Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience

[Nebulous]

A non-casual player of any experience level will figure out the rules. Our casual, casual players are content if other players tell them what to roll, for instance. like "I want to attack with my sword. Okay, 1d20+5 to-hit. Hit. Okay, 1d10+4 damage. Its right there on your sheet. Oh yes, so it is." Or... "You leveled. Okay, well lets keep fighting. Okay, another level of Fighter it is."

I have a player like that. I actually find it annoying, he can't seem to remember where on his sheet to look for the sword's attack bonus, although it is always in the same place. He knows this, but someone has to point it out to him.

 

[Campbell]

The game is fairly easy to learn the basics of and get playing. So far in Pathfinder Society those who are new to the game have had a fairly easy time engaging with the game. However the game expects you to engage with it.

There really are no options in the game for players who just want to sit back, enjoy the GM's story and maybe roll a couple dice. The game expects active engagement from everyone at the table pretty much all the time.

 

[CapnZapp]

Or... "You leveled. Okay, well lets keep fighting. Okay, another level of Fighter it is."

Though in all fairness it's not like you could take a level of Bard or Ranger here... I mean: "of course it's another level of Fighter, that's not a choice"

 

[kenada]

Background: My first D&D was 3e. I started DMing with 3.5e and have run 3.5e, 4e, 5e, PF1, and some non-D&D games like Dungeon World, Open Legend, and a homebrew D&D-like hack for Fate Core. Dungeon World has shaped the lens through which I view PF2 and how I GM, though the effect is fairly modest, and I’d posit that Justin Alexander has had more influence on my GMing procedure and structures.

Prior to converting to PF2, I was running a sandbox hexcrawl in my homebrew setting (that got its life in Open Legend) using 5e. See here for why we’re converting, but the TL; DR is 5e is not a great fit for what we want. Before 5e (and a few other systems), we were primarily a PF1 group using a heavily house-ruled version of PF1. I stopped running PF1 because it got to be too much, and I got tired of Golarion. We switched to Open Legend then 5e, which is where my setting started (OL) and then evolved (5e).

I was pretty cold on the PF2 playtest. I thought it was okay when I played it at Origins, but I did not like what I saw when they released the playtest materials and tried to run one of the PFS scenarios for my group. I really bounced off skill adjudication, which seemed cool in theory (assign a level to a task and derive your DC from that) but was clunky in practice. I like the simple DC ladder in the final rules, whichh makes it easy to improvise a DC.

I ran a one-shot for my group with the final rules, which went well. I knew going into it combat would probably be fine. When I ran PF1, we used the Unchained action economy. I wanted to see how exploration went and try some scenarios that caused us problems in 5e (a bunch of flying snakes TPK’d the party…). We also have a player who joined us and has only played 5e. Everyone seemed to like the one-shot.

I hew towards an older school mentality on encounter design, so I used mostly trivial and low threat encounters. Moderate threat encounters have a risk of ending the adventuring day, which makes them too risky to use regularly. We played for about four or five hours, and we got through five encounters. In addition to that, we were able to do a little urbancrawling and some dungeoncrawling. My favorite moment was when one of the PCs accidentally set off a Grimtooth’s trap and got himself flung into the spiked ceiling. Well, that and when the zombie hulk opened up combat by pelting the party with corpses. That was awesome.

Prepping was easy, but I always skew prep-lite. Nothing in PF2 required me to go prep heavy. The official GM screen is a poor reference, but what official screen doesn’t have problems? There is a learning curve, and I think that is what all the traits do. I find them useful and like that they are there, but they are going to pose a barrier to entry.

The system itself ran very smoothly. There are very few exceptions, and the CRB is well organized as a reference (probably why it is so boring to read). I found it very easy to adjudicate improvised activities. One of the PCs wanted to use a ghoul’s corpse to bluff some ghouls in another room, and it was very easy to use the decide which basic actions applied and have it all fit naturally in the game’s action economy. Interestingly, there were no complaints about things that used to be free now costing actions (such as adjusting your grip), but I think that’s because of how largely exception free the action economy is coupled with everything’s being fitted into it.

One thing that did not go well was always revealing DCs. I had started doing that in 5e, but I think I’m going to use secret checks in PF2 as written. No matter best intentions, I think it leaks too much information in PF2 to work well given the number of checks that happen e.g., when PCs investigate traps.

After we finished the one-shot, I set to work on converting my homebrew setting. It features none of the core races from D&D and is generally more JRPG-like and less like a traditional setting, but it also pulls in other influences (the Stormlight Archive and Vance’s Dying Earth being prominent). Compared to homebrewing races in 5e, I find homebrewing ancestries much easier in PF2. The customization points are standardized, so there are lots of examples to use as benchmarks, and you can steal or repurpose them quite easily. I’d say about 25% of my ancestry feats are borrowed or modified from the core ancestries.

