Pathfinder 2E I think I am giving up on PF2ER

[Reynard]

You'd think that, but PF2 has grown the playerbase. Paizo selling more than ever. I think they owe a good deal of that to the explosion of 5E and community overall growth than any secret PF2 sauce.

Yeah, there has always been bleed off from D&D to other games. it is the tide that lifts all boats. PF2 appeals to D&D players that want more structure and crunchy bits, plus their adventures tend to get high praise and Golarion is a cool, diverse setting.

I am honestly pretty dismissive of PF1 grognards who accuse Paizo of abandoning them or whatever, especially when they make questionable claims about how PF2 is dying etc... Paizo gave them 10 years of solid support, but it was time for a new edition. If there was still that big of a market for PF 1E material, some company would be serving it via the OGL.

 

[Xenolith234]

My group and I played PF2e for about 3 years before we switched to Savage Worlds to finish our campaign. I/we found that it was too complex with things that didn't feel like they mattered - +1s here, +1s there, feats that just give you more +1s. It didn't feel impactful or powerful, and the group struggled to win combats because they couldn't pull off the seemingly "perfect" teamwork that PF2e requires. No one character felt like they could change the tide of a fight with a neat idea or powerful spell.

 

[Staffan]

My group and I played PF2e for about 3 years before we switched to Savage Worlds to finish our campaign. I/we found that it was too complex with things that didn't feel like they mattered - +1s here, +1s there, feats that just give you more +1s. It didn't feel impactful or powerful, and the group struggled to win combats because they couldn't pull off the seemingly "perfect" teamwork that PF2e requires. No one character felt like they could change the tide of a fight with a neat idea or powerful spell.

PF2 is rather conservative with bonuses, mainly because of the crit mechanic that basically doubles the effect of a +1. That's also why the game is calibrated so you almost never succeed on a 7 or less – if you did, you'd also crit on a 17, and for some reason the devs think that would be bad.

 

[Osgood]

One of the guys in my secondary group really wanted to run PF2, so we have been giving it a shot. In almost 40 years of gaming I’ve tried dozens of systems, PF2 may be the first I actively hate.

The rules are needlessly fiddle and complex, things often grind to a halt in combat as people puzzle over various mechanics, I feel like about half my character's abilities are pointless and I actually dread gaining a level because of having to sift through so many pages of choices chasing the highly situation bonuses that looks even remotely likely to come up.

I don't know that anyone is having much fun with it, and I hope when we get the end of the current adventure, we get rid of it (if not, I may have to leave that group).

 

[Velderan]

My group and I played PF2e for about 3 years before we switched to Savage Worlds to finish our campaign. I/we found that it was too complex with things that didn't feel like they mattered - +1s here, +1s there, feats that just give you more +1s. It didn't feel impactful or powerful, and the group struggled to win combats because they couldn't pull off the seemingly "perfect" teamwork that PF2e requires. No one character felt like they could change the tide of a fight with a neat idea or powerful spell.

I've heard of some of the early APs having some pretty challenging encounters, but if the GM is building encounters based on the guidance, you definitely don't need perfect teamwork. For extreme rated encounters, sure. Not so much for severe and definitely not for moderate or lower encounters.

Not sure if you're the GM or a player, but GMing a game where I see how close all the rolls are to success or failure I can absolutely tell you the +1s matter. Every game, multiple times I see people hit or crit only because of a +1 bonus. As GM when my group was getting started, I pointed these situations out so the group saw that the little things they were doing to set up the next persons turn were making a difference. It definitely encounters teamwork, but I don't see that as a negative on the system.

 

[Xenolith234]

I was the GM running moderate encounters at best - I never ran a hard encounter. Internally I know that the +1s matter, but to the players, they don't feel like they matter. For what it's worth, I was also playing the game face-to-face so it was extra fiddly.

 

[Retreater]

I wonder if I had encountered PF1 under the same circumstances as PF2, if I'd see it the same way. Like if I was in my 40s with limited time to study the rules, if there was a robust computer program to handle the rules, if there was a global pandemic that forced me to play online for years.
I think I'm a system hopper because I get burned out easily. I get overwhelmed with crunchy systems, bored with rules lite systems. And medium complexity doesn't really satisfy either need.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Same. I’ve never tried to run it f2f, but I don’t see anything more complicated than running something like AD&D 2e with a lot of the optional rules my table used to use. A good GM screen handles most of the quick reference stuff I need. Foundry is nice for having all the relevant rules immediately reference-able for those obscure rules you rarely use. Persistent damage trackers are nice too for tracking bleeds and burns, but I imagine f2f could handle that easily enough with status rings and minis. That’s how I managed condition tracking in 5e.

The biggest issue is one that applies to most F20 games that aren't minimalist; there's an awful lot of special casing, mostly in terms of feats and spells. I'm not actually sold even automated systems help that much there, as the automated system isn't usually going to know to apply them, so you have to keep track of them.

(There's a reason that classically in the Hero System the single place the largest number of people have had issues was with Variable Pools. Its about the only place you were liable to have a player have as many things to keep track of as a moderate to high level wizard or cleric player in F20 games usually does).

That being said, it’s not for everyone and that’s ok. @Reynard gave it a legit chance and it just didn’t stick, it happens. Hopefully Dragonbane is more his group’s speed, let us know how that goes! It’s awesome there are so many options out there for gaming these days, it really makes all the negativity online very confusing to me. Don’t like a game, try another! My group likes PF2e, but we also play Call of Cthulhu just to change things up. Different games are good!

Yeah. In the end, you need to know what you want and then pick that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have been using Fantasy grounds for Pathfinder 2E, as that is my VTT of choice (based mostly on sunk cost and limited capacity to learn a new one).

The big thing is that we have been trying to play by the book, which means we have been stopping to look up rules and get it right. There are lots of rules and tags and things work just differently enough from 5E or PF1 that it is a bit of a slog no matter what we do. We have been playing Abomination Vault but I don't particularly like the dungeon and tried to do some homebrew sidequests and realized that I just did not know the system well enough to make that work as smoothly as I would like.

I had the advantage when I started playing PF2e that I hadn't run D&D3e for a long time, and had completely skipped over PF1e or D&D5e (the former because it seemed like it'd have the same issues as D&D3e, the latter because it had made some decisions I knew I wasn't going to like right out the get-go) so I wasn't having to unlearn things. And make no mistake, that's always a significant problem with closely related systems; I've had it with new editions of games that changed significantly in the past.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Except it turned off a lot of PF1e lovers. You never want to make a game that shrinks your audience.

Not like there was much point in just doing the same-old-same-old again. There was enough PF1e material that was probably going to leave a lot of people asking why they'd bother.