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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.
This is mostly what I'm vouching for, yes. We don't need exact strategies or anything, but there are fundamental, base-level tips that can be doled out in relevant sections via sidebars - where it won't eat up more pages and fits in with all the other minor info that makes it into sidebars.
For example, a sidebar on Rogue can give a small (clearly stated to be nonexhaustive) list of ways that a creature can be rendered off-guard. It's the most common and oft-useful condition in the game bar maybe Frightened, so it's a good starting point to pull from.
Clearly labelling that some skill actions are meant for Encounter Mode, not Exploration Mode (Climb, Pick a Lock, Disable a Device) and reminding players that, if a situation is tense and every second matters, they can use Encounter Mode even if it's not combat!
Things like these, which are fundamental tips that all players (including the GM) can find helpful, and they aren't necessarily prescriptive, just helping bridge some knowledge gaps that the Player Core tends to have.
I don't expect these products to make experts out of new players, but it should be proficient at getting people familiar with the game's systems at a base level, and right now there are gears that could be greased to help that process along.
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If I were rewriting player core, i'd also have a list of skills that are good ideas for a given class, alongside the whole "You might, others might" section.
For example, for fighter it'd say "You might train in intimidation to demoralise your foes, weakening their defences more, or focus on athletics to trip and shove your opponents".
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If I were rewriting player core, i'd also have a list of skills that are good ideas for a given class, alongside the whole "You might, others might" section.
For example, for fighter it'd say "You might train in intimidation to demoralise your foes, weakening their defences more, or focus on athletics to trip and shove your opponents".
After their introductions, the Core rulebooks are written like reference books, which is almost opposite the style BotBrain suggested. For example, page 240 of Player Core defines Demoralize, "With a sudden shout, a well-timed taunt, or a cutting put-down, you can shake an enemy's resolve." It goes on to say that success makes the target frightened 1 (frightened 2 on a crit). To understand what that means, look up "frightened" in the Glossary and Index, "frightened (condition) Fear impedes everything you attempt. 444," and go to page 444 to find, " You take a status penalty equal to this value to all your checks and DCs." Fortunately, the Archives of Nethys has links.
Sometimes I have to make suggestions. At 3rd level in my Ironfang Invasion campaign, while fighting cultists in a cave system, the party stopped for Treat Wounds. I gave them 10 minutes to treat one PC, but a 4th-level cultist barbarian barged in confidently at the 11th minute. The party had five members plus an NPC rogue who had been a prisoner of the cultists and the champion's velociraptor animal companion, so the party soon had the barbarian surrounded and flanked. However, this barbarian had Deny Advantage, "You aren't off-guard to hidden, undetected, or flanking creatures of your level or lower, or creatures of your level or lower using surprise attack." The three rogues could not deliver their sneak attack damage, so the barbarian boasted of his relative invulnerability as he hit back. On the other hand, I had had more time to think about Deny Advantage, and technically the NPC rogue had fought the barbarian when he was captured, so that NPC tried to trip the barbarian. He failed, but the ranger wielding a +1 kukri tried, too, and he succeeded. The barbarian became off-guard due to prone condition and died to the sneak attack damage of the other two rogues.
The chain of logic for tripping is not obvious. Off-guard reduces AC and permits sneak attack, so the party wants the barbarian off-guard. Deny Advantages means no off-guard from flanking, hiding, or surprise. Other means of imposing off-guard are feint, grapple, and trip. Let's try trip.
I don't think it's the job of the Player Core to give tips and tricks on how to play optimally. There is a lot of wisdom that can be given, sure. But that is adding page space to an already 450 page book. And even if it did give tip after tip, there will always be blind spots. Even if a such tips would be useful, there will always be new wisdom that comes alongside new metas, so the first book of the line is the worst place to put such wisdom (see Age of Ashes and its growing pains as an example).
What this would call for is a PF2E version of PF1E's Strategy Guide. A whole book dedicated to tips and tricks, and experienced wisdom of how to make an optimum character from Level 1-20.
In short, if a GM Core exists to give GMs tips on how to optimally GM, a Strategy Guide can give players tips on how to optimally be players.
I think that a free Strategy Guide on the Internet, similar to the Guides for optimizing a character class, would suffice. Hm, the Guide to Guides already lists one, Pathfinder 2e Tactica, but it is pretty short.
I have tried writing such a guide. I have not been able to tame it into a coherent structure. And trying to cover of all the basic tactics, such demoralizing and flanking and tripping and shunning a 3rd Strike except under special circumstances, tired me out before I got to the advanced tactics such as There's no One True Way to play the game. And of course, given my nature I want to explain the mathematics, but that bogs down the narrative.
