Pathfinder 2e - How does it compare to other systems?

[Dallahan]

My groups current campaign is wrapping up and we're looking at starting a new one. I've been considering running our next campaign using Pathfinder 2e, but am unfamiliar with the system and would like to get an idea of how it compares to other systems. Our group started with D&D 3.5 but that was years ago and when we ran a one shot with it recently we found the system far clunkier than we remembered.

The last campaign I ran for the group was D&D 4e, which we all really enjoyed it and I greatly appreciated the encounter building rules. However, a couple of my players enjoy min-maxing and by the end of it I was struggling to create challenging encounters and was overusing enemies with paralysis and hypnosis abilities to keep up with the parties power level.

Since then we've played quite a bit of 5th edition but reached the point where we've gotten a bit bored of the system and its lack of depth. Our current campaign is Shadow of the Demon Lord, which has been quite fun but I would prefer a slightly meatier system for our next game. The campaign plan to run next will be more classic fantasy, with some weirder elements on the periphery, with a good balance of investigation, exploration and combat. I'm wondering how Pathfinder 2e compares to the aforementioned systems in that regard, and how much strain it puts on the GM when it comes to encounter building, especially with min-maxed PC's.

[stoutstien]

You'll probably be better off with PF 1e rather than 2e.

PF 2e math is extraordinary right so it's difficult to feel like you are above any sort of curve based on meta or in game choices.

[Kurald Galain]

a good balance of investigation, exploration and combat.
Out of the systems you mention, the only one that has solid rules for investigation and exploration is PF1 / 3.5. The other systems all default to "yeah, just roll your favorite skill and make something up".

PF1 is less clunky than 3.5, although moreso than 5E. PF2 is more clunky than 3.5; it has a lot of little fiddly parts and tiny modifiers that you need to track even though they make no difference in practice.

HTH.

[falconflicker]

Many of the noncombat subsystems from PF1 were updated in the Gamemastery Guide, and then incorporated into the Remaster's GM Core.

They have a reasonably in-depth Hexploration (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3103) subsystem, a Research (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3045) subsystem which can be used for investigation, an Influence (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3040) subsystem to track more in-depth social encounters, subsystems for Chases (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3049), Heists (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3059), Duels (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3084), and for Creating your own organizations (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=3084).

The links are all to the Archives of Nethys, a free, officially supported site that contains all of the rules. Take a look at them and see if they fit your play style.

[NRSASD]

Speaking as someone who grew up playing 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, switched to 5E, then switched to PF2E, I strongly second Kurald's comments. There are tons of fiddly details that have to be tracked and don't make much of a difference. We're running a long campaign in it and it has been very fun learning another approach for solving the same problems, but I don't think we'll play more of it after this campaign.

One of the unwritten assumptions of the system is that you have to focus on debuffing enemies vigorously to stand a chance of actually hurting them. That's fine, but it was a major shift for my players. Also, you can easily feel like you're treading water rather than progressing if you aren't careful.

For my table, in my experience, it is easier to homebrew a bespoke d20 system that does what I want rather than force 5E or PF2E into a contorted shape.

[Just to Browse]

Similar things to 4e:
Out of combat stuff mostly boils down to progress clocks the way 4e skill challenges do. You can easily ignore all out of combat systems in favor of SCs, or whatever else you were already doing.
Monsters and classes still have roles (sort of, see downsides)
Still lots of room for optimizers to do their thing.
Upsides over 4e that I think you'll enjoy:
Player options are significantly more constrained. It's harder for a player to shoot themselves in the foot (though still possible), and harder to over-optimize. This makes balancing combats for high levels much easier.
The numbers from PF2 rouuuuuughly match PF1/3e, so you quickly reference tables from those books without needing to use them.
Potential downsides to be aware of over 4e:
While monster & PC roles exist, they're hidden. You're expected to just sorta figure it out. Parties will need some kind of out-of-combat healer for example, but the game doesn't emphasize that as hard as it should.
Magic is closer to the vancian 3e casters, and spellcasters tend to be weak in combat compared to their martial counterparts at low levels, which some players can bounce off of.
The way the game is presented, horizontal power seems like it could be a pretty useful thing (like using archetypes to dabble in casting). This is generally a trap, and will put any PC who takes it behind their companions. I mention this because (IMO) it's not uncommon for a 4e character to dabble in a little striking or leading when the best power at their level just happens to be striker-y/leader-y. For all its flexibility, PF2 can feel inflexible. Depending on your playgroup, this inflexibility could be a little frustrating.

On the whole, based on your description, I think the system would be a good fit for you.

[JusticeZero]

I'll just ask, have you considered leaving the D&D-like ecosystem entirely? Maybe going backward to an old edition (though you'll lose depth), or something else like Cairn, or an Odd-like such as Mausritter, or a D6 game, Runequest, or something else? Pathfinder has always been similar to D&D in various ways, and I've been hearing a lot of frustration with things that are distinctive aspects of the D&D-ish arm of gaming.

[Serafina]

If you liked D&D 4E you'll likely enjoy PF 2E.
All the rules content is available for free on the Archives of Nethys (https://2e.aonprd.com/?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1) (it lags behind a few months with the newest releases, but is well maintained).

It obviously has solid combat - notably the 3-action economy putting a premium on certain actions and movement. You have to consider whether you want to make an additional attack or instead intimidate an enemy, or instead reposition yourself, and that's before you get into spells or feats that take up multiple actions.
It's system for critical success and failures is also pretty neat - it doesn't depend solely on lucky rolls (nat 20s/1s) but instead of beating/missing a target number by 10. So it's more of a reward for being good at a task, and the game reflects that - a critical success on a saving throw typically evades damage entirely, for example.
Bonuses come in three types - circumstance, status (=magical) and item. You apply the strongest of each type, that's it, it nicely reduces bookkeeping IME.

It does have an exploration system (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2573). A lot of actions are tagged exploration (https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=595), denoting that they're actions you take while exploring and that modify how you go about it.
Whether that is what you are looking for, I can't tell you, but you should be able to decide on that for yourself.

Investigation is something that lives in several rule sections. Some of it happens during encounters (especially social encounters), some of it happens during exploration, and some of it happens during Downtime (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2604) (e.g. using Underworld Lore to find out where a stolen item ended up, one of the given examples).

Personally, I quite like building characters in Patfhinder 2E.
You get plenty of options, particularly once you take Archetypes (which is also where multiclassing lives, it's similar to 4E) into account. Options are however much more balanced against each other than in other editions - particularly in terms of numbers.
You may be familiar with the addage that if one option is way stronger than the other, there really are no options. I run into this issue way less often with PF2E than with other D&D-adjacent games.
I quite enjoy min-maxing, and it's still something I can do in PF2E - it's just the version where I make a character good at specific things, rather than making them overwhelmingly strong.


So yeah, that's a recommend from me.

[Kurald Galain]

If you liked D&D 4E you'll likely enjoy PF 2E.
I disagree. 4E has far more diversity in both build options and tactics, to the point where 4E has a dedicated character role for crowd control, and PF2 basically bans crowd control from existing.

[Serafina]

Build Diversity is easy to judge by just reading the material (or some guides), and I'd say that PF2E competes with D&D 4E quite handily there if you ignore the diversity that gets added by Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies.
If you want something like Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies, then you can just use the Free Archetype (https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2751) rules - having a second progression track of class-like features should feel pretty familiar!
With Free Archetype in play PF2E has IMO very high build diversity.


It's certainly true that PF2E does not have the same type of Crowd Control that D&D 4E has.
Neither did D&D 3.5, nor does D&D 5E, nor does PF1E. 4E was pretty unique in that regard.
You can play a Defender. Whether that is simply by picking up a Champion and using their defensive/retributive Reactions, or by using the Shield Warden (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4807) feat to protect nearby allies, or by playing any martial character and making use of Trip, Shove, and Reposition together with Reactive Strike (https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2256).
There is also another Defender-oriented class, the currently-in-playtest (https://downloads.paizo.com/WarOfImmortalsPlaytest.pdf) Guardian. It'll hopefully get a few improvements in it's actual release, but it's certainly more oriented towards being a Defender than any class in anything D&D-adjacent outside of 4E.

[stoutstien]

I disagree. 4E has far more diversity in both build options and tactics, to the point where 4E has a dedicated character role for crowd control, and PF2 basically bans crowd control from existing.

It has CC it just doesn't feel like it because it has a high mandatory maneuver threshold built-in. Debuffs are CC because of the way the action system works. A bombing alchemist can debuff groups into lockdown regularly but they are expected to. Then you have runes that stack on everything else.

It basically boils down to action economy manipulation which can feel off if you prefer the aesthetic of actually locking somebody down.

[Kurald Galain]

Debuffs are CC
No, there is a very fundamental difference between "debuffs" and "CC". You might as well claim that PF2 has CC because it redefines CC to mean "non-weapon damage". I mean that's technically correct but also pretty meaningless.

Anyway, my point is that pretty much none of the 4E fans I know (including myself) actually enjoy PF2. And you might have noticed that our 4E forum on this very site has not, in fact, had an upsurge of 4E fans who enjoy PF2, either.

[stoutstien]

No, there is a very fundamental difference between "debuffs" and "CC". You might as well claim that PF2 has CC because it redefines CC to mean "non-weapon damage". I mean that's technically correct but also pretty meaningless.

Anyway, my point is that pretty much none of the 4E fans I know (including myself) actually enjoy PF2. And you might have noticed that our 4E forum on this very site has not, in fact, had an upsurge of 4E fans who enjoy PF2, either.

I mean what is the difference between making an action impossible and making the action cost more therefore impossible other than feel?

I'm not defending PF2 at all. I think it's a bunch of fiddly math that doesn't lead to anything worthwhile. It's false depth. Complexity for the sake of it that doesn't really increase the number of viable options. it just hides the few good ways to do stuff in a pile of useless options that are flat out traps. Overdesigned is a good word for it.

I find it attracts people who are more excited about planning to play than actually playing but it also doesn't have a high amount of potential discovery in that process either.

[Corsair14]

As someone who initially read the rule book when it came out and felt it was far too complicated(not to the shadowrun level of insanity) I put it on my shelf and went and my group played 5e, then we had a long 2e ravenloft campaign, then we played rifts(uggg you want bad rules, go play a Paladium system with MDC). My turn to DM rolled around again and I saw a few videos on pathfinder and we picked it up and had a really good time once we got the hang of it. I cant go back to 5e, its horrible by comparison. The combat in pathfinder is far more fun and in depth than in any other fantasy RPG I have played outside of Warhammer FRPG. Its actually fun for the DM and isnt just roll a dice and swing. Skills actually mean something, not everyone can do everything. The critical and fumble city is awesome, especially if you get the cards.

I cant really comment on the campaign world as I tend to run old 2e campaign worlds which are pretty easy to convert over and restat appropriately. I use 2e because Wizards has failed us on bring old ones back repeatedly, and the Pathfinder world just seems kind of kitchen sink. I prefer more traditional (LOTR/Conan-esque)worlds without all the silly animal races being happily welcomed everywhere and orcs, halfings, and drow sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya :P.

Also characters in pathfinder while they get powerful abilities early on, healers especially, the CR of monsters and such goes up accordingly so they dont seem have the same silly super hero feel that characters in 5e have. Overall I enjoy DMing and playing PF2 far more than any other current system. I recommend watching videos about it on youtube and not getting overwhelmed with the numbers until you see it in practice and how it meshes.

[Psyren]

I remember during the whole OGL debacle when a ton of 5e youtubers jumped over to PF2 just to try it out, and they found a number of things they liked for martials and some of the gishes. But I remember how telling it was that none of them had anything good to say about the pure spellcasters, and it all came down to the godawful saving throw system PF2 uses, where most spells need a crit fail to begin approaching the level of 5e magic. It just wasn't exciting, and I saw pretty much all of them bounce off PF2 and return to 5e as a result. (Well, that, and their rapidly dwindling views.)

[Rynjin]

Pretty much, yeah. Paizo tried to ape the Mutants and Masterminds paradigm for saves without including the supplementary systems that make that good, like saves being inversely proportional. In M&M you can essentially have a really high Fort or Will, but not both, etc. so every character either has a glaring weak point to target or is okay at all saves but great at none.

[Anonymouswizard]

I remember during the whole OGL debacle when a ton of 5e youtubers jumped over to PF2 just to try it out, and they found a number of things they liked for martials and some of the gishes. But I remember how telling it was that none of them had anything good to say about the pure spellcasters, and it all came down to the godawful saving throw system PF2 uses, where most spells need a crit fail to begin approaching the level of 5e magic. It just wasn't exciting, and I saw pretty much all of them bounce off PF2 and return to 5e as a result. (Well, that, and their rapidly dwindling views.)

To be fair Pathfinder 2e (and Starfinder before it) are also trying really hard to stop caster dominance. The designers seem to have overcorrected to the point that many spells aren't actually viable, and magic really needed a go over to have more interaction with the action economy (far too many spells are two actions).

Sadly I don't believe the Remaster actually fixes many spells, and I don't own it (I sadly bought 2e about six months before it was announced, and want to get some use out of those original books).

[Psyren]

To be fair Pathfinder 2e (and Starfinder before it) are also trying really hard to stop caster dominance. The designers seem to have overcorrected to the point that many spells aren't actually viable, and magic really needed a go over to have more interaction with the action economy (far too many spells are two actions).

Sadly I don't believe the Remaster actually fixes many spells, and I don't own it (I sadly bought 2e about six months before it was announced, and want to get some use out of those original books).

I know what they were going for and why, but in sanding off those edges they removed too much of what made PF1 and D&D exciting; those "big swing" moments where PCs feel awesome and like they saved the day. When the DM can throw a Deadly number of goblins at the party but the Bard is able to cut the oncoming horde in half instantly with a well-positioned hypnotic pattern, that feels amazing - and even the Fighter and Rogue then get to then do their thing by wading into the unhypnotized half of the enemy a lot more safely.

PF2 might be different than 4e in execution, but they had a similar idea at their core - chasing the unicorn of parity to the corners of the earth, even if the end result is a system with nearly all the excitement of its predecessor extricated.

[Xihirli]

I really love playing and running pathfinder, my players include two full spellcasters and my characters include one (a cleric).

I can also attest to a LOT of moments where spells wildly swung the battlefield in huge moments, from an enemy fireball that downed half the party to a set of debuffs that reduced an enemy’s armor class by 3 to just let the monk go wild. And there was a spell I cast as a Cleric that gave our party melee hitter a ranged weapon that dealt fire damage against an enemy that was vulnerable to it and out of range.

I recently started a new game as a fighter and the party bard has been instrumental (ha) so far. Plus magic HAS done plenty of damage.

My response to anyone who says they’re interested in Pathfinder 2 is "try it! I think you’ll like it!"

[MonochromeTiger]

Going to throw my comment in on the "they overcorrected" side of things as far as magic goes, but with the further point they also overcorrected on self reliance vs team play.

Frankly, if magic managed to swing things in a fight then you were already so close that a minor buff/debuff would've pushed things to a decisive win in another game. Magic in Pathfinder 2 caps out somewhere around where a decent crowd control spell would have in Pathfinder, meanwhile AoE damage is pretty much the only real damage role that magic classes are really allowed by the system. The problem isn't that magic can't do damage at all or that its spells can't have any effect it's that the damage it can do and the effect it has is fit into very specific bands of intended effect with the "full" effect being stuck behind your opponent crit-failing their save just to meet what would have been the normal effect an edition before.

Meanwhile Fighter is the standard around which damage in the game is based, and it still merely performs "adequate." That's part of the issue, they've combated over-optimization in 2e by lowering the ceiling for performance on an individual level to barely adequate and group play to "decent", the floor meanwhile is still much lower. Magic classes doing "well" are playing buff/debuff cheerleader and occasionally throwing out an AoE in a way that closely mirrors 4e's "alright we need to stack up all our +1s and all their -1s" where filling the checklist each fight is worked into the expected difficulty of each encounter as the standard of play. You aren't going to break the game or really swing things in a way that it didn't already fully account for because they have taken all the flashy toys' legs off at the knees and narrowed the range of abilities to the point that your party is either playing as the game expects you to or playing badly with highly predictable results for both.

Depending on what you want out of the game all of this may be a good thing for you. Perhaps you're tired of magic users having a spell that just shuts something down and happening to have it prepped during the encounter it's most useful for, PF2's solution to that is that magic users are much more limited in what they can actually do unless your GM is either fudging rolls or improbably unlucky with saves and intentionally setting enemies up where AoE is always the answer. Perhaps you're tired of one of your players just not realizing it's a team game and toning down their optimizing to be in line with the rest of the party, PF2's solution is a design philosophy where everyone is largely incapable of accomplishing anything of actual value alone to keep anyone from "carrying the fight" but also punishing trying to perform too far out of their class's designated roles. Perhaps you're a GM who is frustrated about how inaccurate CR can be with some monsters punching way above their weight, PF2's solution is that just about every monster is set up to run fairly predictably without nearly as much in the way of abilities that can quickly turn the fight one way or another unless the players are doing things very foolishly.

PF2's solution to just about every problem is to keep cutting off the edges until everything fits within a tightly controlled maximum for performance somewhere far below what Pathfinder had. Essentially "we knew how this level of play worked so lets just take that and stretch it over the entire gameplay experience" but even with the focus on math it still has places where things fray and you end up with the average player straining to still maintain that standard of "meets expectations." To accomplish this everyone ends up less capable on their own, everything has been squished into such a narrow box that anyone standing out and having a moment to shine is either a result of someone or something else being played badly or amounts to what Pathfinder would consider just a normal move working as intended; very few things are objectively terrible but the "worse" options are still present and can add up especially if you try to push anything out of its invisible role. In Pathfinder you could take a "bad" build and still accomplish something interesting with it, in PF2 a bad build is just objectively bad. In Pathfinder you could take a good build and pull off things that get remembered for years, in PF2 the idea of anyone really being a standard fantasy hero is treated like something to be ashamed of and your grand accomplishments amount to being 4-6 random people who only get anything done because you all happen to be working together while struggling through the problem.

Thing is quite a bit of this is clear on how it got there. It's similar to the jarring move from D&D 3.5 to 4e complete with the designers swearing up and down it's a natural evolution of the mechanics. Partially because some of the same people behind 4e are or were involved in PF2 and most of the differences between the two systems are either down to them realizing most people hated something and changing it slightly or the more recent remaster trying to distance the system as much as possible from anything WotC might sue over if they manage to scrap the OGL. As Psyren puts it they were chasing the unicorn of parity, and that's not necessarily a bad goal but the way they did it was stripping most of the individual worth from things and turning most of the "options" into the same thing worded differently then putting whatever people thought the biggest offenders were in the corner and pinning them in.

[Psyren]

The problem isn't that magic can't do damage at all or that its spells can't have any effect, it's that the damage it can do and the effect it has is fit into very specific bands of intended effect with the "full" effect being stuck behind your opponent crit-failing their save just to meet what would have been the normal effect an edition before.

This is exactly what it feels like. And frankly, it sucks. Even in the fiction, it makes me wonder why anyone would bother being a spellcaster in Golarion anymore. An enemy crit-failing something should be a "holy crap, I did that??" moment, not a "finally, my magic spell is kinda doing what it's advertised to do" moment. Like the PF2 Sleep spell doesn't actually keep targets asleep unless you heighten it all the way to 4th level, making it useless in combat - what the heck am I using it for then, shutting down fussy toddlers?


Depending on what you want out of the game all of this may be a good thing for you. Perhaps you're tired of magic users having a spell that just shuts something down and happening to have it prepped during the encounter it's most useful for, PF2's solution to that is that magic users are much more limited in what they can actually do unless your GM is either fudging rolls or improbably unlucky with saves and intentionally setting enemies up where AoE is always the answer. Perhaps you're tired of one of your players just not realizing it's a team game and toning down their optimizing to be in line with the rest of the party, PF2's solution is a design philosophy where everyone is largely incapable of accomplishing anything of actual value alone to keep anyone from "carrying the fight" but also punishing trying to perform too far out of their class's designated roles. Perhaps you're a GM who is frustrated about how inaccurate CR can be with some monsters punching way above their weight, PF2's solution is that just about every monster is set up to run fairly predictably without nearly as much in the way of abilities that can quickly turn the fight one way or another unless the players are doing things very foolishly.

PF2's solution to just about every problem is to keep cutting off the edges until everything fits within a tightly controlled maximum for performance somewhere far below what Pathfinder had. Essentially "we knew how this level of play worked so lets just take that and stretch it over the entire gameplay experience" but even with the focus on math it still has places where things fray and you end up with the average player straining to still maintain that standard of "meets expectations." To accomplish this everyone ends up less capable on their own, everything has been squished into such a narrow box that anyone standing out and having a moment to shine is either a result of someone or something else being played badly or amounts to what Pathfinder would consider just a normal move working as intended; very few things are objectively terrible but the "worse" options are still present and can add up especially if you try to push anything out of its invisible role. In Pathfinder you could take a "bad" build and still accomplish something interesting with it, in PF2 a bad build is just objectively bad. In Pathfinder you could take a good build and pull off things that get remembered for years, in PF2 the idea of anyone really being a standard fantasy hero is treated like something to be ashamed of and your grand accomplishments amount to being 4-6 random people who only get anything done because you all happen to be working together while struggling through the problem.


This too. And I don't mean to shade people who enjoy this kind of tightly pre-cut balance. But it's just not for me. I want to have a lot of levers I can pull to challenge or surprise the players and have them surprise me.


