Pathfinder 2E I think I am giving up on PF2ER

[Thomas Shey]

My guess is that the combat eats up a disproportionate amount session time.

I'm not going to tell people they're wrong here, but I have to note that PF2e combats felt a lot faster to me than D&D 3.5 ones. I mean, yeah, people could just end up fitting in more, meaning there's still a high proportion of game time taken up by combat, but that can be true in any game system that's at all combat centric (which is to say, most of them).

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are options that are clearly better than others. Champions stink.

I had a great and effective time playing a Champion. I have to bluntly suggest if you've never seen someone do that, they didn't know how to play one, or didn't want the experience it brings.

Alchemists and Oracles stink.

Original alchemists definitely had some problems.

Rogues are leagues ahead of barbarians and rangers who waste action economy to be effective.

Somehow my wife managed to enjoy her barbarian as much as she did her rogue/fighter hybrid, so this is at least an overstatement.

Fighters are ahead of everyone.

My fighter was a decent play experience, but he was hardly making the sorcerer, monk or cleric feel like they were second rate.

Maybe they'll fix these terrible classes in Player Core 2?

Or alternatively, your definition of a decent class has problems.

 

[Incenjucar]

Sometimes a game just doesn't click for an individual or group, and that's okay. I find PF2E so intuitive that I was able to switch to it effortlessly after decades of only D&D without a hitch, and my roleplay is only ever constrained by the fact our PFS games have to end when the store closes.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One issue I've found with PF2 combat is that "boss fights" (i.e. fights against one strong foe) are counterintuitive, particularly for casters. When you fight a boss, narratively it makes sense to "bring out the big guns" and "stop holding back". But PF2 doesn't work like that, because of rapidly escalating numbers for creatures and because of Incapacitation. So you don't want to use your strongest spells on the boss, you want to use moderately strong debuffs that (a) aren't strong enough to count for Incapacitation (slow is great here, as is fear) and (b) still have an OK effect on a successful save.

How much of that is people being used to casters being the solution to any boss by use of statistics and takeout spells however? That's not an artifact you see outside the D&D sphere very often, because takeout spells are either rare or prohibitively expensive to keep lobbing against an opponent who will probably have decent resistance to it (since the truth is, any boss-monster fight is largely a joke if they don't have a decent resistance to such things).

This is one area where I think 13th Age has the better solution to incapacitating effects: cap them by current hp. That way you can't stop the dragon with a paralyze in round 1, but maybe you can use it as a finisher in round 3-4.

That said, this I agree with.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I would have loved if the incapactiation trait in PF2E only worked until the target was bloodied.

Its not a terrible idea for a house rule, but it still does produce the result you saw in other D&D incarnations that the solution to bosses is spamming takeouts; it just waits until after about half damage is done. The 13th Age version works because usually the target hit points are more like a quarter or less, so you have to do a lot more work first.

 

[Eric V]

Its not a terrible idea for a house rule, but it still does produce the result you saw in other D&D incarnations that the solution to bosses is spamming takeouts; it just waits until after about half damage is done. The 13th Age version works because usually the target hit points are more like a quarter or less, so you have to do a lot more work first.

Fair.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair.

Don't get me wrong, having run some 13A now, I think porting in something analogous to its hit point limits as a house rule into PF2e would be a fairly good idea. I just think half is still too high.

(Whether that would satisfy complaints is another question. For some people I think it would (obviously Staffan for example). Other people are carrying over expectations that spellcasters, especially arcanists, are the single target opponent defeaters, and that's really not their job in PF2e, and if they keep wanting that its just going to be a frustrating experience for them. That's not where their strengths lay in PF2e; its more like old school lower level arcanists who were best at imposing conditions on single targets and cooking up groups).

 

[Velderan]

Did that EVER release? I feel like once the whole OGL Fiasco happened, Paizo just nixed the 5E version of Abomination Vault.

They delayed it around the time the remaster was announced, I assume since they had to reshuffle resources and reprioritize which books were being worked on. It was recently finally released.

 

[Retreater]

I had a great and effective time playing a Champion. I have to bluntly suggest if you've never seen someone do that, they didn't know how to play one, or didn't want the experience it brings.

Regularly comes up as a bottom tier class in rankings online.
Its primary interesting ability is tied to reactions, which is in demand for shield block, attack of opportunity, and others. Not to mention that you have to be perfectly placed to use it, and if you're fighting something larger than Large sized you're probably too far away from your ally to help.
You have the best defense, but your damage output stinks. There's no reason for an enemy to ever target you. You need an ability like 4E's marking to get any use out of your defensive abilities.
You're a worse fighter by almost every metric.

 

[Staffan]

Don't get me wrong, having run some 13A now, I think porting in something analogous to its hit point limits as a house rule into PF2e would be a fairly good idea. I just think half is still too high.

One advantage of the 13A method is that you can use the hp limit as a tuning mechanic. For example, a 3rd level confusion targets an opponent with 100 hp or less, while a 3rd level hold monster targets one with 60 hp or less.