Pathfinder 2E Actual AP Play Experience

[Celtavian]

Surely the low guy on the list is the Alchemist!

...but I agree that the Wizard (or Wizard and Sorcerer) are next lowest on the list.

(And I agree that the Bard is awesome.)

Hmm. So far the alchemist has been super nasty and useful. His Mist Elixirs and movement elixirs are solid party buffs. His bombs do a lot of damage and he can control the splash better than AoE spells. He likes to build up persistent damage on multiple creatures. He can flat-foot creatures with electrical bombs. His splash damage adds up over fights. Alchemist bomber has been very solid. I have heard the mutagen and healer alchemist are weak.

 

[Celtavian]

you could be right, but it would be interesting to ask them specifically now and then again after you finish the AP.

They're on board with PF2. They don't want to go back to the overly complicated PF1 and they don't want to play with the lack of options in 5E. So PF2 is now our game as long as it is supported. Seems to offer the right mix between PF1 and 5E. They spend a lot of time pouring over books looking for powerful options and if they don't get books with character options, they get super bored with the game.

Well that is rather subjective. It has been awhile since I looked through the Bestiary, but I don't remember anything feeling more "realistic,' but like I said that is subjective. I also have certain biases and I was really disappointed with the dragons in PF2e.

We will also just have to agree to disagree about legendary monsters. I found just about every legendary monster in the 5e MM more interesting than the equivalent monster in the Bestiary. And the MM ones aren't even the best examples.

However, this thread is about actual play experience, not monster design. If I have any other questions about monster design I will DM you.

Sounds good. I'm very impressed with monster design in PF2. I liked monster design in 5E too, but my players found a way to break that game. So the game became trivial rather quickly once they found game breaking tactics. Monsters became way less scary and easy to beat. The mechanics do not allow that in PF2E. Even spells like wall of force can be broken by more powerful monsters. They will batter the wall down without the necessary spell. It will take some time, but it will happen. And you can't teleport out of a dangerous situation easily. Teleport has a 10 minute casting time. You can't take a large party out with Dimension Door. There are just a lot more ways to put the party in a life and death situation that they can't rule lawyer their way out of or easily escape with ideal spells. As an old school D&D player, I like that feel. That's the old school smell of death.

 

[Celtavian]

This is exactly what you would expect, coming from anything from AD&D or 5E, or, dunno, Savage Worlds or Tunnels & Trolls.

In PF2, the game math mandates a completely different approach. See, PF2 doesn't do "2-3 trogs is simple, 4-6 is a challenge, 7-9 is really tough, and 10+ forget about it" at all.

Let's use actual Bestiary numbers to illustrate: Warriors are level 1, Skulkers level 2 and Leaders level 3. Let's furthermore assume the party consists of four level 2 heroes. (The math is exactly the same if your monsters are levels 8, 9, and 10 and you are level 9).

Then I'd say a single Warrior is what you'd call "simple."

Two Warriors or one Warrior and one Skulker is "a challenge".

Three or four Warriors, two Skulkers, or one Leader and one Warrior is "really tough".

Combine any two of the previous encounters, and you are immediately in "really tough" territory, if not outright "forget about it".

Only "simple" encounters mean there's a real chance of not taking significant damage. As soon as you face a "challenge", chances are at least one hero will lose half his hit points, and require healing.

At such a low level, Medicine will keep pace, so that the 10 minute downtime per encounter schedule might seem workable. As you level up, you realize you're more realistically looking at 20, 30 or even 40 minutes downtime per encounter on average. (So a dozen encounters takes four or six hours, 99% spent resting). You might bring this down by focusing your party's capacity for healing. On the other hand, any party without Medicine will definitely need two or more days to wrap it up.

More importantly, you hopefully see that the space for reinforcements is next to zero. You speak of a wandering patrol of three Trogs. I'm assuming Warriors. You can't add that to any challenging fight or you'd look at a possible TPK. At the very least you would turn the game into fantasy naughty word Vietnam, because of the harrowing difficulty.

So even hours after entering the Trog caves, and half a dozen rooms cleared, you have basically no room to play the Trogs smart, or you immediately overwhelm the heroes.

You can absolutely expect them to change gears, turning to guerilla-style warfare, or protacted diplomacy or whatever. Many groups don't enjoy that, though. (I should clearly state that this isn't even discussed in Paizo's APs).

What you can't do is just keep on trucking like you were playing another game. To do that you need enemies of at the very least three levels lower (preferably more).

Or, as I've stated already, you need to transform the game by losing level to proficiency, loosening up the very very tight math.

Ergo my conclusion: the game comes set for 4E-style combat set-pieces out of the box. If you want it to support sandbox play, you need to change something.