Thing is quite a bit of this is clear on how it got there. It's similar to the jarring move from D&D 3.5 to 4e complete with the designers swearing up and down it's a natural evolution of the mechanics. Partially because some of the same people behind 4e are or were involved in PF2 and most of the differences between the two systems are either down to them realizing most people hated something and changing it slightly or the more recent remaster trying to distance the system as much as possible from anything WotC might sue over if they manage to scrap the OGL. As Psyren puts it they were chasing the unicorn of parity, and that's not necessarily a bad goal but the way they did it was stripping most of the individual worth from things and turning most of the "options" into the same thing worded differently then putting whatever people thought the biggest offenders were in the corner and pinning them in.

I'm very happy that the folks looking for this kind of design have a clear and popular frontrunner to show to their groups. But when they sit there lamenting that they still don't know how 5e is so popular and the folks who like it are trapped or blind and how on earth can people not just mass exodus to their game that is clearly Ao's gift to the hobby and I'm just... I know full well what PF2 is doing and I'm not interested. I've played it before, I likely will play it again, but it won't ever be my "main" TTRPG.

[catagent101]

I feel weird about the complaint that spells only "do their thing" on a crit fail because the only examples I can think of are spells that would be blatantly broken if they could pull it off consistently.

[JNAProductions]

I've barely played it, and the setup for the game was a little weird.
Game died early on, but character creation was much more reminiscent of 3.P than 5E. Lots of fiddly things without immediately clear ramifications.

I will, however, echo Xihirli here. Just because it's got most (or all?) its content online, so it doesn't cost anything to try. Might as well.

[Psyren]

I feel weird about the complaint that spells only "do their thing" on a crit fail because the only examples I can think of are spells that would be blatantly broken if they could pull it off consistently.

Your definition of "broken" doesn't align at all with mine then. Not saying it needs to obviously, but for people who tried bringing casters from 5e to PF2 and ended up thoroughly disillusioned with the latter - like myself - this disconnect might explain why.

Let's take a simple 1st-level control spell that exists in both games as an example: Command.

The 5e version of Command (https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/command)'s primary use is to shut down a single monster's turn, usually by either ending it early or making them burn their lone Action on something ineffective or disadvantageous - or both. for example "Command: Approach" makes the monster burn their movement on getting next to you, and even if they get within 5ft before running out of movement or needing to Dash, they immediately end their turn rather than being able to attack. The range is also 60ft, so you have considerable leeway when it comes to standing on your backline and pulling enemy creatures out of position for your martial allies to chew up. Lastly, the creature is moving under its own power, so it counts as volitional and therefore provokes OAs.

The PF2 version of Command (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1470) meanwhile will only have the above functionality on a critical failure, which consumes all three of the target's actions. On a normal failure, the monster only needs to use one of its three actions obeying the Command and can then act normally. So you hit a creature with Command:Approach, they get a normal failure, they walk towards you, and then they can bash your face in, or walk away again, or cast a spell of their own, or whatever else. And the range is 30ft, so to even use it, you yourself have to be much closer to the frontline. And I don't remember the OA rules in PF2, but I think only certain classes can do them? It just got nerfed into the ground and I have no idea why. Did I miss all the online discourse lamenting how "broken" the Command spell was in PF1 or 5e?

[catagent101]

FWIW I was thinking in terms of spells like Cursed Metamorphosis (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1479) (formerly Baleful Polymorph). Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

[Hunter Noventa]

My group has been running the Kingmaker AP for PF2, and issues with the module itself aside (The whole Kingdom Building aspect was not well playtested at all and has a host of problems) we are really running into the same issues that others are seeing regarding magic.

We recently had a 'boss fight' against a creature that was on level above us, and while part of this was certainly the dice, not a single one of my debuff spells were able to land, all of them were saved against, even against its weakest save. And this has been a running trend, my most effective spells are those that don't allow a save at all, which are few and far between. When your spells are only allowed to have their full effect on 'effectively' a natural 1, it feels really bad.

It sucks because PF2 does a lot of other things right! The martials are clearly having a great time. The ancestry and free archetype systems are a lot of fun. Being able to move weapon and armor bonuses around freely really ease the pain of finding a weapon no one wants to use. (Though on the flip side, spellcasters have basically no way to spend resources to increase their to-hit or Save DCs).

Once we finish the AP, my group is very likely to shift back to PF1, but backporting what works from PF2 like the three-action system ( which was an optional rule that showed up late in PF1's lifecycle), weapon and armor runes and a few other things.

[Xihirli]

Let's take a simple 1st-level control spell that exists in both games as an example: Command.


That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

[Psyren]

Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

It meets the bare minimum low bar of the spell's name... but if their goal was to attract people from D&D or even PF1, it feels a lot worse.


That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

You're forgetting that at low levels, the PCs are a lot more likely to have a spellcaster on staff than the bad guys are. So yeah, when you storm the goblin lair and they have a Shaman who debuffs everyone (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0011.html) or makes your Fighter break formation, that's a Big Deal. It makes that fight feel very different. That's a good thing, even if it means more danger.

But with the edges sanded off instead, that moment becomes a meh.

[MonochromeTiger]

FWIW I was thinking in terms of spells like Cursed Metamorphosis (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1479) (formerly Baleful Polymorph). Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

Have to agree with Psyren again here. If your only goal is "alright the name kind of works" then fine but as for me I generally want magic to do more than mildly inconvenience something in the same way I want martials to do more than just be "that guy who lifts weights has a stick now." PF2 feels like they were afraid of the first throwing things off so they kneecapped it, but at the same time they don't actually fix the second they just decide "problem solved we'll lower the bar and that will be the new normal."

Arguably what they have in place may be worse than just taking some of these spells out entirely. Keeping to the Command example, in most cases you are unlikely to even see the enemy crit-fail their save, you are instead going to see the closest you get to success being to take up a single action doing what you want from a very limited list and generally undoing it with their next action. At best you waste as many actions as it takes just to cast the spell, at worst you've just spent two of your three actions and the enemy uses basically beats your face in through malicious compliance. Pathfinder had its own problems but generally if you needed CC you knew a spell was going to give you actual CC.


My group has been running the Kingmaker AP for PF2, and issues with the module itself aside (The whole Kingdom Building aspect was not well playtested at all and has a host of problems) we are really running into the same issues that others are seeing regarding magic.

We recently had a 'boss fight' against a creature that was on level above us, and while part of this was certainly the dice, not a single one of my debuff spells were able to land, all of them were saved against, even against its weakest save. And this has been a running trend, my most effective spells are those that don't allow a save at all, which are few and far between. When your spells are only allowed to have their full effect on 'effectively' a natural 1, it feels really bad.

It sucks because PF2 does a lot of other things right! The martials are clearly having a great time. The ancestry and free archetype systems are a lot of fun. Being able to move weapon and armor bonuses around freely really ease the pain of finding a weapon no one wants to use. (Though on the flip side, spellcasters have basically no way to spend resources to increase their to-hit or Save DCs).

Once we finish the AP, my group is very likely to shift back to PF1, but backporting what works from PF2 like the three-action system ( which was an optional rule that showed up late in PF1's lifecycle), weapon and armor runes and a few other things.

Part of that, as far as I can tell, is that the scaling of Saves is one of the things that they really didn't work out as well as they could have as levels progress. Especially in cases where the enemy is above you the odds of successfully doing something with a spell just plummets.


That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

And if you truly don't like it then you have PF2. If that's the game for you great, enjoy, glad you like it and I wish you and your group(s) all the fun in the world.

At least as far as I'm concerned my argument isn't "this is bad and people shouldn't play it" it's "this is something I do not enjoy and I am communicating why." An argument hinging on the idea that the enemy can do it too isn't really going to change my mind because the version I prefer already has the enemy doing it too and that is something I am used to and enjoy, in the same vein I don't expect that my issues with PF2's magic are going to change your mind on what you object to with Pathfinder's. The systems are simply too different, despite sharing the brand name and a main setting I can't see porting mechanics over from either without considerable tweaking and testing doing anything but breaking what makes either system appeal to its audience.

So really, and I apologize if this feels like a bit of a non-argument, it really comes down to a matter of personal taste. Either this is an issue that bothers someone and PF2 is really not the system for them unless something drastically changes or this isn't an issue that bothers them at all in which case PF2 is fine. I come down on the former, it's clear you fit the latter, nothing wrong with that we just don't agree.

[catagent101]

That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

This is to my understanding the reason why spells are the way they are yeah. Spells are intended to be used by villains as well and are designed so that it doesn't suck to have them cast on you. I think it's a pretty good solution for keeping spells from an earlier more lethal D&D while going with PF2e's heroic tone.


It meets the bare minimum low bar of the spell's name... but if their goal was to attract people from D&D or even PF1, it feels a lot worse.


I... don't understand why the 5e version is more fun at all. Why am I playing this encounter if a 1st level spell can just make the enemy flee off the battlemap? Why am I not baking muffins or something?

[Psyren]

I... don't understand why the 5e version is more fun at all. Why am I playing this encounter if a 1st level spell can just make the enemy flee off the battlemap? Why am I not baking muffins or something?

Do all your encounters involve the party facing a single monster on a 30' map? That seems like a bigger problem to me than the spells.

[Rynjin]

I... don't understand why the 5e version is more fun at all. Why am I playing this encounter if a 1st level spell can just make the enemy flee off the battlemap? Why am I not baking muffins or something?

Did this sound cooler in your head or something? Because this makes pretty much zero sense as a response.

Like...are you under the impression that making a single enemy flee for a turn ends the encounter? Do you think if they leave the battlemat they despawn like a poorly coded video game? Or do you figure they'd just choose not to come back?

Do you think combat is the only thing fun in the game? And an even further subset of that, do you think HP damage is the only fulfilling metric for what makes said combat fun? Do you think it's bad that spending resources should result in a significant gain?

I guess if your answer to the majority of these questions is "yes", and people getting to do cool stuff at the table bothers you...sure, you might as well go bake muffins. Because it's pretty clear you're not very interested in RPGs.

Like we're not talking about 3.5 Color Spray here, which is a 1st level spell which can essentially instakill like 3-4 people at low levels. This is 5e Command. Where your options are:


Approach. The target moves toward you by the shortest and most direct route, ending its turn if it moves within 5 feet of you.

Drop. The target drops whatever it is holding and then ends its turn.

Flee. The target spends its turn moving away from you by the fastest available means.

Grovel. The target falls prone and then ends its turn.

Halt. The target doesn’t move and takes no actions. A flying creature stays aloft, provided that it is able to do so. If it must move to stay aloft, it flies the minimum distance needed to remain in the air.

Exactly zero of these options end the combat. Hell, they don't even end THAT SPECIFIC ENEMY. The spell takes one guy out of the combat temporarily. You trade one of your actions and a spell slot for their action and movement. An equivalent exchange.

Command is kind of the star example of a perfectly designed spell that has an okay chance of success (Wisdom saves are pretty easy to pass) but has a decent-sized impact. Always has been. It's been the benchmark for 1st level CC for over 20 years.

Pathfinder 2e completely changes that metric, and not for the better. Instead of exchanging your turn and a spell slot for their turn (and no spell slot!), you trade your turn and a spell slot for...part of their turn. One of their attacks, essentially. Trading 2 of your actions for one of theirs is a bad trade even if you do it FOR FREE.

Why would you ever choose to do this? It makes zero tactical sense. This is like if you're playing Chess, and implement a rule where you can flip a coin and call it heads or tails; if you win, your opponent skips their turn. But they also get to flip a coin, and if you call yours wrong, or they call theirs right, you skip your next TWO turns. That would be an extremely dumb play to make, nobody would ever do that.

[Anonymouswizard]

You know P2's Command is great, except for the fact it costs two of your actions for one of theirs. If it only took one action to cast it would be a good spell to throw at enemies who include a setup action to be fully effective.

Really the issue is that most spells just weren't designed around the game's action economy.

[Psyren]

You know P2's Command is great, except for the fact it costs two of your actions for one of theirs. If it only took one action to cast it would be a good spell to throw at enemies who include a setup action to be fully effective.

Really the issue is that most spells just weren't designed around the game's action economy.

It would be better as a 1-action spell, but it would still represent a significant loss in functionality relative to its predecessor or from D&D, and thus still be disappointing to a lot of the people they are trying to attract from those games.



Arguably what they have in place may be worse than just taking some of these spells out entirely. Keeping to the Command example, in most cases you are unlikely to even see the enemy crit-fail their save, you are instead going to see the closest you get to success being to take up a single action doing what you want from a very limited list and generally undoing it with their next action. At best you waste as many actions as it takes just to cast the spell, at worst you've just spent two of your three actions and the enemy uses basically beats your face in through malicious compliance. Pathfinder had its own problems but generally if you needed CC you knew a spell was going to give you actual CC.

I love the malicious compliance line :smallbiggrin:



At least as far as I'm concerned my argument isn't "this is bad and people shouldn't play it" it's "this is something I do not enjoy and I am communicating why." An argument hinging on the idea that the enemy can do it too isn't really going to change my mind because the version I prefer already has the enemy doing it too and that is something I am used to and enjoy, in the same vein I don't expect that my issues with PF2's magic are going to change your mind on what you object to with Pathfinder's. The systems are simply too different, despite sharing the brand name and a main setting I can't see porting mechanics over from either without considerable tweaking and testing doing anything but breaking what makes either system appeal to its audience.

Exactly this. I'd rather have Actual Command / Actual Sleep / Actual Color Spray Dizzying Colors in the game, with the tactical consideration that they might potentially get used on me, than being stuck with only watered-down versions for both sides.



Once we finish the AP, my group is very likely to shift back to PF1, but backporting what works from PF2 like the three-action system ( which was an optional rule that showed up late in PF1's lifecycle), weapon and armor runes and a few other things.

FYI - PF1 already has the 3-action rule as a variant (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/unchained-action-economy/), because Unchained was their testing ground for multiple PF2 ideas.

[lesser_minion]

Why would you ever choose to do this? It makes zero tactical sense. This is like if you're playing Chess, and implement a rule where you can flip a coin and call it heads or tails; if you win, your opponent skips their turn. But they also get to flip a coin, and if you call yours wrong, or they call theirs right, you skip your next TWO turns. That would be an extremely dumb play to make, nobody would ever do that.

I kind of hate that I'm doing this, but a mechanic like that would be pretty strong in Chess. You could use it to stop an opponent from forcing a draw, or you could use it to escape from Zugzwang.

On slightly less of a tangent, "Surrender" used to be a valid choice for Command, so using it to end fights has at least been theoretically possible in the past.

[Anonymouswizard]

It would be better as a 1-action spell, but it would still represent a significant loss in functionality relative to its predecessor or from D&D, and thus still be disappointing to a lot of the people they are trying to attract from those games.

Because D&D is a paragon of balance and all deviations from it are terrible.

There's some disappointment in that you lose the ability for arbitrary one word commands, but otherwise it's main issue is the two for one trade.


Exactly this. I'd rather have Actual Command / Actual Sleep / Actual Color Spray Dizzying Colors in the game, with the tactical consideration that they might potentially get used on me, than being stuck with only watered-down versions for both sides.

Sleep is weird, I'd argue the base duration should be ten minutes, but it's main 'issue' in this case is that it's intentionally a noncombat spell.

As for Colour Spray I think the P2 version is actually slightly better. Blinded is possibly a bit weaker, but it has an affect unless the target(s), crit succeeds, and if they fail they're dazzled for a minute (effectively a 20% miss chance on their actions), and blinded for a whole minute if they crit fail.

[Psyren]

On slightly less of a tangent, "Surrender" used to be a valid choice for Command, so using it to end fights has at least been theoretically possible in the past.

Unless your enemy has the memory of a goldfish, I'd question the usefulness of a 1-round surrender.


Because D&D is a paragon of balance and all deviations from it are terrible.

Presumably they were interested in retaining their PF1 audience. If not, calling the game "Pathfinder 2" would be fairly illogical.



There's some disappointment in that you lose the ability for arbitrary one word commands, but otherwise it's main issue is the two for one trade.

It would still be bland even if it was 1-for-1. But it wouldn't be abjectly terrible, so I'll give you that.



Sleep is weird, I'd argue the base duration should be ten minutes, but it's main 'issue' in this case is that it's intentionally a noncombat spell.

The base duration is all but irrelevant, because even out of combat it's just normal sleep, i.e. they can perceive you to wake up; noises, smells etc.



As for Colour Spray I think the P2 version is actually slightly better. Blinded is possibly a bit weaker, but it has an affect unless the target(s), crit succeeds, and if they fail they're dazzled for a minute (effectively a 20% miss chance on their actions), and blinded for a whole minute if they crit fail.

5e's is better; it has no save, just a HP limit. The issue with the 5e version is that Sleep exists and most classes that get one get the other.

[Anonymouswizard]

The base duration is all but irrelevant, because even out of combat it's just normal sleep, i.e. they can perceive you to wake up; noises, smells etc.

Eh, ten minutes of normal sleep isn't useless, especially at levels where you care about 1st level slots. It's situational, which is a pretty big downside, but useful.


5e's is better; it has no save, just a HP limit. The issue with the 5e version is that Sleep exists and most classes that get one get the other.

Urgh, hp limits im spells.can go and die. We already have a perfectly workable method of determining if a creature resists a spell, we don't need a whole separate one for like six spells

Sleep? Use a bloody saving throw.
Colour Spray? Use a bloody saving throw.
Power Word: Whatever? Use a bloody saving throw.

Also I really feel like you're underselling 'standard effect lasts for a minute'.

[lesser_minion]

Unless your enemy has the memory of a goldfish, I'd question the usefulness of a 1-round surrender.

If they're trying to surrender to the best of their ability, then they shouldn't oppose anything you do to secure them for that round. You could disarm and manacle them, or even cast a more potent spell on them with no save or possibility of resistance.

[MonochromeTiger]

I love the malicious compliance line :smallbiggrin:

I have significant experience with both DMs/GMs and players who are perfectly willing to make a very careful interpretation of effects like Command, including in my negative experiences with PF2. PF2 Command makes it much easier to have that issue than the 5e version simply because one action doing what you want while still leaving the entire rest of their turn intact as the normal result (if they even fail badly enough to set off the effect) just leaves so much room for malicious compliance responses that leave "drop prone" and "stand still" as the objective best options on its list.

They move toward you? Congratulations they spend their remaining actions trying to murder you up close and since you're still a squishy caster in a game where the defensive and offensive options for casters are significantly lowered odds are pretty good you're in serious danger. Run away? "Alright, the Goblin runs a short distance away then pulls out a sling and takes a shot at the person who just showed they can mess with his head, his allies also turn to look at you as their turns start." Even "release what it's holding" has spawned a few conversations about whether or not throwing their weapon at the person who just used Command counts since it's "releasing what they're holding" at high speed and in the direction of the caster.


If they're trying to surrender to the best of their ability, then they shouldn't oppose anything you do to secure them for that round. You could disarm and manacle them, or even cast a more potent spell on them with no save or possibility of resistance.

There's limits to what even a surrendering person would accept even if they're doing their best to surrender. Generally speaking you're not going to have someone who is surrendering just sit there and accept a sword in the gut, by the same reasoning they're unlikely to just accept some spell effect they don't recognize going uncontested. As for manacles and everything else, unless the target is completely alone for whatever reason the caster and their allies aren't exactly going to have the best of times trying to tie them up or manacle them in the middle of a fight with all their friends still active. And that's if they even have the resources on hand to effectively detain the target, a surprising number of players I've seen ignore the adventuring basics like "always have rope."

[Rynjin]

I kind of hate that I'm doing this, but a mechanic like that would be pretty strong in Chess. You could use it to stop an opponent from forcing a draw, or you could use it to escape from Zugzwang.

I feel like a 25% chance to do so in exchange for a 75% chance of giving your opponent two extra turns would be pretty poor odds even in a niche circumstance like this.

Like yeah, if you're casting Command because you play in a world where it's the only CC spell, and you'll die instantly if you don't get the critical fail result, you'll still cast it, but that's not the usual tactical consideration.

It giving you a niche chance to not lose doesn't mean it is often going to be a viable tactical consideration. Particularly when it comes with the opportunity cost of learning a different spell that might have a lesser maximum impact but always works. Like if you could instead choose to allow all your pieces to move one extra square.

I'm pretty sure I'd take the latter, even if one in several games I might be like "Darn! Only Command could save me now!". I'll eat the L on those occasions.

[MoiMagnus]

Do all your encounters involve the party facing a single monster on a 30' map? That seems like a bigger problem to me than the spells.

While I'm straying away a little bit from the matter at hand (especially since I never played PF2), I have to say that I've been generally dissatisfied by boss battles in D&D.

I want "team of heroes VS the evil king in his throne room / the dragon inside his lair / etc" and no other creature in the room, and mostly a straight boss battle, to be something that works and is relatively interesting out-of-the-box.

And 5e oscillate between spells being too good because they win in one go, or frustratingly useless for the caster because of legendary resistance or worse immunity. (Though I have to admit that legendary actions are great, I'm not always convinced by the execution but it's a step in the good direction.)

From that, it follows that the most reasonable options would be for spells to have diminished effects on boss, so for every spell to have a "lesser" effect that doesn't one-turn-win the fight while still doing something.

Well, reading the comments, it seems that PF2 overcorrected by making spell also feel useless against regular non-boss enemies, which is a shame because I do think this idea has potential.

