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Since there's going to be, or there already is, a stream of new players coming to the game i think that this argument is not at all unproper to discuss.
in my opinion the game fails at teaching new players how they should play the game: low levels are COMPLETELY focused on damage and innate survivability:
-the first since a crit can and probably will oneshot most enemies, and heavily injure some bosses; plus there aren't really any worth debuff spells to use, focusing wholly on damage is therefore not only the most effective strategy but highly incentivized by the fact that enemies WILL also do that! "three fighters and a bard" didn't come out of thin air.
-by innate survivability i mean the survivability of the base chassis of the class, in later levels thanks to items and abilities almost everyone will have resistances and means to significantly reduce damage taken, at lower level the best you have it's shield block which, while incredibly effective, doesn't really permit any serious stalling. (a high level kin can tank a boss due to abilities, a low level barb can tank a boss due to his enormous hp pool).
these two factors, coupled by the fact that some classes genuinely get an enormous spike around level 7+, have new players focus on raw numbers and come to conclusions such as:
-rogue suck (sorry, had to :p)
-casters suck
-the best party is 3 martials and a buff oriented caster.
what do you think?
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what do you think?
That there's no One True Way to play the game.
I personally find that buff and debuff are sold over and over again and damage is not sold enough. Your post is another one that feed this feeling.
Combat ends when someone reaches a certain hp threshold. So leave damage be.
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I would question the idea that (early) rouge sucks but I don't want to get too off-topic immediately.
IMO the biggest problems I've had with the teaching the system has been, and I'm not even being hyperbolic with word choices here, deprogramming habits from DnD 5e.
Even if players read the rules or the truncated versions I give them, I don't think the books do enough to stress the idea that skill actions are worthwhile, and standing around trying to land 3 hits every round will get you killed.
It's not as bad now I know to really stress it to players, but my first campaign was a trainwreck for several sessions as players just didn't do anything except 2/3 attack turns.
Also, even at early levels, debuffs are helpful. If, as you say, early levels are all about crits, debuffs and buffed players have a much higher chance of landing that crit. It's why demoralise can be great.
I've never seen a player come away from early levels and decide that it's not worth debuffing enemies. I've seen them come away not realising they can do it with things that aren't spells, which goes into my point above.
And again, never seen one come away and decide that casters "suck" either. Weaker than they'd like them to be? Sure. Especially if they really wanted to use spell attack rolls. But never seen someone decide they're all worthless.
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I've not seen many people come to the conclusion that rogues suck.
And casters sucks seems to come up more from people experienced in other version of fantasy RPGs, especially PF1.
The biggest folly I see new players make is trying to use 3 actions with the attack trait (MAP really is that bad). And not picking up good reactions and other action economy/compression abilities. Abilities that don't look that great on paper but are very effective.
Sudden Charge is an example (sometimes) where people don't realize why it's good. It's 2 actions, to move twice your normal movement distance (which would cost 2 actions) and attack. It's a staple of practically any melee build which has access to it, but I've seen new players ignore it because they're not thinking of the 3 action system their characters have to exist in.
Edit: Hey, look at that poster above me talking about this issue
Action compression is incredibly powerful, but overlooked because "you can already do that".
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I think that the game does NOT do a good job of teaching new players how to play it. Only other players and GMs can do the job of teaching how to play it. Yes, low levels are deadly and all you are trying to do is survive and get a little more power. Maybe that’s why there aren’t heroes overwhelming Golarion - it’s a deadly occupation!
Seriously, let’s take a look at each of your concerns in turn. Correct, low level combat is brutal and short (18-30 seconds, kinda like real life). You have to maximize your strengths and also help your comrades to hit, damage, and stay alive. Following that, your next three points aren’t really the outcomes that I have witnessed.
Rogues are pretty awesome martials and make a nice alternative to those characters who just stand in one place and hit things.
Casters are more difficult to play because their spells and abilities provide subtle but critical factors to party success, whether that’s buffs, debuffs, area damage (very strong and underestimated in multiple enemy encounters-which are nearly all of them), or battlefield control (which maximizes your martials’ damage and minimizes that of the enemy).
I’ve seen some very interesting games in Pathfinder Society at a table of 3 or more casters and one non-optimal martial like a monk or rogue. Even these ‘bad’ tables do well and often make for a very fun / exciting game. I don’t know what kind of games you are playing, but it doesn’t match up with my experience at all, which means ‘the game’ is doing a fine job of teaching people how to play it.
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It's kind of weird to see people pretending we didn't have literal years of "casters are worthless" discourse predicated along the OP's point of issues with low level play and a lack of experience with the system. Discourse that has somewhat faded as people have gained more knowledge about the system and experienced the game at a wider variety of levels.
Some of the posters in this very thread have been involved in those debates, and in fact have pointed to the way casters mature as they level up in previous discussions.
I think the OP has a reasonable point: Level 1 Pathfinder players wildly differently than the game does at pretty much any other breakpoint. Even level 2 changes a lot of assumptions about the game and by level 5 and up you're in an entirely different world.
Yet lots of new players have washed out because of those very specific low level experiences, or had their entire view of the game defined by them.
We've had each of those discussions so many times it's kind of wild to me to see people arguing that it's not true. Is it just that it's framed as a criticism of the system and people are having a kneejerk reaction to it?
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The way things scale, survivability and martial effectiveness between all classes is definitely something I could see throwing new players.
I introduced someone to the game and they quickly decided the best class is rogue and he would never play another class, skill feats meant that much to him.
Another new group from 5e had a hard time understanding the basic math expectations. One didn't want any armor or Dex because it didn't fit his character.
Since you can easily play anything from society games to APs or even harder home brew it's hard to say if those issues are a system problem or just getting to know what your GM expects of you and what system knowledge you need to meet those expectations.
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It is an RPG. You learn to play from the experience. These games are not simple bored games. You want the players to develop their own play-style and think about building a character mechanically and creatively including personality, motivations, and getting into doing a bit of acting. When they first start, you want them to get into the spirit of the game, which is playing make believe with rules.
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Some of the posters in this very thread have been involved in those debates, and in fact have pointed to the way casters mature as they level up in previous discussions.
I think the OP has a reasonable point: Level 1 Pathfinder players wildly differently than the game does at pretty much any other breakpoint. Even level 2 changes a lot of assumptions about the game and by level 5 and up you're in an entirely different world.
Yet lots of new players have washed out because of those very specific low level experiences, or had their entire view of the game defined by them.
We've had each of those discussions so many times it's kind of wild to me to see people arguing that it's not true. Is it just that it's framed as a criticism of the system and people are having a kneejerk reaction to it?
