For what it's worth, during my campaign the players didn't often use complex strategies but the encounters were so aggressively difficult and varied that it didn't matter much. My players were a gunslinger, a summoner, and a shield-focused paladin, so most of their actions were taken up by class necessity but they sure did use every tool in the toolbox to stay upright despite losing a third of their hp in one attack.
I'm not sure why people are telling you that tactics are what you need to win.
PF2 and PF1 are no more tactically compelling than 5E or any numbers based RPG.
In PF1 tactics often consisted of countering spells. The martials were very focused on hitting things and killing them. The casters were focused on parsing spells to set up every possible advantage to the point of trivializing the game. Flanking, buffing, debuffing, all were part of the tactical options.
5E tactics consisted of getting advantage or applying disadvantage.
PF2 tactics consist of getting some bonuses and applying penalties to slant the combat in your favor.
None of these games are tactically complex. All you need is a basic understanding of how the game functions, then use available means to slant it in your favor.
PF2 focuses on short-term buffing and debuffing. Most of the tactical choices are obvious as they were in PF1 or 5E. Probably the most difficult option to remember are reactions because some people don't pay attention on other player's or creature's turns.
The monsters are built much stronger than PF1 on purpose. There's no getting around it. They will hit you and they will hurt you. No amount of tactical play will help this other than don't be close enough to get hit.
About the only thing I can tell you for sure is the power gap between monsters and players shrinks as you rise in level. It starts very difficult, then gets easier and easier and easier.
Just today my 9th level Abom Vaults party annihilated a bunch of equal level encounters with minimum difficulty. At 9th level it takes some really dangerous creatures to cause them real trouble.
The game scales to high level on a much smoother grade. Low level is the toughest part of PF2.
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About the only thing I can tell you for sure is the power gap between monsters and players shrinks as you rise in level. It starts very difficult, then gets easier and easier and easier.
This is true in my experience as well (primarily vs. single enemies). I think it's for 2 reasons:
1. HP scales faster than damage. You have a decent chance to be downed a by a single crit at level 1 from a +3 creature. Even by level 2 or 3, you're still going to struggle with a +3 creature but it's probably not going to down anyone but maybe the squishiest members in a single hit, just because of how much HP you get per level in PF2E.Regardless, I think Paizo is completely aware of this. Abom Vaults, for example, did not have ANY Severe encounters at first level (or 2nd, iirc), and only a handful of Moderate ones. Haven't read Strength of Thousands since I'll probably get to play in that one, but I would be interested if they avoided this in that AP as well.
Hopefully PFS modules pick up this design doctrine as well, if they haven't already.
2. Player options open up; more spells, more feats. Not valid for PFS I guess, but the highly popular Free Archetype rule really accelerates how quickly PCs can get a full suite of tricks.
PnP games are traditionally deadlier at low levels, and I know the detractors on this thread would disagree, but based on my experience and how many low level deaths we had in 1E, I still feel it was far deadlier. Getting downed in PF2E isn't rare, especially at lower levels, but getting downed is not that bad or risky, honestly, unless your GM is the type that murders downed characters. Don't forget the rule about shifting your intiative to before the creature that downed you; as long as your party has a way to heal, they can easily get you back up in time to take your actions for the turn so you don't even lose a turn.
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I would say it's unfair to say pf2 is not more tactically engaging than pf1 or 5e.
Pf1 is more of a strategic game, where you win largely before a fight happens at character gen. Sure there are about as many options for moving the maths mid fight as PF2, but unless your character has specialised in them (and normally only one of them) they aren't worth trying, you give up several attacks worth of damage and everyone else's numbers are so good already you probably haven't really helped anyway. In PF2 the need for specialists to attempt things is lower, the opportunity cost is lower and the relative gains are higher.
In 5e because one instance if advantage or disadvantage is enough to cancel out infinite stacks of the other, there isn't any point trying to do anything fancy once you've applied dis/adv once.
PF2 doesn't engage me more tactically than PF1. I do think PF2 is far more engaging tactically than 5E.
PF1 tactical options were mostly magical based as martials did not have the same ability to tactically influence combat. If you enjoyed parsing spellbooks and planning out magical strategies, PF1 was a great game.
PF2 tactical options are more short-term and any class has these options as part of their character. They seemed to have increased tactical options for martials and reduced tactical options for casters creating a balanced middle ground.
That being said I think telling people they can tactically overcome the conventions of the game isn't giving people like the OP an honest view of PF2.
You have to be honest about the OP's criticism: PF2 is set up so monsters have a high level of accuracy and deal a lot of damage by design. This design choice makes combats run faster, enemies more challenging, and allows the game to scale up to higher level without going off the rails.
