Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[Aldarc]

Is it more a matter of "too many feats" or "how the feats are presented"? If one were to break up the class features in 5e into feats, much as @Morrus said, you would probably end up with a list of feats of comparable size. So I don't think that turning everything into feats is inherently "too much clutter" because it worked well for prior systems like the AGE System, True 20, d20 Modern, etc. A few people have complained that the presentation of feats reminds them of 4e. Regardless of whether that is an apt comparison, there may be something to be said for how Pathfinder 2 and 4e D&D presents its content that can be psychologically off-putting for people.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Is it more a matter of "too many feats" or "how the feats are presented"? If one were to break up the class features in 5e into feats, much as @Morrus said, you would probably end up with a list of feats of comparable size.

...I can be two things...

More seriously, I think Morrus was wrong in his post. If we consider 5e at the 1-year mark (so excluding Xanathar’s) and convert everything that is a feature into a PF2 style feat, I think you still get many fewer 5e feats than PF2.

In PF2, there are ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats and general feats.

Let’s take them in order.
Ancestry feats: 9 races (14 counting subraces). Let’s say, generously, 5 features per race. This makes 70.
Class feats: This is the hardest to count. There are 12 classes. There are about 15 features per class (excluding subclasses which will be counted separately, and ASI, which aren’t features in PF2). That makes 180.
Subclasses. There are 45 subclasses. Let’s say 6 features per subclass. This makes 270.
Skill feats: 0 (this was easy!)
Archetype feats: 12.
General feats: 35.

Tallied up this makes 70+180+270+12+35= 567. About 1/4 of the PF2 feats at the same place in the dev cycle.

However, as much as I like arithmetic, I think that is only half the point. A lot of the feats in PF2 provide very incremental benefits. If you take the specialty crafting (blacksmith) feat, you may be frustrated that it only gives you a +1 (+2 at master level) when crafting metal weapons and armor (at the feat explicitly calls out that the GM can halve the bonus when making weapons that contain both metal and wood, like morningstars).

 

[nevin]

...I can be two things...

More seriously, I think Morrus was wrong in his post. If we consider 5e at the 1-year mark (so excluding Xanathar’s) and convert everything that is a feature into a PF2 style feat, I think you still get many fewer 5e feats than PF2.

In PF2, there are ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats and general feats.

Let’s take them in order.
Ancestry feats: 9 races (14 counting subraces). Let’s say, generously, 5 features per race. This makes 70.
Class feats: This is the hardest to count. There are 12 classes. There are about 15 features per class (excluding subclasses which will be counted separately, and ASI, which aren’t features in PF2). That makes 180.
Subclasses. There are 45 subclasses. Let’s say 6 features per subclass. This makes 270.
Skill feats: 0 (this was easy!)
Archetype feats: 12.
General feats: 35.

Tallied up this makes 70+180+270+12+35= 567. About 1/4 of the PF2 feats at the same place in the dev cycle.

However, as much as I like arithmetic, I think that is only half the point. A lot of the feats in PF2 provide very incremental benefits. If you take the specialty crafting (blacksmith) feat, you may be frustrated that it only gives you a +1 (+2 at master level) when crafting metal weapons and armor (at the feat explicitly calls out that the GM can halve the bonus when making weapons that contain both metal and wood, like morningstars).

Which leads to the perception problem that feats, which in other editions are significant boost of power, are now just little things that keep you ever so slightly better than the bad guys. If you pause your game and heal in between encounters like in your video games.

 

[Aldarc]

...I can be two things...

Sure, but I was asking if it was more one factor than the other rather than precluding both.

More seriously, I think Morrus was wrong in his post. If we consider 5e at the 1-year mark (so excluding Xanathar’s) and convert everything that is a feature into a PF2 style feat, I think you still get many fewer 5e feats than PF2.

I'm not sure if I agree with your breakdown. For example, let's take General Feats category. The feats in 5e were intentionally designed to contain larger blocks of features than what existed prior in 3e and 4e, so I don't think that translating 1-for-1 works as simply as you make it out.

However, as much as I like arithmetic, I think that is only half the point. A lot of the feats in PF2 provide very incremental benefits. If you take the specialty crafting (blacksmith) feat, you may be frustrated that it only gives you a +1 (+2 at master level) when crafting metal weapons and armor (at the feat explicitly calls out that the GM can halve the bonus when making weapons that contain both metal and wood, like morningstars).

