Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[!DWolf]

That is really good point / suggestion. Is that how it is handled in the rules and/or published adventures, you just your take on how to run it?

It is mostly my rule of thumb on how to adjudicate gaming as I focus heavily on character choices and consequences, but it is mentioned abstractly in the pathfinder 2e core rulebook on page 443 (first page of the playing the game section) where it talks about modes of play (encounter, exploration, and downtime) and says that you only need to make a check if the result of a choice is uncertain. Later on the book goes into when you should be doing in each mode and how to adjudicate them - one of the features I really like about PF2E actually - and the text there implies that once you are out of danger then you don’t roll for every little thing only special events. That might be me reading my bias into the text though.

 

[Ancalagon]

Yes it is! I have the WFRP 2e version but never got to run it... one of these days though I will convert it to PF2E (mostly the setting needs converting as it’s not a mechanics heavy adventure) and spring it on my players as a one shot - maybe have an investigator, a witch, and a rogue as pregens.

Why not just run in in warhammer? I was a player for this and it was a riot

 

[CleverNickName]

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).

Oof. By the time I got to the bottom of that second paragraph, I had already decided "nope, Pathfinder 2 is not my jam."

This has to be an exaggeration. Right?

 

[!DWolf]

Why not just run in in warhammer? I was a player for this and it was a riot

I would love to, but... I only play in person because I have difficulty with social interaction over video and unless I want to play dnd 5e (which I don’t) the player choice in my area is pretty limited. My existing players are mostly great but they are not the most open to changing systems (a lot of them won’t even play PF2E, preferring to just play my 1e campaign, and a couple just started PF2E because I am one of the only games in town with covid shutting everything down). So it’s not a realistic option at this point.

 

[!DWolf]

Oof. By the time I got to the bottom of that second paragraph, I had already decided "nope, Pathfinder 2 is not my jam."

This has to be an exaggeration. Right?

That is mostly accurate (I don’t think there is a general feat that lets you pick a skill feat as skill feats are already general feats). But it plays a lot simpler than this makes it sound because the feats are sectioned off so that for most feat selections you will only need to choose between a handful.

 

[Vael]

Oof. By the time I got to the bottom of that second paragraph, I had already decided "nope, Pathfinder 2 is not my jam."

This has to be an exaggeration. Right?

No, that seems accurate. I'm playing in my first Pathfinder 2 game, I made a Human Oracle. And yeah, one of my feats/racial features was more or less an Ancestry feat that grants me General Feat. So yeah, I took a feat to take a different feat.

Honestly, if I weren't using an app to build the character, I might have rage quit during character creation.

 

[!DWolf]

I actually find character creation quite easy. It’s more difficult than 5e but much easier than PF1E. The key I think is to start with a strong concept to help you avoid choice paralysis. Here I will make a character to show you:

Concept: born to a noble family he was sequestered away when it became apparent that he had something a little off in his blood. So he spent the time reading and studying in his parents extensive library, especially illusion magic so that he could hide his deformities when he was forced to go out in public.

A: Human (Tiefling) obviously. We get two boosts and they are going into Intelligence and Dexterity. We also get an ancestry feat from the human or tiefling lists and we are going to choose Form of the Fiend to give him a horrible fiendish jaw attack.

B: Background is going to be noble or scholar. We will go with noble: choosing intelligence and dexterity as our boosts, and genealogy lore as our skill.

C: We are going to go with the unconventional choice and go with rogue here choosing the Eldritch trickster racket and selecting the wizard as our free dedication. That gives us intelligence as our class boost (or dex but we are going with int). As a rogue we get a class feat and a skill feat: we are going to take trapfinder and arcane sense.

D: We now need to choose four ability boosts: lets go int (18), dex (16), con (12), wis (12). We have an int mod of +4 so we a select 11 additional skills (Medicine, Nature, Occult, Religion, Thievery, Diplomacy, and Deception to fit our character concept and then Intimidation, acrobatics, crafting, and performance) and we get 5 addition languages (elven, dwarven, gnome, orcish, and jotun).

And then we just need to go shopping (select the pregenerated rogue kit), pick four cantrips (prestidigitation, read aura, ghost sounds, and mage hand) and choose a name (Charles Suune III).

It took me 32 minutes to do this. It’s not the most optimal character ever... but that’s okay, he should be a fun character to play anyways.

 

[CapnZapp]

FWIW, I think the suggestions made here and elsewhere that PCs have to be at full health before any fight are rubbish. Often enough, in the games I've played, there are time constraints that prevent players from taking 10 minutes, let alone 40-60 minutes after every fight to rest & treat their wounds. Fortunately, the existence of clerics (and a few other classes) who have healing spells and powers and the existence of items like healing potions help make the action a wee bit more dynamic. And if the PCs are wounded and they think they're heading into a fight, maybe they'll pay a little more attention to the terrain and their tactics, rather than just charging the foe and trusting to the DM's aversion for TPKs to carry the day.

I could be wrong, but this reads as a comment on D&D and rpgs in general, not as a direct reply to the situation in Pathfinder 2, specifically on official adventures.

