How is Pathfinder 2 and other systems compared DnD and Pathfinder 1?

[enumag]

Not asking about rules differences. I’m asking about how the game feels while playing.

Years ago we started a DnD 4e group with a couple of friends, later switched to DnD 5 and now we’re playing Pathfinder 1. Here I’d like to share our experience with these various systems and ask how other system such as Pathfinder 2 work in comparison.

DnD 4e

We enjoyed a lot of fun with 4e. It offered a lot of options which we liked a lot. The character power and combat felt fairly balanced as well save for 2 characters (wizard and sorcerer) who had both high area damage output as well as being nearly immortal. These clearly deserved some nerfs but with a few tweaks it could be a well balanced game.

The downside here was that combat was very long. Some boss fights took several hours even. It was a problem if someone died in the middle of a battle because then the player had quite a bit of downtime (usually DM gave them some monsters to control.)

DnD 5

Adjusting to 5e took us some time since it was very different from 4e. But it’s fast combat solved our main issue from 4e and the balance was even better in this edition. But since we played DnD 5 while it was relatively new it had way less options for player characters compared to 4e. Though admittedly this is most likely what allowed it to have the best balance.

The biggest loss however was character power. It felt like the characters were no longer meant to become those near god-like beings we were used to from high-level 4e. The combat was swift and balanced but no longer felt epic which ultimately took away some of the fun.

Pathfinder 1

Last year we restarted the group again in Pathfinder 1. First few levels felt a bit sluggish before everyone settled on a character they were happy with. Combat is still as fast as DnD 5 and overall this system feels to be the most fun of the three. Decent balance, powerful characters and a ton of options which allow us to enjoy several entirely new playstyles which weren’t really possible in DnD.

The only downside here is that the combat (while still fairly balanced) feels very random. Since around level 10, winning the initiative is usually the decisive advantage and very often an enemy or a player is subjected to a “save or be irrelevant” effect (death, sleep, long daze, spellcasting block, confusion forcing random actions and so on).

----

What’s your opinion? Do you agree with our assessment of these systems? How would you rate other systems such as Pathfinder 2 in comparison?

[ExLibrisMortis]

The ups and downs you list for each system sound very familiar.

I've been told that 4e was often houseruled to mitigate the long combats, just halving monster hp to start with. On the other hand, a fairly common 3.5/PF houserule is to give everyone maximum hp per hit die, just to mitigate the high damage potential of DPS-built characters. So yeah, sounds familiar.

Initiative is a crucial stat that gets a lot of attention in 3.5/PF, particularly when fighting optimized opponents (e.g. in duels). Having the initiative is really crucial; being the first to get that save-or-suck off can win the battle on round 1. So yeah, that sounds familiar, too. (I'm not sure what the PF strategy is, but in 3.5, you optimize your immunities and immediate actions to mitigate save-or-suck effects.)

I can't comment on PF2, I'm afraid. I'll say that the threads I have read on the topic (on this forum) suggest that it was met with less than universal acclaim.

[Faily]

I can only make comparisons on D&D 5e and PF1.

Pathfinder 1
Of the two, I vastly prefer PF1. I enjoy the mechanical options available, I like Vancian casting (sue me), I like that there is much wider difference of characters even if they're from the same class, overall I like the fiddly mechanics, and I like things like Metamagics and such. I like how powerful I can feel with my character in PF1, and having done all sorts of adventures now ranging from "you're 1st level and you're fighting rats in the swamp" to battles where Wish and Miracle have been used to great effect as we've battled near-deity level threats. It's quite a trip to really grow a character from level 1 to 20 over the course of several years of play.

There are things I don't like for PF1, such as the bloat of useless feats (when they could've consolidated feats more to stop shafting the martials) and the lack of Skill Points in general for a lot of classes (a popular house rule with our group is making the minimum Skill Points 4+INT instead of 2+INT, with the exception of Wizards). Lots of things I wish could've been done better, but overall it's the game that works best for our playgroups and our playstyles.