From my understanding and experience of the PF2, those increments matter for a lot of checks where critical success and failure exists as possibilities. It may not be psychologically satisfying to only get a +1 bonus if you are used to larger bonuses in 5e (e.g., +5, Advantage, etc.), but that does not mean that a +1/+2 is not a meaningful bonus in the context of PF2.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

One thing that I want to comment on is that in my eyes, Pathfinder 2e does a really good job on the complexity vs. depth ratio, and I think some of that is because it was willing to go a little more complex than it's fifth edition competitor (which incidentally, I think fails on the complexity vs. depth test.)

Let me explain by contrasting the two games, 5e does indeed streamline, but it suffers from having cut back too much in some areas (customization, modifiers) while not cutting back enough in others (take its standard/bonus/move/reaction action system, or its encumbrance, or the way its modifiers work.) There's also a lot of rules text, you don't make choices, but you still get a bunch of features. You make one choice and the game hands you a bunch of rules to operate your character as you level up.

When we switched to Pathfinder, we discovered that while we were making our choices, the players who had the most trouble in 5e knowing how their stuff worked were having an easier time because choosing their abilities made them more invested in them, and they weren't just receiving things buried in a wall of features from a subclass.

In 5e, the lack of modifiers makes the game a little quicker on the math/tracking front, but you lose a great deal of mechanical differentiation because you can't build things more than once. If you applied one effect that gave you advantage, the benefit to using more such effects immediately dropped off. This reduces the tactics, as we observed ourselves to be getting advantage through some relatively easy means, and then ignoring further tactical options because all that was left was to pile on.

Compare to our Pathfinder game last night, where one player made a creature they couldn't flank flat footed with one effect, while another frightened it. Our abilities stayed useful, and the added complexity let the players feel rewarded for their choices, both in the traditional character building sense of creating characters who could do that and capitalize on it, but also in the tactical sense of using the options they were given in combat to do that. It makes a lot of depth off of that bit of complexity increase.

In other cases, Pathfinder streamlines things 5e doesn't, the action system is way more intuitive than explaining to people about bonus actions and how you only get to use it if you have one (which is a newbie trap, incidentally) and you can't downgrade your standard action into two bonus actions if you want to, and no you can't attack more if you're not using your move at all. In pathfinder, its just three actions, some neat things you can do cost more than one, its brilliant and tactically satisfying, that's another thing my 5e players with rules-difficulty like.

This is exacerbated by the fact that 5e isn't really a simple game, not like other games we've played are-- Kids on Brooms, and Masks: A New Generation, both come to mind. Its still super crunchy, its just that the crunch is kind of bland, and the game's core engine doesn't work that well (bounded accuracy creating weird swinginess, or players handling way above their pay grade, super powerful magic, broken martial feats.) Its like you're doing most of the same amount of rules, with like less than half of the customization. I can't even say character building is faster because we used tools for both, and Pathbuilder 2e nukes beyond's character builder from orbit in terms of speed.

From my game, I can say the subsystems (like crafting and medicine) seem to work better than the posters in this thread are advertising. Crafting is useful ebcause settlement level doesn't really tend to scale 1 for 1 with you, meaning job level tends to be at a delay unless you go out of your way, and not all games have easy access to magic item shops (though thats a much more viable proposition than 5e supports), I've typically run magic item sales as having to track down a seller for the item they want with checks, in settlements of high enough level to support them (I guess the DC would get harder if you're in a lower level settlement? it didn't come up.)

Add to this the lego brick approach to every aspect of character building, and you wind up feeling a lot of depth and customization, but we aren't significantly doing more work than in 5e, heck, since we actually leveraged that systems 'homebrew advantage' to make up for lack of options, its less work for me as GM, since I don't have to trawl homebrew sources for balanced content, or rule on things my players found somewhere, and might need to interact with other homebrew. I did it, we enjoyed it- i even would write my own options, which made the rounds in various homebrew communities.

I'd rather do less work while keeping my players happy and pathfinder 2e lets me do that.

 

[Vael]

Question: How well does theatre of the mind combat work in P2? Because my (admittedly limited) initial impression is that this is not a system to play without a battlemap. I find the three action economy and flanking really necessitate the grid.

 

[kenada]

No, now you're discussing only the Recall Knowledge activity in isolation. Please don't do that.

As far as I’m aware, we both agree that Recall Knowledge is pretty awful in combat.

"working as intended" is not a good defense unless my criticism was "it tried to make it hard to break WBL and it fails".

