that did everything a Dead Druid inspired Graveknight is supposed to do, and I did an Erutaki (Inuit) Thug Boss with two Polar Bears as pet, and they fought in an ice arena, and it was one of the best fight of my DM career.
- And it was the feeling for the entiriety of our PF2 runs: my monsters, homberew or AP, felt so much more cooler, efficient and dangerous than the players. Even at lvl -2. My players felt sometimes at agony looking at their HPs, or the cool thingy of the monsters. And 50% to miss in a Pathfinder Golarion setting (and not in a Grim Dark like Warhammer) felt TERRIBLE.
- The magic is awefull. Like there is no way to put it. Magic is weak, so weak. At level 6, my Druid and my Sorcerer players looked at me at the end of the session and told me: we want to reroll, we feel like garbage. And I agreed. And don't take me wrong, they are perfectly fine with playing Buff bots, or Healbots, but when they put Haste, Polymorph, Mirror Image (Bonded Mind, Share Spells, Alchemysts) or Greater invisibility on the Martials, not +1. Magic is so weak than it fealt weaker that setting and games where a Mage is powerfull because he can make it rain over the village and that's it. Because lorewise that makes him dangerous and powerfull. But in a world of Nex, and Geb, Azlant, Tyr-Baphon, where pyramids fly, and portals opens toward other planets and where there is a f+~#ing Dungeon where you can become a God, they made magic less powerfull than in Game of Thrones. Pathfinder 2 is a vengeance on 10+ years of "so-called" martial/caster inequality (which we always find so dumb in the fist place, it is a group game ffs).
Conclusion:
PF2 is full of good ideas. Even excellent ideas, from chracter creation to action economy. It is an awesome experience as a DM. AWESOME!! But... I don't see the point. Pathfinder and Golarion are a power game fantasy. You are hero of the village at 5, of the kingdom at 10, of the continent at 15 and of the multiverse at 20.And the same goes for the setting, from the Worldwound if PF1 to Azlant in the history of the setting to Tyr-Baphon undead army in PF2. You got Lich who f~+& Gods, and hero who become God being drunk. And the system of PF1 allows you to become that murder machine.
In opposition 5e DnD make you a beliveable hero, in a system where story take a bigger place over rules and power fantasy. Same for Shadow of the Demon Lord, or 5e Legend of the Five Rings. Or Cypher System.
PF2 give power fantasy to your DM, has more than 500 pages of rules with feats that allow you to do things that you should already be doing with the skill, and cut your spells in two and your HP by half each fight. I don't see the point of the game, really, not trolling. The deisgn make no sense, if you want a gritty feeling, you don't play Pathfinder. You just make the campaign stop at level 7, or you houserule, or you use a different system but keep Golarion as the setting, like the upcoming Kingmaker in 5e.
And as Paizo fans, and most notably Golarion fans (best setting in fantasy, period) we want to love PF2. So hard. But we can't. That being said it is a very alive game, with great community, wonderfull setting, and whitout a huge numbers of the cons of PF1. So I say try it, go for it. Play the Plaguestone Module, which is a very fun adventure and story, and see for yourselves :)
Sry, long post.
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You've summed up my objections to PF2 more succinctly than I've thus far been able to. Take my like and go with honor friend.
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Who do all of you play with? Do you just find the worst randos on the internet to throw dice with or are your friends just such a pack of asses that they get bent out of shape over a game?
PF1 and 3.x definitely need a strong bond between players and the GM but that's why you play with your friends and not randos. PUGing an RPG seems like the saddest and most awful way to play.
I play with the same guys I've been playing with 30 plus years across multiple editions.
Not like we didn't like 3E/PF1. It was a fun game for years.
We liked 2ne edition. First edition. The Basic and Expert set.
The only edition we actively disliked was 4E. Terrible game. That's why I don't get the comparisons between 4E and PF2. They don't feel alike at all.
But PF2 has created a game with the right level of balance and player options that starts at a level that makes it easier to play and DM than PF1/3E.
I've had to tweak every version of these RPGs we've ever played. I had to tweak 3E/PF1 more than most. I got tired of the PF1/3E DMing slog of having to work so hard for even a moderate challenge at higher level. The game wasn't built to run very well past lvl 7.
We like to use the word balance. But in reality it's more the math. The math just got whacky after lvl 7 or so. All the buffs, spells, options, and the like were far too many and interacted in ways that made the game a huge pain to prepare for.