D&D 5e
Now, I'm not saying that 5e is bad, and honestly it was somewhat refreshing to give it a proper playthrough for the first time this year in a campaign. I do like how 5e's Feats all feel good and important when you pick one, and there's no such thing as a "feat-tax". I liked some of the simplier things, like the Finesse-tag on certain weapons (which removes Weapon Finesse as *yet* another Feat you need to take for a certain build), the way cantrips get more powerful as you level up, ritual-casting, and consolidating a lot of the skills.

The negatives I don't like for 5e is that it feels like the mechanics don't progress anymore after a certain level (around level 10 or so) - a lot of classes seem to stop giving cool abilities after that point, spells are kind of... fine, but might as well just use those spell slots to cast your lower-level spell slots a lot of the time? I feel like the spell slots-mechanic is kind of... needlessly complicated, but that's mostly my opinion on how I prefer things. I am also really sad that Metamagic isn't a thing anymore (except for Sorcerer). Proficiency is a little meh and bland to me. I think what I dislike the most is the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic. I get that it makes things a lot simpler and fast-moving, but I just really don't like how dumbed down it is. "You're poisoned, prone, blind, and standing in a puddle of Grease, so you get Disadvantage. But because of [insert random thing], you have Advantage, so that cancels out all your Disadvantage". :smallconfused:


Conclusion: I think both D&D 5e and PF1 are fine games. I would even be so kind as to say that 5e is actually the game with the better coherent design and mechanics, when viewing it without my own personal preferences. But my own personal preferences is that PF1 is more fun for the kind of games I like to play and run. I won't ever choose to run a 5e game, and playing in a 5e game for me is like "eh, sure I guess?", whereas I will have a much greater interest in a PF1 game and will run (and have run) games with it.

[Kurald Galain]

Personally I like PF1 best for how it does Zero-To-Hero character growth. Enemies or obstacles that are a threat at low level are a speedbump at mid level and can't even touch you at high level. High level gameplay is markedly different from low level.

In 4E, high level gameplay is largely the same as low level, with bigger numbers. This is intentional on the part of the designers, who picked "the sweet spot" of a few levels in 3E and modelled the entire game after that. Based on printed adventures, you can fight a huge dragon at level 2 or a common city guard at level 15, in both cases with their numbers scaled to the party's level. That means there's no real sense of character growth.

In 5E, high level gameplay is largely the same as low level, with mostly the same numbers. Again intentionally designed that way, on grounds of "bounded accuracy", and the idea that low level grunts are still a threat when you're high level. You can go through ten levels of adventuring career growing only two points on a d20, meaning there's no real sense of character growth here, either. The game is honest and upfront that this is the point; it's just not my preference.

PF2 uses the same model as 4E (unsurprisingly, as it shares a few designers). This is best exemplified if you look at the game's top-tier "Legendary!!" abilities and how utterly mundane they are (e.g. communicating without a shared language, or inflicting "shaken" for two rounds, or cryptic hints from a religious book).

[Xervous]

Having read but not played PF2 I will stand by my assessment that they mostly just added 0.25 to the prior product (PF1 oft being referred to as 3.75)

PF2 has a flimsy illusion of choice in its progression, with choose your own class features being a poor veiling of what are essentially subclass chains in all but name. Racial features are gutted and spread out, with ribbons being weighted the same as actual impactful features. Combat numbers are both treadmilled like 4e and heavily constrained in range like 5e with few choices beyond class and optimal ‘subclass’ selection feeding into performance. Caster BFC is thoroughly gutted, mostly relegating them to plot prodding support monkeys. And if you want actual damage in combat you just roll up a ranger/fighter/etc (both of whom have negligible features beyond kill). And on top of this there’s a dozen minor keywords that carry various -1/2/3s on all manner of specific rolls, but that’s mainly for players to worry about because damage >> status effects generally. One example I find heavily at odds with how dumbed down the rest of the system is how shields behave. They take an action to ready (one of your three), increase AC by a slight margin, and actually absorb damage, possibly breaking in the process.

