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

[Tigris]

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.

Except on low levels there are no good area spells and no good conditions and enemies thst matter have a really high chance that your spell misses. Yes you can use spells with miss effects, but it still feels bad that most of your spells miss.

Also there is a lot of illusion here, like "stunned 1" which sounds cool but just makes an enemy lose 1 action (the same 100s of other things like some maneuvers also do), which is often like a 10% damage decrease because of the way multi attacking works.


There is a lot of gaslighting going on in the PF2 reddit trying to convince new caster players that they are better than they are by overvaluing their buffs they can give to martials.

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.

But the "more teamwork needed" is mostly just PF2 players advertising their game / convincing newcommers to play casters to buff them as they are playing casters.


The best example for me was when the guy behind "mathfinder" videos explained a new player on reddit that his "enchant weapon (or magic weapon cant remember the spell) spell is soo good it doubles the martials damage".

Then someone actually did the math and showed that its less than a 40% damage increase. So a caster spent their turn and a limited ressource to increase a martials damage by less than 40%. And with combats not lasting that long and burst being more valuable, being a fighter and doing basic attacks would give a better average combat contributions than being a caster using your limited ressource.


Teamwork is needed to make (low level) casters look like being worth including, because you need to do a knowledge check against the enemy to find the weakest defense to have a reasonable chance to hit the spell, and the caster themselves might not be good at doing that themselves and or their least inefficient spells might be spells to buff martials.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

~Eats popcorn while enjoying the show~

 

[BryonD]

The wizard in my game is actively campaigning to switch to PF1E.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

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.

From my experience, it doesn't require teamwork to the extent that D&D4E does, but it does reward it. In 4E successful teamwork could double your damage output, but in PF2 it's often just a 10-20% increase -- very noticeable, but you can play without it.

It's nice to get an evil eye and a frightened condition on an enemy, definitely, but it's not the same as a 4E bard dancing an enemy into a bunch of opp attacks, or a fighter dragging 5 foes into fireball formation.

When playing in random groups with my 4E bard or fighter/mage, I'd always ask about other characters I could seriously assist, but in PF2 I don't need more than maybe a round of planning and a quick "does reducing their will help anyone?"

 

[Justice and Rule]

Except on low levels there are no good area spells and no good conditions and enemies thst matter have a really high chance that your spell misses. Yes you can use spells with miss effects, but it still feels bad that most of your spells miss.

Missing can suck, but that's true of anything. A lot of spells have gradations, though, where even if someone saves you cause some level of effect. Simply "missing" is less of a thing now, just as "save versus suck" is also less of a thing.

Also there is a lot of illusion here, like "stunned 1" which sounds cool but just makes an enemy lose 1 action (the same 100s of other things like some maneuvers also do), which is often like a 10% damage decrease because of the way multi attacking works.

That's not illusion, that's a major effect. Losing one action out of 3 is a big deal, especially when most enemies don't have reactive attacks; you can move away and force them to spend an action, which can take away from someone's big two-action or three-action moves.

Also lmfao @ "10% damage decrease". Many enemies scale well or better than the characters, depending on the CR. Losing an attack is a massive deal for an enemy because most are better-suited than the PCs at a given level to multi-attack, especially solo challenges.

When you say this stuff, you make me think you haven't played the game before.

There is a lot of gaslighting going on in the PF2 reddit trying to convince new caster players that they are better than they are by overvaluing their buffs they can give to martials.

But the "more teamwork needed" is mostly just PF2 players advertising their game / convincing newcommers to play casters to buff them as they are playing casters.

It's more that it's harder for casters to "go it alone" like they can in stuff like 5E, where they are basically good at everything. Casters have great utility value and the ability to deal with groups or control the battlefield more than martials. They don't have single-target damage, but that's what martials get: big damage up close. That's the tradeoff. They are still effective on their own.

The best example for me was when the guy behind "mathfinder" videos explained a new player on reddit that his "enchant weapon (or magic weapon cant remember the spell) spell is soo good it doubles the martials damage".

Then someone actually did the math and showed that its less than a 40% damage increase. So a caster spent their turn and a limited ressource to increase a martials damage by less than 40%. And with combats not lasting that long and burst being more valuable, being a fighter and doing basic attacks would give a better average combat contributions than being a caster using your limited ressource.

Uh, can you bring up the post? I'd love to actually see the proof instead of just hearing it from you.

Also "combats not lasting longer" is a great argument for the value and importance of a single action being lost...

Teamwork is needed to make (low level) casters look like being worth including, because you need to do a knowledge check against the enemy to find the weakest defense to have a reasonable chance to hit the spell, and the caster themselves might not be good at doing that themselves and or their least inefficient spells might be spells to buff martials.

I don't think teamwork is needed to make them work. Spellcasters can work well on their own, but they aren't going to be as efficient when it comes to single-target damage as a martial. What makes everything more efficient is teamwork, but you seem to equate this as the "only way to make them work", rather than simply helping both sides be more efficient.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Except on low levels there are no good area spells and no good conditions

Scorching ray, level 2: three attacks doing 2d6 at range 60'
Every level adds 2d6 to the damage, so at 4th level you are doing 8d6 to 3 enemies.

