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My first PF2e campaign had a similar DM, he just loved to throw encounters over budget at us (full homebrew).
I played a redeemer champion with shield block and felt really useless, blocking destroyed my shield every time.
Having "studied" PF2e beforehand i started calculating the XP values of the encounters, and most did not even fit on the scale.
I gave feedback that i did not enjoy this style of play and would prefer a tad more heroism, the other players agreet, but no reaction.
After i realized that things were not going to change and again another encounter felt like the DM playing "to win", countering every creative solution we came up with a "they obviously thought about this and placed guards there" i finally left the group.
Finding PF2e groups is quite difficult here in Germany, but i decided it was better not to play than to play in a bad game.
A lot of people wrote (good) things about teamwork and game mechanics, i just do not think that those will help you if the DM does not work with the players to have fun.
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I'm quite familiar with PF2 and how it plays. If my GM regularly pitted our party against multiple (!) level +2 or higher "boss" creatures or characters, then we'd all be dejected hamburger meat as well.
It's not you or your tactics. It's not the game system or its math. It's the GM appearing to not understand the basic fundamentals of the game.
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I'm quite familiar with PF2 and how it plays. If my GM regularly pitted our party against multiple (!) level +2 or higher "boss" creatures or characters, then we'd all be dejected hamburger meat as well.
It's not you or your tactics. It's not the game system or its math. It's the GM appearing to not understand the basic fundamentals of the game.
A big question becomes "does the GM realize the problem?"
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A big question becomes "does the GM realize the problem?"I'm quite familiar with PF2 and how it plays. If my GM regularly pitted our party against multiple (!) level +2 or higher "boss" creatures or characters, then we'd all be dejected hamburger meat as well.
It's not you or your tactics. It's not the game system or its math. It's the GM appearing to not understand the basic fundamentals of the game.
I wonder how the GM ended up running an under-leveled party, That does not ordinarily happen, because either the party dies or the PCs level up quickly due to the high-xp challenges.
In the first post, Radu the Wanderer said, "I have joined up with a new game group recently, and am joining them mid-way through the campaign they are playing. I believe they are doing some variation of one of the AP's- I think maybe Age of Ashes?" If the GM created this variation by dropping encounters, then the party would have no way of earning the proper levels before the later encounters. Radu the Wanderer also mentioned attendance problems, so if the PCs earn no XP when absent for encounters, then they would be below level.
I myself give everyone XP for all encounters, even players who were absent, so that all PCs will be at the same level. Same level makes designing encounters easier.
The obvious solution to this mistake is Milestone Leveling. Each module in recent adventure paths has a list of when the PCs are supposed to level up. I don't own a copy of Age of Ashes, but my copy of Kindled Magic in the Strength of Thousands adventure path says,
Advancement Track
“Kindled Magic” is designed for four characters.
The heroes begin this adventure at 1st level.
The heroes reach 2nd level after they defeat the gremlins at the <redacted to avoid spoilers, the Severe 1 encounter on page 27>.
The heroes reach 3rd level after completing their <redacted, Severe 2 encounter on page 44> and fighting off the insect attack.
The heroes should reach 4th level by the end of the adventure.
Milestone Leveling means to not track XP. Instead, the PCs level up when the advancement tracks says that they should.
The advancement track also can be a strong argument for Radu the Wanderer to point out that the PCs are the wrong level for the encounters.
The GM also needs to know how to design or adjust encounters for the PCs in the campaign. I would go into the math, except that I already started a thread about it over a year ago: Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters. A quick piece of advice is that whenever the party has only 3 our of the recommended 4 PCs, then the GM should use only 3/4 of the opponents.
Unless your character's hands were bound or restrained, you should also have had an opportunity to use the Grab An Edge reaction before your character fell to their death.
Almost nothing in PF2e kills you for a single failed skill check; that should always be a red flag.
PF2 has a very different meta-strategy and character design that PF1 does. That influences a lot of things that can be hard to make the switch because of.
That meta switch is that characters are not necessarily superheroes. They are cinematic heroes. Let me explain.
Superheroes (PF1 heroes) have superpowers. They have some trick or two that they never fail at. Their bonuses to their rolls are too high.
Cinematic heroes (PF2 heroes) are heroes because they fight even if the odds aren't always in their favor.
What does this affect:
Skills: If the GM is causing catastrophic consequences for a simple failure of a skill check, then it is no wonder that you are frustrated. PF2 characters are expected to fail their skill checks that they are fully invested in about 40% of the time. The GM needs to know how to fail forward - not kill characters for failing one skill check.
Combat: You don't solo enemies. Combat is a tactical dance where the entire party needs to not overextend - spend some thought on your defenses and putting your enemies at a disadvantage. A rushdown strategy is going to fail more often than not.
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Now, that said, Age of Ashes is known to be rather overtuned. The AP was written when even the developers weren't fully aware of those lessons and practical differences between the two systems that I just summarized in this post.