[Psyren]

Eh, ten minutes of normal sleep isn't useless, especially at levels where you care about 1st level slots. It's situational, which is a pretty big downside, but useful.

Good for you, glad you find it sufficient. I don't.


7
Urgh, hp limits im spells.can go and die. We already have a perfectly workable method of determining if a creature resists a spell, we don't need a whole separate one for like six spells

Sleep? Use a bloody saving throw.
Colour Spray? Use a bloody saving throw.
Power Word: Whatever? Use a bloody saving throw.

There's this concept called variety that you (and seemingly Paizo) might want to reacquaint yourselves with. Yes, saving throws exist, but both 5e and PF1 proved you can have spells with dramatic effects that are still reasonable for their level, and that don't need to interact with that mechanic. That's how you get a thing called depth, which PF2 spellcasting is sorely lacking.



Also I really feel like you're underselling 'standard effect lasts for a minute'.

Because in practice it won't be useful, assuming you mean sleep. In an exploration scene a single minute per casting is nearly pointless, and in combat the target will wake up at the first clang or shout, wasting your turn and slot.

[lesser_minion]

There's limits to what even a surrendering person would accept even if they're doing their best to surrender. Generally speaking you're not going to have someone who is surrendering just sit there and accept a sword in the gut, by the same reasoning they're unlikely to just accept some spell effect they don't recognize going uncontested. As for manacles and everything else, unless the target is completely alone for whatever reason the caster and their allies aren't exactly going to have the best of times trying to tie them up or manacle them in the middle of a fight with all their friends still active. And that's if they even have the resources on hand to effectively detain the target, a surprising number of players I've seen ignore the adventuring basics like "always have rope."

I don't disagree with any of this. I don't think "surrender" would always be a winning option, I just think it had the potential sometimes.

The "any one-word command" thing was replaced with a fixed menu of five options in 3.5. "Command: surrender" might have been a part of it, but there must be at least a few Finnish, Estonian, or Hungarian D&D players out there who still tell stories about the first and only time someone used 3.0 Command at one of their tables.


I feel like a 25% chance to do so in exchange for a 75% chance of giving your opponent two extra turns would be pretty poor odds even in a niche circumstance like this.

I'm not a chess expert, but I suspect it would be useful in a few different endgames. Forced turn skip + check presumably equals checkmate, and if your opponent has lost their turn, it presumably also becomes legal to move your king into check.

That said, I was really just nitpicking the use of Chess, rather than having it be an M:TG card or similar.

[Rynjin]

I wanted to simplify it down to a truly turn-based game with no other factors, is why. I play enough card games to know that coin flip turn skip effects can actually get out of hand in those if you have other cards that can force a result on the turnskip.

Arcana Force XXI: The World in Yugioh is a good example. Baseline very bad card; you flip a coin and if you call it right your opponent skips their turn. Call it wrong and not only have you spent a bunch of resources to summon it, you give your opponent even more card advantage.

But there is a newly revealed deck archetype that CAN weave this into their main combo without spending a ton of resources, and force the die roll, so it's kinda degenerate in theory. Remains to be seen whether that will still be too gimmicky or not, but it's more playable than expected.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's this concept called variety that you (and seemingly Paizo) might want to reacquaint yourselves with. Yes, saving throws exist, but both 5e and PF1 proved you can have spells with dramatic effects that are still reasonable for their level, and that don't need to interact with that mechanic. That's how you get a thing called depth, which PF2 spellcasting is sorely lacking.

I hope WotC learns about this variety thing, instead of just giving every character spell slots :smallwink:

(Yes I know Paizo is also guilty of that.)

Variety for variety's sake isn't inherently good. We already have two methods for determining if a spell fails, why do we need a third for a literal handful of spells that you're going to ignore for most of the game as HP totals bloat?


Because in practice it won't be useful, assuming you mean sleep. In an exploration scene a single minute per casting is nearly pointless, and in combat the target will wake up at the first clang or shout, wasting your turn and slot.

Reread Colour Spray, it's effects last for a minute. It might not be complete blindness, but enemies being Dazzled for an entire combat isn't bad.

[Spamotron]

My impression of the people who don't like PF2 in this thread tried a couple sessions at most and then bounced. Their feedback might be useful to you but here's something else that's likely more nuanced. This Thread (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4e4ca?Lifeboat-thread-Why-the-PF2E-Hate) on the Official Paizo forums is people who actually enjoy the system and have played it for years discussing the pain points and dislikes they have.

[Anonymouswizard]

My impression of the people who don't like PF2 in this thread tried a couple sessions at most and then bounced. Their feedback might be useful to you but here's something else that's likely more nuanced. This Thread (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4e4ca?Lifeboat-thread-Why-the-PF2E-Hate) on the Official Paizo forums is people who actually enjoy the system and have played it for years discussing the pain points and dislikes they have.

Huh, interesting that one of the first complaints is the variable spell list casters, I actually like them. I hear Revised has Witch replacing Sorcerer in the corebook, which I completely get, but it's nice that one's still there by default.

[Psyren]

I hope WotC learns about this variety thing, instead of just giving every character spell slots :smallwink:

(Yes I know Paizo is also guilty of that.)

Thanks for saving me a rebuttal :smalltongue:



Variety for variety's sake isn't inherently good. We already have two methods for determining if a spell fails, why do we need a third for a literal handful of spells that you're going to ignore for most of the game as HP totals bloat?

Because not all spells are meant to be effective for your entire career. Sleep and Color Spray being solid choices at low levels that you eventually outgrow as monsters get more HP is both intentional and good design. I'll take that over spells that are uniformly bland/niche from inception to conclusion.



Reread Colour Spray, it's effects last for a minute. It might not be complete blindness, but enemies being Dazzled for an entire combat isn't bad.

PF2 dazzled is less of a joke than PF1 dazzled, I'll give you that. But a 25% chance to lose any given attack is still going to take a couple rounds to compensate me for the two actions I gave up to impose it, never mind the spell slot.

[Serafina]

Pathfinder 2E's Command actually trades Actions 1:1 if an enemy fail's a saving throw:
- they spend 1 action running away
- they spend 1 action to get back where they started

What if they don't care about their positioning? Say, if they're an archer?
- they spend 1 action dropping everything they hold
- they spend 1 (or more!) actions picking those items back up

That leaves it somewhat ineffective against enemy spellcasters, though you can of course make them approach you to lure them into melee, or make them drop prone if they are already in melee (which makes them easier to hit and harder for them to get away), which ain't bad either.



As for Sleep (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1675) - a Failure is good enough to knock a creature unconscious for 1 minute, which is plenty of time in combat. This will very much leave enemies
- unable to act
- Blinded and Off-Guard
- in need of damage, healing, or an interact-action to wake up
What it won't do until the 4th-level version is
- make enemies drop prone
- make enemies drop what they are holding
- prevent them from waking up due to loud noise.

It's actually more limited compared to 5E by it's short range (30 feet) and area of effect (5 foot burst), whereas the 5E version has a long range (90 feet) and big AOE (20 foot burst).
Of course that's only an issue if you want Sleep to be an encounter-ender. The PF2E version is still quite capable of hitting several creatures and taking them out of the fight for one or more rounds.


As for Colour Spray/Dizzying Colours:
- it notably has an effect if the enemy succeeds at a saving throw, dazzled for 1 round. Assuming you catch like a few enemies with it, that's decent odds that one of them will miss a strike in that time
- on a Failure it will Stun 1 (costing the enemy 1 action outright), Blind for 1 round (which in addition to the miss chance also makes all terrain difficult terrain), and Dazzles for 1 minute aka most of a fight (imposing a 25% miss chance)
Sure, it only partially disables enemies, but it's still pretty effective at doing so? Heck, a 25% miss chance is statistically comparable to Disadvantage, which is what the 5E version imposes from imposing Blinded.

[Psyren]

Pathfinder 2E's Command actually trades Actions 1:1 if an enemy fail's a saving throw:
- they spend 1 action running away
- they spend 1 action to get back where they started

That only helps if the enemy wasn't already in melee. It also does nothing to help Command:Approach, so you might as well not have that option. In PF1 and 5e, both are useful, so it's still a nerf for no reason other than making casters less interesting.


What if they don't care about their positioning? Say, if they're an archer?
- they spend 1 action dropping everything they hold
- they spend 1 (or more!) actions picking those items back up

You've denied their second shot - but thanks to PF2's MAP that second shot was likely going to miss anyway, so there's ultimately little difference, they still get to wing you in the face. PF1/5e Command:Drop meanwhile denies all their shots.



As for Sleep (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1675) - a Failure is good enough to knock a creature unconscious for 1 minute, which is plenty of time in combat.
...
Of course that's only an issue if you want Sleep to be an encounter-ender. The PF2E version is still quite capable of hitting several creatures and taking them out of the fight for one or more rounds.

You're forgetting once again that PF2 sleep does not keep them asleep - i.e. anything they perceive (like a loud noise - but those don't happen in combat, right??) can wake them up at any time. They even explicitly warn you that PF2 Sleep is intentionally ineffective in combat for this very reason. Forget one minute, you'll be lucky to get one round out of it unless your plan is to (quietly) run away.



As for Colour Spray/Dizzying Colours:
- it notably has an effect if the enemy succeeds at a saving throw, dazzled for 1 round. Assuming you catch like a few enemies with it, that's decent odds that one of them will miss a strike in that time
- on a Failure it will Stun 1 (costing the enemy 1 action outright), Blind for 1 round (which in addition to the miss chance also makes all terrain difficult terrain), and Dazzles for 1 minute aka most of a fight (imposing a 25% miss chance)
Sure, it only partially disables enemies, but it's still pretty effective at doing so? Heck, a 25% miss chance is statistically comparable to Disadvantage, which is what the 5E version imposes from imposing Blinded.

I'm not saying PF2 color spray is useless. Certainly it's much better in a fight than PF2 sleep is. But when you compare it to PF1 or especially 5e Color Spray, it still comes up short at the levels where you'd be using color spray in the first place.

[Ignimortis]

My impression of the people who don't like PF2 in this thread tried a couple sessions at most and then bounced. Their feedback might be useful to you but here's something else that's likely more nuanced. This Thread (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4e4ca?Lifeboat-thread-Why-the-PF2E-Hate) on the Official Paizo forums is people who actually enjoy the system and have played it for years discussing the pain points and dislikes they have.

I have played PF2 for two and a half years. I am willing to give it one more chance later on with a different group and running an official adventure rather than a homebrew world, and if that doesn't prove at least two degrees of success better than those 2.5 years, I will officially declare PF2 to be the worst system I've ever played.

It is, by far, the system most praised by DMs and least praised by players. It's designed in a way that a DM should never have issues running it, and players will play what they can, rather what they want. If PF1 was a hard system to DM, but an incredibly fun one to be a player in, then PF2 is the reverse - playing it is incredibly boring, but running it seems to be buttery smooth even for newcomer DMs.

It is understandable why it's that way. Paizo is a company that sells adventures. The system is secondary to those adventures, and having a system that ensures the adventures run well with 99.99% of the groups is far more important for Paizo than anything else. But the moments where I looked at the VTT and said "yeah, this was a mechanically fulfilling and fun session" were few. The only reason I've stuck it out for 2.5 years were interesting roleplay and an engaging world, neither of which had much to do with PF2.


While I'm straying away a little bit from the matter at hand (especially since I never played PF2), I have to say that I've been generally dissatisfied by boss battles in D&D.

I want "team of heroes VS the evil king in his throne room / the dragon inside his lair / etc" and no other creature in the room, and mostly a straight boss battle, to be something that works and is relatively interesting out-of-the-box.

And 5e oscillate between spells being too good because they win in one go, or frustratingly useless for the caster because of legendary resistance or worse immunity. (Though I have to admit that legendary actions are great, I'm not always convinced by the execution but it's a step in the good direction.)

From that, it follows that the most reasonable options would be for spells to have diminished effects on boss, so for every spell to have a "lesser" effect that doesn't one-turn-win the fight while still doing something.

Well, reading the comments, it seems that PF2 overcorrected by making spell also feel useless against regular non-boss enemies, which is a shame because I do think this idea has potential.
I have never seen a system do this particularly well out of the box. You can get there, but you'd need to do 70% of design yourself.

[MonochromeTiger]

From that, it follows that the most reasonable options would be for spells to have diminished effects on boss, so for every spell to have a "lesser" effect that doesn't one-turn-win the fight while still doing something.

Well, reading the comments, it seems that PF2 overcorrected by making spell also feel useless against regular non-boss enemies, which is a shame because I do think this idea has potential.

It's an incredibly complex and difficult balance to manage and, honestly, most games don't seem to try too hard. What you get more often is a system that follows their bias to one extreme or another with the occasional tweak or errata trying to fix the objectively broken things, if that much (PF2 for instance had entire classes or major releases that were seriously underperforming even in comparison to the other things sharing their role or niche go untouched for years despite "balance" being the main talking point of its supporters). Sadly the most likely things to actually resolve the issue are either excessively heavy house rules or basically making your own system for that specific purpose.


My impression of the people who don't like PF2 in this thread tried a couple sessions at most and then bounced. Their feedback might be useful to you but here's something else that's likely more nuanced. This Thread (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs4e4ca?Lifeboat-thread-Why-the-PF2E-Hate) on the Official Paizo forums is people who actually enjoy the system and have played it for years discussing the pain points and dislikes they have.

Getting the distinct impression from how dismissive this is that bringing up how long I've sat through PF2 for, how I've finished both Homebrew campaigns and everything my friend had from the PF2 Kingmaker remake, would still just result in having my issues with the system brushed off. It's really not as simple as "oh they just don't get it, they must be biased", it's opinion and personal taste.

Even in the thread you link to you've got people who just can't seem to agree on what their issues are, or try to invalidate others' issues because they don't have them or others' favored points because they don't have them. Heck you've got one or two people in there whose main reason for loving PF2 seems to be that they just hate 3.5 and Pathfinder and that anyone from another site who has issues with it is biased. Never mind the fact that it's Paizo's own forums where of course most of the opinions on PF2 are going to be positive. You generally don't just wander into the specialized forums for a product, especially the general forums instead of customer support or technical question sections, if you don't already have an above average interest in those products. Saying this is a more nuanced view is like telling someone looking at game reviews to just ignore any negative ones and only accept the few bad things said about it in positive reviews.

Edit: to be fair, I'd be the first to say my experience with PF2 is limited. Compared to the much longer experience I have with the original it is absolutely minuscule. But I know I've had enough to form my own opinion with experience to back it and that opinion is still negative. The only positives I can think of were the people I was playing with, who I care enough about personally to suffer through those games despite how much they disappointed me, and a few points of the setting being interesting. I can acknowledge where PF2's strengths are, I can acknowledge that I am absolutely not the target audience as is proven by the fact that it has yet to appeal to me in the slightest, I can also acknowledge that for the people it does appeal to it's great. That last part is really easy to admit because, true to edition wars standards, many of those people it appeals to just come out and tell me I'm wrong for not liking it and still liking things it "improved on."

However, it's just another system that is trying to do something different from what I want. That simple, I am not who it's for nor will I be for anything short of a radical change that would almost certainly ruin it in the eyes of the people who it is for. But it really is just another system, it isn't superior or inferior on those grounds to Pathfinder, D&D 3.5, or 4e, or 5e. It's simply different, and part of that difference is accepting that some people won't like it and that their dislike isn't saying you can't like it or something you have to oppose or block out. It's just their dislike and their criticism.

[Jophiel]

I've been in a PF2e (Revised) game for a couple of months now (level four) and have been enjoying it. I'm playing a cleric and find myself with plenty to do and enough options to keep it interesting. Yes, some spells I think are "worse" such as Command but that's not a big deal for me since it wouldn't be a go-to for this character anyway. Neo-Bless took a little getting used to but it's amusing to see it blast across 80' radius of map during a protracted fight.

We played a PF1e Kingmaker game for a year and I ran a control/debuff wizard who just dominated the battlefield and was a source of semi-frustration to the GM since I'd often trivialize encounters between Color Spray, Glitterdust, Haste/Slow, Web, etc. To be clear, he was cool about it but he also had a hard time feeling like encounters were interesting when 75% of them started with me incapacitating (as a general term, not a status effect) 90% of the enemies and the rest was us mopping up. So, while my reading of those spells in PF2e definitely pings me as them being weaker and I'd probably be super frustrated to try and play the same concept in PF2e, I can understand why they did it.

Most of what I'm iffy about in PF2e is really just based on expectations from PF1e and D&D across multiple editions instead of really being a mechanical flaw. If I let those preconceptions go, I'm enjoying the system and game.

[Ignimortis]

I feel weird about the complaint that spells only "do their thing" on a crit fail because the only examples I can think of are spells that would be blatantly broken if they could pull it off consistently.
Most spells do what they're intended to do on a failed save, and critfail ranges from "this enemy is already dead, they just don't know it yet" to "fail, but for more rounds, which are likely unnecessary anyways". Slow critfail dumpsters a target. Web critfail does basically nothing unless a target specifically plays into the Web by being dumb.


That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.
Except enemies still have critsave-or-suck abilities. My party has fought a default PF2 enemy that imposed confusion for 1 round on a fail...and on a success, you were free...except you made the save on the end of the turn (so you can't do anything yet!), and had to roll the save again at the start of your next turn if you were in a 30-ft range of the enemy. Basically, until a melee player made a critical save, they were at best useless, at worst killing themselves.


Going to throw my comment in on the "they overcorrected" side of things as far as magic goes, but with the further point they also overcorrected on self reliance vs team play.

Frankly, if magic managed to swing things in a fight then you were already so close that a minor buff/debuff would've pushed things to a decisive win in another game. Magic in Pathfinder 2 caps out somewhere around where a decent crowd control spell would have in Pathfinder, meanwhile AoE damage is pretty much the only real damage role that magic classes are really allowed by the system. The problem isn't that magic can't do damage at all or that its spells can't have any effect it's that the damage it can do and the effect it has is fit into very specific bands of intended effect with the "full" effect being stuck behind your opponent crit-failing their save just to meet what would have been the normal effect an edition before.

Meanwhile Fighter is the standard around which damage in the game is based, and it still merely performs "adequate." That's part of the issue, they've combated over-optimization in 2e by lowering the ceiling for performance on an individual level to barely adequate and group play to "decent", the floor meanwhile is still much lower. Magic classes doing "well" are playing buff/debuff cheerleader and occasionally throwing out an AoE in a way that closely mirrors 4e's "alright we need to stack up all our +1s and all their -1s" where filling the checklist each fight is worked into the expected difficulty of each encounter as the standard of play. You aren't going to break the game or really swing things in a way that it didn't already fully account for because they have taken all the flashy toys' legs off at the knees and narrowed the range of abilities to the point that your party is either playing as the game expects you to or playing badly with highly predictable results for both.

Depending on what you want out of the game all of this may be a good thing for you. Perhaps you're tired of magic users having a spell that just shuts something down and happening to have it prepped during the encounter it's most useful for, PF2's solution to that is that magic users are much more limited in what they can actually do unless your GM is either fudging rolls or improbably unlucky with saves and intentionally setting enemies up where AoE is always the answer. Perhaps you're tired of one of your players just not realizing it's a team game and toning down their optimizing to be in line with the rest of the party, PF2's solution is a design philosophy where everyone is largely incapable of accomplishing anything of actual value alone to keep anyone from "carrying the fight" but also punishing trying to perform too far out of their class's designated roles. Perhaps you're a GM who is frustrated about how inaccurate CR can be with some monsters punching way above their weight, PF2's solution is that just about every monster is set up to run fairly predictably without nearly as much in the way of abilities that can quickly turn the fight one way or another unless the players are doing things very foolishly.

PF2's solution to just about every problem is to keep cutting off the edges until everything fits within a tightly controlled maximum for performance somewhere far below what Pathfinder had. Essentially "we knew how this level of play worked so lets just take that and stretch it over the entire gameplay experience" but even with the focus on math it still has places where things fray and you end up with the average player straining to still maintain that standard of "meets expectations." To accomplish this everyone ends up less capable on their own, everything has been squished into such a narrow box that anyone standing out and having a moment to shine is either a result of someone or something else being played badly or amounts to what Pathfinder would consider just a normal move working as intended; very few things are objectively terrible but the "worse" options are still present and can add up especially if you try to push anything out of its invisible role. In Pathfinder you could take a "bad" build and still accomplish something interesting with it, in PF2 a bad build is just objectively bad. In Pathfinder you could take a good build and pull off things that get remembered for years, in PF2 the idea of anyone really being a standard fantasy hero is treated like something to be ashamed of and your grand accomplishments amount to being 4-6 random people who only get anything done because you all happen to be working together while struggling through the problem.

Thing is quite a bit of this is clear on how it got there. It's similar to the jarring move from D&D 3.5 to 4e complete with the designers swearing up and down it's a natural evolution of the mechanics. Partially because some of the same people behind 4e are or were involved in PF2 and most of the differences between the two systems are either down to them realizing most people hated something and changing it slightly or the more recent remaster trying to distance the system as much as possible from anything WotC might sue over if they manage to scrap the OGL. As Psyren puts it they were chasing the unicorn of parity, and that's not necessarily a bad goal but the way they did it was stripping most of the individual worth from things and turning most of the "options" into the same thing worded differently then putting whatever people thought the biggest offenders were in the corner and pinning them in.

