Is Pathfinder 2 Paizo's 4E?

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think Paizo are making their business decisions out of pride and resentment, and I'm surprised you would suggest they are.

Their most successful product - Pathfinder - was based on Pride & Resentment - not /their/ pride or resentment, but you sure can collect a lot of money from proud, resentful people intent on voting with their wallets.

That's clearly the case with monsters.
However, whilst probably no edition of D&D has used exactly the same rules for PCs and NPCs, the rules were very similar up until 4th edition, which was a massive change in the way NPCs were statted up.

NPCs were statted up, in 1e, just like monsters. Heck, there were humanoids - actual humans, under the not-sexist-at-all entry "Men" - in the MM, with monster stat blocks. Other times they were condensed statistics. Other times they were just like PCs, and still others they were built with "Unofficial NPC Classes" from the pages of The Dragon. Often, they broke all sorts of rules that players probably wouldn't be allowed to get away with - multi-classed humans, for instance. ::shrug::

5th edition dialled it back a lot, but the NPCs still look bizarre to me - an NPC might have 15 hit dice, cast as a 9th level wizard and have the proficiency bonus of a 7th level character. In a funny kind of way, 4th edition NPCs made more "sense" to me - "he's a senior cultist of Orcus, his stat block is nothing like yours because his life path has been very different to yours" - rather than 5th edition's "he's a wizard Jim, but not as we know it".

There was plenty of that in 1e & 4e ( and 2e, I'm guess'n though I didn't pay enough attention to be sure). It's just a case 5e being more classic-D&D-like, in a way that 3e was less-classic-D&D like (in fact, probably /least/-classic-D&D-like of all the eds - I title usually taken by 4e in virtually every other imaginable category).

 

[wakedown]

Nope. As a player that has played all versions of D&D since the beginning, PF2 is nothing like 4E. It is far more like 5E. Even that comparison is off. It's more of its own game testing a bunch of new ideas, some of them very interesting, some questionable, and it will take some time to figure out.

Having played all the editions, I have to say PF2E is the closer to 4E than it is to 1E/2E, 3E or 5E. The more PF2E is played, the more it feels like 4E. I haven't gotten to play the final PF2E version yet (there's local resistance in doing so) but it doesn't look much different than the Playtest in terms of how it will feel.

First impressions are telling. 4E if you flip to a class you have all these little boxes and colors around a Power and a litany of keywords... (flipping) like the Warlock's Dreadful Blast, "Arcane, Fear, Implement, Psychic" and this little diamond shape separating that from it's indication it's an "Encounter" power. PF2E is almost identical with how it delineates "powers" and you read through the keyword tagging. 5E, 3E, 2E, 1E read more naturally - it's just a bold ability name and then a non-bold sentence that follows that explains it. PF2E is heavily based on the notion of using the terms "Stride" and "Strike" often at your table, i.e. spending 2 actions (of your 3) but that 2 action cost gives you the ability to make 3 Strides (a horse gallop IIRC). After a few sessions, your brain recalls back when it used to say the word "Shift" aloud more often than would seem reasonable.

The action economy feels roughly 4E-esque. In 4E, I recall folks trying to figure out their "3 action budget" - a standard action and 2 minor actions (or a standard, move and minor, or..). In PF2E, it's kind of similar as players pretty much stand in place and try to figure out the optimal way to spend 3 actions, sometimes with pauses on determining the rough probability of hitting an AC, but now carrying further baggage of probability of a critical hit or critical miss. 1E, 2E and 5E didn't feel like this at all. Folks could move freely without expending a "resource unit" that could be spent in another way.

PF2E is a little worse in a sense because it codifies so many actions, like "Recall Knowledge". You're jumped by skum and their weird crab-monster pet. Do you spend 2 of your 3 actions doing "Recall Knowledge" on those 2 things you're facing? Or do you metagame knowing what to expect because you don't want to spend the precious action that turn and instead get your buffs going? PF2E really gets into combat crunch and if your players are a little OCD and a little math-bent, they'll start to act out-of-character in order to take the more mathematically sound options. 1E, 2E, 5E didn't have this baggage so much as you had all this freedom outside of combat actions to be like your character should be, and then just decide ultimately what you do with that action (which in the 3E era was more powerful if you didn't move and the conversion of a SA to FRA yielded an incremental benefit).

