Pathfinder 2E Do you think 1st or 2nd edition is more complicated?

[James Gasik]

So I decided to take a look at my level 5 Oracle from PF 1e. I have the following notations on my sheet due to racial, feats, traits, class features, and magic items.

*+2 AC vs. attacks from good subtype/alignment creatures (homebrew armor shield material).
*+2 AC vs. critical hit confirmation rolls (homebrew armor material).
*+2 dodge bonus to AC in cold environments (racial).
*+2 bonus to saves against charm and compulsion (Birthmark Trait).
*+4 bonus on Will saves vs. fear Lion-Hearted Feat).
*+2 competence bonus for Will saves made against mind-affecting effects (Focused Mind Trait).
*+3 to Will saves against mind-affecting effects (Steadfast Personality Feat).

*6 Inspiration points from my Archetype which can add 1d6 to various rolls and checks or to let me ignore being flat-footed.

*The DC to gather information or make Knowledge checks about my character are reduced by 5. -10 penalty to Will saves made against non-mind-affecting Divination spells and spell-like abilities. 1/day can "take 10" on a check I would not normally be able to (this is from my Oracle Curse).

All of this is on top of my actual skills and spells. Every time I had to make a saving throw, I had to ask which of my bonuses applied, and half the time, monster abilities didn't even have tags telling us what kind of abilities they were to know if they should apply or not!

After not playing Pathfinder 1e for several years, I simply can't go back.

 

[GreyLord]

One area which I have never really figured out how to do with PF2e is Experience. The way the write it for the Monsters and the way it works really...just is a mystery to me as a DM.

Because of that, with PF2e it is almost strictly...we level when I decide we level. It's basically, strict Milestone leveling since the XP system for the Monsters and such is basically too complicated/complex for me to actually figure out how/what I'm supposed to do. That's even with me having tried to learn it with the Beginner's Box even!

Luckily Milestone leveling is an option.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am not that familiar with Pathfinder 1E, but I have played D&D 3e a lot, and PF1 is closely based on that, IIRC, so I'll compare that. Maybe I'll be off base because PF1 was more different to 3E then I remember.

Character creation might actually be quite similar, with 2E Pathfinder having the advatnage that all classes follow the same basic scheme at which they get feats and abilites, and at least I think all the core classes also all use similar spell progressions. But you still need to select from a lot of feats, you might have feat chains to consider, and spellcasters need to manage their spell lists.

But some real complexity in 3E was the management of all the various bonus types and their stacking. If you were to properly, seriously play 3E with optimization in mind (even way before you look for rules loopholes and exploits involving Polymoprhing/Shapeshifting or what not might have existed back then), then you had to consider a lot of things.

Your items might grant you enhancement bonus to your weapon attacks, your armor, your shield, your ability scores, deflection bonuses, natural armor bonuses, armor bonuses, shield bonuses (or was that an armor bonus by a shield that got to stack with the armor bonus from armor?), inherent bonuses to armor or shields, synergy bonuses.

But on top of that, some nice spellcaster in your party probably has some buff spells for you, that also provice the same type of bonus and would overlap. "Oh, I got Ring of Protection +1 that grants +1 deflection bonus to AC, the Magic Circle vs Evil that gives +2 deflection to AC (but only against evil - or was it non-good? - attackers), so my AC is 1 point higher usually. "
And sometimes, someone might cast Dispel Magic, or we even deliberately cast Antimagic Field to deal with a dangerous enemy spellcaster, relying on Admantite Armor and Weapons as the only source of buffs that would still help us, which naturally needed an entry in my attack and armor tables).

Most of my characters needed to make tables to correctly calculate attack bonuses, armor class (touch armor class, flat-footed AC, flat-footed touch AC), and saving throws.
And we definitely played longer than to 7th level (we usually reached double digits, though I am not sure we ever got to 20th level), but the problems probably start around 3rd or 5th level, because then you are almost guaranteed to have some magic items and magic buff spells that interact with those.
Our Paladin/Hospitaler/Fighter (that was occassionally suffering from multi-classing penalties) spend the evening before the game calculating all their values and planning when and how to cast spells for maximum buffage.


Yes, Pathfinder 2E has a lot of conditions that usually boil down to another penalty to attack or defense (very rarely a bonus, so kinda the opposite of D&D 3E), but usually not that many apply at the same time and overlap each other.

 

[Corinnguard]

Feats:

• PF1: Over 2000: Common Terms – d20PFSRD
  • 1 Every 2 levels, some classes get bonus feats
• PF2: Over 5600: Feats - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database
  • Skill feats level 2 every 2 levels
  • General feats: Level 3 + every 4 levels
  • Ancestry feats: Level 1 every 4 levels
  • With the official variant for frre archetypes 1 Archetype feat every 2 levels.
  • (Class feats: Level 1 and every 2 levels) Can be seen as class features

What made PF1 easier for me to read and understand was that it was a continuation of 3e D&D. As a result, it didn't seem that complicated. The rules between 3e and PF1 were roughly the same. Character generation was pretty much the same. Everything in PF1 didn't require a feat.

Featfinder (aka PF2) required a feat for almost everything. I thought people hated bloat in their RPGs.

 

[BigZebra]

The core rules are simpler in 2e than in 1e.
BUT - and it's a big but IMO (hence the capitalization) - the organization of the 2e rulebook is terrible. And even worse the 2e class design is extremely convoluted and complex.

I so wish Paizo would make a simpler system. I thinkg Jacobs and Mona have made som amazing stuff in the past, would love to see them make something I'd want to play

 

[Tigris]

The core rules are simpler in 2e than in 1e.
BUT - and it's a big but IMO (hence the capitalization) - the organization of the 2e rulebook is terrible. And even worse the 2e class design is extremely convoluted and complex.

