Wow, I read Bluemagetim's comment #237 last night, considered replying, went to bed instead, and found 27 more comments this morning.
Now you [Fabios] and Trip H are saying that you have an easy time at high levels, but it's too swingy and dangerous at 1 to 4. So how do you interpret that? It's creampuff later on and you want what? Creampuff at level 1 to 4.
If we were talking game design, you'd be mentioning how PF2 advances as whole. Not just focused on 1 to 4.
Throw me into the same camp as Fabios and Trip.H. The hit point math starts with a ratio of total hit points are around twice Strike damage and asymptotically goes to a ratio of total hit points are around four times Strike damage. The game would be more teachable if the ratio stayed constant, for example, it could be a fixed ratio of 1 to 3.
This is an issue from original edition Dungeons & Dragons where the ratio for low-hit-point characters was often 1 to 1. Hit the wizard and he goes down. Paizo tried fixing it in Pathfinder 1st Edition by declaring that the 1st-level hit die was not rolled; instead, all characters received the maximum value from the die. They were more elegant in Pathfinder 2nd Edition, which dropped hit dice. Instead, the characters received one-time hit points from their ancestry in addition to their hit points per level from their class. Paizo has been trying to fix the bad ratio at low levels, but their fix was not big enough.
Back in 2020 AD when some players complained that PF2 characters did not feel heroic enough when the same-level creatures were just as tough as the PCs, the forum gave the simple suggestion of giving the PCs an extra level if the players wanted the PCs to be stronger. Likewise, for those players how want Old School difficulty, I give the same suggestion in reverse. Select creatures one level higher to challenge the PCs with grueling combat....
Thanks for explaining that Mathmuse.
It sounds like not expecting safety overnight is an important piece of info for the players to be aware of.Also if this was meant as a moderate threat encounter then the circumstances should probably be ones conducive of a moderate threat of enemies of the level they provided.
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Name something *objectively* better. Not subjectively, not your opinion, objectively better.This is not some lazy isikai anime in which the party is overpowered and invincible right out of the gate. This is a tabletop roleplaying game, possibly the finest there has ever been. To insinuate that the math is badwrongfun is an insult to the developers that spent countless hours getting the math exactly right for the type of game they wanted.
This isn't about game design, but about heehawing one's personal preferences as the only correct way. Anyone who reads this thread and says otherwise are the ones being disingenuous.
"The finest there has ever been"
LOOOOL! pathfinder 2e Is the best d20 ttrpg ever that's for sure, but It's soooo far from the best ttrpg ever, It's actually exilerating that a system so convoluted and messy can be defined as the "finest"
Fabula ultima, call of chtulu, not the end, the last Torch, Kids and bikes, dungeon and dragons 4th edition
Does the beginner box send level +2 or +3 creatures at the party in 30ft rooms via railroading?
With no resources and no ability to tilt the fight in their favor?
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Can I ask, why are you opposed to reverse, where the baseline AP is written so that beginner GMs just feeding the encounters to beginner players will do fine, and Paizo includes extra guidance for advanced players and GMs on how to upscale it?I mean, we're talking about levels 1-3 or levels 1-5 here. It makes little sense to me to tune that for advanced players and GM and then include guidance for beginners on how to make it easier. Writing a series of encounters that require a high level of system mastery to GM and for PCs to survive through, but then adding text telling beginner GMs all the modifications they will need to do to make it suitable for beginner players, is pretty much the poster child for the thread title "not doing a good job of teaching new players how to play."
As far as I'm aware APs aren't designed for beginners or experts as a whole, they're just prewritten adventures to save time. And you're putting an argument out that I never made so I'm genuinely not sure what you're talking about. My suggestion of guidance is for in a book like the GM core, not APs. I'm suggesting that paizo should have done a better job having the GM core teach. Literally what this thread is about.
Fabula ultima, call of chtulu, not the end, the last Torch, Kids and bikes, dungeon and dragons 4th editionI can list systems, too, but doing so doesn't make them objectively better.
Each One of those system Is modern, a great winner in its own niche and has a much Better game design (cause It follows ACTUAL game design, not copying a dumbass in his basement winging It).
