The emotional benefits to the GM for that shift is truly remarkable. I don't feel like a crappy babysitter, I feel like I'm encouraging adventures with my friends. :)
the best thing I've found is this: pathfinder 2e can be as crunchy or as soft as I need it to be. Rules heavy for the players who need it; and I can make it rules soft for the RPG players when I need it.
As a GM I do love that encounter difficulties is not under tune or over tune in my experience running 5e and 3.5e. There's nothing more frustrating than CR table unable to tell whether it's difficult encounter or not. In Pathfinder, you know it's going to be boss fight if the monster level is 3 level higher than PC level. Other points is Pathfinder 2e is good at tricking your player to feel that they vertically progress, but actually the system horizontally progress them even with amazing feats and abilities. Monster do get more challenging as they level up to keep in par for high level campaign. Most youtube videos love to tell awesome thing about PF2e from player perspective and rarely see what the GM gets for running the game for the group.
God yes, GMing feels like a breeze compared to the constant house ruling and rule reminding and "Sorry but actually this twitter thread by the creator clarifies that you can't do this" that 5e kinda forced me into.
This is mainly because, if you have the action points, and the action doesn't specifically say you can't do it in this situation, then you can do it. Crazy
Switched from 5e 4 years ago.I agree! Pf2nd is way better for my taste as well. For all the reasons you said but also because it's world and lore is just super epic. Iove that the world is not just another clone of generic fantasy, but so diverse uniqe and living :)
Exactly! It was one of the biggest letdowns when I got into 5e a year ago, purchased the books and thought "lets get into it" in terms of world lore, gods and all that stuff ... just to find out that there is nothing to get into. The DMG basically just tells you "here's an example, make the rest up yourself". Bruh. I didn't pay nearly $60 to just make it up by myself.
I also like the fact that players are encouraged through game design to make groups rather than individual characters who can super grandstand every battle.
While all the other reasons are great, I personally love the character customisation the most. Even at level 1, With the same class, ancestry and heritage. You can end up with things like... A cleric martial or full support/ Divine damage dealer. Or sorcerers with varying bloodlines having vastly different priorities in combat aswell as spell lists. Just that every character get one special feat from ancestry and the class subtypes do so much
Absolutely, and the added classes allow you to explore things so much more in depth. If you wanted a stylish combatant in 5e you either went battlemaster or rogue swashbuckler. In pathfinder, swasbuckler is its own CLASS, and being stylish gives you actual mechanical benefits (panache), and you can be tons of different subtypes of stylish fighter (fencer? Gymnast? Witty banter? And even more). In 5e flavour is free but mechanically meaningless. In 2e that flavour is usually a fun mechanic.
I know right. Why should I bother what kind of god my paladin/champion/cleric follows if there isnt an actual mechanic involved with it. I put together a human fighter with the adopted ancestry feat. Just so they can pick goblin weapon familiarity and wield an explosive dogslicer while in Point blank Stance. .. yes this is still level 1 and I can have more RP and flavour in my combat than I could ever have with 5e's rules.
Worst part is when you finally get one at an inflated price, and....it's the first print run where the Alchemist class is still misprinted with all the mistakes in it! X( But with the remaster stuff, I think best bet for me right now is to bug local shops long enough they submit to pressure and (pre)orders the remaster books for me >_> Likely going to get them late compared to the US anyway, but at least would be able to get them (I hope)
Just found the channel. Thanks for covering this! And especially addressing the mis-perceived over-complexity that pushes some away from PF2. Will you be making more PF2 content?
I've played TTRPG's since 1980. First D&D (advanced) then a lot more. loved D&D 3 and 3.5. Didn't do 4th. Was thinking about 5th. Then OGL / Hasbro . Now onto Pathfinder 2e. Encounter Budget: Once you get the hang of it; it's wonderfully useful. It makes building encounters so damnn easy and CONSISTANT!! A Severe encounter is ALWAYS going to be. a severe encounter. Combat: the 3 action economy is SOO good. My party spent 3 turns beating the boss. (1st level party, 4th lvl boss) They were lucky (2 crits in turn one) and smart. One of my players worked out in a DND game it would have been at least 6 to 12 turns.
When you do have to make a house rule in PF2, the amount of existing rules gives a good "sanity check" for the house rule. You have a framework to model new rules on.
One thing to note. 2e is having a revised edition set of books coming out soon to leave the OGL completely behind and errata certain things. You may want to wait to buy the core book set until those release.
The original core book isn't hard, but it is intimidating and the organization could be better. If you are wanting to take the game for a spin, Archives of Nethys has all the mechanics and is free. You can get a feel and go from there if you want to hold out for the new core books. Since my Core is original print run it will save me a lot of errata skimming to switch, so I probably will. Supporting Paizo is well worth it.
