Pathfinder 2E How is Pathfinder doing?

[ReshiIRE]

A little nit-pick on my part, but I dont think Abomination Vaults was popular because Paizo figured out how to write a good PF2 AP. I think it was popular because it had been ages since a non-linear path without experimental systems had been attempted. It was sold as an old school dungeon crawl (which I think PF2 does poorly) and only went to level 10. I think it would actually do very well in a 5E conversion.

That is also a valid point. I just wanted to present some extra thoughts.

 

[Staffan]

It does appear at-least that Age of Ashes with tuning can be a lot of fun as I have seen some later groups express happiness with it from reading various things online. The balance issues of earlier APs might actually be a lesser issues than the thematic issues of Extinction Curse , which I have heard does not stick super well to its circus theme, and Agents of Edgewatch - which was quite controversal in the community* as it launched very soon after George Floyd was murdered by police officers and presented the police as capable of no wrong and able to straight up murder suspects. That AP also did not stick super well to the idea of being a police member in Abaslom.

I've had experience with Age of Ashes (as a player, up to level 11, about to hit 12), Extinction Curse (as GM, played the first two volumes so we reached level 9 just before pausing as we went back to off-line playing), and Agents of Edgewatch (only the first volume, just hit level 5).

Age of Ashes has some rough parts early on, particularly a certain encounter near the end of volume 1. It showed me that the encounter guidelines needs an addendum that you should be really careful about using higher-level enemies against low-level characters, because low-level characters don't have the depth needed to deal with them. A level 10 enemy against a level 7 party is in theory the same as a level 7 enemy against a level 4 party, but in practice they are very different.

Both Extinction Curse and Agents of Edgewatch suffer from two things: overly large dungeons, and Paizo's lack of confidence in adventuring that isn't dungeon-crawling. They're both sold in as high-concept APs, but they pretty much devolve into dungeon crawling anyway. And they both have fairly big dungeons (10+ encounters) with things going on that should in theory be ticking clocks, but because of the way post-encounter recovery is handled and how the encounters are tuned it feels really bad to try to force them in a single day. Agents of Edgewatch also had a ridiculously lethal monster around: an elite ochre jelly that's supposed to be a "moderate" encounter for a 4th level party but has 170 hp, immunity to slashing, piercing, precision, electricity, and acid damage, with slashing/piercing/electrical damage possibly splitting it into two equally-lethal monsters with fewer hp, as well as an attack bonus of +17 against the typical AC of 21 – plus, there are traps in the upper portion of the dungeon that has a good chance of hitting you at level 3 and depositing you in the same room as the ooze prone, alone, and with 15-20 points of damage already.

 

[JThursby]

A little nit-pick on my part, but I dont think Abomination Vaults was popular because Paizo figured out how to write a good PF2 AP. I think it was popular because it had been ages since a non-linear path without experimental systems had been attempted. It was sold as an old school dungeon crawl (which I think PF2 does poorly) and only went to level 10. I think it would actually do very well in a 5E conversion.

Theoretically, the reason the Beginner Box and Abomination Vaults were as great as they were was because of the feedback and criticism directed at those early Adventure Paths; for the Beginner Box especially, it may have been a blessing to have had those early rough patches to allow them to know what to avoid for an introductary adventure. It is somewhat a chicken and the egg scenario.

Something that goes a little underappreciated in this industry is the difference in results between a writer and project manager who is decent and one who is excellent and experienced. Abomination Vaults benefited from being the first 2e AP to benefit directly from James Jacob's adventure writing expertise. He was the mastermind behind much of 1e's early success with it's APs.

 

[willrali]

A little nit-pick on my part, but I dont think Abomination Vaults was popular because Paizo figured out how to write a good PF2 AP. I think it was popular because it had been ages since a non-linear path without experimental systems had been attempted. It was sold as an old school dungeon crawl (which I think PF2 does poorly) and only went to level 10. I think it would actually do very well in a 5E conversion.

Correct, Paizo didn’t just figure out how to write a good PF2 AP, because they already knew how to write great APs. And Abomination Vaults combined their innovation and narrative skills with an old fashioned dungeon crawl; a genre that PF2 does very well indeed. Hence its popularity.

