Pathfinder 2E PF2E like D&D 4e?

[Campbell]

This worries me. I haven't played a PC in 25+ years and I am not a skilled player, nor do I have a desire at this time to be one. Is it your opinion the PF2e is not a casual game? If a jumped into Society play would it frustrate the group if I wasn't a skilled player?

I cannot speak to every group, but my experience here locally in the Denver area is that Society tables seem to be very welcoming to new players and willing to show them the ropes. That being said the content is tuned pretty hard and most GMs will let the dice fail where they may. When things go badly most players take it pretty well. I have had a lot of fun in failed scenarios.

Side Note: Pathfinder Society tends to be rather close knit. I find you get to know people pretty well and make friends in a way that happens less often in Adventurer's League which can feel more disposable.

 

[GrahamWills]

That is my specific experience with encounter powers in 4E and why I did not like them. It really did reach a point where my players literally used their encounter powers because they felt they wasted them not to use them even if they were fighting some completely easy, non-threatening encounter. They would start off using their at-will powers, the things they were fighting were almost dead, and then they would start blowing off their encounter powers. I straight up told them, "You don't really need to do this to win. You guys have this won." They looked back at me and said, "Might as well use them or they're wasted. I'll get them back next encounter any ways." After that happened three or four times, I was done with the game.

I guess if you have players like that and they refuse to change, then yeah, you didn't have much of a choice. It seems a bit weird to me that a group of people felt they had to use an options imply because it was there. Do they also use all their good skills every encounter too -- making diplomacy checks because they have a good diplomacy? Or was it simply the fact that they recharged that made them feel compelled to use them every time?

I've never had players like this; in fact it seems very odd for players to start with at-will powers -- that's very much an oddity compared with regular 4E play-styles. Typically the encounter alpha-strike is the default mechanism, dropping back to at-wills when the encounters are done. Not invalidating your experience, but it's definitely very far from the norm.

Do your spell-casters behave the same way in other versions of D&D? Do they use mundane attacks like throwing darts until the enemy is nearly dead and then start casting fireballs if it's the end of the day and they know they are going to rest up and don't want to waste spells? it seems an odd play-style to me, but if your players like that style, yeah, 4E is never going to work for them.

 

[GrahamWills]

This worries me. I haven't played a PC in 25+ years and I am not a skilled player, nor do I have a desire at this time to be one. Is it your opinion the PF2e is not a casual game? If a jumped into Society play would it frustrate the group if I wasn't a skilled player?

Not in my experience. Perhaps if you have a high level character, people will expect you to be skilled with it (based on the fact you must have played it 20+ times!), but players with low-level characters aren;'t expected to know anything more than a rough idea of how skills are resolved, how a combat turn works and the existence of their class-based skills.

If you turned up at a society event, and in the first encounter said "new player here. my rogue gets a sneak attack, I think. How does that work?" you will almost certainly get a helpful response and people will be happy that a new player has joined their group -- not annoyed at your lack of experience!

I've played way more 13th Age, 4E, Fate, Deadlands, Rolemaster, Savage worlds, etc than PF1, but I had a PF1 character that I played sporadically at cons -- getting all the way up to 4th level in five years. I'd regularly be asking "do I double my crit dice or roll twice?" or "how does moving diagonally work in this system?", "is a 1 an automatic failure?" or other basic questions and I have never heard anything other than friendly responses. (Full disclosure -- I'm still not 100% sure of the answers to the above three questions ....)

This has also been true of 5e Adventurer's League and the old 3.5 and 4e Living worlds; at high levels there's an expectation that you have a reasonable grasp of the rules, but if you're playing at a level where you might have played less than 20 games, people are very typically friendly and helpful.

 

[billd91]

I guess if you have players like that and they refuse to change, then yeah, you didn't have much of a choice. It seems a bit weird to me that a group of people felt they had to use an options imply because it was there. Do they also use all their good skills every encounter too -- making diplomacy checks because they have a good diplomacy? Or was it simply the fact that they recharged that made them feel compelled to use them every time?

I've never had players like this; in fact it seems very odd for players to start with at-will powers -- that's very much an oddity compared with regular 4E play-styles. Typically the encounter alpha-strike is the default mechanism, dropping back to at-wills when the encounters are done. Not invalidating your experience, but it's definitely very far from the norm.

Yeah, I agree that starting with at wills would be backward from what I understand of most people's 4e experiences. But I still think the more important issue is using the encounter power every encounter, even area powers against a single enemy or other powers that may not really fit the circumstance, to not waste the resource.

 

[dave2008]

I cannot speak to every group, but my experience here locally in the Denver area is that Society tables seem to be very welcoming to new players and willing to show them the ropes. That being said the content is tuned pretty hard and most GMs will let the dice fail where they may. When things go badly most players take it pretty well. I have had a lot of fun in failed scenarios.

Well I don't mind my characters dying, I just don't want to disappoint the group.

