Pathfinder 2E Are you moving from 5E to PF2?

[zztong]

We have a few casual players at our table. They're generally not thrown by the action choices. (Most of the time you just step-attack-attack anyways.) What they're missing are the chances to take advantage of their feats, which have built in conditions and offer non-obvious advantages.

The casual players aren't interested in reading the feat details partly because the more serious players spend a lot of boring time doing that. Some of the casual players are no longer interested in making their own characters. They're happy to play whatever another player makes for them. Making playtest characters was too much for them and the new full rules weren't tempting enough to get them to try again.

 

[Haffrung]

It's not even char gen itself that I think will be daunting for casuals. Many of the mechanics are just, well, complex.

* There are the myriad mechanical effects that different weapons and armour have - which are cool, but not something casuals will easily find, let alone remember.

* The dozens of specific actions, spread out over the categories of skill actions, general skill actions, exploration actions, encounter actions, combat actions, etc.

* Then there's the whole Hide > Stealth > Sneak > Hidden > Undetected > Observed relationship that probably needs a flowchart to explain.

This stuff all seems well thought out, and I can see how it will be engaging in play. But it takes a certain mindset and a certain type of player to enjoy grappling with that degree of mechanical complexity. Even if I give my casuals pre-gen PCs (which I'll probably do), I'll need to create cheat sheets, walk everybody through encounters very slowly, and constantly remind some players of what they can and can't do.

 

[Campbell]

A good comparison is Magic. The basic rules are not super complex, but there are a lot of subtle interactions between things. I think it will be fairly easy to play on a basic level, but players who really dive deep and have a strong understanding of the meta are going to be far more effective. You could hand the same character to two different players and the results could be dramatically different.

In general I am a fan of having a higher skill cap and lower skill ceiling, but to someone who just wants to engage casually that might not be a good thing.

 

[Aldarc]

I think this edition could benefit from a more laid out "here's actions you can take on your turn" type of sheet, kind of like what was had with "power cards" in 4E. Maybe that would help with players who aren't as engaged by the tactical applications. Or maybe that would be even more confusing, I'm not sure.

I find that cheat sheets for players are helpful no matter the game. I usually print out some for players in games that I have run for 5e, Numenera, Dungeon World, and Fate. It typically speeds things up while giving casuals or newcomers something to fall back on without feeling pressured to memorize everything.

 

[Vaeron]

I’d say yes, but I’ve actually only played 5e one time so that’d technically be misleading. But I have all the stuff. I guess I will continue to buy both.

 

[CapnZapp]

I find that cheat sheets for players are helpful no matter the game. I usually print out some for players in games that I have run for 5e, Numenera, Dungeon World, and Fate. It typically speeds things up while giving casuals or newcomers something to fall back on without feeling pressured to memorize everything.

I believe cheat sheets will mostly serve to scare newcomers away. At least if they attempt to be complete, which applies to all I've seen so far.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think it's best to simply acknowledge that PF2 is a game in a completely different league than 5E, when it comes to choices, options, details and math.

That said, Paizo has had four plus years to study 5E and draw conclusions why it is successful. If they chose to not do so, that's on them.

 

[ccs]

Now, having spent the past week reading the new book?
I can say that we'll definitely play it.

In our Sunday (PF) game one other player is very interested (so interested that they bought the special edition copy because they had to have it immediately & couldn't wait for the store to restock in 2-3 days!) & the rest aren't opposed to the idea. So the next time I'm up to DM (likely in about a month) I'm running it PF2. After that what'll likely happen is that it'll alternate between PF1 & PF2 depending upon DM & what type of story/characters we want to have.

In the Thur (5e) game?
One other player really wants to try it, one is almost certainly opposed, and the others neutral.
So we might give it a one shot or two.

 

[Markh3rd]

My friends first PFS game last night playing PF2 wasn't as enjoyable as he had hoped. His complaint was that the keywords were confusing to him and he didn't like that initiative could be any kind of check (like a nature check for initiative was the example). He didn't feel like the floating bonuses were reduced enough and that many players slowed down just to do the math correctly (17+14+1+2-5 for example). And he also said figuring out the degree of success or failure for each attack for each player also slowed down the game.

This was level 1 play with only 2 combat encounters and the game ran 1 hour past time. So naturally he is already concerned about high level play. He said he won't run it. He has too many casual players that would get easily frustrated. I myself have a mix of casual and experienced players for my home game and he doesn't want me to switch to PF2 and believes they wouldn't enjoy it either. (The casuals at least).

I may have to give it some time to revisit running it as I have the plaguestone adventure and wanted to start with that one. But I want everyone to have fun most importantly and right now I'm afraid I'd get resistance to it.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've played one session and PF2 is brutal when it comes to the fiddly stuff.

Not recommended to casuals. This is a different ball game than 5E.