So in that combat where you got wrecked by the enemies, check with the GM and see if that is because the enemies are at your level +3 or so. If you are level 7 and going up against a level 10 enemy, yeah. They crush face. Just by their numbers. You aren't able to punch above your weight class like that in PF2.
Yeah, I'm incredibly suspicious of the OP's situation, and what I mean is I think probably the GM doesn't understand PF2 well yet and how it differs.
I think there is a high chance the type of enemy the OP had to face was probably at level or higher level than the OP's character, which was always going to be an unwinnable fight. I'm also a bit suspicious because there were 3 of them, and the OP sounds like they were trying to deal with them alone. Where was the rest of the party? Why didn't they try to get down to you?
The GM could have easily ran this a different way and not had such a bad outcome. Don't have all 3 enemies dog pile on the same PC. Have one attack the PC that fell in the water, and have that attract the other 2 enemies but they go after the other PCs. That probably could have enabled OP to get out of the water and survived, assuming at least one other party member came and attempted to help them while other party members dealt with the other enemies.
Anyways, reading through the whole thread I think the majority of us would conclude (without a lot more specific details of the enemies fought) that your GM is probably running the game incorrectly, taking a lot of baggage from PF1 into PF2 and ruining the fun for you.
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What am I missing?You're coming from PF1.
Very strangely, pure beginners, with no knowledge of prior systems, fare much better in PF2 than players coming from PF1 and D&D5 as the latter ones bring a lot of assumptions that don't work in PF2 and actually play against them.
Not that strange. My musings in a similar thread more than a year ago :
It is key to remember that PF2 was designed to avoid the pitfalls / problems that 3.5 / PF1 had.
Because of this, long-time experts at PF1 system mastery are the people who have the worst time adapting to PF2. Because the ways to efficiency they learned and used for success in PF1 are specifically those that PF2 was designed to shut down.
Not only has the paradigm changed. On key points, it is actually the opposite.
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Late to the party here, but I will say my first impressions of PF2 were very similar. My views are slightly skilled as my schedule doesn’t really support a home group play, and 95+% of my experience is Society play. Basically it takes a mental shift from PF1 and it took a few years for the adventure writers to start to follow their own rules, instead of what they thought adventures should be like. Give it another shot, maybe another game, another GM or both.
While the game definitely is different in many aspects, I had not that big of a problem shifting to 2E gameplay when I had my first PFS games. Then again, I've been mostly GM'ing 1E the past 24 years so I might have a different perspective than someone who has been been a player of 1E.
I'm kinda nervous how my guys are going to like 2E, since we are starting our first campaign in 2 1/2 weeks. :p
I'm getting that picture! It's still difficult for me to really see the benefit of a 75/25 crit vs an 85/35 crit, but I do see the main issue of "all your numbers are at least 2 points lower than they are expected to be" turning a "slightly harder than usual" encounter into a "you'd best hope RNG goes your way long enough to live, because you're basically screwed!" encounter.
May do some re-thinking and re-tooling and run a swashbuckler tank type, though- that sounds appealing. There's something I like about a tough nut to crack that isn't using the typical route of sword+board and heavy armor...
Just wanted to clarify here that "at least 2" is going to be "more like 4" in some cases. eg: You get to boost a skill proficiency at level 9, so there's an additional +2. Investigator gets to boost another skill at level 8 since they get one every level (so does Rogue, though the Investigator ones are limited in where you can spend them).
So trying to do your best things feeling really hard makes sense, since your best thing should probably be at +4 from what you were doing it at, and 55% success chance feels a LOT different than a 35% success chance. If you're level 9, +2 item bonus items start becoming available and that's an added bonus on top of that for your best thing, so now you're suddenly pushing 60% or even 65% if you didn't have a +1 item.
Investigator is a cool class. I've seen some folks play it ranged and do quite well. That build isn't a damage power house, but it's an absolute beast at skills, can be a great medic with Battle Medicine (and the Medic Archetype), and can also dish out reasonable ranged damage while doing it. The Player Core 2 update making Devise a Stratagem easier to get as a free action helps a ton since you get a bunch of flexibility in how you spend your turn.
Swashbuckler also got improved in Player Core 2 a lot. Check out that version if you're going to play it. :)
I'm sorry your first shot at it was so rough. That's an indication of how hard things can be if the GM isn't adjusting correctly. Encoutners are supposed to be dialed down if you have 3 players to compensate for that, and you're not supposed to be so under levelled/geared. The fight you describe is one I'd never throw at a level 7 party since it's effectively a "campaign ending BBEG" difficulty level encounter and by that point characters have more resources to deal with those challenges.
(You also should have been given a chance to Grab an Edge of the bridge to avoid falling like that.)
