Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder Second Edition: I hear it's bad - Why Bad, How Bad?

[wakedown]

I'm not sure this is true yet.. It feels right now an inexperienced player making "bad" choices would have a character fairly close to a min-maxer making optimal choices.

With some folks having received their PF2E Core book here, we're at the crossroads where those folks who sprung the $60 want to give it a spin and others who didn't enjoy the Playtest requiring convincing.

A muster for a 2nd level table of PF2E is certainly better than PF1E would be in terms of parity if we had a game tonight. PF1E has over a hundred books where some players have mastery over all of them, so you could see a Level 2 PC which is an Alchemist/Barbarian who rages and drinks their mutagen and rolls into a brawl while power attacking with a greatsword with a 26 Strength (this has happened countless times). PF1E Core that wasn't possible. Or I could have two players with wizards at 3rd level, and one has a 3d4 burning hands and the other has a 6d4 free-rime entangling burning hands thanks to their system mastery (and has spent their GP/PP on pearls of power so they seem like they have an infinite number). Just by limiting to a single Core book, we're in better territory in choosing PF2E over PF1E.

What I can already see in PF2E (which again was present in 4E and 3E as well, but not so much in 1E/2E & 5E) is the notion of alpha player quarterbacking of non-alpha players in both building their characters and taking their in-turn combat actions. PF2E is an intimidating system (PF2E core to PF1E core) if I put an alpha and non-alpha next to each other. Right now, a critical conversation affecting a possible game with the PF2E final rules with a non-alpha player is "oh, you want to be a ranged rogue? Are you sure, that's really sub-optimal unless you take the Fighter Dedication, but you'll want to consider if taking that as your first or second..." The alpha players actually have Excel open with probability models of critical successes vs regular successes and are building cheat sheets on what to do with their actions (from what I understand this will govern on if you should attack again or take a different action, or a multi-action "activity" type attack).

If your table is all alphas, or all non-alphas (or just the GM is the alpha), these problems don't manifest as readily.

 

[Celtavian]

With some folks having received their PF2E Core book here, we're at the crossroads where those folks who sprung the $60 want to give it a spin and others who didn't enjoy the Playtest requiring convincing.

A muster for a 2nd level table of PF2E is certainly better than PF1E would be in terms of parity if we had a game tonight. PF1E has over a hundred books where some players have mastery over all of them, so you could see a Level 2 PC which is an Alchemist/Barbarian who rages and drinks their mutagen and rolls into a brawl while power attacking with a greatsword with a 26 Strength (this has happened countless times). PF1E Core that wasn't possible. Or I could have two players with wizards at 3rd level, and one has a 3d4 burning hands and the other has a 6d4 free-rime entangling burning hands thanks to their system mastery (and has spent their GP/PP on pearls of power so they seem like they have an infinite number). Just by limiting to a single Core book, we're in better territory in choosing PF2E over PF1E.

What I can already see in PF2E (which again was present in 4E and 3E as well, but not so much in 1E/2E & 5E) is the notion of alpha player quarterbacking of non-alpha players in both building their characters and taking their in-turn combat actions. PF2E is an intimidating system (PF2E core to PF1E core) if I put an alpha and non-alpha next to each other. Right now, a critical conversation affecting a possible game with the PF2E final rules with a non-alpha player is "oh, you want to be a ranged rogue? Are you sure, that's really sub-optimal unless you take the Fighter Dedication, but you'll want to consider if taking that as your first or second..." The alpha players actually have Excel open with probability models of critical successes vs regular successes and are building cheat sheets on what to do with their actions (from what I understand this will govern on if you should attack again or take a different action, or a multi-action "activity" type attack).

If your table is all alphas, or all non-alphas (or just the GM is the alpha), these problems don't manifest as readily.

Did you notice some abilities that seemed like overpowered options? We played eight classes. We found that the martials did more damage than caster cantrips. Casters had a few tricks to make up for this with spells. Overall all the martials were about equal in power. The options were all very close to equal.