Has the OP been involved in those conversations? Sorry, I didn’t check and was just trying to summarize for them. You might be correct that many people have washed out at first level, which is why it’s important for other players and GMs to teach them about the vast differences between first and other levels.
I’m not sure who you say is arguing that 1st level play is not difficult and bland. As you point out, by 2nd level (or 5th or 7th) the game has changed significantly. That holds true once you get to 10th or 15th. Each tier of play brings its own challenges and rewards. That’s a boon not a bug. Once again, I’m not sure who is arguing that the OP’s experience is untrue. It seems that people are just offering other experiences that don’t match with that OP. Isn’t that how you teach the game, by talking about it?
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The "teaching" part would be in the introductory boxed set. I think there's a lot of room for creating some examples of clever combats, but that's not much different than just asking the community or reading examples and guides.
At a certain point players need to read the rules enough to understand them rather than just follow them.
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It's kind of weird to see people pretending we didn't have literal years of "casters are worthless" discourse predicated along the OP's point of issues with low level play and a lack of experience with the system. Discourse that has somewhat faded as people have gained more knowledge about the system and experienced the game at a wider variety of levels.
Some of the posters in this very thread have been involved in those debates, and in fact have pointed to the way casters mature as they level up in previous discussions.
I think the OP has a reasonable point: Level 1 Pathfinder players wildly differently than the game does at pretty much any other breakpoint. Even level 2 changes a lot of assumptions about the game and by level 5 and up you're in an entirely different world.
Yet lots of new players have washed out because of those very specific low level experiences, or had their entire view of the game defined by them.
We've had each of those discussions so many times it's kind of wild to me to see people arguing that it's not true. Is it just that it's framed as a criticism of the system and people are having a kneejerk reaction to it?
Who's aruging that people don't say casters suck?
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what do you think?That there's no One True Way to play the game.
I'm very glad that this is the first sentence of the first response.
That is my answer as well. And I will leave it at that.
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Aside from a few generalities and basic assumptions, I don't think the game should focus on publishing elements that greatly guide players towards a specific playstyle.
Maybe presenting some direction towards successfully creating the campaign with the flavor a table might want, for example.
Such as:
1. Casual fun game night, featuring low encounters as bread and butter, moderate as mini-bosses and severe as major bosses, with higher focus on puzzles and social encounters as challenges.
2. Ragtag party (usually the type you see in DnD5e), with encounters mostly remaining on the moderate side, with battles designed to allow for mistakes and selfish play without a lot of consequences. Focusing on the usual dungeon crawls with heavy combat and avoiding higher-level enemies even in higher difficulties. Little to no focus on social encounters.
3. The intended experience, featuring the whole range of encounters, including higher level enemies that demand more teamwork and dish out more concentrated damage. Basically what you get on the average AP, but closer to Age of Ashes in terms of difficulty.
4. Hardcore, the old school meat-grinder with encounters mostly being severe and even Extreme+ in certain circumstances. High chance of encounters blending together and amplifying the difficulty. Time is always used as a constraint. And other tactics that requires the party to be on their A game in play AND build their characters with party optimization in mind.
I think the above, more than anything, is the best way to create a good first impression of PF2e and retain more players.
What mostly happens is people, even the ones who bother reading the books, coming to PF2e with other games' assumptions in mind and having a different experience than they expected. Specially DnD5e's newcomers, where encounters are mostly easy and just a slow, but certain, progress towards victory no matter what players do, what they built or how little teamwork they used. Then they come to PF2e, where a Moderate encounter is described exactly the same as a "Deadly" encounter in DND5e and they think the game must be played at that level, is too hard or too punishing.
Guiding new GMs into creating campaigns with the overall energy they're looking for is bound to be more effective than merely teaching players how to play, which something a couple minutes on google can give you an answer.
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Some thoughts from playing in live-in-person organized play games. This assumes the GM and at least one player is experienced, this also assumes just teaching the basics.
In organized play sometimes you only have 5 or 10 minutes to help new players, opinions like caster or rouge suck aren't helpful with that. What is helpful is some reference handouts with a list of actions, a list of condition or condition cards, a list of exploration activities, and a list of common teamwork tactics, such as flanking. In a live in-person game if you have 2 martial classes that are likely to be flanking a lot have them sit next to each other it's easier for them to plan tactics without interrupting the whole table. Having new players sit next to experienced players helps too
If you don't have time to stop the game to teach common tactics like flanking or taking cover, have the opponents in an easier encounter use them against the PCs.
In organized play, if you are worried about party optimization, let the new player play what they want, especially if they took the time to make their own character in advance, and let an experienced player switch characters or play a pre-gen if needed. I always bring several characters to games just for this reason. For organized play I consider a party to be optimized if there is at least one melee character and someone that can heal.
For news players, when possible play an adventure or scenario meant for new players, where each encounter focuses on teaching one game element at a time.
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The game is far easier for people to learn than past iterations. There may be more rules, but they are far simpler and better written. What's more, there are far more useful tools and resources to help one play the game. We have it better than ever before.
The player base, on the other hand, has grown far more dependent on hand-holding, railroading, and general GM coddling. Social media, poor parenting, failing school systems, divisive politics, and the constant social campaigns to destroy the nuclear family are causing society in general to devolve to Idiocracy levels of helplessness.
Back in my day people could think past the immediate consequences of their actions, could see through their initial emotional outbursts and produce something resembling a logical thought process, and often took the initiative to find things out or get things done, rather than screaming into the aether that no one was taking care of their every need.
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It is an RPG. You learn to play from the experience. These games are not simple bored games. You want the players to develop their own play-style and think about building a character mechanically and creatively including personality, motivations, and getting into doing a bit of acting. When they first start, you want them to get into the spirit of the game, which is playing make believe with rules.
Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking
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I agree with BotBrain, the biggest difficulty of the system is not dealing with "new" players, but primarily is making the "new" players forget their old systems, along with their addictions to acquired assumptions.
I say this because first of all I classify a new PF2e player into 3 categories:
Each of these types of players ends up having a completely different experience because they have very different expectations. Even though they all go through practically the same learning curve.
The truly new player is the one who gives the least amount of work and has the least rejection. In the few players I had the opportunity to follow the experience in the system, for everyone everything was exciting and wonderful, even wrong decisions, inefficient use of the action economy, everything was a fun and enjoyable experience.
Players who come from other systems, on the other hand, need to go through a period of "detox" from the expectations, vices and way of thinking and acting shaped by their old systems. Furthermore, they tend to have a strong initial prejudice, either because of hatred or aversion to their old system, or because of love or satisfaction with their old system. This greatly affects their experience.
