Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[MerricB]

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I did not even know parrying caused an AoO. Is it a move or manipulate action? If so, that is getting excised out. Stupid.

You probably excised it out by accident (as you weren't aware of the rule)!

 

[kenada]

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I did not even know parrying caused an AoO. Is it a move or manipulate action? If so, that is getting excised out. Stupid.

The parry trait lets you spend an Interact action to gain a +1 circumstance bonus to AC. It should be its own action like Raise a Shield.

I like Interact and Release, but they should be tools used by GMs for adjudication. They’re too overused by the system, and they definitely shouldn’t be a way to shoehorn stuff into the system that runs unintuitively and messes up modularity.

 

[FrozenNorth]

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. I did not even know parrying caused an AoO. Is it a move or manipulate action? If so, that is getting excised out. Stupid.

It is more needlessly complicated than that. If you are wielding a weapon with the Parry keyword, you need to use the Interact action to prepare it to parry. Parrying thus gives you a +1 to your AC.

OK, makes sense. You need to Interact with the Object, so it takes an Action (like raising a Shield) and gives a lesser bonus (just +1 and you can’t Shield Block).

Except, the Interact Action has the Manipulate trait. So, just by preparing to parry, if your opponent has an AOO, he gets a free attack, and on a critical success, he prevents you from parrying. Technically, during the Interact Action, your character doesn’t benefit from the +1, since a critical success can prevent you from parrying.

Edit. I see kenada beat me to the punch. Oops!

 

[Celtavian]

You probably excised it out by accident (as you weren't aware of the rule)!

I have a natural filter for unintuitive, unnecessary rules in general. Another thing likely not intended, but missed because the PF2 book is so insanely huge.

 

[kenada]

So this thread prompted me to make an attempt at reworking weapon traits to follow the same format that the system uses for feats, actions, etc. I found them more readable. Now that they’re not just dense blobs of text, it’s easy to see they fall into a few types:

• Circumstance bonus to attack: backswing, sweep
• Combat maneuvers: disarm, grapple, shove, trip
• Critical success effects: deadly, fatal
• Damage boosts (based on weapon damage dice): forceful, jousting, twin
• Damage boosts (other): backstabber, propulsive, two-hand
• New mechanics: attached, free-hand, reach, unarmed, versatile
• Various benefits: agile, finesse, nonlethal, parry, thrown
• Various limitations: volley

Here’s the result of the work: Weapon Traits.pdf (edit: or v2, which keeps closer to the original style while trying to be a bit more consistent with how it denotes things: Weapon Traits v2.pdf)

I should note I didn’t just reformat them. I turned the non-static stuff into effects you layered on top of your attacks or into actions with triggers. That gives it a proper home on your character sheet and helps you see them visually while scanning the list of traits. I also added an exploration activity to Affix an Attached Weapon and turned Parry into an action (because having it trigger reactions to manipulate actions is silly). However, that (Parry) should be the only material change. The rest should be equivalent.

Something I noticed during the conversion is some of the stuff was just underspecified or really clumsily worded. Affixing your attached weapon probably should need a repair kit, but it doesn’t say. I assumed it did. The triggering actions in particular were a lot harder to parse before I turned them into actions. It seems like whenever PF2 deviates from the standardized format it uses to convey mechanics it suffers.

Edit: I should add that the check to Affix an Attached Weapon is completely pointless and should probably be dropped (just like Affix a Talisman doesn’t have one).

 

[Ancalagon]

It is more needlessly complicated than that. If you are wielding a weapon with the Parry keyword, you need to use the Interact action to prepare it to parry. Parrying thus gives you a +1 to your AC.

OK, makes sense. You need to Interact with the Object, so it takes an Action (like raising a Shield) and gives a lesser bonus (just +1 and you can’t Shield Block).

Except, the Interact Action has the Manipulate trait. So, just by preparing to parry, if your opponent has an AOO, he gets a free attack, and on a critical success, he prevents you from parrying. Technically, during the Interact Action, your character doesn’t benefit from the +1, since a critical success can prevent you from parrying.

Edit. I see kenada beat me to the punch. Oops!

... seriously?!?

 

[kenada]

... seriously?!?

Yeah. The equipment chapter is a mess, and weapon traits in particular are awful. They’re dense and hard to read. They introduce several mechanics without following the standard format. Consequently, they’re harder to understand and sometimes a bit sloppily written (see above re: attached weapons).

Parry should be an action with the requirement that your weapon has the parry trait. Building it on top of Interact let them save space by not defining a new action, but it came at the cost of unintuitive interactions with e.g., Attack of Opportunity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not the only place where Manipulate's presence or lack has been a problem child, either. While there are other elements, its one of the topics of heated discussion that comes up any time the Battlefield Medicine issue comes up.

And my suspicion that the Attack of Opportunity thing with Parry is, as you say earlier, not just counterintuitive but unintended.

 

[nevin]

Nevin, I see where you're coming from, but IMHO that's all on the DM and the players. A DM who has a compelling storyline in his pocket, with clues, NPCs to interact with, and clever objectives that go beyond killing critters & taking their stuff will do fine. A DM who struggles with the rules and thinks that yet another encounter with more monsters is an adequate substitute for a plot, will flounder. Similarly, players who ignore clues and are just looking for more loot and xp shouldn't be surprised that their game experience is reduced to a tactical combat grind.

But that's true of any RPG. It was true in the 70s and it's true today.

FWIW, I think the suggestions made here and elsewhere that PCs have to be at full health before any fight are rubbish. Often enough, in the games I've played, there are time constraints that prevent players from taking 10 minutes, let alone 40-60 minutes after every fight to rest & treat their wounds. Fortunately, the existence of clerics (and a few other classes) who have healing spells and powers and the existence of items like healing potions help make the action a wee bit more dynamic. And if the PCs are wounded and they think they're heading into a fight, maybe they'll pay a little more attention to the terrain and their tactics, rather than just charging the foe and trusting to the DM's aversion for TPKs to carry the day.

I agree it's in a large part up to DM. However in my experience Pathfinder seems to either intensify the problem (or maybe it's just the kind of people attracted to it.) I know people that just do dungeon crawls.

the thing is pathfinder has combat completely segmented down to the Actions and movements and every single thing about the game is getting tactical advantage. The combats take a lot more time than in other systems because of that. And finally if you go to the pathfinder forums and make an observation about this you'll almost certainly be told how to play the game "Optimally". It seems to start at the top, be baked into the system and heavily reinforced by the min max mindset of the player's that seem to be attracted to the "crunchy" stuff.

As far as players feeling like they have to get thier 10 minute rest or other things that's a problem Gaming in general is suffering through. The idea that the Game developer is responsible for balance, through the rules , has the negative effect of teaching the DM's to defer to the rulebook everytime. That and younger players who all seem to think if DM fudges a roll, or does something that's not in a book, that they've been screwed. I think that's a generational problem, caused by telling children they can grow up to do what ever they want, and that everyone is a special snowflake.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm afraid the idea that PF2e takes longer to play out than other games in the D&D-sphere is exactly the opposite of my experience.