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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8152816" data-attributes="member: 70468">My point with OSE is that it’s up front about what it is. We ran Winter’s Daughter tonight, and it’s the same way. It says it’s not balanced around the PCs, and it means it (the first encounter is with 4* HD cultists, or level 5 cultists in my PF2 conversion). PF2 feels like it wants to be the game for adventure paths, but it doesn’t want to limit its market to just that, so it ends up kind of muddled. Moreover, it suffers from <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/43568/roleplaying-games/game-structures-addendum-system-matters" target="_blank">not doing enough to teach you how to run it</a>.Look at our discussions where we suggest ways to handle problems, and CapnZapp rightly responds asking where the book says to do that. In that case, we’re both right. The things we suggest would help deal with the problems, and CapnZapp is right that the system doesn’t tell you to do those things. There are a lot of things an experienced GM can do to make PF2 work pretty well in practice, but a naïve approach might result in the game being way too difficult (especially if the group doesn’t grasp how important group tactics are).My feelings after today’s session is that I really wish I ran that module in OSE. My players really enjoyed it, and while PF2 worked fine, I really chafed at some of the conversion work I had to do. I think I’ve pretty much cemented myself as having very mixed feelings on PF2. On one hand, there are a number of elements I like. On the other, there’s some stuff that’s just a pain that I’d rather not be there. I also kind of get the criticism of rotations. One of my players chose the swashbuckler pregen, and that character was always having to do something to generate panache. It just felt kind of rote. Oh, it’s time to do a fascinating performance, so you can power up your things. Yeah, you can do other things to do that. Using your style thing is the most obvious, so every fight started out the same way. I don’t think the player really cared, but I can see someone’s being bored with that. I saw some similar stuff in the magus playtest (where you had to play a certain way to get the most out of Striking Spell).I’m not going to claim that’s an illusion of choice because I think there are more choices than just (and more choices that matter outside of) what you do in combat or when building characters, but it made combat feel kind of bleh. There was an investigator, and it was the same way. Devise a Strategem, do a thing (or not do a thing when you roll a natural 1). I need still to process my thoughts, so I’m not entirely sure what to make of that feeling right now.</blockquote>

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