Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[CapnZapp]

Breaking this out from the "Is this a fair review" thread for all of us not interested in discussing the nature of hit points.

Cheers,
Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

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

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]

In my analysis the game contains multiple subsystems that can charitably be characterized as overengineered. Here are three that we have recently started discussing:

Medicine and Treat Wounds
Recall Knowledge
Crafting

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm sure it is well-intentioned to create different 'two weapon fighting' feats that can be taken variably by fighters, rangers, rogues, etc, because each one has its own fiddly math-iness to ensure no build is better than any other build by too much of a margin.

But sheeeeeeeit, in 5e I just use the default two weapon fighting rules that anyone can do, and it works, y'know, well enough. Use my action to attack with my main weapon, and a bonus action to get one off-hand attack. Done.

That feels much less, I dunno, stressful. I don't have to go hunting for the ideal min-maxed choice out of a list of hundreds of small perks. That might work in a video game, where you can gain enough XP to pick up a new perk every 15 minutes or so. But for a tabletop game, yeah, that's too complex.

 

[CapnZapp]

 

[CapnZapp]

Regarding resting between encounters, let me make the following assertions and we can discuss:

§ the game is predicated on heroes entering each encounter at or close to full health
The classic notion of wandering monsters can't easily be used to motivate heroes to keep adventuring while they still have damage

§ the game is predicated on 10-minute exploration activities being a scarce resource, so that your choice of such activities doesn't become "I'll do all of them"
Rests should thus be completed in 10-30 minutes, except Medicine/Treat Wounds isn't powerful enough. You easily need 40-70 minutes.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm sure it is well-intentioned to create different 'two weapon fighting' feats that can be taken variably by fighters, rangers, rogues, etc, because each one has its own fiddly math-iness to ensure no build is better than any other build by too much of a margin.

Here's my relevant post from the other thread:

A Ranger at mid level can have an attack modifier of 0, -2, -3, -4, or more and that's only depending on his own gear and action choices (not any external factors, of which there are nearly always some). Then you roll heapfuls of dice for every attack, and you modify many of them with weaknesses and resistances.

So. Anyone's basic attack modifier is 0, -5, -10 if you spend your round doing three attacks. This is reminiscent of "BAB" from d20 if you remember. (And as you probably know, D&D 5E ignores this and just lets you do each attack at your normal attack bonus)

Agile weapons get a special "one less" modifier, so this becomes 0, -4, -8. So far, so good.

Now Rangers get 0, -3, -6 against targets that they have previously marked. If Rangers use agile weapons we get 0, -2, -4.

Now then, all heroes get to choose from class-specific feats and the Ranger can choose "Twin Takedown" which allows him to attack with both weapons with a single action assuming he wields one weapon in each hand. There is also a feat called "Dual strike" that pretty much does the same thing, just with completely different specifics. For one thing, it requires two actions, not just one. (Rangers access this feat through multiclassing or archetypes)

Our level 11 Ranger has both these feats. He also has three weapons: one throwing dagger which carries all the magical runes, one hatchet, and one cold iron bastard sword. The dagger and hatchet are agile, the sword is not.

This immediately makes the combinatorics explode.

He can start off a turn making a dagger/hatchet twin takedown attack, with 0, -2 attack modifiers (assuming the target is previously marked). He can then make a dual strike (with the same weapons) with his second action, and the attack penalties are -4, -4 for those attacks. If he takes these two actions in reverse order, we get 0, 0, -4, -4, so that's better (and different). Obviously the damage will be different for each weapon.

Okay so lets do Dual Strike before Twin Takedown in the future.

Now imagine he's attacking with dagger/sword instead of dagger/hatchet. The penalties become 0, -2 followed by -4, -8. Wait, what? The dual strike feat (but not the twin takedown feat) specifies that if the second attack is not made by an agile weapon, there's an additional -2 penalty. This explains why the first pair of attack modifiers are 0/-2 instead of the expected 0/0. For the second pair of attack modifiers the extra penalties comes from both this and how the third attack carries a "double -3" penalty for a non-agile attack (again assuming a ranger with a marked target, otherwise we're talking -10) explaining the -8. The -4 is the double -2 penalty for an agile weapon.

Okay so let's instead do the sword attack before the dagger in each pairing. Dual strike sword/dagger, twin takedown sword/dagger becomes 0, 0, -6, -4. Note how the numbers are completely different. (In fact, if you aren't a PF2 rules expert, I don't expect you to be able to follow along. Just go "this sounds extremely fiddly" and that's all I ask of you) Finally we have arrived at the optimal sequence.

That is just a single very small example. It just scratches the surface of what a single hero has to deal with for each and every combat turn, since the specifics rarely stay the same.

 

[glass]

It is rather disingenuous to say that there are 2126 feats with "all filters off" when feats are heavily siloed. You are never picking feats with "all filter off".

_
glass.

 

[FrozenNorth]

It is rather disingenuous to say that there are 2126 feats with "all filters off" when feats are heavily siloed. You are never picking feats with "all filter off".

_
glass.

This is a fair point. PF2 calls everything a feat, so you are correct that putting all the feats in one bucket is comparing apples and oranges (though to extend the analogy, both are still fruit ).

For the benefit of those who may not have played PF2, there are 5 types of feats: Racial Feats, Class Feats, Archetype Feats, General Feats and Skill Feats.

What kind of muddies things up however, is that some of the feats are interchangeable. There is a Racial Feat that allows you to pick a General Feat, a Racial Feat that allows you to pick a skill Feat, a Racial Feat that allows you to pick a Class Feat, a General Feat that allows you to pick a Racial Feat, a General Feat that allows you to pick a Skill Feat, and Class Feats can always be used to pick an Archetype Feat (and this is the only way to pick an Archetype Feat).

Focussing for the moment of Skill Feats (which are not gated behind a specific Class or Race), there are currently about 170 Skill Feats on Archives of Nethys after the game has been out for 1 year. Your tastes may vary, but to me, this is a lot of skill feats given that most Pathfinder books are continuing to add to that list.

 

[Philip Benz]

Focussing for the moment of Skill Feats (which are not gated behind a specific Class or Race), there are currently about 170 Skill Feats on Archives of Nethys after the game has been out for 1 year. Your tastes may vary, but to me, this is a lot of skill feats given that most Pathfinder books are continuing to add to that list.

While this is true, you're never choosing amongst the full list of 170, since they are all tied to level, and most often to your level of expertise. Usually you have a choice between 1-4 feats for each skill you're trained in (or whatever level of expertise you've reached).

Personally, I like the new way they have covered advancement in non-combat skills, compared to the skill point hassle that was the heart of DD3.x and PF1.