Common mistakes?


Rules Discussion


Just wondering if there was a list of common mistakes or pitfalls to look out for when moving from other games to PF2e.


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I don't know if anyone has compiled a list. And it would be subjective anyway.

But my starting list that I have seen come up on here a lot from people migrating from PF1:

Full Attack => Don't make attacks at full MAP. Find other things to do with your third action.
Aggression only, only defense is dead enemies => Defensive options are important. Use them. You can't blitz down an enemy in one round on your own.
Save or die spells => Incapacitation trait.
Solo Hero => You need your team and they need you.
CR +4 is the minimum for a good challenge => A single CR +3 is a legitimate TPK threat.


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Teamwork is most important as said above.

GM side…

Grab costs an action
Learn the stealth and detection rules
Learn the conditions
Learn exploration activities and try to integrate your players' explorations in a meaningful way
Have DCs by level handy
Bonuses/Penalties don't often stack. (Just three types of bonuses: circumstance, item, and status [most common for buffs/debuffs])
Monster design does not follow the same rules as PCs
When adjusting difficulty add mooks instead of making the big solo boss elite
Secret checks can make the game more interesting depending on your table, the Secret tag is a thing for a reason as is the line that says GMs don't have to use it at their discretion


And since this is in the Rules section instead of Discussion, then for rules errors I would list:

Not reading traits to find rules.
Forgetting to add level to proficiency.


breithauptclan wrote:

And since this is in the Rules section instead of Discussion, then for rules errors I would list:

Not reading traits to find rules.
Forgetting to add level to proficiency.

I had actually meant to put this in advice but since most of the mistakes that are likely to come up for me are rules related it still works :)


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GM side: Pay attention to effects with the incapacitation trait. Because forgetting PCs get the benefits of that too can make things a LOT nastier.


Pay attention to many skill feats modifiers specially secret ones. For example usually you roll Perception secretly to make a player to notice if an NPC is showing traces of lying but if the player have Lie to Me he/she can use Deception instead if is higher but it's very common that you forget about it and to ask to players if they have some feat that helps to detect lies denounces you. So keep a list of situational feats that may allow your players to have bonus/penalties or changes in secret rolls is very useful (because if you forget it they will complain).


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breithauptclan wrote:
Not reading traits to find rules.

Since this is (I think) the biggest one, here are some important example (beside incapacitation, which was already mentioned):

- The attack trait and its interaction with the multi-attack penalty. In particular, this affects athletics maneuvers: grapple, trip, shove, and disarm.

- The open and flourish traits. These are very easy to overlook and appear often, including at low levels (for example on Sudden Charge). There are also some class-specific traits of similar importance, such as press for fighters or psyche for psychics; always make sure to read the trait sidebar in the class description.

- The splash trait, which I think is the easiest out of these to completely overlook (in fact I overlooked it myself when I was new to the game). The gist of it is that splash weapons do their splash damage even on a (non-critical) failure.


One mistake i've seen often in new groups is refocusing:
you can only refocus if you have spend a point from your last refocus.

so if you have 2 points, and spend both, you can only go up to 1 for the rest of the day (until higher level with specific feats, or if you are a psychic)

Grand Archive

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painted_green wrote:


- The attack trait and its interaction with the multi-attack penalty. In particular, this affects athletics maneuvers: grapple, trip, shove, and disarm.

It is relevant to note that the Escape action also has the attack trait. Like if you were escaping from a grapple.

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