I didn't play enough 4E to see the similarities. To me PF2/3E feels like something between PF1, 5E, and old school 2E and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. You can see little bits of each game's influence in PF2. You still have a massive number of options and ability to add options like the PF/3E chassis. Magic seems to have taken a lot of ideas from 5E to lower it's power along with truly useful at will cantrips. You have some of the lethality of 1E/2E with really dangerous monsters with fearsome abilities that can kill you or deal a lot of damage. PF2 has a real interesting mix of influences.

I'll probably play around with encounter design some if I feel it is getting too hard. I imagine right now AP designers are getting used to designing challenges. It's still much better than the old PF APs where the party just ran through the adventure like a hot knife through butter with most monsters as speed bumps to higher level characters. I had rewrite nearly every encounter in nearly every AP past book 1. This is very refreshing to play the book and find it hard.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Edit: Ignore. I thought I'd gotten to the end of the thread and hadn't, my point was covered

 

[CapnZapp]

I didn't play enough 4E to see the similarities. To me PF2/3E feels like something between PF1, 5E, and old school 2E and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. You can see little bits of each game's influence in PF2. You still have a massive number of options and ability to add options like the PF/3E chassis. Magic seems to have taken a lot of ideas from 5E to lower it's power along with truly useful at will cantrips. You have some of the lethality of 1E/2E with really dangerous monsters with fearsome abilities that can kill you or deal a lot of damage. PF2 has a real interesting mix of influences.

Just a small question: what do you mean by "PF2/3E"?

I'll probably play around with encounter design some if I feel it is getting too hard. I imagine right now AP designers are getting used to designing challenges. It's still much better than the old PF APs where the party just ran through the adventure like a hot knife through butter with most monsters as speed bumps to higher level characters. I had rewrite nearly every encounter in nearly every AP past book 1. This is very refreshing to play the book and find it hard.

We are in complete agreement.

Setting up 3E/PF1 for experienced characters with blinged-out characters to provide a meaningful challenge was a sisyphean task; utterly thankless.

In comparison, 5E is child's play. Yet, still much work, since the devs apparently calibrate the difficulty for the very easy game. And unless you design your own monsters, there's still a... bluntness to the edge, given how 5E is fundamentally a simpler game.

At least when it comes to monsters, PF2 is 3E/PF1 done right. You don't have to run through hoops to make the world scary and dangerous.

And since removing stuff is always easier than adding it, I like it. Instead of having to work hard to cover up the PCs exceptionalism, I only have to work easy to bring it forward

 

[CapnZapp]

Edit: Ignore. I thought I'd gotten to the end of the thread and hadn't, my point was covered

Okay. Feel free to ask if you have any other thoughts!

 

[dave2008]

They're on board with PF2.

Just to be clear, that is not what I was asking. If you don't want to help, that's cool.

 

[dave2008]

In comparison, 5E is child's play. Yet, still much work, since the devs apparently calibrate the difficulty for headless chickens without feats, without items, without any minmaxing or party tactics... And unless you design your own monsters, there's still a... bluntness to the edge, given how 5E is fundamentally a simpler game.

I would prefer you don't call my players headless chickens. Just because your group finds 5e "easy" doesn't mean that all groups do. All the people I play with are reasonable intelligent and 67% of them are highly educated (masters or PHD). They simply have a different play style than your group and that is OK. That doesn't make them headless chickens.

And just to clarify, though I like to make tough custom monsters, I have mentioned before I can't use them with my group(s), they are challenged by the bog standard 5e monsters.

 

[CapnZapp]

I would prefer you don't call my players headless chickens.

I wasn't talking about you. But I've removed the flippancy.

 

[CapnZapp]

Just to be clear, that is not what I was asking.

Tried going back through the quotes... was your question "if they liked the fact that their min-max mindset / play style was ineffectual" by any chance?

If so, my players (not Celt's) are obviously miffed it wasn't easily possible to minmax the naughty word out of the system.

But that hasn't meant they have cooled on the system. Not yet anyway.

My players are historically all about minmaxing the individual character, party optimization be damned - exactly the kind of approach enabled and amply rewarded by 3E/PF1*... and the approach PF2 simply laughs evilly at

It will be interesting to see if they are going to learn anything from the fact that "everybody" says PF2 is all about minmaxing the party tactics. That is, minmaxing what happens at the table rather than before you sit down at the table. I guess I won't know for sure until the party composition changes, though (such as when it's time to generate a new party).

*) 3.5 is probably the favorite game, all categories, for at least two of the players, precisely because it allows for an utterly unchecked power trip, if you only know how to absorb thousands of pages of rules, and are entirely unfazed about cobbling together a dozen prestige classes and yet calling that a "character"... Yes, we're talking about the same game that I as the DM would put as my number #1 most horrible spot. d20 is sadomasochistic that way...