# Pathfinder Beginner Box Review



## Ringtail (Jan 11, 2021)

Naturally I compared it to the 5e set, specifically the Lost Mines of Phandelver adventure. I was a little disappointed by the group adventure. The dungeon included in the pathfinder box is excellent, with traps and puzzles and combat and a few alternate routes, it is just that, a dungeon. You could probably finish in 1 or 2 sessions. LMoP is not just a dungeon, it's a whole adventure, with a town, wilderness, ruins, social encounters and *3 Dungeons! *(Of various size.) 

However I still think the paizo box is better for including a map and pawns. When I first started playing D&D in high school, I had a handful of REAPER BONES minis (unpainted and unbased) plus a handful of 3e Pre Painted I bought at a con from a bin. Having the minis would have rocked my world. The *Troubles in Otari *adventure is a better match for LMoP, though unfortunately that's separate.


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## Jeff Carpenter (Jan 11, 2021)

The 1st edition beginers box had rules for advancing to 5th level. Disappoint this only goes to 3rd level. That box was a great pathfinder basic version.

Overall as said by Ringtail above LMoP is a better adventure and introduction, but pawns and a huge plus. 

I bought this to see if I would want 2e and im not sure it gave enough to wet my appetite and isn't as good as the 1e box in my opinion.


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## univoxs (Jan 11, 2021)

I would be interested in this just because of the solo adventure. Having to do a lot of that kind of thing these days.


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## aco175 (Jan 11, 2021)

They are still offering this adventure for free as well on their site.  I know nothing of how they fit together or how each plays, but it is another Pathfinder2 adventure.  It is from 2019 when they were playtesting.


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 11, 2021)

The 2nd Edition Beginner Box is meant to advance players to 3rd level and then transition into the full rule set. More than anything, it is meant to help new players begin play with Pathfinder. The way the box is set up with the rules, players can begin rolling dice within five to ten minutes. Trouble in Otari was meant to be an adventure for the players to progress in and then move to the full rules. The newest Adventure Path coming out later in January is a three part mega-dungeon set in the Otari area. Players can begin using the full set of rules with that AP.


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## Retreater (Jan 11, 2021)

aco175 said:


> They are still offering this adventure for free as well on their site.  I know nothing of how they fit together or how each plays, but it is another Pathfinder2 adventure.  It is from 2019 when they were playtesting.



That adventure should fit to "nothing." It's a TPK waiting to happen.


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## dave2008 (Jan 12, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> The 2nd Edition Beginner Box is meant to advance players to 3rd level and then transition into the full rule set. More than anything, it is meant to help new players begin play with Pathfinder. The way the box is set up with the rules, players can begin rolling dice within five to ten minutes. Trouble in Otari was meant to be an adventure for the players to progress in and then move to the full rules. The newest Adventure Path coming out later in January is a three part mega-dungeon set in the Otari area. Players can begin using the full set of rules with that AP.



DO you need the full set of rules (other than the player character feats), or could you just use the beginner box rules.  I ask because though I have it, I am not really interested in digesting the whole CRB


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## embee (Jan 12, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> digesting the whole CRB



The CRB is 636 pages. Digesting it would be akin to eating a bowl of Super Colon Blow.


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## Bravesteel25 (Jan 12, 2021)

It seems to me like this starter set feels like something that would have felt right at home next to D&D starter set from around 2005. It doesn't seem to hold up well to direct comparison to 5E's starter set. Not very impressed, honestly.


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 12, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> DO you need the full set of rules (other than the player character feats), or could you just use the beginner box rules.  I ask because though I have it, I am not really interested in digesting the whole CRB



You do not need the CRB to play with the Beginner Box adventure or Troubles in Otari. They have even recommended some of the PFS2 Bounties which are short 1 hour long adventures for use with the Beginner Box. You really will want to move from the Box to the full ruleset to take advantage of all the classes, archetypes, dedications, ancestries, and heritages that Pathfinder Second Edition has to offer players and GMs.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jan 13, 2021)

FickleKnight said:


> It seems to me like this starter set feels like something that would have felt right at home next to D&D starter set from around 2005. It doesn't seem to hold up well to direct comparison to 5E's starter set. Not very impressed, honestly.



Are you talking about THIS STARTER SET. Because I had that starter set and wound up giving it away. Value and content wise it was kinda thin compared to both the PF and PF2 Beginners boxes. The D&D starter set felt like they just threw it together as a loss leader and relied on the brand name to sell it. The PF beginners boxes looked like they took their time to create and experience for beginners, people who have never played the game before. Admittedly I'm not really the target audience for these boxes but I tend to buy them anyway because I'm always looking for ways to introduce new people to the hobby. 

But yeah having actually owned all three of these boxes the D&D 5e starters box wasnt a bad buy, but compared to the PF beginners boxes? YIKES.


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## Retreater (Jan 13, 2021)

ShinHakkaider said:


> Are you talking about THIS STARTER SET. Because I had that starter set and wound up giving it away.



You are literally the first person I've seen complain about that product. Not saying your criticisms are invalid, just unusual. 
That starter set contains one of the best regarded 5e adventures and enough gameplay content to last months.


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## dave2008 (Jan 13, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> You do not need the CRB to play with the Beginner Box adventure or Troubles in Otari. They have even recommended some of the PFS2 Bounties which are short 1 hour long adventures for use with the Beginner Box. You really will want to move from the Box to the full ruleset to take advantage of all the classes, archetypes, dedications, ancestries, and heritages that Pathfinder Second Edition has to offer players and GMs.



I meant play the game past the adventure levels in the box (not withstanding player feats/features at higher levels).  I want to know if all the rules I really need to run the game are in the box


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## Aldarc (Jan 13, 2021)

Retreater said:


> You are literally the first person I've seen complain about that product. Not saying your criticisms are invalid, just unusual.
> That starter set contains one of the best regarded 5e adventures and enough gameplay content to last months.



Don't let your feelings about PF2 cloud your judgment. As a starter adventure, LMoP is great. As a Starter Box, it's kinda thin and lackluster. The only selling points for the starter set should not just be LMoP and the D&D label on the box. 

I know you are not a fan of Numenera, but for a comparatively priced starter box, one gets everything one gets in the D&D one (i.e., dice, 5 pre-gens, an adventure, a slimmed down rulebook) plus a poster map, 10 XP cards, 12 GM Intrusion cards, 1 cheat sheet, and a link to an additional free adventure download. 

But then compared to the PF2 starter box? Yikes, indeed.


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## Retreater (Jan 13, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Don't let your feelings about PF2 cloud your judgment. As a starter adventure, LMoP is great. As a Starter Box, it's kinda thin and lackluster. The only selling points for the starter set should not just be LMoP and the D&D label on the box.



