Pathfinder 2E Regarding the complexity of Pathfinder 2

[kenada]

No offense taken, but that was Retreater. We played for a year, finished the adventure, than changed systems.

Sorry about that! I blame the green avatars. These threads are starting to blend together.

Anyway, switching to a system that works better for you is the way to go.

 

[kenada]

"Run as written" is an important thing in Paizo-land, particularly because of the development of the broader gaming culture Paizo cultivated in its wider playerbase via adventures and Pathfinder Society. The goal for organized play was to ensure a consistent experience through adventures (inclusive of Society scenarios and sanctioned Adventure Paths) and to not have a wide variance in play where one group had a TPK in an encounter and the other group overcame it due to GM fiat on rules. This was even more important as players moved from GM to GM and it was a question of permissiveness to use certain edge rules between tables because you'd end up with 4th, 5th, 6th, etc level characters that were given permission to do something ruleswise only to finally reach an arbiter who would say "no the rules don't allow that". A lot of PF1E rules were "gimmicky" or borderline exploits so rules interpretation as close to RAW became a critical part of the wider, disparate groups orbiting and engaging in FLGS gaming. Society volunteer leadership felt the instruction was to make things as black and white as possible which permeated the culture.

For a consumer who just picked up a couple books and played exclusively with their home group, they would have likely not been aware that the bulk of the active gaming audience was mired in heated RAW debates during the height of Paizo gaming.

It’s true that PFS is strict, but that’s not what’s being discussed here. The position I’m contesting is even more strict than what PFS requires. For example, foreshadowing dangerous creatures in a sanctioned adventure would be allowed under table variance, but that’s been rejected as a non-default stylistic variance. One could argue that foreshadowing a dangerous encounter might even be encouraged in PFS if it would help avoid a TPK.

 

[glass]

I got those same vibes too. The system strikes me as very SOLID. I’ve had to restrain myself from making an analogy to Progressive Disclosure (but that’s sort of where I was going in my discussion of simplicity and traits).

I do not know a great deal about computer programming, so I do not have a great deal to contribute to this particular subthread. However, I am going to mention that before I clicked the link I somehow read it as "Progressive Dinosaurs". I was both amused and somewhat saddened to discover it was not....

_
glass.

 

[kenada]

I do not know a great deal about computer programming, so I do not have a great deal to contribute to this particular subthread. However, I am going to mention that before I clicked the link I somehow read it as "Progressive Dinosaurs". I was both amused and somewhat saddened to discover it was not....

Pathfinder does have a pretty nice selection of dinosaurs in its bestiaries. I got it! We’ve all been playing it wrong. The true OP combo is the t-rex monk. The arms are tiny, but that just means they pack a wallop!

 

[willrali]

Well my experience has been people care less about the system and more about the other players and the gm. PF2 offers progressive values, neat concepts, great art, and new options, and that‘s what matters. We moved over because we quickly exhausted 5e’s scope and having to fudge a rule here or there didn’t matter one bit.

 

[Celtavian]

Our blaster is the Wizard. He's slowly coming into his own with Cones of Cold and Chain Lightning.

But that's at level 9 or 11. If you ask me, that is criminally late.

Seeing him cast Fireball on all four monsters of an encounter (there are very few encounters with lots of mooks) to deal maybe average weapon damage three of them, the fourth taking no damage at all, was pitiful.

He just expended one of his few highest-level slots, and it basically made no difference. No creature was dropped. Sure, it means one hit less is eventually needed for the martials, but that is a very low and unimpressive impact. The amount of incoming damage saved felt inconsequential.

Certainly up until level 7 I felt there are zero reasons to bring along a Wizard. A second (fourth, actually) martial would have been much more helpful. Another martial would definitely have made an impact where it counts: not only by reducing incoming damage faster by actually dropping enemies, but possibly even more importantly, by being far better equipped to soak incoming monster attacks.

The session before last, when the Wizard managed to insta-kill several mooks (from full hp to zero in one go) with his Chain Lightning, was the first time I recognized the power of magic. Everybody around the table cheered, relieved the player and character finally justified his place in the group as somebody capable of doing something the martials simply can't.

Good to hear you finally saw it. I didn't see it until lvl 11 on my bard, but a bard is not as built for blasting. Bards have a lot of other abilities than blasting, so wasn't important. Yeah. Wizards and sorcerers still need some help at those early levels. I keep telling myself I plan to build a wizard, but it's so hard to bring myself to do it when I can make an equally good blaster druid with much better focus options, weapons, and armor I can use to get through those painful levels.

I imagine you can take Beastmaster archetype now as a wizard or sorcerer, but then you kind of take a druid power to make you good through the lower levels. Sad that doing so is necessary.

 

[Celtavian]

PF2 could use some clean up. The makings of a very good game are there, but the book Paizo released has far too much in it written in a sometimes strange way. The community should do some clean up work and advise Paizo to clean up and shorten the book.

Some examples of half-assed rules:
1. Crafting is overly complex for what you get. The precious material crafting for ammo is not spelled out and shouldn't be what it is. It's strange.

