| 25 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, my answer may be discouraging, but you are right.
The system is designed to avoid bad characters. So you are not punished because you don't know the system well as a beginner. This is an asset to most persons but you can see it as a drawback: You can't make a character that is stronger than the challenges you'll face.
Also, in PF2, it's impossible to "carry the rest of the party". If the party is failing, the party fails. You have to play as a team. Which doesn't mean that you can't do anything on your own, you can strike enemies as a Barbarian and blast them as a Sorcerer. But if you expect your character to deal with a threat single-handedly, you'll be disappointed.
I feel that you have experience with previous systems, either D&D or PF1. Discovering this edition will be a bit tougher for you than for a pure beginner as many of your reflexes from other editions will get you killed in this one (strangely, beginners find less difficulties to adapt to this ruleset than experienced players). I strongly encourage you to forget what you know and get on board PF2 as if it was a completely different game. This is definitely the best approach to it.
And, of course, if the game doesn't suit you, then there's nothing that can be done. No game is for everyone. Still, I can assure you PF2 is a neatly done game with solid mechanics. Trying it, long enough to fully understand it, is in my opinion a good idea.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
In my experience, one player/character usually has to carry the rest of the party a good 80% of the time. Relying on other players/characters will get the entire party killed. Most players/characters act independently of all the others in the party against the same enemy, but there is no coordination or planning, and very few player use abilities or spells to help their comrades unless the spell/ability they were using on themselves had additional targets beyond just themselves. I have a hard time seeing this work in game.
You need new experience then.
That mindset is exactly the type of thing that causes threads like this and this and this.
In my experience, parties that synergize their abilities collectively and work as a group are vastly more successful than those who try to be the solo hero and carry the team.
And yes, there are hard limits on how powerful (or weak) your character can be. That is so that the person creating the encounters can easily set the difficulty of the encounter appropriately without having to know the intricate details of each character that is playing.
That doesn't mean that the characters will all feel 'samey'. Each class plays out differently than the others do. Even ones that are similar. Even two characters of the same class but with different subclasses can both mechanically and flavor feel very different.
Relative level determines if you are successful.
Your build determines how you are successful.
Your party synergy determines how well you are successful.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
A high level Wizard in PF1 can definitely carry an entire team 80% of the time.
At low level, some violent martial builds are also able to carry a team during combats.
So even if 80% is a bit inflated, I can understand the general feeling behind the hyperbole.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
What is the point of making a character and playing if your character can be replaced with any other character or at least any other character that fills the same roll with no difference.
One of the things that I love the most about PF2 and its character creation is that I feel like I am building a character that goes on adventures rather than creating a stat block that defeats other stat blocks.
I played PF1 for a few months once. I wasn't great at the character creation minigame. So while my character was an awesome character, it wasn't even a good stat block. I felt pretty useless in combat.
And yes, there was another player in that game that was great at the character creation minigame. So they had an interesting and fun character that was also a fantastic stat block. They pretty much carried the entire party through our low level combats.
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.
Why?
Why is that your assumption?
It seems like a strange assumption to me.
Also, what can you do to change that assumption? Because that mindset is going to make PF2 be not very much fun at all.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
What is the point of making a character and playing if your character can be replaced with any other character or at least any other character that fills the same roll with no difference.
So can any of you tell me what I am missing, or shed some light on this conclusion. I for obvious reasons can’t spend any money with WoTC. And Fantasy RPGs are my passion.
In PF2, teamwork makes the dream work. You can't win the game at character creation, and no amount of theorycrafting will help you if everyone else at the table is dead weight. However, because it's hard to build a bad character, your fellow party members are less likely to be dead weight in the first place.
What makes a PF2 PC good is understanding how they can contribute to combat, and then build that PC to enable that strategy.
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.
As a former PF1 player, PF2 requires a paradigm shift. I encourage you to have a frank discussion with your GM and fellow players about tactics when you find them, or else ask the GM to keep encounters at low difficulty. IME, gently suggesting that PCs move to flank enemies or Delay their turn until you're done debuffing is usually well-received.
