Pathfinder 2E Essential PF2 Books and Best Adventure

[Reynard]

One of my Gaming Resolutions this year is to give Pathfinder 2.0 an honest go. I am curious what folks who are familiar with (and like!) the game think are "essential" materials. besides the Core rulebook and the Bestiary, are books like Advanced Player's Guide and Gamemastery Guide essential for a good experience? What about additional Bestiaries? And if I plan on running an adventer or AP set in Golarion, is the campaign setting a must have?

Speaking of adventures: which is the best to get a real feel for PF2? I am not going to commit to a full AP, but I could commit to the first couple volumes. I own both Fall of Plaguestone and the first volume of Abomination Vaults from the last time I was going to do this but then we only played Plaguestone for a couple sessions before my players balked and wanted to go back to 5E.

Thanks for your advice and input.

 

[Retreater]

You can give it an "honest go" with just the Core rulebook and Bestiary. I'd say there are plenty of options in the Core to get the essential experience. Advanced Player's Guide, Guns and Gear, and the other class books have nice options, but you don't need to go full tilt and overwhelm yourself (and everyone else). And honestly, it's all on Archives of Nethys if you want to sample it before you buy.

I use the Golarion wiki to fill in the gaps of the setting that come up during the play of adventures. The Lost Omens stuff I own (their campaign setting line) I have just because they were deeply discounted on Humble Bundle. None of it has been necessary.

I have heard that Plaguestone isn't the best. I probably wouldn't start with that.

The Beginner Box is an amazing introduction. I have run it several times. From there you can go to Troubles in Otari, which is a spin-off to the adventure in the Beginner Box (Menace Under Otari). Both of those connect to the Abomination Vaults, which is fun to have in the background for characters to explore as they get up to more trouble in the nearby town, Otari. (Just use the first volume for now since you already have it.)

Other than that, it's pretty much APs. I haven't heard much good about the single adventure modules. Of the APs, Strength of Thousands is the highest reviewed one.

Anyways, best of luck!

 

[payn]

I wouldnt say the Golarion Inner Sea setting book is necessary to a good PF2 experience, but I do very much like and recommend that resource.

 

[thullgrim]

I like the Outlaws of Alkenstar AP. It’s also available for purchase as foundry modules with all the setup work done and the implementation there is awesome. You would need the core rule book and Guns and Gears to make that go. Along with the AP modules. But there’s always Archives of Nethys to reference the rules portion of that material.

 

[Catolias]

I’ve been playing less than a year with PF2e (and loving it!) and my suggestion would be as follows:

• You can play without Advanced Players Guide, but I find it has useful additions / variations. I’ve been playing with many of the same group for years and they were taken with some of the stuff in the APG so it was hard to rule that book out
• Similarly, the Gamemastery Guide has useful variations on gameplay plus tables and options that I’ve had to refer to more than a few times.
• I have the Advanced and Standard GM Screens, which I use as a quick lookup reference to keep the game moving.
• I have the Lost Omens Guide and I agree with @Retreater that it is not essential.
• I have the Bestiary, but with online tools like pf2easy.com it is not an essential. Btw, the encounter builder on Pf2 east is very, very easy to good and useful.

With games, I ran a couple of Paizo’s bounty games to start with to get the hang of the mechanics and game play. the Bounty modules I ran had gameplay of 1-2 hours in length, were simple to easy to understand, and I was able to slot them into my own game setting in Golarion.

 

[Staffan]

• Similarly, the Gamemastery Guide has useful variations on gameplay plus tables and options that I’ve had to refer to more than a few times.

The GMG also has the creature (and hazard) creation rules, which are great both for their primary purpose of actually creating creatures/NPCs, and for giving a peek behind the curtain of Pathfinder numbers. Of course, if this is all you're using it for you might as well use AON.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Minimum, I would get the player's handbook and gamemastery guide in paper. For the rest you can use Archives of Nethys just fine.

As far as content, I would include all (some more) Archtypes from Archives of Nethys as the PH only included class archtypes and non-class archtypes I would consider essential for a better experience. I like Free Archtype and include it in almost all my games (sometimes restricted, somtimes not) as well. Using only PH classes and races is fine, but including everything in AoN won't break anything either.

Personally, I think the APs are all ok but not great. There are too many multi combat 'dungeons' and filler combat for my taste. That said, Strength of Thousands bones are pretty good and could be made great with some GM work.

The Mwangi Expanse is an amazing sourcebook but of course not essential. If you are at all interested in the region, I would pick it up.

 

[payn]

Minimum, I would get the player's handbook and gamemastery guide in paper. For the rest you can use Archives of Nethys just fine.

As far as content, I would include all (some more) Archtypes from Archives of Nethys as the PH only included class archtypes and non-class archtypes I would consider essential for a better experience. I like Free Archtype and include it in almost all my games (sometimes restricted, somtimes not) as well. Using only PH classes and races is fine, but including everything in AoN won't break anything either.

Personally, I think the APs are all ok but not great. There are too many multi combat 'dungeons' and filler combat for my taste. That said, Strength of Thousands bones are pretty good and could be made great with some GM work.

The Mwangi Expanse is an amazing sourcebook but of course not essential. If you are at all interested in the region, I would pick it up.

I'll second the free archetype variant. It allows a bit more PF1 feel in that you can multi-class and archetype if you would like instead of choosing between them.

 

[Reynard]

I'm definitely thinking about this harder now with current events.

Has anyone played Abomination Vaults? Is it a good dungeon crawl? Does PF2 work for dungeon exploration?

 

[thullgrim]

@Retreater ran it online I believe. It’s probably the most popular of the APs. The PF2 starter box takes place in the same locale and there’s a second standalone adventure in Otari as well I believe. So plenty of support material. Figuring out how you want to deal with Healing issue is probably important. PF2 really wants you to be a full hit points for each encounter. Think ability resource attrition, not necessarily hit point attrition