When a player like this comes from an old system that they already have a lot of criticism and disagreement with, they generally tend to accept PF2e well, especially when they start to see and feel that PF2e corrects or does things differently that they already criticized in their old system, but at the same time they get a little frustrated when they see that it still adopts some feature that they don't like (although the impact of the latter is usually not very significant).
The biggest problem is when a player comes from a system that they already liked. This type of player often has a bad initial impression, pointing out and complaining about design decisions and mechanics that they think their old system handled better and underestimating or diminishing new solutions or approaches that PF2e provides for many things. However, even so, at least my most critical players of PF2e still give in to issues such as the action economy, the critical system and even how martials usually have much better progression, versatility and balance than in other D20 systems.
And all of this is a big and important preamble to this thread for me, now I'll give my opinion on what the OP said.
First to the oneshot's point, and I tend to agree. However, I point out that this is not and has never been exclusive to PF2e in D20 systems. In fact, here it is even smaller due to the fact that the game provides HP in absolute and maximum values to what the old HP dices was, in addition to adding an extra HP coming from ancestry. However, even with this, given the destructive power that a 1d12+4 weapon has to cause up to 16 HP of damage, I still feel that the initial HP of the level 1 gameplay and partially of the level 2 gameplay is still low, which ends up contributing to this initial feeling that damage is everything, especially during critical rolls that easily kill an enemy instantly or knock down a dying PC.
In my opinion, it's something that the designers even worried about (giving high HP values per level + an extra HP from the ancestry and balancing the enemies based on that), but it still wasn't enough. For me, the ancestry should give double the current HP (maybe even triple) and the enemies should be equally adjusted. However, I understand that this would slow down the combats, so it's a complicated design decision in the end.
In any case, I don't consider it a significant problem worth focusing on it too much.
Regarding the point that critical hits cause instant kills due to low initial HP and that investing in damage is superior to debuffs, especially at the beginning of the game where you are still very limited in accumulating damage actions, it is a contradiction with a mechanic that precisely helps to increase the critical chance of the entire party and/or to decrease the chance of you and your allies suffering critical damage.
And finally, regarding the initial criticisms of the classes:
And finally, the issue of learning, which in games with a large number of rules and options like PF2e is done much more through experience than through the system. We don't have, we don't need, and it would be a pain if there were a tutorial on how to use everything in the system, especially because even if there were, the system is alive and new possibilities appear as more content is added.
In my opinion, the experience of learning and discovering the possibilities of the system by playing and making mistakes and successes is enjoyable in itself. I remember that I started playing PF2e without really understanding the importance of the third action and how badly I played with it! But the process of discovering this, adjusting, testing new possibilities, etc., was a fun process of discovering possibilities and breaking paradigms until I got to where I am today. This is something that, if the OP doesn't hold on to some prejudice, he will also notice. That many things he thinks today will change not only as he and his friends progress in the game, but also as he comes to understand that many things in practice are still being overestimated/underestimated and ignored by him now and that he will later discover on his own and perhaps then he will want to play a new adventure from the beginning, playing with a much more experienced view of the game.
It is an RPG. You learn to play from the experience. These games are not simple bored games. You want the players to develop their own play-style and think about building a character mechanically and creatively including personality, motivations, and getting into doing a bit of acting. When they first start, you want them to get into the spirit of the game, which is playing make believe with rules.Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking
It's not quite mathematical. What really changes mathematically is the progression of HP, which, because it is much greater than the progression of damage, makes battles less deadly due to luck over time.
What really changes as the game progresses are your options. And at higher levels you have much more horizontal power to deal with battles. And like a caster, for example, who at the beginning has very little HP, has few relative defenses against enemies, but at medium levels he fights flying and invisible, completely changing his survivability. This is much more due to the available options (horizontal power) increasing drastically than simply a simple mathematical/numerical advantage.
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Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking
Speaking as a longtime GM? This is entirely valid. I'm not sure if I'd put the breakpoint at level 5, but its somewhere in the vicinity:
- Early on, the difference between a "defensively tough" class and a "fragile" class are pretty small because everyone's running at very similar proficiencies and such. This starts opening up after a few levels.
- Characters get more ways to interact with battles and more options to shift the situation into their favor, which makes the ones that can do that feel like they're actually getting their cool stuff. (Gang Up and Opportune Backstab are absolute game changers for Rogue, for example.)
- HP goes WAY up relative to incoming damage. Level 1 battles are very swingy because HP pools are small relative to incoming damage and its not at all difficult to drop someone in one hit.
Hell, level 1 is basically the only time in the entire game when PCs are actually at risk from the massive damage rule (which is why I ignore that rule). A Creature 3 encounter (which APs do at level 1) is fully capable of outright killing a level 1 PC via massive damage with a crit. Extinction Curse has one encounter in particular that it's very possible for this to happen even to a tanky PC like a Champion. This simply can't happen at level 10 because no Creature 12 is capable of doing that kind of damage.
This isn't really a new problem: PF1 is notorious for the character you actually want to play not coming online for a few levels and PF2 is far better about that. But level 1 characters can pick up bad habits because the deck is just stacked differently than it is a few levels later.
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I've been playing Pathfinder since 2010, and usually serve as the GM, but I've recently started playing in an Abomination Vaults group, using 2e remastered rules.
The group is mostly 5e converts (including the GM), and the primary issue I see with new players coming into 2e is that a) getting over either 5e habits and or/trying to adjust to 2e after the remaster and b) just not feeling the need to read/learn about the game or their character because there's just a lot going on rules-wise compared to the games they are used to.
I can help with explaining the rules in a broad sense during the session (i.e., this is how hazards work, this is what this condition does, etc.), but to the Bard player who says "all my spells suck" because they haven't cracked the spine of a Player Core book or won't delve into Archives of Nethys, there's not much I will do because it takes personal incentive to play the game. I think people coming from 5e just readily expect some type of DND Beyond-like service that is attached to every TTRPG.
I will say, the one player that has taken to the game quite well is the one person at the table who's a brand new player to TTRPGs, and as they have no basis of comparison, enjoys the heck out of the remastered rules.
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I can help with explaining the rules in a broad sense during the session (i.e., this is how hazards work, this is what this condition does, etc.), but to the Bard player who says "all my spells suck" because they haven't cracked the spine of a Player Core book or won't delve into Archives of Nethys, there's not much I will do because it takes personal incentive to play the game. I think people coming from 5e just readily expect some type of DND Beyond-like service that is attached to every TTRPG.
