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As noted elsewhere, I’m a little behind in reading Paizo publications. I’ve just started reading the second edition (not remastered) Core Rulebook and have some comments:
The book has lots of new vocabulary! It’s taking awhile to learn it all.
No more point buy for ability scores! That seems to allow more customization.
Goblins are hilarious! I laughed three times while reading about them.
All classes are trained in perception! That totally makes sense, as it seems to be the most useful skill (although it doesn’t seem to be a skill anymore).
Fighters are experts in perception but monks aren’t! That’s a shocker.
Monk abilities are no longer affected by wisdom! Another shocker.
No class skills! Another change that seems to allow more customization.
Gear is so inexpensive! Then again, characters start with less money, so maybe it balances out.
Good stuff!
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Goblins are hilarious! I laughed three times while reading about them.
Wait until you find the Tanuki!
Regarding the Monk: Wisdom becomes a bit more important if you want to cast (offensive) focus spells: "your key spellcasting attribute is Wisdom"
That is quite niche though, for most monks wisdom is "only" will saves, perception and possibly skills. Still important, but no longer the one attribute every monk needs.
Class skills: A few classes have a skill they are automatically trained in, like crafting for an inventor or religion for a cleric.
You are totally right though, there is a lot of freedom there!
Gear: It will become expensive, but your wealth will rise even faster, the luxury item from two levels ago will be dirt cheap!
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There are many fun and interesting ancestries in PF2e that we will make an entire topic talk about all them. PF2e is supre creative in ancestries mechanics, maybe they are not all useful yet they still are fun.
As well pointed by Dr. Frank Funkelstein, monks still uses wis but not for their defense just for their ki even in the remaster. PF2e has an idea to depend way less from MAD and monks have such option to have a wisdomless monk focused in martial arts or a wisdom monk focused into their ki.
The removal of class skills was one of the best things that Paizo made. Yet your still still depends from your stats so the new "class skills" are now your key stat and secondary stat skills.
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I would instead say that your 'class skills' are the skill or two that your class gives you trained proficiency in automatically at level 1.
But that is a bit of a pedantic opinion.
The other really nice thing about skills is that you automatically get full 1/level investment in every skill that you have proficiency in. Increasing that proficiency to higher than Trained is like getting Skill Focus for that skill.
There are also a lot fewer skills listed, so it is easier to have a more complete coverage of needed skills for a character or the entire party.
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As noted elsewhere, I’m a little behind in reading Paizo publications. I’ve just started reading the second edition (not remastered) Core Rulebook and have some comments:
The book has lots of new vocabulary! It’s taking awhile to learn it all.
Pathfinder 1st Edition started with updated D&D 3.5 rules as its foundation, but it grew beyond that foundation. That created ambiguities. Pathfinder 2nd Edition created a new foundation to avoid those ambiguities and that required new vocabulary. For example, PF1 had to distinguish between an attack and a standard attack (i.e., an attack taken as a Standard action), but PF2 instead carefully defined Strike as the basic unit of weapon attack.
No more point buy for ability scores! That seems to allow more customization.
The PF2 attribute scores (changed from "ability" to "attribute" in the Remaster) tend toward +4, +3, +1, +1, +0, +0 in some order, or +4, +3, +2, +1, +0, -1 for nonhumans with an attribute flaw. Point buys made a +4 very expensive, but the PF2 system offers a single +4 and most characters fight best with a +4 in their combat or spellcasting attribute. The customization is in where the +3 goes.
Goblins are hilarious! I laughed three times while reading about them.
Leshies are fun, too.
All classes are trained in perception! That totally makes sense, as it seems to be the most useful skill (although it doesn’t seem to be a skill anymore).
Yeah, Perception was essentially a mandatory skill, so PF2 removed it from the list of skills and gave it an automatic progression based on class. The design is that mandatory features ought to have their cost removed.
Fighters are experts in perception but monks aren’t! That’s a shocker.
PF2 tries to round out the fighters more than PF1 did.
Monk abilities are no longer affected by wisdom! Another shocker.