Oh, add lancer, 20 times the complexity and build variety of pathfinder
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Throw me into the same camp as Fabios and Trip.H. The hit point math starts with a ratio of total hit points are around twice Strike damage and asymptotically goes to a ratio of total hit points are around four times Strike damage. The game would be more teachable if the ratio stayed constant, for example, it could be a fixed ratio of 1 to 3.The issue I have is that changing this scaling makes the PC's growth feel less explosive. We know from RL experience that our fastest growth is right when we start learning a new skill, this is also when we're most likely to fail or to give up on said task or skill. Making a TTRPG mirror this, is a wonderful design feature, and kills off some number of characters while also filtering out players not suited to the experience.
No, that is not how real life worked for me. As a mathematician working at the National Security Agency, I started in a rotational development program where I toured in a new office every 6 months. It took me 2 months to catch up at the new office and then the next 2 months were my best growth and work. The last two months were spent documenting my results.
Also consider the two purposes of leveling up in a roleplaying game. Leveling up is a reward for successful play, and it lets the challenges be different at different levels. This implies that leveling should happen as a steady pace, and Pathfinder's experience point system is designed for a steady pace.
I also don't like the idea of filtering out players. Some players won't like PF2, but setting up a sour experience at low levels to weed them out before the sour experience ends makes no sense.
To turn it around, if you can't handle beginner levels being tuned for beginners, maybe this game just isn't for you. 'Darnit! Who's idea was it to make this beginner box be for beginners! It should require the players to know and use all available tactics to survive! It should be made for advancers! Like meeeeee!' No thanks.PF2, as written, is for me. It's you out here begging for change.
GMs like me have been changing PF2 all along by avoiding killer encounters at 1st level. The correction of removing the hidden difficulty would give more control and more choice to the GM.
I care about Paizo creating good experiences for beginners because that grows the player base, which drives more content creation. If a game starts catering solely to the people who have played it for 10 years and demands new entries know every rule intimately to even survive a session, I would expect that game's market share to contract and die.There's a benefit to filtering out players who won't turn into long-term customers. Loads of companies and brands specifically target those who they want to purchase their products, and doing so is incredibly valuable.
What is this benefit? A friend runs Three Gear Games in Laurel, Maryland, and he invites games at his stores. I spent a few years running Pathfinder at his and his father's previous store, The Family Game Store in Savage, Maryland. New players buy dice and miniatures and rulebooks, but I don't recall many additional purchases at high levels. Instead, they might buy a supplemental rulebook to play a new class or ancestry in a new campaign. Thus, the goal is to make new players want to play more campaigns, not to weed them out at their first campaign.
I buy the Lost Omens PDFs to fill out my campaigns with extra details. I would subscribe for the books along with the PDFs to lend them out, but my players have seldom been interested in reading that material and my bookshelves are already overflowing.
2) Things going wrong early is good. Hiding the experience of losing a character in the mid levels delays a group from learning how to deal with that loss.
At mid levels characters can be resurrected.
Most PF2 players aren't new, though. So, catering to them and not your proven buying audience is a terrible idea. You can make specific products for that purpose, but the majority of your products should respect what your long-term proven buyers enjoy. This means more difficulty and complexity at the lower levels.
I try to include a new player in each of my campaigns. Even playing at home in New York after I left Maryland, I included new player Richard in Iron Gods, Erin and Story in Ironfang Invasion, Dash in A Fistful of Flowers, and Reece in Strength of Thousands. Richard tried to join Ironfang Invasion but died of brain cancer, Erin left for college, Story is now a regular player, Dash decided that roleplaying was not for him, and Reece is still in my current campaign.
By the way, I think player retention is a good side topic for this thread about teaching Pathfinder.
I don't know if I'd call other systems objectively better, but I think a majority of the tabletops I've played have more attractive beginner experiences than PF2E, especially for casters.
I think the ones I've had more issues with so far are
-ICON. I think this will become an interesting game, but when I tried it, it was written in a way that made you stop to discuss rules every single time anyone wanted to do anything while you were learning the game. And this was with everyone reading the rules! It also has PF2E's keywording issue cranked to 11. (It's being distributed as a PDF; there's no excuse to not add reminder text, at the least.) Game seems like it will be fine with editing passes, but I have a hard time recommending it yet unless you really want what it's going for.
-Savage Worlds. It's interesting, but combat tends to go on a long time, everything feels spongy, and difficulty is modulated so much by the benny system that I can't even tell if my experience as a player is representative of the system or just representative of the DM.
