Tony Vargas
Legend
Not sold on it, yet.
Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience
Xenonnonex
Hero
But play experiences seem to be encouraging.
Campbell
Relaxed Intensity
I have only played at low levels and have not played a caster myself, but so far casters seem to be doing fine. I have had my bacon saved by them more than once. My point of comparison is mostly Fifth Edition here.
I am excited to play a Wizard. I will be taking one for a spin in Pathfinder Society this month. The changes have me excited to play a spell caster for the first time in a long time.
I am excited to play a Wizard. I will be taking one for a spin in Pathfinder Society this month. The changes have me excited to play a spell caster for the first time in a long time.
GrahamWills
Hero
Session #2 played last week; we have a party with a gnome alchemist, a barbarian with giant blood, a druid, a rogue and my half-orc warpriest. In our previous session we had wandered into a section a level or two higher than us and our first level characters retreated the heck out after burning a ton of resources to win the first fight. Instead we concentrated on clearing out an old keep that local goblins said wasn’t too dangerous.
The exploration mode continuous to work well. I’m moving slowly with detect magic up most of the time, our theif sneaks around and if we hear anything our barabarian uses athletics to charge in. So we have a mix of skills often used for initiative, which is pretty cool. It feels right that the barbarian gets an edge because they are charging in, while the thief's edge comes from being subtle.
In combat, the three action economy continues to present a multitude of interesting and often tricky choices, i’m playing a melee-focused priest, so even at level 1 I had a variety of different options I could try; three different levels of heal (one of which would harm the undead we were fighting, but that’s the three action version). Two actions to cast magic weapon (do I pre-cast it before we throw the door open and potentially waste it?). One action for sure strike. Or to cast a shield cantrip. Or move to a better location. We had a tough fight at the end of the session against a group of higher-level undead and I felt I could not afford to spend an action to recall knowledge about them. This was almost a disaster as we had our low-damage attackers hitting the undead that had resist 5 most things and regenerated (so he lasted way too long) and the d10+10 damage barabarian and I (magic weapon doing 2d12+3) rolling badly and missing the high AC leader. As an aside, the monsters we fought felt quite different, with crabs doing cool things like spending actions to retreat into shells, and reacting to stab opponents who missed them. Even the undead were very differentiated. All our table really enjoyed that variety, especially those coming from 5E for whom it was pretty rare (I generally play/run 13th age and 4e which have a lot of differentiation in monsters compared to other editions, but PF2 felt pretty much the same, honestly). This was a big win for us.
Treat Injury again proved super-valuable for between-combat healing; especially since we have little time pressure. Combat moved fast; we only looked up one rule all night during play now everyone knows what their weapon descriptions do (for those lucky people with fatal and agile weapons as opposed to my greatsword’s straight damage advantage). Speaking of which, when we discussed weapons it felt pretty much in character: “I like the huge damage I get with the great sword. Plus I can hold it in front of me to avoid accidentally running into the gelatinous cube the goblins warned us of”. “Have you considered traditional orc weapons? The sweeping is pretty nice and it has some other advantage”. “I might look at it later, when I learn how to use it as a warpriest, but it’ll be hard to give up the d12 damage especially when magic weapon is active. When I get a +1 damage weapon, i’ll consider switching to orc splitter and shield”
We found some talismans as treasure and a striking spear. The cost to transfer the rune to one of our weapons seems reasonable, and low-level magic gear is pretty weak, so nothing felt very exciting; on the other hand, nothing felt useless either.
From a roleplaying point of view, PF1,2 D&D3,4,5 all feel pretty similar. Social skills are the same, and there are no explicit mechanisms for social encounters (4e has a resolution system which helps, but is not really anything special for social). 13th Age is way ahead in this regard with several systems aimed at social roleplaying. But nothing got in the way, and D&D has traditionally been rules-light for non-combatant encounters, so no issues there.
Bit of a random report, anything else struck me? Let’s see ..
Leveling from 1 to 2 was way easier than character creation. All five of did it in 15 mins between two encounters sharing 3 books. Honestly, initial character creation is the most fiddly part of the game, throwing all kinds of terms you have to work out and requiring much look up (my human ancestry feat was to get a class feat which I used to get a focus spell which is based on my god and I have to choose from their domain and so look each of these up ....). Second level was so much easier, taking a feat to become a Sorceror multiclass (extra skills! Two more cantrips!). You have probably guessed I’m not really going for an optimal character, as my prime stat for cleric is 12 wisdom and I have a 14 for the sorceror charisma. My first 4e character was a fighter who multiclassed wizard; I think I just have fun playing characters with lots of options and 1-2 less attack and damage modifiers.
Three actions plus one off-turn reaction is absolutely right as a design decision for a tactical combat game like D&D. Much though I love 4E, the different types of actions are an annoyance, and limiting to one reaction makes the game flow rapidly without sacrificing the “aha, but when you try that, I respond with this” feel of reactions.
