Pathfinder 2E PF2E like D&D 4e?

[dave2008]

@Campbell is their a good way to find a pathfinder society group in my area? I did a quick google search and didn't get any good info. My PF google-fu must be bad.

 

[Campbell]

@Campbell is their a good way to find a pathfinder society group in my area? I did a quick google search and didn't get any good info. My PF google-fu must be bad.

Generally you are going to want to find the website for your local chapter. Here is the website for the Ohio Pathfinder Society.

Right now is not the best time to find in person games. If you use discord this semi-official discord server always has games going on various virtual tabletops. There are all kinds of really helpful folks there.

 

[Campbell]

I am not really a fan of long rest, short res, daily or encounter abilities that do not directly correspond to meaningful stuff in the fiction. It bothers me less than martial characters that are lackluster, do not fulfill their fictional promises, or are not compelling from a game play perspective. For the longest time I defended encounters and dailies in Fourth Edition because I did not want to see the return of fighters that felt boring to play (to me) and did not feel like they should be fighting dragons and pit fiends.

Then I played games where at will abilities were allowed to be awesome and game play was mostly about choosing the right ability based on the current situation or where different resources had to be managed in tandem. From a game play perspective I prefer it when resource recovery is not automatic, where you have to make decisions about which resources to focus on.

 

[dave2008]

Generally you are going to want to find the website for your local chapter. Here is the website for the Ohio Pathfinder Society.

I actually looked there and couldn't find anything in my area. I will keep checking.

 

[Teemu]

I don't mind short rest abilities. Abilities that charge per discrete encounter are not short rest abilities in my opinion. They are recharged per encounter, not via a short rest which is easy to play with as a DM. You seem to implying that encounter powers recharged per short rest, which they did not in my experience. You literally had access to them every discrete encounter after waiting what...5 minutes to go to the next room if that? That's an encounter power, not a short rest power. And as you just stated, once you blow it off it is done for the encounter regardless of how long the encounter takes which can also negatively impact story-telling. If I'm in a story and the PC in question uses his big attack against a group of kobolds and he wins, then looks fine. IF he is in battle with a group of giants in a big old fight and he blows off his encounter power, but can't do it again even though it is still needed to achieve victory then the story reader starts to go, "Why doesn't he just do that power again? Why can he only do it once whether the battle is 12 seconds against a kobold group or 30 minutes against a group of giants?" Different animal in my experience.

I can already tell we're never going to agree on encounter powers or at will powers. So I'll make it my last post on the subject and accept the differing viewpoints.

I just wanted to mention that the 4e 5 min short rest is not always guaranteed. Just some time ago the group in my 4e game was assaulting an enemy keep. They had to fight 3 full encounters without a short rest in between since their rests were interrupted by enemies coming down from upper levels. It’s definitely true that most of the time you’re going to get a 5 min breather after an encounter, but it’s not always true.

And as comparison to my 5e game, even though the short rests take up an hour, often the circumstances allow for a short rest between every fight of a particular day. Not always, but it can be quite common. It really depends on the type of situation the party is in.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It was the fact they recharged per encounter.

They didn't. They recharged with a short rest. They were called encounter powers and normally the players had them every encounter - but the actual recharge mechanic was the short rest. Of course it could have been presented better rather than being a sentence a paragraph and a half in to the short rest rules, but if you interrupted PCs half way through a short rest they would not have their encounter powers back.

4e worked the way 5e works here - and lead to the same protection but not hoarding of short-rest based resources when this was very occasionally enforced. It was just one of the all too many things that should have been presented better in the 4e PHB (don't get me started on skill challenges; they are a great improv tool, but the presentation looks like someone trying to present how to do improv simply took down the results).

In other editions of D&D, you don't know if you're going to need that fireball on a watch at night when the BBEG sends his minions or a big encounter might happen.

Fireball is of course a daily power in 4e. You need that long rest to recover it. Even if the players were burning encounter powers they certainly shouldn't have been gratuitously burning daily ones.

That's why mechanics that don't recharge by encounter are important to give the DM the ability to breed fear in the PCs,

You mean like daily powers? Or like actual 4e encounter powers rather than misunderstood ones?

I just wanted to mention that the 4e 5 min short rest is not always guaranteed. Just some time ago the group in my 4e game was assaulting an enemy keep. They had to fight 3 full encounters without a short rest in between since their rests were interrupted by enemies coming down from upper levels. It’s definitely true that most of the time you’re going to get a 5 min breather after an encounter, but it’s not always true.