Of the other games I've actually played, things I ultimately had a better beginner experience with included TBZ, Technoir, 4E, 5E (which is still disproportionately dangerous at early levels, though not to the same degree), PF1E (also still disproportionately dangerous sometimes, though not to the same degree), Hunter the Vigil (hard to say how the system goes as a whole because we played a softball oneshot)... I'm definitely forgetting some games here.
There are more games I've looked over a lot but not played, and I won't comment on those. Most issues aren't obvious until actual play.
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I had this deadliness conversation with my group.
I asked them what kind of game they wanted earlier on, are they ok with character death as a possibility. Their answer was they trust me.
They want the threat of death to be there. Its part of what goes into feeling like you overcame a challenge, its part of seeing your decisions matter, but they trust I will not just throw encounters at them that completely invalidate any choices they make going into the encounter and during. And to connect this to the topic I have trusted the encounter building guidelines to make these encounters. I have not experienced a design problem a low levels with my group.
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To make the point more specific,
If a player makes a character with low HP and low AC but decides engage in combat with and to get in melee range of a dangerous high melee damage creature I am validating their decisions by having that creature one shot them (glibly I just mean start striking that pc)
If they don't get killed for deciding to get in range then I am invalidating their choices both in designing their character and in the encounter when they put themselves in harms way.
If I force the entire party into a 30ft room with a strong melee creature, no exits, where no allowance for any choice in the matter leading up to it or during to do anything but engage and kill the character off I have railroaded that character to their death.
Rofl, I get back on, check Reddit, and there's a top pf2 post on this exact same issue from the other angle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1klr33w/perspectives_from_a_ chill_pathfinder_table/
Where the GM insisted on playing it on ~"easy mode" and the results have been great enough for the player to post about it. The consistency (lack of BS difficulty jumps) of that experience has allowed everyone to have more fun.
Even the exact point about "easy mode" paradoxically allowing for increasing the difficulty because of that trusted norm is present in this post. With extra emphasis on the lack of "power game pressure" enabling players to make non-meta feat selections (thus making weaker PCs that are more fun to pilot).
Quote like this abound:
“It allows the system to breathe” is a very eloquent way to phrase it and summarizes the point I was trying to make super well.
There's nothing inherently bad with different difficulties. Some like it hard, some like it easy, everyone has fun. It seems good to me.
I find there are 2 kinds of players/GMs when it comes to difficulty: Those who consider that character death should always be on the table and those who consider that character death should only happen for a reason. And in general they can't play together without a lot of frustration on one side or the other.
Side note: I also have the feeling from reading here and on Reddit that Reddit users are less about crunch, optimization and difficulty than the official forum users. But I may be wrong about that, I know more this community than the Reddit one.
Rofl, I get back on, check Reddit, and there's a top pf2 post on this exact same issue from the other angle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1klr33w/perspectives_from_a_ chill_pathfinder_table/
Where the GM insisted on playing it on ~"easy mode" and the results have been great enough for the player to post about it. The consistency (lack of BS difficulty jumps) of that experience has allowed everyone to have more fun.
Even the exact point about "easy mode" paradoxically allowing for increasing the difficulty because of that trusted norm is present in this post. With extra emphasis on the lack of "power game pressure" enabling players to make non-meta feat selections (thus making weaker PCs that are more fun to pilot).
Quote like this abound:
“It allows the system to breathe” is a very eloquent way to phrase it and summarizes the point I was trying to make super well.
Wouldn't you say this an example of how robust the design is?
That the math is great for setting up an experience you want to have?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
All of this "no, it's the GM's fault" is still playing "dodge the real question : answer"
"Mathematically speaking, how many hits does it take to full-->down a PC?"
When the answer is 1-2, that results in a lot of negative consequences to gameplay, listed out in that big post above. One of which is the OP of this thread, that low level players have no idea what good or bad tactics are because combat outcomes appear so absurdly ruled by RNG and not player agency.
And again, we know that above answer changes based on the creature/PC level.
Which is because the math for HP growth across levels is f@!@ed, varying by a 7x multiplier based on which level up it is, from 35% at L1 to 5% at L19.
What are you talking about? It wouldn't possibly be the same percentage for all classes given someone like a barbarian can have twice as many hit points as a 6 hit point caster or more.
My level 17 barbarian has 330 hit points. My level 17 monk has 280. My sorcerer has 195. How are you getting the same percentage for all the classes at these levels?
You're making stuff up at this point.
