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

[Thomas Shey]

In PF2's defense, you can kinda go through the book in order and build a character organically. You pick ancestry and get your heritage feat (listed in that section), stat increases, and traits. Then background and get that stuff. Then your class neatly lists what you get, the optional subclasses, the class feats (organized by level). It's not bad at all.

There's some issues with "Let's go through the classes and pick out the things listed there. Then let's look at the skills and see what we actually want good there. Then the non-class feats and do the same. And then, if we're playing a spellcaster, go through the options there. Oh, and let's look through the armor and weapons and see what seems useful and fun there." But that's an issue in any detailed RPG, even moreso in the exception-based designs that dominate the D&D-adjacent market. Its kind of the price of doing business.

 

[Enrahim]

In PF2's defense, you can kinda go through the book in order and build a character organically. You pick ancestry and get your heritage feat (listed in that section), stat increases, and traits. Then background and get that stuff. Then your class neatly lists what you get, the optional subclasses, the class feats (organized by level). It's not bad at all.

I also made a character by the Draw Steel book, and it was exactly the same linear process. The only thing I can see that could cause back and forth would be if wanting to immediately chose skill or perk (or kit) when those are mentioned, rather than do as me and make a note of that and wait with chosing until I reached the respective chapters?

 

[SteveC]

I've made a ton of characters with Pathbuilder, and one party of them on Forge Steel. And I didn't find either very difficult. They step you through the process. I think both games would be more difficult without online tools, so in that way, they are similar.

 

[Hermes_Alexandria]

I'm in the process of building a character for Draw Steel, and all I can say, is that it is not a straight forward process.

In fact it's quite frustrating.

Having to jump back and forth between sections to build a character is one of the old school rituals that I'm glad I left behind.

And weeding through paragraph after paragraph of fluff to find the information I need, when I have limit time is not fun.

Give me Pathbuilder any day over this mess of a book.

Character and Adventure builder

Forge Steel

andyaiken.github.io