Well here are a few other selling points that we sometimes don't consider that made it particularly good for new gamers.
1) The D&D Starter Set had massive reach in retail stores.
2) It was regularly discounted to around $14 on Amazon.
Also it was released before the 5e core books, allowing groups to test out the system before potentially spending hundreds of dollars on a new game (especially after 4e lost many fans).
I don't have the PF2 Beginner Box. I'm sure it's a great product since I thought that of the PF1 Beginner Box. Likely if I were to go back to PF2, I'd probably run a Beginner Box only campaign.
But I don't think the 5e Starter Set should be dismissed as a bad product.


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## Aldarc (Jan 13, 2021)

Retreater said:


> Well here are a few other selling points that we sometimes don't consider that made it particularly good for new gamers.
> 1) The D&D Starter Set had massive reach in retail stores.
> 2) It was regularly discounted to around $14 on Amazon.



That's the power of a mass producer like Hasbro rather than any inherit virtue of the box or its contents.



Retreater said:


> But I don't think the 5e Starter Set should be dismissed as a bad product.



I don't think it's a bad product. I think it's a comparatively mediocre one, and I don't think we should be in the business of celebrating mediocrity from a brand like D&D that has the market backing of Hasbro.

Edit: Let's put it this way, would any TTRPG brand other than D&D be able to get away with making that starter box?


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## dave2008 (Jan 13, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> That's the power of a mass producer like Hasbro rather than any inherit virtue of the box or its contents.
> 
> 
> I don't think it's a bad product. I think it's a comparatively mediocre one, and I don't think we should be in the business of celebrating mediocrity from a brand like D&D that has the market backing of Hasbro.
> ...



I think the primary issue that @Retreater was getting at was timing (5e box came out at the beginning) and cost. On amazon the 5e box is less than $13 while the PF2 box is $30-40. They are different markets really.  Is the PF2 box worth 3x the cost of the 5e box.  Probably, but it stretches the definition of "beginner" box a bit IMO.

The 5e box is, like 5e itself, fairly simple.  The PF2 box is, like PF2, more complex.  They are good representatives of their game and I think they both have their space and are good products for what they are trying to achieve.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jan 13, 2021)

Retreater said:


> You are literally the first person I've seen complain about that product. Not saying your criticisms are invalid, just unusual.
> That starter set contains one of the best regarded 5e adventures and enough gameplay content to last months.




I was comparing it to the PF and PF 2 beginners box and saying of the three that it was the weakest introductory product for the value. 

At NO POINT did I say it was a bad product. In fact I specifically say: 

"But yeah having actually owned all three of these boxes *the D&D 5e starters box wasn't a bad buy*, but compared to the PF beginners boxes? YIKES."

I gave the box away because 1) I realized that I had no interest in playing or running 5E  2) A neighbor of mine had a nephew who was interested in D&D so I gave it to her to give to him. He got a practically new boxed set to start his journey with. Last I heard he and his friends were deep into S2 of Critical Role and trying to play games over ZOOM.


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## Islayre d'Argolh (Jan 13, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Edit: Let's put it this way, would any TTRPG brand other than D&D be able to get away with making that starter box?




The strenght of the 5e Starter set is the quality of the module.
The 5e Essentials kit is, by far, a more complete/sexy product than the 5e Starter set (with GM's screen, conditions card and stuff like that) but if i had to choose* i will pick the 5e Starter set anytime. Because LMoP is that good.

I'm the pround owner of the first edition Pathfinder Beginner Box, still one of my all time favorite D&D/D&D-like "basic boxes" but for me the 5e starter set is the number one.

One of my friends DM-ed the starter set with 5 players for en entire year of gaming (17 sessions)...
17 sessions, 6 players, 20 bucks.

* don't choose : buy both ^^


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## embee (Jan 13, 2021)

Retreater said:


> Well here are a few other selling points that we sometimes don't consider that made it particularly good for new gamers.
> 1) The D&D Starter Set had massive reach in retail stores.
> 2) It was regularly discounted to around $14 on Amazon.
> Also it was released before the 5e core books, allowing groups to test out the system before potentially spending hundreds of dollars on a new game (especially after 4e lost many fans).
> ...



I agree with a caveat...

At the time and with discounts, it's fine. LMoP is a great adventure. The kit other than that is only worth about $10 - $15. It doesn't have enough dice (you can't roll advantage with only 1 d20) and it can overwhelm new DMs with the amount of notetaking they'll have to do because those notes aren't already done (see below). 

When you combine it with the Essentials Kit (Dragon of Icespire Peak), it's an amazing value. You can get both for $25. Put them together and you get sufficient dice, helpful items like an initiative tracker, item cards, and pregen Sidekicks. And, if you play weekly 4-hour sessions, LMoP with DoIP has at least 3 months of gaming in it. Seriously, WOTC should combine them formally and release them as a hardcover like they did with Tyranny of Dragons.

The Starter Kit was good. Only "good" because it didn't have enough. It shows that a great adventure will go a long way to cover up flaws.


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## Bravesteel25 (Jan 13, 2021)

ShinHakkaider said:


> Are you talking about THIS STARTER SET. Because I had that starter set and wound up giving it away. Value and content wise it was kinda thin compared to both the PF and PF2 Beginners boxes. The D&D starter set felt like they just threw it together as a loss leader and relied on the brand name to sell it. The PF beginners boxes looked like they took their time to create and experience for beginners, people who have never played the game before. Admittedly I'm not really the target audience for these boxes but I tend to buy them anyway because I'm always looking for ways to introduce new people to the hobby.
> 
> But yeah having actually owned all three of these boxes the D&D 5e starters box wasnt a bad buy, but compared to the PF beginners boxes? YIKES.




That's the one. I will admit that the color coding and reference cards are nice, but I don't see much actual value there in gaming time. I haven't heard many people complain about the 5E Starter Set like you have.


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## Retreater (Jan 13, 2021)

And let's not forget that both PF Beginner Boxes were released later in the lifecycles in their games than the first 5e starter set. It's not the same comparison, the same as the Call of Cthulhu or Warhammer Fantasy sets. 
But yeah, if you don't like 5e, it's not going to be a good deal regardless.


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## Wrathamon (Jan 13, 2021)

seems strangely intentional to have a green dragon on the cover ... like a certain starter set. I liked how the original pathfinder had the black dragon on it.


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## GreyLord (Jan 14, 2021)

We played through this as a group over the recent Holidays and more.  Gave it a fair shot I think with our over enthusiastic Pathfinder fan in the group.  That individual was so eager to try to convert us they even gave EACH OF US OUR OWN COPY OF THIS BOX.

For reference...I said the Original Pathfinder Beginner Box (and I'm not a Pathfinder Fan to top this off) was the best Beginning Players set made (topping the 3e and 3.5 Basic sets, the 4e sets, etc).  It was absolutely outstanding.  I cannot say the same about the 2e BB.

Sure, it has a lot of junk (emphasis on the junk part in some ways) but a LOT of that junk is not all that useful beyond the box.  The original BB had a map as well as a blank grid sheet, you could use that grid sheet endlessly.  The 2e box has a map...and beyond that map nothing else.  You can't use it for varied play without crafting it to that map.