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Name something *objectively* better. Not subjectively, not your opinion, objectively better.Fabula ultima, call of chtulu, not the end, the last Torch, Kids and bikes, dungeon and dragons 4th edition
I would criticize the response for not giving any objective reasoning for including those systems.
But I won't because the request also fails to give, or even suggest, any objective measurements for the analysis.
The request is basically asking for subjective opinions of 'better', but is also rejecting all subjective opinions as categorically invalid. The request is not answerable.
This isn't discussion in good faith. This is edition warring at its worst.
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Throw me into the same camp as Fabios and Trip.H. The hit point math starts with a ratio of total hit points are around twice Strike damage and asymptotically goes to a ratio of total hit points are around four times Strike damage. The game would be more teachable if the ratio stayed constant, for example, it could be a fixed ratio of 1 to 3.The issue I have is that changing this scaling makes the PC's growth feel less explosive. We know from RL experience that our fastest growth is right when we start learning a new skill, this is also when we're most likely to fail or to give up on said task or skill. Making a TTRPG mirror this, is a wonderful design feature, and kills off some number of characters while also filtering out players not suited to the experience.No, that is not how real life worked for me. As a mathematician working at the National Security Agency, I started in a rotational development program where I toured in a new office every 6 months. It took me 2 months to catch up at the new office and then the next 2 months were my best growth and work. The last two months were spent documenting my results.
Also consider the two purposes of leveling up in a roleplaying game. Leveling up is a reward for successful play, and it lets the challenges be different at different levels. This implies that leveling should happen as a steady pace, and Pathfinder's experience point system is designed for a steady pace.
I also don't like the idea of filtering out players. Some players won't like PF2, but setting up a sour experience at low levels to weed them out before the sour experience ends makes no sense.
...To turn it around, if you can't handle beginner levels being tuned for beginners, maybe this game just isn't for you. 'Darnit! Who's idea was it to make this beginner box be for beginners! It should require the players to know and use all available tactics to survive! It should be made for
I don't care if they boost the hit points or not. I still don't see it as a problem. The only thing that makes teaching this game easier is a good GM teaching new players and creating memorable, fun experiences.
I don't think that has anything to do with dying or not.I know for my group of long time players, memorable experiences are things like walking into the owlbear cave in Keep on the Borderlands at level 1 and dying. Or going through the Tomb of Horrors the first time and dying a bunch. We still laugh about our buddy losing three characters in a row in Return to Elemental Evil.
My basic point is I do not believe this low level hit point issue has anything to do with teaching the game or player retention. These games will never, ever attract a major mainstream player base. It's always going to be a nice group of players who will play these games because they like them and it won't matter if they are getting one-shotted at level 1 or level 20. They will play them regardless.
If Paizo thinks the can acquire more customers by increasing low level hit points, then I imagine they'll do it. If it doesn't appear to be a problematic feature of the game, they won't.
I have not personally had problems with it nor heard complaints about it in my group or with any players over the years. I have no problems teaching the game and getting players into it.
I think if you know how to mathematically fix it to create the desirable hit point ratios across levels, then give it a shot and see if it makes the game more fun to play at level 1 and 2. Then you can determine if it seems worth the effort for your group.
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Rofl, I get back on, check Reddit, and there's a top pf2 post on this exact same issue from the other angle.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1klr33w/perspectives_from_a_ chill_pathfinder_table/
Where the GM insisted on playing it on ~"easy mode" and the results have been great enough for the player to post about it. The consistency (lack of BS difficulty jumps) of that experience has allowed everyone to have more fun.
Even the exact point about "easy mode" paradoxically allowing for increasing the difficulty because of that trusted norm is present in this post. With extra emphasis on the lack of "power game pressure" enabling players to make non-meta feat selections (thus making weaker PCs that are more fun to pilot).
Quote like this abound:
“It allows the system to breathe” is a very eloquent way to phrase it and summarizes the point I was trying to make super well.
That is why this is not a game design discussion. This is a personal preference discussion.
You just read a post by a group that likes it easier.
I queried my group and they confirmed they missed the deadliness of the old game.
I've seen this over the years playing with different groups. Groups have different preferences for RP, combat, difficulty, humor (I hate excessive humor in a campaign), magic items, and lots of other variables.
Paizo (any game company) cannot satisfy every personal preference. So if you got a problem, do the fix for your group.
I'll repeat, "real" difficulty requires agency and error.
