Pathfinder 2E I played my first PF2e game this week. Here's why I'm less inclined to play again.

[Thomas Shey]

I mean, it's changed like 3 times. Again, trying to balance for people who play at home as well as something for Society play isn't easy and is almost certainly the problem.

That probably hasn't helped, given the time spread involved. And yeah, being quite as focused toward Society sometimes does the game no favors.

 

[S'mon]

To begin with: I'm a D&D veteran of decades, having played every edition of D&D except 5.0 and the white paper, when each was the most recent version of the game. I had read the rules for PF1e and PF2e (thanks, Humble Bundle) and found them promising, plus people rave over PF, so I was eager to play a demo at GalaxyCon last weekend.

The long and the short of it is, that while it does have a few strengths over D&D, I came out of it less interested in PF than I was beforehand.

In the first game, I played an Investigator. This just sort of... didn't work. A level 1 Investigator seems to be flatly worse than every other class. If there's a mystery of some sort involved, and if you have the opportunity to prep with some investigation, then you can use your Int for attack rolls... making you still worse than any other class that gets their prime attribute to attack and damage with no preparation. At best, you can set up a +1 bonus to use against 1 enemy, which is, over the course of a typical battle, not going to be as good as just attacking them one time. One of the other players at the table had to explain how an Investigator gets more usable at higher levels, but I didn't get to experience it myself.

But the bigger problem was that the adventure wasn't a mystery, until suddenly it was and we're rolling initiative. The DM apologized for not realizing I was an Investigator and needed some additional prep opportunity baked into the game, but he shouldn't have had to. Especially in organized play, that shouldn't be an extra job he has to do.

In the second game, I was an Inventor. This worked better, because I could spend one action to both move and attack with my robot buddy. But I also needed an action to power myself up for a damage bonus, and in a battle that only lasts 2-3 rounds, it's not worth trading an attack now for a small damage boost later. So basically the whole setup was a more complicated way to get two attacks, sometimes, maybe.

Which brings us to the 3-action economy. I just really don't like it. D&D baking minor actions like drawing weapons into their move+action economy works much better. You should be able to take some kind of heroic action every round, and when you have to burn actions to draw weapons, sheathe weapons, raise shields, etc. then you run out of the actions you need to use your class features and also do something cool.

Finally, complexity. A demo D&D character sheet is one piece of paper, single-sided; maybe two if you're a spellcaster. Every PF character sheet was two pieces of paper, at least the first of which was double-sided. And the class features are dense. I had to read both of them very carefully (while the game was going on) to figure out how all the pieces interlocked. Now, granted, that's because a level 1 PF2e character is comparable in stats and complexity to a level 3 D&D5.x character. But even then, a D&D character's abilities are easier to grok.

I was absolutely the target audience for PF walking into the event, so the fact that I'm now turned off of it seems like a big miss. Maybe the characters I chose were poor examples (in which case, taking them out of the stack of the dozen pregens we were handed might have been a good idea). But with my lack of experience, I can't tell the difference between a lacking demo and a lacking game.

Sounds like a bad intro to the game. My first experience wasn't great either, but I recently started GMing a campaign with the Beginner Box and it's been brilliant. The BB PC Classes - Fighter Rogue Wizard Cleric - are all great; Fighter especially is absolutely awesome. They should probably not have been handing out weird stuff like Investigator & Inventor at a taster session.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Sounds like a bad intro to the game. My first experience wasn't great either, but I recently started GMing a campaign with the Beginner Box and it's been brilliant. The BB PC Classes - Fighter Rogue Wizard Cleric - are all great; Fighter especially is absolutely awesome. They should probably not have been handing out weird stuff like Investigator & Inventor at a taster session.

Though a sorcerer might have actually been a better choice than a wizard., and possibly a non-prepared divine caster instead of the cleric (I'm in a campaign right now where we've got a sort of parallel world of the traditional four-character class set, and I don't get the feeling my wife's Oracle has too many weird bobs to fiddle with. Investigator (which is what subs for a rogue in our group) is probably more arcane than needed for an intro, though).