The Dungeon included is not so great.  The first encounter for the party does not glide you into combat so you can figure out how it works...we had a PC die within the first few rounds and it just went downhill from there.  If one's idea of a beginner's box first encounter is to have it be challenging enough that your party could die or that players get their characters killed right off the bat...well...

Sure...now they realize the game is deadly...but they also get a bad taste in their mouth for the game mechanics.  If this is what the company thinks a beginning introductory encounter should be...what do they feel a normal encounter should be?

Next, it offers 3 races and four classes...which out of the box is not bad.  The First one offered four classes and ONE THAT YOU COULD DOWNLOAD so you could have up to five beginner classes.  In addition, they all went up to level 5...the 2e box only goes up to level 3 (technically only 2 of which you could play).

The only extended usage of the book I can see is if you want to use the pawns.  They are decent.  As for the rest of the box...I rate it slightly higher than the 5e D&D Starter set.  At least you can make your own characters.

HOWEVER...it ranks lower than the 3e, 3.5, and 4e sets (all of them), and I'd even rate the 5e Essentials Kit FAR better for whoever wants to play the game today.  In the 5e Essentials Kit you get 4 races (with 9 subraces), 5 Classes, and can get up to Level 6 AND it's cheaper already than the PF 2e BB.  In addition, the adventure in the Essentials Kit is also a better module/adventure.  It gets better if you include the Essentials Kit AND the 5e Starter Set (and getting both together still cheaper than the PF 2e BB at the places I get the RPGs).  

We ended up playing through the 2e BB module in whole finally, and then some other adventures from the DM (Plaguestone and then another of the DM's making or where ever they came from it) and so I think we gave the BB a fair shake (and more, we ended up using the PDF's from the GM to increase the character levels...but the GM owns the rulebooks and such...not I) and even PF2e a fair shake (all for the sake of that GM...who as I said is sort of a PF fanatic I think).  

In regards to the 2e BB...it's better than the 5e Starter  (though the adventure in the Starter Set is better) set as a standalone, but that's not saying much.  Overall, it's not that great  in my opinion.


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## Retreater (Jan 14, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> The Dungeon included is not so great. The first encounter for the party does not glide you into combat so you can figure out how it works...we had a PC die within the first few rounds and it just went downhill from there. If one's idea of a beginner's box first encounter is to have it be challenging enough that your party could die or that players get their characters killed right off the bat...well...
> 
> Sure...now they realize the game is deadly...but they also get a bad taste in their mouth for the game mechanics. If this is what the company thinks a beginning introductory encounter should be...what do they feel a normal encounter should be?



Yeah. I don't think Paizo understands how to craft adventures for their own system. The defenders of PF2 can talk until they're blue in the face about how players and GMs just "don't get it," but that's ultimately a failure on Paizo's part if - after a year of play and numerous published adventures - it is so lethal as to be nearly unwinnable. Especially in an intro adventure designed for beginning players.

We had a similar issue with Fantasy Flight's Star Wars: Imperial Assault boardgame. Everyone gets together to play and the Imperial player (GM-equivalent) completely trounces the Rebels (all the other players) in the starter mission. There is no way to succeed in it. And while it might be trying to be clever and build a theme, it ultimately failed to make my players want to try a new mission. So much for the "cleverness" - I never played it again and sold it.


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 16, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> I meant play the game past the adventure levels in the box (not withstanding player feats/features at higher levels).  I want to know if all the rules I really need to run the game are in the box



No. There are eight more classes, 4 more ancestries, 2 heritages, and a ton more class feats, items, spells, etc. in the CRB alone. The BB is just a stripped down set of rules with an adventure tailored to those rules that introduces players to the game itself. It is not intended to be a separate rule set. It is literally a beginner's guide. To play regular Pathfinder 2nd Edition adventures, one will need the CRB. The Pathfinder Society sessions are all built for the full set of rules as well outside of the BB adventure.

One thing folks might want to consider is building a nice little campaign in Otari using the BB and Troubles in Otari as beginner level stuff and follow it up with Volume 1 of the new Adventure Path - The Abomination Vaults which is also set in Otari. Volume 1 has a lot of information on Otari via a gazeteer. This AP will be 1 of 3 parts, all of them form a giant megadungeon that should take characters from L1 to L12. I've already ordered it and am hoping Roll20 will have it as well. I plan to run this as a year long event at my lodge with my new WizKids 4D Dungeon terrain set. 

Here is a link to the product page on Volume I if you are interested in its contents.


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## dave2008 (Jan 16, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> No. There are eight more classes, 4 more ancestries, 2 heritages, and a ton more class feats, items, spells, etc. in the CRB alone. The BB is just a stripped down set of rules with an adventure tailored to those rules that introduces players to the game itself. It is not intended to be a separate rule set. It is literally a beginner's guide. To play regular Pathfinder 2nd Edition adventures, one will need the CRB.



Just to be clear, we don't need more classes, ancestries, or heritages.  And I excluded stuff like feats, spells, etc. from this discussion in my previous comment.  

Basically, if I provide my players the stuff the need from their class(feats, spells, etc.), can we just play the game with the rules in BB?


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## Retreater (Jan 16, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Basically, if I provide my players the stuff the need from their class(feats, spells, etc.), can we just play the game with the rules in BB?



Like if you have a copy of the Core Rulebook and use it to completely fill in all the gaps from the Beginner Box? Sure, you could do that. Moreover, you wouldn't even need a Beginner Box to do it.  
Point is, the game requires all the feats, spells, magic items, etc. It is extremely player-focused. It's not like 5e where the characters have 2-3 pages of rules to play their characters (maybe a bit more for spells). It is spread out over 600+ pages of a massive rules tome. So if you want to play a full campaign, you need the full rules.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 16, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> I meant play the game past the adventure levels in the box (not withstanding player feats/features at higher levels).  I want to know if all the rules I really need to run the game are in the box



I notice you're getting contradictory answers there Dave. 

Not having seen the box, I would still guess the answer to the question you're actually asking is "yes" (or "mostly yes")...

You are familiar with 4th Edition so you don't need to be told that this isn't enough to actually play the game for more than a few levels past 3rd. The rules might be there, but you need so much more to actually level up characters: class features, feats, spells, items...

But what these fine people don't seem to be getting is the idea I think you're going for: give your players the rules skeleton, provide all the class details yourself. Your aim would be to considerably lessen the rules load for your players. You're planning on using the game for players who wouldn't enjoy the full onslaught of choice that is the core of PF2. Am I right?


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## GreyLord (Jan 17, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> DO you need the full set of rules (other than the player character feats), or could you just use the beginner box rules.  I ask because though I have it, I am not really interested in digesting the whole CRB





dave2008 said:


> Just to be clear, we don't need more classes, ancestries, or heritages.  And I excluded stuff like feats, spells, etc. from this discussion in my previous comment.
> 
> Basically, if I provide my players the stuff the need from their class(feats, spells, etc.), can we just play the game with the rules in BB?