The campaign soft-resets and starts back up on the 5th. My players are more excited to make characters than they have been in a long time. That’s great, and what I like is we don’t have to worry about trap options or plan out builds in advance to make sure the PCs are performing at par. From what I’ve seen from theorycrafting so far, DPR between options is close enough that players can focus on concept and not be badly off.

 

[kenada]

I forgot to mention: I made the pre-gens (4th level) for the one-shot. I liked the flexibility I had building different kinds of characters. The group ended up using the barbarian, who was the party’s out of combat healbot. I loved how well that worked.

 

[danbala]

I have run two session of Age of Ashes and three 2e PFS adventures.

There were several aspects of the game that surprised me in both good and bad ways:

I was very skeptical of Secret Checks before I ran my first game. It turns out they are one of my favorite additions. They worked great. It actually sped things up because I could just roll quickly for everyone and do the math in my head. When it came to searching in particular, it really helped with meta gaming as people were basically forced to accept the result of their effort. There was also a nice feature of the adventure that basically changed the results based on how much time the party allocated to the search. This made searching into a game of resource management. Finally, the secret knowledge checks were also fun. We had one critical failure when one player tried to find the way toward the tower that sent the party on the wrong direction. We also had a critical success that resulted in another player learning some interesting information about the goblin tribe they were dealing with. In both cases it changed the story in an interesting way.

Next surprise: Damage was not spikey as I thought it would be. From reading about other people's play experiences, I assumed with the new critical rules that combat would involve a lot of burst damage and sudden kills. That wasn’t the case. First of all, criticals were still not all that common. In most cases you would need to roll a 20 to crit by getting 10 over the target number. Second, everyone had enough HPs that the occasional crit could be absorbed by most combatants. Finally, they seem to have made damage from spells more consistent and less spikey. The really strong effects only happen on a critically failed saving throw which only comes up about 5% of the time.

Next surprise: Mobility Equals Resiliency. Speaking of resiliency, I was pleasantly surprised how increased mobility changed the game. 2e does two things to increase mobility: it got rid of most attacks of opportunity and got rid of full round actions. The big beneficiaries seemed to be the glass cannons such as the rogue and the casters. Our rogue was able to move around the battlefield from cover to cover and then spring out with a surprise attack, and then duck back into cover if need be. The casters could back off and position if they were targeted. All players were easily able to pull back out of combat when they saw that they were in trouble. Finally, when characters went down it was easy for other players to step up and heal them. My impression was that all the mobility kept players from feeling “locked out” of the game by being limited only to certain options. Instead a number of tactical opportunities were opened up to all players and they used them to make the party more resilient as a whole.

Next surprise New and interesting treasure. I have seen people complaining about the new consumable items, but my group found them exciting. (For example one player now has a modification to his battles axe that will let him at +1 and an extra die of damage for one attack.) The fact that they seem both plentiful and limited in effect has encouraged my players to actually use them.

There were also few things about 2e, that were more difficult as a GM than I expected:

Action List. The game now has separate lists of Basic actions, Speciality Basic Actions, Skill Actions and Exploration Activities. In additional there are special actions and reactions that you learn from feats. Each of these have different "traits". The GM needs to understand clearly what action you are using because these traits may trigger certain reactions or have other rules affects. For example, if you say “I take a potion out go over to the fighter and pour it into his mouth” what you are really saying is “I use an interact action (with a manipulate trait) to take out a potion. I use a Stride action to move to the fighter. then I use my final action to use Interact to poor the potion into his mouth.” The interact action has the manipulation trait which means it triggers certain reactions — most notably attacks of opportunity. Also the traits effect how often an action can happen in a turn (actions with the “flourish” trait can only be used once per turn). They can also affect the order of you action as some actions can only happen after you use the Strike action, for example. All of this has the potential to be pretty complicated. I wasn’t expecting just how complicated this could be to run. I think Im up to the challenge but it will take some work.

Another thing that will take some getting used to: Item traits. So all of the weapons have traits, armor has traits and so on. This created some confusion in my mind. There are 12 different traits that apply to weapons and they all have special rules. On top of that there are “weapon critical traits” that apply to classes of weapons. Weapons also have materials as before and can be subject to runes or other enchantments that also have special terminology. This is also true of armor that has its on set of traits and materials. For the players this is straightforward: they only have to worry about the traits of the weapon they are using and they can’t use the weapon critical effect if they have a special feat. But for the GM you need to have a handle on all of these rules and how they interrelate. In some cases these rules impact the tactical options of the NPCs. It’s a bit much to try to take in all at once. Again, I’m optimistic I can get on top of it, but it caught me off guard how much extra load this put on my brain.