An excellent post, by the way. Outlines every single frustration I have with PF2 in a more eloquent way than I can usually do.

Edit: My PF1 GM said this is an advertisement, not a critique. *shudders*

[Anonymouswizard]

Most of what I'm iffy about in PF2e is really just based on expectations from PF1e and D&D across multiple editions instead of really being a mechanical flaw. If I let those preconceptions go, I'm enjoying the system and game.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. People don't dislike P2 because it's mechanically bad, it's because it differs from their expectations. This forum has biases towards D&D 3.X and 5e, and therefore how it differs from them is what is mainly being argued about in this thread.

Another comment I've seen floating around is that stats don't matter as you'll quickly find your Proficiency Bonus being the single biggest factor in your rolls. Which generally comes from people not realizing that as it's primarily designed for adventure paths play most* DCs will be keeping level with Proficiency Bonus.

* But admittedly not all so players can feel a sense of progress.

[Greenflame133]

Hi, I'm about to try PF 2e myself, as I wonder about it and my play group seemed attracted simpler rules. From just reading the rules it seemed great, a full system builds on flexibility of some SoP/SoM

Reading the post I'm having secound thoughts. Probably going to give it a try regardless, but might be more verful.

As somebody who bounded of 5e with all the characters feeling sami, it sounds like 2e has simular issues but even worst. Witch is a shame since the modual feat system seems to promise the exact opposite

[Tanarii]

Pathfinder 2e is basically Pathfinder 1e revised to be D&D 4e.

It's very heavy on feats as your build options.

It's got balanced martials and casters. Due to that, folks used to some D&D systems that aren't 4e often regard martial as OP and casters as weak. :smallwink:

It's got tight math, so enemies need to be in narrow level band (+/-2 for the most part).

It's heavily tactical. The difference is in D&D4e it's more about position yourself and your enemies, with rider buffs/rebuffs being secondary. In PF2e it's more about buffs/rebuffs with position being secondary. Both are important in both systems, it's just that one is slightly more focused that the other on different aspects.

It has an okay skill system with a game structure (roughly equivalent to skill challenges).

It's got a gear treadmill, unless you use optional rules.

That means it's designed primarily for linear adventures with ever increasing power for both characters and enemies in step, focused around a series of encounters, mostly combat encounters on a grid. In other words, it's very Combat as Sport.

It's not designed for heavily narrative play, combat as war, OSR-style non-linear dungeon/hex crawls, mystery, intrigue, or the like.

So yeah, basically 4e. But with plenty of improvements. And retaining spell slots for casters.

Edit: To be clear, I very much liked D&D 4e and I very much like PF 2e. Both are very good at what they do. It's just important to be clear on what they do so you can know if it's what you're looking for.

[Kurald Galain]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. People don't dislike P2 because it's mechanically bad, it's because it differs from their expectations.
Nah. People dislike PF2 because it spends a lot of word count on mechanically fiddly things that in practice don't make a difference, AND because it contains a lot of options that (compared to other options in the same system) really aren't worth using. For instance:


As for Colour Spray I think the P2 version is actually slightly better.
Bear in mind that P2's color spray has that keyword that gives level-appropriate enemies +10 to saves. Even aside from that, given how long combat lasts, stun for 1d4+1 rounds (PF1) is much more powerful than dazzled for 10 rounds (P2).


Eh, ten minutes of normal sleep isn't useless, especially at levels where you care about 1st level slots.
P2 sleep also has that +10 to saves keyword. That goes a long way to making the spell useless even outside of combat (inside combat, as Psyren mentions, enemies will just wake up from the noise).


My impression of the people who don't like PF2 in this thread tried a couple sessions at most and then bounced.
LOL, I remember from the 4E days that a common statement was that if people would just play it they would agree with the fans. And look how that worked out :smallamused:
Although to be fair, 4E is way ahead of P2 in terms of versatility, tactics, class balance, and overall "heroic feel".

[Xervous]

Pathfinder 2 offers solutions to issues I simply do not experience as a GM, and is vastly inferior to other games in its derived player facing options. (Derived as opposed to stated, as there is a lot of tedium masking the lack of choices which end up meeting par).

4e and Lancer are far more entertaining skirmish games with greater diversity of distinct archetype behavior. Many games offer more interesting and rewarding progression options beyond the meager scope of what PF2 has stretched over its 1-20 span.

PF2 seems to be designed to function for bottom of the barrel setups with low competence GMs who need to be guarded against power hungry players. Fun? That’s a secondary concern.

[Ignimortis]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. People don't dislike P2 because it's mechanically bad, it's because it differs from their expectations. This forum has biases towards D&D 3.X and 5e, and therefore how it differs from them is what is mainly being argued about in this thread.
Frankly, after a lot of play and a lot of reflection and also a revisiting of PF1, I dislike PF2 because it has taken the least interesting, least nuanced read of PF1, and shaved off everything that did not fit that read. PF2 is, quite literally, a game that was designed by people whose understanding of PF1 was based on "elite array/PB15 adventurers fight things in small rooms", and has never transcended that level fully. By now, I honestly think that Paizo just didn't grok PF1 very well, despite working with it for 10 years, because it was, at heart, 3.5 with houserules, and Paizo adamantly refused to learn or apply any lessons from 3.5 for some reason.

I also think that almost (mostly due to PF2 skills being rather better in general) all of experiences PF2 can provide are also contained in PF1 if your group is decent enough about keeping to similar optimization levels. The reverse is far from being true, obviously.

Even when taken as a standalone product, it's basically a mediocre wargame where you control one unit and get to customize them within their expected role chosen at chargen. And even that sounds better than what PF2 turns out to be.



LOL, I remember from the 4E days that a common statement was that if people would just play it they would agree with the fans. And look how that worked out :smallamused:
Although to be fair, 4E is way ahead of P2 in terms of versatility, tactics, class balance, and overall "heroic feel".
Honestly considering running 4e at some point these days, though I'm not dedicated enough to write my own adventure for a system I barely know. I've heard good things about Zeitgeist, though...



PF2 seems to be designed to function for bottom of the barrel setups with low competence GMs who need to be guarded against power hungry players. Fun? That’s a secondary concern.
This is an opinion I can really get behind. Basically every single argument about PF2 eventually devolves into "but it's really easy to run, and it has great balance!". Yes, it does. Because it's basically the blandest game I've ever seen, never taking risks if they even remotely threaten to ruin the expected fight design, which is "buff, debuff, take positions, hit thing with stick until it falls over or until it kills you". Fun is barely ever considered, except maybe for GMs who really enjoy things going as they planned.

[Xervous]

This is an opinion I can really get behind. Basically every single argument about PF2 eventually devolves into "but it's really easy to run, and it has great balance!". Yes, it does. Because it's basically the blandest game I've ever seen, never taking risks if they even remotely threaten to ruin the expected fight design, which is "buff, debuff, take positions, hit thing with stick until it falls over or until it kills you". Fun is barely ever considered, except maybe for GMs who really enjoy things going as they planned.

I will readily admit a biased viewpoint as I’m the one person at the table who least needs a safe, sanitized system to avoid unexpected outcomes or malicious powergamers. But even if we accept the design intent for PF2e as a noble pursuit, the tax return that is character creation and progression undermines the standardized environment by adding multiple avenues for players to screw up even before they start making decisions in combat.

Something like Gloomhaven which is exclusively a skirmish game manages to deliver multiple distinct builds while requiring a fraction of the choices and far fewer keywords. Yes, Gloomhaven is incredibly locked down compared to PF2. With fewer choices, each one can be given more power budget so the choices are actually meaningful. Most of the choices are completely separate from one another. There’s no requirement to feat chain your way up to a specific card, so all the various options aren’t stuffed away in separate silos. That’s not to say certain cards don’t get picked together at a high rate, but you can quickly see what does and doesn’t line up when weighing the options. Gloomhaven has some characters with balance problems, but those all come down to individual cards or mechanics being out of line. To summarize this rambling tangent, Gloomhaven demonstrates you can still achieve varied expression in a locked down system, and you can do so without forcing the player to stare down a multiple choice quiz to see if their character merely gets to meet par.

[Psyren]

Bear in mind that P2's color spray has that keyword that gives level-appropriate enemies +10 to saves. Even aside from that, given how long combat lasts, stun for 1d4+1 rounds (PF1) is much more powerful than dazzled for 10 rounds (P2).


P2 sleep also has that +10 to saves keyword. That goes a long way to making the spell useless even outside of combat (inside combat, as Psyren mentions, enemies will just wake up from the noise).

Gods, I didn't even notice the keyword :smallsigh: So not only are the P2 versions of these spells even more useless than I thought, I can't even look at the spell and know what it does because such an important rule is buried among the fluff things like "this spell involves false sensory stimuli." Did they really hate casters this much?

[Ignimortis]

I will readily admit a biased viewpoint as I’m the one person at the table who least needs a safe, sanitized system to avoid unexpected outcomes or malicious powergamers. But even if we accept the design intent for PF2e as a noble pursuit, the tax return that is character creation and progression undermines the standardized environment by adding multiple avenues for players to screw up even before they start making decisions in combat.
Even if we do accept being "unbreakable" as a noble pursuit, the design that basically drops everyone down to the CRB Fighter's understanding of how combat should work (i.e. buff, debuff, walk over there, hit thing with stick till dead, everything else should be a sidegrade at most) is frankly the easiest and the dullest way to achieve that.



Something like Gloomhaven which is exclusively a skirmish game manages to deliver multiple distinct builds while requiring a fraction of the choices and far fewer keywords. Yes, Gloomhaven is incredibly locked down compared to PF2. With fewer choices, each one can be given more power budget so the choices are actually meaningful. Most of the choices are completely separate from one another. There’s no requirement to feat chain your way up to a specific card, so all the various options aren’t stuffed away in separate silos. That’s not to say certain cards don’t get picked together at a high rate, but you can quickly see what does and doesn’t line up when weighing the options. Gloomhaven has some characters with balance problems, but those all come down to individual cards or mechanics being out of line. To summarize this rambling tangent, Gloomhaven demonstrates you can still achieve varied expression in a locked down system, and you can do so without forcing the player to stare down a multiple choice quiz to see if their character merely gets to meet par.
Funnily enough, the people who praise PF2 the most in my circle are also the people who enjoy this kind of non-quite-RPG game like Gloomhaven and Tainted Grail. I figure this has to do something with them not caring much for freedom of expression or being satisfied with basic archetypes already present, though one of them has recently stated that they figured out they don't even like TTRPGs all that much and would much rather play some coop or PvP videogame with the same people.


Gods, I didn't even notice the keyword :smallsigh: So not only are the P2 versions of these spells even more useless than I thought, I can't even look at the spell and know what it does because such an important rule is buried among the fluff things like "this spell involves false sensory stimuli." Did they really hate casters this much?

In short, yes. To be less succinct, not exactly. They mostly hated the ability of casters to utterly destroy the precious "single high-level monster with weak Will saves" encounters with a single action, because clearly the issue here is the spellcaster rather than the encounter design. Note that the best control spells in the game don't have that Incapacitation trait, like Slow and Synesthesia, and them not having that trait is precisely why those spells are the best in the game - you can actually drop them on an APL+4 enemy and have them work, though not very reliably still due to inflated save numbers.

Funnily enough, some of the later adventures (I've been looking through the Fists of the Ruby Phoenix lately)...barely have any encounters with a single APL+3 or APL+4 enemy reliant on brute force. It's almost always either a few of APL-1 to APL+0 enemies (which can get shut down with those spells), or a specific single enemy which is actually a troop (a kind of humanoid swarm), or a spellcaster who isn't suffering from the PC caster syndrome (i.e. they're actually decent in melee, have good AC/saves and don't have to deal with Incap due to being higher level than the party). But those are always custom enemies rather than something coming from the Bestiary, with extra abilities!

[MonochromeTiger]

Even if we do accept being "unbreakable" as a noble pursuit, the design that basically drops everyone down to the CRB Fighter's understanding of how combat should work (i.e. buff, debuff, walk over there, hit thing with stick till dead, everything else should be a sidegrade at most) is frankly the easiest and the dullest way to achieve that.

And as I mentioned earlier it doesn't even feel like they really fixed the issue of Fighter being the "boring" one in any significant way. It's still just the "make it hit good and let them pick Feats" class, the only difference is that the way they determine "hit good" makes it the class most likely to actually crit reliably so it's still the low/no effort option but now it's arguably also the strongest option in the game. All without actually making it any more interesting.


Funnily enough, the people who praise PF2 the most in my circle are also the people who enjoy this kind of non-quite-RPG game like Gloomhaven and Tainted Grail. I figure this has to do something with them not caring much for freedom of expression or being satisfied with basic archetypes already present, though one of them has recently stated that they figured out they don't even like TTRPGs all that much and would much rather play some coop or PvP videogame with the same people.

This hits on something I've noticed too, everyone I play with who pushes for PF2 would also rather be playing a board game than an RPG. Everyone else in my groups who has any real good things to say about PF2 are pretty clear it's just convenience things like websites that let them handle character creation which are more because the push toward online play is still relatively recent than anything else. Pathfinder didn't have it to the same degree or as much VTT integration because those just weren't a thing while it was Paizo's main product. D&D5e doesn't have it as readily accessible because WotC is pushing its own online services that make it unclear what is and isn't behind a subscription people don't want to have to pay for convenience. So at least in my groups the only real pull PF2 has is "well if we rely entirely on these online services we can just click the recommended options and write down what we get."

[Darvin]

Every time I read up on threads like these, I'm reminded that nothing has really changed from the beta test. Right down to the specific example of the Command spell. I gave the exact same critiques lodged here in this thread on my feedback survey back in the playtest. And it's a shame, because there's a lot I liked about PF2 in the playtest, and I still want to like it. But it's just missing the qualities that - for me - are integral to a fantasy TTRPG. Spellcasters in Pathfinder 1st edition really nail the power fantasy of being a reality-bending Wizard or Sorcerer, and allowed for players to pursue plans and plots. I wanted non-casters elevated to the same level. There certainly are some spells that deserved to be reigned in, but a lot of the spell nerfs ended up gutting the system and removing the very kinds of power fantasy that I actively want in my games.

[Arutema]

Every time I read up on threads like these, I'm reminded that nothing has really changed from the beta test. Right down to the specific example of the Command spell. I gave the exact same critiques lodged here in this thread on my feedback survey back in the playtest.

Honestly, this is because Paizo was very selective about what playtest feedback they were willing to listen to, with a great many criticisms of the new system simply ignored.

My thoughts on 2e are that adventure paths are Paizo's big money-makers, so everything in the new system was designed around "don't let players break the AP."

[Rynjin]

That was the explicit intent. The sytem is written expressly to be easy to GM through Adventure Paths, and the player experience is secondary.

[Tanarii]

It's worth keeping in mind that half the designers of Pathfinder 2e were former WotC 4e employees. Bulmahn knew exactly what he was aiming for in terms of the product.

[Lemmy]

While I'm definitely NOT a fan of PF2e... I find a lot of the examples used here pretty inconsistent.

Especially the "Magic is weaker than previous editions" or "some options are so bad, they aren't worth using". I mean... Have you seen 5e?

Honestly, both 5e and PF2 suffer of very similar problems in slightly different ways. Both of them seemed to want to solve the problem of "casters are too powerful" by making everyone and everything much weaker, more uniform and less cool.

Neither system managed to pique my interest (or maintain it once I gave it a try anyway).

I'm much more interested in the upcoming DC20 (and a couple other indie systems in development) than I've ever been about 5e or PF2.

[Kurald Galain]

Especially the "Magic is weaker than previous editions" or "some options are so bad, they aren't worth using". I mean... Have you seen 5e?
That's because the problem with PF2 is not "magic is weaker than in 3E", but that "magic is so weak that it's not worth using (tactically speaking) and crowd control doesn't exist and many spells have only a 5% chance of working (i.e. requiring a crit-fail). 5E doesn't have this problem.

Also, the issue with PF2 isn't "some options aren't worth using" but "MANY options aren't worth using".

There's a reason why 5E is VASTLY more popular.

[Anonymouswizard]

There's a reason why 5E is VASTLY more popular.

Yep, brand recognition. Remember that it's still assumed that 4e outsold Pathfinder 1e by a significant margin.

Honestly in terms of games I consider neither D&D5e or Pathfinder 2e particularly outstanding. D&D3.X was better, but still not one of the all time greats.

Honestly I'd rather play Unknown Armies, or Paleomythic, or Scion. Something that aims to do a specific kind of setting really well, rather than the vagueness of modern D&D. But that's not what people play.

...I should really ask my brother for my copy of Paleomythic back.

[Tectorman]

I'm much more interested in the upcoming DC20 (and a couple other indie systems in development) than I've ever been about 5e or PF2.

Agreed on looking forward to DC20! Some oc it is frankly inspired, and some of it harkens back to a few older games I know of (for example, "nonrolled" damage increasing instead thanks to how high you rolled reminds me of Anima Beyond Fantasy). And considering he says most of his experience is 5E, it's strangely gratifying to see these things independently crop up. Like convergent evolution.

[Lemmy]

That's because the problem with PF2 is not "magic is weaker than in 3E", but that "magic is so weak that it's not worth using (tactically speaking) and crowd control doesn't exist and many spells have only a 5% chance of working (i.e. requiring a crit-fail). 5E doesn't have this problem.
There's quite a bit of hyperbole here... But I honestly don't care enough about PF2 to defend it.


Also, the issue with PF2 isn't "some options aren't worth using" but "MANY options aren't worth using".Again... Have you seen 5e? Or 3.5? Or PF1?


Yep, brand recognition. Remember that it's still assumed that 4e outsold Pathfinder 1e by a significant margin.You're right about brand recognition... That's BY FAR what keeps D&D the number 1 brand...

And TBF, the whole "4e far outsold PF" was literally a couple of tweets from 2 guys who offered exactly zero evidence (and arguably have vested interests in making D&D/WotC perfomance look better).

But all in all... Both 5e and PF2 are pretty meh. Really, these days we're spoiled for choice when it comes to RPG. A lot of indie systems do a much better job of offering a good "high fantasy adventure" experience than anything made by WotC has in decades.

[Rynjin]

Something also worth noting is that while both games take the approach of "make magic weaker", they do so in drastically different ways.

PF2e gives you the ILLUSION of being able to cast classic CC spells, but tacks on a bunch of different hidden circumstances that makes all of these options traps. Low base DCs, high enemy saves, obtuse tags that make landing them harder, and the "degrees of failure" system all obfuscate how unreliable these spells are. As a result, players are duped into picking up these spells and then realize they've wasted their time.

5e also has a vendetta against CC spells, but at least they're open and honest about them sucking, and had the balls to simply remove most of them from the game entirely.

[Lemmy]

I'll play devil's advocate one more time, just for a bit...

There's a lot of hyperbole in the "CC spells are useless" stance. If you're using the spell against minions/ lesser threats, then you don't need your target to roll a critical failure in order to get the full effect of the spell.

And if you're using against opponents of same/higher level... Well...

SoD and SoL spells have always been one of the least fun aspects of D&D and PF.

One character using a single action and immediately neutralizing multiple creatures who in theory are just as powerful as him was really bad design IMO, both for balance and for story-telling...

PF2 acknowledges that enemies cast spells too, so instead of forcing the GM to choose between using really frustrating tactics or intentionally gimping themselves, they decided to make spells less all-or-nothing... Which isn't a bad idea, TBH, but they while the idea is good, their execution was pretty bad...

Big problems with PF2, though:

They removed a lot of the more strategic elements of PF1, including much of its customization (of both character and adventure) in order to make it "more like 5e, but not quite".

Another issue is the 3-action action economy. It's great, but it feels like the devs often forgot the implications of the system.

e.g.: while it in theory makes the game more dynamic than the old action system, it STILL encourages characters to stand still and "full attack" (even with spells... For example, if Magic Missile costs a single spell slot no matter whether I use 3 actions to shoot 3 projectiles or 1 action to shoot only 1... Why would I ever bother using it to shoot anything less than 3 times?).

I'll also reinforce the point about PF2 being full of false choices when it comes to character build and customization. You definitely make more character build choices in PF2 than in 5e, but a lot of those choices are still very generic "get a +1 when doing this action" and/or a don't really feel very interesting or special...

5e is VERY guilty or homogenization too (even character races feel much more like a barely relevant part of a build than an actual integral part of a person). And this tendency only grew stronger over time... BUT at very least, 5e feats do feel impactful, while PF2 feats feel... mediocre.

[Tanarii]

I'll play devil's advocate one more time, just for a bit
Honestly it's not really worth it around here. There's too much negative Pf2 attitudes not really grounded in the way the actually works, mixed in with negative universal generalization from things it does do but disliking is really just a preference.

It's kinda like going to the PF2 Reddit where you'll see a lot of excessive positivity that the game about things the game actually doesn't do, mixed in with positive universal generalization statements based on things it does do but are actually just a preference.

It'd be like trying to play devil's advocate for 5e in the PF2 Reddit. Except there you'd just get downvoted into oblivion. :smallamused:

[Ignimortis]

And TBF, the whole "4e far outsold PF" was literally a couple of tweets from 2 guys who offered exactly zero evidence (and arguably have vested interests in making D&D/WotC perfomance look better).
TBF in return, the only metric we have for PF outdoing 4e is the retailer statistics in the US, and we have never seen by how much it was doing so. So the info is equally dubious on that front.