[Madsamurai]

Having read but not played PF2 I will stand by my assessment that they mostly just added 0.25 to the prior product (PF1 oft being referred to as 3.75)

PF2 has a flimsy illusion of choice in its progression, with choose your own class features being a poor veiling of what are essentially subclass chains in all but name. Racial features are gutted and spread out, with ribbons being weighted the same as actual impactful features. Combat numbers are both treadmilled like 4e and heavily constrained in range like 5e with few choices beyond class and optimal ‘subclass’ selection feeding into performance. Caster BFC is thoroughly gutted, mostly relegating them to plot prodding support monkeys. And if you want actual damage in combat you just roll up a ranger/fighter/etc (both of whom have negligible features beyond kill). And on top of this there’s a dozen minor keywords that carry various -1/2/3s on all manner of specific rolls, but that’s mainly for players to worry about because damage >> status effects generally. One example I find heavily at odds with how dumbed down the rest of the system is how shields behave. They take an action to ready (one of your three), increase AC by a slight margin, and actually absorb damage, possibly breaking in the process.

I've played the playtest but not the full release. My feeling on it largely agrees with Xervous. When building mid level characters I sometimes just didn't take all my skill feats because there were so few that mattered.

However, what p2 is good at is combat. Every class has interesting choices to make in combat and it altogether feels pretty dynamic and fun. The Monster design is varied too. Overall, it's the strongest part of the system.

Spells have been nerfed hard, but in all the wrong ways? Combats last 4 to 5 rounds but casters have less slots. So blasters feel even worse than in P1.

Out of combat, casters are still the only ones who can affect the narrative and spells-in-a-can items are more expensive. So if you want to explore under the lake I hope you brought a cleric or druid.

[Faily]

I've played the playtest but not the full release. My feeling on it largely agrees with Xervous. When building mid level characters I sometimes just didn't take all my skill feats because there were so few that mattered.

However, what p2 is good at is combat. Every class has interesting choices to make in combat and it altogether feels pretty dynamic and fun. The Monster design is varied too. Overall, it's the strongest part of the system.


I wasn't personally a huge fan of the combat-rules I've read of PF2, like the aforementioned Ready Shield action that Xervous mentioned which I personally find to be pretty blegh in terms of execution. Had shields been useful on their own, but had an increase if you used the Ready Shield, then I think it could've been better.

I don't feel like the 3 Action-system of PF2 is revolutionary or amazing (having again only read some of PF2's mechanics). If drawing comparisons, I feel like 5e actually did a better job of cleaning up the combat of PF/D&D (there's some things I wish could be better to with Bonus Actions for all classes, but that's another discussion).

[DrMartin]

I recently played quite a bit of PF2 and can share my experiences.

To frame where my opinion comes from, I have been playing (heavily houseruled and 3rd-partied) pathfinder 1 for years as my system of choice, but I have played (and had fun with) 4e (very little), 5e (a lot of it), and all previous versions of d&d (and many other systems, but that's beside the point).

I tried the PF2 Playtest and was quite disappointed. Since I was there when the original pathfinder launched, I had very little hope that the playtest would actually lead to significant changes or improvements, so when I got offered to play the finished version I was extremely skeptical. But it was still a game with good friends and I jumped into it, and oh boy am I happy I did.

They changed quite a lot from the Playtest. And really is a very different game from PF1, glancing at a few rules or abilities and trying to fit that into the PF1 framework really doesn't do it justice.

Playing PF2 has been really fun. So far I played a fighter, an alchemist, and a wizard, highest of which to level 9, and GMed one Society scenario, and running it has been very easy.

You will find a lot of posts in the web comparing PF2 it to PF1, but in my experience a more fitting parallel / comparison is to 5e, as both game share a somewhat common and more modern, streamlined design. Still a comparison with PF1 or 3.5 can be meaningful, especially on this forum, but after playing it PF2 really feels like a different game from PF1, not a patch or a "3.99".