Yes, you can play a low level game with just the rules in the BB, though you probably would need to buy some grid or other items to position the characters with.


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## kenada (Jan 17, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Basically, if I provide my players the stuff the need from their class(feats, spells, etc.), can we just play the game with the rules in BB?



The rules in the Beginner Box are the same as the ones in the CRB, but they’re presented more succinctly or abbreviated in places. A few things are just gone (some of the jankier skill actions/activities like Craft and Create Forgery), or they’re not called out (like the perception state machine), but nothing is really _different_.

I feel like this is how the CRB should have written. The CRB spends over four pages explaining checks, but the BB does it in less than a page. Skills? Half as many pages. Exploration activities? Less than a page. The game is just easier to understand when it’s to the point.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 17, 2021)

I've said numerous times the biggest and most serious flaw and drawback of Pathfinder 2 is it's rules diarrhea. Paizo is entirely unable to keep it simple, making the boast PF2 is much streamlined compared to PF1 quite ironic.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 17, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> Edit: Let's put it this way, would any TTRPG brand other than D&D be able to get away with making that starter box?



I think the 5E starter box is quite excellent, and my answer would be yes.

That we have it for the market leader rather than some obscure basement game is just a bonus, since such a quality product is then visible to many more prospective gamers!


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## kenada (Jan 17, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> I've said numerous times the biggest and most serious flaw and drawback of Pathfinder 2 is it's rules diarrhea. Paizo is entirely unable to keep it simple, making the boast PF2 is much streamlined compared to PF1 quite ironic.



But the Beginner Box shows that they _can_ actually do that, which makes the state of the CRB all the more vexing.


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## dave2008 (Jan 17, 2021)

kenada said:


> The rules in the Beginner Box are the same as the ones in the CRB, but they’re presented more succinctly or abbreviated in places. A few things are just gone (some of the jankier skill actions/activities like Craft and Create Forgery), or they’re not called out (like the perception state machine), but nothing is really _different_.
> 
> I feel like this is how the CRB should have written. The CRB spends over four pages explaining checks, but the BB does it in less than a page. Skills? Half as many pages. Exploration activities? Less than a page. The game is just easier to understand when it’s to the point.



That is what I was hoping - thanks!


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 17, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Just to be clear, we don't need more classes, ancestries, or heritages.  And I excluded stuff like feats, spells, etc. from this discussion in my previous comment.
> 
> Basically, if I provide my players the stuff the need from their class(feats, spells, etc.), can we just play the game with the rules in BB?



Sure, you can make sessions on your own and only use the BB rules. 

Why you would want to cripple your players and limit them to a tiny fraction of the options available to them via the full rule set is your choice. Players would probably get tired of only having four classes to choose from. One of the reasons PF2 is so popular is the amount of choices available to players and GMs.


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 17, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> I've said numerous times the biggest and most serious flaw and drawback of Pathfinder 2 is it's rules diarrhea. Paizo is entirely unable to keep it simple, making the boast PF2 is much streamlined compared to PF1 quite ironic.



Actually, it is more streamlined. While there are a lot of options available to the players in building their classes, the actual expansion of rules needed to play the game have been fairly minimal. We've seen a new form of archetype introduced, but then again that archetype was pointed out in the CRB as existing. We've seen a new form of heritage introduced via the versatile heritage which has given more options to the players. But we really haven't seen that many rules added to the game. The Lost Omens line has added content, but not game rules. We are going to see some more rules added for troop maneuvers, but those are optional rules that help those who want campaigns that use those type of rules. 

I just have to disagree about rules diarrhea. If anything, we see a plethora of choices for building characters and that is actually a good thing.


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## dave2008 (Jan 17, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> Sure, you can make sessions on your own and only use the BB rules.
> 
> Why you would want to cripple your players and limit them to a tiny fraction of the options available to them via the *full rule set* is your choice. Players would probably get tired of only having four classes to choose from. One of the reasons PF2 is so popular is the amount of choices available to players and GMs.



No desire to cripple my players, but what do you consider the: "full rule set?"

FYI, I've played with my group for 30 yrs and generally know what they like.  For example, my players have played the same characters for the past 6 years in our 5e campaign (and we are only lvl 15), so I am not worried about them needing a bunch of classes, races, etc..  They typically chose fighters, and occasionally a rogue or wizard. My players prefer to play rather than build characters. Heck, I think they would be fine if the only choice the ever had to make was what class they wanted to play. I'm the builder of the group, but that is why I DM!


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## dave2008 (Jan 17, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> Actually, it is more streamlined. While there are a lot of options available to the players in building their classes, the actual expansion of rules needed to play the game have been fairly minimal. We've seen a new form of archetype introduced, but then again that archetype was pointed out in the CRB as existing. We've seen a new form of heritage introduced via the versatile heritage which has given more options to the players. But we really haven't seen that many rules added to the game. The Lost Omens line has added content, but not game rules. We are going to see some more rules added for troop maneuvers, but those are optional rules that help those who want campaigns that use those type of rules.
> 
> I just have to disagree about rules diarrhea. If anything, we see a plethora of choices for building characters and that is actually a good thing.



I am pretty sure @CapnZapp is just talking about the rules in the CRB, not rules bloat.


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## transmission89 (Jan 17, 2021)

I think overall this review is fair, but I find myself, I guess, surprised by some statements from the review and some commenters. Obviously, the following is IMO and YMMV etc.

I do not agree with the critique of lack of milestone replacement as a ding in the review. It asserts that this should be an obvious replacement in the case of the “tired artefact of xp”. Firstly, this is based off the false assumption that milestones are innately superior and so why have they gone with xp as a result?
For me, I don’t believe in that basis (for me I disagree with their use as I feel they are a solution in search of a self made problem) and there are enough to discussions still in the community around their use and xp that suggest that the jury is still out on them at the moment.

A lot of commentators are suggesting that the box offers less than the 5e starter set as the adventure isn’t as long as the 5e box and doesn’t go to level 5. Obviously, opinions will differ on the adventure quality, but in the haste to declare the starter set superior, one thing is overlooked. Where are the rules in the 5e starter book to make your own characters? Where are the tools in the dm booklet to create your own adventures?

you are given a pre packaged adventure and the rules to run it, that’s it. The pf2 box gives you an adventure, the ability to create your own character and provides the gm with a bestiary (featuring monsters not in the adventure), information on traps and hazards and how to construct those so that you are empowered to create your own. 

This shows a difference in philosophy about what an RPG starter set should be and do. Its down to you what fits best for you, but I’d take a toolset that shows me as a beginner on HOW to GM and play vs just building a reliance on pre packaged content.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 17, 2021)

Incidentally, if anyone has the starter set and wants to see the game's full rules (or to play with them before deciding to invest) for comparison, you can freely and legally do so on Archives of Nethys.