As a design choice, HP low enough to full-->down in one go makes it incredibly easy to deaths to happen without agency nor error.
In most other game genres, there are factors to mitigate the anti-fun of these events, from quick checkpoint restarts, to one player piloting a whole party of actors.
A ttrpg has none of those luxuries, if a PC dies from bullshit, that's about as bad an outcome as can happen. Again, this is the one genre where a PC can be played for a literal year.
To loose them to a nat 1 on a save with 0 agency is the kind of fun anti-spiral that doesn't even exist in most gaming spaces. Even if the GM bends reality to get them alive later, that fun is forever fractured.
Deaths *need* to feel legit to the players.
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I'll also repeat that pf2 has trained GMs to hide this math problem from their players as much as possible.
I personally think I was seriously underestimating how much on-the-fly BS removal GMs typically need to do for pf2 to be fun to play.
That SoT night ambush is one example that I've spoken about so much, *because* I honestly doubt many parties can survive that when run legit.
As such, I have to think that the "normal pf2 default" is to pull similar "cheats" as my own GM did to minimize the BS. This puts a serious strain on the GM to constantly keep the random spikes of over-lethality in check.
.
This is why when a GM "lowers the difficulty" as per that post, it can lead to such a good outcome, where the GM no longer has to constantly warp reality and can let the dice really fall where they may.
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That SoT ambush has been brought up numerous times, and while I have not run that volume yet, I plan to in the future so have read through all of the books a couple times over. The way your GM ran it is 100% different than how I read it, so I'm not exactly sure how much mileage you can get from that claim. And I've never really seen anyone say anything about the encounter in any forums while looking for others experiences with the AP, which I would expect to see if it was notoriously dropping players.
If anything it speaks to poor writing and leaving it too open ended to read it as being excessively deadly. Which is why I can only see most of the issues here as GM or adventure issues.
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If you crit fail a Chain Lightning save, a level 9 character with an 8 HP class with 16 Con goes from 100-0 on an average roll.
I don't hear you screaming about that.
Please note that I'm using this exact example because it's a +2 enemy with a crit attack - exactly the same situation as at level 1 that you keep screaming about.
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I'll repeat, "real" difficulty requires agency and error.
As a design choice, HP low enough to full-->down in one go makes it incredibly easy to deaths to happen without agency nor error.
This is just not at all a true statement.
Your not taking into account the game is not just a combat encounter. Everything players do can factor into what happens, when an encounter will happen, if it stays the one i wrote up, if it even happens at all.And difficulty at least in my game for an encounter depends on how the players approach it. They can do things and as a result end up not fighting where I planned one, making a fight happen where there was none, making a planned fight easier for them, making it easier for the other side.
Consider the error as you put it might be getting in a fight against an ogre or a direwolf or whatever at level 1 without being prepared and engaging it without clear advantages?
The game is just a lot bigger than the conception your putting forward.
I'll also repeat that pf2 has trained GMs to hide this math problem from their players as much as possible.I personally think I was seriously underestimating how much on-the-fly BS removal GMs typically need to do for pf2 to be fun to play.
Thats just nonsense. I dont say that to be mean, but its nonsense. Making an encounter a moderate one instead of deciding to make it a severe one is not hiding a math problem, its doesnt need to be on the fly and usually wouldnt be when a GM is making up the encounters.
The encounter choices for me are typically done in advance, so I have time to put together foundry assets for the map, the creature images, and choose reward loot. usually when I make an on the fly adjustment its not a difficulty reason, its a well my players went and did a thing and now I need to change some things to represent the outcome of those choices. Added:In that way players actually influence the difficulty they face which is a sign they do have agency.
That SoT night ambush is one example that I've spoken about so much, *because* I honestly doubt many parties can survive that when run legit.
I think you misunderstood what happened there. Your GM messed up and made it a more lethal fight in two ways.
First your party needed crucial exposition that would have made them aware they were not sleeping in a safe environment.Second the ambush would not have actually meant a surprise ambush while sleeping and instead would have given your party opportunities for your prep and caution knowing you cant sleep safely to keep it from being a full on surprise ambush. That way if you did get surprised while sleeping it really would have been on your party for not being prepared.
Your GM mistakenly took away all agency from the encounter. That's not a problem with AP legit difficulty or game design or game math.