I so wish Paizo would make a simpler system. I Jacobs and Mona have made som amazing stuff in the past.

I am pretty sure that the convolutedness of the classes is wanted / by design.

(Rulebook organization most likely not, this happens also in games which want to be streamlined (Draw Steel, Gloomhaven RPG) and other games (goblin slayer)).


Paizo does want PF2 classes to look complex, but do want it to still be balanced.

To a point where they made a really really tight balance, where its really limited in what you can do with a really precise scaling. (Like even agile weapon and non agile 1dice size higher weapons do in average situations almost exactly the same damage, most martials do around 2 basic attacks (hidden behind class features) with some class feature to improve basic attacks in similar scaling ways).

And now because the target audience are people which like system mastery, complexity and many options etc. you add complexity and convolution on top of it to make classes look more different.


Thats why you name the same class feature (proficiency rank in a safe improves to next level) different between different classes.


Thats why you call basic attacks strikes, and dont have class features improving them passive, but instead have named class features which names, which do basic attacks but with a small bonus. If 3 different classes get an additional basic attack (via the flurry tag), you make sure they have 3 different names, and have slightly differences between them. (Monk, Ranger, and was the 3rd Fighter?).

This way classes are feeling more different (to some players), because "you dont do just basic attacks, do you things like flurry of blows, Twin takedown or Double Slice". (Which all just do 2 basic attacks (the last one with a different bonus than the first two but still)).


The part in the "" is a quote from a PF2 fan from reddit. They really believed that the martial classes are doing so much more than basic attacks, and then brought as example attacks like flurry of blows. So this convolution helps, it make people believe that their basic attacks are different from other peoples, because they have a different name.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

But some real complexity in 3E was the management of all the various bonus types and their stacking. If you were to properly, seriously play 3E with optimization in mind (even way before you look for rules loopholes and exploits involving Polymoprhing/Shapeshifting or what not might have existed back then), then you had to consider a lot of things.

Your items might grant you enhancement bonus to your weapon attacks, your armor, your shield, your ability scores, deflection bonuses, natural armor bonuses, armor bonuses, shield bonuses (or was that an armor bonus by a shield that got to stack with the armor bonus from armor?), inherent bonuses to armor or shields, synergy bonuses.

But on top of that, some nice spellcaster in your party probably has some buff spells for you, that also provice the same type of bonus and would overlap. "Oh, I got Ring of Protection +1 that grants +1 deflection bonus to AC, the Magic Circle vs Evil that gives +2 deflection to AC (but only against evil - or was it non-good? - attackers), so my AC is 1 point higher usually. "
And sometimes, someone might cast Dispel Magic, or we even deliberately cast Antimagic Field to deal with a dangerous enemy spellcaster, relying on Admantite Armor and Weapons as the only source of buffs that would still help us, which naturally needed an entry in my attack and armor tables).

Most of my characters needed to make tables to correctly calculate attack bonuses, armor class (touch armor class, flat-footed AC, flat-footed touch AC), and saving throws.
And we definitely played longer than to 7th level (we usually reached double digits, though I am not sure we ever got to 20th level), but the problems probably start around 3rd or 5th level, because then you are almost guaranteed to have some magic items and magic buff spells that interact with those.
Our Paladin/Hospitaler/Fighter (that was occassionally suffering from multi-classing penalties) spend the evening before the game calculating all their values and planning when and how to cast spells for maximum buffage.

I can attest to this. The PF1 campaign I was in broke down for this exact reason around level 9 or 10, where the DM physically couldn't keep track of the buff/bonus/etc in an encounter where he had to run multiple spellcasters, and had like 30 tabs open in his browser just to try. This was WITH using Roll20 to automate things as much as possible.

PF2 may have a lot of on-paper complexity but the actual play is incredibly smooth by comparison. There's only ever 3 types of bonuses or penalties and spells/items are all usually given very short durations to prevent buff-stacking. I can easily run multiple spellcasters or complex monsters behind the screen and I've gotten multiple campaigns to the early teens level-wise without any players feeling overwhelmed or combats being difficult to run/play.

 

[payn]

One area which I have never really figured out how to do with PF2e is Experience. The way the write it for the Monsters and the way it works really...just is a mystery to me as a DM.

Because of that, with PF2e it is almost strictly...we level when I decide we level. It's basically, strict Milestone leveling since the XP system for the Monsters and such is basically too complicated/complex for me to actually figure out how/what I'm supposed to do. That's even with me having tried to learn it with the Beginner's Box even!

Luckily Milestone leveling is an option.

I went milestone some time ago. The PF2 XP system was simplified greatly to basically say just do milestone. Though, its XP system makes loads more sense than PF1 and the CR system is accurate (painfully so IMO). Again, im surprised folks find these streamlined systems complicated or even more so than PF1.

 

[payn]

I can attest to this. The PF1 campaign I was in broke down for this exact reason around level 9 or 10, where the DM physically couldn't keep track of the buff/bonus/etc in an encounter where he had to run multiple spellcasters, and had like 30 tabs open in his browser just to try. This was WITH using Roll20 to automate things as much as possible.

PF2 may have a lot of on-paper complexity but the actual play is incredibly smooth by comparison. There's only ever 3 types of bonuses or penalties and spells/items are all usually given very short durations to prevent buff-stacking. I can easily run multiple spellcasters or complex monsters behind the screen and I've gotten multiple campaigns to the early teens level-wise without any players feeling overwhelmed or combats being difficult to run/play.

This highlights so much of the differences. Both look complicated, but PF2 executes so much more easily.