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^^^
So much this. "Teaching new players how to play," once you cover the basics on the three action economy, MAP, and how important the "little" bonuses and penalties from "combos"/teamwork (as they add up) are compared to a more "one-trick pony" mindset, is really something all the players have to be involved in as they brainstorm possible options for the specific characters involved and the specific opponents and situation at hand.
PF2's paradigm is very different from 3.x/PF1 in that a character's "build" (as long as a very low "optimization" bar is met; basically +3 or +4 in the character's most important ability at 1st level and don't focus on options that the character won't be able to do well at) is often less important than the "combos"/teamwork the group chooses during play. Because of the "bounded accuracy" math of PF2, it is extremely difficult for a "maximally optimized" character to be significantly better than a "somewhat optimized" character "on paper" or acting solo. And really, the only way to learn how to apply the "combos"/teamwork after the basics is through experience.
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Might just be me but I feel like the game doesn't get all that complicated as you level. You get more options but you also lose some.
Level one you can do most skills with a 7 point spread. By level seven you can have a 15 point spread on skills. (From max proficiency and stat to untrained and +0 stat)
As you level some options just become less and less usable to you, you learn what your character can and can't do. Once you know the handful of things your character is good at you generally stick with that.
Even playing FA to level 20 it never felt like the complexity really increased.
Might be best to sum up the game to players like this, as a group try to keep a circumstance and status buff on allies while keeping the same as a penalty on enemies. Mess with enemy action economy when able and focus targets down.
Figure out what options your class/build has for doing those things and that's most of the games combat.
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.
I agree with your overall argument , although I would place the cutoff point as level 3 instead of 5. It’s negligibly more complex than level 1 but avoids how the 1-3 experience sets a very warped baseline, meanwhile 3-5 still feels weak initially but by level 5 between increased options, hp, and core feature growth players really start to move past those perceptions without internalizing them.
It also solves most of the issue of low level caster play being heavily unrepresentative of the actual experience by starting them off with 5 slots and quickly reaching 8 slots (along with the critical rank 3 “now you can *really* start doing interesting things” slot). Starting play with a non-insignificant chance to whiff your 2 slots at level 1 and spend the rest of the adventuring day as a worse ranged martial is a major contributor to negative player perceptions, particularly since those two slots feel so precious and limited that seeing what their class received “instead of playing a fighter” accomplish less than a fighter striking twice at the same level can be deeply demoralizing for them.
To remind everyone what this looks like, I once saw a Kingmaker campaign that started at 1st level in the manor, as is the common setup. After the attack started the fighter and magus each consistently dropped 1-2 assassins every round while the two casters, working together, dropped 0-1 assassins per round using cantrips. One even tried using their 1st level attack roll spell but low rolled 3 damage total to an assassin and, after using 2 actions and one of their two spell slots for that pitiful showing, was followed by the fighter to moving up, one shotting the assassin to the left of the first for 1 action, then finishing off the other with their second strike. Another low rolled their cantrips and ended up spending 3 back to back rounds to drop another.
I couldn’t even blame them for being upset after the session, that was an objectively poor play experience, and one that had absolutely nothing to do with conflicting expectations from prior game systems. In a game that is “lauded” for its tight balance it was painfully obvious to everyone at the table that the martial and caster characters weren’t anywhere close to balanced in capabilities.
Considering how these kinds of early play experiences stick with people and shape how they view the game going forward it’s no wonder “casters suck in pf2e” ends up being a common opinion floating around the internet, the early gameplay experience is extremely warped compared to what’s actually normal once gameplay stabilizes.
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PF2's paradigm is very different from 3.x/PF1 in that a character's "build" (as long as a very low "optimization" bar is met; basically +3 or +4 in the character's most important ability at 1st level and don't focus on options that the character won't be able to do well at) is often less important than the "combos"/teamwork the group chooses during play. Because of the "bounded accuracy" math of PF2, it is extremely difficult for a "maximally optimized" character to be significantly better than a "somewhat optimized" character "on paper" or acting solo. And really, the only way to learn how to apply the "combos"/teamwork after the basics is through experience.
This is actually the single most important thing for experienced TTRPG players learning PF2, especially so for those coming from PF1 (although that wave of people is mostly done).
But learning that you CANNOT "win" the game during character creation as you can in PF1 is a huge learning curve that is challenging for experienced players to understand, because they came from games where you could be so overpowered that you could handle an entire adventure nearly on your own. That does not exist in PF2.
Instead, your party as a whole needs to understand each characters strengths and weaknesses and work together to support each other....but that is something I absolutely DON'T expect the rules to teach. Mostly because it too complex and party dependent to provide any kind of real frame work on, other than something like "Hey, using intimidate to frighten and athletics to trip can cause very useful de-buffs that your allies can benefit from that are better choices of actions than making an attack at maximum MAP".
