- PF2E is a team focused game. Your PCs should build their PCs as if they were MMO players going into a group dungeon. Identify key roles and have each person pick one and go for it. NOT the same exact roles as an MMO like FFXIV or WoW. More like present day Guild Wars 2 - who is support, who has buffing, who dishes out burst damage, who will apply conditions onto enemies, who does this or that.
- If you build a team of main characters and individual heroes things won't go well.
- I see D&D players often say "it's none of your business what I put on my character sheet." If I said that to my raid lead back when I was a WoW raider I'd be rightly booted out of the raid roster. The same is true in PF2E. You're making a team - so make one. Anyone who is "I'm going to spend all my skill slots on various kinds of basket weaving lore" and play a bard with 8 charisma is actively hurting the ability of the other players to enjoy the game because the game is built around team work.
I think this overstates it a little bit, but its bringing up an important point; completely ignoring what other people are doing in terms of character creation or what function you'll serve in a team is not likely to go well, and there's a price for deliberately building a character subpar (this is
not the same as not optimizing them--the mid to top range of PF2e is usually close enough that you won't be punished for the former in play to a visible level.) My personal opinion is that there are group construction that aren't going to go well, but they aren't usually ones that would have gone well in D&D 3e, 4e or even most earlier editions either (I don't feel competent to speak of 5e) such as all martial parties or parties completely lacking in frontline types
- The game engine is deadly, especially at low levels but this can remain throughout. Set expectations accordingly. It is particularly unforgiving of players who refuse to think tactically.
Though, this can be overstated. Its only likely to be visible when dealing with up-level encounters, or encounters where peculiarities of group construction interact with quirks of the particular opponents badly.
- Recall Knowledge is key. The game assumes people are using it all the time. So far I have yet to see people do so in any game I've been in and I can see us having issues as a result. I very often see GMs let players talk over the player asking to recall knowledge almost as if the GM doesn't want to deal with it - but your GM needs to see that this is the primary tool they have for handing out the plot. If you don't actively encourage players to use it, they will wander aimlessly through your adventure holding railroad tickets for a train that PF2E is not designed to have arrive.
This is pretty boggling to hear, since not paying attention to Recall Knowledge seems like a way to slam face-first into opponents Resistances as you advance, and that's not going to be pleasant.
- Every single published adventure made before late 2022 is badly tuned. Get very proactive at checking encounters using the encounter design rules and then correcting them for the proper difficulty for a group of your size. Even if your group is 4 PCs that are a fighter, wizard, rogue, and cleric and the module says it's built for 4 PCs and this is a moderate encounter... it isn't. It's probably extreme or even "OMG WTF"... Prior to last year they had good plot writers but their balance team was clearly snorting crack in the back room somewhere...
My suggestion has been "was fighting the last war". PF1e, like D&D3e had a CR system that failed out progressively as you leveled, as it started to consistently overstate the hazard of encounters relative to the PCs. I expect the early writers were subconsciously carrying over that assumption to PF2e and upgraded the encounters higher than they should have because of it.
- Lots of magic items. The game assumes you will have a steady supply of magic items. Do NOT hold back on this or the PCs will get slaughtered. If you use Foundry and you use a certain mod that gives you prestocked shops for some popular adventures... your PCs will be screwed as that module caps out its shops around level 3 for modules like Abomination Vaults where the local town is supposed to have shops with gear up to level 10.
Though, honestly, this is mostly an issue with weapons, armor and resistance items. Most of the other stuff is colorful and sometimes useful, but I forget I have them half the time and its had little visible impact. Not having things that improve your AC, saves, attack, damage or resistances is a different story.
- Hand out Hero Points. So far every GM I've been with has not given any out other than the 1 you get at session start and things can get rough. The game engine assumes you're getting about 1 per hour of play and that you're probably doing 1 combat encounter every hour of play so yeah...
Though this is hit or miss. I've gone through whole sessions where I didn't need them, and had situations come up where I desperately did.
- Anyone who uses their third action to spam a third attack should be asked to change class and hand the role over to a player with a brain.
Use it to move in or out, do maneuvers like trip, shove, grapple, disarm, aid, demoralize, distract, take cover, or just about anything else. You can 3 attack and very rarely it's worth it. But usually you're just making it harder for your allies by essentially giving the other side bonus actions by dent of you wasting one of your side's actions.
There's one special case where this isn't necessarily true; a particular rogue build goes out of its way to minimize its multi-action penalty. While they still will sometimes have better things to do with their third action, its not actually stupid for them to use it to attack.
- Make sure someone can cover out of combat healing and someone can cover in combat healing and ideally don't force both of these burdens onto the same player.
Eh. Its not that painful once you're going to have the in-combat specialist anyway to invest in the feats and Medicine skill to do it out of combat too. Most of its skill feats which are cheap to come by anyway.
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