Here's a link to the CRB on that website, so Dave can see for themselves what isn't represented in the BB.


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## dave2008 (Jan 17, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> . One of the reasons PF2 is so popular is the amount of choices available to players and GMs.






The-Magic-Sword said:


> Incidentally, if anyone has the starter set and wants to see the game's full rules (or to play with them before deciding to invest) for comparison, you can freely and legally do so on Archives of Nethys.
> 
> Here's a link to the CRB on that website, so Dave can see for themselves what isn't represented in the BB.



As I mentioned, I already have the CRB (and the Bestiary & GMG).  I've also had the Archives bookmark since PF2 came out.  The reason I was asking if I could get by with just the box, I don't want to deal with the 600+ pages of the CRB!


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## CapnZapp (Jan 17, 2021)

Jimmy Dick said:


> Why you would want to cripple your players and limit them to a tiny fraction of the options available to them via the full rule set is your choice.



You might not realize this, but your choice of phrasing reveals more about you and your limitations, than anything else. 

Just sayin'...


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## CapnZapp (Jan 17, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Incidentally, if anyone has the starter set and wants to see the game's full rules (or to play with them before deciding to invest) for comparison, you can freely and legally do so on Archives of Nethys.
> 
> Here's a link to the CRB on that website, so Dave can see for themselves what isn't represented in the BB.



I thnk what Dave (and many other people) would really find useful, is a complete breakdown of what is in the CRB but not in the BB (a "diff" if you will).

And I don't mean the gazillion feats. I mean rules. How you do stuff, and what stuff you can do. So including skill actions. But not class feats, items, spells and such.


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## dave2008 (Jan 17, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> I thnk what Dave (and many other people) would really find useful, is a complete breakdown of what is in the CRB but not in the BB (a "diff" if you will).
> 
> And I don't mean the gazillion feats. I mean rules. How you do stuff, and what stuff you can do. So including skill actions. But not class feats, items, spells and such.



Yes, that would be great, but a lot of work I imagine.


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## transmission89 (Jan 17, 2021)

It’s all pretty much there in the starter set. It’s the same rules, just less options. For all the talk of the size of the CRB, the “how to play rules” are less than 30 pages.
You lose a lot of the extra things like crafting and specific downtime activities (and thus skill options that might relate to that). You also lose non basic classes and information and items above level 3.


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## Retreater (Jan 18, 2021)

Maybe we can streamline the presentation of PF2? Is it too early to start on the retroclone?


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## kenada (Jan 18, 2021)

Retreater said:


> Maybe we can streamline the presentation of PF2? Is it too early to start on the retroclone?



I considered it non-seriously before I finally decided to move forward with pitching my group on trying OSE. I’d made a pass at streamlining skill actions in my cheat sheet and realized that many of them were resolved similarly. One can probably drop most of the actions and replace them with a handful of tools the GM can use to adjudicate various situations.

However, I realized that rabbit hole was deep. Once you get past skill actions, then you have clunky subsystems like the vision subsystem that barely does anything. You think it does, but most of the rules are actually baked into Stealth and Hide.

I’ll concede that the Beginner Box does seem to take care of some of this stuff. It drops the vision state machine and replaces it with plain language. What happens when you do certain things while hidden was dropped from the skill actions and moved to a sidebar. Like I said before, other parts are also presented better than the CRB.

Ultimately, I decided going down that rabbit hole wasn’t a good use of my time. The type of game I like to run can be done in PF2 (and done fine), but it requires some tinkering, and it’s not a common way to run the game. It’s just easier to do something with less of an impedance mismatch, and I’m burnt out on running PF2.


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## GreyLord (Jan 18, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I think overall this review is fair, but I find myself, I guess, surprised by some statements from the review and some commenters. Obviously, the following is IMO and YMMV etc.
> 
> I do not agree with the critique of lack of milestone replacement as a ding in the review. It asserts that this should be an obvious replacement in the case of the “tired artefact of xp”. Firstly, this is based off the false assumption that milestones are innately superior and so why have they gone with xp as a result?
> For me, I don’t believe in that basis (for me I disagree with their use as I feel they are a solution in search of a self made problem) and there are enough to discussions still in the community around their use and xp that suggest that the jury is still out on them at the moment.
> ...



I didn't say the Starter set was...and I don't think many have. 

There is something else called the Essentials Kit.  It came out after the Starter Set.  You should really look it up if you do not know what the Essentials Kit is.  It is NOT the Starter Set, it is a different item for 5e which allows you to do all the PF BB box does, but with more classes, races, levels, and adventure possilibities.  It lacks the grid graph (which is basically useless in the BB except for the included adventure) and the pawns. 

It is the ESSENTIALS KIT.  In it you have the rules to create a character, go up to level 6, have 5 classes and 4 races with many subraces, and a branching adventure (dice seem higher quality as well). 

You can combine it with the Starter Set (buying both of them can be cheaper than buying one PF2e BB even) to have yet even more adventures and items to work with (monsters and other items).

I don't think many have claimed what you said about the Starter Set, it's about the Essentials Kit or the EK and Starter Set combined.


If we want to get technical, in addition when you combine both ( It may just be in the Essentials Kit, but as I combined mine, I can't be positive which came with which set) they also include a cardboard DM's screen (which the PF2e BB does not) as well as condition cards (for example, say someone is hit prone, the DM can hand them a card which describes everything about it, the BB has one as well, but it is all on one card) and indicates that they currently have that condition.  It also has Magic Item cards amongst other items which the PF 2e BB does not.

Overall, the Essentials Kit is a bargain, combined with the Starter Set it's far more value for the money in my opinion than the PF2e BB.


PS: That doesn't mean I dislike everything about PF2e, I just think that the PF2e BB is a BAD value.  Alone it rates higher than the 5e Starter set, but it rates lower than every other box set that's come out for games like PF or D&D....

Regarding things that I DO think PF2e made some good choices about, at least as I understand it...

Fighters hit better than other classes.  They get bonuses granted by class abilities to actually hit better than others...something 5e doesn't really do.

The 3 action paradigm works better than the lose all your multiple attacks if you move paradigm of PF 1e

Skills are imaginative...

But I DO think the PF2e BB is not that great of a value in comparison to what else has been released in the past, or what is even out presently (the Star Finder Box which we tried has a LOT MORE value for the money in my opinion, and obviously the Essentials Kit for D&D 5e has the best value presently in my opinion).


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 18, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> You might not realize this, but your choice of phrasing reveals more about you and your limitations, than anything else.
> 
> Just sayin'...



Fortunately, I am not concerned about your interpretation.


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## Jimmy Dick (Jan 18, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> As I mentioned, I already have the CRB (and the Bestiary & GMG).  I've also had the Archives bookmark since PF2 came out.  The reason I was asking if I could get by with just the box, I don't want to deal with the 600+ pages of the CRB!