Overall the feel is a bit like it's a Fantasy Boardgame with its own unique ruleset vs a familar D&D coat you've worn before where at a 6-person table there's really only 1 or 2 people who really have mastery over the specialized rules and act as advisors helping the others play through by the rules and try to beat the challenges by helping them play their own characters more optimally. To me, the best D&D editions the casual gamers had more autonomy in their decisions each turn because the variability of in-combat in-turn decisions wasn't so broad. Your friends would encourage, "cast fireball!" at you or "attack it!", which felt more in-character vs explain the precise use of multiple actions, "open with your Swipe, then flourish with your Power Attack!" This is the kind of Pandemic-esque "coaching"play that we had quite a bit of in the 4E era with unwieldy vocabulary terms that led to its shorter table life (there's a technical term for this across all board game genres which escapes me this morning).

EDIT: Quarterbacking. That's the term. PF2E feels like it has more quarterbacking to my groups to put it on par with 4E if not even beyond 4E. (The next edition down in quarterbacking would be 3E, then a big divide before 5E, 2E, 1E).

 

[Celtavian]

Having played all the editions, I have to say PF2E is the closer to 4E than it is to 1E/2E, 3E or 5E. The more PF2E is played, the more it feels like 4E. I haven't gotten to play the final PF2E version yet (there's local resistance in doing so) but it doesn't look much different than the Playtest in terms of how it will feel.

First impressions are telling. 4E if you flip to a class you have all these little boxes and colors around a Power and a litany of keywords... (flipping) like the Warlock's Dreadful Blast, "Arcane, Fear, Implement, Psychic" and this little diamond shape separating that from it's indication it's an "Encounter" power. PF2E is almost identical with how it delineates "powers" and you read through the keyword tagging. 5E, 3E, 2E, 1E read more naturally - it's just a bold ability name and then a non-bold sentence that follows that explains it. PF2E is heavily based on the notion of using the terms "Stride" and "Strike" often at your table, i.e. spending 2 actions (of your 3) but that 2 action cost gives you the ability to make 3 Strides (a horse gallop IIRC). After a few sessions, your brain recalls back when it used to say the word "Shift" aloud more often than would seem reasonable.

The action economy feels roughly 4E-esque. In 4E, I recall folks trying to figure out their "3 action budget" - a standard action and 2 minor actions (or a standard, move and minor, or..). In PF2E, it's kind of similar as players pretty much stand in place and try to figure out the optimal way to spend 3 actions, sometimes with pauses on determining the rough probability of hitting an AC, but now carrying further baggage of probability of a critical hit or critical miss. 1E, 2E and 5E didn't feel like this at all. Folks could move freely without expending a "resource unit" that could be spent in another way.

PF2E is a little worse in a sense because it codifies so many actions, like "Recall Knowledge". You're jumped by skum and their weird crab-monster pet. Do you spend 2 of your 3 actions doing "Recall Knowledge" on those 2 things you're facing? Or do you metagame knowing what to expect because you don't want to spend the precious action that turn and instead get your buffs going? PF2E really gets into combat crunch and if your players are a little OCD and a little math-bent, they'll start to act out-of-character in order to take the more mathematically sound options. 1E, 2E, 5E didn't have this baggage so much as you had all this freedom outside of combat actions to be like your character should be, and then just decide ultimately what you do with that action (which in the 3E era was more powerful if you didn't move and the conversion of a SA to FRA yielded an incremental benefit).

Overall the feel is a bit like it's a Fantasy Boardgame with its own unique ruleset vs a familar D&D coat you've worn before where at a 6-person table there's really only 1 or 2 people who really have mastery over the specialized rules and act as advisors helping the others play through by the rules and try to beat the challenges by helping them play their own characters more optimally. To me, the best D&D editions the casual gamers had more autonomy in their decisions each turn because the variability of in-combat in-turn decisions wasn't so broad. Your friends would encourage, "cast fireball!" at you or "attack it!", which felt more in-character vs explain the precise use of multiple actions, "open with your Swipe, then flourish with your Power Attack!" This is the kind of Pandemic-esque "coaching"play that we had quite a bit of in the 4E era with unwieldy vocabulary terms that led to its shorter table life (there's a technical term for this across all board game genres which escapes me this morning).

