Pathfinder 2E Taking20 -"I'm Quitting Pathfinder 2e Because of This Issue"

[Justice and Rule]

My feeling for PF2 characters are that they are much less competent than either PF1 or 5E characters. In 5E, the difference between being trained or not is rather small until high levels, so 5E characters feel like they are competent at most things that are not on their dump stats.

I would disagree: 5E characters are easily less competent. Having a slightly better chance at high-end tasks doesn't really make up for lower-end tasks always being more difficult. That combines with fewer options for characters to advance: you have fewer skills, worse stats, and few options to do anything about either (especially when they are fighting against feats). You never really gain "competence" at tasks because of the swinginess of the dice, unless you're a bard/rogue or have expertise from a Feat. And that's not even getting into the problems with Saves...

In PF2, your stats are better and advance more broadly so that even while you might not be able to do the high-end stuff, you can more consistently do the low-end stuff. More importantly, you gain more skills at creation, including just having Perception and your important class skill/s (Unlike, say, a 5E Ranger who has to spend their precious few skill slots on Survival and Nature), along with being able to get more skills with a decent Intelligence (Which, again, is more possible given how stat allocation goes in character creation) and being able to gain skills fairly easily as levels go on.

So yeah, you're way more likely to be broadly competent in PF2, where you'll have better stats and more skills, along with the fact that your skill advancement options are way more open. 5E's skill system just makes you feel incompetent all the time and it was one of the first things I went about trying to mod when I got the book.

Comparing PF1 to PF2, race/heritage is my prime example; in PF1 you got all of the classic race abilities, while in PF2, all the things an ancestry can do became a palette and you are only allowed a few of the choices.

I am not saying this is a flaw in PF2, that is a matter of taste.

I get this a little bit more, but at the same time I'm not sure it really works compared to 5E. You get a bit more at the start compared for gaining more stuff over time. It's the difference between getting a lump sum versus regular installments. <shrug>

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

My feeling for PF2 characters are that they are much less competent than either PF1 or 5E characters. In 5E, the difference between being trained or not is rather small until high levels, so 5E characters feel like they are competent at most things that are not on their dump stats. Comparing PF1 to PF2, race/heritage is my prime example; in PF1 you got all of the classic race abilities, while in PF2, all the things an ancestry can do became a palette and you are only allowed a few of the choices.

I am not saying this is a flaw in PF2, that is a matter of taste.

Having experienced both systems heavily, I think there is an interesting distinction to be discussed in terms of competence.

A 5e character is competent in the sense that they have a reasonable numerical chance to try just about anything, and it might work, this isn't in relation to their skill set, but is more fundamental than that-- the same could be said of just about anyone else, its practically incidental to the character themselves, just a feature of playing the game. Your 5e character has an ambiguous pool of knowledge and skills that they picked up somewhere and can muddle their way through on, its a game set up for someone to say 'Well I'm no X, but goshdangit, I can give it the ole college try!' and it does that specifically to invite the tension of possibly succeeding, but also failing, instead of players avoiding solutions entirely if they aren't good at them (which admittedly kind of happens anyway.)

A PF2e character is competent in the sense that they have a wide array of things to specialize in, and a pool of resources that encourages spreading out across that pool to a degree earlier games didn't. They're built to be good at each thing that they happen to be good at, its all very intentional (or at least, it can be) but in comparison to pf1e (or 4e, in my case) they don't have to spend that all in one place to be good at something. The pathfinder 2e character is a renaissance man-- their education and training covers an array of different abilities, but they absolutely come from a skillset effort was invested in acquiring, anything that doesn't fit that description, well the game does stab at letting you try it, but even the culture surrounding the game would pretty firmly consider it someone else's job.

In short, I feel that in 5e, tasks are just considered easy enough for anyone to try their hand at, but in PF2e characters have a wide skillset.

 

[Justpassingthrough]

When i look at the conditions pages i have the impression, not in all but in many, which is 100 different tastes of -1 debuffing. This for me is having countless choices of almost the same thing which I understand as an illusion of choice

Ps. Most spells will end up giving a condition that ends up being -1 debuff.
Ps. -2 debuff is not a rebuttal.

 

[kenada]

Conditions are just a way of giving a name to rules elements, so they can be reused and used by other parts of the game. Arguing that they constitute a kind of choice (or lack thereof) seems tenuous at best.

Even if there were exactly one condition in the game, and that was the only effect you can impose, there can still be a choice in how one goes about doing that. For example: the “condition” of taking damage.

You can do it with a sword, or you can do it to groups (fireball, etc). You can have someone do it on your behalf, or you can manipulate the environment to do it for you. Calling this an “illusion of choice” would be incredibly reductive.

It also misses the point that Cody is making. When he talks about “illusion of choice”, he is talking about having several choices but only certain ones are viable because they are “the best” or “obvious”. If we can take multiple oaths to the same end (applying our hypothetical one condition), then we actually do have a choice.