You can for your own made up materials. It's a bit harder if you want to use APs, Adventures, and PFS2 scenarios. I would venture it can still be done. It's really up to what you and your group want to do. My experience in my area is based on a constantly changing player base due to distance issues (welcome to rural America), adulthood concerns (damn kids getting in the way), and just generally life issues like having to work to earn a living (which is way better than not having a job at all). Your mileage may vary.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 18, 2021)

I will point out, in comparing the Starter Set of Pf2e (Menace under Otari) and the two for 5e (Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mines of Phandelver) in terms of content, while the PF2e offering goes to a lower level, the levels in the two games are paced differently-- 5e has its Experience Point scaling system where the game shuffles you very quickly through the first few levels, whereas PF2e utilizes an entirely flat curve, DOIP is even more aggressive than 5e usually is about leveling characters up with its quest milestones.



Spoiler: Dragons of Icespire Peak Spoilers



While it varies by quest, going from level 1 to 2 in Dragons of Icespire Peak is very little actual content-- if they take Umbrage Hill for instance, the players have to deal with a single Manticore, and that's literally it; The Dwarven Expedition quest is like, 3 Ochre Jellies (if the players find the secret room at all, otherwise its 2) and some Orcs. Completing any of these is a level, the later quests are only a little more extensive in terms of content, though some of them have extensive maps, they're dramatically lighter on fights, traps, and puzzles.





Spoiler: Menace Under Otari Spoilers



Meanwhile, Menace Under Otari (ignoring the accomplishments, since I ignored similarly non-time consuming content for DoIP) has you Fighting 4 Giant Rats for 80 Experience Points, Fight or Sneak Past a Spider for 40 Experience Points, Destroy 4 Skeletons and a Zombie for 100 Experience Points, Fight 4 Kobolds for 80 Experience Points, A Puzzle they can solve for 80 Experience Points, Overcoming Kobolds and Traps for 136 points, Fighting more Kobolds 80 Experience Points, Encountering and Defeating a Cinder Rat for 80 Experience Points, Defeating Xulgaths for 120 Experience Points, Disabling or Destroying a Complex Fountain Trap for 80 Experience Points, Fighting a last group of Kobolds for 120 Experience Points with an opportunity to earn more depending on what they do at the end of the fight. At the end of that last encounter there's a sidebar notifying the GM that depending on some of the optional Experience Points, the Players would level up. There's a few encounters (2-3, including a Dragon Fight) remaining after this in the adventure as a whole, thought it does end after like 2 more major encounters, though the book encourages the GM to use the additional enclosed content to make their own adventures to make up the difference (or buy Troubles in Otari), which Icespire Peak doesn't really have.



From this we can see that the actual amount of adventuring content in the two books isn't that different (though for all that I will say the Essential's Kit is currently much cheaper, though for the life of me I remember paying more at Target when it came out, I think its specifically a loss leader product whereas Paizo can't quite do that to the same extent, the Essentials Kit is barely more expensive than a single set of chessex dice) If a GM does accept the invitation to start homebrewing from there (something the Essentials Kit doesn't really provide is guidelines and resources for this), there's actually quite a few sessions to play through before the players exhaust the content of the Beginner Box from a player perspective, since every level in Pathfinder 2e is that same 1,000 experience points, so a similar amount of material content as I listed above for that level 1 adventure, while 5e doesn't slow down leveling until a little later, and even then its much quicker (intended to have players leveling every other session, rather than every 3-4 for Pathfinder 2e.)


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## Rune (Jan 18, 2021)

On the topic of content in the 5e Essential’s Kit, I want to point out that mine came with a digital code for the D&D Beyond version, including three extra adventure that expand the content quite a lot.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 18, 2021)

Rune said:


> On the topic of content in the 5e Essential’s Kit, I want to point out that mine came with a digital code for the D&D Beyond version, including three extra adventure that expand the content quite a lot.



Yeah, I neglected those because they came quite a while later, I think I switched games in the interim even. I also don't want to get too bogged down talking about free content to keep you going, since the "literally everything you could want but premade adventures and lore is free, buy the books because they're nicer to read recreationally, are physical, have good art, and you want to support us" approach Paizo takes with Nethys puts it in a dramatically different weight class in that department, ditto for the lack of PDF support in DND.

The argument just kind of keeps moving goalposts at that point, as we hash out the rules of what perks are included. I do want to mention  personally think that DOIP is neat in a "I wish Sandbox adventures were better supported to new players so they'd be a bigger part of the culture" kind of way, DOIP is baby tier sandbox structure, which is neat. I think it needs a lot of GM love to make the adventures not feel poverty-tier in terms of engagement though, there's a lot of dungeon maps that sprawl in meaningless ways, full of monotonous empty rooms and sparse adventure.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 19, 2021)

Seems strange to compare starter boxes for 2 different RPG systems the way people have been so far; each system has its own unique challenges for introducing new players to their system.

PF2's starting point is that someone _is already willing to try out PF2 over a competing system_. I venture to say that many people are interested in PF2's options but hesitate because think it is "too complex" and can't be learned easily. The Beginner Box serves as a great "ramp up" for the system. The Game Master Guide's adventure really holds your hand in how to govern the table, how to handle Exploration activities, how to run combats, complex hazards, skill checks, etc. And then it follows that up with concrete advice for creating your own adventures. It's exactly what it needs to be. While it doesn't go beyond Level 3, there are many options presented within those three levels, and the rules for expanding beyond Level 3 _are all available for free online_.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jan 20, 2021)

You know, I stopped taking some of the stuff said in this thread seriously when someone said, with what I'm assuming is a straight face, that 



Retreater said:


> I don't think Paizo understands how to craft adventures for their own system.




Considering that Paizo was crafting adventures for almost 6-7 years during 3 - 3.5, then another 10 years for Pathfinder 1st edition? I'd venture that you might need to clarify what you're trying to say or admit that you really don't at all know what you're talking about. 

If you MEANT to say that there will be some growing pains when crafting adventures for a new edition? Then THAT'S something that I can 100% agree with. 

That other statement though? Not so much.


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## Campbell (Jan 21, 2021)

I am not seeing any signs that indicate Paizo shows a lack of understanding what their game is good at. I mean I do think the system is not well suited to linear modules, but the type of linear modules Paizo produces are very well tuned to what PF2 is good at - challenge oriented play where every decision matters. They lean directly into the changes that were made to make skilled play at the table more important.

Paizo has not really changed much in their approach to adventure design since Age of Worms. They design really difficult content where mistakes can be fatal. There has always been a strong vein of gamesmanship at Paizo. You can see that in the streams they do, the adventures they have designed from the beginning, and much of the direct commentary from designers on the Paizo board. Even in the way the GM section is written - skilled play is a pretty big theme.