I agree with most of what you said here, but in my group that I have switched over from 5e to PF2e a lot of players feel that the restrictions on movement, and item manipulation (they cost actions) are overly restrictive. A great example is a character who gets knocked unconscious. After missing a turn due to being knocked out, they then miss another turn standing, picking up their weapon and then maybe a move because the battle has now moved on. We've also found many cases where by introducing terrain into encounters (a good example is the Kobold boss in the starter set) the players have felt penalized for trying to maneuver around the battlefield due to the number of actions required to scale a 10ft cliff for example. Nethys forbid it's a 20ft cliff! (I have run this twice as a player and once as a GM and we had the same thing each time) What are your recommendations for dealing with this? I've spoken to a several PF2e veteran PLAYERS about this, and their answer is basically "Tell them to suck it up/L2P" I get it, but its really not very helpful.
In my personal experience, I'm a BIG implementor of the "rule of cool" when it comes to fixing certain rules that could be considered too restrictive. I love that PF2e / Paizo has fleshed out so many rules for so many scenarios, but I don't always use them or want to constantly refer to them because I don't want my sessions to be nothing but page flipping, you know what I mean? While I feel like some rules like having to pick up your weapon after you've fallen unconscious can be a bit brutal at times, I honestly don't mind it that much (and the same goes for most of the players I've introduced to PF2e). In my experience, this particular rule makes going down a lot more scary for the players and has led to a lot of creative choices from my players that they normally wouldn't make because in other systems where teamwork may not be as crucial as it is in PF2e, and where they'd automatically pickup their weapon after becoming conscious, in PF2e they have to make the (sometimes) difficult decision of either spending their actions to ready themselves for their next turn, or perhaps use those actions to get into flanking position for their friend who's turn is next, or perhaps using their last action to heal one of their allies who still hasn't been healed, etc. Since PF2e requires a lot more teamwork than other systems, and because going down is a lot more punishing than in other systems, I've found that my players respect encounters and monsters a lot more because of this threat and I feel like encounters become more challenging, which the majority of my players have agreed makes the overall experience more enjoyable and thrilling. ⚔️ But I try to not get too caught up on all the nitty gritty details of scenarios and if you feel it'd take away from an encounter if you implement an unnecessary amount of rules or rules you perhaps don't like, then there's nothing stopping you from just not implementing them. 🤷♂️ After all, the players in PF2e are referred to as "heroes". 🧙♂️🥷🧝♂️ So I don't see the harm in letting players feel like they truly are heroes by forgoing a couple of small rules if the moment's right. (But that's just my personal GMing style and opinion.)
I am starting to think I may pick Pathfinder to play. I am just getting back in to TTRPG, I am not in Estes in any rule set yet. Pathfinder is looking to be what I may go with.
The best thing I like about character creation in PF2e is that I can make a character and not have to worry about someone else doing the same class in the party. I could make 2 human fighters (with the same background even) and still be entirely different beyond just weapon choice or fluff, from level 1.
something i REALLY disliked in other games was variety in games rulings, i HATE it. i want to show up to a game and get the game i expect, meaning even as a PLAYER. i deeply appreciate the consistency of GM rulings because if nothing else, i DO NOT like being like "but the rules say this!!" and them saying no. i want to read a rule, and pretty confidently know. here is the way this goes. and because paizo has a tendency to UNDER tune, often any "GM interpretation" is in my BENEFIT which is a LOT more fun. im okay disliking the game designer, i want THEM to tell me know because i WANT the GM to feel empowered to say yes or let me do cool stuff and know that even without that, i wont be f***ing his game up (something even worse)
as both a GM AND player i absolutly LOVE the level system, whenever i played the first edition, i would often struggle with "what exactly should i have rn?" and what are some options. i would often find feat guides and for 5e, i didnt ever even bother looking at the feats. for pf its all free, and i can CLEARLY see each option available to me. there are not thousands of feats. there are 95 feats for the BIGGEST option, for level one general feats. there are obviously OPTIMAL choices in character creation. but even the most STRINGENT optimizer will admit. i mean, one 2 rules you were gonna do anyway. youll be fine.
One thing I love with pathfinders character creation is it feels vastly more freeform than 5e. When I played baldurs gate 3, I felt pretty limited with my character, and felt that I had to make my character around my class. In pathfinder not only were there so many options, a lot of my options made my character very unique and supported specific aspects of my character.
Have just recently started playing a bit of PF2 and I agree, the amount of customization it allows players to put into the mechanical side of their characters is nuts and I love it. XD
I actually got my start as a player in Pathfinder 1E. Unfortunately, since it was released, I haven't really had the time to look into 2E, so this was a nice overview of the game mechanics. A lot of 1E's mechanics were based on D&D 3.5, but it seems like they really changed a lot of things in the new version haven't they? Kinda makes me want to get back into playing again.
