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

[Thomas Shey]

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.

You're using "enemies that matter" in way that does not fit my experience. If you only care about boss monsters, yes, playing a caster might feel inadequate, but I repeat my comment earlier. I can't otherwise buy this in general because I've watched a sorcerer do good work in something like four different campaigns now, so it can't be that bloody hard.

(As I've acknowledged, I've heard some complaints about wizards specifically I'm not qualified to comment about; but I've seen sorcerers, witches and other casters all get by so selling me that's a generic caster problem is simply going to be a very hard sell).

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.

Or completely robs them of their more capable two-action trick because they also need to move.

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.

Again, you can claim this as you want, but its sufficiently far from my experience in the field that I'm just going to shrug. The oracle and sorcerer in my current game may not gust as high as my barbarian, but they do damage more consistently than he ever does, and enough to generally ge the job done.

 

[Staffan]

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).

In my experience, non-prepared divine casters are at a fairly significant disadvantage – at least if you want to be a healer. The reason is that you need to have the right spell for whatever condition your ally is suffering from, and you probably need it at a fairly high level because of how the counteracting system works. With prepared casting, you can at least somewhat figure out what afflictions and debuffs you'll be facing if you know where you're going and make sure you have the right stuff available.

I think this might have gotten somewhat fixed in the remaster – IIRC, they condensed most of the condition relief spells down into like two.

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.

Slow has been an MVP for my sorcerer going from level 5 up to level 12 or so (the campaign is on hiatus now and I can't recall quite how high we got). It's amazing against boss types, because it inflicts Slowed 1 (lose 1 action) for a round even on a successful save, and it doesn't have Incapacitation. Me spending two actions to remove one boss action is a very good trade most of the time, and should they actually fail their save it sticks for a whole minute.

It is fairly common for PF2 creatures to have special attacks that use up two or three actions, either in one single activity or as part of a routine. A common variant is a Strike (1 action) with the Grab rider (1 action), and then a follow-up that hits a grabbed target really hard (like a dire wolf's worry or a grappler-type's constrict). Another common thing is having a two- or three-action AOE strike, which either gets shut down entirely or can't be done along a move if they're one action down. So taking away one action can be very strong.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

There are individual opponent sets that can absolutely punish you if you're not working together, but its not every encounter.

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

Depends on the composition of the party and how well you know it. It becomes easy once you know your party and their strengths and weaknesses well, though sometimes there's some tradeoffs that aren't clear. This is more true with some classes than others though; you really need to pay attention to what's going on when playing a Champion, less so with a Barbarian (though you can throw yourself face first into a meat grinder with the latter easier if you're not at least a little careful).

 

[Micah Sweet]

You're using "enemies that matter" in way that does not fit my experience. If you only care about boss monsters, yes, playing a caster might feel inadequate, but I repeat my comment earlier. I can't otherwise buy this in general because I've watched a sorcerer do good work in something like four different campaigns now, so it can't be that bloody hard.

(As I've acknowledged, I've heard some complaints about wizards specifically I'm not qualified to comment about; but I've seen sorcerers, witches and other casters all get by so selling me that's a generic caster problem is simply going to be a very hard sell).



Or completely robs them of their more capable two-action trick because they also need to move.



Again, you can claim this as you want, but its sufficiently far from my experience in the field that I'm just going to shrug. The oracle and sorcerer in my current game may not gust as high as my barbarian, but they do damage more consistently than he ever does, and enough to generally ge the job done.

Are they fun to play, coming from a D&D 5e (or other non-4e D&D) experience?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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

It depends what you expect them to feel like. They still have a wide range of access to abiities no non-caster can do, but if you've imprinted on them being The Solution to every problem, then there's no making you happy with anything less.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Are they fun to play, coming from a D&D 5e (or other non-4e D&D) experience?

Well, like I said, we have one player who does nothing but sorcerers and similar, so she must be getting something out of it. I can't directly say since I've only played one spellcaster (I tend to find D&D style magic fiddly in an annoying way so its rarely a priiority) and he was a hybrid so not a good case to evaluate on.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It depends what you expect them to feel like. They still have a wide range of access to abiities no non-caster can do, but if you've imprinted on them being The Solution to every problem, then there's no making you happy with anything less.

Apparently PF2 casters aren't good at single target damage either, so it's not just "The Solution to every problem".

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my experience, non-prepared divine casters are at a fairly significant disadvantage – at least if you want to be a healer. The reason is that you need to have the right spell for whatever condition your ally is suffering from, and you probably need it at a fairly high level because of how the counteracting system works. With prepared casting, you can at least somewhat figure out what afflictions and debuffs you'll be facing if you know where you're going and make sure you have the right stuff available.

I think this might have gotten somewhat fixed in the remaster – IIRC, they condensed most of the condition relief spells down into like two.

Point taken. But that still seems only helpful when the cleric can bake a cake (i.e. knows in advance what they're getting into) and has the price of the usual spell prep fiddliness, which doesn't seem ideal for a try-out game.

 

[Tigris]

Are they fun to play, coming from a D&D 5e (or other non-4e D&D) experience?

Its just way more complicated 5e, if you do like to feel clever by learning tons of options, and like having things more complicated than needed by choice (to make it look more deep), then it can be fun for you.


PF2 has a specific target audience, people loving system mastery and wanting to be rewarded for it.


PF2 overall is more "down to earth" than 5E. And casters for me feel in low levels just weak because their spells mostly just do small numerical modifier and or weak damage.


If you love getting "the enemy now has -1 to hit" or "martials you get +2 to hit for 1 round!" as a result for casting your rare spell slot, then you will like it. If you expect big flashy effects (in mechanics not just flavour), then you will most likely (like me) be dissapointed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Apparently PF2 casters aren't good at single target damage either, so it's not just "The Solution to every problem".

That's what I mean. There's actually a reason for people other than casters to be there other than meat shields. If that's bothersome to someone, then no, they're not going to like it.

They still have a vast variety of versitility, progressively increasing with level, that no non-caster can match. Its just that doesn't include "best choice to take out a singleton" in its bailiwick.