This is not a D&D 4e style mismatch between the designers and what the game they designed is really good at. I personally think it's a mismatch between what some people are looking for out of the adventures (a fairly chill experience through a linear story) and what Paizo adventures have always really been in my opinion (crucibles in which you have to earn every last bit of story).

Like I have said elsewhere I think Paizo is positioning PF2 as the Dark Souls version of the D&D family of games for better or worse. The game is really good at being that too. I think it's also good at some other things, including less stress inducing play. That's just never how Paizo has tuned any of their adventures.


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## GreyLord (Jan 22, 2021)

ShinHakkaider said:


> You know, I stopped taking some of the stuff said in this thread seriously when someone said, with what I'm assuming is a straight face, that
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I was not the one who said it, but I DO think something may be wrong when you design a game and think that the introductory combat to the system for beginning players should be challenging enough for them so that you start killing the PC's off before the players even have a chance to figure out how to play.

That instantly made at least one of our group lose ALL INTEREST in PF2e.  It doesn't matter that we kept playing for a few weeks after that to give it a fair chance, after that combat, they had lost all interest.  Other items in that adventure also were not particularly fun to be honest (I know Paizo writes good adventures, or have in the past, though if this is a signal of what they are doing now, the comment above is right...that adventure in the BB is pretty dull overall...it's a straight dungeon crawl, but not one that is all that creative.  The most creative part was the creature in the pond in the cave...other than that...not that great of a dungeon crawl to be honest). 

Crafting something that make people to WANT TO AVOID your system is generally not seen as a good way to introduce them to your game system.

I will say the Plaguestone adventure was more interesting at least, so they haven't lost it all, but that BB box introduction was BAD...at least for our group.  We have no intention of ever playing PF2e ever again...depsite our local Pathfinder fanatic wanting us to.  We gave it a fair shot via the BB and it's rules...and you know what...it turned us off even more than we were before.

I've actually never had a Starter, Basic, or Beginner set ever do that where we were left with less desire to play the system than we had before we tried it out.  Of course, that's from the view of a bunch of players that were not big into Pathfinder to begin with, so maybe we are not the target audience...but that still should make someone pause and think about what they may be doing.

With the PF BB (1e) I cannot say I was a big PF fan, but it was decent enough that I went from being sick of the 3.5 antics of the past to being willing to play in a PF1e game (which we have on occasion...even molified our PF fan in our group that though we will not continue with their PF2e games, we will do a Shattered Star campaign with them every other week with PF1e to at least keep them in their Pathfinder play).  After the PF2e BB box experience, which I expect is a sampling of what the full PF2e game is like...I really don't want to try it again.  It might not seem like much from a Non-PF fan, but that actually has a wide gulf of difference between the impact that the two BB boxes made on me.

And note:  There are good things about the system, but there are some things that really turned me off about the system too.  For example, the AC of the enemies are about 1 or 2 points too high...every time...and as you get past level 2 the HP tends to make combats a little bit longer than desired, which unfortunately is a large part of the game, or at least the games we played.  The combats should be more exciting, but they seemed more of a drag as we went through the adventures.  I DO like some things I listed before, such as Fighters being able to actually be fighters because they are more skilled in weapons and armor as well as some other items...but compared to what drags the system down, or did for us in the BB game...not enough to make me want to play it again.


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## ShinHakkaider (Jan 22, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> I was not the one who said it, but I DO think something may be wrong when you design a game and think that the introductory combat to the system for beginning players should be challenging enough for them so that you start killing the PC's off before the players even have a chance to figure out how to play.
> 
> That instantly made at least one of our group lose ALL INTEREST in PF2e.  It doesn't matter that we kept playing for a few weeks after that to give it a fair chance, after that combat, they had lost all interest.  Other items in that adventure also were not particularly fun to be honest (I know Paizo writes good adventures, or have in the past, though if this is a signal of what they are doing now, the comment above is right...that adventure in the BB is pretty dull overall...it's a straight dungeon crawl, but not one that is all that creative.  The most creative part was the creature in the pond in the cave...other than that...not that great of a dungeon crawl to be honest).
> 
> ...




Hey that's fair. I feel the same way about 5E. Well maybe with a lot less venom but I came the to conclusion that 5E was definitely not for me. It's not a poorly designed or bad game. I've actually played games with systems/mechanics that I didn't care for. Most times a good GM can even make a bad system shine but if you're not inclined to like I system then  no amount of shine is going to do it for you. 

I've been running a PF2 game on Roll20 for the past 6 months or so and am loving the system. The adventure I'm running is one of my own make but the intention is to at some point when the PC's hit 5th or 6th level is to do a conversion of either Frog God Games TOMB OF ABYSTHOR or TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL. When that's done, I'll probably convert one of their older AP's (looking at Council of Thieves or Ironfang Invasion) to PF2. 

I think that the PF2 BB is fine and is of good value for what comes in the box, not just the adventure which admittedly is very straightforward. PF2 is a more involved game than 5E so getting a GM used to the mechanics is important. Then again I learned Basic and Advanced D&D on B2 and T1. 

Regarding the lethality of the adventure, I'm going to assume that if this was designed for beginners? and there's a first time GM running this game? there's going to be a section that tells that first time GM how to handle a combat going AGAINST the PC's. 

And Lo and behold on page 32-33 There IS that section under ENCOUNTERS. Where it talks about Surrender and Escape. All of which are options and part of the game, especially for new people learning it. I've run MANY a starter game for both experienced players and Newbies and I almost NEVER end the game with character deaths (unless it was Paranoia or most recently the ALIEN RPG) especially if the goal is to learn the system. Maybe that's just me though. 

For ME, RPG's whether their books or Beginners's Boxes are tools, references for learning the game. If the enclosed adventure is good? BONUS. If it's average, Okay but is it helping me learn to run the game? Then GREAT. If one bad play through is enough to completely sour a group on a game? I guess that's fair. I played in a 4E play test many years ago and didn't quite like the game. It took me running a few games of 4e to make an informed decision that this game, again, not a BAD GAME just wasn't the D&D I wanted to play or run. I get it though. You don't like pathfinder and you think it's a bad game. I think it's pretty tight and a very different game than PF1. To each their own. 

Bowing out of this conversation as there's no further point to make. Be well all and have fun no matter what game you're playing!


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## ronaldsf (Jan 25, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> The Dungeon included is not so great.  The first encounter for the party does not glide you into combat so you can figure out how it works...we had a PC die within the first few rounds and it just went downhill from there.  If one's idea of a beginner's box first encounter is to have it be challenging enough that your party could die or that players get their characters killed right off the bat...well...






GreyLord said:


> I was not the one who said it, but I DO think something may be wrong when you design a game and think that the introductory combat to the system for beginning players should be challenging enough for them so that you start killing the PC's off before the players even have a chance to figure out how to play.
> 
> That instantly made at least one of our group lose ALL INTEREST in PF2e.