As such, I have to think that the "normal pf2 default" is to pull similar "cheats" as my own GM did to minimize the BS. This puts a serious strain on the GM to constantly keep the random spikes of over-lethality in check.
This is why when a GM "lowers the difficulty" as per that post, it can lead to such a good outcome, where the GM no longer has to constantly warp reality and can let the dice really fall where they may.
It seems you didn't understand what they meant by lower difficulty.
In terms of an AP it could mean adding weak template or using less enemies sure.But in terms of making your own games it only means not throwing severe or extreme encounters to often, which by the way not using those excessively is the standard recommended in the GM core. In which case your not actually lowering a standard difficulty your just setting a difficulty by using the guidelines.
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I find there are 2 kinds of players/GMs when it comes to difficulty: Those who consider that character death should always be on the table and those who consider that character death should only happen for a reason. And in general they can't play together without a lot of frustration on one side or the other.There's just been a couple hundred posts with one set of folks suggesting that some adjustment be made to early levels to reduce single-bad-roll character death likelihood, but not necessarily objecting or saying anything about later level play. The above split is thus, IMO, a very inapt description of the discussion going on here, since neither side of this debate fits either of your two categories.
Your mention of crunch is relevant though. I'd say part of a 'doing a better job teaching new players' request would include encounters built so that players with limited understanding of all the crunchy maneuvers and options are still likely to beat the enemies. For the first few sessions. Then yes making that crunch a more and more important part of needed game play as the players grow more proficient in the game system. But that's only my opinion. Very clearly, there are players who think anything less than 'full crunch mode on, you'd better have memorized every action starting from encounter 1 session 1 or you're gonna die' is diluting the purity of the wonderful swingyness the game should have.
I actually am for a table making the decision themselves about what they want.
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Does the beginner box send level +2 or +3 creatures at the party in 30ft rooms via railroading?
With no resources and no ability to tilt the fight in their favor?
Technically, the answer is yes, actually. That said, my party managed to get it to crit fail on a Fear spell, and well...awkward times were had by me after that. I want to say the enemy should be +2 at that point, with +3 if you go into it at level 1 (which some people have done).
If you crit fail a Chain Lightning save, a level 9 character with an 8 HP class with 16 Con goes from 100-0 on an average roll.
I don't hear you screaming about that.
Please note that I'm using this exact example because it's a +2 enemy with a crit attack - exactly the same situation as at level 1 that you keep screaming about.
This point ignores:
-The significant differences between rolling a save and having your AC targeted, such as the ability to hero point if you nat 1 and save improvement abilities (like evasive reflexes)
-The greatly increased ability of the party to recover from damage at higher levels (via just having more resources than they did at level 1)
-Massive damage, which is a much more significant threat in lower level encounters
-The amount of the time more you get hit by a strike than a top rank spell
And a ton of other things.
The spell can absolutely smash someone to the floor, yeah. I'm not going to deny that! But I think acting like a top rank Chain Lightning (which is notoriously strong on raw damage dice alone in exchange for the possibility of the AoE stopping) is comparable to a normal strike is a bit odd.
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There's just been a couple hundred posts with one set of folks suggesting that some adjustment be made to early levels to reduce single-bad-roll character death likelihood, but not necessarily objecting or saying anything about later level play. The above split is thus, IMO, a very inapt description of the discussion going on here, since neither side of this debate fits either of your two categories.
I was only answering the previous post. I've just skimed through the discussion and I don't think it's really interesting.
"Teaching", as it's the core of the discussion, is a complex job. I'd quote Wikipedia: "Small effects or lack of statistically significant effects have been found when evaluating many teaching methods rigorously with randomized controlled trials."
So the answer to the original (implied) question is certainly that there's no way to do a good or bad job at teaching new players how to play.
If Paizo really wants to design the game to teach itself, it needs to make a VTT module with pregen characters that plays like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Extremely on rails, but with choice at certain branching paths, simple AI scripts for the enemies, and full rules automation. Anything less can be failed by a new GM very easily.
What you're describing is a tutorial. And tutorials can't explain more than the basics of a game. PF2 is too complex to be taught that way. To learn PF2 you need to play it.
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So the answer to the original (implied) question is certainly that there's no way to do a good or bad job at teaching new players how to play.
That's just plainly wrong - I don't agree with Trip about most of their PF2 opinions, but I truly don't understand why they're getting the backlash they are for the concept that a game should incentivize new players to learn the game in a way that will actually be helpful for their future enjoyment of the game.