My level 7 fighter is doing 2d12+7 and (at -5 attack) 2d8+7 damage to a single enemy, plus possibly some conditions.

-> Pure damage against 3+ enemies and the caster wins hands down, even at level 3.

Also there is a lot of illusion here, like "stunned 1" which sounds cool but just makes an enemy lose 1 action (the same 100s of other things like some maneuvers also do), which is often like a 10% damage decrease because of the way multi attacking works.

Tigris -- I think you are missing a big opportunity here. I ran in a near TPK last month and stunned 1 was a major factor in Not Dying (TM).

You are looking at the case where a monster has 3 attacks, and so depriving him of one attack just saves you a -10 attack. Yup, lame agreed. But if you are allowing a serious enemy to make 3 attacks on you, you are already in bad trouble.

So here was the situation last week: Three monsters attacking us, each with an area attack (all enemies within 30') that did maybe 1/4 of our hits per successful attack (save for half -- about a 50-50 chance of saving for us). That was a 2-action cast for them.

So I cast paralyze on one (it saved, as expected, so stunned 1) and then moved 30' back. The fighters and cleric hit it twice and moved back 30'.

It was now out of range and so could not move and do its burst attack. The other 2 could get 2 of us in their burst each, but instead of the four of us each taking 3 bursts (12 total attacks on us), we only took 4. Tactics saving us 2/3 of incoming damage.

Later, same party were fighting a very nasty solo demon in a hard encounter. Another paralyze (saved again so stunned 1) meant that it only got one attack as it had to move and attack. It was pretty much auto-hitting on -5, so paralyzing is halving its damage output (actually not quite as much as it was critting a lot, maybe reducing dmaage by 40% would be more accurate). If I could have done nothing but stun 1 it all fight I would have and we'd have won relatively easily.

But no. I ran out of paralyze. Our healer melee guy could not keep up and two went down, so just me and the monk still up. So I cast a containment spell on the big boss. He smashed it one hit and then moved up but with one hit did not drop the monk, who made it to our healer and brought them conscious. One giant heal later and we were good to go and finished it off.

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If you are fighting a bunch of small things, you don't use debuffs. You just use scorching ray or the like and do moderate damage to several enemies. Against big enemies and especially solos, stunned 1 is absolutely huge. In the most normal case, where you are forcing an enemy to move before attacking (and if you are not, it's back to tactics school for the fighters!) it up to halves the enemies damage output. Which is a really, really good result for one character's action.

Plus, there's a reasonable chance they will actually fail their check!

But the "more teamwork needed" is mostly just PF2 players advertising their game / convincing newcomers to play casters to buff them as they are playing casters.

Really no, it's debuffing that makes the difference. I'd suggest that you try that instead and you might have more fun with your casters.

I've played in many PFS tables and I'm actually struggling to think of a time anyone has buffed another person. I've done it in home campaigns (when you get to mass haste spells it starts to be really impactful) but up to level 10 or so, your best strategy is pretty simple: If there are many, area attacks. If there are few, debuff.

 

[payn]

From my experience, it doesn't require teamwork to the extent that D&D4E does, but it does reward it. In 4E successful teamwork could double your damage output, but in PF2 it's often just a 10-20% increase -- very noticeable, but you can play without it.

That was very much not my experience. The PF2 game didnt work at all if the players didn't work like a surgical team.

It's nice to get an evil eye and a frightened condition on an enemy, definitely, but it's not the same as a 4E bard dancing an enemy into a bunch of opp attacks, or a fighter dragging 5 foes into fireball formation.

When playing in random groups with my 4E bard or fighter/mage, I'd always ask about other characters I could seriously assist, but in PF2 I don't need more than maybe a round of planning and a quick "does reducing their will help anyone?"

This tracks. The teamwork decisions seems to be pretty obvious and not as exciting as they could be in PF2.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Provided such imposers meet your requirements for what being a powerful wizard should feel like.

 

[Incenjucar]

Team composition and the threat level encounters have a big impact in PF2. There are a lot of builds that allow you to set up a cascade for your allies if they are able to target what you expose. There are a lot of ways to grant your allies combat advantage, but that's less helpful of they all use saving throw attacks, and being able to lock targets in place can be amazing or horrible depending on the range and speed of your allies.

I have a character who is basically a gravity well who can generate walls that can completely negate some encounters, once drowning a whole room with the help of a spellcaster ally, but the melee rogue sometimes traps themselves as a solo target on the wrong side of the wall and gets shredded.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Oh, absolutely. The way I've seen it described is "PF1 characters require most of the thought in generation and advancement, and can be played pretty casually once you've wound them up; PF2 characters can be generated and advanced a bit haphazardly without usually too much harm, but absolutely require paying attention in combat including what other people are doing".

Needless to say, that causes some serious inter-edition stress because some people perceive PF2e characters as too weak in play, particularly if they were used to the arcanist-take-out technique in PF1e or D&D3/