But all in all... Both 5e and PF2 are pretty meh. Really, these days we're spoiled for choice when it comes to RPG. A lot of indie systems do a much better job of offering a good "high fantasy adventure" experience than anything made by WotC has in decades.
Like what? I am genuinely interested, because IME, all the stuff I've seen either falls into the OSR trap and therefore is uninteresting to me, or is some basic 3e-adjacent system that looks okay-ish, but has zero content past the corebook and hasn't been updated in years. I honestly just want 3.5 streamlined by people who understood how 3.5 worked by the end of its' lifecycle and what of its ideas worked well.


Something also worth noting is that while both games take the approach of "make magic weaker", they do so in drastically different ways.

PF2e gives you the ILLUSION of being able to cast classic CC spells, but tacks on a bunch of different hidden circumstances that makes all of these options traps. Low base DCs, high enemy saves, obtuse tags that make landing them harder, and the "degrees of failure" system all obfuscate how unreliable these spells are. As a result, players are duped into picking up these spells and then realize they've wasted their time.

5e also has a vendetta against CC spells, but at least they're open and honest about them sucking, and had the balls to simply remove most of them from the game entirely.
The funny thing is, PF2 kind of happened upon a decent solution for CC spells, then murdered it in cold blood with math and traits. The general idea of "spells actually do something on a basic save, and the effect can get downgraded against powerful foes" is good.

What isn't good is gating the actual effect behind a failure on a save, then making failures less likely than successes for any creature you would care about debuffing, then giving every enemy who is more important than your character an automatic +10 on their save against many impactful effects, and then making critfailures so debilitating sometimes that a GM can't just wave a hand and say "all enemy saves are reduced by X points, incapacitation trait no longer exists" to fix the issue for the most part. The implementation simply needs more nuance, but that would interfere with ease of running and unbreakability, so it can't have that.


That was the explicit intent. The sytem is written expressly to be easy to GM through Adventure Paths, and the player experience is secondary.
It's a sad day when the two premier options on the market are either obsessed with ease of entry to the detriment of the mechanics (5e), or with ease of running the game through prewritten modules to the detriment of player expression and impact (PF2).


Honestly it's not really worth it around here. There's too much negative Pf2 attitudes not really grounded in the way the actually works, mixed in with negative universal generalization from things it does do but disliking is really just a preference.
Everything is a preference. But PF2's issues are easier to point at, because 90% of it is in the math. You can have a different experience if you run encounters differently from how the game says you should, but ran by default and using adventures as a reference point, it pretty much does everything people here are talking about. Now, whether that's a good or a bad thing is a preference, but then we come back to the fact that every game has its fans and detractors, because someone's having fun with it. I, for one, feel compelled to add my voice to the PF2-negative crowd every time, simply to express my opinion and attempt to slightly counterbalance the glowing praise it gets from the PF2 subreddit and Paizo forums.

I honestly do not consider it a good game outside of a very narrow niche of "run Paizo APs in Golarion with little to no homebrew and no major adjustments". It's a good game when used for that. Is that a worthwhile thing to squander the second-only-to-D&D TTRPG fantasy adventure brand name and recognition on? I wouldn't think so, but Paizo consider that to be the best way to stay in business.

[Greenflame133]

Like what? I am genuinely interested, because IME, all the stuff I've seen either falls into the OSR trap and therefore is uninteresting to me, or is some basic 3e-adjacent system that looks okay-ish, but has zero content past the corebook and hasn't been updated in years. I honestly just want 3.5 streamlined by people who understood how 3.5 worked by the end of its' lifecycle and what of its ideas worked well.

It's a sad day when the two premier options on the market are either obsessed with ease of entry to the detriment of the mechanics (5e), or with ease of running the game through prewritten modules to the detriment of player expression and impact (PF2).
PF 1e has been that to me. Given it's not as big as D&D 3.5e but bettwen massgive size of 3pp and 3.X campability, make it non-issue. One big thing PF 1e was introducing of class spefficing talents. PF 2e techinically streamed line that even futher by making class feats into defoult way classes operate. OF course, PF 2e come bundeled with a whole lo of other stuff.

One bit stramlining optsion for PF 1e comes in form for Spheres from DDS. They turn add this system of sphere talents progression divited into brroad area. It's a lot like PF 2e, but it's build on top of PF 1e, so you still have ability scores and other complex stuff. Two big things sphere do for me, is turn a big spelllist of unrelated spells into modual spell builder that is more narrow in scope and eaiser to manage. They also cose the gap bettwne caster and marshal with Power and Might sphere being on siular power level.

Another BIG system that is similar it Savage Words. It has a core rulebook and many expansions. Some or less compatible with each other, so depending on DM/Game system can be small or huge.

Also, while it might no be what you are looking for. Lately I been enjoying a great deal of PbtA. Mostly Uncommon World (a hack of Dungeon World), this is a crunshy system, rather main mechanic incoerating fluff into the math. Books tell you what you can do, you describe how you are able to do it, and then if roll 6- DM will find a way your mathod can backfire, (or some other complicesions). It's order of magnitute easier to get into then D&D 5e while offering more optsio n to make something intrasting.

I so sad that in sawer systems are don't see many fun building like Sir Bearington (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=9788572&postcount=716), it almost feels like we need those crazy complex system for players to come thought, relize the can do something redicule and acually do it. I have seen Sir Bearington or Three in a Trenchcoat homebrew for 5e, but it never feels the same. It's a silly idea without grounding of riggit system, meaning it feels more like poorly writen spell in hight fantasy novel.

[Kurald Galain]

Yep, brand recognition. Remember that it's still assumed that 4e outsold Pathfinder 1e by a significant margin.
Assumed by you, perhaps; but the facts are well known that WOTC rather hastily abandoned 4E (quietly dropping numerous planned books) and took an entirely different tack for 5E (including the lengthy playtest) because PF was the first RPG ever that outsold D&D.


The funny thing is, PF2 kind of happened upon a decent solution for CC spells, then murdered it in cold blood with math and traits.
That's fair. The problem is not with the crit system in general, but with the math that almost always means that monsters only crit-fail anything on a natural one (and get a 20%-ish chance to crit-succeed), and conversely PCs only crit-succeed on a natural twenty (except fighters) and get a 20%-ish chance to crit-fail.

[Lemmy]

TBF in return, the only metric we have for PF outdoing 4e is the retailer statistics in the US, and we have never seen by how much it was doing so. So the info is equally dubious on that front.
True... We'll never really know, although we can kinda assume based on how their respective owner-companies dealt with each game. But I couldn't care less...


Like what? I am genuinely interested, because IME, all the stuff I've seen either falls into the OSR trap and therefore is uninteresting to me, or is some basic 3e-adjacent system that looks okay-ish, but has zero content past the corebook and hasn't been updated in years. I honestly just want 3.5 streamlined by people who understood how 3.5 worked by the end of its' lifecycle and what of its ideas worked well.
Does heavily home-brewed PF1 count? :smallbiggrin:

Jokes aside... i know what you mean, but right now there are quite a few indie games in development, (DC20 is the one I'm looking forward to, but there's also Daggerheart). But we'll have to wait and see if any of those games will gain popularity (and hopefully actually make something different/better than 5e).



The funny thing is, PF2 kind of happened upon a decent solution for CC spells, then murdered it in cold blood with math and traits. The general idea of "spells actually do something on a basic save, and the effect can get downgraded against powerful foes" is good.

What isn't good is gating the actual effect behind a failure on a save, then making failures less likely than successes for any creature you would care about debuffing, then giving every enemy who is more important than your character an automatic +10 on their save against many impactful effects, and then making critfailures so debilitating sometimes that a GM can't just wave a hand and say "all enemy saves are reduced by X points, incapacitation trait no longer exists" to fix the issue for the most part. The implementation simply needs more nuance, but that would interfere with ease of running and unbreakability, so it can't have that.

It's a sad day when the two premier options on the market are either obsessed with ease of entry to the detriment of the mechanics (5e), or with ease of running the game through prewritten modules to the detriment of player expression and impact (PF2).
Yup. Pretty much this. I agree with this assessment.

[Anonymouswizard]

Assumed by you, perhaps; but the facts are well known that WOTC rather hastily abandoned 4E (quietly dropping numerous planned books) and took an entirely different tack for 5E (including the lengthy playtest) because PF was the first RPG ever that outsold D&D.

A runaway success in the tabletop RPG market is a drop in a bucket for Hasbro. Or at least it was before their other departments began underperforming. All we know is that 4e wasn't making enough profit.


Also on fantasy RPGs that aren't based on D&D: Ryuutama, Burning Wheel, Legends of the Wulin, Legend of the Five Rings, The Fantasy Trip, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Runequest, Heirs to Heresy, Seventh Sea. At this point I stop being able to name them off the top of my head.

[Xervous]

but there's also Daggerheart

Absolutely wonderful for illustrating how not to do things. PF2e is at least coherent and competently put together. Given its origins Daggerheart meets expectations.

[Psyren]

While I'm definitely NOT a fan of PF2e... I find a lot of the examples used here pretty inconsistent.

Especially the "Magic is weaker than previous editions" or "some options are so bad, they aren't worth using". I mean... Have you seen 5e?

...Have you? There's orders of magnitude between 5e and PF2 magic. If you compare, say, 3.5 Command and 5e Command, they're not that different, while PF2 Command is leagues away from both of them in the wrong direction.


Honestly, both 5e and PF2 suffer of very similar problems in slightly different ways. Both of them seemed to want to solve the problem of "casters are too powerful" by making everyone and everything much weaker, more uniform and less cool.

This is false too; 5e didn't just tone down casters, they gave martials some considerable buffs compared to 3.5 - like actually being able to move and attack without crippling their damage output, or not needing a laundry list of feat taxes to draw weapons quickly, do any kind of special attack/maneuver, be decent at skills, go to the bathroom etc.


Yep, brand recognition.

You're right about brand recognition... That's BY FAR what keeps D&D the number 1 brand...

I find this belief that the D&D brand is the only reason for 5e's success and its design is somehow irrelevant to its appeal to be incredibly naive. Brand gets new people in the door, but it won't keep them there; if what they had found coming in was 4e's lack of depth or 3.5e's byzantine complexity or 2e's reams of antediluvian tables they would have run for the hills.



5e also has a vendetta against CC spells, but at least they're open and honest about them sucking, and had the balls to simply remove most of them from the game entirely.

I'm not aware of this "vendetta," 5e has plenty of great CC spells. Some of them are actually too good still (like Wall of Force/Forcecage; I think they could stand to be toned down further, such as being able to be damaged by martial characters/monsters, even if it's hard to do.) PF1 actually did this better than 5e.


I'll play devil's advocate one more time, just for a bit...

There's a lot of hyperbole in the "CC spells are useless" stance. If you're using the spell against minions/ lesser threats, then you don't need your target to roll a critical failure in order to get the full effect of the spell.

Yeah, but those mooks are the monsters you usually don't need to control to begin with; you can just AoE them instead. The best condition in the game is Dead after all.



One character using a single action and immediately neutralizing multiple creatures who in theory are just as powerful as him was really bad design IMO, both for balance and for story-telling...

PF2 acknowledges that enemies cast spells too, so instead of forcing the GM to choose between using really frustrating tactics or intentionally gimping themselves, they decided to make spells less all-or-nothing... Which isn't a bad idea, TBH, but they while the idea is good, their execution was pretty bad...

It's not all-or-nothing because of a thing called counterplay though. Take Hypnotic Pattern - you can shut down a group of equally powerful creatures with it, but their friends have the tactical option of literally slapping them out of it, or if you're badly positioned, slapping/shooting you instead. There's things they can do to deal with it beyond dispelling, hoping everyone saves, or waiting it out, and you have to take those things into account yourself when casting it. That's what creates depth, and it's one of the things PF2 is sorely lacking.

[Anonymouswizard]

.I find this belief that the D&D brand is the only reason for 5e's success and its design is somehow irrelevant to its appeal to be incredibly naive. Brand gets new people in the door, but it won't keep them there; if what they had found coming in was 4e's lack of depth or 3.5e's byzantine complexity or 2e's reams of antediluvian tables they would have run for the hills.


True, 5e is also so badly designed people are afraid to try other games under the impression they'll be just as hard to learn :smalltongue:

The level of brand recognition D&D has compared to anything else in the medium is ridiculous. People don't try 5e, dislike it, and then move onto Shadowrun or Thirsty Sword Lesbians. They play it, dislike it, and do t play RPGs again.

More seriously, 5e is partially popular because once combat's over it mostly gets out of the way, and therefore it doesn't matter how badly designed anything other than combat is. There are games which much better designed noncombat gameplay than D&D (generally involving stuff like emotional leverage and fluctuating relationships), but most people are happy going freeform.

Hell, I'm sure that the majority of players actually don't care about having all these rules for combat.

[Lemmy]

Absolutely wonderful for illustrating how not to do things. PF2e is at least coherent and competently put together. Given its origins Daggerheart meets expectations.
And if you don't like it, that's fine (I'm not a fan either - So far it turned out way too similar to 5e. with a few extra gimmicks, which are decent gimmicks for the most part, but "too similar to 5e" is a pretty big flaw in my book), but my point is that there are quite a few indie games in development right now that seem much better than anything WotC has made in over a decade! I just can't remember all of them right now... The one I'm most interested in ATM is DC20. I won't say I like everything in it, but no game is perfect


I find this belief that the D&D brand is the only reason for 5e's success and its design is somehow irrelevant to its appeal to be incredibly naive. Brand gets new people in the door, but it won't keep them there; if what they had found coming in was 4e's lack of depth or 3.5e's byzantine complexity or 2e's reams of antediluvian tables they would have run for the hills.
No one said it's the only reason... Only that it's by far the biggest reason.
Because it is.


Yeah, but those mooks are the monsters you usually don't need to control to begin with; you can just AoE them instead. The best condition in the game is Dead after all.Perhaps... But between that and have to deal with SoL or SoD, I consider the second option to be far worse for fun gameplay and story-telling.

And I don't think the PF2 Command spell is nearly as bad as you claim, except for the fact that it's pretty easy to resist... But the effect itself is fine. 2 actions for 2 actions (drop the weapon, pick the weapon) and/or placing the enemy at a disadvantageous position.

That doesn't mean I like magic in PF2... Or much of anything else in PF2, TBH... But let's not pretend 5e is better. It pretty much makes most of the same mistakes made by PF2, but in slightly different ways to slightly different degrees in different areas.


It's not all-or-nothing because of a thing called counterplay though. Take Hypnotic Pattern - you can shut down a group of equally powerful creatures with it, but their friends have the tactical option of literally slapping them out of it, or if you're badly positioned, slapping/shooting you instead. There's things they can do to deal with it beyond dispelling, hoping everyone saves, or waiting it out, and you have to take those things into account yourself when casting it. That's what creates depth, and it's one of the things PF2 is sorely lacking.
And a lot of others realistic have zero ways to be dealt with...
What's this? The enemy sorcerer cast Flesh to Stone? Well... I hope everyone is can roll well and/or is ready to go do something else for 40 hours while the other players enjoy the game.

[Serafina]

I'll just quickly note that a Crit Fail in PF2E does not have 5% odds of occuring.

Take a 7th-level Wizard. They're Expert (level + 4) in Spell Attack Modifiers and Spell DC's. They have a +4 to Intelligence. That gives their spells a DC of 10 + 7 + 4 + 4 = 25.
Notice that this is for all their spells, regardless of level - a level 1 spell is as likely to land as a level 4 spell.

Assume you're targeting a weaker monster - level 6 - and a weak save. That'd typically have a +8 to Save DC.
Meaning the monster would need to roll a 17 to succeed at the save, and would critically fail at the save on rolling a 6 or lower.

A 1-6 has a 30% chance of occuring, so rather than 5%, it's actually a 30% chance for a critical failure.
Assuming you target a weaker monster (which is what crowd control spells should target!) and that you are targeting a weak save.


For comparison, if you target an at-level monster with a better save, it could have a save of +15.
This would give it 50/50 odds of succeeding at the save, and it would indeed only crit-fail 5% of the time.
But at that point you are likely better using off a damage spell that targets AC or has a Basic Save, if you aren't busy buffing allies or otherwise using your magic.

[Kurald Galain]

Assume you're targeting a weaker monster - level 6 - and a weak save.

Why would you assume that? That doesn't strike me as a common situation.

[Psyren]

True, 5e is also so badly designed people are afraid to try other games under the impression they'll be just as hard to learn :smalltongue:

The level of brand recognition D&D has compared to anything else in the medium is ridiculous. People don't try 5e, dislike it, and then move onto Shadowrun or Thirsty Sword Lesbians. They play it, dislike it, and do t play RPGs again.

And both 5e as well as the hobby as a whole are still growing, so your thesis is the problem. Try again.



Hell, I'm sure that the majority of players actually don't care about having all these rules for combat.

Oh, well, if you're sure :smallamused:


No one said it's the only reason

It was the only reason you both mentioned.



That doesn't mean I like magic in PF2... Or much of anything else in PF2, TBH... But let's not pretend 5e is better.

I'm not pretending, don't worry :smallbiggrin:



Jokes aside... i know what you mean, but right now there are quite a few indie games in development, (DC20 is the one I'm looking forward to, but there's also Daggerheart). But we'll have to wait and see if any of those games will gain popularity (and hopefully actually make something different/better than 5e).


MCDM is the offshoot I'm most interested in (the more I hear about Daggerheart the less I like it.) I think DC20 and Valiant are just going to end up being pick-and-mix bags for otherwise largely 5e campaigns.



And a lot of others realistic have zero ways to be dealt with...
What's this? The enemy sorcerer cast Flesh to Stone? Well... I hope everyone is can roll well and/or is ready to go do something else for 40 hours while the other players enjoy the game.

You know that's single-target and takes 3 failures to take someone out of a fight completely right?

[Serafina]

Why would you assume that? That doesn't strike me as a common situation.Because you're fighting a large group of weaker monsters?
And targeting the weakest save is just what you obviously do.

"Boss and Lackeys" is indeed an example for a Severe difficulty encounter, consisting of one enemy of Party Level +2 (which would be 9 here) and four enemies of Party Level -4 (which would actually be 3 here, not 6).
If the enemies are level 3 and you target their weak save, they'd actually just have +6 or +4 to their save - needing a 19 to succeed, and crit-failing on a 9 (or 45% of the time).

If you can get an effect 45% of the time in a common type of encounter, you can't really claim it to be uncommon.


Alternatively, we could look at a "Troop", which would be a Moderate Encounter of one creature of party level, and two creatures of party level -2 (=5).
That just gets you in the rough ballpark I calced above - 25-30% chance they'll get a critical failure.
Given that you're targeting multiple enemies, that's pretty good odds that one of them will get a crit fail, and the other one will still be affected.

[Kurald Galain]

Assume you're targeting a weaker monster - level 6 - and a weak save. That'd typically have a +8 to Save DC.
A casual glance over Aonprd shows that the average weakest save of a L6 monster is +12, not +8.

If your aim is to make PF2's spells seem not quite as pointless, then you're really not making a strong case here :smallamused:

[Anonymouswizard]

And both 5e as well as the hobby as a whole are still growing, so your thesis is the problem. Try again.

Ah but what that thesis doesn't account for are those who try 5e and don't dislike it. In fact someone who's very middling in their opinion might still not move from 5e because they see the effort as not worth it.


Oh, well, if you're sure :smallamused:

Trust me, three round combats that take multiple hours to resolve are not the standard at casual tables. A shocking number of people see 'I move and attack' as completely fine and all they need, hence the Champion Fighter.

Heck I know people who love games mastering who are completely fine with 'move and attack' Fighters.

Heck in my last M&M game I think everybody just had one combat power, two if they wanted an AoE. And we had tons of fun even when the high-Toughness enemies started appearing.

And that's not counting the people who aren't there for combat.

[Greenflame133]

Ah but what that thesis doesn't account for are those who try 5e and don't dislike it. In fact someone who's very middling in their opinion might still not move from 5e because they see the effort as not worth it.

I do see them, and sometime I am like that, but then I will out a Dungon World or 2d10. I feel like 5e fails becouse it's not a simple system, while i lackes the fun factor of a more complex system

[Ignimortis]

PF 1e has been that to me. Given it's not as big as D&D 3.5e but bettwen massgive size of 3pp and 3.X campability, make it non-issue. One big thing PF 1e was introducing of class spefficing talents. PF 2e techinically streamed line that even futher by making class feats into defoult way classes operate. OF course, PF 2e come bundeled with a whole lo of other stuff.

One bit stramlining optsion for PF 1e comes in form for Spheres from DDS. They turn add this system of sphere talents progression divited into brroad area. It's a lot like PF 2e, but it's build on top of PF 1e, so you still have ability scores and other complex stuff. Two big things sphere do for me, is turn a big spelllist of unrelated spells into modual spell builder that is more narrow in scope and eaiser to manage. They also cose the gap bettwne caster and marshal with Power and Might sphere being on siular power level.
PF1 is...okay. Once you bolt some homebrew onto it, it's serviceable. Still, I can constantly see things to improve in PF1 every time I interact with it, which sometimes makes me mad. Spheres takes a lot of effort to introduce to a GM who is still getting his bearing with the default system, so it's unlikely it'll be used for a while yet.



Another BIG system that is similar it Savage Words. It has a core rulebook and many expansions. Some or less compatible with each other, so depending on DM/Game system can be small or huge.