I'll divide my impressions in thematic areas:

Character Creation

Comparing to 5e, you make more choices (one or two per level, no matter your class), and your numbers go up a lot more. Those choices you make tend to be individually smaller, but they sum up quite a bit. These choices have categories, so you'll rarely have a combat ability and a non-combat ability competing for the same character-building resource.

Comparing to 3.5/PF1, the character building minigame in PF2 feels more like a low-stake exercise like picking toppings for a pizza than piecing together a puzzle or a complex Lego kit. You pick your class and subclass at 1st and that gives you a strong archetypal foundation for your character. Feat choices you make after that improve on that, and you are rewarded for planning ahead and looking for synergies, but the "reward" is way smaller than in the older editions. The "risk", on the other hand, is very very low. You are going to get a functional character with effective things to do at the table no matter what you pick. (sort-of, obviously: there are edge cases, abilities that are better than others, etc....but the overall balance feels quite good).

You don't have the issue that skill focus and power attack compete for the same character resource, so all characters tend to end up with a toolkit of abilities, with a mix of combat and non combat. Characters feel more competent at their thing from the get-go than in 3.5/PF.

Combat

Combat is fun. Really fun. The 3 action system has a lot of clever implementations for both mundanes and casters. You can do basic combat maneuvers and be effective at them without investing special character resources, and a lot of spells have varied effects according to how many actions you decide to spend when casting them.

All the monsters have special abilities, all the characters have different things to do with their actions, so you almost never have a round of "I attack the monster, the monster attacks back".

There is more math and situational modifiers during combat than in 5e, but way way less than 3.5/PF. They have drastically reduced the nickle and dime modifiers but it's still Pathfinder and you will still probably have to find a place on the sheet to write "+1 to this specific use of this skill under this specific circumstances" and then forget about it when the time to apply that bonus actually comes around.

OTOH, the math behind critical hits makes it so that even small number differences matter a lot. So that +2 you get because of flanking / tripping / intimidate means you now hit on a 5 and crit on a 15, instead of on a 7 / 17 - and that is quite a larger difference than a "simple" +2, as crits often carry some rider effect with them. This encourages tactical play.

As a GM, the guidelines for building encounters felt really good and easy to use. The math behind the game is tight and my impression is they made a good job at balancing things, this time around.

Feel and Gameplay

5e design intention was that a large enough group of goblin is a treat at all levels. In pathfinder2 as you go up in level those goblins will never have a chance to touch you, and every attack of yours against them will be a critical, and every save they try against your spells will be a critical fail. A character good (well, legendary) at intimidation can just look at them funny and kill them.

The game assumes you get magic items. Casters are generally more balanced with martials than in previous editions, as long as the martials get their magic weapons. Not a big fan of this.

The biggest difference is that casters have way less avenues of sidestepping the rules of the game than in other editions. Save or suck / save or die spells have been hit hard with the nerf hammer and mostly do their real effect only on a critical fail, which only trigger reliably against lower-level opponents. Skill-substituting spells like knock now mostly enhance the use of a skill, rather than substituting it. Invisibility is still invisibility though.

You mostly don't have the "tutorial" levels you get in 5e until you pick your subclass or have to wait for a build to come together like in 3.5. I wrote mostly because Archetypes and Multiclass only comes online at level 2, so if your character concept really requires that, you have to wait a level to, say, be a Viking instead of a "regular" Fighter.

Your character comes online at level 1 and grows continuously in small, incremental steps. That said the game starts really being fun at level 5 or so, when you have picked up enough feats of different categories to have a varied toolkit of abilities at your disposal.

The power level scales to somewhere definitely lower than 3.5/PF. Haven't played higher than level 9 but combats didn't get significantly longer as we gained levels. Maybe someone else who has can comment on high level play.

