Pathfinder 2e

[bruce205]

Is Pathfinder 2e an Improvement on 1e ? Love Wrath but it strains my brain :)

[hilburnashua]

The rules, and especially the modifier stacking, are simplified. Spells are a bit neutered.

[Silicate Bunny]

"Improvement" is an extremely subjective concept. I've found some parts of it neat, and other parts of it not so neat, especially in regards to DCs for enemies both in what they force players to roll against, and what they have to overcome to reduce or ignore player abilities. Mind, the vtt my group uses seems to favor giving the GM as many nat 20s as possible while the rest of us get sub-averages, so there's some bias.

That said, martial classes do a whole lot better with the differences between 1e and 2e. Three-action turn system is interesting, too.

[Ishan451]

Postat inițial de bruce205:

Is Pathfinder 2e an Improvement on 1e ?

No. 2e sucks. Especially if you like casters.

[pete3great]

If you thought everyone was copy'n'pasting the same builds over and over in 1st, wait until you see 2nd!

[Brian]

I've only ever played D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder 1e in video game form. But as someone who has now played a decent amount of Pathfinder 2e tabletop (and GMed most of that time), I would say 2e is better in every way I can think of. The main reason for this is that they nearly started over in terms of designing the mechanics. They weren't just iterating on 1e, they bulldozed and rebuilt from the ground up. And when the remaster comes out later this year, it will essentially have zero ties with old systems.

[Yannir]

Streamlining things is never good. I like a complicated system I can immerse into.

[Brian]

Postat inițial de Yannir:

Streamlining things is never good...

This is false on its face. When devs say they are streamlining a sequel, is it USUALLY a bad sign? Yes. But obviously there are cases where streamlining is very, very beneficial. It's all about quality of execution.

[Ishan451]

Postat inițial de Brian:

This is false on its face. When devs say they are streamlining a sequel, is it USUALLY a bad sign? Yes. But obviously there are cases where streamlining is very, very beneficial. It's all about quality of execution.

And Pathfinder 2e"streamlined" it to the point where it is boring. Without Archetypes every Class is the same. Sure your Mountain Stance Monk will have a different flavor from your Crane Stance Monk, but until you invest a feat in entering a stance as free action the first turn as monk will always be "enter stance" + advance/strike+flurry of blows. And any subsequent turn will be: Reposition/Strike+Flurry+strike. The 3rd Strike can be exchanged for Bon Mot, intimidate, Step or Feint. Intimidate is hardcapped to one try per day success or fail for a -1 for a Round. And its not different for other Martials. You build to one or two moves and that is your rotation. More effects get added, but the rotation is always the same.

Actions like disarm require crit success to be useful and official Adventures pit you against opponents several level above you, that will save and hit on a 2+.

And best we dont even talk about just how much Paizo hates Mages. If you play a caster you get 1 thing per round with enemies saving in 75+% of the time for that extra useless feeling.

PF2e needs a benevolent GM that fixes the egregious problems with the System by softballing enemies or adding a bunch of variant rules.

PF2e is a terrible system that i have come to loath GMing that for the past 3 years and i cant wait to finally put the campaign behind me so ill never need to touch that POS system again.

[Brian]

To each his own. I love it and would never want to GM a system as needlessly complicated as 1e. Also in terms of character build options, that’s what 2e is known for, especially with free archetype variant rule, which nearly everyone plays with. And with significantly less feat tax. So I would say you’re objectively wrong there.

[.//slayer]

To each his own. I love it and would never want to GM a system as needlessly complicated as 1e.

The complexity doesn't matter when the GMing is done by the CPU.

So I would say you’re objectively wrong there.

Objectively wrong in preferring one edition over another?..

[Ishan451]

Postat inițial de Brian:

So I would say you’re objectively wrong there.

Objectively wrong in my statement that the GM needs to fix the system with Variant Rules and softballing? Is that why you said most play PF2e with a Variant Rule?

Yeah, i don't think objectively wrong means what you think it means.

[Max Kojote, M.SC]

I personally like both editions. I've warmed up a bit more to PF2e, but that's mostly from having Inventor as a class, and gnolls as more than just an example of the race builder. But that's just me on that front.

On my wizard I've been enjoying the new casting system as well. Having more stuff that actually does stuff on a successful save is nice. Not needing to have to go into Dex for touch attacks is also nice (even if they're still less reliable). Having scaling cantrips is a definite improvement! As is having Investigator actually using their main thing before level 4.

[Immortal Reaver]

It is superbalanced around martials. This has effect spellcasters are weaker on some levels because for example Fighter gets +2 weapon, but wizard gets nothing to have bigger chance to hit with spells.
They get rid of the some powerful spells (=made normaly unachievable by being lvl 10). Also all the combat power comes from class and archetype abilities, you cannot influence it with feats (Weapon Focus is not in P2E), they are now only for things like jumping higher. You have 3 actions (different spells take different amount of actions) and biggest annoyance, Raise Shield is action you need to do every round to get bonus to AC.

Another thing with super balancing is that you just cannot fight enemy that is +5 CR higher no matter what, even though in P1E you could at lvl 5 fight CR 10, on certain condition, (lets say for example Rakshasa CR10, if you had for example lvl 5 party with Paladin with Piercing weapon and rest of the party would focus on support for Paladin then you can kill it, it can be hard but very possible). At the same time in P1 you can end up CR 1 encounter killing lvl 4 party and unless they run away (most people never do), they will die in certainty, like swarms and ghosts.

Also if DM gives you in P2E enchanted weapon/armor/shield early it will break the balancing, same if DM gives it to you too late.