God tell me about it. I once had to be a bit nasty and give a player a "Start reading what your character does, and what your feats mean, or you'll need to find another group" warning. I feel horrid doing it, especially since we're friends outside the game, but at some point you're just being disrespected because you're putting all this effort in and someone doesn't want to read a couple paragraphs.
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Pathfinder 2nd Edition does an excellent job of enabling tactical play; however, it does not teach tactical play. In that sense, I agree with Fabios. I disagree about rogues sucking and about the best party. And those two misconceptions are related to tactical play.
I came to Pathfinder 2nd Edition from Pathfinder 1st Edition. But my role was as a GM rather than as a player, and my experience was turned upside-down by my players. They love tactical teamwork. They learned tactical teamwork under Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, mastered it under PF1, and seamlessly continued using it under PF2. I was mystified by many posts in 2019 and early 2020 talking about how deadly PF2 combat was compared to PF1 combat. My players had no additional difficulty.
Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder 1st Edition allowed powergaming in which clever selection of abilities could make a character much stronger than the average character. A 1st-level PC could readily survive against 1st-level challenges because the PC was really as strong as a 2nd-level character. This style is great for roleplaying power fantasties; unfortunately, it was hard on the players who did not powergame and hard on GMs trying to create balanced encounters. Therefore, out of fairness, the designers of Pathfinder 2nd Edition deliberately capped the advantage of powergaming with tight math. A well-built 1st-level PF2 character won't be as powerful as a 2nd-level PF2 character.
Tactical teamwork, on the other hand, was not nerfed. It works just fine. Thus, my players had no trouble with PF2.
But teamwork is not intuitive to learn. In contrast, powergaming is intuitive to learn. If hitting hard defeated an enemy, then hitting harder at the next level is the obvious way to go. Tactics require acting differently based on enemy strengths and weaknesses, so a single combat style is not enough.
low levels are COMPLETELY focused on damage and innate survivability:
-the first since a crit can and probably will oneshot most enemies, and heavily injure some bosses; plus there aren't really any worth debuff spells to use, focusing wholly on damage is therefore not only the most effective strategy but highly incentivized by the fact that enemies WILL also do that! "three fighters and a bard" didn't come out of thin air.
-by innate survivability i mean the survivability of the base chassis of the class, in later levels thanks to items and abilities almost everyone will have resistances and means to significantly reduce damage taken, at lower level the best you have it's shield block which, while incredibly effective, doesn't really permit any serious stalling. (a high level kin can tank a boss due to abilities, a low level barb can tank a boss due to his enormous hp pool).
these two factors, coupled by the fact that some classes genuinely get an enormous spike around level 7+, have new players focus on raw numbers ...
Let me look at those raw numbers. Table 2–10: Strike Damage gives the average damage dealt by the regular Strike of a monster, and the hit points of a CON +0 Human Bard would be 8*(1+level). For example, a 1st-level monster deals an average of 6 damage and a 1st-level bard has 16 hp, so the monster needs more than two successful Strikes (more than 1 critical hit) to take down the bard. This is still possible in one turn with a critical hit and a regular hit on in two strikes, but with the monster having +8 to hit and the bard having AC 17, that would happen with only a (0.1)(0.35) + (0.6)(0.05) - (0.1)(0.05) = 0.06 = 6% chance. More likely is that the bard would take two regular hits and be standing vulnerable at 4 hp remaining.
Level: Average High Damage, Bard HP, HP/Damage
1: 6, 16, 2.67
2: 9, 24, 2.67
3: 12, 32, 2.67
4: 14, 40, 2.86
5: 16, 48, 3.00
6: 18, 56, 3.11
7: 20, 64, 3.20
8: 22, 72, 3.27
9: 24, 80, 3.33
10: 26, 88, 3.38
Of course, if the party is fighting a level+2 monster, we have to shift the monster damage numbers. Critical hits are more dangerous that way.
Level: Average Level+2 High Damage, Bard HP, HP/Damage
1: 12, 16, 1.33
2: 14, 24, 1.71
3: 16, 32, 2.00
4: 18, 40, 2.22
5: 20, 48, 2.40
6: 22, 56, 2.55
7: 24, 64, 2.67
8: 26, 72, 2.77
9: 28, 80, 2.86
10: 30, 88, 2.93
Yes, a single critical hit from a level+2 high-damage monster can take down an average PC at 1st to 3rd level. How does a party handle a high-damage level+2 monster at low levels?
Imagine three identical barbarians and a bard against a Gorilla 30 feet away. Let's give the party initial luck, so that the turn order is Bard, Barbarian 1, Barbarian 2, Barbarian 3, and the Gorilla. The bard casts Telekinetic Projectile on the gorilla for 7 damage and begins Courageous Anthem. The Legacy barbarian don't show it, but Remastered barbarians have Quick-Tempered, which lets them rage as a free action at the beginning of combat, so the barbarians each use Sudden Charge to reach the barbarian for a bastard sword Strike, followed by another bastard sword Strike. This is the maximum damage strategy. +8 to Strike due to Courageous Anthem versus the gorilla's AC 18 gives a 55% success rate, and the second Strike has +3 for a 30% success rate, so the expected number of successful hits is 2.55. Let me round that up to 3 hits with no critical hits and the average bastard sword damage is 9.5 due to the Courageous Anthem, so the gorilla is down to 10 hit points. Then the gorilla gets its revenge. It has a +11 to hit against the barbarians' AC 18, so it averages 1.2 regular hits and 0.3 critical hits in three Strikes so it deals an average of 19.8 damage, which is not enough to routinely take out a 22-hp barbarian with 3 temporary hit points. But maybe it got lucky and had a critical hit followed by a regular hit for an average of 33 damage. The party wins on the next turn, but one barbarian is lying on the ground rolling recovery checks. None of the party is trained in Medicine, so their untrained Administer First Aid attempts fail and the bard has to use a Soothe spell to save the dying barbarian.
That would be a poor showing against a Moderate-Threat encounter. Even if the barbarian the gorilla hit was not brought down to dying, that barbarian would still be heavily injured and would be a weak point in the next battle.
Now consider another approach. On the first turn, the bard still casts Telekinetic Projectile but then she Strides farther from the gorilla. But the barbarians try Demoralize with their Raging Intimidation, throw a javelin at the gorilla, and then retreat too, but not as far as the bard. The javelins have less chance of hitting and deal less damage on a hit, but this tactic forces the gorilla to Stride twice to reach them, so it would get only one Strike. If the gorilla chooses to not pursue them, then the bard starts her Courageous Anthem and the barbarians throw more javelins. If the gorilla does Stride twice and Strike once, then the bard does Telekinetic Projectile and Courageous Anthem, and the barbarians can Strike with their bastard swords at least twice. Due to the extra damage from the javelins and the extra Telekinetic Projectile, they probably take down the gorilla that turn. The damage from one gorilla Strike is less than the damage from two gorilla Strikes, so they are in better shape.
