Pathfinder 2E Is this a fair review of PF2?

[Yardiff]

This is demonstrably not the case. After our less-than-stellar experience with PF2, I DMed them in 5e (2 of them had no prior experience with 5e). They didn't suddenly turn into model players who knew all the rules, but gameplay was a lot smoother and a lot quicker.

Couple questions.

How long did you play PF2 and how many of you, if any, knew the well system.

Then your comparing your exp with PF2 to a game you GM'd were only 2 players didnt know the system well?

 

[FrozenNorth]

Couple questions.

How long did you play PF2 and how many of you, if any, knew the well system.

Then your comparing your exp with PF2 to a game you GM'd were only 2 players didnt know the system well?

Going from the VTT log, we played at least 100 hours of PF2. Each of the sessions was roughly 4-5 hours, and given how long the campaign lasted in real life (and the frequency we played), this seems a pretty fair estimate. We started PF2 soon after it started: none of us had considerable experience with the system (and none of us had been involved in the playtest).

And yes, I am comparing my experience with PF2 with 5e. The first time we started 5e, none of us had experience with that system either. It still went more smoothly than PF2. Likewise, I'm comparing players who were new to PF2 (in winter 2019) with the same players who were new to 5e (less than a year later). To me, this is a pretty good basis of comparison.

 

[Ancalagon]

- this game is very complex and very complicated.

Two questions.

First, what is the difference for you between complex and complicated?

• The feat system is constructed to enable and encourage maximum bloat. Paizo has already churned out literally one thousand feats! There are countless instances of feats that do pretty much the same thing (or even exactly the same thing!) but there is one minor thing that differentiates them.

... are you saying that there are already a 1000 feats for PF2?

 

[CapnZapp]

Two questions.

First, what is the difference for you between complex and complicated?

... are you saying that there are already a 1000 feats for PF2?

Actually, if that bothers you, consider them synonyms to keep it simple.

Per the official SRD at Nethys, there are 2126 feats today, roughly one year after the game's release. The Core Rulebook alone comes with 801 feats.

Feat Filter - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database (it takes several minutes to complete a search with no filters)

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm sorry I wasn't able to respond to this post earlier, especially as it seems to have blown up somewhat. I cannot confirm that it literally 40 minutes of table time to deal with healing: I was not watching the clock. However, it definitely took longer than 10 minutes' table time, and it definitely felt extremely pointless and time-consuming.

To provide an idea of how it went:
End of combat.
Main Healer guy: Anyone need healing? (pretty much the entire party has taken at least a little damage)
Main Healer guy: OK, I heal character X.
((Rolls Medicine Check. He's pretty effective, so it generally succeeds, but no crit.))
DM: OK, what are the rest of you doing during this 10 minute period?
((Go around the table to the other 4 characters (minus healer and healee) to see what they are doing during this bloc. No one wants to say they don't do anything, so everyone tries to come up with something. Often, one of the 3 other characters with healing will try to heal someone else, but because we are less than level 4, and none of them have great Wisdom, it generally fails, but they mark off the attempt anyway.))
2nd 10 minute bloc
Main Healer guy: I continue healing the guy I'm healing.
((Rolls Medecine Check. Another success, no crit)).
DM: What are the rest of you doing during THIS 10 minute period?
((Go around the table again. One of the other characters with healing attempts to heal a different character. Let's say it succeeds this time. The other characters come up with what they are doing the 2nd 10-minute period.))
Repeat until everyone is healed. Since it generally takes about 5 or 6 10-minute blocs to heal everyone, this takes a considerable amount of table time.

The worst part is that IT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL. We are going to take the time to heal anyway. The DM didn't make wandering monster rolls. We left the dungeon TWICE for long rests, and none of the other monsters left their rooms. This was a massive subsystem that did not seem to exist except to grind the game to a halt.

Exactly, except its even worse than this.

After you leave the lowest levels, the character with Medicine gets the choice between aiming for DC 15 or DC 20, where a success on DC 20 provides a +10 bonus to the amount healed. On the other hand, scoring a critical success on the DC 15 roll (=rolling 25 or higher) doubles the dice (from 2d8 to 4d8).

So what'll it be? Going for DC 15 for 2d8 healing (with an ever-greater shot at 4d8) or DC 20 for 2d8+10 healing?