That said, here's a basic build you may like. Good AC, accuracy, damage, saves, and tactics.
• Fighter with 18 STR, 14 CON, 14 WIS, your pick. Any ancestry is fine.
• Purchase full plate as soon as possible for high AC
• The guisarme has high damage, reach for AoO's, and you can trip foes to lower their attack & AC or provoke an AoO from you. This will also help out your fellow PCs.
• Use Athletics to Trip, then follow up with a Strike. Pick up the Knockdown feat at level 4.
There's more you can do, like using Intimdation to Demoralize or picking up some spellcasting for good buff spells, but that'll get you started.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
In general, all TTRPGs are intended to be team games. There is often opportunity for personal excellence, but at the end of the day, you win or fail as a team. 2e emphasizes teamwork a bit more than usual, but not to a degree that is truly exceptional. It works as well as the group playing it does, as usual.
Yes, quite a few characters will end up being able to fulfil the same role to a roughly equal extent. But that is not the same thing as those characters being the same or playing the same. If you want to play a high-end damage dealer, you have fighters, barbarians, two flavours of champion, magus and a few rogues. If you want to be more of a defender, you have 2 flavours of fighter, 3-4 flavours of champion, a lot of flavours of monk, another barbarian, a few swashbucklers and maybe even a ranger, if you are feeling spicy. If you want to be a caster, there are tons of em. And so on. Depending on what degree of optimization you want, that selection can be even larger.
However, this also doesn't mean that you can't "succeed" at making a very good character. 2e still very much rewards specialisation and committing to the bit, so to say. There is plenty of room between "viable" and "very good", especially as the game goes on. Just as an example - in my party, there are two primary damage dealers. A tiger-stance monk and me, a two-handed tyrant. Unless I'm quite unlucky, my average round dishes out well over 100 damage. My friend the monk does about 70 under the same circumstances. Our respective maximums are even further apart. Yeah.
Depending on what you choose and how much you commit to that choice, your characters will feel very different, even if they ultimately accomplish the same thing.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
That is how all TTRPGs have been for me. Each character is on their own until the end of an encounter. The only exception is people will use an action to prevent someone from dying, but some people feel that that is kind of a wasted action better spent finishing the encounter. Then deal with the downed characters.
And yet, literally everyone on this thread is telling you that your assumptions are wrong.
You asked at the very beginning:
So can any of you tell me what I am missing, or shed some light on this conclusion.
And that is the answer. It may not be the answer that you were expecting, or even an answer that you like. But it is the answer that you need.
PF2 is a team based, cooperative, role-playing game. It actually delivers on that claim. It is team based - party strategy and synergy is extremely important. It is cooperative - including with the GM. It is focused fairly balanced between combat and role-play - skills and skill feats are fairly important even if they don't always have in-combat use.
In order to enjoy this game you will need to put away your assumptions that you have gotten from other games. If you and your long-time friends that are used to playing PF1 and D&D and Shadowrun try to play PF2 the same way, it will go horribly wrong and you will either end up quitting the game system entirely, or end up back here on the advice forum wondering what went wrong.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
In my experience, one player/character usually has to carry the rest of the party a good 80% of the time. Relying on other players/characters will get the entire party killed. Most players/characters act independently of all the others in the party against the same enemy, but there is no coordination or planning, and very few player use abilities or spells to help their comrades unless the spell/ability they were using on themselves had additional targets beyond just themselves. I have a hard time seeing this work in game.You need new experience then.
That mindset is exactly the type of thing that causes threads like this and this and this.
"I wonder if one of those is mine..."
*clicks first link*
"AYYYYY called it!"
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
That is how all TTRPGs have been for me. Each character is on their own until the end of an encounter. The only exception is people will use an action to prevent someone from dying, but some people feel that that is kind of a wasted action better spent finishing the encounter. Then deal with the downed characters.