I don't agree. Spell durations are exactly like 5E. Powers are still very 3E like providing unique bonuses and not necessarily doing damage. Heightening is exactly like 5E which 4E did not have. There are no encounter powers. It's nothing like 4E.

If you have played 4E, then you know it did not have a 3 action economy. Nothing of the kind. You're reaching to shove it in the 4E box for some reason. I'm not sure why. Anyone that has played 4E will know PF2 is nothing like 4E. It's more like 5E in some areas and more like 3E in others like focus points and use on demand abilities rather than encounter or daily.

PF2 is it's own game. None of the mechanics you list were in 4E. I played that game and despised it. I know it well having gave it a good run as I do every edition of D&D. Anyone that has played 5E will see that PF2 drew some mechanics from 5E like spell durations and heightening. That it kept old D&D Vancian magic, something 4E didn't even try to do. That's its power structure is based on focus points, use on demand, and none that encounter power like 3E than encounter and daily video game like mechanics.

It is most definitely not 4E. I'm not going to discuss that comparison any longer because I despired 4E. Any discussion will bring out my vitriol recalling a game that almost ruined D&D. I'm glad 5E restored the fun in D&D for many. 5E felt far more like D&D even if I didn't enjoy running it. As far as PF2, we'll see where it ends up. It's so different and seems to pull from so much, it's hard to say whether I will like it or not.

 

[Celtavian]

Their most successful product - Pathfinder - was based on Pride & Resentment - not /their/ pride or resentment, but you sure can collect a lot of money from proud, resentful people intent on voting with their wallets.

We're calling preferring a different way of playing D&D pride and resentment? Really? I gave 4E a shot. I didn't like it. So I moved to Pathfinder. I tried 5E. I thought it was ok and liked a lot of the mechanical changes, but boring to me. I stuck with Pathfinder. I always give D&D systems a shot. I'm glad Pathfinder existed or I would have still been playing 3rd edition with no adventure support.

 

[wakedown]

If you have played 4E, then you know it did not have a 3 action economy. Nothing of the kind. You're reaching to shove it in the 4E box for some reason. I'm not sure why.

I'm simply relating the assessment of multiple gaming groups.

You might not see the "3 action economy" of 4E and 3E but many local alpha players among my gaming groups fully optimized for it, particularly Turn 1 and Turn 2 action budgets.

Just to show I'm not picking on 4E, which was basically 3E in this regard except closer to a 3-action economy as it had a more apparent library of minor actions. PF1E (3E) gave you 3 actions per turn (codified as a standard, a move and a swift action). Alpha players, when asked about how their character did whatever crazy Turn 1 shenanigans they did, would then often share the theorycrafting about builds to ensure you had something to do with each of those actions.

So you'd have players trying to determine how to use their Move action and their Trickery domain to toss up a Copy Cat, then use their Free Action to rage, and maybe their Swift action to cast Divine Favor. Again, it's all about maximizing the 3 actions per turn. In 3E/PF1E/4E you'd often have players not moving because they found something better to do with that action budget. The more you end up with an alpha player in PF2E, the more coaching you'll see about not actually using your actions to move, but instead use them to pay the cost of other things.

If you didn't play with any alpha player(s) who really maximized the action economy, the game would feel much different with more even parity. Believe it or not, this became fairly prevalent in PFS Organized Play so much so that Paizo made a ruling on the maximum number of free actions that could be taken per turn at one point, which then led to a massive backlash as certain punishing OP GMs would then use that to try to curtail the players taking more than 3 actions per turn via free actions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

We're calling preferring a different way of playing D&D pride and resentment? Really?

There sure was a lot of glee whenever PF sales numbers edged out D&D sales numbers. I doubt conscious wallet-voting was an entirely trivial part of that. (Though, to be fair, surveys indicated a /lot/ of crossover between D&D and PF fans - that is, lots of people bought into both for their respective runs - and the kind of single-ed-insistent 'pride' being alluded to was also shown, in WotC surveys, to be the exception, not the rule, with most fans of D&D liking all the editions they played, rather than exclusively committing to one or/and hating another.)