5e lacks PF2’s depth, customizability, and texture as a dungeon crawling system, so while Paizo will undoubtedly do an excellent job with converting Abomination Vaults, a great deal will be lost.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm actually with the group that is a little dubious about PF2e as a conventional dungeon-crawler. This is a game that seriously wants you to be able to rest between encounters, and absolutely doesn't want encounters to compound each other, both of which are things that dungeons have a tendency to work against. You might be able to address the former to some extent, but its going to be a fine line of making each encounter weak enough that the lack of ability to do healing between isn't too much, but they aren't so weak they're just speed bumps.

 

[Staffan]

I'm actually with the group that is a little dubious about PF2e as a conventional dungeon-crawler. This is a game that seriously wants you to be able to rest between encounters, and absolutely doesn't want encounters to compound each other, both of which are things that dungeons have a tendency to work against. You might be able to address the former to some extent, but its going to be a fine line of making each encounter weak enough that the lack of ability to do healing between isn't too much, but they aren't so weak they're just speed bumps.

Yeah, and it is particularly weak in dungeon-crawling at the early levels (before someone has been able to invest properly in Medicine and the associated feats). The game is built with the assumption that you'll face each encounter with full hp, but a single person using Treat Wounds to heal the party is likely to take an hour or more even with Continual Recovery (removing the 1-hour cooldown on Treat Wounds for any one person).

If I'm running Pathfinder again, I'm definitely going to be using the Stamina optional rule from the GMG (Short version: Half of your class-based hp plus Con bonus are turned into Stamina, which you can restore fully by resting for 10 minutes and spending one Resolve point, which you have a number of equal to your key ability bonus, but which you can't recover by traditional hp recovery means like heal or Treat Wounds; you lose Stamina before losing hp).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

It works well if the compounding encounters aren't topping the difficulty scale to begin with, its actually very rewarding with certain feats, and the biggest motivator ive seen for my party to actually break out the potions-- expediting their recovery because they dont have a full 10 minutes "you can hear shouting, itll be about a minute before the orcs arrive."

 

[Thomas Shey]

It works well if the compounding encounters aren't topping the difficulty scale to begin

Like I said, I'm dubious about doing that reliably without making the individual encounters speedbumps, which can easily be what Level -2s are in a lot of cases.

And of course it helps if you have potions good enough to get the job done. I'm hauling around some bottom end elixirs, and I'm kind of wondering why given how trivial they are (and I'm playing a Gunslinger, which isn't the mass of hit points the more strong fighty classes like Fighters, Champions or Barbarians are).

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Like I said, I'm dubious about doing that reliably without making the individual encounters speedbumps, which can easily be what Level -2s are in a lot of cases.

And of course it helps if you have potions good enough to get the job done. I'm hauling around some bottom end elixirs, and I'm kind of wondering why given how trivial they are (and I'm playing a Gunslinger, which isn't the mass of hit points the more strong fighty classes like Fighters, Champions or Barbarians are).

Id somewhat expect them to be easier, as the reward for playing well and not letting them combine.

Not sure on the potions and elixirs, the treasure tables have the levels of consumables so the ones you got most recently, or could most recently buy/craft should be pretty potent, at least enough to shore you up for that second punch of a shortly incoming encounter. Straight up spell slots and wands or what have you are nice in that range too.

Which ties back into base encounter difficulty and what kind of encounters are being used as the composite pieces, how they combine (directly or in waves, over how many rounds and from where, a fireball shaped group and streaming in less convenient firmation are different) and what the resulting total budget is.

Full health isnt vital to all encounters in pf2e, just the ones with the most threatening creatures. Especially if your party can swing some in combat healing for you.

 

[jmartkdr2]

My personal experince has been that as the sole frontliner, I take all the damage. That means I need a lot of healing, while everyone else doesn't need any.

It's not that they mind or don't want to wait for me to heal - it's that a ten-minute break might get me backup to half hp, and it might take 2-3 hour to get me near full. This... discourages deep dives.