Also, while it might no be what you are looking for. Lately I been enjoying a great deal of PbtA. Mostly Uncommon World (a hack of Dungeon World), this is a crunshy system, rather main mechanic incoerating fluff into the math. Books tell you what you can do, you describe how you are able to do it, and then if roll 6- DM will find a way your mathod can backfire, (or some other complicesions). It's order of magnitute easier to get into then D&D 5e while offering more optsio n to make something intrasting.
Too rules-light for my taste.



I so sad that in sawer systems are don't see many fun building like Sir Bearington (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=9788572&postcount=716), it almost feels like we need those crazy complex system for players to come thought, relize the can do something redicule and acually do it. I have seen Sir Bearington or Three in a Trenchcoat homebrew for 5e, but it never feels the same. It's a silly idea without grounding of riggit system, meaning it feels more like poorly writen spell in hight fantasy novel.
Yeah, complex systems create those fun things out of chaos, which is part of why I appreciate them so much.



That's fair. The problem is not with the crit system in general, but with the math that almost always means that monsters only crit-fail anything on a natural one (and get a 20%-ish chance to crit-succeed), and conversely PCs only crit-succeed on a natural twenty (except fighters) and get a 20%-ish chance to crit-fail.
It's such a problem for PCs that basically every class gets at least one automatic "success to critical success" for their saves, and many get two. After that, the game gets a bit better - but that tends to happen at level 10 or so.


I'll just quickly note that a Crit Fail in PF2E does not have 5% odds of occuring.

Take a 7th-level Wizard. They're Expert (level + 4) in Spell Attack Modifiers and Spell DC's. They have a +4 to Intelligence. That gives their spells a DC of 10 + 7 + 4 + 4 = 25.
Notice that this is for all their spells, regardless of level - a level 1 spell is as likely to land as a level 4 spell.

Assume you're targeting a weaker monster - level 6 - and a weak save. That'd typically have a +8 to Save DC.
Meaning the monster would need to roll a 17 to succeed at the save, and would critically fail at the save on rolling a 6 or lower.

A 1-6 has a 30% chance of occuring, so rather than 5%, it's actually a 30% chance for a critical failure.
Assuming you target a weaker monster (which is what crowd control spells should target!) and that you are targeting a weak save.

For comparison, if you target an at-level monster with a better save, it could have a save of +15.
This would give it 50/50 odds of succeeding at the save, and it would indeed only crit-fail 5% of the time.
But at that point you are likely better using off a damage spell that targets AC or has a Basic Save, if you aren't busy buffing allies or otherwise using your magic.
That is not exactly true. An enemy of APL-1 generally has a weak save that critfails on 1-4 in the best circumstance - for instance, a level 6 enemy generally has +11 or +12 rather than +8 or +9 on their weak save - +8 or +9 is like, a very specific enemy, and those either tend to have some gimmick that renders those saves less effective to exploit, like weak Will on golems or weak Fort on undead, or maybe it's like an ooze, which is designed to be dealt with using magic damage, because they resist weapon damage a lot. And even that is a very lucky situation, since the Wizard just got their +3 from going to level 7, and the math hasn't caught up yet (at level 6 and average enemy level 5, the difference would be even less, with critfails on 1-2 only).

Anyway, it's pretty consistent at any level you're not - a level-1 enemy rolls just enough to have a critfailure on 1-3 or 1-2, and a level+0 enemy rolls critfailures 1-2 or 1 only (there are enemies that actually don't have a dedicated weak save, like driders, who are level 6 creatures, but their lowest save against magic is +14. so they beat your DC25 on an 11+ despite being a level-1 creature, and if you face them at level 6 instead, they beat you at 8+. And often enough their weak save is Reflex, which is 95% damage spells only. Therefore, any enemy actually worth using debuffs on, such as an APL+1 or higher enemy, generally rolls critfails only on a nat 1.

Damage spells that target AC fall off incredibly quickly and harshly, since you're behind martials by several points and cannot benefit from flanking nor usually have any decent options to obtain ranged flatfooted. Your ranged spell attack is often resolved against AC that you hit on 11+ or something, with no effect on save. Attack roll spells are notoriously bad, to the point that even the PF2 subreddit says "yeah, they're kinda bad, just target saves".

Also, I begrudge you that stance of "control spells should target weaker targets". Weaker targets are barely worth using spells on, usually.



Does heavily home-brewed PF1 count? :smallbiggrin:
Thus far it's the best I can get. But I still hold out hope for something better...



Jokes aside... i know what you mean, but right now there are quite a few indie games in development, (DC20 is the one I'm looking forward to, but there's also Daggerheart). But we'll have to wait and see if any of those games will gain popularity (and hopefully actually make something different/better than 5e).

Absolutely wonderful for illustrating how not to do things. PF2e is at least coherent and competently put together. Given its origins Daggerheart meets expectations.
Daggerheart honestly looks very eh. It's like...a game that is designed to work for CR, and only for CR, and for most parties who aren't playing at the same level of narrative focus as CR, it's gonna be worse than 5e. And that's not a high bar.

[Serafina]

A casual glance over Aonprd shows that the average weakest save of a L6 monster is +12, not +8.

If your aim is to make PF2's spells seem not quite as pointless, then you're really not making a strong case here :smallamused:+11 actually.
Which makes them succeed at a 14, and crit fail at a 4 - so that's still a 20% chance to get a critical failure.

Yes, some "weak saves" will be +12 instead, in which case that chance goes down to 15%. Oh look, +1's can matter quite a bit.

And remember, this is still a Level -1 enemy. If it's a Level -2 enemy, that'd be a +9 save and thus a 30% chance.

Remember, you originally claimed it to be a 5% chance. For that to be the case, you typically need to target a medium save of an at-level enemy.
In our level 7 example, a weak save would be a +12, and a good save would be +15 - which gives them a 50/50 chance of succeeding, and they'd indeed only crit-fail on a 1 (because a natural 20/1 upgrades/downgrades by one step).

But if you are fighting at-level enemies, you'll only be fighting 2-4 of them, so why should it be easy to take them out with a single action?
(2 would be a moderate encounter, 3 a severe encounter, and 4 an extreme encounter).

[Kurald Galain]

Remember, you originally claimed it to be a 5% chance. For that to be the case, you typically need to target a medium save of an at-level enemy.
Yes, because that is actually the normal situation. You're making my case for me :smallcool:

[Anonymouswizard]

I do see them, and sometime I am like that, but then I will out a Dungon World or 2d10. I feel like 5e fails becouse it's not a simple system, while i lackes the fun factor of a more complex system

Honestly my issue with 5e is that it's looked at some other games, taken the basics of engaging systems, and then does nothing with them.

By far the worst is Inspiration, IME it's so vestigial that GMs don't remember it exists. And yet it's the ONLY reward the system has for roleplaying.

[JNAProductions]

Honestly my issue with 5e is that it's looked at some other games, taken the basics of engaging systems, and then does nothing with them.

By far the worst is Inspiration, IME it's so vestigial that GMs don't remember it exists. And yet it's the ONLY reward the system has for roleplaying.

As someone who's a big fan of 5E, I can agree to that.

I usually remember it, as a DM; but as a player, not so much. And my players never seem to remember to use it either.

[Kurald Galain]

Assume you're targeting a weaker monster - level 6 - and a weak save.

Actually, now would be a good time to point out how PF2's monster identification rules work.

First, identifying a monster takes an action (unlike in 3E/PF1/4E, where it's free). Then, of course, it takes a knowledge check. And then... drum roll... if you succeed... drum rollllll... you learn one of its best-known attributes, such as the fact that a manticore (who just fired tail spikes at you) does in fact have tail spikes.

And that's it. By the rules, you cannot actually ask "which is its lowest save"; the system provides no way for the players to learn that. So yeah, wizards like to target weak saves, but have no way of actually doing so. Just in case PF2 needed yet more ways of making casters pointless :smalltongue:

[Serafina]

Actually, now would be a good time to point out how PF2's monster identification rules work.

First, identifying a monster takes an action (unlike in 3E/PF1/4E, where it's free). Then, of course, it takes a knowledge check. And then... drum roll... if you succeed... drum rollllll... you learn one of its best-known attributes, such as the fact that a manticore (who just fired tail spikes at you) does in fact have tail spikes.

And that's it. By the rules, you cannot actually ask "which is its lowest save"; the system provides no way for the players to learn that. So yeah, wizards like to target weak saves, but have no way of actually doing so. Just in case PF2 needed yet more ways of making casters pointless :smalltongue:Nope.
“Are any of its defenses weak?” is literary one of the example questions listed. If your GM doesn't answer that in a way that reveals any of it's defenses - y'know, the attributes listed as AC, Fort, Ref, Will - then the GM isn't answering the question.

And sure, it takes an action, but that is why you have three actions.
If you're casting a 2-action spell, then you literary have an action left over - unless you want to do something else with that action, but that's a tactical consideration!
What if you're casting a 3-action spell? Well, that's a tactical consideration too - but most spells only take 2 actions, so that's not even that much of an issue.


Also, so as to not double-post:
Fighting enemies -2 or -4 levels below yours is literary a normal situation, and I've shown that you have significantly higher than 5% chance for them to get a critical failure. Unless you only ever fight small numbers of elite enemies, but that's hardly a typical campaign! Sure, the exact numbers may vary, but the point is still made, you can't insist that your situation is the norm.

[Rynjin]

The issue is, if I'm fighting weak enemies, why would I bother imposing weak conditions on them when I could impose the strongest condition: Dead?

If the enemies are THAT weak that you have a solid chance of "killing" them with your CC spell, you should be able to ACTUALLY kill them with a damage spell.

You were talking about the "-2" enemies only having a 30% chance of actually getting the crit fail anyway. Them's bad odds.

[Ignimortis]

Also, so as to not double-post:
Fighting enemies -2 or -4 levels below yours is literary a normal situation, and I've shown that you have significantly higher than 5% chance for them to get a critical failure. Unless you only ever fight small numbers of elite enemies, but that's hardly a typical campaign! Sure, the exact numbers may vary, but the point is still made, you can't insist that your situation is the norm.

Last time I've seen enemies below level-1 without an elite template, in the game where I'm level 17 now, was...maybe at level 7 when we fought a horde of level-3 beastmen, but there were quite literally dozens of them and we were basically playing tower defense, holding them back and trying to not let any of them through our position, as they only spared one action per turn at most trying to attack us, and focused most on running past. So hardly a typical encounter either. This came after five of us fought a Nuckelavee (level 9) at level 5, and I'll give you three guesses which fight was by far more challenging.

The last encounter that came incredibly close to a TPK was five of us at level 15, facing off against a Lesser Death and maybe half a dozen of Elite Nosferatu dudes, based on some other level 11 or 12 creatures, which capitalized on Lesser Death's aura. There was never a fight where all enemies were APL-2 or below in the entire campaign, and the last time it was only creatures of APL-1 or below was maybe at level 4, as even the beastmen encounter from above had a couple elite minotaurs and beastman troops at the end.

But then the question arises - if we're fighting a mob of APL-2 enemies or below, why are we wasting spells, a valuable strategic resource (even if unreliable against stronger opponents, they are still the thing that can sway those hard fights if they actually land, and having more slots/tries is essential to get them to land), on fights we can clean up with at-will abilities without much risk?

[Psyren]

Ah but what that thesis doesn't account for are those who try 5e and don't dislike it. In fact someone who's very middling in their opinion might still not move from 5e because they see the effort as not worth it.

Great, so you agree then that the ones who try 5e and quit the hobby entirely are offset/negligible :smallsmile:



Trust me, three round combats that take multiple hours to resolve are not the standard at casual tables. A shocking number of people see 'I move and attack' as completely fine and all they need, hence the Champion Fighter.

Heck I know people who love games mastering who are completely fine with 'move and attack' Fighters.

Heck in my last M&M game I think everybody just had one combat power, two if they wanted an AoE. And we had tons of fun even when the high-Toughness enemies started appearing.

And that's not counting the people who aren't there for combat.

It's quite a leap from "people are fine with Champion Fighter" to "people don't want rules for combat." Or even "people just want to move and attack" for that matter - Champion Fighters can do way more than that. And in fact, if your thesis is that lots of rules for combat are unwanted, that's a far bigger indictment of PF2 than it is of 5e, where you have to remember to raise your shield as an action and keep track of MAP and whether using your third Action on a hail-mary swing is better than Helping your ally and which classes are allowed to OA etc.


The issue is, if I'm fighting weak enemies, why would I bother imposing weak conditions on them when I could impose the strongest condition: Dead?

If the enemies are THAT weak that you have a solid chance of "killing" them with your CC spell, you should be able to ACTUALLY kill them with a damage spell.

You were talking about the "-2" enemies only having a 30% chance of actually getting the crit fail anyway. Them's bad odds.

My thought exactly, if I'm fighting mooks at -4 or -6 then what the heck does it matter what I use on them? Even if they're paired with one strong enemy, I'd just mop up the adds rather than waste time cc'ing them. CC is for challenging enemies, not pushovers.

[Kurald Galain]

Nope.
“Are any of its defenses weak?” is literary one of the example questions listed.
No it's not.

Source: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2638

And before that you wrote that an average save is +8 when it's actually quite a bit higher... maybe you should check a good source like Aonprd to make your posts more accurate?

[catagent101]

That's the GM advice for Recall Knowledge. The list of example questions is here (https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2367) in the action description.

[Serafina]

The issue is, if I'm fighting weak enemies, why would I bother imposing weak conditions on them when I could impose the strongest condition: Dead?

If the enemies are THAT weak that you have a solid chance of "killing" them with your CC spell, you should be able to ACTUALLY kill them with a damage spell.

You were talking about the "-2" enemies only having a 30% chance of actually getting the crit fail anyway. Them's bad odds.Not if you target multiple enemies, and because a Crit Fail is quite likely to take them out of the fight.

Okay, let's actually use an example, a previously maligned spell - Color Spray.
For that to be feasible we need to use a lower-level party, because Color Spray stops working past a certain level. But if you are a level 4 party, you can use it against level -2 enemies, if you are a level 6 party, you can use it against level -4 enemies (either way, level 2 enemies).

Let's go with the level 6 party so that Fireball is on the table, and have the fight Shadow Drakes (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=640) which have a weakness to fire to make that comparison stronger. There should be 4 Shadow Drakes and one stronger monster (level 8).
Our Spell DC is 22, and they have a Will Save of +6.
On a 20, the Shadow Drakes are unaffected.
On an 16-19, the Shadow Drakes are only Dazzled for 1 round - this gives them a 25% miss chance.
On a 6-15, they are Stunned 1 (they lose 1 action), Blinded for 1 round, and Dazzled for 1 minute.
On a 1-5, they are Stunned for 1 round, and Blinded for 1 minute.

Compare and Contrast Fireball. We use the same Spell DC, but their Reflex Save is +10.
On a 20, the Shadow Drakes are unaffected and take no damage.
On a 12-19, the Shadow Drakes take 3D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to fire - an average of 15.5.
On a 2-11, the Shadow Drakes take 6D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to Fire - an average of 26.
On a 1, the Shadow Drakes take 12D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to fire - an average of 47.
Note that the Shadow Drakes have 28 HP - so you can kill them, but only if you roll above average on your damage, or they roll a 1.

Now, that makes Fireball seem pretty good - I deliberately picked a creature that was also weak to it.

You also have to consider of course that Color Spray is a first-rank spell, whereas Fireball is a third-rank spell.
And that Fireball can do some damage to the level +4 enemy, or at least has a chance to do so.
And that different AoEs - Cone vs. Burst.
And also that Colour Spray is from level 3+ onward pretty friendly fire proof due to it's Incapacitation trait, which gives a +10 to the saving throw. Sure, that sucks if you hit an enemy, but it also shields your allies. You wouldn't want to use Fireball when enemies are already in melee, you might consider using Color Spray instead.

Now, I could also compare Fireball to a 3rd-level Spell - say, a heightened Fear.
On a 20, they're unaffected.
On a 16-19 they're Frightened 1 - that's a -1 penalty to everything.
On a 6-15 they're Frightened 2.
On a 1-5 they're Frightened 3 and also Flee for 1 round.
It targets 5 creatures, directly targeting without being dependant on an AOE. That means targeting the entire encounter.
Again, this is a different use case to Fireball, but I would argue that it is worth using. Sure, if you have a clear shot with Fireball, you wanna use Fireball - but Fireball is one of the best spells there is, and we're targeting enemies that are weak to fire.

[Kurald Galain]

That's the GM advice for Recall Knowledge. The list of example questions is here (https://2e.aonprd.com/Actions.aspx?ID=2367) in the action description.

Ok, fair enough.

Also, I missed earlier that (1) the DC on the knowledge check is pretty high, easily giving you a 30%-40% chance to waste your action (more if you're not a wizard); and (2) you get only a single question per action; and (3) crit-failing gives you false information.

Frankly the only game I can think of that makes it harder for PCs to know what they're facing is Call of Chthulhu.

[Ignimortis]

Let's go with the level 6 party so that Fireball is on the table, and have the fight Shadow Drakes (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=640) which have a weakness to fire to make that comparison stronger. There should be 4 Shadow Drakes and one stronger monster (level 8).

Okay, but the question is, why would you not try to disable the only actual threat in the room, that being the APL+2 enemy? Those shadow drakes have 28 HP each, a martial kills one of them per turn almost automatically, and even your Caustic Blast cantrip can put them down pretty well (DC of 25, they roll Reflex at +10, it's their best save but you're still so above them, it stops mattering much). Offensively, they have a +11 attack, so they hit on what, like 9+ against the squishiest caster, probably more?

Meanwhile, a level 8 creature is threatening everyone, and what you should probably be doing is casting Fear (level 1) on it, or some other debuff, or maybe give your Fighter something instead, I dunno. Sure, if this is what passes for a "boss fight for the day", then yeah, sure, you can drop something high-slot to have fun. But in the game I've played the most, that would've been a regular fight, and you'd be expected to do at least two or three more similarly budgeted fights, and possibly one extreme fight at the end. You don't waste your best slots on trash fights.

[Rynjin]

Not if you target multiple enemies, and because a Crit Fail is quite likely to take them out of the fight.

Okay, let's actually use an example, a previously maligned spell - Color Spray.
For that to be feasible we need to use a lower-level party, because Color Spray stops working past a certain level. But if you are a level 4 party, you can use it against level -2 enemies, if you are a level 6 party, you can use it against level -4 enemies (either way, level 2 enemies).

Let's go with the level 6 party so that Fireball is on the table, and have the fight Shadow Drakes (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=640) which have a weakness to fire to make that comparison stronger. There should be 4 Shadow Drakes and one stronger monster (level 8).
Our Spell DC is 22, and they have a Will Save of +6.
On a 20, the Shadow Drakes are unaffected.
On an 16-19, the Shadow Drakes are only Dazzled for 1 round - this gives them a 25% miss chance.
On a 6-15, they are Stunned 1 (they lose 1 action), Blinded for 1 round, and Dazzled for 1 minute.
On a 1-5, they are Stunned for 1 round, and Blinded for 1 minute.

Compare and Contrast Fireball. We use the same Spell DC, but their Reflex Save is +10.
On a 20, the Shadow Drakes are unaffected and take no damage.
On a 12-19, the Shadow Drakes take 3D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to fire - an average of 15.5.
On a 2-11, the Shadow Drakes take 6D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to Fire - an average of 26.
On a 1, the Shadow Drakes take 12D6 fire damage, +5 from their weakness to fire - an average of 47.
Note that the Shadow Drakes have 28 HP - so you can kill them, but only if you roll above average on your damage, or they roll a 1.

Now, that makes Fireball seem pretty good - I deliberately picked a creature that was also weak to it.

You also have to consider of course that Color Spray is a first-rank spell, whereas Fireball is a third-rank spell.
And that Fireball can do some damage to the level +4 enemy, or at least has a chance to do so.
And that different AoEs - Cone vs. Burst.
And also that Colour Spray is from level 3+ onward pretty friendly fire proof due to it's Incapacitation trait, which gives a +10 to the saving throw. Sure, that sucks if you hit an enemy, but it also shields your allies. You wouldn't want to use Fireball when enemies are already in melee, you might consider using Color Spray instead.

Now, I could also compare Fireball to a 3rd-level Spell - say, a heightened Fear.
On a 20, they're unaffected.
On a 16-19 they're Frightened 1 - that's a -1 penalty to everything.
On a 6-15 they're Frightened 2.
On a 1-5 they're Frightened 3 and also Flee for 1 round.
It targets 5 creatures, directly targeting without being dependant on an AOE. That means targeting the entire encounter.
Again, this is a different use case to Fireball, but I would argue that it is worth using. Sure, if you have a clear shot with Fireball, you wanna use Fireball - but Fireball is one of the best spells there is, and we're targeting enemies that are weak to fire.

Again, we come back to, why in the everloving **** would I trade two of my actions to take away one of my opponent's actions?

I'd need to catch 3 of these drakes (unlikely with a 15 ft. cone) to make that trade even vaguely worthwhile, but even then it's not that good. 2 actions is pretty much my whole turn. 1 action is basically nothing for the enemy, because most powerful actions cost 2 actions, which they still have the ability to do.

And the issue is that comparison extends even to 3rd level CC spells as well...is what I would say, if there WERE any good AoE CC spells at 3rd level lmao. Fact of the matter is, you had to do this comparison with Color Spray because it's just about the only one that exists, and compares favorably to any other AoE CC. You're gonna cast, what, Oneiric Mire instead?