The biggest difference to me is that all the big traditional game changing abilities are gated behind a rarity system and not available to players by default, so your character will have long distance teleport only if the GM allows. This is IMHO because Paizo = Adventure Paths, which are largely linear, and this new edition is especially designed to fit around that product.

High level usages of skill can achieve cool stuff but everything is still quite grounded in "believable" territory, which for me feels always kind of a meh decision in a game with magic and elves etc. A high level thievery use can steal the armor from someone while they are wearing it, but cannot steal their shadow or their desire to live like in Legendary Rogues or Exalted or games going for that kind of power level.

TLDR:

PF2 is really fun, more grounded and less crazy (for good or bad) than 3.5/PF1, more "rules, not rulings" than 5e.

[GrayDeath]

PF 1 or better 3.PF: My goto when we play anything D&Dish.
Why? because it does the "classic" D&D Zero to hero High Fantasy Power Fantasy/many Options Play best.

That said, it still has at elast 100 useless feats, and often (though less so since PF arrived) oftentimes requires counter-intuitive Class meshups to play what you actually want to play.
And people playing non FullC asters must be aware that, unless houseruled heavily, they will not matter in the area the Full Caster decides he wants to be good at.



D&D 4: Mechancially sound (not hard, given that 8 out of 10 classes FELT the same as well^^) but fluffwise and evolutionwise ...not ideal.
Also too gamey for our tastes (they left the In World explanations entirely with their Short Rest/Second Wind stuff).
We didnt play it long, but on the plus side, even newbs can build well working characters^^



D&D5: The most concise and in itself "complete" Game....sadly it tries very hard to eliminate the actual Draw D&D has for me.
Cauese let me be perfectly clear: If I want balance, or Low fantasy, or anything in that area, there are literally at least half a Dozen Games out there that do it better (main problem in that case is that they remained on rolling a large Die on small bonuses).
Bounded accuracy destroys the original D&D Feel entirely.
Mind, in itself, it makes for a much better balanced and more concise gameplay....just not a D&D one. ^^



PF2: I only read the latest beta and played 2 rounds.
It...seems to not know what it actually wants to be.
On the one hand, it added some interesting and flexible combat options.
On the other, the entire rest seems made up of "100es of Bonuses too small to amtter and too boring to engage with".
In case it wasnt clear: PF to totally went into a direction I do not enjoy.


Bonus:

Starfinder:

Corewise very solid and interesting Game....with the exception of the idiotic Weapon Rules. See, additional Damage Dice, which you need for anything but the most fragile Characters from mid levels onward, are insanely expensive.
That, and I would have liked mor Ritual/Science Options outside Combat.
Overall, if you houserule your weapons, a good game.

[stack]

When PF2 came out, the limits on what basic combat styles could be support by each class irled me, but the APG that came out this summer helped that significantly.

[Haggo]

I've never been bothered by the shield thing because I've seen enough of video game enemies put up their shield unless their attacking to get what they're going for.

[Pugwampy]

What’s your opinion? Do you agree with our assessment of these systems? How would you rate other systems such as Pathfinder 2 in comparison?


Are you asking for a non biased opinion on the best edition in the 3.PF section ?? :smallbiggrin:


I read a bit of 4th edition , to me it was a completely alien concept .
I read a bit of 5th edition it was a huge improvement but still I dont like the forced background story roleplaying . I am always happy if a player makes a backstory of his own initiative but i wont pressure him .

Pathfinder 1 filled in lots of noticeable areas that 3.5 seemed to leave out . Its easy to make the switch or even just have hybrid game .

[MonochromeTiger]

Personal opinion on comparing PF2 to D&D and PF1?

That's easy enough. I find PF2 worse in pretty much every regard, though I haven't tried or looked at the remaster content that's currently being released in an attempt to separate it further from its D&D roots and avoid WotC pulling something with legal trouble.