PF2 is not a perfect game. But its math is extremely well done, predictable, and far easier to manipulate. You can get the feel you want much, much easier.
I can modify PF2 to ramp things up some without breaking it. PF2 math stays predictable across all levels to 20. PF1 math goes out the door after lvl 7. When I have to give dragons 2000 plus hit points to make them a reasonable challenge to high level characters after calculating their average DPR, then the math has a problem because no recommendation in the book even came close to telling me to do this. I had to figure it out by calculating DPR, buffs, and take into account all the capabilities of the party. PF1 math got real, real whacky.
PF2 math is extremely tight and predictable across levels. I can manipulated in a much more precise manner. Now that I understand it better, I have modified the game to fit our group better. The game hasn't broken doing so.
It's not like I hated PF1. My group enjoyed the hell out of that game. But those of us that DMed never liked the level of system mastery and preparation you had to put in to PF1 to make the game playable up to high levels. It was too much. It limited who was willing to GM and even burned myself and other DMs out.
But PF2 has encouraged other players to GM because they know the game won't get out of hand. They can see that they can open the Bestiary, pull out a giant, and it will challenge the players. They know the players don't have the means to game the system, this makes them more likely to try GMing because they can be assured the game won't go off the rails with some crazy combination of abilities.
I can only say that if you want magic to work better in PF2, make it so. You are not more limited by the rules of PF2 than you were PF1. You make some house rules to improve the caster experience. I already did this and it made playing casters more fun (except the wizard...wizard still sucks).
No one in my group wants to go back to the PF1 casters rule all at high level game. But we all wanted casters better than they are out of the box in PF2. We made some house rules making things better in a way that didn't require the removal of incapacitation. Anyone can do the same that isn't playing in some tight rule environment like PFS.
You really have to give PF2 a nice run, see how it works to high level, then you can see it is a damn good game and can be easily modified to make casting better while keeping the game challenging across all levels.
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And it was the feeling for the entiriety of our PF2 runs: my monsters, homberew or AP, felt so much more cooler, efficient and dangerous than the players. Even at lvl -2. My players felt sometimes at agony looking at their HPs, or the cool thingy of the monsters. And 50% to miss in a Pathfinder Golarion setting (and not in a Grim Dark like Warhammer) felt TERRIBLE.
Honestly, if your players are hitting at 50% on monsters of level-2, something is very, very wrong. Like, I'm not sure how you're building your monsters, but you should be hitting and critting way more often than that. Just as a quick example, my level 11 Swashbuckler hits at +22 on his two weapons, vs a High 9 AC of 28. So he should be critting 25% of the time. For it to be 50%, he has to be going against a level 12 enemy. If he takes advantage of flat-footed, that goes up to Medium 14. And that's not counting anything like clumsy, sickened, or frightened, or any buffs teammates might apply. Adding a level 6 heroism, vs a frightened 1, flat-footed creature, hits at 55% vs a High 15.
The magic is awefull. Like there is no way to put it. Magic is weak, so weak. At level 6, my Druid and my Sorcerer players looked at me at the end of the session and told me: we want to reroll, we feel like garbage. And I agreed. And don't take me wrong, they are perfectly fine with playing Buff bots, or Healbots, but when they put Haste, Polymorph, Mirror Image (Bonded Mind, Share Spells, Alchemysts) or Greater invisibility on the Martials, not +1.
I seriously need to know what you're doing such that magic is bad. Last session my party's level 11 wizard did something like 280 damage in a single cast of Chain Lightning. He's been pretty good with his Fireballs such that enemies are consistently softened up for our martials to sweep them quickly. Enervation has been consistently amazing with its persistent damage, even managing to stick a failure on a higher level rogue for 4 rounds once. I'm actually even considering taking Basic Oracle Spellcasting in a level 12 class feat slot to help fill in the divine spell utility (since our casters are a druid and a wizard).
The druid has...weird spell choices, but the ones he has been casting have been quite good. (Though he could stand to prepare Heal in an actually usable slot once in a while.)
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That's just the thing, I don't disagree that PF1/3.x is a bear to run and that it places an undue burden on the GM. I get that it's a rusted-out frame with an overturned engine stuck to it and that you need to be skilled, careful, and lucky to make it run smoothly session in and session out. I just think that for all of its flaws few games have ever attempted to pair meaty mechanical crunch in a simulationist framework with the sheer uninhibited freedom that it offers.