With all due respect this sounds more like the mindset of the people you play with rather than the games themselves. I've played all the games you have (and a few more) and very rarely do I encounter a rampant mindset that resembles what you're talking about. And I'm not disparaging that mindset. Some people may find that more fun. It's just not as common in my experience.
That said PF2E is HIGHLY teamwork friendly and a lot of assumptions ingrained in other games don't quite translate to it and vice versa.
But to go back to your original point I will suggest the following that has helped my table transition:
1. Remember that sometimes using non-attack actions/skills are better than taking an attack.
2. Aiding an ally will often make your job easier.
3. There is sometimes a lot of overlap of abilities, but that's fine. Characters don't have to be uber-specialized.
4. Communication with your allies is important.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
So... I will address the original position. The thing to realize is that optimization is still very possible. It's just thin. If everyone is doing basic stuff like putting together a reasonable statline, then you're not going to be able to produce a character who's enormously more capable than the person who's sitting next to you... but you can still optimize, and you can still see real gains from it. It's just that the gains that you can see are in the 10%-20% range, total, rather than the 2x-10x range like with some previous versions of the game. The game is still there, and the gains are real. It's just that they're not enough to let you really marginalize your teammates anymore.
The advantages you can glean as a group through tactical skill and party optimization are significantly greater.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I will also say that the game slowly teaches you to work as a team if you aren't used to it. That is because rarely is it worth it to use all of your actions to strike. Which often leads you to start wondering what you can do with your third or even second action, which usually end up as actions that van help the team as a whole in some way.
Contributor
|
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hello Friend Ramlatus!
I am going to suggest that you go with the reach trip fighter build that Necr0g1ant suggested above. I am also going to suggest that you sign up for PFS and play that build at a few tables, either in person or online. You are going to be useful to your party, and you'll discover ways your party can be useful to you in the course of play.
Everyone who comes from PF1 or D&D goes through this mental hurdle. You're not alone. I went through this too until I actually played the game and went... "Oh yeah. That was effective."
Looking forward to playing with you at an online convention - maybe PaizoCon? - sometime.
Hmm
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.
This is an assumption that will lead everyone involved to having a *very* bad time with PF2.
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.This is an assumption that will lead everyone involved to having a *very* bad time with PF2.
You know, while that's mostly true, there are ways around it that still result in mostly functional parties. Your typical 3 martial setup could be backed by a bard that has no interest in casting anything but debuffs and do pretty good for themselves as long as they also all have medicine to heal themselves between fights. It's not great by any means, but as long as the martials aren't weak classes like swashbucklers or investigators they'd probably do surprisingly ok as long as they played smart individually.
I find optimizing and theorycrafting in 2E far less satisfying than it was in 1E or D&D 3.5. As Sanityfaerie mentioned and you've discovered, the payoff for optimization in 2E is much lower than it is in other systems. I miss coming up with characters who can base every skill they care about off one stat and one-shot enemies, but I enjoy my time at the table more. It's satisfying to overcome tough opponents and a streak of low dice rolls through cooperation and tactics.
Just want to note here that I rather enjoy it myself. Sure, it's not 4e or 3.5, and it won't let you do the crazy things that those would let you do, but It's a lot better than trying to optimize in 5e, where they decided to severely choke your options so that you wouldn't have anything to optimize with.
Like I said, you can still play the game. You just have to accept that in PF2, the optimization game is played with significantly lower stakes... and, yes, that a lot of the bigger gains require working with other folks, rather than just going it alone.
Just as one example to whet your appetite... consider a Goblin Druid (Order of the Flame) who's friends with a Goblin Oracle (Flames mystery). Trying to pull off that combo as a single person would take entirely too long, run afoul of focus point economies, and so forth. Both of them working together, though...?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, Paizo tried to remove system mastery as something that would allow you to build an uber player character that could solo a whole adventure on your own.