Mainly, having lived through all the very vocal resentment of the early edition war years, it was just too amusing a set-up to waste - 'pride' came along for the ride because the post I replied to happened to use it. If they'd said 'pizza & resentment' I'd've had to've used that.

You might not see the "3 action economy" of 4E

They're a Standard, Move, & Minor action, so there's /three/ of them. ::shrug::

PF1E (3E) gave you 3 actions per turn (codified as a standard, a move and a swift action).

Wow, how 'bout that.

For that matter 5e has Action, Move, & Bonus Action, but...

In 3E/PF1E/4E you'd often have players not moving because they found something better to do with that action budget.

… the thing 5e did, and it's one of the few things they tried to make at all 'tight' (along with BA), though, was not let you trade action. 3e & 4e both let you 'down grade' actions. Standard for Move, Move for Minor, that kinda thing, so that, for instance, a double-move flowed fairly intuitively from the rules.
5e made each Action explicit, rather than a trade. So moves do little more than move, and a double-move is accomplished with the specific Dash action, which is still an Action, not a Move, just an Action that moves you the same distance as a Move. Thus if some foolish designer ever let you do something broken with you Move, you couldn't double-up on it by downgrading your Action to a Move.
...and then your Bonus Action doesn't exist unless you come up with something that gives you one...

Believe it or not, this became fairly prevalent in PFS Organized Play so much so that Paizo made a ruling on the maximum number of free actions that could be taken per turn at one point, which then led to a massive backlash as certain punishing OP GMs would then use that to try to curtail the players taking more than 3 actions per turn via free actions.

Sounds plausible.

The more you end up with an alpha player in PF2E, the more coaching you'll see about not actually using your actions to move, but instead use them to pay the cost of other things.

It seems like 3 fungible actions/round really invites optimizing 3 attacks per round... there's gotta be more to it than that.

 

[Carmen Sbordone]

I would never say P2 is paizo's akin to 4th edition. However. 2019 is not the same as 2007/2008. Times and situations have radically changed on 10 years.

5e is VERY popular. Unlike the last edition it has not split a fan base. More people are playing.

P2 on the other hand is a bit of a departure from its previous edition. Enough so some are sticking to P1 and i keep seeing posts like "is pathfinder 2 bad?".

To be fair, i avoided the play test, but to my limited looking around, that seem to have some problems.

I wouldnt be surprised at all to see starfinder outshine and out do pathfinder2.

 

[Celtavian]

I'm simply relating the assessment of multiple gaming groups.

You might not see the "3 action economy" of 4E and 3E but many local alpha players among my gaming groups fully optimized for it, particularly Turn 1 and Turn 2 action budgets.

Just to show I'm not picking on 4E, which was basically 3E in this regard except closer to a 3-action economy as it had a more apparent library of minor actions. PF1E (3E) gave you 3 actions per turn (codified as a standard, a move and a swift action). Alpha players, when asked about how their character did whatever crazy Turn 1 shenanigans they did, would then often share the theorycrafting about builds to ensure you had something to do with each of those actions.

So you'd have players trying to determine how to use their Move action and their Trickery domain to toss up a Copy Cat, then use their Free Action to rage, and maybe their Swift action to cast Divine Favor. Again, it's all about maximizing the 3 actions per turn. In 3E/PF1E/4E you'd often have players not moving because they found something better to do with that action budget. The more you end up with an alpha player in PF2E, the more coaching you'll see about not actually using your actions to move, but instead use them to pay the cost of other things.

If you didn't play with any alpha player(s) who really maximized the action economy, the game would feel much different with more even parity. Believe it or not, this became fairly prevalent in PFS Organized Play so much so that Paizo made a ruling on the maximum number of free actions that could be taken per turn at one point, which then led to a massive backlash as certain punishing OP GMs would then use that to try to curtail the players taking more than 3 actions per turn via free actions.