They've definitely changed a lot and they have most definitely succeeded at making it more approachable! (Or at least in my humble opinion.) I think whether you like 2e or not really depends on your playstyle. 🤔💭 I've had new players both dislike and love it for varying reasons, but I definitely think it's worth giving it a go at some point. 😁
As a long time GM and player of PF1 and part of the playtest for PF2, yes, a TON has changed. Almost enough to call it a brand new game, with some fun callbacks. It has its issues, just like each and every game system, but what I have experienced of it is very positive.
I would love to play more PF2, but most of my friends are still wrapped around 5e. It's hard to get them to switch to something else, especially when they're so comfortable with 5e.
problem with PF2 feats: none of them feel good, like I just want a fighter to hit harder, not become a debuffer or apply a condition, or buff my party or appyl frightened whatever, just hit harder....and no feats do that. (No power attack doesn't count, it is a trap that is in the overwhelming majority of cases worse than attacking twice, like mathematically it is never better, no matter the targets resistance, but maybe, a situation exists where it is worth it). Your comment about combat never feeling trivial is true...but it also means the characters never feel heroic, or powerful, they just muddle thru never improving....
Debuffing, especially things like frightened, DOES make you hit harder because of the stages of success mechanism. -1/-2 AC from frightened means you’ll crit 5%/10% more often. So your average DPR goes up significantly. Getting +2 flat damage vs getting 2x damage is massively more damage.
I want to preface this by saying that I have been a long time player and GM of PF1 and a general big time fan of Paizo since Pathfinder's release back in '09. So this comes from a place of love. But has Paizo finally figured out save DCs? I haven't had enough experience with 2e to really know. Save DCs in 1e did not work and were one of the most common house rules I saw/used. DC 15 save on a roughly APL 15 item was pretty bad. I do love the new action system, and turning just about everything into feats (while strange at first) definitely made character customization really robust and enjoyable. I'm also a HUGE fan of the proficiency system for skills and such. Very cool, Paizo.
To my knowledge I honestly don't know. 💭 As far as the core rulebook goes there aren't any roll tables to create one, but there are guidelines for creating your own monsters, adventures, and encounters. However I wouldn't be surprised if the community has created one.
@@THEFabianValenzuelaFoundry VTT has a mod that allows you to generate new dungeons based on criteria you set. It only makes the layout but it always looked really fun to run
@@nattertot been using it but have never used the built in macros, that is insanely useful. It did spark an interest to invest into some other modules for Foundry as well
Everything in the newer books is balanced around the CRB classes and equipment. Some classes have more options, but nothing is strictly better than CRB options.
Pathfinder is also really easy to min-max, if one does any snooping around on the internet. I have to consciously tone my characters down when I build them, as I know my fellow players only really bother with the game when they're sitting at the table. So although there is greater choice, flavor, nuance, and opportunity, there is also a greater allowance for having a more min-maxed character. I don't think it is a bad thing, but something for GMs especially to be aware of.
@@Arkancide You're right that it's 100% something to be aware of when playing Pathfinder 1st edition (or DnD 3.5, which is what first edition pathfinder was based on). The "power ceiling" on these games is incredibly high, and a player who knows how to do it can completely break the game. This is a big drawback to some people, but others really enjoy this and it can be a lot of fun with the right kind of group. Pathfinder 2E provides a far more balanced experience where it's very difficult to create an overly powerful or too weak character, not just compared to pf1E but compared to other games like DND 5e as well. I find that when playing with a mixed group where some players are newers and others are more experienced, this is very helpful.
Just tell me the downside of PF2e itself, and not about there aren't any players/GMs. Whoever recommends PF2e never really talks about its flaws, and they only talk about lack of players/GMs if ever. They just look like they're simply blinded over how "tight" the rules are and scared to face its flaws, which every human creation should have.
I've thought about making a video covering the downsides of PF2e, but generally those types of videos garnish more negativity than anything else. But I'll probably end up making the video at some point anyways because I agree! Most videos only cover the good stuff and never the bad, so I think it'd be pretty informative / helpful to some folks I'm sure. 💭
For combat focused sessions it's one of the most reliable, and I find homebrewing items and monsters for it to be much easier. But for purely social roleplay it's probably on the same level as 5e (which is to say not the best), though it has actual rules for downtime and exploration which helps
On the contrary it’s popularity is on the rise. Once Hasbro/WoTC continues along it’s path of self destruction in pursuit of monetization and repeats the debacle of the 4e release (which made PF1e the top TTRPG on the market then) that will continue its growth. Yes there are a ton of other games out there and I play those as well (Blades in the Dark, Worlds/Stars Without Number, CoC, and many others) but for the “tactical” combat itch PF2e is leaps and bounds ahead of many offerings out there hands down. Is it for everybody? Nope sure isn’t but it’s popularity is rising and to deny that is simply disingenuous.