Dr. Frank Funkelstein explained that wisdom is the spellcasting attribute for monks with ki spells. PF2 tries hard to avoid Multiple Attribute Dependence; instead, each class is supposed to have only one combat stat, except for optional builds.
No class skills! Another change that seems to allow more customization.
If a skill is highly representative of a class, such as Religion for clerics and Stealth for rogues, the class is trained in it for free.
Gear is so inexpensive! Then again, characters start with less money, so maybe it balances out.
Gear is still expensive in the new economy. And the price savings for Crafting is now trivial. The good news is that less gear is mandatory; for example, a character no longer requires separate rings of protection and amulets of natural armor to keep their AC up. They just need armor with Armor Potency runes.
Messy missed some of the biggest changes in gameplay, because they don't pop up when just reading. In the three-action system, most spells cast 2 actions and a third Strike with a -10 multiple attack penalty is almost useless, so the characters have a third action to use on something else besides dealing damage. That leads to more variety in combat, such as a fighter with Cha +3 and trained in Intimidation trying Demoralize on an opponent before attacking.
Another change is that the Treat Wounds 10-minute activity means that in a slow dungeon, the PCs can approach each combat at full hit points without using their Heal spells. Other characters can use the 10 minutes to Refocus for more magic while the healer treats wounds. This lets the GM give a lot more tough fights.
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Some favorable comments:
They dropped the confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit! That had to be one of the worst rules ever.
They dropped Spellcraft! That skill was unnecessary.
Maximum hit points per level! It’s about time.
Some unfavorable comments:
They dropped different weapons’ critical ranges and multipliers! I thought that gave weapons more flavor.
Longsword can’t be used either one-handed or two-handed! This seems like an unnecessary change.
A 20th-level character has 32 feats (5 ancestry, 1 background, 10 skill, 5 general, and 11 class)! I appreciate the customizability, but this is too much.
While I’m enjoying martial classes’ class features, class feats have been a let-down — too many, too minor, too intricate. We’ll see if casters’ class feats are more appealing.
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Some favorable comments:
They dropped the confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit! That had to be one of the worst rules ever.
They dropped Spellcraft! That skill was unnecessary.
Maximum hit points per level! It’s about time.
Some unfavorable comments:
They dropped different weapons’ critical ranges and multipliers! I thought that gave weapons more flavor.
Longsword can’t be used either one-handed or two-handed! This seems like an unnecessary change.
A 20th-level character has 32 feats (5 ancestry, 1 background, 10 skill, 5 general, and 11 class)! I appreciate the customizability, but this is too much.
While I’m enjoying martial classes’ class features, class feats have been a let-down — too many, too minor, too intricate. We’ll see if casters’ class feats are more appealing.
It's not as bad as it looks on the tin. Since the feats are each siloed off into different categories, they don't interfere with one another (you won't be forced to sacrifice combat potential by taking a skill feat over a class feat, for example), and choosing from hundreds of feats becomes far easier than past editions because you only need to pick for your class for your level, which typically narrows it down to less than 20.
Also, that many feats is only really daunting at the very high levels. Most people play at low to mid levels, where it's not nearly as overwhelming.
And some people don't think it's enough feats! They typically favor optional rule systems like "free archetype" which can potentially double your available class feats. Because of the way 2nd Edition mechanics are structured, this typically increases versatility, but not overall power.
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Some favorable comments:
They dropped the confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit! That had to be one of the worst rules ever.
They dropped Spellcraft! That skill was unnecessary.
Maximum hit points per level! It’s about time.
Some unfavorable comments:
They dropped different weapons’ critical ranges and multipliers! I thought that gave weapons more flavor.
Longsword can’t be used either one-handed or two-handed! This seems like an unnecessary change.
A 20th-level character has 32 feats (5 ancestry, 1 background, 10 skill, 5 general, and 11 class)! I appreciate the customizability, but this is too much.
While I’m enjoying martial classes’ class features, class feats have been a let-down — too many, too minor, too intricate. We’ll see if casters’ class feats are more appealing.