I'm reminded that AD&D turns were ten minutes. Pressuring 4e PCs and denying them their short rests makes for really tense times.

 

[Celtavian]

They didn't. They recharged with a short rest. They were called encounter powers and normally the players had them every encounter - but the actual recharge mechanic was the short rest. Of course it could have been presented better rather than being a sentence a paragraph and a half in to the short rest rules, but if you interrupted PCs half way through a short rest they would not have their encounter powers back.

4e worked the way 5e works here - and lead to the same protection but not hoarding of short-rest based resources when this was very occasionally enforced. It was just one of the all too many things that should have been presented better in the 4e PHB (don't get me started on skill challenges; they are a great improv tool, but the presentation looks like someone trying to present how to do improv simply took down the results).

They turned things that should not have been encounter powers into encounter powers in 4E. PF2 and 4E are very different.

For example, if I want to use 3 focus points on the same power 3 times in a row, I can. Focus powers are more flexible and give the player more agency and control as well to use the power that is appropriate multiple times if necessary. And some powers or abilities are designed like fighting maneuvers that you can use continuously. That was another aspect of encounter powers I did not like and made no sense. If something is a fighting maneuver, it needs to be a fighting maneuver you can use endlessly as long the fighter is standing.

I think some people want to shoehorn PF2 into the idea of being like 4E. As someone that played both, it doesn't feel anything like 4E. It's far more flexible and powers feel more like maneuvers and appropriate parts of class abilities.

 

[Neonchameleon]

They turned things that should not have been encounter powers into encounter powers in 4E.

Which is an entirely different issue from the direct misinformation you were spreading.

That was another aspect of encounter powers I did not like and made no sense. If something is a fighting maneuver, it needs to be a fighting maneuver you can use endlessly as long the fighter is standing.

Your approach makes sense ... if your fighters aren't made of flesh and blood but are untiring robots who never ever need to worry about pacing themselves. Of course this is the sort of situation that non-4e D&D hit points leave you in; it doesn't matter how badly beaten up or tired you are, as long as you are still standing you still have 100% of your physical capabilities.

Further spamming the same attack again and again makes sense ... if you are up against unthinking robots who never ever see what you are doing and learn and adapt as you repeat the same trick again and again. "Fool me once, shame on you... fool me twice, shame on me."

Are there more realistic ways that aren't that complex than 4e manages that take account both of fatigue and of predictability leaving you open for counters? Sure - and I could make a case that the Bo9S Crusader mechanic is a good example of one. But in terms of making sense 4e is vastly better than the "walk forward and mash A to deplete the enemy's health bar until they fall over" of a 1980s beat-em-up video game that it replaced.

 

[dave2008]

If something is a fighting maneuver, it needs to be a fighting maneuver you can use endlessly as long the fighter is standing.

I know you don't agree with me, as we have had this discussion before, but to me this perspective makes no sense. It is extremely gamey, and just breaks my immersion. Only in a video game can a fighter do the same "maneuver" over and over without fail. It is just not realistic.

The way you state this as some universal truth when it is so clearly a personal preference not based in reality just rubs me the wrong way. It is not something that the game "needs," it is something you want.

Sorry to vent, please feel free to enjoy what you enjoy.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think some people want to shoehorn PF2 into the idea of being like 4E. As someone that played both, it doesn't feel anything like 4E. It's far more flexible and powers feel more like maneuvers and appropriate parts of class abilities.

Well, some of us are capable of both agreeing 4E doesn't play like 4E and seeing clear similarities in how several core subsystems are built.

(Insert "why not have both?" girl here )

 

[Retreater]

In 4e, RAW, if you interrupt the short rest with another encounter, then it isn't a second encounter - it's an extension of the first encounter. Your XP budget should be deducted from whatever you spent to create the first encounter. Otherwise, you're breaking the resource economy of the game, and likely going to have a boring time with characters forced to rely on At-Will powers to slog through a fight. And 4e doesn't like it when you mess with its design principles.

 

[CapnZapp]

I know you don't agree with me, as we have had this discussion before, but to me this perspective makes no sense. It is extremely gamey, and just breaks my immersion. Only in a video game can a fighter do the same "maneuver" over and over without fail. It is just not realistic

Funny that.

All he means is how unrealistic it feels when you can't make a particular swipe or feint more than, say, 3 times during the day.

In other words, you're talking about different things. Both implementations can feel extremely gamey, even to one and the same player.