It's not something inherently awful like RIFTS or F.A.T.A.L., it does what it sets out to do well if in a maddeningly difficult to run fashion, and I'll take that over a system that always feels like its holding back.
The problem Malleus with that game is that almost no one played it. There is a reason in PF1 that most parties stopped by level 7, most short form campaigns were made for low levels, PFS capped early, etc. PF1 can be a wonderful game when played between players of similar skill and dedication backed up by a DM willing to do a bunch of work. But that’s a very high bar to clear and most games stopped at seven or below for all the scaling issues PF1 had. Someone said it earlier in the thread but they figured out the most desired PF1 feel was heroic and leaned in on that. They cut out the high end and all the problems it caused.
Your points on murder machines and grumbling about inequality of casters/martials just shows you don’t get it or were in that 1% lucky enough to find the perfect group of like minded folk. That ability to create the murder machine ties directly into the inequality of players at the table which sinks most games. It is a group game after all and casters ability to dominate the game and invalidate most other classes was a huge failing of PF1. Sorry you don’t get to feel like a god but generally that just ended up with you feeling godlike while the rest of your group checked their phone or wondered why they were even wasting their time playing.
To add to that, there is a big reason E6 or E8 was incredibly popular - because you could avoid the problems with mid-high level play and enjoy the nice sweet spot.
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There is some very good criticism in here. To answer a few:
- Cyouni, yes of course Martials were rather decent at hitting things, but what I meant by that 50%, is the fact that the chance of failing the thing you're supposed to be goot at were much higher than in PF1 (or many other game to be fair). Even more so at low level (it gets better around 7-8). We felt we underperformed way much more in our "main thing" that in many other game. Even we taking hard and tough game like Warhammer or Shadow of the Demon Lord. Stacking debuff to be able to reliabily hit a +1 Level mid session boss felt bad. What is worse was the fact that he was hitting us (and crit...) again and again. Yes we had a bad tactic at first, playing like in 5e or PF1, but as we learnt, it was still, untill higher level (like 10+) very noticeable.
- Blasting is decent. But it is not as decent as before when you built for it, and utility and supports has been nerfed so hard. The worst is controll. Our caster like to play heavy controllers, so the Incapacitation Trait and other things like that (tigth math) make boss almost never failed a save. Which is fine, it is a boss, ok. But when you suceeded to Petrify a Dragon or Mind Controll A Balord in 5e or PF1, the feeling of "this is my moment" of the caster is just gone. No smart Charm Personn, no "I transform our Barbarian in a murder machine".
- Arakasius, maybe we are blind and consider our experience THE experience, if that's the case I apologize. We never found the martial caster thing an issue because we always considered that martial carried the first 8 level for the caster to be able to carry the last 8. And everytime it is still our high attack bonus full buffed martial that tend to break the BBEG in a full round attack, more rarely the caster with a one shot from a spell (it happens of course, but more rarely). So our martial players don't care about their lack of option, they want to break the DPR. And our caster players like to outsmart whatever the issue is. So we always had our balance in the game. And in PF2, the breaking of the DPR is way less impressive, and the outsmart with magic is tedious at best. So we are lost.
That being said I really think that the Op should try PF2. Because it is the game for so many people, and it would be a shame to not try.
AND I also think that personnal attack on the way people enjoy a game or DM got nothing to do here or anywhere whatsoever unless someone ask for help. Some of us here should calm down a bit :)
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And for the sake of honesty, our table add a s%%$load of houserules in the years of PF1. I made a list in the PF1 forum, in resonnance with our conversation here, that I will link below. We turned it into our game. Maybe Deriven is right, we just need to up PF2 Casters and tweak a few things and just get out of our confort zone.
Here is the link of our Pathfinder 1.5 as we called it (yeah I know, a bit trolly, sorry, it was an inside joke, it is not to add more salt to the discussion). if you are interested for whatever reasons, feel free to check it.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43hbj?Our-Houserules-for-the-last-three-campai gns#1
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Maybe the rythm of play is alos a consideration to have. We play 5 hours each two weeks, so we can make an AP in one year, very often in 9 months. And we play with Roll 20, that got a lot of automatized s!@* to help the way you play and gain time. That plus houserules, good system mastery, and yada yada are factors to keep in mind. Plus same group since 15 years now.
I would agree that starting PF1 as of today, when what you know of RPG is Critical Role and 5e, would be like being slapped in the face. I understand that it is outdated from the potentiel new players. I sometimes forget, in our nerdy discussion, that they got to sell something. My bad.