I need to point that these points are very personal.
They dropped the confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit! That had to be one of the worst rules ever.
I like the old "confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit". This works well for old 3.5/pf1 because they prevent the critical or nothing that some D20 systems had that ignores the enemy AC in nat 20.
PF2e critical system is pretty cool but the nat 20 have this problem of if the enemy AC is too high you can enter in a situation where your hit and critical rate diference are too small but the game balance usually makes this uncommon.
They dropped Spellcraft! That skill was unnecessary.
About spellcraft it wasn't unnecessary and wasn't fully dropped. It was dismembered in the 4 traditions skills (arcana, religion, nature, occult) with the recall knowledge being specific for each tradition magic and craft was moved to craft skill. But the point is that the 4 traditions skill are not limited to just get info but also to deal with some skill challenges and magical hazards.
Maximum hit points per level! It’s about time.
And I agree about maximum hit points per level! It’s about time. Yet I still think that it wasn't enough. Level 1 still the most dangerous level in terms of chance to be killed because the damage rolls still are too close to characters max HP even with ancestry HP added. IMO pf2e still could added a bit more initial HP.
They dropped different weapons’ critical ranges and multipliers! I thought that gave weapons more flavor.
But they added traits for other side that gives them even more flavor and "critical multipliers" still exists in the form of mortal and fatal traits. Also the weapon groups have their own critical effect. It isn't just more damage anymore.
Longsword can’t be used either one-handed or two-handed! This seems like an unnecessary change.
This was moved to bastard sword that isn't exotic (now called advanced) anymore. Instead longswords allow to do 2 different damage types to exploit some specific physical weakness or to avoid some specific physical resistance.
A 20th-level character has 32 feats (5 ancestry, 1 background, 10 skill, 5 general, and 11 class)! I appreciate the customizability, but this is too much.
Yet many players still thinks that it isn't enought and play using free archetype rules just to get more feats and more customization.
While I’m enjoying martial classes’ class features, class feats have been a let-down — too many, too minor, too intricate. We’ll see if casters’ class feats are more appealing.
I agree with you here and I'm sorry to point but the casters are worse.
Yet I need to point that the initial impression of this game is quite misleading. You will getting the real importance of many things as long you becoming accustomed with the PF2e mechanics, action importance, per encounter resources and the tight math. Many +1/-1 makes a big difference due how they also changes the critical rates too and there are many other small things that changes the gameplay experience way more than we thing initially while other that looks more good than they really are (specially those who uses or requires many actions).
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They dropped the confirmation roll to confirm a critical hit! That had to be one of the worst rules ever.
They dropped different weapons’ critical ranges and multipliers! I thought that gave weapons more flavor.
Those two are actually linked. Both are related to the new crit = AC+10 rule.
Now, instead of your scimitar critting on an 18, your character crits on an 18. Any time that they outclass their opponent by that much.
Longsword can’t be used either one-handed or two-handed! This seems like an unnecessary change.
I'm not seeing how this is a change. A PF1 Longsword had no benefits for being used two-handed.
A PF2 Longsword can technically also be used two-handed though it still gives no changes to the weapon stats.
Are you sure that you aren't thinking of a Bastard Sword?
A 20th-level character has 32 feats (5 ancestry, 1 background, 10 skill, 5 general, and 11 class)! I appreciate the customizability, but this is too much.
While I’m enjoying martial classes’ class features, class feats have been a let-down — too many, too minor, too intricate. We’ll see if casters’ class feats are more appealing.
These two are also linked.
In PF1 your character's power was defined greatly by which feats you chose. You had to filter through all of the feats and find the ones that are actually powerful enough to use and ignore all of the ones that are 'just flavor'.
In PF2 your character's power is given automatically by character level. The feats are almost entirely for tweaks and enabling that power to be used in different ways. But they don't increase the character's power overall.
For example, a Ranger at level 1 can choose one of Twin Takedown or Hunted Shot - and can grab the other one at level 2 if desired. Those two feats will enable either two weapon fighting styles or bow fighting style respectively. But neither of them are necessary for either fighting style (you can still wield dual weapons or use a bow without the feats), and neither of them increase your attack bonus when using those weapons or fighting style.