Overall, our group had a very positive experience.

 

[Rhianni32]

I have run two session of Age of Ashes and three 2e PFS adventures.

There were several aspects of the game that surprised me in both good and bad ways:

Good read. Thank you for the info.

 

[zztong]

Though in all fairness it's not like you could take a level of Bard or Ranger here... I mean: "of course it's another level of Fighter, that's not a choice"

Heh, good point. I guess I channeled a PF1 conversation there. The PF2 variation would be about the multi-class feats.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I've been playing a test game for a few weeks now, leveling my players at an accelerated rate, we're going up to level 5 for this week's session, before this I was a 5e obsessed DM who had been running consistently for like three years or more.

In Combat the game works well, the 3 action system is actually really cool to use in practice, and in tandem with the relative lack of OA's have made combat a very mobile, dynamic experience. The way actions are distributed during the turn really debunks with one of the big theorycrafted 'problems' with the math- the success rate of a given action might be lower, but you have a good chance of landing something on your turn overall, even against higher leveled monsters (which are pretty much always functionally bosses) across multiple actions- your overall chance to hit across two attacks at full MAP isn't 50%, it's 62.7% or so. There's a lot of nuance here where specific class feat comboes seem boring, but open a world of possibility in combat through interactions with MAP, for instance fighter class feat, double slice? has a 75% chance of hitting because the second slice happens before any MAP is applied, Power Attack tacks a bunch of extra damage onto your MAPless first attack (or at least your second, as I've heard people have been optimizing it.) Spells are powerful, but they don't feel dominant, at least at low levels. With how tight the math is, Solo's unquestionably work well, as a creature 3 levels higher than the party led to a desperate battle for survival, whereas that was something I'd had to massage in 5e.

In Exploration the game's codification of exploration activities and guideline of using 10 minute increments to track time is actually really functional, some characters are looking for traps, some characters are detecting magic, other characters are recalling knowledge about everything. By making these activities 'modes' the game successfully dodges problems concerning the probability of five people all making the same check from which 5e suffers, it also helps to make dungeon crawls feel more active, we actually did a crawl on a grid and it was a lot of fun for them. Letting players use different initiatives by getting into things in different ways is genius as well, really adds a lot to the whole 'sneaking vs. not sneaking' thing. This also benefit from skill feats, but I'll talk about that in my character building heading. Overall, the game seems like it could do a better job than 5e at simulating actual dungeon crawls, without losing utility outside of that.

In Character Building the game is a treat, in that coming from 5e I feel spoiled for choice, some people complain about micro feats, but in reality, many feats are clearly designed to benefit specific playstyles- giving natural through lines (here's the free hand duelist package, here's the dual wielder package, etc), but you can take different things to adjust your overall build. My players have loved building specific characters, and one of my new players (a 5e baby) let me know that they actually liked pf2e better for this, because their choices allowed them to feel more invested, and gave them a more direct sense of what they could do (rather than the wall of text you just get given from a relatively few choices in 5e.) Skill feats being separate from class feats is genius, because it stops you from having to pick between combat and non combat, now everyone can be good at both- and my players are using it quite a bit, one player has the lie to me gambler feat and uses it, another player has crafting feats and is using them.

In GMing the game gives a lot of useful guidance for running a consistent and balanced game, the monsters I've run have had lots of cool powers- last session they fought a wyvern whose dive and momentum abilities kept my players running across the battlefield after it and their grabbed friends. Treasure is easier to handle than in 5e because it gives you steady wealth by level, and everything you need to adjust it. Creating a 'haul' for each level has been fairly easy. The game uses a rarity system and then locks off all the problematic options behind it, giving the GM the power to decide if the players can get it or not- so you don't have to ban things, just not include them- this is true for say, resurrection magic, alignment detection, teleportation, and other features known to complicate the GM's day.

Edit: It just hit me the biggest thing coming from 5e, is the fact that Pathfinder Second Edition uses Vancian Spell Casting a lot of my players don't like the idea of playing prepared casters (matching each spell to a slot you use to cast it at the day's beginning) at all, especially after 5e's simplified spontaneous approach. That being said, I expect players to variously either come to accept it, develop a preference for the spontaneous classes, or focus on the martial options. It seems like a pain point, but not an insurmountable option, especially if your players are the types who might enjoy the crafting system, which allows you to craft scrolls and wands- used properly a prepared caster shouldn't have any trouble, but it certainly requires more skill (and book keeping) to play a wizard here.

 

[Arilyn]

Yes, I'm not too sure about Vancian casting either, and wished they'd gone the 5e route in this area.