This is tactics. The gorilla is worse at range, so the party began the battle at range. That tactic dealt their damage more slowly, but it hindered the gorilla more than it hindered them.
And if the barbarians were not identical, then we could have even more tactical possibilities. One could have higher dexterity and wield a longbow at range. One could study Medicine and carry a healer's kit. One could gain a cantrip from an ancestry feat. Or the PCs could even have different classes for a party of barbarian, bard, cleric, and witch. Because tactics work better than optimized damage.
But tactics are harder to learn than optimization. Tactics change with every opponent. Some are strongest in melee, so ranged response is the best tactic. Some are best at range, so close-in is the best tactic. A glass cannon (high offense, almost no defense) should be hit fast. Some guards and patrols are predictable, so ambushes work well. Some creatures are easily fooled, so deception works well. Several weak opponents in a mob have a different action economy than one strong opponent.
Tactics like ambushes and deception rely on skills in addition to combat prowess. Rogues are the masters of skills, so they truly shine in a party that uses those tactics. For example, in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, the 3rd-level party had to take out a cave of evil cultists. The entrance to the cave had some PF1 shrieker mushrooms that would shriek loudly at any movement. The cultists used that as an alarm. The party knew about this, due to talking with an escaped prisoner of the cultists. Thus, the scoundrel rogue in the party made goat noises outside the entrance to the cave (a Deception check), until a guard inside the cave said to his partner, "Tell everyone that the shriek will be a false alarm. I am going out to hunt some fresh goat meat." The guard walked out, setting off the shrieker mushrooms, and the party shot him full of arrows, unheard due to the shrieks. And they entered the cave while the cultists were ignoring their own alarm system.
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Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speakingSpeaking as a longtime GM? This is entirely valid. I'm not sure if I'd put the breakpoint at level 5, but its somewhere in the vicinity:
In my games the dividing line is between 1st level and all other levels. Tactics depend on having options, and the extra feats at 2nd level open up more options. Plus, the PCs have not yet learned how to work together at a team at 1st level.
- Characters get more ways to interact with battles and more options to shift the situation into their favor, which makes the ones that can do that feel like they're actually getting their cool stuff. (Gang Up and Opportune Backstab are absolute game changers for Rogue, for example.)
The sniper rogue with thief racket in my Ironfang Invasion campaign became the most valuable player-character when she acquired Precise Debiliations at 10th level. Beforehand, she was dealing sneak attack damage at range from Hiding wherever needed. Afterwards, she was making opponents off-guard to everyone, doubling the vulnerability of high-AC foes.
This isn't really a new problem: PF1 is notorious for the character you actually want to play not coming online for a few levels and PF2 is far better about that. But level 1 characters can pick up bad habits because the deck is just stacked differently than it is a few levels later.
My players like to roleplay the coming-of-age story of their characters growing into the character they want to be.
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I wouldn't say the best party is 3 martials and a buff oriented caster because it struggles with high exp + high body count encounters unless the caster double duties into blasting, struggles with incorporeal at low level, and is swingier than other compositions-- it also makes the caster into a bit of a vulnerability, since they'll be the only source of in-combat healing.
Largely I think that the game teaches good play, but mainly via necessity-- you want to raise your rate of hit/crits, you want to increase damage, and you want to forestall loss conditions. All of those are more or less enforced whenever you fight a higher level creature.
- You raise your rate of hit/crit via MAP Avoidance, Additional Strikes, Flanking, Frightening, Inspiring Marshal Stance, Targeting Lower Saves, or sustain spell combos, and as you level, feats because its rather frustrating not to hit and most bosses will have the feeling of a tight race toward the end.
- You increase damage through feats, magic items, and the odd spell, you'll also notice saving throw spells and such are highly consistent.
- Forestalling Loss is obvious, but getting crit by high level creatures will make the utility of champion's reaction, healing, healing boosts, shield block, AC increases, penalties to enemy attack and action denial all intuitively obvious.
From there, it's a matter of using it-- the more often you have to deal with rougher encounters the more chances you have to try different strategies out. Usually what disrupts that process, if anything, is preconception about what constitutes optimal blocking experimentation, or another goal being over-prioritized in such a way that the players need to reconcile it with instrumental play, or the GM should make the encounters easier for the sake of that other goal.
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I agree with BotBrain, the biggest difficulty of the system is not dealing with "new" players, but primarily is making the "new" players forget their old systems, along with their addictions to acquired assumptions.
I agree and I think there are a couple of sub-categories of this too.
1: Players that assume the rules and tactics are the same, so didn't read the rules. This player might learn from their mistake given time.
2: Players that try to recreate their character from another game and expect it to play the same way. This player is setting themself up for failure if they are not willing to accept change.
3: Players that want to optimize everything, but don't realize what is optimized in one game is not optimized in another. This can be a hard change for players who are used to optimizing being all about their character with no consideration for teamwork.
4: All of the above.
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I think the idea that low level and mid/high level being so different is more about the difference between high damage martials, mid damage martials and casters. All three can contribute with strikes at low level and can have close to max defenses.
Later levels high damage martials are wrecking with strike based attacks, mid damage martials are contributing more with class specific abilities and skills, casters aren't really able to effectively contribute with strikes.
There's similar changes to defense scaling.
So you can get used to tactics and options that won't really work later on.
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I'm not sure that PF2e itself should be attempting to teach players at lower levels.
I hate to constantly have to bring up 5e, but unfortunately it's prudent in this instance: 5e treats its first few levels as "introductory levels", even moreso now in the 2024 redesign now that all the classes get their subclasses at level 3. And, honestly? That's why I don't like 5e's early levels at all. They just don't give you enough tools between characters (bar casters, I guess) for it to be interesting to play.
PF2e's first few levels aren't so much introductory to the GAME as they are to your characters. The game gives everyone a wealth of generic tools you can start with at level 1 alongside your class's (and sometimes "subclass's") given toolkit. Some classes even get to choose what their level 1 toolkit will look like, like Fighter/Monk. Then, at level 2, everyone gets to choose a couple things that let them experiment. Then, at level 3, your general feat allows you to branch out further, and so on and so forth to the races.