Of course, that assumes how we go about things matters in an RPG. I’d posit that’s the point. Otherwise, we’re all just sitting around fishing for excuses to roll dice. And if it always was just dice, was there ever any choice? Well, yes. How the journey goes is what creates a story.

 

[Justice and Rule]

When i look at the conditions pages i have the impression, not in all but in many, which is 100 different tastes of -1 debuffing. This for me is having countless choices of almost the same thing which I understand as an illusion of choice

Ps. Most spells will end up giving a condition that ends up being -1 debuff.
Ps. -2 debuff is not a rebuttal.

I mean, most of the conditions don't actually deal with that. What conditions they do have are largely sectioning off ability penalties so that you don't have to rewrite them continually for each power or spell, thus you don't have to constantly refer to them. I mean, let's look at them:

Clumsy: Dex penalties. Simple, but also makes sense and doesn't need to be more complex.
Drained: Constitution penalty, but also reduces your Maximum Hit points. Also has a unique recovery mechanic (resting).
Enfeebled: Strength penalties. Same as Clumsy.
Fatigued: AC and Save penalty, but also you can't choose an exploration penalty.
Frightened: Straight up penalty to everything, but unique recovery mechanic (decreases by one at the end of your turn).
Sickened: Same as Frightened, but you can't ingest items (like potions) and unique recovery mechanic (spend one action to attempt a save to lower your Sickened level).
Stupified: Mental abilities penalty, plus chance your spells will fail on a check.

That's really not that many (largely focused around very common debuffs), and trying to just focus on the penalties would be like saying all of 5E's conditions are just Adavantage/Disadvantage. It's how they are focused that matters.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And there's absolutely significant choice when you have multiple options to impose those; some of them are far more relevant to some opponents than others (Stupefied being the standout; if you choose to do that to a non-spell-casting opponent, it probably was a bad choice barring special circumstances).

 

[Justpassingthrough]

And there's absolutely significant choice when you have multiple options to impose those; some of them are far more relevant to some opponents than others (Stupefied being the standout; if you choose to do that to a non-spell-casting opponent, it probably was a bad choice barring special circumstances).

Compared to the 5th edition, pathfinder has much more conditions, each one being infinitely much less relevant and an excessive focus on debuffs. A million forms of debuffs is like an ice cream shop with a million flavors of blue ice cream, you say it has a million flavors and I say you only have blue ice cream. And this is what I feel with the feets and everything in pf2. For me it is no use having thirty forms of debuff and all summons so far are bad, For me it is no use having variety to do the same thing

 

[Thomas Shey]

Compared to the 5th edition, pathfinder has much more conditions, each one being infinitely much less relevant and an excessive focus on debuffs. A million forms of debuffs is like an ice cream shop with a million flavors of blue ice cream, you say it has a million flavors and I say you only have blue ice cream. And this is what I feel with the feets and everything in pf2. For me it is no use having thirty forms of debuff and all summons so far are bad, For me it is no use having variety to do the same thing

Well, there's two answers to this.

1. If you don't care about debuffs, then yes, you're not going to care about PF2e because its very much a team-oriented game where a lot of what you're doing is setting up each other to be more effectively.


2. To be blunt, almost all attacks in virtually every game adds up to "debuffs, takeouts, and damage", and it was a conscious choice in the PF2e design to stay away from takeouts. So either you're you're doing debuffs or it adds up to "what's the most efficient way to do damage", and bluntly, that's far more likely to be illusory than any set of debuff choices once you're aware what you're dealing with, and by the nature of D&D style damage, is intrinsically bland.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Compared to the 5th edition, pathfinder has much more conditions, each one being infinitely much less relevant and an excessive focus on debuffs. A million forms of debuffs is like an ice cream shop with a million flavors of blue ice cream, you say it has a million flavors and I say you only have blue ice cream. And this is what I feel with the feets and everything in pf2. For me it is no use having thirty forms of debuff and all summons so far are bad, For me it is no use having variety to do the same thing

What are you on about? Pathfinder 2E doesn't really have that many more "debuff" conditions than 5E: by my own count, I'd say it's 21 to 9 (I'm counting Fatigued and Exhaustion for each side), and most of the extras for Pathfinder 2E are just common monster and spell effects that are also found 5E.

Like, the Drained condition in PF2 is basically the same as the anti-healing effect some undead have in 5E, only codified so it doesn't have to be written out every time it is used again. Same with Slowed, Controlled, Confused and Enfeebled. Like, the only ones I can really think of that don't exist in 5E are Dazzled, Doomed, Fascinated, and Flat-footed. And instead of having the general Poisoned condition, Pathfinder breaks it down so different poisons actually, you know, feel different.

Like, this is absolutely the weirdest critique I've seen of the game, largely because it comes off as nonsense when you actually know something about both systems.

 

[CapnZapp]

Pathfinder 2 easily has much more clutter re: conditions than 5E. You frequently need to remember a lot of little rules (to deduct -1 there, to make this save here, and conditions frequently end for different reasons at different times).

There's just no contest.