The druid’s Owl has the highest kill total of the game with 6 confirmed kills. It’s mostly luck, but a flying minion is pretty sweet.
Fighting zombies with 12 AC meant that we could regularly critical them by rolling high rolls but under 20. With a +5 bonus and flat-footed foes, a 15 crit them. That felt eminently satisfying and definitely made them feel like a stupid lifeless corpse that couldn’t defend themselves properly. However I missed 13th Age’s minion rules. Annoying to do 36 points critical damage on one minion and see it mostly wasted, whereas in 13A it would leak over onto a nearby minion. But again, another way the monsters felt very different.
We didn’t stop the game to see if there were any guidelines for damage from actions like toppling a bookcase on someone. 4E has a very nice table giving guidelines for that sort of general threat, and it would be nice if PF2 had a similar resource for GMs to use.
Still not sure about shields. I used one in the play test often and quite liked the way if worked. Maybe it’s just that with this character I rarely have a spare action to raise it / cast it, but it feels a bit weaksauce. Remind me of this when failing to raise my shield means the dragon crits me and kills me.
Oh, I also trained out of orc ferocity as it newly killed me. Monster knocks me out. ‘Aha’ I said ‘not so fast; with orc ferocity I am still up, on 1 hit point with a wound’. Monster hits me with second attack and I am now dying 2. If I rolled a critical failure on my turn I would have been dying 4 == dead. Thank you, but no thank you feat. I’ll be a Sorceror instead.
Overall i’ve only played PF2 seven times now, as opposed to >50 of each of AD&D, 3.5, 4E and 13th Age. Probably about 20 PF1 sessions and 10 5E. But my rankings would put 13th Age first, then probably 4E and PF2 tied, followed by AD&D. PF1 and 3.5 would be at the bottom. My biases are in favor of systems that make it easier to tell fun stories, and have rules that are consistent and make a range of types of character playable fun. I am not in favor of systems with rules that try to model reality at the expense of playability, and of complexity that allows experts to build characters extremely more competent than beginners can. As always, YMMV
The exploration mode continuous to work well. I’m moving slowly with detect magic up most of the time, our theif sneaks around and if we hear anything our barabarian uses athletics to charge in. So we have a mix of skills often used for initiative, which is pretty cool. It feels right that the barbarian gets an edge because they are charging in, while the thief's edge comes from being subtle.
In combat, the three action economy continues to present a multitude of interesting and often tricky choices, i’m playing a melee-focused priest, so even at level 1 I had a variety of different options I could try; three different levels of heal (one of which would harm the undead we were fighting, but that’s the three action version). Two actions to cast magic weapon (do I pre-cast it before we throw the door open and potentially waste it?). One action for sure strike. Or to cast a shield cantrip. Or move to a better location. We had a tough fight at the end of the session against a group of higher-level undead and I felt I could not afford to spend an action to recall knowledge about them. This was almost a disaster as we had our low-damage attackers hitting the undead that had resist 5 most things and regenerated (so he lasted way too long) and the d10+10 damage barabarian and I (magic weapon doing 2d12+3) rolling badly and missing the high AC leader. As an aside, the monsters we fought felt quite different, with crabs doing cool things like spending actions to retreat into shells, and reacting to stab opponents who missed them. Even the undead were very differentiated. All our table really enjoyed that variety, especially those coming from 5E for whom it was pretty rare (I generally play/run 13th age and 4e which have a lot of differentiation in monsters compared to other editions, but PF2 felt pretty much the same, honestly). This was a big win for us.
Treat Injury again proved super-valuable for between-combat healing; especially since we have little time pressure. Combat moved fast; we only looked up one rule all night during play now everyone knows what their weapon descriptions do (for those lucky people with fatal and agile weapons as opposed to my greatsword’s straight damage advantage). Speaking of which, when we discussed weapons it felt pretty much in character: “I like the huge damage I get with the great sword. Plus I can hold it in front of me to avoid accidentally running into the gelatinous cube the goblins warned us of”. “Have you considered traditional orc weapons? The sweeping is pretty nice and it has some other advantage”. “I might look at it later, when I learn how to use it as a warpriest, but it’ll be hard to give up the d12 damage especially when magic weapon is active. When I get a +1 damage weapon, i’ll consider switching to orc splitter and shield”
We found some talismans as treasure and a striking spear. The cost to transfer the rune to one of our weapons seems reasonable, and low-level magic gear is pretty weak, so nothing felt very exciting; on the other hand, nothing felt useless either.
From a roleplaying point of view, PF1,2 D&D3,4,5 all feel pretty similar. Social skills are the same, and there are no explicit mechanisms for social encounters (4e has a resolution system which helps, but is not really anything special for social). 13th Age is way ahead in this regard with several systems aimed at social roleplaying. But nothing got in the way, and D&D has traditionally been rules-light for non-combatant encounters, so no issues there.
