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Pathfinder 2e: Actual Play Experience
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<blockquote data-quote="danbala" data-source="post: 7817838" data-attributes="member: 8464"><p>I have run two session of Age of Ashes and three 2e PFS adventures.</p><p></p><p>There were several aspects of the game that surprised me in both good and bad ways:</p><p></p><p>I was very skeptical of <strong><strong>Secret Checks </strong></strong>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.</p><p></p><p>Next surprise: <strong>Damage was not spikey</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>Next surprise: <strong>Mobility Equals Resiliency</strong>. 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.</p><p></p><p>Next surprise <strong>New and interesting treasure. </strong>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.</p><p></p><p>There were also few things about 2e, that were more difficult as a GM than I expected:</p><p></p><p><strong>Action List.</strong> 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.</p><p></p><p>Another thing that will take some getting used to:<strong> Item traits</strong>. 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.</p><p></p><p>Overall, our group had a very positive experience.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="danbala, post: 7817838, member: 8464"] 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 [B][B]Secret Checks [/B][/B]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: [B]Damage was not spikey[/B] 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: [B]Mobility Equals Resiliency[/B]. 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 [B]New and interesting treasure. [/B]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: [B]Action List.[/B] 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:[B] Item traits[/B]. 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. [/QUOTE]
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