PS. The solution, of course, is to play a game where you need to make an opposed skill check of some sort to pull off a certain maneuver. That way, you might end up successfully pulling it off zero times one day, and ten times the next. (The former much more likely against a veteran adversary; the latter much more likely against greenhorn rookies)

PPS. And of course, the real takeaway here is that "3 uses/day" is an abstraction that cuts down on all them die rolls. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't mean you can pull it off only three times a day. It doesn't even mean a foe is supposed to fall for the same trick three combat rounds in a row. What it means is your character has the narrative power to say "I'm successful" three times a day, so use it when you really need it.

PPPS. The really real takeaway here is that you're both wrong

 

[dave2008]

Funny that.

All he means is how unrealistic it feels when you can't make a particular swipe or feint more than, say, 3 times during the day.

In other words, you're talking about different things. Both implementations can feel extremely gamey, even to one and the same player.

PS. The solution, of course, is to play a game where you need to make an opposed skill check of some sort to pull off a certain maneuver. That way, you might end up successfully pulling it off zero times one day, and ten times the next. (The former much more likely against a veteran adversary; the latter much more likely against greenhorn rookies)

PPS. And of course, the real takeaway here is that "3 uses/day" is an abstraction that cuts down on all them die rolls. Nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't mean you can pull it off only three times a day. It doesn't even mean a foe is supposed to fall for the same trick three combat rounds in a row. What it means is your character has the narrative power to say "I'm successful" three times a day, so use it when you really need it.

PPPS. The really real takeaway here is that you're both wrong

To clarify I was not trying to suggest D&D of any version got it right. However, I can use a house rule in conjunction with the default encounter or short rest mechanic (of 4e & 5e) that feels just right to me and is easier than having to add that mechanic to a game that doesn't have it built in.

 

[Teemu]

In 4e, RAW, if you interrupt the short rest with another encounter, then it isn't a second encounter - it's an extension of the first encounter. Your XP budget should be deducted from whatever you spent to create the first encounter. Otherwise, you're breaking the resource economy of the game, and likely going to have a boring time with characters forced to rely on At-Will powers to slog through a fight. And 4e doesn't like it when you mess with its design principles.

That’s not true. If you design a series of separate fights, then yes, that should be considered a single encounter so that you can gauge the difficulty properly. But if the players decide to push on without resting, or something prevents it, those are separate encounters. There’s a sidebar discussing this in the DM’s Book.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Eh, my personal experience with that is replace awesome with "broken or invincible to standard enemies".

Like I admit, I like mooks actually being good at their intended role in 2e Its kinda hard to feel awesome when you wash the floor with all enemies in every room.

Ohh, I’ve never seen that happen in 4e or 5e, what edition are you talking about? Or are you taking about PF1 or PF2? I think I would like to try that.

 

[GrahamWills]

4e doesn't like it when you mess with its design principles.

This is actually not my experience with 4E. I've run. lot of various versions of D&D, and I think I'd argue that 4E is the easiest to mess with. I think the reason is that the design is consistent and well-defined. That means that when you mess with it, you have a good idea what will happen.

For example, our 4E campaign is playing a set of epic modules. Each one is more or less a full level, so about 9-12 encounters. Quite a few of the modules do not not have any ability to take a long rest, and instead have optional ways to achieve the effects of a long rest by taking role-playing options. This worked pretty well because 4E has a well-defined, planned structure. We could look at the state of our surges and that would give us a good idea of whether or not we felt like we could continue without asking help from dubious character #2.

In 3E we'd be looking at, I guess, just spell usage and how many healing potions/wands we had. healing becomes a binary issue: do you have wands/potions available or not. If you do, then you look at the caster's spells and have to make an informed guess as to how many fo each of them yo neigh need. It's much klunkier and less reliable a decision. And for the game writer it's a near-impossible task. You have no idea in 3E if you have a fighter-heavy party with lots of leading wands who ignores the need to rest completely, or a magic-heavy party who will be useless when the spells run out.

So in 3E it's very hard to mess with the system -- there's no consistency in how much parties care about rests. In 4E there is much more consistency and so it's much easier to mess with the design principles because you have. pretty good idea of what it will cost.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This is actually not my experience with 4E. I've run. lot of various versions of D&D, and I think I'd argue that 4E is the easiest to mess with. I think the reason is that the design is consistent and well-defined. That means that when you mess with it, you have a good idea what will happen.

