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

[Staffan]

Suddenly blanking on Savage Worlds, despite having run 2 campaigns using it — does it break a player’s combat round into multiple actions? I don’t recall doing so, but maybe I was playing fast and loose with the rules.

Savage Worlds allows you to take 2 actions at a -2 penalty to everything, or 3 at -4. You also get a move, and can increase that move by Running – this is not an action but gives -2 as well. There are also ways of making multiple attacks per action, such as autofire.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don’t think you can have played these games in longer campaigns. In NBA, you are fighting vampires, and vampires are famously vulnerable to piercing weapons, and very often completely immune to bullets, so switching between pistol and stabby weapon is absolutely a common thing. In CoC guns are pretty random in terms of damage, and do not have damage bonuses applied. Plus they are harder to critical with. If you run the math on a strong character fighting an armored horror like an elder thing, you will realize that a rapier (or any sword, tbh) is a better option.

I should have made it clear I was only talking about CoC. I own but have never played NBAs, so I wouldn't have felt competent to talk about its specific milieu.

In CoC the point is, there's no special reason to have a melee weapon, especially since it means the character has to have two different skills that advance separately. I'd also have to go back and look but I'm extremely dubious that the rapier is better than a shotgun in anything but very selective situations.

D&D style games do multiple actions in one round, but outside the d20 world, I think it’s actually uncommon: CoC, Fate, PbtA, BRP, Numenéra, *Borg, whatever the system that Alien, Bladerunner and the other Free League games use, The One Ring, pretty much every Indie game I’ve ever played, Toon, Paranoia, Everway (I’m just running through my library here), Pendragon, Hillfolk, Gumshoe — I think it’s only 13th Age and PF2 in my library that require you to choose multiple actions within a round.

Suddenly blanking on Savage Worlds, despite having run 2 campaigns using it — does it break a player’s combat round into multiple actions? I don’t recall doing so, but maybe I was playing fast and loose with the rules.

Well, its been a while for me too, but I certainly know movement and main actions are separate but I'm unwilling to state with authority it as a free/quick action construct.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Yeah, the only games where weapon swapping doesn't have some cost is ones where the weapon choice virtually doesn't matter.

In Hexxen it makes a difference because it affects how good your can parry (and often more damage means worse parry) is, but you can basically switch between weapons as often as you like.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

In CoC the point is, there's no special reason to have a melee weapon, especially since it means the character has to have two different skills that advance separately. I'd also have to go back and look but I'm extremely dubious that the rapier is better than a shotgun in anything but very selective situations.

Well, this conversation has been helpful. I just checked my books and found that there is no penalty for a second shotgun attack at the same target, so you can fire two shots in one round and reload the next, so you get off one attack per round overall, rather than the 2 every three rounds I was thinking.

With that update to my knowledge bank, yup, you are correct. A beefy guy is averaging 11 damage per successful attack with a big sword (cavalry saber) including impale chance, and the shotgun user is doing 14, no impale chance, so definitely better. I've probably been running that wrong for decades!

Sword guy can fight back with his sword skill, which can be nice, but it's a risky option. You don't have to put points into dodge though, which is also nice, but overall I think always fighting back is a low-survival strategy. As you say, in selective situations or for very careful builds, it might work, but overall ... the shotgun is much better.

As a total aside, shotguns have been the cause of death of at least two characters in my campaigns. One character so loved his shotgun that when it was knocked into the Thames, he swam in after it and drowned. And characters with shotguns who go temporarily insane are a serious threat! I can recall at least one character taking the full 24 damage from an extreme result from a panicking friend. Fun times!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well, this conversation has been helpful. I just checked my books and found that there is no penalty for a second shotgun attack at the same target, so you can fire two shots in one round and reload the next, so you get off one attack per round overall, rather than the 2 every three rounds I was thinking.

With that update to my knowledge bank, yup, you are correct. A beefy guy is averaging 11 damage per successful attack with a big sword (cavalry saber) including impale chance, and the shotgun user is doing 14, no impale chance, so definitely better. I've probably been running that wrong for decades!

Eh, I'd be hypocritical to be on someone for getting some numbers, even with a game they used often, off.

But my general point was in most modern period games, the situations where a melee weapon is better than a ranged weapon in any way that benefits swapping back and forth is pretty rare. You'd probably want to do it in Savage Worlds if you were using anything but a handgun (because of the problems that system does with long arms at melee range), but its unlikely it'd be useful to change back until you disengaged. And that kind of thing is pretty typical there; until forced into melee in a modern game, you just stick with a gun.

Sword guy can fight back with his sword skill, which can be nice, but it's a risky option. You don't have to put points into dodge though, which is also nice, but overall I think always fighting back is a low-survival strategy. As you say, in selective situations or for very careful builds, it might work, but overall ... the shotgun is much better.

Truth is, for games that represent at least some of their benefits, the shotgun is probably the generic adventurer's weapon in the modern period. Others can be situationally better, but the shotgun is just a good general purpose weapon. Its only real downsides are its bulk and being two-handed. Oh, and it doesn't pack the most ammo in the world.

 

[nevin]

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.

Well PF2e doubled down on its strong group of players that like the game to be more tactical. They locked in the fact that the game assumes all non melee combatants are support classes. Any non melee class will have far more impact bugging and supporting melee than doing anything else. A lot of people like that. It also limits the Minimax that had taken over 1st edition.
As I said a lot of people like it. I think the solution is worse than the problems they tried to solve. Good news is all your old versions still exist. Just play PF 1e or any version you like if DND.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Well PF2e doubled down on its strong group of players that like the game to be more tactical. They locked in the fact that the game assumes all non melee combatants are support classes. Any non melee class will have far more impact bugging and supporting melee than doing anything else. A lot of people like that. It also limits the Minimax that had taken over 1st edition.
As I said a lot of people like it. I think the solution is worse than the problems they tried to solve. Good news is all your old versions still exist. Just play PF 1e or any version you like if DND.

I'm not sure I believe that's true with regular archers, and I think it requires a particular look at things to even believe it with mages with area effects.

What its largely done is make it hard for a spellcaster to have a dramatic effect on a higher level opponent with any one spell. And I know a lot of people have been used to that being the go-to way to handle those for a very long time. But I know who's been cleaning up the lower level opponents in most PF2e fights I've seen, and it wasn't the meleeists.

 

[nevin]

So the new spot for magic is clean up crew? Interesting.

 

[Justice and Rule]

So the new spot for magic is clean up crew? Interesting.

More like they are better at crowd-control than melee-focused builds, but I find that people with weapons typically are better at causing damage than those with magic, which is fine: magic can cause damage, but it's power is in its versatility. Magic is a Jack of All Trades, it can't do everything the best like in most editions of D&D.

But people with weapons cause better damage is a fine niche. And melee can be a bit better at causing damage, in my games I have a gunslinger who is absolutely a terror when it comes to crit-fishing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So the new spot for magic is clean up crew? Interesting.

If your idea of "taking out half the opposition" is "clean up crew", I'd have to say that's a sign of "If I'm not the primary actor in taking down the big bad I'm nerfed" mentality.