The same scenario repeats later on (DC 30 for +30? DC 40 for +50?). And in fact, you're asked to make these decisions each and every time. At least until you finally break down and take the time to crunch the numbers to calculate averages so you can always make the better choice (or give up and take Assurance for your Medicine skill...), you have a clear risk of analysis paralysis each and every time it's time to make that Treat Wounds check.

You can easily get a discussion where the player with the Medicine skill asks the wounded character's player what to choose. That player isn't interested or informed, and shoots back the decision to the healer... and then repeat this for each healer-healee pairing and I can easily see this taking 40 minutes of real time at least once!

Also note:

• unless the healer has taken a feat (Continual Recovery) you're then immune to further Treat Wounds for 1 hour.... unless the healer keeps healing you (with his successful check) for the full hour, in which case you're healed twice the regular amount.
• most characters with Medicine takes Battle Medicine which lets you do a one-action heal (=suitable for combat). Problem is, the target is then immune to your Battle Medicine for one day, so everybody needs to remember from which allies they've received a Battle Medicine. (It's not unreasonable to expect several characters getting this since it's so good and costs relatively little - one skill pick plus one skill feat. But the web of "who healed whom" quickly requires pen and paper to track!)

This is just one of the rules subsystems that comes across as written by an overenthusiastic fan rather than a professional game designer. It's not that it is impossibly crunchy.

It's more why am I asked to make these decisions??? when nothing of it ultimately matters, since we're not moving until we're reasonably healthy anyway?!? (I've already flagged the incongruity with regards to the other downtime activities that Frozen mentions - if you rest for 50 or 70 minutes, their choices cease to matter, since everybody has time to do everything)

Remember, if players attempt to do the heroic thing of pressing on at half health... the game will instantly punish them by making even Low-difficulty encounters lethal...


Continual Recovery (as discussed above) is a good example of the feat bloat in the game - every little thing is gated behind a feat. Meaning that the enormous amount of choice in the game is fairly artificial - while 5E is designed with philosophy to (for the most part) have choices that give you stuff that expand your character, PF2 is littered with feats that mostly come across as limiters only: without the feat you feel wonkily restricted, so you get the feat to be able to keep doing your stuff reasonably well. As you level up expectations increase, and in too many cases you have to take a feat to not reach a ceiling.

The difference can perhaps be expressed like this:

• you don't need this feat, but if you take it you will become awesome! (5th Edition)
• you need this feat! It won't make you feel awesome, but you'll avoid feeling hamstrung if you take it! (Pathfinder 2)

In large parts the ability to offer choices comes from making the baseline abilities as limited and restricted as possible, so the rules can then offer several feats that ease one such restriction each.

I far prefer an enabling, generous design philosophy over a design that continuously reminds you of limitations.

 

[CapnZapp]

To break this out so it isn't easily missed:

When and if you take a break longer than 10-30 minutes, the intended minigame of "choose your downtime 10-minute activities" breaks down.

To highlight this, one intended feature of the Sorcerer class (as opposed to other spellcasting classes with access to Focus spells) is that it doesn't matter which activities you take, they all count for regaining Focus points.

Focus spells can most easily be described as "Encounter powers". Assuming you get at least 10 minutes between each encounter, a character with a Focus spell can cast this "oversized cantrip" once in every encounter, since it takes 10 minutes to regain the focus point that fuels the Focus spell.

For Wizards and Clerics etc you're asked to take the Refocus activity specifically to spend 10 minutes meditating, praying, reading and so on in order to regain one (1) focus point. A character can have as many as 3 Focus Points (and many Focus Spells).

Other common activities include Treat Wounds (as discussed), Repair a Shield, scouting ahead, standing guard or whatever. They're all handled in 10-minute chunks.

It should be trivial to see why this system breaks apart if you routinely rest for much more than 30 minutes. It means you always have enough time for everything - you're no longer asked to abstain from regaining that Focus Point since you needed to, I dunno, decipher old scribblings that could provide a clue to your adventure. And the Sorcerer's edge becomes nothing.

If you routinely heal up enough to move on in 10 minutes, it becomes much more reasonable for the GM to threaten you with wandering monsters if you dally, linger or delay. And thus the intended decision points as regards Exploration Activities start to work again.

But when both the Fighter and Bard has lost 100 hit points each, even the best character with Medicine will need maybe an hour to heal everyone back up.