Bit of a random report, anything else struck me? Let’s see ..
Leveling from 1 to 2 was way easier than character creation. All five of did it in 15 mins between two encounters sharing 3 books. Honestly, initial character creation is the most fiddly part of the game, throwing all kinds of terms you have to work out and requiring much look up (my human ancestry feat was to get a class feat which I used to get a focus spell which is based on my god and I have to choose from their domain and so look each of these up ....). Second level was so much easier, taking a feat to become a Sorceror multiclass (extra skills! Two more cantrips!). You have probably guessed I’m not really going for an optimal character, as my prime stat for cleric is 12 wisdom and I have a 14 for the sorceror charisma. My first 4e character was a fighter who multiclassed wizard; I think I just have fun playing characters with lots of options and 1-2 less attack and damage modifiers.
Three actions plus one off-turn reaction is absolutely right as a design decision for a tactical combat game like D&D. Much though I love 4E, the different types of actions are an annoyance, and limiting to one reaction makes the game flow rapidly without sacrificing the “aha, but when you try that, I respond with this” feel of reactions.
The druid’s Owl has the highest kill total of the game with 6 confirmed kills. It’s mostly luck, but a flying minion is pretty sweet.
Fighting zombies with 12 AC meant that we could regularly critical them by rolling high rolls but under 20. With a +5 bonus and flat-footed foes, a 15 crit them. That felt eminently satisfying and definitely made them feel like a stupid lifeless corpse that couldn’t defend themselves properly. However I missed 13th Age’s minion rules. Annoying to do 36 points critical damage on one minion and see it mostly wasted, whereas in 13A it would leak over onto a nearby minion. But again, another way the monsters felt very different.
We didn’t stop the game to see if there were any guidelines for damage from actions like toppling a bookcase on someone. 4E has a very nice table giving guidelines for that sort of general threat, and it would be nice if PF2 had a similar resource for GMs to use.
Still not sure about shields. I used one in the play test often and quite liked the way if worked. Maybe it’s just that with this character I rarely have a spare action to raise it / cast it, but it feels a bit weaksauce. Remind me of this when failing to raise my shield means the dragon crits me and kills me.
Oh, I also trained out of orc ferocity as it newly killed me. Monster knocks me out. ‘Aha’ I said ‘not so fast; with orc ferocity I am still up, on 1 hit point with a wound’. Monster hits me with second attack and I am now dying 2. If I rolled a critical failure on my turn I would have been dying 4 == dead. Thank you, but no thank you feat. I’ll be a Sorceror instead.
Overall i’ve only played PF2 seven times now, as opposed to >50 of each of AD&D, 3.5, 4E and 13th Age. Probably about 20 PF1 sessions and 10 5E. But my rankings would put 13th Age first, then probably 4E and PF2 tied, followed by AD&D. PF1 and 3.5 would be at the bottom. My biases are in favor of systems that make it easier to tell fun stories, and have rules that are consistent and make a range of types of character playable fun. I am not in favor of systems with rules that try to model reality at the expense of playability, and of complexity that allows experts to build characters extremely more competent than beginners can. As always, YMMV
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CapnZapp
Legend
That is of no relevance, since it threw out the feeling of a D&D Wizard with the bathwater. It's like playing a different game.
You are trying to relativize again, placing d20 and 5E on the side of OP and unreasonable; while placing your cherished 4E on the side of balance and reason.
My take is that while 3E was clearly unreasonable, 5E manages to thread the needle. A 5E spellcaster still feels like a D&D spellcaster - your spells have a sometimes dramatic impact. Yet martials never feel surplus or second-tier.
So you can theorize however much you want. Many many years of playing 5E tells me its devs created something truly valuable - they managed to take the d20 spellcasting chassi and update it to achieve a fun kind of balance!
This is not only because of Concentration - they went over the whole body of spells and truly managed to change the balance (in the way 3.5 or Pathfinder never even came close to).And no, 5E Wizards feel nothing like 4E, while feeling very much like 3E Wizards, except not overpowered. (Powerful yes, too powerful not at all)
5E is 3E done right, especially in the area of spells and LFQW!
Aldarc
Legend
That is of no relevance, since it is still a D&D Wizard. You can't just keep throwing out 4e because it's inconvenient to your "5e was the first edition to fix everything" narrative that you are trying to construct.
5e retains LFQW, and people who actually knows what the term "LFQW" means have explained this to you before numerous times in the past.5E is 3E done right, especially in the area of spells and LFQW!
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dave2008
Legend
Unfortunately I am still looking for PF2e game, but you don’t need to have a full-on adventure day for a good time in 5e. We’ve been playing 5e from the beginning and I have a very casual approach to encounter design. We have 1-3 fights a day (if we fight) and have no issues. I have only had the 6-8 encounters people talk about a few times.