That was PF1, and while I enjoyed being an overpowered monster through character choices, it was challenging for a GM to deal with, and certainly less fun for other players if they were new to the game and didn't know how to make similar crazy effective characters.
So what you observe is by intention.
Character options don't make you better at the underlying math, and instead tend to give you better action economy or allow you to combine multiple actions into one activity with some benefit. Like making two attacks, but MAP not increasing until after both are made. Sure, you could spend two actions to strike twice but the second would have MAP.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I understand your concerns with Pathfinder 2, I have many of the same issues with it and have only played a few games with it as a result. That said, I'd take some time and just build a few characters at various levels to see how you feel after having done that. You might still find that your builds feel constrained but you might start to see differences that open you up to the system.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.Why?
Why is that your assumption?
It seems like a strange assumption to me.
Also, what can you do to change that assumption? Because that mindset is going to make PF2 be not very much fun at all.
Yeah, if you approach PF2 with this mindset you're going to hate it.
PF2 is kind of the opposite of D&D 3.5 and PF1.
System mastery simply will not let you be outstandingly better than another character by virtue of the stats on your character sheet.
Real system mastery is understanding not to make a 3rd action strike when you have -10 MAP because it's not going to hit and it's a waste of an action. Instead you should raise a shield. Or bon mot. Or even just move away from the enemy, who then might have to move to you and now they can't use their big 3 action attack against you because they have to spend 1 or their 3 actions moving.
The most effective players in PF2 are ones who understand the action economy and how to move it in players favor and understand that debuffing the enemy via trip, frightened, feint, etc will make the whole group more successful and increase everyone chances of hitting but also criting.
Oh, and don't forget an occasional bon mot for your caster friend throwing out will saves.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Optimizing in PF1 sucked donkey balls. Yes, you absolutely could go nuts and demolish everything with your OP build... and watch the will to play leave your GM's eyes, while your party members start disengaging and browsing on their phones as you solved all the problems.
Oh, but then you get wise and start only optimizing builds that help the party be better! Until you realize the party resents you for making them feel like they're puppets on your strings, and the GM is having just as much trouble as ever putting together satisfying challenges.
I'll be frank: the assumption that everyone is out for themselves and you can't expect help from your team is extremely problematic, and makes it seem like you've never actually experienced a fraction of the fun that can be had in this hobby. It's downright sad.
In PF2, you have actually interesting optimization problems: Given your resources (abilities, feats, skills, and money) how can you achieve group goals most efficiently given the other players' resource decisions. It's nontrivial, unlike prior edition optimization problems where you just pump certain numerical values to beat known enemy numerical values.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Some people have said something about Play by Post games, but I don't really know how that works.
I've been playing Play by Post pretty much exclusively for about a year now.
The hardest part of that is finding a group that you mesh well with and plays at the same pace that you do. Also, recruitment is hard - especially if someone has social anxiety or fear of rejection.
Generally the pace is that each person checks in about once or twice per day, but that isn't always the case. Also, the ones that I have been in have involved a VTT for map tracking - but it doesn't need to be in a real-time fashion. You just have to be able to eventually load and interact with the map.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
So it is not considered rude to ask about the other characters skills and abilities? I have found that in the past asking about another character is like asking to see someone naked. Done very delicately.
I have almost always seen some sort of session 0 group pooling of at least the basics of what all of the various characters are going to be doing in combat and how they can help each other be more effective.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
So it is not considered rude to ask about the other characters skills and abilities? I have found that in the past asking about another character is like asking to see someone naked. Done very delicately.
I’ve been doing tabletop for 15 years now and never once seen this behavior. Many groups do a “session 0” explicitly about creating their characters together, so that they fit together nicely in both mechanics and narrative.
|
Contributor
|
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Ramlatus, good news. There is a Play-By-Post convention that is seating right now for games starting March 6th.
Would you like me to:
1) Reserve a seat for you at one of the tables;
2) Help you figure out how to get your character formatted for PBP?