[Lemmy]

Do people really only use CC on super powerful opponents?

So if you're at level 9 and 8 monsters of CR 7 show up, you don't use any CC spells at all? I find that really hard to believe...

I'm not denying that PF2 magic is pretty weak, but it's not because of the "spells only cause a partial effect on powerful foes" mechanic. That's probably the one good idea in PF2, the issue with magic in PF2 is caused by multiple factors stacking together (usually a mix of "effect is weaker" and "saving throw DCs are too easy to beat").

By all means, I'll be the first to criticize PF2 (and 5e), but let's criticize it for what it is and does. There's enough there that we really don't need to exaggerate its flaws.

[Ignimortis]

Do people really only use CC on super powerful opponents?

So if you're at level 9 and 8 monsters of CR 7 show up, you don't use any CC spells at all? I find that really hard to believe...

I'm not denying that PF2 magic is pretty weak, but it's not because of the "spells only cause a partial effect on powerful foes" mechanic. That's probably the one good idea in PF2, the issue with magic in PF2 is caused by multiple factors stacking together (usually a mix of "effect is weaker" and "saving throw DCs are too easy to beat").

By all means, I'll be the first to criticize PF2 (and 5e), but let's criticize it for what it is and does. There's enough there that we really don't need to exaggerate its flaws.

If 8 opponents of CR7 show up, sure - it's actually a pretty hard fight despite the numbers disadvantage, simply due to action economy and increased chances that they get to crit or gang up on the weaker party members. If 3 or 4 opponents of CR7 show up... Chances are, you can beat them up without much issue even if you don't spend any resources aside from minor healing. And if you know you're very likely to fight harder fights today, it's in your best interest to mop up without too much resource expenditure.

Consider that pretty much all of the APs for PF2 released before...Strength of Thousands, I believe?.. have several segments where the party would have to fight 4-5 encounters of moderate and higher threat in a row, sometimes facing an extreme out of the blue. I think the first one, Age of Ashes, has an infamous part where you could potentially through little fault of your own be embroiled in a gauntlet of up to 11 (!) encounters in a row, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill all but the luckiest and best-optimized parties.

[Rynjin]

Do people really only use CC on super powerful opponents?

So if you're at level 9 and 8 monsters of CR 7 show up, you don't use any CC spells at all? I find that really hard to believe...

I'm not denying that PF2 magic is pretty weak, but it's not because of the "spells only cause a partial effect on powerful foes" mechanic. That's probably the one good idea in PF2, the issue with magic in PF2 is caused by multiple factors stacking together (usually a mix of "effect is weaker" and "saving throw DCs are too easy to beat").

By all means, I'll be the first to criticize PF2 (and 5e), but let's criticize it for what it is and does. There's enough there that we really don't need to exaggerate its flaws.

I only use CC if it's actually gonna...do something. Which most CC spells in PF don't.

If 8 CR 7 monsters show up, and I'm level 9, sure in PF1e I'll cast something like Hungry Pit, Wall of Stone, or Fear. Y'know, stuff that straight up removes a couple of dudes from the fight for a few rounds.

Most of the good examples of these spells don't exist in PF2e. Instead you have stuff like...uh..."Freezing Rain" which does a smidge of damage and might remove 1 of their actions. or "Slither" which is really good on a Critical Fail, and ****ing trash otherwise.

And those are your best option. Because if you go back down to 3rd level spells or below, you have that pesky "Incapacitation" tag that ensures you will never get the actually good benefit of the spell. If they're CR 8 instead, you can't use 4th level spells on them either. And if they're a CR 10 boss monster, even your highest level spell slot is useless.

I know you seem to like that mechanic, but I find it absolutely asinine. If they wanted to go that route they could have at least limited it to an optional template you could apply to "Boss monsters" instead of being a flat "as you level, your low level spells slots become completely useless even on fodder!" mechanic.

Having a "sweet spot" where your spells are useful and then are swiftly outpaced is dumb as hell. Especially when that "sweet spot" is "never against CR appropriate enemies, and only sometimes against fodder".

[Lemmy]

I only use CC if it's actually gonna...do something. Which most CC spells in PF don't.

If 8 CR 7 monsters show up, and I'm level 9, sure in PF1e I'll cast something like Hungry Pit, Wall of Stone, or Fear. Y'know, stuff that straight up removes a couple of dudes from the fight for a few rounds.
Depends... If your spell affects, say, half of the creatures and removes 1 action of each of them every round, that's a really good spell, as you removed A TON of actions from the opposition team.

A spell doesn't have to "straight up removes a couple of dudes from the fight" in order to be useful, just like an attack doesn't have to insta-kill the target to be relevant.


Most of the good examples of these spells don't exist in PF2e. Instead you have stuff like...uh..."Freezing Rain" which does a smidge of damage and might remove 1 of their actions. or "Slither" which is really good on a Critical Fail, and ****ing trash otherwise.

And those are your best option. Because if you go back down to 3rd level spells or below, you have that pesky "Incapacitation" tag that ensures you will never get the actually good benefit of the spell. If they're CR 8 instead, you can't use 4th level spells on them either. And if they're a CR 10 boss monster, even your highest level spell slot is useless.

I know you seem to like that mechanic, but I find it absolutely asinine. If they wanted to go that route they could have at least limited it to an optional template you could apply to "Boss monsters" instead of being a flat "as you level, your low level spells slots become completely useless even on fodder!" mechanic.

Having a "sweet spot" where your spells are useful and then are swiftly outpaced is dumb as hell. Especially when that "sweet spot" is "never against CR appropriate enemies, and only sometimes against fodder".
But you see, that's an issue with the "stacking of multiple problems" aspect I mentioned.

Spells having partial effects on more powerful enemies and full effects on weak ones is pretty okay... The issue arises when that's combined with spell effects being pretty weak overall, spell DCs being too low, monster saves being too high and certain effect tags making spells even easier to resist.

It's not really one single factor that makes PF2 magic bad... It's the combination of many of them.

(And TBF, low level spells becoming useless as you go up in level is pretty standard in D&D and PF1 too... Usually due to the mostly static DC).

[Aotrs Commander]

I can't especially speak to the mechanics of PF2, but it did bring us PC skeletons and PC spiders-what-turn-into-people, so it once again proves that most rule-systems have at least one good idea somewhere.

Which I can then shamelessly steal and paste back into my extensive-basically-an-edition-into-itself 3.5/PF1 hybrid1 and/or, on occasion, Rolemaster/Spacemaster (itself a hybrid of 3 editions of RM and two of SM).

Neither 5E nor PF2 (and especially nobody else) stands a chance, really, not again twenty years of work (or, in the second case, more like 35).



1There are currently 63 base classes. I consider this "probably sufficient for now."

[Pex]

Only going by what I've read, they made an effort to fix the warrior-caster power divide. They kept Vancian casting. No more extra spell slots by high ability score. No more increasing power of spells by caster level, using the 5E method of needing a higher spell slot. They changed the traditional spell level of some spells. Also, Save or Suck doesn't really exist. It's Save or Be Bothered. Still effective debuffing due to interfering in action economy, but there's no real I Win The Combat spell. A spellcaster is not winning alone, but he still contributes in a meaningful way. He has his share of being awesome.

They also fixed warriors by not having any one particular fighting style dominate. Two-handed, two-weapon, weapon & shield, one-hand weapon only each have their own perks and drawbacks. Use the style you prefer. You'll do fine and won't regret not doing another. Strength also gets some love due to caring about bulk, and it's still needed for damage with range attacks. Range's advantage is not being in melee, which is fine, but you can't dump ST and your effectiveness is on par with melee. No style is the One True Way.

Pathfinder 2E is by no means perfect. It's very crunchy, and you have to plan out your character from 1 to 20 at character creation. If you don't you will find you can't get a cool thing you wanted at level 10 or whatever because of a choice you made at level 3. There are lots of fiddly +1s to remember.

I'd be willing to give it a try if I ever find a group to play it. My current Pathfinder group is 1E. Don't know if we'll switch when current campaign ends if we keep playing.

[Ignimortis]

Only going by what I've read, they made an effort to fix the warrior-caster power divide. They kept Vancian casting. No more extra spell slots by high ability score. No more increasing power of spells by caster level, using the 5E method of needing a higher spell slot. They changed the traditional spell level of some spells. Also, Save or Suck doesn't really exist. It's Save or Be Bothered. Still effective debuffing due to interfering in action economy, but there's no real I Win The Combat spell. A spellcaster is not winning alone, but he still contributes in a meaningful way. He has his share of being awesome.

They also fixed warriors by not having any one particular fighting style dominate. Two-handed, two-weapon, weapon & shield, one-hand weapon only each have their own perks and drawbacks. Use the style you prefer. You'll do fine and won't regret not doing another. Strength also gets some love due to caring about bulk, and it's still needed for damage with range attacks. Range's advantage is not being in melee, which is fine, but you can't dump ST and your effectiveness is on par with melee. No style is the One True Way.


All of these are true or kind of true (one can certainly argue about spellcasters, and though I highly dislike spellcaster dominance, even I think PF2 went too far).

However, this kind of fixing the martial-caster divide and a host of other issues with PF1 is a bit like taking two people, one which has no pancakes, and another which has a whole stack of them with every condiment they could ever want, slapping the latter's pancakes out of their hands into the mud, then handing each of them one dirty and torn pancake and telling them "now you're equal!" while leaving the rest to rot.

This metaphor might have ran away from me, but the idea is that PF2 "fixed" warrior-mage issues by making everyone no more strong and valuable than a warrior previously was, and balancing the whole experience around that. In 95% of cases, including core design, the decision was to nerf good stuff rather than to bring bad stuff to being at least mediocre.

[LuckyTheOrc]

I love PF2. I'm never going back to running 5e.

I'm still mad that I trusted 5e without doing a sanity check and TPK'ed my party with a Death Kiss because adding the six player doubles the encounter budget which allows double the boss monster for 1/6 more party strength. I called a mulligan, but still. You just don't get that in PF2.

As far as boss monsters go, my players haven't REALLY embraced the mechanical logic that when fighting bosses your AC is for avoiding crits and your attacks are for making hits (not crits). They want to crit bosses and avoid being hit, but that's not how the math shakes out. Still, as long as I give them enough mooks and minibosses they can dunk on, they'll indulge me the occasional boss they have to work for.

The magic items actually work in PF2, they're actually balanced and priced appropriately. 5e with it's big ol shoulder shrug and 'figure it out yourself' can go bury itself.

...

I consider D&D-likes basically it's own genre of TTRPG, it has a very specific play experience and I think PF2 scratches that itch best of that group.

[Tanarii]

I consider D&D-likes basically it's own genre of TTRPG, it has a very specific play experience and I think PF2 scratches that itch best of that group.
It's good if you want a narrow band of monsters with identically leveled PCs and usable for linear adventures. It's basically unusable if you want non-linear adventures, a wider band of monsters, differently levels PCs, or a west marches campaign (which needs all three).

(i had to look up the bit about doubling encounter budgets for 6 players. I was shocked to find that's sadly correct for solo "bosses". I basically never ran solo encounters for 5e because IMO it sucks for them. OTOH PF2 isn't particularly good for them either ... but at least the math supports them as intended. It's just that whiffing a bunch and getting slammed back hard isn't a lot of fun for players.)

[LuckyTheOrc]

It's good if you want a narrow band of monsters with identically leveled PCs and usable for linear adventures. It's basically unusable if you want non-linear adventures, a wider band of monsters, differently levels PCs, or a west marches campaign (which needs all three).


I don't think anything D&D-like is very good for differently leveled PC's. But within the 'D&D genre', I don't see why PF2 is notably bad at non-linear. You have to watch the power-bands to know what you're throwing at the party, but that's true of any combat-focused system. At least with PF2 you know what you're getting.

[Anonymouswizard]

I don't think anything D&D-like is very good for differently leveled PC's.

I don't think any TTRPG is particularly good for significantly divergent PC power levels. A good group can make them work, but it's easy to have it end with resentment.

With the exception of something like the very earliest games, or troupe style play.

I do own some games where it's inevitable, mostly PbtA stuff, but they also tend to be designed for short campaigns. Who cares if the Vampire is an advance or two ahead of you're playing something else in four weeks anyway.

[Greenflame133]

PF2e isn't the only one to address warrior-caster power divide, but it definitely has big advantages over D&D 5e.
That said, when it comes to picking a system to play/run, I don't see myself picking up PF 2e over: PF1e Spheres, DW or Savage Worlds

To broadly touch on some stuff. PF 2e feels too tightly balanced around Magic items. PC have to pick up all the core items very closely to then expected. If they buy them too late, or too early, the maths prebaked maths breaks, and you do the same thing of adjusting encounters based on how well the party performs.

Most other d20system use a guideline of Wealth By Level with exact prices. Which has similar issues of +x weapon being the best thing you can buy, but the less tight maths give them more wiggle room.

Meanwhile, some loose system like Dungeon World entirely (or mostly) eliminate items with to hit/damage bonus, focusing on utility and flavour effects. In with case, combat balance is unaffected by the items.

Generally speaking D&D 3.5e, D&D 5e, PF 1e and many other systems don't have super precise CR system. There is no number of lv 1 commoners who can threaten a CR 9 Greater Fire Elemental (PF 1e), as even if they score a hit, DR will negate it all while they are set on fire just from touching it. Similarly, large numbers of PCs will find themselves outclassed by a high CR single boss. A group of 6 PCs might do better against encounters for a group of 3, but with double monster HP.

Back to warrior-caster, D&D 3.5e has ToB, PF 1e has PoW. It narrows the gap with "sword spells"

PF 1e and D&D 5e have spheres, which covert both to warriors and caster to new system. Not quite unlimited pancakes, but a huge pool of options I'm still exploring after years of play.

DW gives warriors base HP and damage dice. Spell caster buffing the selves is about equal.


I don't think anything D&D-like is very good for differently leveled PC's. But within the 'D&D genre', I don't see why PF2 is notably bad at non-linear. You have to watch the power-bands to know what you're throwing at the party, but that's true of any combat-focused system. At least with PF2 you know what you're getting.
This is kinda true. Generally speaking, any game that is defined around combat will probably have this issue. I think DW is best at handling it as damage boosting moves are rare by design, higher levels PC will be able to do more, across border spectrum, but not completely out class their temates.

[Kurald Galain]

PF2e isn't the only one to address warrior-caster power divide, but it definitely has big advantages over D&D 5e.
Thankfully, 5E definitely has big advantages over PF2; such as being much easier to build characters for, more easy and lightweight to run, and having spells that actually do what they say they do (notably crowd control and plot-impacting spells like Teleport).

Essentially, characters in 5E feel much more heroic and competent than in PF2, in addition to having much more agency. All in all it's not surprising that 5E is vastly more popular than PF2.

[Greenflame133]

Thankfully, 5E definitely has big advantages over PF2; such as being much easier to build characters for, more easy and lightweight to run, and having spells that actually do what they say they do (notably crowd control and plot-impacting spells like Teleport).

Essentially, characters in 5E feel much more heroic and competent than in PF2, in addition to having much more agency. All in all it's not surprising that 5E is vastly more popular than PF2.
The complexity diffrance isn't that big, other then having more choices. Running... well 5e has it fair share of odd, wierd, and needlessly complex rules, so it's eaier exept when it isn't.

On a player side, main thing is that you constantly pick optsion from lists, a bit like warlocks invocations but for everyone, at every level.

On a whole. D&D 5e and PF 2e aren't far from each other in terms of complexity. PbtAs are much simpler then thier of them, d20 system (D&D 3.5e, PF 1e, ect) usually are way more complext. For me bouth 5e is this wakward spot where it's too complex to have with system off the side, but deep enought to generate novel ideas. PF 2e dose it silightly, as the feats in thoery have a lot more depth. In thoery, as for all the optsion that they present only small selecion is meaningful. Meaning any novel character will be doomed to being nearly useless by the tight math.

That is not to say either D&D 5e or PF 2e lack intrasting ideas build in, but rather that there are very few ways to combine them in novel ways

[Kurald Galain]

The complexity diffrance isn't that big, other then having more choices.

LOL no. You can start with PF2's excessively long list of conditions (several of which have specific numeric values and/or actions attached) as well as keywords/tags (several of which have rules attached, such as the aforementioned "level-appropriate enemies get +10 to saving throws").

Basically 5E aims at being fast to resolve and quick to play, whereas PF2 almost necessitates a VTT and automation software to keep track of what your modifiers are this round.

[Aotrs Commander]

I don't think any TTRPG is particularly good for significantly divergent PC power levels. A good group can make them work, but it's easy to have it end with resentment.

With the exception of something like the very earliest games, or troupe style play.

I do own some games where it's inevitable, mostly PbtA stuff, but they also tend to be designed for short campaigns. Who cares if the Vampire is an advance or two ahead of you're playing something else in four weeks anyway.

Rolemaster... Manages? With a little bit of difference, because it's all skill-based and the way the skills work. To some extent, the actual stats of the PCs can have way more impact on that basis. The 22-year long party we had, I had to buff one of the character's stats about twice because as an archmage1, she was well behind the power curve of the Ridiculously High Stats Party (including one of the NPCs - though in my defence, she was a character in the party first in the dasy when occasionaklly, someone else would DM for it).

There is a reason when I started the current modern party, I, like with D&D, locked to a points-buy and not randomly rolled stats. One party with characters with stat bonus approaching the size of the (percentile) stats was enough, thanks, even for me.



1Anyone moaning about how weak casters are in PF2 should try playing RM2/Rolemaster Classic spellcasters by core rules.

You have to spend most of your skill points to learn spells, because unless you spend 20 ranks (which could be anything from half to 2/3 of your development points, if you're a primary single-realm spellcaster), you only get a 5% chance per rank of learning that spell list, and indeed you are technically only allowed to attempt to learn one spell list per level. If you succeed on your spell gain roll, you do learn the spell list to level 10... Except that trying to cast a spell above your level you a) by core, likely only have 1 power point per level, so you can't cast it anyway and b) have chance of exploding your own brain2 if you try to cast a spell above your level. Also, it takes two rounds of preparation before you cast a spell of your level (until about some level below your that I can't be arsed to look up) and if you cut that off? Chance of head-asploding again.

So you could potentially be a mage at level 1 who knows NO SPELLS, or, at best, your one and only spell is basically a flashlight.

There is a VERY GOOD REASON Rolemaster has numerous alternative casting rules. I don't think we ever actually played to "only learn one list per level," because I think we never noticed that rule. And these days, I have completely re-written how casting works, drawing from those alternate systems.

Otherwise, you want to see where martial dominate? See Rolemaster.

(Oh and that party? After 22 years? Level 12. (By comparison RM's spells go from 1 to 50. Admittedly, that group was only played on day quests and no weekly, but...))



2Quite literally, with attack spells.

[Tanarii]

I don't think anything D&D-like is very good for differently leveled PC's.Well, you're wrong. 4e wasn't very good at it, for the same reason as Pf2, a difference of 2+ levels means you're not only being carried, you're in significant danger of death. But 3e and 5e can handle a difference of about 4-5 level, more if they don't mind being carried a bit. And AD&D could handle basically any level difference once you were past level 1 or so, and you could easily be carried for that level.


But within the 'D&D genre', I don't see why PF2 is notably bad at non-linear. You have to watch the power-bands to know what you're throwing at the party, but that's true of any combat-focused system. At least with PF2 you know what you're getting.Because non-linear means you aren't "throwing at the party", it means the party is choosing what to engage. If you're requried to watch power bands, it can't do non-linear.

3e and 5e, with their CR systems, definitely encourage one to think in terms of linear and planned progression to make sure the party encounters what it can handle. But they're actually not required at all, which is why they're infamous for 'not working' or 'being terrible' etc etc.

4e and PF2e require it. Because if you encounter something you can't handle in combat, you also can't handle it in non-combat way. Its numbers are strictly superior to yours across the board. You can't even escape notice initially nor can you run away.

Pre-Dragonlance TSR is infamous for once you leave the dungeon, what you encounter is what you encounter.


LOL no. You can start with PF2's excessively long list of conditions (several of which have specific numeric values and/or actions attached) as well as keywords/tags (several of which have rules attached, such as the aforementioned "level-appropriate enemies get +10 to saving throws").

Basically 5E aims at being fast to resolve and quick to play, whereas PF2 almost necessitates a VTT and automation software to keep track of what your modifiers are this round.Agreed. PF2e is like D&D4e in that regard. Not only is character building complicated, but it's both complex and sloooooooow to run.

D&D 3e and PF1e were medium in both I'd say. Later on (with lots of splat) character building became the infamously most complex D&D to date of course.

5e is probably the easiest D&D since BECMI to build a character in since BECMI unless you run a wizard or allow optional multiclassing rules, and even then it's not too bad. But it's the easiest D&D to run and also the fastest.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly I'd hoped that this discussion had died.

To sum up this entire thread: P2 does one kind of game okay, but for most is probably a worse forever system that D&D5e. But it can have it's place in a collection or rotation, and is designed to make running narrative adventure paths as painless as possible.

A lot of this board doesn't like it, but the board also trends towards a more sandboxy game style and as a whole prefers simpler or fewer rules.

Would the above be an acceptable description?

Honestly I'm really beginning to think P2's biggest issue might be being too similar to D&D. I suspect things like weak casters would be more acceptable in a game with a less clear heritage.