Tactical options help you win, but they don't really stop you from getting hit and critically hit. You're still going to get hit a lot and critically hit a lot. This is part of PF2 and can't really be prevented even with good tactics.
I agree that you will get hit and crit'd a lot, but I definitely feel that you can either mitigate those or bend them in your favour. For example, our fighter would easily at level 1 have an effective attack bonus of +13: +1 Inspire Courage, +1 Demoralise and +2 flanking, raising their chance to hit or crit by 20 percentage points. Armour class is more difficult, but when it's necessary we could add +3 AC from his shield, forbidding ward or later inspire defense.
For my example, my Swashbuckler can apply a -2 to hit on the target of his finisher if they're targeting him, has Twin Parry for +1/+2 to AC (he usually uses the +1 so that he can have a reach weapon for Dual Finisher) and is hoping to put Greater Fearsome on his rapier. So by the end, that can become a 6 point AC swing if he crits, but will usually "only" amount to 3 points of AC that he can guarantee himself.
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I agree that you will get hit and crit'd a lot, but I definitely feel that you can either mitigate those or bend them in your favour. For example, our fighter would easily at level 1 have an effective attack bonus of +13: +1 Inspire Courage, +1 Demoralise and +2 flanking, raising their chance to hit or crit by 20 percentage points. Armour class is more difficult, but when it's necessary we could add +3 AC from his shield, forbidding ward or later inspire defense.For my example, my Swashbuckler can apply a -2 to hit on the target of his finisher if they're targeting him, has Twin Parry for +1/+2 to AC (he usually uses the +1 so that he can have a reach weapon for Dual Finisher) and is hoping to put Greater Fearsome on his rapier. So by the end, that can become a 6 point AC swing if he crits, but will usually "only" amount to 3 points of AC that he can guarantee himself.
That's at higher level. The complaints seem to be mostly coming from people playing that 1 to 5 range where the game is real painful regardless of tactics.
My group and I started off quite surprised by the ability of monsters to crit, how weak spells seemed compared to what you fight, and the general nerfing of magic.
After hitting level 16, we started to figure things out. The power scaling of players becoming extremely powerful by that level became apparent. We learned how to optimize builds and tactics like we did in every edition of D&D. It takes time to learn how things work.
Even by lvl 9 now we are generally hammering what we face. But low level is rough. PF2 seems built for a tough build up those first five levels. The biggest early shifting points are getting expert in your weapon or casting ability and striking weapons. Then it gets easier from there with occasional tough fights.
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I think this thread has devolved into a lot of bickering and personal attacks at this point.
Might be wise to lock it, unless people can take a deep breath, a step away from the fight, and focus on the discussion that was intended to be had.
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I think this thread has devolved into a lot of bickering and personal attacks at this point.
Might be wise to lock it, unless people can take a deep breath, a step away from the fight, and focus on the discussion that was intended to be had.
Bickering seems like the inevitable conclusion of any thread started with a subjective question.
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That's at higher level. The complaints seem to be mostly coming from people playing that 1 to 5 range where the game is real painful regardless of tactics.My group and I started off quite surprised by the ability of monsters to crit, how weak spells seemed compared to what you fight, and the general nerfing of magic.
After hitting level 16, we started to figure things out. The power scaling of players becoming extremely powerful by that level became apparent. We learned how to optimize builds and tactics like we did in every edition of D&D. It takes time to learn how things work.
Even by lvl 9 now we are generally hammering what we face. But low level is rough. PF2 seems built for a tough build up those first five levels. The biggest early shifting points are getting expert in your weapon or casting ability and striking weapons. Then it gets easier from there with occasional tough fights.
It...depends. There's still ways. For instance, Goading Feint/Dueling Parry Swash, plus a caster casting Fear, can still easily be a 6 point swing on one attack. Blur/Mistform Elixir still quite handy to give a 20% miss chance, Inspire Defense/Protective Ward is also still handy and stacks with the above - Protective Ward especially really helped out my party for those early parts. Mirror Image has still been consistently great.
That said, I freely agree it's a lot harder at low levels, especially level 1.
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PF2 doesn't give you information, which... maybe it should. XCom gives loads of information, and that makes it a better game.It also hasn't seemed to give me options. And I thought that was maybe because I'd been looking at the wrong classes or something, but then, we've got this guy, who loves PF2:
There's just not much you can do at low level. Boss monsters hit low level characters super easy. One big hit or critical can take you out. You hopefully will have a healer to get you back up. A lvl+3 boss monster at lvl 1 or 2 is a beast of a fight. That can easily turn into a TPK without much you can do about it tactically. You're going to have to hope you can kill itSo the system doesn't give you information, it doesn't give you options, hence it doesn't start as a tactical game. Maybe it becomes one somewhere north of level 7, but that's no use to me.