 

[S'mon]

Though a sorcerer might have actually been a better choice than a wizard., and possibly a non-prepared divine caster instead of the cleric (I'm in a campaign right now where we've got a sort of parallel world of the traditional four-character class set, and I don't get the feeling my wife's Oracle has too many weird bobs to fiddle with. Investigator (which is what subs for a rogue in our group) is probably more arcane than needed for an intro, though).

My son did struggle a bit with his Wizard being much weaker than the other PCs - Fighter Fighter Cleric & Monk (my resident powergamer insisted, hi Judith!)
Since we hit level 3 Wizard has been fine, but at level 1-2 it felt like playing Nice Deadpool alongside Wolverine & Actual Deadpool.

 

[djotaku]

My son did struggle a bit with his Wizard being much weaker than the other PCs - Fighter Fighter Cleric & Monk (my resident powergamer insisted, hi Judith!)
Since we hit level 3 Wizard has been fine, but at level 1-2 it felt like playing Nice Deadpool alongside Wolverine & Actual Deadpool.

Isn't this the case with most (all?) d20 TTRPGs? to make up for the eventually powerful wizard they start off pretty squishy - just like the bard (at least the 5e bard....that's what I have experience with)

 

[Thomas Shey]

My son did struggle a bit with his Wizard being much weaker than the other PCs - Fighter Fighter Cleric & Monk (my resident powergamer insisted, hi Judith!)
Since we hit level 3 Wizard has been fine, but at level 1-2 it felt like playing Nice Deadpool alongside Wolverine & Actual Deadpool.

I've heard before that the first couple levels of wizard can sometimes be a little rough in PF2e; since our biggest arcanist player doesn't do prepared casters, I haven't actually seen one in play.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Isn't this the case with most (all?) d20 TTRPGs? to make up for the eventually powerful wizard they start off pretty squishy - just like the bard (at least the 5e bard....that's what I have experience with)

One of the things they did in PF2e however was balance out casters so their single target punch isn't as dramatic as in most of the D20 sphere. People who are used to it otherwise can feel a little substandard until the area and conndition imposers start to come in to their own.

 

[Tigris]

Isn't this the case with most (all?) d20 TTRPGs? to make up for the eventually powerful wizard they start off pretty squishy - just like the bard (at least the 5e bard....that's what I have experience with)

Not really. It was in the past, but many modern games dont do this. Also PF2 is the only game I know where you regularily hear the criticism that casters are too weak.

in early levels it can even be that casting your highest leveled spell is worse than a fighter just basic attacking.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not really. It was in the past, but many modern games dont do this. Also PF2 is the only game I know where you regularily hear the criticism that casters are too weak.

in early levels it can even be that casting your highest leveled spell is worse than a fighter just basic attacking.

PF2e offensive casters are best at area damage and imposing conditions. PF2e martials are best at single target damage. There's one casting type that's pretty good at that too, but trades off a lot of the versitility casters usually have.

I'm really hard pressed to feel sorry for casters who want to have their cake and eat it too just because they're used to doing so in other parts of the D20 family.

 

[djotaku]

PF2e offensive casters are best at area damage and imposing conditions. PF2e martials are best at single target damage. There's one casting type that's pretty good at that too, but trades off a lot of the versitility casters usually have.

I'm really hard pressed to feel sorry for casters who want to have their cake and eat it too just because they're used to doing so in other parts of the D20 family.

Yeah, my understanding from reddit and enworld is that PF2e requires more teamwork than D&D and other 5e variants. I see pros and cons to that, but if people are coming from a 5e to PF2e, I imagine that can be a bit jarring. I may have the chance to see later this year. I picked up the new beginner box (Unlit Star) and plan to run it for my D&D/ToV table as a pallate cleanser between campaigns.