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Late to the party here, but I will say my first impressions of PF2 were very similar. My views are slightly skilled as my schedule doesn’t really support a home group play, and 95+% of my experience is Society play. Basically it takes a mental shift from PF1 and it took a few years for the adventure writers to start to follow their own rules, instead of what they thought adventures should be like. Give it another shot, maybe another game, another GM or both.While the game definitely is different in many aspects, I had not that big of a problem shifting to 2E gameplay when I had my first PFS games. Then again, I've been mostly GM'ing 1E the past 24 years so I might have a different perspective than someone who has been been a player of 1E.
I'm kinda nervous how my guys are going to like 2E, since we are starting our first campaign in 2 1/2 weeks. :p
Good luck! I hope they like it!
I think its definitely a bigger issue for PF1 players than GMs. PF1 GMs have to actively work around a bunch of issues with the system to avoid edge cases that make things not work and also just to not instantly kill players because some creatures are so much stronger than others at the same CR. The transition as a GM can be easier since you don't have to do so much "fixing" on the fly when designing encounters. As long as you don't just flagrantly break the expectations of the game, it's easier to GM.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
More context coming to light in this one;
I still say that team work is key and don't be an action hero and be wary if another player insists on being the 'main character'. PF2E just doesn't work with 4 'main characters' like some other tRPGs (notably 5E D&D these days, but this is an old issue) do.
However yeah; also have a GM that 'plays right'.
When I was in middle school in the 80s, I recall one guy who would brag about the number of PCs he'd kill off every session. Even at that age no one else thought that was cool - but it was the last point at which that playstyle wasn't 'uncool'... ;)
After all - that's the playstyle Gygax used to advocate for in the pages of Dragon and in modules like S1 Tomb of Horrors. If you're GM is sitting down to a game of late 1970s AD&D but ya'll brought 2024 Pathfinder 2E - that isn't going to go over well.
Fixing a GM problem is a lot harder than fixing a player problem. Granted it's just one person, but it's the person our game format has assigned the role of setting the tone of things. So it's hard to tell them their tone is all wrong.
But that's the conversation the OP is now facing.
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Hi. Haven't read any of the other posts, but to the OP, you don't have to like a game, nor feel bad about not liking it.
Good luck!
Just so you know, this is how this post sounds:
OP: "My friend made me some high end locally sourced grass-fed steaks but didn't take them out of the bag and refused to cook them and served them to me as-is. I don't like that I didn't like them. What am I missing?"
You: "I don't care what other people have to say, but you don't have to like steak, nor feel bad about not liking it (◡‿◡✿)"
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
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For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.
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For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
The power gamer in your group might get the most out of a fighter or barbarian with a twohanded weapon.
The game heavily focuses synergy on those two classes getting to get those hits and and hit hard.Other characters might give them runic weapon early, and demoralize the enemy or cast fear on their target but its the fighter or barb that is striking for the most damage.
Casters kind of take time to get into their stride like with most of these games and a powergamer having to fail at spells early game might just make them not like playing much.
Fighter and barb are early satisfaction.
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Honestly, powergamers tend to dislike the edition for precisely that reason. There's no way to destroy level 20 monsters at level 10 the way there is in PF 1E, D&D 5e, etc due to the math.It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
And that helps clarify the difference between optimizer and powergamer.
2 concepts that were long seen as one.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
You know maybe your power gamer will feel like they are getting what they want out of a fighter with druid dedication for untamed form.
It kind of takes off some of the need for buffing teamwork cause they can give themselves a +2 status bonus to hit in animal forms as early as level 4.Its not necessarily stronger than swinging a twohanded weapon when you have support from teammates but with the improved movement speeds and types of animal forms and even higher than fighter accuracy it will probably feel very strong early game. And becasue they have druid dedication they can start adding druid spells opening up their options later so they dont feel too one noted
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For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^You know maybe your power gamer will feel like they are getting what they want out of a fighter with druid dedication for untamed form.
It kind of takes off some of the need for buffing teamwork cause they can give themselves a +2 status bonus to hit in animal forms as early as level 4.
Its not necessarily stronger than swinging a twohanded weapon when you have support from teammates but with the improved movement speeds and types of animal forms and even higher than fighter accuracy it will probably feel very strong early game. And becasue they have druid dedication they can start adding druid spells opening up their options later so they dont feel too one noted
Note though that AFAICT they will never get the improved Fighter proficiency with the attacks because those do not belong to a Weapon group and Remaster killed the Martial Artist workaround.
Note though that AFAICT they will never get the improved Fighter proficiency with the attacks because those do not belong to a Weapon group and Remaster killed the Martial Artist workaround.For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^You know maybe your power gamer will feel like they are getting what they want out of a fighter with druid dedication for untamed form.
It kind of takes off some of the need for buffing teamwork cause they can give themselves a +2 status bonus to hit in animal forms as early as level 4.
Its not necessarily stronger than swinging a twohanded weapon when you have support from teammates but with the improved movement speeds and types of animal forms and even higher than fighter accuracy it will probably feel very strong early game. And becasue they have druid dedication they can start adding druid spells opening up their options later so they dont feel too one noted
Ah ok. Probably for the best.