Although we suggested a fighter build, you could try something else too. We never asked you what you like to play. Casters? Skilled characters? Melee?
Play-by-Post won't require a new computer. It is a bit slow, but I like thinking about the game I am playing throughout the day. Is this something you want to try?
Hmm
|
Contributor
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay, I reserved a spot for you on the Outpost spread sheet. I didn't know your OPF number, but I reserved you a seat and I'm going to ping you with the location of the game's gameplay and discussion threads. There are currently 3 martials on the table already, so maybe you want to try something else? But I'll leave it up to you!
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Generally, I've had far more fun theory building in pf2e than any edition of DND and pf1e.
Because I know the characters I make won't upset anyone at the table or solo any encounters.
Both things I had a habit of doing without really trying in the past games.
I'd learn faster than the DM, I'd employee synergies I thought were cool but the result was over shadowing some others at the table.
Pf2e has been a safe haven for players like me who optimize themes and ideas soley for the fun of it.
I have about 130 character ideas on my pathbuilder app so far...
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Looking into it further I keep reading things saying that teamwork is what is important in Pathfinder 2e. I find this idea difficult to believe. In my experience, one player/character usually has to carry the rest of the party a good 80% of the time. Relying on other players/characters will get the entire party killed. Most players/characters act independently of all the others in the party against the same enemy, but there is no coordination or planning, and very few player use abilities or spells to help their comrades unless the spell/ability they were using on themselves had additional targets beyond just themselves. I have a hard time seeing this work in game.
I like that Ramlatus did their homework and read up on PF2 strategies, despite their disagreement with the teamwork emphasis.
Teamwork in PF2 can take many forms. One style has a player character carrying the rest of the party 25% of the time. And then in another 25% another PC carries the party, and in yet another 25% the third PC carries the party, and in the fourth 25% the fourth PC carries the party. That teamwork style might be more to Ramlatus's taste.
When in combat my assumption is that I will receive no help from my companions in the from of buffs or healing until the combat is over and then only half the time.
Players can form a teamwork party in which the characters have no ability to buff each other and each character mostly heals themselves with the Medicine skill. Buffs are only one tool for teamwork, not the heart of teamwork.
Why is that your assumption?
It seems like a strange assumption to me.
Also, what can you do to change that assumption? Because that mindset is going to make PF2 be not very much fun at all.
Yeah, if you approach PF2 with this mindset you're going to hate it.
PF2 is kind of the opposite of D&D 3.5 and PF1.
Actually, my players used teamwork heavily throughout our PF1 Iron Gods campaign. Fighting as a team aided roleplaying as a band of close friends. And I had to double the challenge (i.e., raise the CR by 2) of the encounters in the modules to balance their advantage from good tactics through teamwork. In contrast, if a single party member were optimized to twice as powerful as the average PC of their level, that would be only a 25% increase in party strength, not enough to justify rewriting an encounter.
The rest of Claxon's comment #32 gives solid advice about how the system works and how to master the system. Let me add two more pieces of advice.
The hostile creatures from the Bestiary are built with the kind of stats that min-maxing gave in D&D 3.5 and PF1. They cannot be defeated one-on-one face-to-face toe-to-toe by a PC of the same level.
And the PF2 developers gave them those good numbers (Building Creatures) to compensate for their terrible vulnerability: they are designed to be easy to play. James Jacobs, though he is the creative director rather than a mechanics designer, once described each creature in the bestiary or the module as a snapshot. It is designed for one role in one encounter. Force it into another role and it sucks.
And that is how my players prefer to win. They deny the enemy the enemy's favorite strategy. The denial takes teamwork. Often only one party member has a special ability that messes up the enemy's tactic and the other party members switch to supporting that one successful party member.
