What gets me playing Draw Steel and not Pathfinder 2e?

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think that's a fair comment at all.

I think the issue isn't "low energy" and that is just insulting and also a bit ignorant, frankly. The issue is that a certain mode of play is close to optimal, so that mode of play will be reflected.

Except, as I said, that mode of play when used without thought is not optimal. That's the point. The "swing, swing, swing" thing may have been the best choice in PF1e. Its not in 2e, and anyone who's doing it there is not thinking about it, and I don't feel a need to be complimentary to people who don't.

He's hardly the first poster to point out PF2 can easily devolve into very repetitive combats and near-identical strategies, and claiming it's just lazy or dim players causing this seems to me to be likely to be wrong.

And a lot of those were in the same bucket; if you do the same thing round after round, you're not playing optimally, and you probably haven't looked at the game closely. I've played enough PF2e, with radically different characters that I'm plenty comfortable saying that, thanks. There may be extremely specific builds where some repetition is common, but they're unlikely to be very good ones, and with anything else while there are some common tactics that pay to use regularly, none of them are things you can just apply via autopilot, and anyone who thinks so does not actually understand the mechanics, or does not care (like I said, I've heard of people who do the swing-swing-swing thing but its demonstrably a bad idea with one specific exception, and its marginal even there.)

My statement wasn't intended to be complimentary, because as I said, at least two of the things Retreater described them doing are either dumb or lazy; and one of them is so well known its probably both.

Edit: To be fair, with a very small number of samples or a GM who's not putting in any effort at their end it could theoretically be because they're basically just fighting the same fight over and over again, but that almost would require deliberate intent its so hard to do. From his further description, I played a character as my first PF2e character that was at least of a type with the one he played and the pattern he describes while functional was by no means routinely optimal.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be clear, I never have the opportunity to take a 3rd attack in a round. The MAP for 3 attacks (-10) would be too great to consider that.

That was one of my points. That's a really bad tactic and in most cases is a case of people carrying over habits from PF1e or D&D 3e and assuming its still the best choice when its a tactic of last resort.

Best case, I raise shield, and attack twice. The -5 is an acceptable penalty. My first attack is almost always a hit (and often a critical hit).

With a sword and board fighter (which is one of the first characters I played) that's a pretty viable pattern, but its not 100% the best choice. There are opponents who, if you know they'll still want to attack you, the best thing to do with the third action is to disengage (in fact, sometimes it more useful to do the attack, disengage and move twice with certain opponents, though a lot of factors complicate that. But that's just the point; even with a sword-and-board guy (who is one of the simplest characters to play in the game) situation matters).

I still do things like attempt to provide a flank for the rogue to sneak attack. I'll pay attention to make a reactive strike. But I'm tellin' ya, I waited 28 minutes last session to have my entire turn consist of "exploit vulnerability, raise shield, move 20 feet." Didn't get an attack. I got to roll a single recall knowledge check. Next turn (12 minutes later): raise shield, move 20 feet, strike.

Some battles against some foes are going to turn into repetitive patterns definitely, because they consist mostly of one type of opponent where there's a set of tactics for some characters that work particularly well. Golems have a particular approach to taking them on (well, did before the most current version at least, I've heard some comments its less true now) that's a little degenerate for example. I was objecting to the idea one could do this battle in and battle out with no reference to opponents and have it be the best thing to do. If that' happening, the GM is using particularly repetitive battle construction.

Experiences like this have got me thinking "That's it. I've seen everything this system has to offer. I'm completely satisfied without playing this system again."
The amount of effort this system takes to be moderately interesting tactically just isn't a good return on investment for me.

I really have to suggest one of a very small number of things can be going on if it gave that impression: 1. A small enough set of samples to give a poor feel for the system as a whole, or 2. A GM or adventure with very repetitive battle construction. Its about a million miles from my experience here, and I can't resolve the two there.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I play in a big Pathfinder 2e campaign... pretty much no one there is lazy, unimaginative, or not smart. All the martials fall into repetitive behavior each turn in order to pursue the optimal course of action.

Maybe our GM could be more helpful/forgiving for us to do non-optimal solutions but, RAW, bonuses to do that sort of thing rarely approach optimal. Many things have been sacrificed to the god of game balance.

Pathfinder 2e is, at times, a crushingly boring game.

If you've never seen a situation where the things Retreater describes are not optimal, someone is missing something at one end of the table or another. There's always going to be some tactics that work halfway reliably, but that's not the same thing. Poorly game balanced games do this sort of thing even more strongly; they just favor some character builds more than others.

 

[Enrahim]

If you've never seen a situation where the things Retreater describes are not optimal, someone is missing something at one end of the table or another. There's always going to be some tactics that work halfway reliably, but that's not the same thing. Poorly game balanced games do this sort of thing even more strongly; they just favor some character builds more than others.

