I don't have 47 minutes spare to watch it, unfortunately. Any chance of a synopsis of the main points?
What does it say for those of us preferring the written word and/or not having 40 minutes of time?
All right.
Tl'DR:
Look at 12-20 min, is this real? Then 21 to 28 min for even more complexity.
(keep in mind that this is my synopsis and I'm trying to be fair, but I'm also trying not to spend
too much time on it, and also that as much as I am trying to be fair, I might not get it right).
First, perspective of the reviewer: has been playing 5e a
lot - so much so that he almost forgot the old 3.X days.
He's positive about the amount of options and customization you have for your character. He's happy about buying magical gear, although it turned out to be less fun that he thought.
He's very impressed with the 3 action system. (honestly, so am I)
He's concerned about the status/conditions - they are the foundation of the game and they are
48 of them, which makes learning the game more difficult. Some spells description are very cursory. For example, someone cast the good old classic "invisibility" spell. Now I wasn't super happy how the rules were layed out in 5e - you had to dig around to find the consequences of this. PF2 is
worse based on his example.
The invisibility spell gives the invisibility condition
The invisibility condition says you have the undetected condition
The undetected conditions means that enemies attacking you have the flat footed condition and furthermore, they have a 50/50 miss chance
He talks about skill spread - more variation than 5e, and much much bigger spread in numbers, but less fiddly than skill ranks (think 3.X). The concept of bounded accuracy is gone and this has consequence. A level 1 monster can't hit a level 7 PC, and a party of level 7 PCs will struggle immensely to even hit a level 12 monster. On the other hand, niche protection is more present - if the wizard can't figure our a complex arcane problem, it's going to be
very rare that the barbarian just rolls well and figures it out.
He mentions that it is pretty easy for the GM to adjust the numbers quickly - maybe these are goblin veterans, or maybe this giant is weak? However, it can make the PCs feel that their increasing numbers are meaningless because the challenges just keep adjusting.
The +10 crit rules means that it is important to get the exact number for each attack.
... I'm not listening to all of this again, it's like a nightmare of complexity - I'm sure as heck not typing it all out.
Start at 12:05 to about 20:15 for the description of ONE ATTACK. 21-26 min is the attack sequence for one ranger NOT INCLUDING DAMAGE. 26-28.15 is the damage.
It took him half a day to write the script to describe his ranger's attack/damage, and he's not even 100% sure he got it right.
Bottom line is that you can gain a certain amount of proficiency with the system, but then you hit a plateau - you can't seem to go faster than that. There are many conditional bonuses/conditions that change a lot, and core elements of the system make the combats go quite slow. The multi-attack penalty significantly slow things down, especially for the GM. It also makes time prepping sessions longer.
The transition of PF1 to PF2 in Golarion makes using old pathfinder adventures difficult. A tons of villains and problems in PF1 golarion in PF2 have been solved!
Crafting rules has problems. They are best done off-table, but this requires back and forth with the GM, and off-session gaming is... not great.
Final thoughts: The game is not for him. The character creations rules are great sure, but that's not playing the game! All that complexity doesn't add much to the actual play experience, and the combat is too slow. Sure you have great choices of action, but each choice has a wave of consequences that take time to resolve. The 3 action system is great but it could have been much more simpler. They ended up converting their PF campaign back to 5e.