A game's design will absolutely impact the way that players learn to play; for instance, in a 20-level RPG, you could design it so that using melee attacks is the only way to do enough damage to win a fight for the first 10 levels - ranged attacks and spells are just uselessly low damage and don't provide enough support/debuffing/etc to be close to worthwhile. Everyone who starts at level 1, which is almost everyone on their first campaign, will learn to exclusively build melee characters, because that it was what the game is teaching them to do. If the game continues to put melee characters in a similar position of power for the next 10 levels as well, then it has taught them how to play the game successfully; the game design is terrible and I hate it, but it doesn't incentivize players to learn things that will ruin their later enjoyment. In comparison, if levels 11-12 suddenly all spells get incredibly OP, bows get replaced with guns which do massive damage, and monster damage went up massively so being in melee was a huge risk, then the game design has taught you to behave in such a way (only build all melee parties) that will ruin your future enjoyment (you will always get TPK'd once you get to level 11).
Sure, if you stick with the game long enough you'll figure out what has happened, and might learn to make switch hitters who focus more on ranged damage once they get to level 9-10 to prepare themselves for the change. You might even say it is a badge of honour that you have become an expert at a challenging game as one of the few people who managed (bothered) to do so. But the game design failed to teach you this, and that will cause people to have a less fun time, and that is not a good outcome. This isn't even saying it's bad or good game design overall - I think both of these hypothetical games are terribly designed, but one is designed well to incentivize learning the game properly.
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So the answer to the original (implied) question is certainly that there's no way to do a good or bad job at teaching new players how to play.That's just plainly wrong - I don't agree with Trip about most of their PF2 opinions, but I truly don't understand why they're getting the backlash they are for the concept that a game should incentivize new players to learn the game in a way that will actually be helpful for their future enjoyment of the game.
A game's design will absolutely impact the way that players learn to play; for instance, in a 20-level RPG, you could design it so that using melee attacks is the only way to do enough damage to win a fight for the first 10 levels - ranged attacks and spells are just uselessly low damage and don't provide enough support/debuffing/etc to be close to worthwhile. Everyone who starts at level 1, which is almost everyone on their first campaign, will learn to exclusively build melee characters, because that it was what the game is teaching them to do. If the game continues to put melee characters in a similar position of power for the next 10 levels as well, then it has taught them how to play the game successfully; the game design is terrible and I hate it, but it doesn't incentivize players to learn things that will ruin their later enjoyment. In comparison, if levels 11-12 suddenly all spells get incredibly OP, bows get replaced with guns which do massive damage, and monster damage went up massively so being in melee was a huge risk, then the game design has taught you to behave in such a way (only build all melee parties) that will ruin your future enjoyment (you will always get TPK'd once you get to level 11).
Sure, if you stick with the game long enough you'll figure out what has happened, and might learn to make switch hitters who focus more on ranged damage once they get to level 9-10 to prepare themselves for the change. You might even say it is a badge of honour that you have become an expert at a challenging game as one...
Because Trip H tends to post as though his opinion is absolute and irrefutable when it is their personal preference.
Stating something is bad game design as though we all can just see it and agree is a statement I'm not seeing. It's not something anyone has brought up much in the decades I've played.
On top of that, PF2 has taken especial measures to increase starting hit points by a substantial amount. If we're talking percentages, it's a doubling or slightly less for starting classes on top of making maximum hit points for standard progression.
Then Trip H is stating percentages based on some calculation I'm not seeing given how different the hit point totals are for different classes across all levels. So what class is Trip H basing this on? A 10 hit point martial, an 8 hit point class, a 6 hit point caster? What is this percentage based on?
What's the standard that Trip H is working off?
Should a caster not be able to be one shotted? A 10 hit point martial with heavy armor? An 8 hit point rogue? Where's the line?
What about at higher level when you have something like a group of Shining Children nuking a party with Sunburst doing massive damage that is hard to heal in the aggregate. Do we boost hit points at that level because bad rolls led to a party getting decimated?
Where do we draw this line on a PCs ability to get one-shotted or decimated quickly due to random crits or crit fails?
It's all not quite making sense. The math or the design concept.
If people wanted to engage in a real game design discussion of PF2 showing how the game tiers progression and how deadly it can get across levels, that would be interesting. But focusing all this on level 1 and 2 seems strange given I've experienced decimation at high levels in PF2.