The result is that you can pick feats because they 'sound cool' and 'fit the character theme' without worrying about crippling the character and making it unplayable.
But it does also cause the feats to feel like they don't add any power to the character ... because they really don't.
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I'm not seeing how this is a change. A PF1 Longsword had no benefits for being used two-handed.
I think Messy is talking about that in 1E, when you used a one-handed weapon with two hands, you got 1 1/2 your strength modifier on damage, instead of the normal x1. This advantage has been removed completely in 2E and all the extra damage has been moved into the bigger weapon die you normally have for two-handed weapons.
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I think I've read enough of the book to form an opinion, and it's the same as every other edition of pf/dnd -- I like a lot of it and dislike a little of it. My big issue with pf2e is the same as pf1e -- complexity. Its strength is all the detail. Its weakness is that it's just too detailed.
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When it gets into play, you'll honestly be surprised by how much less complicated it is in play than PF1 (I'm mainly comparing at higher levels). No longer will the swift/immediate/free action spam and required prebuffing get in the way of the gameplay.
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A LOT of the complexity is reduced by non-obvious means, in comparison to PF1. Bucketed feat choices means you aren't usually comparing hundreds of options at a time, fewer feat trees means you're not planning out things far in advance, and standardized math progression means you can make "mistakes" in a build and still contribute well. Bonuses being fewer and less stackable means you aren't beholden to a complicated meta of buff stacking.
That's all to say that, yes, PF2 is a decently complex game, but in practice it's at least ENORMOUSLY less complicated than PF1, and its complexity is better spent on fun activities like tactical choices during play.
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Eh, the meta is still heavy on bonus and debuff stacking. It's just streamlined (with far fewer bonus types) and isn't as tied to prebuffing as in PF1.
I personally find that enemies acquire a ton of status effects rather quickly, especially with the amount of status effects that inflict further derivative status effects (like grabbed) and the desire to try and get status bonuses and penalties on the relevant targets for each. This gets worse as you level and have better or more consistent ways of doing this.
I think a lot of people used to playing on VTT underestimate how many fiddly things you're actually tracking as the DM, too. In PF1E, there's a ton of fiddly stacking, but a lot of it is playerside, and you don't deal with it except to check your players' math. My experience has been that in PF2E, there are fewer bonuses and penalties and buffs and debuffs... but more of them need to be accounted for by the DM instead of the players, and players are spending third actions left and right for fiddly modifiers of all sorts that the DM is ultimately responsible for.
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I think a lot of people used to playing on VTT underestimate how many fiddly things you're actually tracking as the DM, too. In PF1E, there's a ton of fiddly stacking, but a lot of it is playerside, and you don't deal with it except to check your players' math. My experience has been that in PF2E, there are fewer bonuses and penalties and buffs and debuffs... but more of them need to be accounted for by the DM instead of the players, and players are spending third actions left and right for fiddly modifiers of all sorts that the DM is ultimately responsible for.
Not really.
There aren't that many numbers to be counted by the game during the fight. Mathematically it's not a significant problem. You basically already have all the NPCs' numbers ready and the players are responsible for theirs in the same way, as a GM you only review these numbers if you don't trust your players (which happens with PF1e too), if not you just run with the bonuses they already provide and only will check if something looks wrong, most of them already have everything added up and you only add one or another bonus from a status or circumstance.
What really "hurts" when GMing PF2e without automation are the triggers. There are a huge amount of circumstantial things in the game. Things like Elven Verve that imposes bonuses or penalties in circumstantial situations that rarely happen. Where someone needs to remember that an this elf character who took this feat has a +1 circumstance bonus on effects that cause immobilized, paralyzed, or slowed, but often the player doesn't even remember that, or you need to announce all the effects of an ability or spell, which reveals effects that you wouldn't always want to reveal (since they should have been discovered via identify) so that the player might remember that when he rolls his save, he has another abiity that triggers or modifies the numbers when some condition or internal effect happens, so that the player might check on the sheet if he has a way to resist it (which often means asking for the book since it doesn't always have the entire description written down) and often he only realizes when the effect finally occurs and has to go back, making a new roll with the bonus or seeing if the bonus will change the result.
