Can you be more specific at all?
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Almost without fail these characters have either died in their first or second encounters or have been completely ineffectual
The Great Rebalancing.
PF2 was built with new math from the ground up. That surprises a lot of people who are coming from other game systems - especially PF1.
In PF1 a game was won or lost at character creation. A properly built character would stand up quite well against creatures much higher level than they are. A party would often take on and win easily against CR +5 enemies.
In PF2 a CR +3 is a serious threat solo boss. It will take a lot of tactics and teamwork from a party of 4 players in order to take it down.
There are plenty of other threads about this already. I'll link to some of them once I find them again.
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So why play PF 2e? Whats the appeal? What am I missing?
Well, you don't start at the best position. Veterans from 5e and PF1 tend to TPK a lot compared to pure beginners. It's mostly because they want to use concepts from these other games to PF2 and it just doesn't work.
PF2 has to be considered like a brand new game. Rules are similar, but their interactions are very different.Also, I don't know what your GM has put for monsters, but when the rules say Severe, they mean Severe. And Extreme means 50% chance of TPK, so really Extreme. If your GM is used to push the system higher than intended, like many GMs were doing in the other editions, then they will kill your party quickly.
And then, also, the difficulty of PF2 is quite high. If you prefer lighter games, just give an extra level to the party and it'll be fine. I know people dislike that but this solution is really the good one when you prefer easy combats like in PF1 or D&D 5.
Pathfinder 2E is restricted. But it's more balanced. And has finally taken the axe to the sacred cows, and ground them into meatloaf.
It's also a lot 'smaller'. Think about what we were used to with PF1 - was many years of released, and in a setup where "Hey, it's a feat!" meant that it was (potentially) available to just about everyone.
2E hasn't had the time to release as much as 1E, and each feat is only for a given class or archetype - so it doesn't widen everyone's options as much. I think they're also being more careful with what they release, power levels - so they don't release the Summoner, then have to scale it back with Unchained.
The downside? If you're a wildshape focused druid, there's basically one set of options - there's not breadth there, yet at least. Maybe in time.
They've also gone harder with something the writers had said they thought of as a core thing in 1E - but couldn't write in then. They want people to stay in one class from level 1 to level 20. Now you do - you can archetype for some extra bits, but you're still 'in' your main class.
There's a bunch of places where you could build something weird, cool and wonderful in 1E, but you can't in 2E. However, that also means those five totally overpowered builds that people made far more often are out - so I see why they did it.
2E ties everything closer to proficiency, and thus it's much harder to get that +1 bonus, because it makes such a difference. Compared to 1E where one of my players (Rogue) has saves of +5/+13/+7 and an AC of 21 at level 9, my level 11 Witch had +19/+20/+18 and an AC of 28.
I would actually say that PF2 and 5E have gone quite different ways compared to the starting point of 3rd edition - 5th is the 'awesome hero' where the default is that you're pretty damn strong, chopping your way through enemeies - not never troubled by them, but a more 'Avengers working their way through the mooks some of the times, facing the big bad some of the time'
Whereas unless you're facing stuff a quite a lot below your level, they can still be troubling in Pathfinder - I'd call it a grittier system now.
Bosses are harder, because their saves - even their weak ones, are really tough, because if there's four of you and one of them, then they're higher level than you. So they're hard to hit, near impossible to crit, and hitting you pretty easily.
You are missing:
Understanding the 3-action Economy
Using teamwork to take down monstersAs everyone else has said: PF2 is a different game from D&D and PF1. The decades-old strategies (create the BEST character) and tactics (step up to opponent and keep beating it until it dies) are either irrelevant or will negatively affect your chances of success.
Until you are effectively using your 3rd action, and until you are using some of your actions to insure that your teammates have a better chance of hitting (or critting) your mutual opponent, then you're going to feel (and be) ineffective.
Another thing is due tight math of the system tactics and debuffs are pretty strong in this game to the point that in many situations is better to try to Prone, Grab or flank an opponent with your very first action than just Strike even if this will result in a worse second attack because make the things easier to your allies is way more effective than just try to do some damage (when my players discovered how devastating could be prone + grab vs strong opponents this basically becomes their main strategy when aren't facing a large number of opponents).
