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

[FrozenNorth]

That all said, I'm not sure "The GM is ignoring parts of the system could cause serious problems" is particularly limited to PF2e.

That’s a fair statement, but my actual criticism was a bit more nuanced.

Because « Pathfinder is a heavy game to GM », mistakes tend to be more frequent and because « Pathfinder fights tend to be finely tuned » mistakes tend to have a greater impact.

 

[FrozenNorth]

I think I've seen that come up once in three campaigns (two of them long), so perhaps you'll at least understand why that doesn't strike me as typically that significant. And I don't think this is a sign I've been playing in unusually easy campaigns given one of those was Age of Ashes.

True, but I’m placing my criticism in the context of the OP, a situation where the players have not played before and the GM has, though the criticism also applies where neither the players nor the GM have played before.

 

[Tigris]

That’s a fair statement, but my actual criticism was a bit more nuanced.

Because « Pathfinder is a heavy game to GM », mistakes tend to be more frequent and because « Pathfinder fights tend to be finely tuned » mistakes tend to have a greater impact.

I fully agree PF2 as a system is a lot less robust than other ones. Because they too extreme balancing small mistakes have a much bigger influence of the game.


In other systems having an additional +2 on hit by mistake is not big thing. In PF2 this is considered huge.


And PF2 has so many more things one can miss. Like "oh you need an action to profit from cover" or "you need an action to draw a weapon". Or "oh this condition causes "flatfooted" (forgot the name) this causes the same kind of penalty this other spell causes so they dont stack" etc.

 

[Eric V]

I fully agree PF2 as a system is a lot less robust than other ones. Because they too extreme balancing small mistakes have a much bigger influence of the game.


In other systems having an additional +2 on hit by mistake is not big thing. In PF2 this is considered huge.


And PF2 has so many more things one can miss. Like "oh you need an action to profit from cover" or "you need an action to draw a weapon". Or "oh this condition causes "flatfooted" (forgot the name) this causes the same kind of penalty this other spell causes so they dont stack" etc.

Our group tends not to have these problems...ymmv, I guess.

 

[Tigris]

Our group tends not to have these problems...ymmv, I guess.

Your groups of people obsessed with PF2 all of them having spent/wasted 100+ hours reading about the system?

PF2 tends to draw in more people who like to spend many hours reading about the system and because they do the same thing with other systems (where this is not necessarily) they underestimate how much more time is needed for pf2 than to other systems.


Its not impossible to run, but it has far more rules and nitpicks and restraints etc. Which you NEED to know.

 

[Eric V]

Your groups of people obsessed with PF2 all of them having spent/wasted 100+ hours reading about the system?

Ummmm...no. We just read the rules and understood them. Focused on our characters primarily, and the rest as we go. Cheat sheets helped. Really didn't feel different than playing most other RPGs.

Is it possible you are being hyperbolic?

 

[Velderan]

Ummmm...no. We just read the rules and understood them. Focused on our characters primarily, and the rest as we go. Cheat sheets helped. Really didn't feel different than playing most other RPGs.

Is it possible you are being hyperbolic?

Same. My only gripe with the system is the same one I had with 5e; combat takes too long at higher levels. Beyond that, no one in my group, including the GM (me), spent hundreds of hours doing anything but actually playing the game at this point. We largely learned as we went along once we had the basics. We probably made mistakes which didn’t matter because we had fun.

 

[Tigris]

Ummmm...no. We just read the rules and understood them. Focused on our characters primarily, and the rest as we go. Cheat sheets helped. Really didn't feel different than playing most other RPGs.

Is it possible you are being hyperbolic?

Most people playing RPGs never did read the rules of those RPGs because they were just explained to them. Exactly what I mean. You are people who read rules, and this is required in PF2, while in 5E almost no one reads the rules, because its not necessarily.


Thats why you dont see the difference because you do the extensive work also for other RPGs where its not needed.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That’s a fair statement, but my actual criticism was a bit more nuanced.

Because « Pathfinder is a heavy game to GM », mistakes tend to be more frequent and because « Pathfinder fights tend to be finely tuned » mistakes tend to have a greater impact.

Uhm. Maybe. But I've seen people make far-reaching mistakes in much simpler systems Just because they missed how something goes, and at the least, the fine-tuning of the fights is just about as likely to go in favor of PCs as against them if an error is made.

Honestly, the most likely way for a PF2e game to go off the rails is human-operation problems, not so much in not understanding the rules but as in, on one grounds or another, not believing it. A GM who understands the game but doesn't realize his players have (at least yet) not learned to understand that its very much a team sport, and doesn't adjust his encounters accordingly will probably slam them face-first into problems, but I'm not sold that's a systemic problem, per se.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I fully agree PF2 as a system is a lot less robust than other ones. Because they too extreme balancing small mistakes have a much bigger influence of the game.

I'd argue its the opposite problem; its more robust. But people, especially in the D&D-sphere, are used to a fair bit of loosey-goosey elements in mechanics that will tolerate them being sloppy and not punish them for it. Which is why when there's problems there its more often because of a GM over-fixing underbaked encounter guidelines, or in games that lack such, not having enough of an idea not to just drop too strong an encounter in the first place because they don't have criteria to work with and haven't played it enough to get by on look and feel.

In other systems having an additional +2 on hit by mistake is not big thing. In PF2 this is considered huge.


And PF2 has so many more things one can miss. Like "oh you need an action to profit from cover" or "you need an action to draw a weapon". Or "oh this condition causes "flatfooted" (forgot the name) this causes the same kind of penalty this other spell causes so they dont stack" etc.

While there's some argument to the other, PF2e is pretty rigourous about mentioning modifier types, there's a limited number of them, and none of them stack with the same type.