It's true, but also very generic advice. And it can't go much deeper, without getting specifics about each party and build.
Man, that was a rough experience to read about.
Did you get the opinion of other players privately before making the decision? Just curious.
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I ended up writing him a private message reminiscent of the Performance Improvement Plan I got from my boss at work once, and he noped out rather than change.
I just wanted to say your patience was commendable here. It sounded incredible frustrating just to read, and I can't imagine actually being involved. I'm sure some people would have kicked him out far sooner, and without any feedback for improvement, so good on you.
I hope he is able to find a GM better able to meet his unique needs someday.
;P
It's true, but also very generic advice. And it can't go much deeper, without getting specifics about each party and build.
Again, I'll stress that this is what I want in things like Player Core and the Beginner's Box. Generic tips are valuable for newer players, since this is a dense game and it can be hard to grasp for a starting seed of knowledge to work from. Once you get that seed, generally the flow gets a lot easier and you start to discover things, but providing non-prescriptive knowledge can prevent forming misinformed habits.
That defensive player story is interesting because that matches my 4th level build in PFS, but I used tactics - grappling, tripping, weapon infusion, healing allies, and thoughtful positioning. Winter Sleet is a pain to use before safe elements if your allies are in a cramped space, but that's a team tactics issue. Going pure tank as a kin can work quite well if you're a team player.
Now, tanking +3 level that early is... a heroic sacrifice. And yeah a low-level kineticist can build a hot tub easily enough, but at level 4 you're making half a brick at a time... there's a reason permanent igneogenesis takes a full hour, and even then you're going to need good crafting skills to be able to justify anything more complex than a stone igloo, and that's going to be four hours to make something about the size of a tent.
Small tangent, but it has a potential impact on tactics if you have a camp or base:
Interestingly creating bricks at 1 bulk could create stone enough to build a small building (~5,000 bricks) after about five hours - though I think structural stone is about 50% heavier than brick, so let's round it up to 8 hours. I would say that, without also using wood for beams and a roof, this should be doubled because you've got a heavy stone roof and need to make stone pillars. So, after 16 hours, you have a crude stone igloo and you probably need some significant crafting checks to not have it all collapse or leak, and that's assuming they have a sound blueprint and have taken time to flatten the land and know how to do so. So, being generous, if they have a blueprint, I'd say four days of dedicated labor with the right measuring tools and skills (and lores!) would be reasonable - but that's a lot of your build invested for shabby housing. It would also be far better to have a wood/earth kin for this.
A wood/earth/metal kin carpenter would be *fascinating* but this is pretty niche! The kind of thing for a quirky inclusion in tertiary books like that potion garden thing.
While I love the idea of wood/earth/metal kineticist making structures using their elemental powers...the current rules that kind of enable it make it not such a great idea and come at the expense of other more relevant adventuring options.
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Yeah, it is one of those things that could break a campaign like Kingmaker if the players have too much leeway in those kind of powers.
You quickly run into a place where players start going "Hey, why can't I make Mesa Verde?"
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Yeah, it is one of those things that could break a campaign like Kingmaker if the players have too much leeway in those kind of powers.
You quickly run into a place where players start going "Hey, why can't I make Mesa Verde?"
Agreed. Some ideas that are interesting but super niche might be amazing for a sandbox campaign but destroy something like Kingmaker. Sometimes it's important to accept some limits to enable certain kinds of stories, as with the Pathfinder Society restrictions.
Learning to respect that is important for players.
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Learning to respect that is important for players.
Very important. If a player can't learn to accept that when I, as a GM, tell them no. It's no because I don't want them to have a good time. It's because I foresee it breaking something in the game or potentially harming the fun for other players.
TTRPG games are just make believe with some rules to resolve the age old dispute of "I shoot you with my gun! Nu uhhh because I roll and dodge out of the way!" with a common groundwork shared between all the player (which includes the GM).
One of my favourite examples of game concepts combining in unexpected ways with "the real world" (or stuff like kingdom building) is the Bottled Monstrosity Worm Vial.
This thing can create a 40' tunnel through solid rock in two Actions. The applications in construction are enormous. I consider it to be the biggest argument against Alchemists being able to use Advanced Alchemy or Quick Alchemy to create Bottled Monstrosities.
It might be fast, but it's EXPENSIVE!
For 600gp, I could hire a thousand unskilled laborers to dig for two months.
Alternatively, I can hire THIRTEEN teams of 10 unskilled laborers and 1 skilled laborer (foreman) to dig for 1 month with a bit of coin left over for unexpected situations.
I suspect that would go much farther in most cases.