It does not sound like you played 4E from your description. There was no optimizing for a 3 action round or anything of the kind. 4E had basic attacks which you could use all the time, encounter powers you could use per encounter, and dailies. Your actions were decided by those abilities along with a move action. One of things I hated about 4E was my players were blowing off their encounter powers regardless of how hard the encounter was because it felt like they were wasting the power if they didn't. That element right there drove me nuts. There is nothing like that in PF2. If there was, I'd probably not even try the game. You combined your whatever power (they were all mostly the same anyway) with your move action. The PF2 3 action system is fairly unique in my experience.

Maybe alpha player is the new term for min-maxers, I don't know. I play with min-maxers that spend hours trying to find every angle. It even gets stupid sometimes where the barbarian is wearing a headband of wisdom just to boost his will save and that complain if I don't let them make individualized magic items using the full extent of the magic item creation rules. I know what PF looks like when the players are pushing the envelope and squeezing every rule in their favor. Maybe that isn't alpha enough for the term, I can't say.

My early impressions are that PF2 won't allow that level of power, at least not in the core. I'm sure power creep will come in as splat books come. I do like that the current game doesn't seem to have as many clearly optimal choices for classes, archetypes, weapons, or feats. I hope that is the case as the players level. I'd like to see TWF, archery, 2hander, and sword and board all be viable options for a martial. So far it seems that is the case.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It does not sound like you played 4E from your description. There was no optimizing for a 3 action round or anything of the kind. 4E had basic attacks which you could use all the time, encounter powers you could use per encounter, and dailies. Your actions were decided by those abilities along with a move action.

One 4e trick along those lines was to dig up minor-action attacks. Some striker classes had minor action attack encounter powers, there was a feat that let you use an at-will as a minor action 1/encounter, Dragonborn Breath, etc. Then you'd 'Alpha* Strike' with a high-damage encounter or daily as your Standard Action, Action Point for another(+ an extra basic, perhaps, from PP feature), then move-for-minor & minor for both minor-action attacks (it's not even like you necessarily gave up movement, as plenty of standard-action encounter attacks could include moving, shifting or charging). You could prettymuch flush all your encounter powers in the first round (maybe two), and easily erase a standard monster (or maybe elite), push a Solo past bloodied, or whatever.
Then you kinda sat around plinking the rest of the fight, because you were a Pony and that was your One Trick.

One of things I hated about 4E was my players were blowing off their encounter powers regardless of how hard the encounter was because it felt like they were wasting the power if they didn't.

Encounter powers were like the visually defining 'signature moves' you'd see an action hero pull, they weren't always a lot more powerful than an at will, and might not always be worth using in absolutely every encounter, depending on how situational your choices were, but if, in contrast to the above 'optimized Alpha Strike,' you did take more interesting/situational encounter powers, and didn't burn through them in rapid succession, you'd often get to use them in a more effective or attention-catching way later in the encounter.

Same's true of Dailies over the day, of course. It was a stylistic thing, which way you went, really. The Alpha Strike optimization could actually turn out not that optimal, at all, depending on the set up of the encounter and the nature of the enemy.








* not in the same sense 'alpha player' seems to be being used in this thread, AFAICT, more in the usual 3.x era notion of 'Nova,' but, well, less so, because you had fewer daily resources to flush in 4e, and the payoff wasn't on the same order.

 

[wakedown]

It does not sound like you played 4E from your description. There was no optimizing for a 3 action round or anything of the kind. 4E had basic attacks..

If I could go back and time and get the hours back from 2/3rd of the 4E games (1/3rd I'm sure had funny non-rules related hijinx), I probably would. The most competitive gamers we played with in the 4E era regularly used 3 powers per turn by converting a move action into a 2nd minor action and deriving the most value from two minor actions in a turn.

5E & 1E/2E do not allow a player to trade a "move action" for something else that could be more optimal. You move or don't. Casual players like moving. In fact, I'd say most 3E players, even those who read the rules a first pass, thought you could attack mid-move until they were illuminated that such antics were limited to the protected realms of Spring Attackers.

You're free to continue to suggest I've never played 4E, but that doesn't change the reality of what optimizers did in the 4e era and the social contract that was present in organized play where optimal use of potential actions per round is a thing. If you didn't see this in your group playing 4E, you likely won't see it playing PF2E either so that's great news!