I have limited experience with PF2. But my impression from reading it was that there appeared to be no clear incentive to not specialise, and ample posibility to do so. If you spend about 90% of your feats into two actions that can be done togetter in a round you either are going to use this action combo a lot, or you failed at optimising during character build. Specialising in this way seem to be possible, and if the game indeed is balanced, than doing so shouldn't be clearly inferior to some other build?

Edit: And to keep things on topic - I cannot think of any feature in DS that clearly singles out single actions for boosting. There are boosts to broader categories of actions like fire or weapon, but as you can switch out abilities at any point you can adapt so you still have a broad palette to work with in terms of where you have put char gen resources. Still not sure if the variation provided is good enough to avoid rutine, like spaming your 3 resource ability, because the higher cost abilities are too situational..

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have limited experience with PF2. But my impression from reading it was that there appeared to be no clear incentive to not specialise, and ample posibility to do so. If you spend about 90% of your feats into two actions that can be done togetter in a round you either are going to use this action combo a lot, or you failed at optimising during character build.

The difference is, even the best tricks aren't the best tricks all the time. You learn them because they're good a fair bit of the time. And because you're probably still at least capable when they aren't.

An example is tripping. Tripping, if you focus on it, can be very useful fairly frequently because of the three action economy when deployed properly. But you can't just do it mindlessly, because to make it work effectively has some overhead in actions on your own part, and sometimes its not the best choice. Its not a particular failure to take though, because its useful enough to justify investment in the Athletics skill and a couple of feats that make it work better (because the other choices you have wouldn't necessarily be more useful more often)

Specialising in this way seem to be possible, and if the game indeed is balanced, than doing so shouldn't be clearly inferior to some other build?

It isn't inferior, but it also isn't the all-purpose power tool. PF2e has some feats that are arguably overspecialized (you really have to get a lot out of jumping for some of the feats that support it to be all that exciting) but there are really pretty few that are clearly winning ways in a generic sense.

That was my objection; its not that some tactics and the character construction to do them can't be useful. Its that if you just do that and then do it every time, its not actually anything resembling optimal play, and its entirely possible people without such a specialization who are actually paying attention to what the right thing to do in the current situation is will on the whole, do better. Because those matter in PF2e.

 

[Hermes_Alexandria]

Edit: And to keep things on topic - I cannot think of any feature in DS that clearly singles out single actions for boosting. There are boosts to broader categories of actions like fire or weapon, but as you can switch out abilities at any point you can adapt so you still have a broad palette to work with in terms of where you have put char gen resources. Still not sure if the variation provided is good enough to avoid rutine, like spaming your 3 resource ability, because the higher cost abilities are too situational..

For my game that's where Victories adding to your resource pool kicked it. The boss battle was the best fight because we had enough base resources to use our highest cost abilities, with a lot of table conversation on how to combo them together.

 

[Elvish Lore]

For my game that's where Victories adding to your resource pool kicked it. The boss battle was the best fight because we had enough base resources to use our highest cost abilities, with a lot of table conversation on how to combo them together.

As someone who doesn’t love lots of ‘war room’ conversations during battle, this is worrying to me. And I’ve heard it said now several times from various sources that there’s plenty of strategizing with the rest of the players about best course of action during a fight.

 

[Hermes_Alexandria]

Abilites that combo with other players, and not simply buff, is a key feature of Draw Steel. It is a very gamist game that probably plays best with some meta-talk at the table.

Coleville quotes the X-men's Fastball Special and the Avengers where Iron Man lazerbeams off Captain America's sheild as inspriation.

I understand of the fun of a more simulationist game, where everyone is alone on the battlefield, but this isn't that game.

 

[Retreater]

With a sword and board fighter (which is one of the first characters I played) that's a pretty viable pattern, but its not 100% the best choice. There are opponents who, if you know they'll still want to attack you, the best thing to do with the third action is to disengage (in fact, sometimes it more useful to do the attack, disengage and move twice with certain opponents, though a lot of factors complicate that. But that's just the point; even with a sword-and-board guy (who is one of the simplest characters to play in the game) situation matters).

I'm a mirror/weapon implement Thaumaturge. I'm also the party's only frontline warrior-type. If I disengage, that opens up the rest of the party to get attacked and also denies me of my ability to use Reactive Strike. There have been the rare instance where I've been able to mirror myself to an otherwise unreachable opponent or to escape grapples, but it's few and far between (two encounters in around a year of weekly play.)

If that' happening, the GM is using particularly repetitive battle construction.

Maybe part of the problem is that we're playing a 2E conversion of a 1E adventure, and the experience isn't perfectly tailored to 2E. But I can say that I've seen similar issues play out with other GMs in other campaigns. It just hasn't been as noticeable because this is the longest I've played the same character.

I really have to suggest one of a very small number of things can be going on if it gave that impression: 1. A small enough set of samples to give a poor feel for the system as a whole, or 2. A GM or adventure with very repetitive battle construction. Its about a million miles from my experience here, and I can't resolve the two there.

I've had a lot of encounters in this campaign. I'm curious, what's the longest you've played with the same character make-up? We're over a year in the game, just reached 8th level, and play about 3 hours a week. It's very repetitive.