How did your players feel about the shield mechanic? I sort of like it thematically. The shield gets broken if used to block too often. I do like the simplified dent mechanic. Tracking hit points was annoying. But dents are easier to track.

 

[wakedown]

Did you notice.. How did your players feel about the shield mechanic?

Based on theorycrafting after receiving the final book in the chats we have, very few folks are talking about shields in anything they want to build.

There's a lot of building going on with the Fighter chassis "multi-classing" into a magic class, where folks are planning on using auto-scaled focus powers and planning short rests throughout the adventuring day to charge them between encounters (basically making focus magic an encounter power where the adventure allows) in order to maximize the use of the 3rd action per round to be spent on that vs an attack.

Really I sit between two camps where there's plenty of meat already in theorycrafters milking the system, and reticent players who are already groaning as they see the builds emerging and don't want to invest into what they see as a steep learning curve. I'm a bit ambivalent at this stage, but I can already see there will be at least a 20 hour GM prep cost in order to be able to adjudicate what players are building towards by 4th level (4th and 8th seem to be level targets for builds, at least at this first-week stage).

If you pre-ordered, you should have the book by now - even folks I know on the East Coast have gotten their copies as of today.

 

[Parmandur]

Based on theorycrafting after receiving the final book in the chats we have, very few folks are talking about shields in anything they want to build.

There's a lot of building going on with the Fighter chassis "multi-classing" into a magic class, where folks are planning on using auto-scaled focus powers and planning short rests throughout the adventuring day to charge them between encounters (basically making focus magic an encounter power where the adventure allows) in order to maximize the use of the 3rd action per round to be spent on that vs an attack.

Really I sit between two camps where there's plenty of meat already in theorycrafters milking the system, and reticent players who are already groaning as they see the builds emerging and don't want to invest into what they see as a steep learning curve. I'm a bit ambivalent at this stage, but I can already see there will be at least a 20 hour GM prep cost in order to be able to adjudicate what players are building towards by 4th level (4th and 8th seem to be level targets for builds, at least at this first-week stage).

If you pre-ordered, you should have the book by now - even folks I know on the East Coast have gotten their copies as of today.

One of my favorite parts of 5E is that, yes, it can be optimized, but the rewards for doing so are small, and there is basically no penalty for building any character one feels like. Involved PC Gen is...not my cup of tea. I prefer systems with straight up random generation that eschew builds altogether, like Traveller (the possibility of death in character creation is more my idea of fun) or DCC.

Out of curiosity, how does the final product compare to the playtest? Any big changes worth noting?

 

[Celtavian]

Based on theorycrafting after receiving the final book in the chats we have, very few folks are talking about shields in anything they want to build.

There's a lot of building going on with the Fighter chassis "multi-classing" into a magic class, where folks are planning on using auto-scaled focus powers and planning short rests throughout the adventuring day to charge them between encounters (basically making focus magic an encounter power where the adventure allows) in order to maximize the use of the 3rd action per round to be spent on that vs an attack.

Really I sit between two camps where there's plenty of meat already in theorycrafters milking the system, and reticent players who are already groaning as they see the builds emerging and don't want to invest into what they see as a steep learning curve. I'm a bit ambivalent at this stage, but I can already see there will be at least a 20 hour GM prep cost in order to be able to adjudicate what players are building towards by 4th level (4th and 8th seem to be level targets for builds, at least at this first-week stage).

If you pre-ordered, you should have the book by now - even folks I know on the East Coast have gotten their copies as of today.

I ordered from Amazon. I think only Paizo pre-orders have the books.

I heard they created some 10 minute rest powers like a 5E short rest. It will be interesting to see how they work. I don't recall the 10 minute rest power points being part of the play test. It seems good for healing. Given the monster damage, the cleric was blowing through heals. There is no HD for heals mechanic in PF2. You really need that magical healing to boost back up for encounters.

The monsters seem pretty easy to run now. They simplified the stat blocks. That was nice.

