Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience

[Jester David]

True. We remember what happened with Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

Yeah. And that was playtested! And the whole thing was written by one team of 2-3 coordinating writers not six separately.

 

[CapnZapp]

Writing your own adventures (in the sense that you're designing your own combat encounters from scratch) certainly requires a certain sense of how the system works and what characters are capable of withstanding.

Getting it wrong and risking a TPK or three is just part of the learning curve. PF2 certainly isn't as... infinitely patient... as 5E is. For instance, when WotC maxes out at "deadly" encounters, I'd have to peg that as somewhere between "moderate" "and severe" in Paizo parlance, and certainly nowhere near "extreme".

I have pitted maybe two encounters at "extreme" encounter budget. Over many months. Compare that to 5E where every session had to feature at least one fight at deadly (or far beyond!) for the players not to get bored...

Talking about reasonably seasoned players minding their minmax playing each game with feats, multiclassing and treasure turned "on" now.

 

[Nilbog]

Writing your own adventures (in the sense that you're designing your own combat encounters from scratch) certainly requires a certain sense of how the system works and what characters are capable of withstanding.

Getting it wrong and risking a TPK or three is just part of the learning curve. PF2 certainly isn't as... infinitely patient... as 5E is. For instance, when Paizo calls an encounter "severe" or "extreme", that's many levels above what WotC calls "deadly".

Talking about reasonably seasoned players minding their minmax playing each game with feats, multiclassing and treasure turned "on" now.

And to me that's a plus point. I find that building encounters fits what the guidelines say.

I love 5e to bits but I found encounter building was more hit and miss and finding the sweet spot for a particular difficulty isn't as easy as easy as in PF2

 

[Celtavian]

Just had a player die. And we don't have the gold to get them back. Looks like you can die again and can't get them back easily. Flesh to Stone is nastier than I thought it was.

 

[CapnZapp]

Just had a player die.

That's rough.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Just had a player die. And we don't have the gold to get them back. Looks like you can die again and can't get them back easily. Flesh to Stone is nastier than I thought it was.

I hope that was a character!

 

[Celtavian]

I hope that was a character!

Yes it was a character. I hope the rest of the statement context made that clear. I wouldn't post so cavalierly if it was one of my actual players. haha.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Yes it was a character. I hope the rest of the statement context made that clear. I wouldn't post so cavalierly if it was one of my actual players. haha.

Yes, it was clear.

 

[CapnZapp]

Pathfinder 2E - Actual AP Play Experience

(started a new thread since playing an official Adventure Path isn't necessarily identical to general PF2 play. Feel free to merge with the existing threads if you disagree a separate discussion is warranted. Thanks) Thought I'd add a few observations on a specific example of playing Pathfinder...

www.enworld.org

 

[jeffh]

While Paizo encourages its AP writers to playtest, this isn't a requirement and many are not run.

I find this mind-boggling, but it explains a lot. At least in this case they have a good excuse, but my experiences with "normal" APs haven't been much better albeit in the opposite direction.