However, I will level some criticism at the products designed to teach new players the game, like the Beginner Box and the Player Core duo, for not properly signposting a lot of important play concepts.
The Beginner Box focuses a lot on straight front-to-back encounters, and the pregenerated characters don't list any of their (EXTREMELY HELPFUL) relevant skill actions, nor does the player book really signpost using them. It doesn't give the (presumably new) GM running it a lot of guidance on some obvious alternatives to those encounters that even new players might come up with ("hey, what if we talk to the kobolds?"). It doesn't do a great job delineating between Encounter Mode and Exploration Mode (10-foot-cliff anyone?). And, obviously, there are the multiple errors it makes in the game rules itself, but those aren't really design issues more than just basic mistakes that should be errata'd.
The Player Core really should be better about spelling out things along the lines of "Hey, we expect you to use your skills in this game as a part of your regular toolkit both in combat and out of it. You're expected that you'll work together with your party to achieve victory together, not half-connectedly just kill monsters by yourself until the encounter is over." The Rogue should have a sidebar that spells out just how much Rogues will get out of helping the party and receiving help in-turn. Things like that.
The game is generally not that hard to learn, it's just that there are lots of precarious stumbling points that people can fall off of that could easily be smoothed over with the products that are designed to teach you things.
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I do think low levels aren't representative of the rest of the play experience—to the degree that if I could redesign the game, I'd consider starting the game's scaling at the powerlevel of level 4 or level 5. The most played levels should represent the feel of the game, and right now, they just don't.
The low level experience feels like a relic of a kind of design that pf2e explicitly does not lean into. It feels like a more old-school dungeon-crawler-y kind of design, one where an important aspect of a class pick could be how likely they are to even survive past the first few levels, where power intentionally scaled very differently across classes as they leveled, and where a wizard surviving and coming into their exceptional power was meant to be a kind of player reward for playing a squishy d4 hit die baby while they were a partial liability. The exceptionally swingy feel of those early levels (or overly easy, since you kind of get a choice between a cakewalk and lethal land with not a ton of daylight inbetween) doesn't really belong in the "fight three square moderates a day as part of your balanced tabletop" design that is so characteristic of PF2E.
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I agree, but with the exception of ready-made adventures, I don't start at level 1, I start at level 2, which is the level at which you can get the dedications and it's already the level at which you already have enough HP to not die easily in a critical hit from an enemy that deals 1d8+3 damage, for example. It's also the level that allows you to have enough resources to get heavy armor, since the initial money at level 1 forces players to have to start many times with inferior or incomplete equipment due to the low budget.
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Problem is: the game changes drastically from low levels to mid levels. my point is that 1-5 pathfinder is a COMPLETELY different game than 7-20 pathfinder mathematically speaking
I just want to highlight this one as one of my biggest problems with the system. I stepped my players through the beginner box, and though it did GREAT in explaining the very basics of the game such as attacking, combat, skill checks and etc I feel like it did not prepare them for any game beyond about 3rd level.
One thing I would love to see is some higher level skill builder adventures, for lack of a better term, to help players learn some skills that don't come up in lower level play. Along with these, you'd need some higher level pregenerated characters that have a paragraph or two highlighting what they're good at, their common combos, and how they interact with their companions.
That level 9 halfling gathered lore psychic? In addition to blasting the enemy with a cool ally ignoring AOE (Shatter Mind), once they activate unleashed psyche they can use occultism to give the magus a +4 aid bonus on their spell strike as an action and a reaction, likely triggering a crit, especially if the investigator used Shared Stratagem to make the enemy off-guard earlier in the round. And, because the investigator used strategic assessment as part of their devise a stratagem, the magus knew to use needle darts to trigger the creature's weakness to cold iron.
The level 6 druid that just got fireball? They can't drop that damage as easily if the front line charges in, but if the party delays to stay in a cluster with the justice champion near the center there's a good likelihood that there will be enemies clustered on one side of the party for a juicy multi-hit. The rogue that just got gang up also has a good reason to stick with their buddy, as now the enemies are vulnerable to sneak attack damage. Conversely, if they're facing spellcasters or breath weapons that's probably a bad idea!
For most experienced players thinking like this probably comes as second nature, but having it pointed out in a brief 'blurb about your character' in the beginning of the adventure would really help new players, I think. Once they see it in action they can hopefully go into the rulebooks proper to see WHY certain actions are good and start thinking of ways to synergize with their allies in ways that lower level adventures just don't cover very well.
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For most experienced players thinking like this probably comes as second nature, but having it pointed out in a brief 'blurb about your character' in the beginning of the adventure would really help new players, I think. Once they see it in action they can hopefully go into the rulebooks proper to see WHY certain actions are good and start thinking of ways to synergize with their allies in ways that lower level adventures just don't cover very well.
Back in my comment #25 I mentioned a sniper rogue who became the most valuable player character. That rogue, the gnome Binny, was played by a new player. And how she became a sniper illustrates learning from other players.
Back at 1st level, my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign had only four players (a fifth player dropped out due to illness), 3 players highly experienced in PF1 and a new player who had never played a tabletop roleplaying game before. At my wife's request (she played the halfling scoundrel rogue Sam) I altered the beginning of the campaign to give a tutorial encounters in PF2 rules, but the new player was not yet available for those game sessions. When the new player arrived, the Ironfang Legion invaded Phaendar and the party was assigned to evacuate civilians over the north bridge to hide in the forest. The party consisted of ranger, druid, and two rogues, because I had forewarned them that the 1st module required sneaking around a forest.
Preventing 1st-level Hobgoblin Soldiers from crossing the bridge was their first serious combat. They had planted a bomb under the bridge that would destroy it when the fuse burned down, so they were on the safe north side of the bridge making ranged attacks instead of standing on the bridge. The rogue Sam, played by an experienced player, hid behind the wide end of the bridge railing in order to catch the soldiers off-guard for sneak attack damage. The rogue Binny copied Sam.
The party leveled up to 2nd level soon afterwards, dealing with the deadly creatures in the Fangwood Forest. Sam multiclassed via sorcerer dedication and gave up his shortbow to cast Telekinetic Projectile instead. Binny kept using her shortbow. The player liked keeping her character safe by hiding behind a bush and shooting from a distance. This is not a viable style unless the rest of the party occupies the enemy's attention to keep them away from the hiding spot; fortunately, the experienced players were willing to do this. Sam had been designed as a high-Charisma expert in Deception and liked being a distraction. And when the sniper role works, the 2d6 piercing damage from sneak attack with a shortbow that can effortlessly switch to new targets is very handy in a battle.