Frankly, I believe that if you just play one or three official Paizo adventures you will quickly be disabused of that notion. You don't have to be at full health, but it helps much more than in any comparable D&D game.

With just a little bad luck even the strongest Fighter can go from max to zero hp in a single round. If he started out at half, there is a considerable risk the monsters could down a second character as well. This can spell disaster, since even the best Cleric has limits on how much she can heal - especially if several party members need to be healed simultaneously.

My experiences are clear: going into even a "Low" encounter at half health can quickly turn into a nightmarish fight, where the party needs to expend all available resources just to come up on top.

In stark contrast, going into the same encounter fully topped up significantly decrease the risk of entering "emergency mode" where you need to stop coasting along (using your unlimited actions and cantrips) to go all-in, that is novaing (using up consumables, magic item abilities, and your best spells - including Heal) just to survive.

I have GMed a lot of D&D adventures, and I am absolutely used to being able to use time constraints to spice up the adventure so I fully get where you're coming from. But I have found that this pretty much does not work in PF2.

There IS a way to express "you're beat up but heroically keep moving" but it doesn't involve adventuring at half hp. Instead it involves the usage of Conditions (such as Fatigued or Drained).

 

[CapnZapp]

That’s fair. I don’t necessarily think this discussion needs to be constrained just to what Paizo publishes in their adventures, but I admit that’s likely to be the most common way people experience the game.


I find the encounter-building guidelines work pretty well in PF2, so I think it’s fair to look to them to see what Paizo intended. Regarding your example, I’ve had that happen several times. I’d consider that working as intended. My players tend not to be great at tactics. That’s one of the things the CRB lists that can cause problems, and it has and does. I’d posit that you can go into everything but an extreme encounter at less than full resources and have a chance of winning. You might have to rest and regroup afterward, but I don’t think that’s unfair (since you can continue adventuring tomorrow).

Now, whether Paizo writes adventures where you fight severe and extreme encounters too much, I don’t know. The last AP I ran was Shattered Star, and I’m probably not going to be running any of the ones for PF2. If they are designed such that there are “too many” hard encounters, then I think that’s a shame. It does the system a disservice, and it puts GMs in a bad position where they have to make sure the PCs are actually ready to deal with the challenges the adventures are providing.

Thanks for your thoughts.

AT this point I'll just point out that Shattered Star is a PF1 adventure.

PF2 is an entirely different beast, and much more deadly, if I remember my 3E days correctly.

When we started the Extinction Curse AP as written, we were all shell-shocked at the unrelenting difficulty curve. And that's six fellows with probably 120 years of D&D experience between us...

 

[CapnZapp]

When there is no danger or no consequence there is no need to roll. If the party is in down time just let them heal to full. The healing system is best used when coupled with exploration mode and pressure. Some examples:

1. An important NPC has been kidnapped by bugbears who are going to torture them for information. The PCs have tracked them to the lair, a maze of twisty little passages with weird acoustics, and are exploring it. Every other turn or so they hear the NPC scream as they are being tortured. Scattered throughout the lair are trivial or low threat encounters - the occasional trap, giant rat or spider, etc. but there is also a Bugbear lurker who likes to make the encounters not as trivial.

2. The party are holed up in an abandoned (?) cabin in the woods. There are weird knickknacks all over the place, a haunted basement with a partly completed escape tunnel, an attic with books, etc. And outside is an Anti-paladin with a hoard of cannibals. Every couple of turns or so he sends in a wave of cannibals to soften the party up. The cannibals retreat before they die to be healed. The party is going to get ground down eventually and that is when the anti-paladin is going to come in and finish them off.

3. The party is looting a ship that is grounded on a jagged cliff. There are hazards all over the ship - giant hungry seagulls, undead sailors, structural damage, etc. but also loot (very heavy loot) that the party wants to get off. But the tide is coming in. Each turn the waters rise and more and more bad things happen to the ship until eventually it will break free and be swept away.

These are situations where healing time matters and where the healing rules really work. Other situations- the party is resting at an inn for the night, for example, don’t require the healing rules - you can hand wave them...

4. Unless of course the inn is innhabited by a cast of colorful characters and the gm has prepared a list of who murders who and when along with who gets blamed for what murder and the whole thing will need to be resolved before before morning when the circuit judge arrives to execute whoever is responsible for what.

I can just chime in to say that none of the Paizo scenarios I've seen for PF2 work this way. (You absolutely CAN use any game engine for these stories, including PF2... but you'd be making up your own encounter guidelines if you do)

My entire criticism is that the healing system absolutely appears written to be "coupled with exploration mode and pressure"... but that this falls apart in practice!

Any two encounters that does not allow for a good rest between pretty much needs to be considered a single encounter (with a single encounter's XP budget)

Dungeons are already so difficult I am finding that I don't want to prolong the scenario by throwing in random encounters. And I certainly can't throw the regular encounters at half-healed heroes.

The game's exceedingly tight encounter balance more or less enforces that the GM allows the party to heal up fully between fights, since anything less either means a two-day dungeon could turn into a week-long slog (if you have to take a long rest after every three fights)...