Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e Remastered for the 5e players (+)

Thomas Shey

Legend
Also, you want to plan your use of Demoralize. You want to start your turn with Demoralize, so ideally the target will be at -1 AC/saves against whatever other shenanigans you have planned. You don't want to go "Stride, Strike, eh I guess I'll Demoralize." Much like a pun, Demoralize is a tool to be wielded with intent.

It depends what else you're doing. Since the Demoralize attempt will count for MAP, you may not want to take the penalty for another action by doing it first; its not uncommon for the success of an attack to be less reliable than an opposed skill attempt depending on the target.
 

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GuardianLurker

Adventurer
So I really want to emphasize how difficult it can be to break 5e players (especially casual ones) to realize how important using that 3rd action for something other than an attack is. When we started the current PF2e game, after finishing our 7+ year 5e campaign, I told my players "You get three actions, think of them as move, attack, and prep or buff. And you really want to be using one each."

That was over 2 years ago. And they're JUST now starting to realize how important that 3rd action is. The easy one is Intimidate/Demoralize, as they can instantly see that Frightened 1. If you have a Swashbuckler type, you might be able to pull off Deception/Feint. But it's REALLY HARD to break that stand-and-deliver slugging match that 5e encourages.

Also, if you have a dedicated char-opt powergamer, be prepared for the whines. Because of the tight math, a lot of very useful options look severely underpowered to the 5e based-assumptions. (A prime example would be the number of spells/day available to casters.)

Also, the Medicine skill/non-magical healing is possibly, even more effective than the magical healing. Encourage someone to take the skill.
 

Staffan

Legend
It depends what else you're doing. Since the Demoralize attempt will count for MAP, you may not want to take the penalty for another action by doing it first; its not uncommon for the success of an attack to be less reliable than an opposed skill attempt depending on the target.
Huh? No, it won't. Demoralize does not have the Attack trait, so it neither affects nor is affected by the multiple attack penalty. This is an advantage it has over e.g. Trip (which, on the other hand, can be used over and over again).
 

Staffan

Legend
Also, if you have a dedicated char-opt powergamer, be prepared for the whines. Because of the tight math, a lot of very useful options look severely underpowered to the 5e based-assumptions. (A prime example would be the number of spells/day available to casters.)
The issue with spells/day is that while the game offers some very good guidance on how to build an encounter and get it balanced, it's considerably more vague on building an adventure and how many encounters a party can handle in a day. This is made worse by post-combat healing being pretty strong and essentially free, particularly once you have Expert Medicine and Continual Recovery (reducing the cooldown on Treat Wounds to 10 minute per target, running simultaneously with the 10 minutes it takes to use the skill). This means that you can usually top up with hp and focus spells in 10-30 minutes, while real spells are gone for the whole day.

I saw a reference somewhere to one of the devs mentioning that the intent was that you'd have about three serious (moderate or higher) encounters per day, and that you were expected to use 1-2 spells of your top two spell ranks in each of those encounters. You could add in a bunch of low or trivial encounters to that, but a caster should be able to contribute to those with cantrips and/or focus spells, so not using any long-term resources. I believe this was a Reddit post by Mark Seifter which got referenced over on the Paizo forums (I could be wrong on which dev it was).

Of course, it doesn't help when one of their level 1 adventures forces the PCs to deal with three Low, seven Moderate, and one Severe encounter over the course of one night. Why so many? Well, the PCs need to gain enough XP to level up, and the adventure only has so many pages to spend on level 1.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
Huh? No, it won't. Demoralize does not have the Attack trait, so it neither affects nor is affected by the multiple attack penalty. This is an advantage it has over e.g. Trip (which, on the other hand, can be used over and over again).

Really? I stand corrected then; I thought all the combat applicable skills (Athletics, Deception, Intimidate) worked that way. Probably just me jumping to conclusions.
 

Thomas Shey

Legend
Regarding the spell consumption, without giving the players some idea what this is going to shake out to, you're liable to get people who either just cling to their important spells or spray them like popcorn, and neither is desirable. This has always been an issue with daily resource games, but there are some respects where you want to avoid people running into the one-encounter-day disease, and if they aren't clear how many there are, they may drag their feet about not doing that.

It matters considerably because compared to some F20 games, combats tend to not run a lot of melee rounds, so it can actually be hard to blow throw too many spells in a lot of cases anyway, but sometimes it just pays not to go crazy with your high ends.
 

KidMidnight

Explorer
Supporter
Really? I stand corrected then; I thought all the combat applicable skills (Athletics, Deception, Intimidate) worked that way. Probably just me jumping to conclusions.
I believe MAP applies only to actions that have the "Attack" trait. Trip has the "Attack" trait, but Demoralize doesn't. Does lead to a lot of rules checking, especially for spells (which are often "Attack" if they have a hit roll).
 

funny

Villager
A lot of helpful things were already said.
One thing i would like to add is that Pathfinder2e is a tactical team game, it is very important to work together to gain advantages. Flanking to get the enemy Off Guard (-2 to AC, sneak attack) is one of the most simple ones.
Trip can be really powerful, it requires the enemy to spend an action to get up (which provokes reactive strike etc).
You can freely delay your turns, use this to act after a buff or debuff.
Demoralizing an enemy, for example, is good for your whole group - while the -1 may look small, it benefits not only you.

Utilizing buffs is often more powerful than casting offensive spells, a "runic weapon"/"runic body" spell on your frontliner may do 1d12 extra per attack for a full minute, much better than doing 2d8 yourself.

I am really missing all these team interactions when playing D&D5 nowadays.
 

Kichwas

Half-breed, still living despite WotC racism
Does lead to a lot of rules checking, especially for spells (which are often "Attack" if they have a hit roll).
Actually for me this is the opposite. It's an example of a consistent rules grammar resulting in less rules checking.
Once I get to know how the 'Attack' trait works, I no longer need to look up whether or not something has MAP, what it targets, and a host of other things.

That works throughout the game. If something has a certain trait the same things can apply as anything else with that trait. Rather than knowing each ability, I just need to master the more common traits.

When a new or unique ability shows up in my game, I look at it's traits and instantly know most of what I need to know to adjudicate it.

It does happen about once or twice a session that something without a trait description pops up that we have to look up. Such as earlier this week when we had a PC and a drake fighting in melee 5 feet underwater while the other PCs were n the shore shotting at the drake. There's rules for that BTW (aquatic combat), but it's just obscure enough to not be in the list of common traits. Other than that there aren't too many things that need look up once you know the traits.
 

Kichwas

Half-breed, still living despite WotC racism
Some have that, but in steps. For example, the Dire Wolf has a bite attack with Grab, meaning if they hit with their bite they can spend an action to automatically grapple the target. And if they have a grappled target, they can use their Worry ability, dealing damage and debuffing without a hit roll (though there is a basic save, but basic saves are way better than attack rolls because you deal half damage on a successful save). So it's not a single three-action ability, but three actions that synergize.
Yes. And this brings up another key thing to PF2E combat and what I was saying. Charging them an action tax breaks up that synergy.

I'm GMing Abomination Vaults, and this past week I've messed my players up for whole turns by simply having an NPC "waste" an action to close a door. ;)
- That can really annoy a ranged caster.

You don't just 'charge an action tax' against your foe to stop 3-action abilities. You do it to mess up their overall 'rotation'.

One of my PCs has taken to using reposition very often. That can be a major nuisance to a melee opponent that now needs to walk back into their "spot" to get at their desired target - which is one less action for something else.
 

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