I can understand both points of view. If you're messing with AD&D you can add new rules structures on without any sort of worry or concern that they will look weird against the backdrop of the system - the system has basically been put together through accretion, and spells use some mechanics, skills another, and thief skills a third. Nothing's going to stick out like a sore thumb. For 40k players it's like welding extra parts on to an orc battlewagon. If it seems like it's a good idea just do it.

Meanwhile 4e was designed with intent. This means that "I wonder what adding this" would do style messing with the design principles tends to work really horribly in the way that welding extra parts on to a speedboat just looks wrong - but if you work with the design rather than against it you can do some really interesting things. Such as, speaking from experience, on one occasion making 4e an excellent horror game with the PCs worried not so much about dying for now as who they would protect so that character could at least have a rest. (To be fair you can do this in 5e as well but with nothing like the impact).

 

[GreyLord]

I have found a similarity between PF2e and 4e, though it has nothing to do with the game rules or game system.

I think if there is a major problem with PF2e currently, it's actually gatekeeping more than anything else. Driving others away from the game simply because they are not part of your crowd.

This is one thing that WotC HAS done well in comparison for 5e. It's their PR.

In 4e they tried to say that others were bad/wrong which (as opposed to what people think) didn't not kill it. They indicated in commercials and other arenas that those who liked other games of D&D (1e, 2e, 3e, etc) were archaic or not playing it right. There was the implication that if you weren't part of "the in crowd" who were the "elite" that you were not welcome. It was still profitable, but it didn't experience the growth it may have if they were more welcoming to everyone.

In 5e they've at least given the outward words that everyone is welcome no matter what system or idea they enjoyed.

Paizo actually has said similar things with PF2e and tried to welcome all players, old and new, but my experience with some of the fans of PF2e seems to do the opposite.

There are some that are welcoming (and I thank all those who are welcoming others to the game), but there are several that are very unwelcoming when I venture into the PF2e wilderness of players. Probably half the reason I'm still on the fence on whether I'm going to give it another shot or not.

Other RPGs don't seem to have this problem these days. The ratio of those who welcome others to the games are a lot greater than those who don't. It's not a need for essentials, but a need to be more welcoming to new players. You need something which makes the new players feel like they want to play the system. There may be some entering it now (and part of which the BB and Abomination vaults are designed to do), but I think the ratio of those who simply dislike others who are not part of the "in crowd" is abnormally large currently in comparison to other RPG fans.

Perhaps once the pandemic clears up and Paizo once again has live players in the store with Pathfinder and it's society they will be able to utilize a BIG push in welcoming and inspiring others to play PF2e. I think there would have originally been a big push with the BB and Abomination Vaults if they were able to meet live with others which could give a massive surge of growth to PF2e. Unfortunately, they were not able to do this at this time.

This doesn't mean that they are having a hard time at all, I just think it could have been a bigger instigator for growth (BB, Abomination Vaults) of new incoming players if they had been able to do so. If my PF fan player is correct, and it really is a different experience in person, than only being able to participate in PF2e online and discuss it through online interactions has greatly colored how the game is, rather than how it may actually be.

 

[billd91]

In 5e they've at least given the outward words that everyone is welcome no matter what system or idea they enjoyed.

Paizo actually has said similar things with PF2e and tried to welcome all players, old and new, but my experience with some of the fans of PF2e seems to do the opposite.

There are some that are welcoming (and I thank all those who are welcoming others to the game), but there are several that are very unwelcoming when I venture into the PF2e wilderness of players. Probably half the reason I'm still on the fence on whether I'm going to give it another shot or not.

I have not experienced this - not in any degree more than I did with PF1. But since I have seen a little of it with PF1, I can certainly see how that could persist and the players who were like that with PF1 being at least as likely, if not more likely, to behave the same way in PF2.

PF1, like 3e, worked better from the player perspective with strong system mastery. While most players I encountered were welcoming, there were some for whom beating the PFS module was serious business and a noob or dabbler who wasn't at the top of their game was not something they wanted to depend on to pull their own weight. Ratcheting up the need for teamwork in PF2 has a definite chance to exacerbate that behavior.

 

[kenada]

There’s a strain of toxic discourse here that turns many of the threads on PF2 into polemics about what the system or Paizo has done wrong. It’s not at all welcoming. I no longer run PF2, but I continue to read and post here to share my experiences in the hope someone might find them useful. However, dealing with the discourse can be fatiguing and tiresome at times.