Ruin Explorer
Legend
So I realized I actually have PF2E and a fair bit of material for it via Humble Bundle and my brother, and honestly, I'm a little bored of 5E, but don't want to go for a drastically less crunchy system like Dungeon World at the moment. Also I've heard good things about the monsters, as compared to 5E.
I've started reading through PF2E, and there are a couple of things I'm not really liking, but maybe I'm not getting. Particularly the "bitty"-ness of the bonuses and so on. Huge numbers of things at lower levels seem to give a +1 bonus to a skill check under specific circumstances. Now, unless I'm misunderstanding severely, that's a pretty tiny bonus. Making it circumstantial means it needs to be evaluated as to when it applies every single time (rather than being, say, a +1 to Diplomacy, it'll be a +1 to Diplomacy in X situation), which means wasting time for a tiny bonus. And often these are things that the text represents as major - like Half-Orcs can have a racial feat to make it easier to negotiate with Goblinoids - but it's a +1, so like, one point of CHA mod or whatever on another PC and you might as well not have the Feat at all.
This feels really off to me, but is there perhaps some way in which a +1 bonus is more important in PF2E than, say, 5E? From the system it looks like the opposite is true, like +1 is less important than in 5E, because PF2E doesn't appear to use a "bounded accuracy" model.
And in combat they seem to bring back my old bugbear, Iterative Attacks, and the ability to make more attacks but at a penalty, both of which seem like they add a lot of math, but don't actually make the game play any better and indeed may actively make it less fun. I understand there's an element of sacred cow here, but how does it work out in practice? Bear in mind, I thought it worked very badly in 3E/PF1, so if it's "about the same" as that, I'm a little concerned lol!
Also, are there any good resources for getting started with PF2E (not like, getting started with RPGs, just PF2E specifically), like particularly those reminding me of key differences between 3E/PF1, 5E, and PF2 in terms of rules that might get overlooked or misremembered?
I know this might sound negative, but there's a lot I like about PF2E (like how the races/classes/backgrounds/stats are handled) but I'm trying to assess whether the whole thing would be a net positive for our group.
I've started reading through PF2E, and there are a couple of things I'm not really liking, but maybe I'm not getting. Particularly the "bitty"-ness of the bonuses and so on. Huge numbers of things at lower levels seem to give a +1 bonus to a skill check under specific circumstances. Now, unless I'm misunderstanding severely, that's a pretty tiny bonus. Making it circumstantial means it needs to be evaluated as to when it applies every single time (rather than being, say, a +1 to Diplomacy, it'll be a +1 to Diplomacy in X situation), which means wasting time for a tiny bonus. And often these are things that the text represents as major - like Half-Orcs can have a racial feat to make it easier to negotiate with Goblinoids - but it's a +1, so like, one point of CHA mod or whatever on another PC and you might as well not have the Feat at all.
This feels really off to me, but is there perhaps some way in which a +1 bonus is more important in PF2E than, say, 5E? From the system it looks like the opposite is true, like +1 is less important than in 5E, because PF2E doesn't appear to use a "bounded accuracy" model.
And in combat they seem to bring back my old bugbear, Iterative Attacks, and the ability to make more attacks but at a penalty, both of which seem like they add a lot of math, but don't actually make the game play any better and indeed may actively make it less fun. I understand there's an element of sacred cow here, but how does it work out in practice? Bear in mind, I thought it worked very badly in 3E/PF1, so if it's "about the same" as that, I'm a little concerned lol!
Also, are there any good resources for getting started with PF2E (not like, getting started with RPGs, just PF2E specifically), like particularly those reminding me of key differences between 3E/PF1, 5E, and PF2 in terms of rules that might get overlooked or misremembered?
I know this might sound negative, but there's a lot I like about PF2E (like how the races/classes/backgrounds/stats are handled) but I'm trying to assess whether the whole thing would be a net positive for our group.