Grade the Pathfinder 2E Game System

[payn]

Difficult for me to vote on this. Objectively, I think its an excellent designed role playing game of tactical nature. On design for doing what it is supposed to do, Id give it a B+. However, I do not happen to like silo'd character design or tactical combat. On taste, Id rate the game more to a C- but thats entirely subjective to me. I know some folks think very very highly of 4E, but I think PF2 is the better designed game.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I really love it, lots of character build options that let you do interesting things, but there's not a lot of fear that something will be unviably bad like with every other d20 RPG that also has a lot of different character options hard-coded in with unique textures. The game has a bunch of subsystems that provide adequate-to-excellent support for different things I need the game to do (Chases, Downtime, Exploration Mode) and does a good job of mechanizing exploration so that I can essentially do OSR-inspired site-based adventuring but with a fairly combat-as-sport based system which my player prefer, with well tuned encounter guidelines that value strategic combat and don't make everything a cakewalk.

I liked 4e back in the day, but PF2e improves on it in almost every way-- my only real gripe in that respect is that I wish a few more of the feats in the game were "active techniques" in the sense of 4e powers, we do have them, I just want more of them so players are incentivized to use a variety of them turn-to-turn, right now they tend to grab one or two and repeat them.

Plus, I just love all the stuff they come out with-- lots of different classes, coverage for just about any fantasy archetype, the archetype system itself combines with the classes to produce lots of interesting character playstyles and flavor combos-- like being able to Shadow Dancer on whatever class instead of just monk, or pick up animal companions or undead companions on whatever, opens up so much more, to my mind.

There's a lot of reasons its my table's main game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Difficult for me to vote on this. Objectively, I think its an excellent designed role playing game of tactical nature. On design for doing what it is supposed to do, Id give it a B+. However, I do not happen to like silo'd character design or tactical combat. On taste, Id rate the game more to a C- but thats entirely subjective to me. I know some folks think very very highly of 4E, but I think PF2 is the better designed game.

This is just a thing that happens. I incredibly respect the design of D&D 4e. I also concluded that, in ways I can't even quite describe, it put me off. There are not contradictory.

 

[kilpatds]

I've only played at pretty low level, but my sense so far is that I like most of what they've done (3 action and how they've balanced that, caster/martial balance, etc). I just really REALLY wish they'd picked up bounded accuracy from 5e. The treadmill feels really really bad when you're on the wrong end of it, and can't hit & the monster can't miss (and frequently crits) and all you can do is hope for big numbers on the d20.

Also so far I felt like "controller" was a little too restricted. Again, low level play with mostly pregens, but ... I really couldn't figure out how to actually net my team actions with my nominal control spells. The one "Grease" I saw used cost team PC more actions than team monster.

 

[Greg K]

I saw some interesting things, but I was, immediately, turned off by the change in how spell lists are handled.

 

[payn]

Plus, I just love all the stuff they come out with-- lots of different classes, coverage for just about any fantasy archetype, the archetype system itself combines with the classes to produce lots of interesting character playstyles and flavor combos-- like being able to Shadow Dancer on whatever class instead of just monk, or pick up animal companions or undead companions on whatever, opens up so much more, to my mind.

There's a lot of reasons its my table's main game.

Are you a fan of free archetype? Seems like the number one variant houserule in use. I was a little bummed about dedication mechanic but FA takes out the sting.

 

[payn]

I've only played at pretty low level, but my sense so far is that I like most of what they've done (3 action and how they've balanced that, caster/martial balance, etc). I just really REALLY wish they'd picked up bounded accuracy from 5e. The treadmill feels really really bad when you're on the wrong end of it, and can't hit & the monster can't miss (and frequently crits) and all you can do is hope for big numbers on the d20.

Also so far I felt like "controller" was a little too restricted. Again, low level play with mostly pregens, but ... I really couldn't figure out how to actually net my team actions with my nominal control spells. The one "Grease" I saw used cost team PC more actions than team monster.

The crit <10> and tiers of failure/success takes a bit of time to learn in PF2. Some really like that tactical crunch, for me it gets a little grindy.

 

[CleverNickName]

Looks like ENWorld is giving the Pathfinder 2E system an overall grade of "B-minus" so far (GPA of 2.60).

It's doing slightly better than the less-popular Cypher System, which has an overall grade of "C-plus" (GPA 2.33) so far.

 

[Divine2021]

I haven’t played it, but I have read through a Ton of their published material. I’m not a mechanics guy, I struggle with numbers, so I can’t speak at all to that. But I like the variety of classes, I like the lore, I liked the way the art looked and I liked reading through the feats. I’d be happy to play it some day if I got the chance.

 

[Velderan]

The crit <10> and tiers of failure/success takes a bit of time to learn in PF2. Some really like that tactical crunch, for me it gets a little grindy.

That's one of the features I like. It encourages teamwork, because the frightened condition you landed may just be what setup a big crit for the next player. Same with positioning to create flat-footed conditions, combined with the reduction in who can perform an attack of opportunity makes combat a lot more interesting to me. While we were learning the system, I made it a priority to point that stuff out when it happened to help encourage the players to see the value in those little +1 bonuses meaning something. As people have mentioned, the 3 action economy can be limiting sometimes as people have pointed out but it also can be incredibly flexible in what it allows you to do.

Encounters come as advertised. A moderate encounter can pose a challenge but shouldn't be hard with some basic teamwork. A severe encounter will require some teamwork to pull through. The one and only Extreme encounter I threw at my players (through a bad choice on their part, which they immediately recognized after it was too late) led to the 1 and only TPK I've ever experienced as a GM in any system.

I've seen a couple people say they burned out running it after a year, so 100% worth mentioning I've been GMing it for about 4 months so I'm definitely still in the honeymoon phase of playing it. We'll see how it goes as more time passes, but it's been a lot of fun as my group's weekly game.