Heavy Fall of Plaguestone spoilers below
Ran Fall of Plaguestone last Friday for my regular TTRPG group and this was our first time playing PF2. Here are my thoughts as a GM...
1: Crits are deadly. We had a TPK in the first fight. The 2nd level wolf that attacks Bort's merchant caravan got two crits. each one dropped a fully healthy character. With its +11 to attack against 1st level characters it crits on a 17-20 as most of the PCs had an 18 AC. On average its crit damage will be 19 damage.
I fear what the 3rd bear they will encounter in part 1 when they are still 1st level will do to them. Looking at higher level monsters vs estimate of bonuses that PCs will have, I don't see this problem going away.
Solution: There were some bad player tactics due to not knowing the rules and I had Bort and his crew save the party by finishing off the wolf but players can't counteract lucky dice rolls.
I'm going to ignore the errata with Hero Points and let the players use it while dying to bring them to 1 HP so they can move around and act. We had it where it stabilized them at 0 but for all intents and purposes they were still out of the fight and not very heroic.
2: Crafting is too expensive. Its already apparent that apart from allowing the party to have access to things they cannot buy, crafting sucks because its too expensive. The formula cost is rough especially if you just want to craft a single item. One of my players running a Rogue wanted to make their own poisons and it seemed too cost prohibitive.
Solutions: I have several plans
Any player that wants to be a crafter and gets a crafting feat, can get their monetary treasure in crafting part with a 50% bonus. e.g. party of 4, 3 PCs get 100 gold, 1 Rogue with alchemy to make poisons will get 150 gold worth of non descript "ingredients" that cannot be sold for money but can go towards any crafting. 50% seems like it will help but not make is so the rogue is using a poison every battle, every attack and causing balance issues.
Formulas will be given out as quest rewards and social interaction skill challenge type mini games.
Factions will offer free formulas. I haven't delved into factions in PF2 but presuming they are like factions in 5ed, PCs can join a faction and spend time earning favor and ranks for rewards. This seems like a good format for a crafting guild that will give free formulas to its members in good standing.
3: I love the detailed mechanics. 5ed DMing for me was a chore. Players would say they want to try something. Then I had to do all the figuring out of the mechanics. what skill is most applicable. what is the DC for this, how successful are they, and what kind of precedence is being set for all future uses of this action a player is wanting to try. Since there was little meat behind the 5ed rules its on the DM and if they don't allow the player to do it they are being a mean jerk.
In PF2 though there is usually an action that is close to what the players are wanting to do enough so that there is a basis to form rule decisions off of.
4: PF2 has a lot more decisions in the game. e.g. get something now or get more available options to future decisions. I'm seeing a common reoccurring pattern in the rules. Shield usage is a common example. spend 1 action to defend yourself. You may or may not be attacked so potentially your 1 action is wasted. But it gives AC bonus and the option to block some damage.
Magic Staves are similar. you can spend a spell slot during your daily preparation to gain spontaneous casting of the staff's spell list vs locking in your spell slot if you are a wizard. But you may not need that staff of divination or staff of fire during that day you spend your spell slot on.
My players had a few complaints about some of the changes (primarily about shield AC not always being on) but after explaining the above on opportunity cost it went over better.
5: PF2 combat seems to work better as a tactical miniature battle simulator than a theatre of the mind. With its level of mechanics (especially traits) and the 3 action economy, combat felt more like a video game than regular TTRPG combat. For better or for worse is a matter of what you want in your game.
6:
PF2 also feels like a collectible card game with the trait system, so I embraced it and created cards for my players. I used
magic set editor and loaded up
Tintagel's 5ed card template. I edited the text file format to load up the various action point icons of PF2.
Green Border = at will type actions, spells, and affects that have unlimited use.
Orange Border = focus abilities or other things that recharge during the day.
Red Border = abilities recharge only during daily preparations like spells.
Purple Border = consumable magic items.
Blue Border = permanent magic items.
My players loved this and it was a big hit. It allows me to pass out magic items for them to hold, use, and trade also. It also solved a problem I knew we were going to have. Between normal actions, skill actions, class unlocked actions, spells, feats, ancestories…. we were going to be overwhelmed with what the PCs could do, and where to find it. in the core rulebook and heaven forbid when other books are published. The character sheets have these all over the place on different pages we were going to want 1 place to quickly look and pick what the PCs were doing.
Now the players can have their character deck. Far easier to change a load out if you retrain a feat, or buy and sell magic items then to be erasing and rewriting on your character sheet.
7:
Secret rolls are awesome. Players no longer have to pretend to play with in character knowledge separate from their player knowledge of how to act. This will help with immersion. They failed a nature check while checking the caustic wolf but didn't know they failed. We forgot for me to roll a Medicine check on Bort when he was eating his turnip porridge and they rolled a "1" so automatically knew what I told them as " you think its an allergic reaction" was a lie. Missed a great RP opportunity with this one as I should have rolled it but we are all learning this system. As a GM I like it because since its secret, it will support the story I am trying to tell vs having the players fight against it with player vs character knowledge.