2. Someone pointed out a damage rule that made it so polar ray didn't critical hit. This rule written as a small addendum in this damage section applied to literally one spell in the whole book and seemed completely unnecessary. Like it was tossed in their, forgotten about, and somehow some player found it and the one spell it applied to in the 600 page rulebook. Why was it even in there? Get rid of that crap.

3. Battle Forms. There are three battle form spells that allow manipulate actions where you turn into creatures that should be able to cast and speak. But the overarching rule states you can't cast or speak in a battle form. None of the combat maneuvers require manipulate actions. You can't wield weapons in a battle form. No DM is going to make some creature trapped in a room because it can't open a door or rule a giant bird can't pick someone up in its talons. Makes no sense to add the "you can use manipulate actions" for other than casting, yet you can't. Seems like a huge oversight.

4. Overall too many rules are scattered in too many places that interact in strange and unintuitive ways. The entire book could use another pass to simplify the system and rules.

5. Interact action required to move from one hand to two hands on a weapon? Why is this necessary? Why put this small rule in? Does nothing. Just creates another interaction to memorize for no good reason.

I'm going through and excising unnecessary rules and adjusting certain rules to make them more fun and simple. It's not breaking the game at all. Nice thing about PF2 is the balance is so tight, modifications don't cause much of a balance change.

I highly recommend you modify or get of rules you don't feel like having in your game if there is no measurable effect on encounter balance.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Some examples of half-assed rules:
1. Crafting is overly complex for what you get. The precious material crafting for ammo is not spelled out and shouldn't be what it is. It's strange.

2. Someone pointed out a damage rule that made it so polar ray didn't critical hit. This rule written as a small addendum in this damage section applied to literally one spell in the whole book and seemed completely unnecessary. Like it was tossed in their, forgotten about, and somehow some player found it and the one spell it applied to in the 600 page rulebook. Why was it even in there? Get rid of that crap.

3. Battle Forms. There are three battle form spells that allow manipulate actions where you turn into creatures that should be able to cast and speak. But the overarching rule states you can't cast or speak in a battle form. None of the combat maneuvers require manipulate actions. You can't wield weapons in a battle form. No DM is going to make some creature trapped in a room because it can't open a door or rule a giant bird can't pick someone up in its talons. Makes no sense to add the "you can use manipulate actions" for other than casting, yet you can't. Seems like a huge oversight.

4. Overall too many rules are scattered in too many places that interact in strange and unintuitive ways. The entire book could use another pass to simplify the system and rules.

5. Interact action required to move from one hand to two hands on a weapon? Why is this necessary? Why put this small rule in? Does nothing. Just creates another interaction to memorize for no good reason.

If we are going into that detail, parrying should not cause an AOO. I know AOO are not as common in PF2, but it is ridiculous that “I use my sword to block his sword” can allow a fighter to hit me again. Plus reaction battles are more annoying than fun and should be minimized.

 

[kenada]

2. Someone pointed out a damage rule that made it so polar ray didn't critical hit. This rule written as a small addendum in this damage section applied to literally one spell in the whole book and seemed completely unnecessary. Like it was tossed in their, forgotten about, and somehow some player found it and the one spell it applied to in the 600 page rulebook. Why was it even in there? Get rid of that crap.

This feels like whoever wrote and edited polar ray forgot that spell attacks only do the listed damage in the spell description. Hopefully it gets fixed in the upcoming errata.

3. Battle Forms. There are three battle form spells that allow manipulate actions where you turn into creatures that should be able to cast and speak. But the overarching rule states you can't cast or speak in a battle form. None of the combat maneuvers require manipulate actions. You can't wield weapons in a battle form. No DM is going to make some creature trapped in a room because it can't open a door or rule a giant bird can't pick someone up in its talons. Makes no sense to add the "you can use manipulate actions" for other than casting, yet you can't. Seems like a huge oversight.

The intent appears to be the GM should decide whether one can use a particular manipulate action (with having no hands and being unable to use manipulate actions requiring hands being the default). That’s fine. The GM can make an appropriate ruling in those cases.

The stuff about casting is weird. In PF1, casting in another form was usually the benefit of a class feature. As far as I can tell, that’s not the case here. Holdover restriction from a previous edition? I think it would be reasonable for the GM to allow casting in some forms. That that should be possible needs to be made more clear (especially in the appendix where it doesn’t mention GM discretion at all).

4. Overall too many rules are scattered in too many places that interact in strange and unintuitive ways. The entire book could use another pass to simplify the system and rules.

I like that traits are little bundles of rules that mostly keep to themselves, but they unquestionably make the game harder to learn. Some of this is presentation, but I’m not sure how much. I agree the game needs an editing pass.

5. Interact action required to move from one hand to two hands on a weapon? Why is this necessary? Why put this small rule in? Does nothing. Just creates another interaction to memorize for no good reason.

I think they’re treating it like adjusting your grip on a putter. It would make more sense (and probably be more realistic) if they had an action to set your fighting posture, and dropping out of it was free. You could even have an exploration activity where you move with weapon readied (a twin to the defend action). However, I doubt that would have been well-received.

 

[Celtavian]

If we are going into that detail, parrying should not cause an AOO. I know AOO are not as common in PF2, but it is ridiculous that “I use my sword to block his sword” can allow a fighter to hit me again. Plus reaction battles are more annoying than fun and should be minimized.

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.