I think the intent is that crafting is a way to customize your character. You’re not intended to make money off of it. That’s how it can be allowed in PFS for PF2 but not for PF1. Consequently, criticizing a game for not doing what one’d like it to do isn’t really a fair criticism. However, I went looking for the posts on the official forums mentioned in your thread. I think I understand the argument, but let me try to recount it here.

The issue is Craft always uses your level, which makes it more time efficient when you are in a settlement that is lower than your level (assuming you can find tasks of the settlement’s level). This allows you to make money if you spend the same amount of time to Craft and then Earn Income that you would have spent just trying to Earn Income to pay for the remainder of the item.

For example, let’s say you want to Craft a potency rune, and you’re in a level 4 settlement. It costs 80 gp in materials plus another 80 gp to finish the item that you get from somewhere. If you choose to Earn Income prior to crafting and just pay the cost, it will take about 115 days to earn enough money. If you choose to Craft, it will take 77 days after the initial 4 days. In the remaining time (34 days), you can Earn Income and make another ~24 gp. Admittedly, that assumes you never roll a natural 1 and critically fail, which isn’t a good assumption.

While I admit that’s a problem, I think it’s the ability to make money that’s the problem not that figuring out how to do it is, and that’s because I think the intent is character customization rather than income generation. It seems like this would be a good target for errata, but I don’t see what the fix would be. It’s explicit that the task level while you Craft is your level instead of whatever task level you’d get in the current settlement. If you somehow tied it to the settlement’s level, then you’d get into weird situations where it’s better to go crafting in a cave outside of town.

 

[kenada]

Question: How well does theatre of the mind combat work in P2? Because my (admittedly limited) initial impression is that this is not a system to play without a battlemap. I find the three action economy and flanking really necessitate the grid.

I’ve run a few simple combats TotM. I thought they went okay, but I wouldn’t use it for larger combats. It doesn’t feel like it would scale without a lot of bookkeeping on my part to keep everything straight. I’m eager to be proven wrong. To be honest, I’m not great at running TotM.

 

[!DWolf]

Question: How well does theatre of the mind combat work in P2? Because my (admittedly limited) initial impression is that this is not a system to play without a battlemap. I find the three action economy and flanking really necessitate the grid.

I have run many systems in which theater of the mind is default and I am good at it. And I have run multiple combat encounters in PF2e in theater of the mind with low numbers of monsters and characters (and in fact prefer to do it that way in those instances since it saves a lot of time making maps and messing with minis). The three action economy and flanking work well in theater of the mind. Movement and AoE is a little trickier but can done with good narration using environmental reference points. Because of my particular players I would hesitate to do large intricate combats without something to reference position (I don’t necessarily use a battlemap, just something so the players can know roughly where the characters are) - but it can be done. What the game won’t do is teach you how to do theater of the mind combat. Like at all. If you already pretty good at it (or work to become good at it ) and you have the correct players, then you should be able to run it theater of the mind.

 

[CapnZapp]

...I can be two things...

More seriously, I think Morrus was wrong in his post. If we consider 5e at the 1-year mark (so excluding Xanathar’s) and convert everything that is a feature into a PF2 style feat, I think you still get many fewer 5e feats than PF2.

In PF2, there are ancestry feats, class feats, skill feats, archetype feats and general feats.

Let’s take them in order.
Ancestry feats: 9 races (14 counting subraces). Let’s say, generously, 5 features per race. This makes 70.
Class feats: This is the hardest to count. There are 12 classes. There are about 15 features per class (excluding subclasses which will be counted separately, and ASI, which aren’t features in PF2). That makes 180.
Subclasses. There are 45 subclasses. Let’s say 6 features per subclass. This makes 270.
Skill feats: 0 (this was easy!)
Archetype feats: 12.
General feats: 35.

Tallied up this makes 70+180+270+12+35= 567. About 1/4 of the PF2 feats at the same place in the dev cycle.

However, as much as I like arithmetic, I think that is only half the point. A lot of the feats in PF2 provide very incremental benefits. If you take the specialty crafting (blacksmith) feat, you may be frustrated that it only gives you a +1 (+2 at master level) when crafting metal weapons and armor (at the feat explicitly calls out that the GM can halve the bonus when making weapons that contain both metal and wood, like morningstars).

This.

5E very clearly shows that the idea "fewer feats that do more" is a good one.

Sure, 5E contains very few actual feats. And it far too often hands out overpoweringly good benefits. But still.

Who wanted very small and conditional benefits?