To hide well, Binny became an expert in Stealth. She also took the Quiet Allies feat to help the rest of the party, and the villagers they protected, sneak around the forest. The rest of the party worked to Cover Tracks so that the Ironfang patrols could not track them.
My wife said that the best way to train a new player in teamwork is to let them pick a role they like that supports the team.
One thing I would love to see is some higher level skill builder adventures, for lack of a better term, to help players learn some skills that don't come up in lower level play. Along with these, you'd need some higher level pregenerated characters that have a paragraph or two highlighting what they're good at, their common combos, and how they interact with their companions.
This has come naturally to my Strength of Thousands campaign. The campaign has 7 PCs which spreads the experience points thinner. I cannot always raise the difficulty of encounters for more XP, so I add class field trips to level up the party at the rate expected by the module. The field trips have a teacher along to give that guidance. See River into Darkness Revisited for an example.
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I was just about to post an appreciation for BigHatMarisa’s comments about removing the stumbling blocks with small sidebars here and there and how we definitely don’t need Paizo to repackage advice as a freakin’ gouging Strategy Guide.
Oh well. You can’t help what people want to pay for.
And as someone who absolutely is repelled by actual play/podcasts etc, if someone could make a run-through actual play, devoid of cheesy characterisations and with zero roleplay with absolutely clear options and rules descriptions….I’d actually watch that.
Absent actual play experience, there are those people who would like to learn more to improve their understanding of the ruleset. I don’t need to “watch” roleplay. But I would love to more fully understand the rollplay.
Having little experience with play above 5th level, I do read all of these threads about various options and abilities and synergies and feats…but it is like watching a movie in another language that I don’t speak, with subtitles in yet another language I’m only half familiar with.
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I do think low levels aren't representative of the rest of the play experience—to the degree that if I could redesign the game, I'd consider starting the game's scaling at the powerlevel of level 4 or level 5.
But new players need to start with less complexity. At level 1, you have at most one feat to choose from, your character is simple and mostly limited to its class abilities. At level 4-5, your character starts fleshing out due to your number of feats and such. The choice of level 1 is a choice of simplicity, so I understand why Paizo chose it as first level.
The most played levels should represent the feel of the game, and right now, they just don't.
There's a difference between most played and most representative. People tend to remember the last levels much more than the first levels (that's a classic human bia, we remember the end more than the beginning). Even your sentence shows it: You don't consider that the most played levels carry the game feel, which seems ridiculous when you state it out loud.
But I'm pretty sure if you tell us what levels represent the game well and if we compare it to the levels your characters have reached, it will be roughly between the 50th percentile and the 90th percentile of the levels you have played (for example, if you have reached level 10 at most, the game feel will be best represented by level 5-9 roughly, players who have reached level 20 and play it regularly tend to consider that levels 10-18 are the most representative of the game).
Because the game feel actually changes much more often than once. You can at least separate the levels in 4 brackets: First levels (1-2) where the game is super swingy and fights last 2 rounds, low levels (3-6) where characters are not really fleshed out, martial still dominates and fights tend to be rather quick, mid levels (7-12) where characters are fleshed out, martial/caster balance is fine and fights last 4-5 rounds, and high levels (13+) where fights tend to be a slog, casters becomes more and more dominant and characters start to be really complicated (especially if you made the mistake of allowing Free Archetype).
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The Beginner's Box is amazing and does an awesome job at teaching the rules and game whether new to TTRPG's or new to PF2e. However, this is a TTRPG, Not every scenario can be designed with a tutorial course at the start of it, or designed as if it is meant to be people's first AP.
It is up to the GM's and/or more experienced players to help new players learn. So, I hope you find a group that will help you learn and come to enjoy PF2e, or barring that, if you just plain prefer other systems, I hope you have many fun games in those systems.
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Zoken made a point that I agree with and will expand on here.
It is unrealistic for any TTRPG that is not stupidly simplistic to teach players how to play well, especially at higher levels where the number of options available increases drastically. I have not tested the much-praised Beginner's Box, but I know that even it will not be able to detail all the intricacies of the game, especially at high levels.
Besides, imagine a video game where the tutorial extends all the way to the maximum level. Boring, right!? It would be similar if PF2e took the player by the hand and carried them around, forcing them to teach them every detail of the game and how to use it optimally. I can already imagine a lot of people getting irritated by this.
That is why, for me, a large part of the experience in a new system involves the player himself being willing to explore the possibilities and learn from other players much more than being guided by a book or adventure.
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I've never thought of the game as "needing" to teach you all the special interactions and optimization that can come into a game, including TTRPG.
I'll provide a personal example, I play Warframe. That game has some very convoluted interactions on damage calculations (and the math behind the game in general, with lots of exceptions).
Up until the point where you hit Steel Path (think of it as NewGame+, much tougher enemies) it's not that challenging to build weapons and warframes to survive and deal adequate damage for what you need to fight. But when I hit Steel Path, I would empty all my ammo trying to take down a single regular enemy. My builds sucked. I had to go research and figure out what I was missing. Grab mods (Galvanized mods) for my weapons and actually think and plan instead of just do whatever looked good without much thought. I started researching via various websites and youtube videos what would work. After a bit I started performing much better.
I do expect any kind of games "tutorial" or teaching to do that. I only expect it to get me familiar with the basics of the game so I reasonably understand what's happening and what I'm doing. Not to show me "Hey, if you do X, while friend 1 does Y, and friend 2 does Z, that you're going to be way more effective than doing those in a vacuum".
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So the beginner's box starts the players with a very basic combat (big rats) has their Iconic character sheets labeled with what each box is and does, and comes with cards that lay out all of their in and out of combat options, the most common statuses, and with an action tracker for keeping track of their action economy. After that we are introduced to exploration as they make their way to an obstacle that requires a skill check. Later on their is a chance for another combat, an exploration with some hidden rolls. a chance to encounter smarter enemies who will use tactics on them. A chance to encounter enemies with weaknesses and resistances... etc.
It also comes with a map, tokens for all the players and monsters, and then some. and tokens for the action tracker. Come to think of it, next time I play this I will use some of these extra tokens as hero points tokens.
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It would be similar if PF2e took the player by the hand and carried them around, forcing them to teach them every detail of the game and how to use it optimally.
And that would also mean "optimal" exists in PF2 and is widely acknowledged. That's not the case at all, both because there are countless ways to play the game, countless combinations of classes and abilities raising different "optimal", simplicity having a vastly different value depending on player's tactical savvyness and no way to prove an "optimal" is optimal.
That's why I say there's no One True Way to play: someone's optimal is not someone else's.
