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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 8114475" data-attributes="member: 75787">From my experiences, 5E is generally easier, but there's not much you can do if things go south. Playing a published adventure, a new player made a couple of bad rolls and was dead in the second encounter. No way to stop it, it just happened (I checked the module after and the GM ran it right). 5E is a much simpler system, so there's not options you can take. So, in general, published modules have to be easier so random luck doesn't kill even a clever, prepared character.PF2 does give you more tools, so you can mitigate disaster. But that means that adventure designers have to guess what level of prep the "average player" has done and balance for that. If your party is not great about planning, you will be in danger. If you are great at planning, it may be easy. And you always have hero points!EXAMPLES AND  MILD SPOILERS FOR AGES OF ASHES<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">In Ages of Ashes, for example, I'm pretty sure that the encounters assume you have 10 points of fire resistance from a certain point on. There's a lot of ambient burning and even some enemies that ignore the first 10 points. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I do not know if it was our GM or the module, but we were rarely unprepared for what we faced. A Lich is way less dangerous when two people cast heightened searing light (with true strike) on it. When we were surprised, it definitely was way nastier.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If you have zero hero points, you are living dangerously. We'd spend them on other things if we didn't anticipate a big fight, but if we knew there was a big bad around, we'd keep them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Our closest calls were when we all decided that we didn't need to spend action to recall knowledge and could just attack.  Once this nearly killed us when our small damage dealers focused on an enemy that had resist 10 all (at lowish levels) and so were pretty much ineffective, while the barbarian went for the creature that just had a lot of hits, but wasn't terribly dangerous. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There were a few times in the campaign that a hazard was very nasty. Again, I'm not sure if this was the module or the GM, but we learned in exploration mode about the hazards and were able to come up with good plans to minimize effects.</li> </ul>A strong hint for the game is: Emergency consumables! In general players don't like buying one-shot items as they see it as a sink for money that could be spent saving up for their next striking rune. But they are great for dealign with sudden unexpected issues. Here are ones I used in the campaign:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Dust of appearance.  Blanket denial of invisibility. Expensive early on but changes fights from "The barbarian misses alf the time" to "... and they're dead"</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Potion of Flying. As in every edition of D&D ever, get one as soon as you can.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Monkey Pin. Cheap way to climb walls fast at low level</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Snapleaf. Feather fall ++</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wand of unseen servant. Not sure about that hazard? Trigger it remotely and watch.</li> </ul>Casters also have great options for Not Being Killed. They don't deal as much damage as martial, but they can avoid death in many more ways. Trick Magic Item at mid-high levels means martial can benefit form these too though. Here's what my warpriest was like at high-level:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Resist 5 to most stuff with a long-term spell</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">See invisible all day</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">False life wands, 2x, upgraded regularly.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Heroism at level via spell and via wand for back-ups </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">20+ music scrolls for movement, teleports, disguise</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Near the end, upgraded to a wand of haste that allowed party-wide haste. Bought a couple. </li> </ul>And now, my biggest two annoyances with PF2: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">One react per turn makes playing someone who mitigates damage very annoying. Even a simple champion at low level has to choose. The enemy beside you casts a spell. Are you going to AoO him with your react? Or wait so you can use the react for the Champion mitigation power? Perhaps I felt this keenly as an orc warpriest / champion with 4 reacts in addition to spell reacts, but it felt harsh to not be able to use your class power because you wanted to keep the react "just in case" you needed to save someone.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Breath of Life does not work against death effects. A react that saves people from death, that won't work against something that casues death. Like, say, phantasmal killer. Grrrr.  Pointless spell and made so by additional extra text. It's already a react so it's hard to  use anyway. The additional restriction means it's almost never going to see play.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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