And when Medicine is free, who can blame parties for saving their spell slots for later? (The Cleric's Heals might do 60 points at this stage. These are MUCH better saved for usage IN combat than spent during resting, since all that does is rapidly accelerate the time when the party needs to rest for the day - i.e. when the Cleric is out of spells)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

if you want to know which system handles realism best, look at systems which have been used most for the reality we are most familiar with — our own. D&D is a non-starter here, but even a brief scanning of the list of Fate worlds available shows it’s a very common choice. d20 modern was an attempt, but the list of other systems that have been more successful modeling our reality is quite long.

The thing about Fate is that it doesn't attempt to model any reality, ours or otherwise. If it's attempting to model anything at all, it's just the narrative structure of a novel. The Dresden Files RPG does a much better job of casting the player into the role of Jim Butcher, than it does for Harry Dresden. Regardless of how well it succeeds at that, it's simply not an appropriate tool for modeling any sort of objective reality.

Traditional games, such as (old) D&D, treat conflict resolution like a word problem in math class. When we want to know what happens, we quantify the relevant variables, and apply the appropriate formulae to determine the objective outcome. If we want to know whether the ogre hits you with its club, we translate its skill and strength into a numeric bonus and compare that to your own defensive traits, with a die to govern those factors not otherwise represented.

Any attempt to model an objective reality is going to fall short at times, unless the model is as complex as the reality being modeled. That's just a limitation of the medium. The important thing is that the relevant factors are represented well enough that we can get basically the right outcomes for basically the right reasons (because that's what informs the choices we make as our characters).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If any of us is doing that it is you. In every edition of D&D going back to 1974, you could lose dozen or hundreds of hitpoints, be reduced to one, and be absolutely fine with nothing more that a night's sleep. The number of nights varied by edition (and sometimes by level), but nothing more was ever required. Magic & and/or medical attention helped speed things up, but were never necessary if you had time. That alone kills "hp are meet points".

I'm not sure why you would think that goes against the concept of physical HP. You are literally describing a physical process which happens in our own reality all the time. When someone is injured, given time, they will heal.

While outside treatment is sometimes necessary when there are complications, that is a complexity which can be dispensed of in the name of building an efficient ruleset. Just because the rules don't concern themselves with low-probability events, that's no excuse for mis-handling the things that are covered by the rules. And it's certainly no reason to jump completely off the deep in, and claim that the physical processes being modeled are not even those processes!

 

[Philip Benz]

I'm not sure why you would think that goes against the concept of physical HP. You are literally describing a physical process which happens in our own reality all the time. When someone is injured, given time, they will heal.

IRL, that is demonstrably untrue, wounds from warfare were very often fatal or debilitating hours, days or weeks after a battle.

But we play fantasy games, and don't enjoy seeing our characters suffer from crippling wounds, amputation, gangrene, peritonitis and so on. Our games have very little to do with real life combat, except on the most superficial, abstract level.

Over the years there have been many reactions to the D&D "hit point" trope. Some early alternatives like Chivalry and Sorcery separated "meat" points from "non-meat" points, so that some wounds were inflicted to your "fatigue levels" and could be regained easily, while other wounds were inflicted to "body points" and those sorts of wounds had more serious consequences and were more difficult to heal. In the years since these halcyon days, there have been many variations and iterations of this theme, as various game designers struggle with how to deal with injury and wounds in fantasy games.

PF2 takes a commendable point of view on the question: it's best not to overthink it. The PF2 hit point and healing system works without being weighted down by unnecessary minutiae. In fact, I think that the total amount of "hit points" a PF2 character has are really "non-meat" fatigue-style damage, and the only real "meat" or body damage comes when you've reached the dying and subsequent wounded condition.

I can't disagree that some of the details of the healing uses of the medicine skill are needlessly complicated. Rather than having to select the DC you want to target, it would be far more helpful if there were a single scale based on a single DC target, as modified by skill ranks. Why our pals at Paizo thought they needed another layer of healing mini-game is beyond me. But that kind of thing is easy enough to house-rule away.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

IRL, that is demonstrably untrue, wounds from warfare were very often fatal or debilitating hours, days or weeks after a battle.

That a system is not concerned with one category of phenomena is not a reflection on how well it covers a different category of phenomena with which it is concerned.

PF2 takes a commendable point of view on the question: it's best not to overthink it. The PF2 hit point and healing system works without being weighted down by unnecessary minutiae.

You call it commendable. I call it a cop out. I say that the PF2 system fails to work because it doesn't address the necessary minutiae of combat - such as whether or not an arrow actually hits its target!