PF2 on release and even with supplemental material is basically hitting many of the same issues for me that jumping from 3.5 to 4e did for many people who mainly played D&D (and with good reason since 4e designers were working on it and the system as a whole feels like 4e was its main inspiration despite PF1's original appeal being to people who bounced off 4e). It may have some of the same things and a coat of paint meant to be reminiscent but it's just so vastly different in ways I dislike I can't make myself play it for too long without everything feeling off.

PF1 had its issues, feat investment especially for Martial classes was an example of that and consolidating some of those feats would have absolutely been an objective improvement, but PF2 doesn't fix any of those issues for me it just trades some for a different issue while making others worse. It tries to maintain the granularity of 3.5 and PF1 but it does so by gutting what was already there and making you pick up the pieces while acting like it's a good thing your character is objectively worse at their class than the same character would've been in PF1.

You end up with less variety and options because each class has a very limited niche in mind and breaking from it just leads to you being sub par in a game where a certain level of system mastery isn't just expected but required to break even. Everything falls into the issue that they just took existing options and whatever wasn't axed entirely was cut down into parts and ends up feeling soulless and empty. Everything is being carried with the constant calls of "but the math works" and "tight balance" but there are still elements that are released that are just objectively worse than others so even claims that everything is balanced better fall flat.

5e meanwhile I may have my issues with but it still feels more consistent in what it does than PF2. There may be less options and it's absolutely a game where they fully expect campaigns to end well before you get anywhere near 20 but going in I still feel like they pull off the full experience better than PF2 does.

In all the only positive I can think of for PF2 over PF1 or 3.5 or 5e is that I've repeatedly heard it's easier to GM, but that's hollow praise if my experience with it both as a player and as a GM has been that it's not fun for me.

[HumanFighter]

I have the Pathfinder 2e core rulebook on my bookshelf, where it sits and collects dust all day. Not that I despise the system or anything, I just find it tedious but would be willing to give it another chance someday, if another player/dm was insistent upon it.
I remember the one and only time I played Pathfinder 2e. I was a human ranger. The gameplay itself was...alright, I suppose. Not bad or anything, and the char. creation was not too bad either, pretty solid (at least for that time it was). However, I once tried to create an Elf Alchemist afterwards and I just gave up halfway through because I found it frustrating and tedious.

But you know, there is some good stuff in there. My time with the game is limited and I am not opposed to playing it, however it is quite low on my list of Games I want to play. At least 4th edition made me feel like a superhero, and without too much tedium (that is unless the table goes overboard, overflowing with status effects everywhere, AAGGGHH)

The progression system of 2e definitely favors having a computer with a character builder program on it, because on paper, oh man, every time you level up you gotta erase and re-write so many little numbers, like AC, all the skills, the spells, writing down ur new feats, etc. And I thought the power creep of Pathfinder 1 and D&D 3.5 was bad, but oh boy this takes the cake. The scaling is literally linear and feels fake and video-gamey to me. Still, despite the way I feel about this, I will say the game of Pathfind 2e does bring some interesting new things to the table, as far as combat goes. It is strategic and fun to plan out how you want to spend your actions on your turn. Do I attack more and fight more aggressively, or do I conserve my actions for helping out an ally, or moving to get to a more valuable/important target? It's a gamble, and it's exciting, and much prefer it over the action system of D&D 5e.

Also I am glad that Pathfind 2e made a more abstracted version of the weight system, with the system of Bulk. That was good, I thought.

[Rynjin]

It's probably my least favorite mainstream system ATM. Even setting aside my preference for Pathfinder 1e, PF 2e just doesn't stack up compared to other systems I enjoy. As a generic system, Savage Worlds is better. Purpose-built systems are better at their purpose. And for that very specific D&D style of fantasy, I would rather play PF1e or even 5e over PF2e.

It's extraordinarily meh.

[Snowbluff]

However, what p2 is good at is combat. Every class has interesting choices to make in combat and it altogether feels pretty dynamic and fun. The Monster design is varied too. Overall, it's the strongest part of the system.