None of this is actually true, though.
You get plenty of information, even if you never use Recall Knowledge in combat (though groups generally should). Any GM that gives you literally any description about the monster will give you enough information to 95% avoid their best save, and there's a ton of easy tells you can use to gather information. You can usually figure out which creatures might have AoO (though I did get surprised once).
You also have tons of options, some of which I mentioned above. It's certainly true at low levels there's less (especially to defenses vs getting hit) but that in no way means there's none.
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Even if PF1, martials characters that did things besides full attack usually did it in combination with their full attack. One of my favorite characters was a bloodrager that used cornugon smash with the weapon enchant that would (IIRC) sicken a shaken enemy, and combine it with riving strike and blooded arcane strike to give them huge debuffs on saves against spells.But all that kind of stuff was designed to work in concert with a full attack.
I once concepted out a PF1 swashbuckler that was designed to dance away from the enemy, and whip at them with a spiked chain from 15 feet away.
I threw it out after finishing the build, looking at it, and then realizing it still went back to full attacks all the time anyways.
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I'm playing a Battle Oracle right now. On any given turn, I am may be moving, using a summon spell to slow down an enemy I shouldn't close with, using a ranged blast so I don't need to close, demoralizing, or striking with my weapon surge or true strike bastard sword. I just found a staff of fantastic visions, which I plan to dual wield and use to fire off fears until it runs out of charges at which point I will switch back to two handing for d12 damage. I also frequently delay my turn to get better mileage out of the frightened condition.
Despite my full plate, I'm still a caster so I aim to use a spell most rounds of combat and not simply rush the front line with my d8 HP. I have to measure whether or not the current combat calls for me to increase my curse or not. I don't actively Heal but I do have it in case someone goes down. My character has felt extremely fun and effective, though my group is confused why I don't throw myself on the Frontline more. My damage isn't as consistently high as the barbarian but I've dealt an awful lot and have had some huge spikes.
It feels hella tactical to me-- I'm making meaningful choices with every action in combat. And this has been only levels 3 and 4. I just got haste and Vampiric Touch for even more options. The closest character I recall from PF1 was a sacred hunter inquisitor. That character was fun, but while there was strategy involved in character building and figuring out how to stack my long lasting buffs for maximum impact and duration, the actual turn to turn combat wasn't particularly varied.
These two characters feel like a good illustration of the system differences. Buff stacking is almost gone compared to PF1, but I'm not sure how you can say it doesn't feel tactical if you're building for varied turn structure. That's what tactics means-- important choices in the moment.
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People who bother to post on this wasteland clearly WANT to love the game but are frustrated.
I think this is true for some people but also not true for others. Some folks just want a different game. We have given in this thread lots of suggestions to make the game feel more heroic, different ways to build encounters, different ways to play your turns in combats, different ways to prioritize actions. It's turned into a point of pride for the detractors to say that they do all that and still the game isn't fun/is too hard/is too complex/is too easy.
But it's hard for us to understand. Tons of us have lots of fun playing every week with this game. We play modules and complete the APs without the feeling to being crushed every battle that some folks here are saying is inherent in the system.
For those that aren't having fun, they have to accept that they can take and improve the game with the suggestions we gave. Whether that's playing more dynamically or streamlining certain systems just like people tweak and improve the rules to their satisfaction in any PnP game (especially 5E, which is notorious for heavy homebrew). But a thread that started with a complaint that creatures hit "too" often, which I think was pretty thoroughly explained in the earlier pages of the thread, has morphed into people who were unhappy with that original explanation complaining about every single system in PF2E.
The game isn't changing dramatically, like these posters seem to want. Maybe in 3E. Paizo will continue to make incremental improvements in character option and adventure design, as they already have, but again, these posters are not looking for incremental improvements; they're acting like the game is broken and needs an overhaul. Maybe it's not fun for them, and that's fine, lots of games are not fun for me, but the game is not broken. Paizo is not going to suddenly start publishing +2 attack and +2 AC feats like 1E or whatever it is that people are expecting.
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My Swashbuckler (Braggart) gets really good use out of Intimidating Glare and Battle Cry. Additional Lore [Fiends] has been incredibly useful going through Extinction Curse.
I have not played PFS so I can't comment on the experience there, however:
In Age of Ashes the ability to craft items without relying on being in a settlement of appropiate level is very valueble.
Likewise there are plenty of moments where the group can sneak to accomplish something.
As an investigator charisma is at a premium so being able to use intelligence instead was very nice for her.
Maybe PFS doesn't provide avenues for some feats to be useful there which is a shame.
I do agree with you that the low level experience for some types of characters could be better.