The other thing that players that comes from other D20 systems have is the difficulty to understand how penalty the MAP is. It's usual in other systems that try to attack as much as possible because try to do another thing is inefficient or because hit the opponent isn't so hard to the point that make try another attack isn't a good option.
While in PF2 the things are completely different. Strike is important but no more important than stay well positioned or than to try to Demoralize an opponent or to Rise a Shield. So attack can be a good idea but try to attack with PAM-5 can be a bad idea while attack with PAM-10 usually is the worse idea and you need to think about what action strategy you will use before use your actions or you may not take the advantage to enter in a flank position or to take the benefits of a Demoralize action or even to try an athletics maneuver like Prone/Grab without suffer MAP.
So the most harder aspect of PF2 isn't the complexity at all but to understand how tactically important and game changing are your available options (and your character usually have more options than you probably realized). But once you take them the game become really fun and interesting.
Another point that specially affects players that comes from other D20 system is that in PF2 you don't need to be most stronger as possible (including do a power creep build is pretty inefficient in this system) in order to kill your opponents ASAP instead you need to work together with your allies to control de battlefield in order to win!
You don't need to do a cooperative build but during the battle you need to understand that you aren't alone and usually is better to cooperated all together to even if this means sacrifice a little of your actions or to delay your turn to take the most tactical advantage as possible.
So abandon any thought of "I need to be the strongest to win" to "we need to work together to win". Because more than any other game PF2 is a team played TTRPG.
And the last most common mistake of players and GMs that comes from other systems is about the battle balance. PF2 encounters are balanced thinking that all players are fully healed and refocused. So it's very important to stop some minutes and recovery the party members HP and refocus before advance again. Also the GMs need to notice if they press the players without this important recovery intervals is like to put them in a more difficult battle. So for example force the players to have 2 Moderated encounters in a row without give time to refocus and heal is almost the same than put then in a Extreme encounter. Everyone including the GM needs to remember that battles are risky and advance like your are a superhero is the recipe to death.
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It sounds like the number one thing your table is missing is good communication between the players, including the GM. A GM who is constantly killing off player characters, and seeing the players get frustrated with the game, has a lot of tools at their disposal for figuring out what kind of game will be most fun for everyone. The default modes of PF2 are for character death to be possible, and some tables (mine included) don’t mind a character dying every several levels, but when it gets too much, we stop as a table and talk about what is going wrong and how all of us want to fix it.
We play PF2 because we like the challenging math, the focus on tactical play and especially how easy the system is to run for a GM, without sacrificing all complexity and build options.
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We could use a little clarification:My group recently started playing PF 2e due to the recent missteps of WotC that made supporting that game unappetizing. However, as we have started delving into PF 2e, I have personally found it to be an overly complex (in terms of rules not variety) overly restrictive game to play.
I have tried playing a Summoner, which use to be one of my favored classes, an Oracle, a Wizard, and a straight up Fighter. Almost without fail these characters have either died in their first or second encounters or have been completely ineffectual, was the case with the Wizard.
Old concepts, such as my ranged Paladin, are no longer possible to build or emulate.
So why play PF 2e? Whats the appeal? What am I missing?
- Are you playing an actual published adventure? If it is a home-built adventure, your GM might just need to review the new difficulty guildlines.
- Are you maxing out your primary stat at character creation? Generally speaking, a starting 18 is great, a 16 is fine, but anything less makes you fairly ineffective.
- Did your casters take a decent ranged attack cantrip (or two)? They ain't great, but they are your 'bread and butter' at low levels and should allow you to contribute in every fight without the risk of a sudden death.
- When you say 'died' do you mean actually dead or just knocked unconscious?
- How are your characters 'dying?' There are a lot of old tactics that will get you killed really quickly in PF2.
- What is the rest of your group composition?
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I have found this one and this one and this one and this one.
Back in early release, I called it the middle child problem.
People who had been through multiple editions adapted quickly. Complete newbies who picked up the system for the first time did fine. But people coming from PF1 or 5e with no other background struggled horribly, and died quick and helpless deaths while ramming their face against any wall imaginable.
Shed your old assumptions and play the game as is. It's the only way to move forward.