I'm not sure how steep the learning curve will be. I know grappling has changed. They removed combat maneuvers. I have heard they replaced it with a skill contest, though I didn't look deeply for it. I'm waiting to see if the combat options are truly balanced. In our experience, no one really stood out in combat. Even the archer was just ok. None of us tried a barbarian. They looked like they could be tough.

 

[zztong]

Did you notice some abilities that seemed like overpowered options? We played eight classes. We found that the martials did more damage than caster cantrips. Casters had a few tricks to make up for this with spells. Overall all the martials were about equal in power. The options were all very close to equal.

How did your players feel about the shield mechanic? I sort of like it thematically. The shield gets broken if used to block too often. I do like the simplified dent mechanic. Tracking hit points was annoying. But dents are easier to track.

I'd say we found the martials were really good in melee and the casters did well at range. Multi-classing a Wizard into Fighter made for a consistently potent character in any situation.

It is easy to make an ineffective martial character: wield a dagger. Because of the way magic item damage scales it is best to use a weapon with the biggest damage die possible. Thus, folks pretty much abandoned shields in favor of two-handed weapons. Only the Paladin with improved shield options stuck with a shield.

Obviously, I'm talking about the Playtest. Neither of my game groups have seen the final version.

 

[CapnZapp]

Because of the way magic item damage scales it is best to use a weapon with the biggest damage die possible. Thus, folks pretty much abandoned shields in favor of two-handed weapons.

But how does this differ from any other dndish game?

I mean, greatswords have always done more damage than longswords. Yet, sword + shield style is doing fine.

Are you saying the game offers ways to increase two-handed weapon damage but not corresponding ways to increase shield AC?

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Looks like magic weapons does +[W] per plus a la 4e. Shields probably only give plusses to ac, and maybe at a slower rate? Also, can +3 ac compete with +8d6 (greatsword plus 3[W]) per attack, when using the shield also uses an action? Dunno.

 

[CapnZapp]

Looks like magic weapons does +[W] per plus a la 4e. Shields probably only give plusses to ac, and maybe at a slower rate? Also, can +3 ac compete with +8d6 (greatsword plus 3[W]) per attack, when using the shield also uses an action? Dunno.

Each point of AC roughly negates 5% of incoming damage.

If you're saying the difference between a +3 greatsword and a +3 longsword is 6d6 - 3d8 = 7,5 then the shield gets competitive when you can assume roughly 50 points of incoming damage that round.

(Ignoring outliers when monsters hit you on 1 or only 20. Also ignoring crits for the mo')

Assuming avoiding 1 point of damage is about as valuable as dealing 1 point of damage.

Which probably isn't true, since "a pound of adventurer" is generally much more lethal than "a pound of monster", so let's say the +3 shield starts to look interesting once you're facing monsters who deal 25-50 damage (before accounting for misses; only damage directed at you specifically).

Then upping the number again to account for the way increased offense is a fine way to lower incoming damage (dead monsters deal less damage )...

...so... maybe 20 damage per plus?

 

[zztong]

But how does this differ from any other dndish game?

I mean, greatswords have always done more damage than longswords. Yet, sword + shield style is doing fine.

Are you saying the game offers ways to increase two-handed weapon damage but not corresponding ways to increase shield AC?

In PF1, a +5 two-handed weapon would do something like 1d12+5.
In PF2, a +5 two-handed weapon would do something like 5d12.

A PF2, the differences in damage based on the die-size of the weapon separate significantly as the magical bonus advances. This lets magic weapons keep up with spell damage, but it also exaggerates the differences in the weapons themselves.

So, would you take a shield and a +5 d8 one-handed weapon or a +5 d12 weapon? You average 2 points more damage per die, so +10 average damage and a much higher potential peak damage. The trade off was that you are 10% more likely to get hit, and perhaps suffer a critical hit. We were seeing folks ditch the shield, specially if they weren't trying to frequently tank.

IIRC, you could not get a magic shield. You needed a class, I think Paladin, to take feats to improve their AC bonus from a shield. That's from memory so I might have be off in some way.