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Also, especially if the player is newer, and the realize their build (at like level two or three) is hurting them, of course you would let them readjust somethings (I would hope)
Yeah, for a new player if they realize they don't like their character for whatever reason, I would straight up let them completely change it.
Maybe the player decides that in fact, playing a spell caster isn't what they wanted after trying it for a couple levels. I would tell them, they should give it a try in another game, but if they weren't having fun with it I would 100% let them change to a fighter if they thought that's what would be fun for them.
Honestly, any player that goes to a GM and says "I'm not having fun with this". As a GM my goal is for people to have fun (and have the illusion of challenge) so if someone's not having fun, I'm going to look at how I can help them, including letting them bring in a completely different character.
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But new players need to start with less complexity. At level 1, you have at most one feat to choose from, your character is simple and mostly limited to its class abilities. At level 4-5, your character starts fleshing out due to your number of feats and such. The choice of level 1 is a choice of simplicity, so I understand why Paizo chose it as first level.
For me, the bigger difference is in the numbers, not the complexity. That's around when things start stabilizing and the encounter guidelines become more accurate. Realistically, L5 is not much more complex than L1; you don't gain /that/ many meaningful options from L1-L5 on most classes. What you do gain a lot of is hitpoints (lord does your HP pool literally become 5x what it was, maybe more if you take toughness!) and check modifier increases. I want the numbers to start more around where they are at L5.
WRT design implications: I understand the complexity concerns here, and half agree. I half agree because I think it's good RPG design to have L1 be introductory complexity, or to have a "pre-level 1" tier of play that helps ease you into the game in the same way. I half disagree because other half of me wishes the game were more complex in general, but a very different kind of complex—something more in the direction of a board game like Gloomhaven than anything. I personally tend to feel like PF2E decisions are more straightforward than I'd like, and the pool of abilities a character has is too large when only a few abilities are ever truly relevant at a time. This isn't really what I want for a tactical game; I prefer harder decisions among fewer, more meaningful options. This is a pretty personal thing, though; over time, I've felt like PF2E straddles a pretty uncomfortable line between a board game and a TTRPG and wish it would've come down harder on one side of the line or the other.
There's a difference between most played and most representative. People tend to remember the last levels much more than the first levels (that's a classic human bia, we remember the end more than the beginning). Even your sentence shows it: You don't consider that the most played levels carry the game feel, which seems ridiculous when you state it out loud.
But I'm pretty sure if you tell us what levels represent the game well and if we compare it to the levels your characters have reached, it will be roughly between the 50th percentile and the 90th percentile of the levels you have played (for example, if you have reached level 10 at most, the game feel will be best represented by level 5-9 roughly, players who have reached level 20 and play it regularly tend to consider that levels 10-18 are the most representative of the game).
Because the game feel actually changes much more often than once. You can at least separate the levels in 4 brackets: First levels (1-2) where the game is super swingy and fights last 2 rounds, low levels (3-6) where characters are not really fleshed out, martial still dominates and fights tend to be rather quick, mid levels (7-12) where characters are fleshed out, martial/caster balance is fine and fights last 4-5 rounds, and high levels...
The bias is to remember the beginning and the end, but sort of forget the middle—not just remember the end.
I never said I think a given level range is "most" representative of the game, or that a given level range is the ideal platonic form of PF2E. I agree the game changes feel multiple times over its run. What I said is that I think L1-4 is least representative and the least congruent with the rest of the game. And I think most would agree, given how most of the "casters bad" discourse and "wow this game is lethal" discourse was a result of L1-4 play.
I don't need or want L1-4 to be perfectly representative of the rest of the game; that's unreasonable for a game with character complexity growth. I do want it to feel enough like the rest of the game that people stop automatically thinking casters are terrible and that a moderate encounter against a single enemy is terrifying. I don't think that's too much of an ask.
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Realistically, L5 is not much more complex than L1; you don't gain /that/ many meaningful options from L1-L5 on most classes.
I have the opposite opinion (as it can only be an opinion).
Level 5 asks you to have an idea of your build, if you want to go for a Dedication or a "monoclass" character, what feats and abilities you'll focus on. Skills also progress greatly, before level 5 a lot of skills are barely usable (Medicine without Battle Medicine nor Continual Recovery? Mostly useless). At level 1, you actually don't even have to think about the skills you'll raise. Skill actions exist at level 1 but they really take off at level 7 due to their rapid gross at low level, faster than the enemy saves. Intimidate at level 1 is meh, at level 7 it's gorgeous. Also, at level 1 casters' power comes from cantrips, it shifts exactly at level 5 when slotted spells gets crazy good. And most classes don't have built in reaction with Reflexive Strike becoming common at level 6. And I obviously don't speak about equipment.
At level 1, you can just focus on your class main ability and it's fine. No need to do anything else to be roughly optimal. At level 5, you need to understand the broader game to play properly, it's much harder to play well at this level. Also, fights are faster at low level and it's actually a boon: Spending 5 rounds only doing Strike Strike Strike because it's actually optimal at your level would be boring to death. Number of rounds significantly increases at the same rate your number of abilities increases.
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I find level five to be a lot more complex. I mean, at level one you have most of your basic class abilities on line, everything that makes your class, your class. If you're a martial (which if this your first game, I definitely recommend) you choose one class feat. I'm not going to pretend this was the only thing you had to choose (ancestry, heritage, ancestry feat, background, class, subclass (if applicable) and modifier adjustment allocations). but all of this is manageable. Add in 4 more levels of skill feats, general feats, class feats, ancestry feats, and another 4 ability modifier improvements, that is a lot to manage.
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A good example that I like to give that is a matter of choice is the fighter and the kineticist.
At level 5, the fighter has to specialize in a group of weapons, the kineticist chooses whether he will take a junction or an additional element.
OK, this varies from class to class, with each one having its own level of particularities. A druid can effectively use his battle forms at level 3.
We can argue that this changes the numbers, which is true, but what it changes much more is the way of playing, with many builds only starting to gain definition at higher levels as certain options that are interesting appear or are consolidated.
A druid with focus spells, for example (like Tempest Surge) can only explore his true potential when he gathers 3 focus points.
So there is a mix of higher numbers and options, but the higher numbers are offset by enemies that also have higher numbers, what really changes the player's experience are the options they have to use.
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The options and their experience with them. I remember one of my players, a monk, going through the beginners box wondering what to do with their third action, I introduced them to the concept of demoralizing, and they immediately started opening every fight with that (despite not being a charismatic build) because they enjoyed the benefit that it gave their team.