Pathfinder 2E Is It Time for PF2 "Essentials"?

[Retreater]

There’s also a Foundry love fest happening on the official forum right now. roll20 is just so incredibly feature poor and expensive for what you get. It doesn’t even have the latest AP (yet? or ever?).

I'm proud of myself for starting that thread over there.

 

[kenada]

I don't really like the idea of striking runes and prefer the 4e approach of increased proficiency with the weapon allows you to do more damage. In PF2 it seems like I could probably do away with striking runes and just say at X level or Y proficiency you do an additional die (or 2) of damage. Do you see an issue with that idea?

That’s pretty much what the Automatic Bonus Progression variant does. You don’t have to use it for every item or bonus. Just get rid of striking runes and give out devastating attacks at the appropriate levels.

 

[Justice and Rule]

There’s also a Foundry love fest happening on the official forum right now. roll20 is just so incredibly feature poor and expensive for what you get. It doesn’t even have the latest AP (yet? or ever?).

I found out about Foundry on the PF2 Reddit in like May, it's like their VTT of choice. The effort to move people to Foundry in the Paizo community is pretty damn broad.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

There's also the High Quality variant for low magic games, which doesn't do quite whats being discussed, but its another neat alternative if you don't like potency/striking and such.

 

[Campbell]

I don't really like the idea of striking runes and prefer the 4e approach of increased proficiency with the weapon allows you to do more damage. In PF2 it seems like I could probably do away with striking runes and just say at X level or Y proficiency you do an additional die (or 2) of damage. Do you see an issue with that idea?

I would not tie it to proficiency. Doing so would increase the edge the fighter has significantly and fighters really do not need any help in PF2. Instead I would look to either Automatic Bonus Progression or High Quality Equipment.

Magic Item Variants - Rules - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database

Pathfinder’s magic item system is calibrated for a high-fantasy world like Golarion, with plenty of access to magic. However, not all settings, games, or subgenres match those assumptions. Varying from the default magic item system can help your group build games in low-magic settings, where the...

2e.aonprd.com

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

The sites very owner is a PF2E fan and has had a long running campaign too! But sometimes folks gotta start with hostile. I just hope they didn’t mean it and it only read that way.

Directed at Zapp mostly, now that I look back, although I didn't notice it was just pretty much them at this point. No hostility at all, though I enjoy a bit of snark when people get melodramatic, like their 'you have to accept the illness for healing to occur' bit, I know they weren't the only one cherrypicking the amazon and roll20 data despite reasons those might not be the best metric. I was literally pointing out to the people that continue to insist Pathfinder 2e is an accepted failure that its doesn't quite match reality, hence a reality check.
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Separately, but wanting to compress to one post, someone mentioned complaints about complexity, its interesting because its all over the place from what I've seen, Morrus's own review cites it as being about as complex as 5e, whereas I'd rate it at slightly more complex, but with a way better depth to complexity ratio, but then other people treat it as if its an out-of-touch rules dense slog. Its interesting how much perception of the game's material complexity varies.

 

[dave2008]

I would not tie it to proficiency. Doing so would increase the edge the fighter has significantly and fighters really do not need any help in PF2. Instead I would look to either Automatic Bonus Progression or High Quality Equipment.

Magic Item Variants - Rules - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder 2nd Edition Database

Pathfinder’s magic item system is calibrated for a high-fantasy world like Golarion, with plenty of access to magic. However, not all settings, games, or subgenres match those assumptions. Varying from the default magic item system can help your group build games in low-magic settings, where the...

2e.aonprd.com

Well I just realized striking runes have a level don't they. I would tie it to that, maybe with a minimum proficiency (so as not to favor the fighter).

 

[dave2008]

Separately, but wanting to compress to one post, someone mentioned complaints about complexity, its interesting because its all over the place from what I've seen, Morrus's own review cites it as being about as complex as 5e, whereas I'd rate it at slightly more complex, but with a way better depth to complexity ratio, but then other people treat it as if its an out-of-touch rules dense slog. Its interesting how much perception of the game's material complexity varies.

Personally I don't separate complexity and depth quite like you do. PF2 definitely has more depth, but that is more complexity for me. The way I approach the game I can't really separate the depth from complexity much. So, from my perspective the depth to complexity ration is closer to way off than way better. Now, I fully understand that is just my perspective and not a game / design issue.

 

[Starfox]

The funny thing is I said that, yet I had a player who had really been into 3.5 who demanded I explain why a monster was able to do anything it did. Every session, every new monster, he'd say at least once, "What?!?!? How is the monster able to do that?!?!?!"

On the subject of PC vs. NPC creation, I dont mind NPCs having a simplified system as long as the final numbers are comparable. If one of the player characters is absent from a scene, I want to be able to hand that player a guardsman to play, and it should work out of the box. How those numbers were made up? I couldn't really care less as longa s they make sense in the story. 3E's insitance that you build monsters like characters was one of the main flaws with it in my book.

What I actually play these days is Action [Edit: My homebrew], which is pretty much DnD reimagined using Feng Shui as a base ruleset. Though it nominally does other genres, DnD is what we have actually use it for. Character creation in Action is entirely points-based, but there is something equivalent to level. There are no classes. In a lot of ways, Action characters are built like NPCs in other games - there are very few restrictions and its the player's responsibility to make it into a cohesive whole. Fits my table.

The free League (Fria Ligan) used to appear at game cons in Sweden maybe 20 years ago with innovative but weird scenarios. Doing things like Twilight 2000 today, they have become much more conventional - but others in the group still do the wierd naughty word. Good kids!

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Personally I don't separate complexity and depth quite like you do. PF2 definitely has more depth, but that is more complexity for me. The way I approach the game I can't really separate the depth from complexity much. So, from my perspective the depth to complexity ration is closer to way off than way better. Now, I fully understand that is just my perspective and not a game / design issue.

So to me, I wanna clarify they're interrelated, you do need more complexity to have more depth, generally-- but the amount of depth you buy with any amount of complexity is down to the 'elegance' of the design, 'efficiency' might be the right word. Pathfinder 1e (3.5 really) was very deep because it had a mountain of complexity, but none of the complexity was that efficient. Whereas I view Pathfinder 2e as having a similar depth, but far less complexity, but it still needs some to do what it does. For point of reference, I view 5e as having very little depth per complexity, but it also has very little complexity. How much complexity is justifiable, even if its efficient, is of course down to taste and how much you value the kind of depth you can get from a rules system (which isn't the be all / end all.)

My biggest problem with 5e, now that I think about it, is that its so much more complex than say PBTA or other rules lite systems... but its not especially deeper than them, while managing to be a little simpler than other d20 games of its ilk, but losing out massively in the depth that arguably makes them attractive in the first place.