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

[Haffrung]

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.

So all RPGs should regard 5E as the sweet-spot for complexity and never go beyond it?

No doubt the relative simplicity of 5E has played a part in its success. But the D&D market today is a big pie, and Paizo only needs a piece of it to be commercially successful. A strategy of retaining two-thirds of its existing customer-based and attracting the 20 per cent of the D&D customer-base that's open to more complexity may well be a better business decision than targeting the exact same market as 5E and hoping to distinguish yourself by, what - Golarion?

 

[FrogReaver]

So all RPGs should regard 5E as the sweet-spot for complexity and never go beyond it?

No doubt the relative simplicity of 5E has played a part in its success. But the D&D market today is a big pie, and Paizo only needs a piece of it to be commercially successful. A strategy of retaining two-thirds of its existing customer-based and attracting the 20 per cent of the D&D customer-base that's open to more complexity may well be a better business decision than targeting the exact same market as 5E and hoping to distinguish yourself by, what - Golarion?

I wasn't excited about pf2 at first. But the more I analyze it's rules, i'm actually happy with their design decisions thus far. The martials classes appear to be far more balanced against each other than they are in 5e. The different fighting styles also appear to be more balanced. Though that may not pan out as I beomce more experienced with the system. But at least the initial analysis is looking solid. I've not delved much into magic yet. I tend to play more martial characters so that's always my first stop.

 

[CapnZapp]

Right, but none of those options are hard.

...

That's easy to play, hard to master.

I'm not sure most new players would agree...

 

[Arilyn]

PF2 is laid out really well, with the best glossary/index I've seen in a rpg. The key terms seem overwhelming at first, but the definitions are easy to find. A lot of the terms come from what were once just phrases, which seems more approachable, but isn't that useful in play. How many times do you scramble about trying to remember exactly what lightly obscured means vs. partial cover? With key terms, they are easy to look up or copy on to cheat sheet and they are also codified and nailed down.

I also agree with Frog Reaver, the number of choices in play are pretty much the same as 5e. PF2 seems to be one of those games that plays better than it reads. Been hearing a lot of comments from people who've played it, claim that it's very intuitive, and a lot of fun. I haven't run it yet, but did try out the playtest. The 3 action economy is fantastic. It works really really well.

So, yes, we plan on diving into PF2 soon. Still going to play some 5e, and 13th Age remains our bedrock for F20 goodness.

 

[Campbell]

When it comes to keywords most are strictly there to govern interactions between mechanics. This makes it easier to determine things like can a Barbarian do this while Raging or does this ability trigger an Attack of Opportunity. The keywords that have mechanical weight are summarized in a sidebar for each class. For spell casters there is similar, but much longer, sidebar. Like until someone casts Calm Emotions a Barbarian does not need to care that Rage has the Emotion trait. They only need to care about things like actions with the Rage trait require them to be under the effects of Rage and if they have a duration end if they are not raging. The advantage here is that under each individual spell and feat there is no need to have lengthy text describing how that ability interfaces with other abilities that we must carefully interpret in play.

Much like Magic when you are first learning to play you will drive yourself crazy if you try to understand the complete meta of the game. I would suggest not trying to do this.

 

[Emirikol Prime]

Huge fan of Golarion. Not a huge fan of the complexity so I'll be buying the campaign stuff and using it for 5E.

 

[Arilyn]

When it comes to keywords most are strictly there to govern interactions between mechanics. This makes it easier to determine things like can a Barbarian do this while Raging or does this ability trigger an Attack of Opportunity. The keywords that have mechanical weight are summarized in a sidebar for each class. For spell casters there is similar, but much longer, sidebar. Like until someone casts Calm Emotions a Barbarian does not need to care that Rage has the Emotion trait. They only need to care about things like actions with the Rage trait require them to be under the effects of Rage and if they have a duration end if they are not raging. The advantage here is that under each individual spell and feat there is no need to have lengthy text describing how that ability interfaces with other abilities that we must carefully interpret in play.

Much like Magic when you are first learning to play you will drive yourself crazy if you try to understand the complete meta of the game. I would suggest not trying to do this.

Yes, good point. Don't try and memorize everything at once. Same with making a character. Pick your choices, one step at a time without trying to learn what's coming, or memorizing all the feats. The book actually explains things to beginners really well.

 

[FrogReaver]

I'm not sure most new players would agree...

I'm sure as with most things you are vastly overstating the issue.

 

[CapnZapp]

Yeah, let's pretend PF2 is in the same league as 5E.

Meanwhile, our players - veterans of dozens of D&D campaigns were shellshocked by the sheer onslaught of options, modifiers and choices in PF2.

For them, they faced the assault on their brains with a huge grin.

For a 5E casual, I don't think so.

 

[RSIxidor]

As I think I was the first to suggest it, I think what I really want in a "cheat sheet" for PF2 is really tailored to the character a bit. In my mind, what I'm imagining is something laid out like the power cards of 4E as exported from the old character builder, where modified activities might already show bonuses you get or options to change how the activity works and in addition it shows how many actions it needs to be used.

I don't think we necessarily want that for new players, though if it were just the stuff you get from ancestry/class/feats that might be enough and not too much.

For new players, though, a single page with names of activities, a quick synopsis, actions needed, and a page number to lookup the full wording seems fine enough.