Spells have been nerfed hard, but in all the wrong ways? Combats last 4 to 5 rounds but casters have less slots. So blasters feel even worse than in P1.


To comment on further, as I do not particularly like the combat systems, I think the game is in a weird place because of the removal of the caster level to damage mechanics of PF1. It kinda makes sense to me in the streamlined 5e, there's nothing to refer to but EXACTLY what you just used to cast the spell. You do how much damage the spell says with no calculation, with an adjustment for spell slot you used, which are always flexible in 5e.

Pathfinder 2 does this too. However, this leads to some issues, where they have to make spell damage based classes have to have the highest level slots in order to scale properly. This leads to a mess where Magus has 4 spell slots where they have to prepare exactly what damage spells they need at the start of the day. PF1 handles the same concept a lot more elegantly, since Magus's damaging spells will scale with their levels, and they have a more robust number of spell slots to last them in their day. This also loops around with how cantrips work, with scale with spell slot which then scales with the level. There's just a lot of text describing how to handling "x dice per level," and magus has to have 3 different resource pools for handling focus spells, normal spells, and scholarly ones because of this. This is part of what I like to call the "Pathfinder Ouroboros," where there are rules to solve a problem that PF2's rules invented for itself in the first place.

On top of that, Magus's action economy is kinda wack since Spell Strike takes a turn's worth of actions to pull off. Yes, maybe I did just play a magus in a one shot, and maybe the fighter did literally nothing but basic strikes and do way better. :smalltongue:



I don't feel like the 3 Action-system of PF2 is revolutionary or amazing (having again only read some of PF2's mechanics). If drawing comparisons, I feel like 5e actually did a better job of cleaning up the combat of PF/D&D (there's some things I wish could be better to with Bonus Actions for all classes, but that's another discussion). The 3 action system is an interesting idea. Like a lot of PF2, it's ideas are terribly executed.

There is nothing fun or innovative about PF2's execution of it's action system. The optimal turn for a stabby guy is 2 actions attacking, and 1 buffing/debuffing, which is analogous to a Full Attack (even with iterative attack penalty, now just called MAP, it self a Pathfinder Ouroboros, so they can file the serial numbers off) and swift action feature. The optimal turn for a castery guy is 2 actions on a spell (which are virtually all 2 actions) then 1 action on buff/debuff, which is analogous to PF1's just casting a spell then maybe using a swift action feature. There is a whole system of tags and rules on how and when I spend my actions and when I do... just so I can play the same way I do in PF1.

I really do appreciate 5e decoupling movement from attack and removing BAB penalty. It does a lot more for my game's running smoothly than PF2's action system.



In all the only positive I can think of for PF2 over PF1 or 3.5 or 5e is that I've repeatedly heard it's easier to GM, but that's hollow praise if my experience with it both as a player and as a GM has been that it's not fun for me. I'm not even sure if PF2's reputation for being easily run is at all earned. A lot of people I've run it with are using tools like Foundry or other character builders to streamlined thumbing through the rules, which while good, still don't keep me from getting a migraine while trying to figure out feats of each category. While 5e often gets lampooned for having GM adjudication, the game rules for PF2 repeatedly and explicitly call for it. 5e gets roasted because people don't conform to its guidelines for resource management nor any of the myriad variants to make it fit with tables, but PF2 also has daily resources in the form of spell slots, but no adventuring day to make sense of in the rules.

There's definitely a mythology around PF2 that I do not think is reflected in how it plays, and the discrepancy drives me nuts.

EDIT: Ok I'll talk about it. I don't like the shield rule. I think it was Keltest had a sardonic quip about the fantasy of playing a character who was too dumb to use both arms that I thought was on point.

Also I hate PF2's movement. Each mode is its own action, which is paltry compared to PF1's movement system having jumping/etc being checks made during your move action. In fact, a lot of things in the game simply take actions where they wouldn't in prior systems. It's a very high number, and it definitely feels punitive when you need an action to put your hand back onto a 2 handed weapon you are holding.

[truemane]

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