[Greenflame133]

There is also issue of setting. Pathfinder in general is a high fantasy setting, so we want wizard. On top of that becouse it's combat heavy, we spend a lot of time in combat, so we want wizards to be useful in combat. Meaning that they game ends up punishing you for play a wizard by make you sit and be useless for majority of the game.

[Ignimortis]

Honestly I'd hoped that this discussion had died.

To sum up this entire thread: P2 does one kind of game okay, but for most is probably a worse forever system that D&D5e. But it can have it's place in a collection or rotation, and is designed to make running narrative adventure paths as painless as possible.

A lot of this board doesn't like it, but the board also trends towards a more sandboxy game style and as a whole prefers simpler or fewer rules.

Would the above be an acceptable description?

Honestly I'm really beginning to think P2's biggest issue might be being too similar to D&D. I suspect things like weak casters would be more acceptable in a game with a less clear heritage.

I like the rule density of PF2. I just don't like how little those rules matter in the end. Like, if there was the same amount of options and the same general rules for conditions and stuff, but your abilities were cooler/more impactful/more fantastical, and the enemies were less boring, and the magic items were less boring, and the game in general was concerned more with fun rather than running APs without chance of breakage... It could probably be something I'd love.

And yes, one of PF2's big issues is that it's Pathfinder. The only chance high-profile D&D-likes really had of breaking away from tradition in a good way, reduced to...breaking away from tradition in a boring way instead. Maybe third time's the charm - maybe someone else will finally make a great game.

[Anonymouswizard]

There is also issue of setting. Pathfinder in general is a high fantasy setting, so we want wizard. On top of that becouse it's combat heavy, we spend a lot of time in combat, so we want wizards to be useful in combat. Meaning that they game ends up punishing you for play a wizard by make you sit and be useless for majority of the game.

I wouldn't agree magic's useless, but it's a fair point. P2 had to decide between rare but strong magic or common but weak for PC casters, and ended up with a situation where it's too rare and too weak

With the way spell slots are set up top level spells should pretty much resolve an encounter on their own, unless the enemies actively outlevel the party.

[Tanarii]

To sum up this entire thread: P2 does one kind of game okay, but for most is probably a worse forever system that D&D5e. But it can have its place in a collection or rotation, and is designed to make running narrative adventure paths as painless as possible.
I'd call it 'story-line following linear adventure paths' instead of narrative. But that's because "narrative" has two meanings nowadays:

1) games that give the players tools to change the world, not just the characters
2) games that follow a plot-heavy storyline, usually in a weakly or strongly linear fashion

[Xervous]

Honestly I'd hoped that this discussion had died.

To sum up this entire thread: P2 does one kind of game okay, but for most is probably a worse forever system that D&D5e. But it can have it's place in a collection or rotation, and is designed to make running narrative adventure paths as painless as possible.

A lot of this board doesn't like it, but the board also trends towards a more sandboxy game style and as a whole prefers simpler or fewer rules.

Would the above be an acceptable description?

Honestly I'm really beginning to think P2's biggest issue might be being too similar to D&D. I suspect things like weak casters would be more acceptable in a game with a less clear heritage.

I like games with lots of rules when those rules add depth, meaningful decisions, or are otherwise integral to capturing the feel of the setting/system. PF2 expends a lot of effort and page count on developing extremely fiddly and minor things where the burden of effort far outweighs the benefits reaped.

Grabbing for Gloomhaven again, characters get to pick roughly 10 from among 20 or so extra cards across the entire leveling process. The improvements offered by each card are often extremely straightforward and consistently tangible. Getting a 5 attack / 5 move card lets you make moves your 4M couldn’t and that 1pt of damage is a constant (barring the null or curses). Most items do noteworthy things. The attack modifier deck is a bit more nebulous but there is a distinctly different feel when you know you can’t draw below a +0 when attacking with advantage.

PF2 on the other hand asks you to jump through sequences of hoops for moderate percentile nudges for fights in the Goldilocks zone. The last time I stumbled across such an obsession over percentiles and attrition rates for repeat combats was when I asked a friend about a mobile gacha grinder and he detailed the fiddly gear optimization for his band of dungeon sloggers.

A lot of PF2 comes across as what should be L1-10 having been stretched up to 20. Other games offer better efficiency of expression for such a scope (ie you don’t jump through quite so many hoops for tangible advancement). Other games offer a wider range of expression (reaching up past the apparent 1-10 scope).

Again, I welcome meaningful rules. It’s just that PF2 comes across with all the elegance of Sacred Geometry.

[Jophiel]

We're still having fun with it.

Maybe PF2 excels at adventure path style gaming but that works out great for my group. We all have one evening a week to play and a tighter experience is time well spent for us. Everyone's having fun and everyone has a pretty broad range of twenty to forty years of previous RPG experiences across multiple systems so it's not as though no one knows better than to hate it. I haven't felt any problems with character building and leveling.

I don't care if anyone else plays it or thinks it's great but it's a little amusing to read some of the criticism here or how strongly people seem to feel about some stuff I shrug at.

[Lemmy]

A lot of PF2 comes across as what should be L1-10 having been stretched up to 20. Other games offer better efficiency of expression for such a scope (ie you don’t jump through quite so many hoops for tangible advancement). Other games offer a wider range of expression (reaching up past the apparent 1-10 scope).
To me, this is the quintessential 5e experience... Even more so than PF2, TBH. But both games suffer of this...

TBH, as I (and others) have mentioned before... There are more similarities than differences between 5e and PF2, when it comes to their general design and "feel".

One is easier to learn... The other is easier to run... Both feel like an extremely simplified D&D where adventures are limited to levels 1-10 and their path to balance was basically making races and classes feel extremely homogeneous, with very few actual choices in character build.

Honestly... 5e races barely few like actual living species. They are less significant than a most feats or class features.

[JNAProductions]

Honestly... 5e races barely few like actual living species. They are less significant than a most feats or class features.

Is that a bad thing? (Bolded bit.)

Races are most significant at low levels. A Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance is much more likely to save your butt at level one than at level eleven. Even for races who's features stay valuable, like a Halfling's Lucky, it represents an increasingly smaller share of your overall power.

But at level one, you're the closest you're gonna be to a common member of your kind. At level twenty, you're exceptional in ways that don't have much to do with your species. A level twenty PC of any class is more their class than they are their race.

And I also don't think a species needs a million and one unique abilities to be a well-defined group. Hell, humans in the real world manage to have quite a bit variety despite all being the same species.

[Kurald Galain]

There are more similarities than differences between 5e and PF2, when it comes to their general design and "feel".
I don't think they're as similar as you claim, considering that there aren't many players that like both games. Fans of either game tend to strongly dislike the other.


Both feel like an extremely simplified D&D where adventures are limited to levels 1-10 and their path to balance was basically making races and classes feel extremely homogeneous, with very few actual choices in character build.
Like, I don't see how PF2 can be called "extremely simplified" (for starters, it has over 40 conditions to keep track of, which is way more than any other D&D'esque game).
Conversely, I don't see how classes in 5E can be called homogenous (they feel rather different in gameplay, and buffet-style multiclassing adds to that).
So, if only one of the two is extremely simplified, and only the other is extremely homogenous, then the games aren't quite as similar as you claim.

I do agree that races are homogenous in both, but then they also are in every earlier edition. I personally prefer this to be different, but it's not new; and as JNA points out, your main abilities come from your training (i.e. class), not race.

[Pex]

All of these are true or kind of true (one can certainly argue about spellcasters, and though I highly dislike spellcaster dominance, even I think PF2 went too far).

However, this kind of fixing the martial-caster divide and a host of other issues with PF1 is a bit like taking two people, one which has no pancakes, and another which has a whole stack of them with every condiment they could ever want, slapping the latter's pancakes out of their hands into the mud, then handing each of them one dirty and torn pancake and telling them "now you're equal!" while leaving the rest to rot.

This metaphor might have ran away from me, but the idea is that PF2 "fixed" warrior-mage issues by making everyone no more strong and valuable than a warrior previously was, and balancing the whole experience around that. In 95% of cases, including core design, the decision was to nerf good stuff rather than to bring bad stuff to being at least mediocre.

I understand and see it. PF2E PCs are 'weaker' than PF1E/D&D PCs in comparison. This becomes a matter of taste. In discussions of 5E people have advocated raising warrior power. The counterargument is doing so makes everyone superheroes. They don't want that power level. PF2E chose this latter side. Players who really like "Zap, you lose" in equivalence will be disappointed. They aren't wrong to like it, and PF1E/D&D do not have to apologize for having it. However, if they won't be happy with "Save or Be Bothered", then PF2E is likely not for them. PF2E doesn't have to apologize either. Play for your preference.

[Tanarii]

A lot of PF2 comes across as what should be L1-10 having been stretched up to 20. Other games offer better efficiency of expression for such a scope (ie you don’t jump through quite so many hoops for tangible advancement). Other games offer a wider range of expression (reaching up past the apparent 1-10 scope). Thats every version of D&D since B/X except BECMI. Especially WotC D&D, with accelerated leveling and no tools to transition to domain/mass combat. (Not that anyone used Battlesystem in the AD&Ds.)

D&D has been in need of keeping the PHB release to levels 1-10 for 46 years. But going beyond that is the most sacred of sacred cows now.


PF2e isn't the only one to address warrior-caster power divide, but it definitely has big advantages over D&D 5e.
Most RPGs other than D&D3e, PF1 or White Wolf game lines is an improvement. 3e is the wellspring of the martial/caster power divide, 4e and 5e and PF2 all brought it back to sanity their own ways.

(White wolf spawned other 'fundamental' problems-to-be-fixed in the mind of the RPG-sphere)


We're still having fun with it.
Yup. It's a very good game, for what it does.

Its just important to note the things it's bad at, if someone is looking for those things they're important.

Even then, some of the things it's somewhat bad at can be overlooked, if there are things it does well that are more important to a group/player.

Same is true of most RPGs. But in the case of someone e.g. walking away from WoTC because of their recent corporate shenanigans, it's often important to know that PF2 really good and really bad at a number of different things from what 5e is really good and really bad at.

Because they might be looking at entirely the wrong game system. It's possible they need something more like PF1, or BitD, or Forbidden Lands.

[Lemmy]

Is that a bad thing? (Bolded bit.).

Races are most significant at low levels. A Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance is much more likely to save your butt at level one than at level eleven. Even for races who's features stay valuable, like a Halfling's Lucky, it represents an increasingly smaller share of your overall power.
Well... Whether it's bad or not depends on your preference. I just don't like when entire species are barely different from each other, and a single feat or class feature makes more of a difference than their race... It's as if what you learn in high school were more significant to your life than whether you're human or a dog.


And I also don't think a species needs a million and one unique abilities to be a well-defined group. Hell, humans in the real world manage to have quite a bit variety despite all being the same species.
You don't need a million and one abilities... But 5e's "here are slightly different bonuses" is too far towards the other direction. There's a lot of space between those two extremes.


I don't think they're as similar as you claim, considering that there aren't many players that like both games. Fans of either game tend to strongly dislike the other..
TBH, there's a pretty silly tribalism, rivalry and/or general ill-will towards the games and/or their companies. I honestly think that's much more of a factor on what people think of 5e and PF2 than actual critical analysis of the game.
Even on this thread there's a lot of exaggerated criticism of both games... And I say that as someone who doesn't care about either of them (or the companies who make them).

[JNAProductions]

Do you have an example of an RPG that does handle racial variety well, in your opinion?

[Greenflame133]

Do you have an example of an RPG that does handle racial variety well, in your opinion?
I would say in DW, at lest some of them. Elf Wizard will find thier detect magic cantrip play incressinegly small roll but Elven bard will be asking the DM about important location no matter how many class moves they have

[Xervous]

Thats every version of D&D since B/X except BECMI. Especially WotC D&D, with accelerated leveling and no tools to transition to domain/mass combat. (Not that anyone used Battlesystem in the AD&Ds.)

D&D has been in need of keeping the PHB release to levels 1-10 for 46 years. But going beyond that is the most sacred of sacred cows now.


It's about the scope of the characters' abilities and how many abilities and feats in PF2e could easily show up at half their listed level without anyone batting an eye. Triple jump distance, a bardic knowledge like ability, hide in plain sight, no need for food/water plus ignore heat related dangers are some things that show up to be selected at level 15. Combat reflexes shows up as a fighter capstone. It’s about portions of the game offering so little mechanical progress over such a wide span of levels.

[Kurald Galain]

A lot of PF2 comes across as what should be L1-10 having been stretched up to 20. Other games offer better efficiency of expression for such a scope (ie you don’t jump through quite so many hoops for tangible advancement). Other games offer a wider range of expression (reaching up past the apparent 1-10 scope).
Thats every version of D&D since B/X except BECMI. Especially WotC D&D, with accelerated leveling and no tools to transition to domain/mass combat.

That's not really a fair comparison. Beyond level 10,
1E and 2E have the castle and follower system.
3E has prestige classes, epic levels, and a whole host of powerful high-tier abilities.
PF1 has powerful higher-level abilities in each class, and a book focusing on capstones.
4E has paragon paths and epic destinies.

PF2 offers... the ability to ask enemies to surrender in combat (unless they don't want to), or to read cryptic hints in a religious book, or to become ten percent better at something you could already do! I mean sure, every game has some issues at the higher level, but PF2 isn't even trying to support anything meaningful here.

[Anonymouswizard]

Honestly if Pathfinder 2e is levels 1-10 stretched over twenty levels I find that even better. They should probably have made the 2e version of Mythic Adventures a much higher priority in that case, but I've been saying that D&D should split into two or more games (or at least lines) for years.

There's also the fact that people mostly want about levels 1-10, which is why 4e and P2 were designed this way. But at the same time even is systems that stretch that experience to twenty or thirty levels many groups just don't want to stay with the same characters that long, most of my games would have topped out at like 9th if we were using levelled systems. Hence 4e introducing Themes for heroic tier characters and probably why P2 brought in Free Archetype as an optional rule.

Honestly the bit of 4e that interested me the most was levels 11-20, Paragon Paths were all cool and specific and I wish some of them had been brought to 5e as subclasses, whereas the Epic Destinies were all very broad and generic. It's the same reason why I dislike 5e's wizard: it's core subclasses are dull.

[Ignimortis]

Honestly if Pathfinder 2e is levels 1-10 stretched over twenty levels I find that even better. They should probably have made the 2e version of Mythic Adventures a much higher priority in that case, but I've been saying that D&D should split into two or more games (or at least lines) for years.

There's also the fact that people mostly want about levels 1-10, which is why 4e and P2 were designed this way. But at the same time even is systems that stretch that experience to twenty or thirty levels many groups just don't want to stay with the same characters that long, most of my games would have topped out at like 9th if we were using levelled systems. Hence 4e introducing Themes for heroic tier characters and probably why P2 brought in Free Archetype as an optional rule.

Honestly the bit of 4e that interested me the most was levels 11-20, Paragon Paths were all cool and specific and I wish some of them had been brought to 5e as subclasses, whereas the Epic Destinies were all very broad and generic. It's the same reason why I dislike 5e's wizard: it's core subclasses are dull.

I don't. I utterly hate the fact that every single D&D-like game after 3e/4e has tried to reduce the impact of levels after 10. If I wanted a low-level saturated experience, I would not be playing D&D or a D&D-like. The whole point of those games, to me, is going from zero to hero to demigod, and while 3e did the latter part rather poorly (mostly due to that being a somewhat unplanned development), it just means that needs refinement. I would not care for a heroic fantasy system if it capped at a level of power circa equivalent to 5e's level 9 or PF2's level 11, because that removes 80% of the reason I play those games.

And the thing is, every major D&D-like since 3e still has a potential base to work like that. It's just not being used or improved upon. Because nobody cares, and nobody cares because it's not been done well, and it's not been done well because nobody cares...

[MonochromeTiger]

Honestly if Pathfinder 2e is levels 1-10 stretched over twenty levels I find that even better. They should probably have made the 2e version of Mythic Adventures a much higher priority in that case, but I've been saying that D&D should split into two or more games (or at least lines) for years.

People also say things like "D&D shouldn't be used for this" and "you should only play these classes in this rule system." Statements like that are more of a reminder that people expect different things from RPGs than an actual objective point, which kind of goes into this next part.


There's also the fact that people mostly want about levels 1-10, which is why 4e and P2 were designed this way. But at the same time even is systems that stretch that experience to twenty or thirty levels many groups just don't want to stay with the same characters that long, most of my games would have topped out at like 9th if we were using levelled systems. Hence 4e introducing Themes for heroic tier characters and probably why P2 brought in Free Archetype as an optional rule.

Our experiences here are fairly different and it shows how much different people (and groups) can want different things out of a game.

Most of the games I've been in that go beyond level ten are more interested in keeping their characters than anything else. They've had time to develop them beyond a basic framework of abilities and general theme, they've had time to establish bonds between their character and others that weren't even the faintest glimmer of an idea at character creation, and in some games it's when you finally climb out of that awkward phase where everything is a bit off since you're figuring out what your character can do.

For me and a few others in my group the whole "stretch 1-10 over the entire game" thing isn't answering any problems it's just saying the awkward phase is now the whole experience. At the same time it doesn't actually resolve your comment of "many groups just don't want to stay with the same characters that long" because level 1-10 stretched over 20 levels is still taking 20 levels worth of time. As others have pointed out PF2 is built entirely around playing their Adventure Paths and scenarios, some of those APs going up to level 20. That means the intended experience is still a long form game where the people who get tired of their character around level nine or so will likely still be tired of their character around level nine or so.

If it works differently for you or you like it more then I'm happy for you but my subjective experience every time I've gone in has basically been that everything you're praising as a possible improvement makes the game worse for me and some of the people in my groups or doesn't actually address the points it's being held up as an answer to. Nothing wrong with that, what we want out of RPGs are just different, but the fact the thread has gone on this long kind of shows how hard it is for people (including myself) to give an opinion so fundamentally out of line with our own without commenting on it.

[MoiMagnus]

IMO, "ship of theseus" is where the fun is in D&D-like systems.

The whole point is that the game during the first session is so different from the game during the last session it is barely worth to have the same name. Breaking the rules with high level spells or an army of minions is only fun because you had to follow the rules first. You need something to ground you, but the point is not to remain grounded.

And sure, it's complex to balance. But the huge things about level-based games (compared to "point buy" where you buy whatever you want) is that you can design classes to adapt in synchronous ways to the evolution of the game.

I might agree that doing it on 20 or 30 levels is kind of too much (although milestone XP can allow you to rush through levels to make it more bearable). But if there are levels to be cut, I'd rather cut the first 5 levels in order to focus on a transition of power, like the transition mercenary/hero -> king/archmage.

Admittedly, the transition nobody -> hero can also be interesting, but I find the "nobody" section too boring if done realistically, and the transition not significant enough if the characters start as "not-actually-nobody".

[Tanarii]

Do you have an example of an RPG that does handle racial variety well, in your opinion?BECMI. Race as class. :smallbiggrin:


It's about the scope of the characters' abilities and how many abilities and feats in PF2e could easily show up at half their listed level without anyone batting an eye. Triple jump distance, a bardic knowledge like ability, hide in plain sight, no need for food/water plus ignore heat related dangers are some things that show up to be selected at level 15. Combat reflexes shows up as a fighter capstone. It’s about portions of the game offering so little mechanical progress over such a wide span of levels.Fair. My point is both D&D and PF could do 1-10 in the PHB with all the reasonable in-scope abilities for both dungeon/hex/urban crawls (hopefully with some good game structures for those) or linear save-the-world AP storylines ... and then have splats to follow. Wuxia/anime/epic/superhero characters for those that want to just keep storylining but at a bigger scale, and various other more mundane but game context switching (e,g. Classic is domain/armies from crawls) for those that want that.

As it stands now, it's just (mostly combat) encounters all the way down, with zero to superhero. And surprise surprise, it's not very well balanced at the very upper levels, although how badly varies from system to system. Because that gets the least playtesting and the least play time at tables. And in their attempts to balance higher levels, it has knock on effects to lower level design.

[Pex]

It's about the scope of the characters' abilities and how many abilities and feats in PF2e could easily show up at half their listed level without anyone batting an eye. Triple jump distance, a bardic knowledge like ability, hide in plain sight, no need for food/water plus ignore heat related dangers are some things that show up to be selected at level 15. Combat reflexes shows up as a fighter capstone. It’s about portions of the game offering so little mechanical progress over such a wide span of levels.

Would this have been an issue if there was no 3E/Pathfinder 1E? When you're used to something, having it taken away or weakened feels like a slight. Pathfinder 2E chose many nerfs of Pathfinder 1E stuff. It's valid not to like the change, but I'm not seeing the argument more than just personal preference not that there's anything wrong with that. Where are you seeing the difference between personal taste and the game was wrong to have done it this way?

Serious question.

[Kurald Galain]

Would this have been an issue if there was no 3E/Pathfinder 1E? Serious question.

Of course.

A very simple example: there is a 9th-level feat that grants a climb speed of 10'. There is also a 1st-level feat that grants a climb speed of 10'. Without having to bring any other games into the equation, it's pretty obvious that there is an issue with the former feat.

More broadly speaking, players can compare options by figuring out how commonly a bonus applies. Like, if opportunity attacks happen only rarely, then a feat that gives you more opportunity attacks is really not impressive. Or by comparing the DPR of cantrips vs weapons. Like, this has been done to death and P2 cantrips are tactically a pretty bad choice.