 

[Celtavian]

I guess if you have players like that and they refuse to change, then yeah, you didn't have much of a choice. It seems a bit weird to me that a group of people felt they had to use an options imply because it was there. Do they also use all their good skills every encounter too -- making diplomacy checks because they have a good diplomacy? Or was it simply the fact that they recharged that made them feel compelled to use them every time?

I've never had players like this; in fact it seems very odd for players to start with at-will powers -- that's very much an oddity compared with regular 4E play-styles. Typically the encounter alpha-strike is the default mechanism, dropping back to at-wills when the encounters are done. Not invalidating your experience, but it's definitely very far from the norm.

Do your spell-casters behave the same way in other versions of D&D? Do they use mundane attacks like throwing darts until the enemy is nearly dead and then start casting fireballs if it's the end of the day and they know they are going to rest up and don't want to waste spells? it seems an odd play-style to me, but if your players like that style, yeah, 4E is never going to work for them.

It was the fact they recharged per encounter. They don't do it with skills. They didn't do it in 5E either with short rests. They preserved resources for fights where it was necessary taking short rests after big fights rather than blowing everything off expecting short rests when they felt like it. I heard some 5E players were doing that, which my players did not do it. It was the specific recharging per encounter that had them doing it.

Nope. Never did that in other versions of D&D. They never knew when they might need those spells. There is no knowing when the end of the day occurs in other editions of D&D. You could get attacked at any time in every edition of D&D including 4E. Only difference was your powers didn't recharge per encounter in other editions of D&D. With an encounter power, you could use it every single time a watch was interrupted at night as that is a discrete encounter. 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.

That's why mechanics that don't recharge by encounter are important to give the DM the ability to breed fear in the PCs, so they don't know when they might need that fireball or that teleport so they don't use it until is needed. Your player characters should not even think there is such a thing as the end of the adventuring day. They should feel paranoid camping for the night, walking around town, attending a dinner, having to camp in a dungeon room, and just wandering around a fantasy world as a powerful adventure who has made powerful enemies by inserting themselves in their affairs. They shouldn't even always feel they will get their 8 hours of rest cleanly, while at the same time trusting you don't plan to TPK them every adventure.

 

[dave2008]

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

Celtavian, I like a lot of what you post, but this is frankly ridiculous. An ability that recharges per rest or per day does not dictate whether or not I can create fear in my PCs. It does not hamstring me as a DM in the slightest. In fact, I find it increases the tension. If a character is running out of limited use abilities (short or long rest) the start to get worried as they know they are getting exhausted and can't continue to fight with the same ferocity. They have to start looking for a way to retreat. My experience is that short rest powers actually breed fear in the PCs, not the opposite.

 

[Celtavian]

Celtavian, I like a lot of what you post, but this is frankly ridiculous. An ability that recharges per rest or per day does not dictate whether or not I can create fear in my PCs. It does not hamstring me as a DM in the slightest. In fact, I find it increases the tension. If a character is running out of limited use abilities (short or long rest) the start to get worried as they know they are getting exhausted and can't continue to fight with the same ferocity. They have to start looking for a way to retreat. My experience is that short rest powers actually breed fear in the PCs, not the opposite.

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.

 

[dave2008]

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 think that is best. We have differing viewpoints and experiences to back them up. I will just say I understand your viewpoint, even if I don't share it or haven't experienced it.

EDIT: Now that I think about it. I guess my understanding ties into my real life experience playing competitive soccer and running track and wrestling. I could chase a player down the field (or race around the track), jog back to my starting position and be ready to do it again in less than 5 minutes. Similar in wrestling too (or sword fighting with my sons now). So the idea of resting for 5 minutes makes sense to me.

 

[CapnZapp]

I think this is more of a conceptual than practical difference.

Celt wants something like "you regain X power points per minute" which just might come down to exactly the same as "you can expend one power per encounter".

Yet the difference couldn't be greater, since the encounter-based model would allow spending three powers in as many minutes, if only monsters arrive once a minute. While of course the time-based model would support spending three powers in a single encounter, if given enough recharge time.

As for myself, I couldn't care less*. Far more troublesome is when the simulationist approach means digging down into pointless minutae.

*) I used to hate not understand encounter-based design but have come to accept it if it simplifies and does away downtime. I still want it to be used to approximate time-based recuperation, however; using it for powers there just isn't any other rationale than a gamist one crosses the boundary into the realm of too-artifical for me.

In other words, while I don't mind (and in fact appreciate) simple hit point recovery systems such as "you regain all your hit points after a short rest" (in games such as PF2 which are clearly designed on the assumption PCs go fresh into every fight), I don't accept the same mechanism when used to say "you can only cast a single Fireball each encounter".

If I have to choose, I would choose the former over the latter. Which is exactly how it works in PF2. The relevant point of comparison, however, is 5E, where I don't have to choose.

I guess my tl;dr is: this fight where you make it out to be a hard either-or choice is silly. The ideal design obviously uses the encounter model for recuperating physical (martial) energy while using time-based recovery for supernatural energy