This is very annoying. PF2e is full of this, with specific resistances/weakness/immunities, very circumstantial modifiers caused by feats and items, as well as triggers that occur when no one remembers, or remembers after almost everything is resolved or it's too late.
This is where the lack of automation hurts, and this is something that I wish PF2e didn't have or had as little as possible.
But don't be fooled, this existed in abundance in PF1e too, the difference is that there, since the player's objective was to stack as many buffs as possible that worked at all times, people simply ignored anything that was too circumstantial.
Also this doesn't prevent the game to runs well but annoies in the middle game or frustrates when someone remembers that have something that would changed all the result but no one remembered that that thing exists.
Want an example of something that almost no one ever remembers to count? When a character drinks an Elixir of Life, they gain an item bonus on saves against diseases and poisons for 10 minutes.
This is almost always ignored, because a save against diseases and poisons must occur within this time for this bonus to be added. In the foundry, they even remember because they leave the effect active, but at the table, everyone forgets.
I haven't found that stuff too complicated at mid-to-high levels, from the GM's chair. However, I'm really lucky, because I've got a table of invested players who will actually track their debuffs on the monsters for me (one of them also handles initiative and double-checks damage, which is nice). However, this is unusual as all get-out for most ttrpg groups, especially those coming in from D&D. Definitely feels more complex to read than to play PF2e, from my recollections of the first few times I'd looked over the rules.
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Much like in-game, out-of-game truly everyone at the table should be expected to work together. It's a game you're playing together, after all - the GM is simply a player with a different role than the party. With everyone taking small chunks of responsibility (usually tracking everything that their own characters have affected is enough) the actual overhead on combats is fairly low.
In pretty much any system, this can (and IMO, should) be the case. Any group project would seem like a pain in the ass if most of the work was dumped onto one member, after all.
I distinctly remember a funny session of a Hell's Vengeance conversion into PF2, where we had an enemy Frightened, Stupefied, Clumsy, Grappled, Prone, taking persistent damage, and just generally not having a good time. We were all keeping track of what we personally had done to that enemy (I had him Frightened and Stupefied, barb had him grappled and prone, rogue had him clumsy and bleeding) and were reminding each other "oh, you might wanna use something that targets Reflex or Will, and go ahead and use your exsanguinating ammo," etc.
When everyone is invested at the table, things run WAY smoother than they seem on-paper. Now, of course, since it's crunchier, it will still run a little slower just because the tactics available can sometimes be tricky to puzzle out.
Automation on Foundry is nice - and is undeniably helpful - but it can also sometimes be taken a little too for-granted and, if its problems are caught, can sometimes be even slower, since corner cases will crop up a lot more often than you'd think for an automated system to realistically have accounted for. It can also occasionally facilitate some real bad gamey habits (second screen distractions, anxious behaviors like clicking doors impatiently or opening loot containers before prompted) that I sometimes even catch myself perpetuating.
The real fiddlyness tends to come in the form of figuring out what information you'd like to reveal at your table vs. keep hidden, and Foundry can only help so much with that. If you don't like to keep much info hidden, then the game runs even more buttery-smooth as more things are known, but it then leaves a lot of the games' options feeling superfluous or slightly more "meta-exploitable". Whereas if you want to keep more things mystified, the onus then comes to the GM to keep a closer eye on your players' sheets and keep in mind situational bonuses/penalties/abilities. Because nobody wants to have to be the player to constantly prod their GM with "hey, so I have this thing for this situation... is it that situation?" like a kid in a car constantly asking "are we there yet?".
Much of this can be resolved by setting expectations at the table, after all, but the work still needs to be put in by all parties to ensure everyone at the table is having a good time. We're partially responsible for our own fun AND for the fun of the others at the table - GM or player.