For example, once at 4th level my 4th-level party with five party members fought a 7th-level bugbear rogue with some lower-level soldiers, enough to make the encounter a Severe-threat. First, my party did not fight the bugbear in his stronghold. Nope, the party was expert in stealth and scouting, so they waited until he was on patrol and ambushed him there. Setting up an ambush took planning. Second, they had learned that the bugbear commander fought like a rogue, relying on sneak attacks, so they separated him from his soldiers so that none could provide him with a flank. This left the ranger and the champion fighting a 7th-level rogue by themselves.
The bugbear rogue had a trick: he knew Twin Feint, so he could use his first attack to set up flat-footedness for sneak attack damage on the second attack. But when he tried to use on the ranger, the champion used her Liberating Step reaction to prevent some of the damage and let the ranger Step away. The bugbear rogue could not make his second attack because the ranger was out of reach. And the champion was a hardened target with shield raised so attacking her was slow. Thus, the bugbear rogue gave up on Twin Feint and used just ordinary Strikes without sneak attack damage. He was a lot less dangerous without his favorite tactics.
And he had no other trick to enable sneak attack because more tricks would have made him harder to play. In contrast, the ranger and the champions were not relying on their favorite tricks either. The ranger had used his trick: he was a swtich hitter who first attacked at range with his longbow and then switched to melee. But the bugbear rogue had 7th-level hit points, so the ranger was stuck in melee for longer than a switch-hitter could tolerate. The champion's favorite trick is that she had swapped out her divine steed for a velociraptor. Her protective abilities were meant to protect the velociraptor, but instead, she had had kept the velociraptor out of this fight to protect the ranger instead. Player characters are versatile and can adjust their tricks to handle many tactics.
The classes have built-in teamwork abilities, such as the champion's reaction from their cause, even if the player did not deliberately build for teamwork. For example, my party also has a gnome rogue with thief racket. The player is new and was shy about engaging in melee, so her favorite tactic was shooting her shortbow from hiding to catch an enemy flat-footed. Thus, she would Strike at range for sneak attack damage, Strike at range without sneak attack damage, and Hide as her third action. At 10th level, she took Precise Debilitation, which let her make her opponent flat-footed unto the end of her next turn. She was happy that she could shoot with sneak attack damage twice per turn. The rest of the party, in contrast, voted her Most Valuable Player. Because her target became flat-footed to everybody! A feat selected to serve her own personal style also served the entire team.
Teamwork is not just effective to PF2, it is also natural to PF2.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Seems everything is covered.
About all I have to add is you can be very powerful at high level, especially if a caster.
There are some options you can look for in groups in PF2 that make for a more optimal, powered up character like allowing Dual Class or Free Archetype.
If you play in a Dual Class game, you can build some brutally powerful characters that get pretty ridiculous at high level. Free Archetype not quite as powered up, but a lot more flexibility in build.
Lower levels definitely won't be any single character carrying the group. Higher level you can build some real combat monsters that won't necessarily carry the group, but definitely standout for their ability to inflict mass destruction.
I'm playing in a dual class game with a Monk/Druid wild shaper and this character is getting more and more brutal as they level.
PF2 definitely spread the power level a lot wider than PF1 or 3E, so you truly are not a powered up combat monster until past level 15 and closer to level 20. The power up is a lot more gradual and balanced, but you do eventually become a really powerful character.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So it is not considered rude to ask about the other characters skills and abilities? I have found that in the past asking about another character is like asking to see someone naked. Done very delicately.I’ve been doing tabletop for 15 years now and never once seen this behavior. Many groups do a “session 0” explicitly about creating their characters together, so that they fit together nicely in both mechanics and narrative.
I've seen it several times, almost always in online games.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've seen it several times, almost always in online games.So it is not considered rude to ask about the other characters skills and abilities? I have found that in the past asking about another character is like asking to see someone naked. Done very delicately.I’ve been doing tabletop for 15 years now and never once seen this behavior. Many groups do a “session 0” explicitly about creating their characters together, so that they fit together nicely in both mechanics and narrative.
...why? What is there to hide or keep private?
My group exclusively plays online, and our character sheets have always been in a shared, public space for all of us to quickly reference.