What happened in that first encounter to cause you to have a character die to giant rats?

The rats are each half as strong as one PC, have 6 hit points and an AC of 15, and do 1d6+1 damage. The fighter Raising his Shield and using Shield Block, and the cleric with a full day of resources of healing, should have handled that Moderate encounter. Kyra can cast _heal _or _stabilize _on a Dying character.

I disagree that the PF2 BB adventure was so challenging that it was "killing the PC's off before the players even have a chance to figure out how to play."

When I first played PF2 back during the 2018 playtest, I found that, having come from other editions, it was a surprise that monsters can (1) attack multiple times at Level 1 and (2) can crit on less than a natural 20. You can see your party's HP totals going south fast.

New players who do _not_ have experience with other D&D editions quickly learn that you generally don't want to end your turn next to an enemy or that you at least you want to Raise your Shield. In the PF2 BB, the solo adventure in the PF2 BB drills this home with its first encounters.

Just raising the possibility that habits from other editions might have caused players to drive straight into proverbial brick walls. But on the other hand, if the tactical play and crunch/style of PF2 are just not your group's cup of tea, that's okay, too. At least you gave it a shot.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 25, 2021)

No, starting PF2 characters can die to ANYTHING. Thinking otherwise just reveals you live in some kind of minmax bubble, out of touch with the kind of mistakes regular gamers do...


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## Rune (Jan 25, 2021)

ronaldsf said:


> Just raising the possibility that habits from other editions might have caused players to drive straight into proverbial brick walls. But on the other hand, if the tactical play and crunch/style of PF2 are just not your group's cup of tea, that's okay, too. At least you gave it a shot.



I haven’t seen the beginner’s box in question, but it seems to me that part of it’s job should be to retrain such pre-existing expectations. In a way that _isn’t_ frustrating.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 25, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> No, starting PF2 characters can die to ANYTHING. Thinking otherwise just reveals you live in some kind of *minmax bubble*, out of touch with the kind of mistakes regular gamers do...



I'm actually trying to ask for details from Greywolf's story of a character dying to giant rats, and figure out why it happened. This is not "living in a minmax bubble."

With the Giant Rats fight, I can see a death happening to _super-tactical_ players IF:
1. Rat wins initiative, runs up to Kyra the cleric, crits with a natural 18 (18+7=25, vs. 15 AC), does average 9 damage. That rat or some other rat(s) then focus on the cleric and, say, land 2 more hits to take her down from her Max 21 HP down to 0. She then fails her Recovery Checks.
2. If they knock out another PC instead, Kyra can stabilize them or cast heal to return them to 50-75% health.
3. Meanwhile, the fighter hits on a +9/+4/-1 vs. rats' 15 AC, and does 1d8+4 damage per hit to their 8 HP. That fighter should be downing 1 giant rat per round on average every turn. This doesn't take into account the rogue, and the wizard who can cast _magic missile _if there is a rat that refuses to get hit.

For Greywolf's group to lose a character to the Rats sounds like it would take some veeeery bad luck. 

Yes, Level 1 characters are fragile and are prone to dying to luck. But that is arguably true with every D&D-derived edition (except perhaps 4e) and isn't exclusive to the PF2 BB. Level 1 5e characters are even more fragile. The 4 goblins at the start of _Lost Mines of Phandelver _from 5e's _Starter Set _are probably more likely to kill a character then these rats are.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 25, 2021)

ronaldsf said:


> I'm trying to bring this down to a specific example and find out exactly how the character died. Far from living in a "minmax bubble."
> 
> With the Giant Rats fight, I can see a death happening to decent (not minmax/optimizing) players IF:
> 1. Rat wins initiative, runs up to Kyra the cleric, crits with a natural 18 (18+7=25, vs. 15 AC), does average 9 damage. That rat or some other rat(s) then focus on the cleric and, say, land 2 more hits to take her down from her Max 21 HP down to 0.
> ...



No trying to analyze the situation can only result in finding out mistakes made. Don't focus on mistakes. Nothing good will come out of it.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 25, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> No trying to analyze the situation can only result in finding out mistakes made. Don't focus on mistakes. *Nothing good will come out of it.*



And saying that the 1st encounter with rats "gets your characters killed right off the bat" without saying how does?

Until we hear what actually happened to Greywolf's group, I can't really accept the conclusion that the BB's rats encounter "gets your characters killed right off the bat" and moreover in a way that is unique to the PF2 BB. Greywolf's entire argument is based off of it. So until it's backed up, their entire argument will not convince many. If they seek to convince, they should clarify.


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## transmission89 (Jan 25, 2021)

Exactly this. I also agree with the concept of it just being bad luck due to the swinginess of level 1.  As mentioned, the Goblins at the beginning of Phandelver are far harsher, especially if the DM is properly applying the cover and concealment mods and the goblins get the opportunity for surprise.


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## MichaelSomething (Jan 26, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> No, starting PF2 characters can die to ANYTHING. Thinking otherwise just reveals you live in some kind of minmax bubble, out of touch with the kind of mistakes regular gamers do...



Funny; I thought people would consider that a feature? Since I remember complaints that level 1 PCs shouldn't be heroes and just be regular people? Didn't people pine for the old days where getting to level 2 was an achievement to celebrate? Don't you remember those threads where people complain that 5E is too easy on PCs? Maybe PF2 is built for them?


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## Retreater (Jan 26, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> Funny; I thought people would consider that a feature? Since I remember complaints that level 1 PCs shouldn't be heroes and just be regular people? Didn't people pine for the old days where getting to level 2 was an achievement to celebrate? Don't you remember those threads where people complain that 5E is too easy on PCs? Maybe PF2 is built for them?



I don't mind that style of game if it's a quick and loose OSR type game, where characters can be made in 5 minutes. This isn't the case with PF2. With all the customization, you really have to put care and attachment into your character, and it's not easy to just "jump back in" after losing a character (and I should know after my group's 3 TPKs). The system also demands a level of group tactical mastery, which you aren't going to be able to develop when going through so many rosters of PCs. 
It's like blending the recipes of 1e, 3e, and 4e. Some of the flavors don't complement each other.


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## Nilbog (Jan 26, 2021)

I'll caveat my comments by saying I've never run an official pf2e official adventure. I'm running my own sort of beginners guide as we had a 4 month hiatus while I got up to speed with foundry vtt, and I'm using the official guide for encounter building.
The group I'm DM'ing for is far from optimal (2x rogue, a monk and a fighter) and after 4 encounters we've come no where near a tpk, had two characters drop in two different encounters but both survived. The encounters so far have been 2x easy and 2 x moderate.
Previously, I ran the game from release face to face for a different group, again no tpks
The game does require getting away from a 5e mindset as movement in combat and buffs/debuffs make a bigger difference, and I'd say it is less forgiving than 5e, but I'm not finding it the tpk machine I'm reading about.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 26, 2021)

ronaldsf said:


> Until we hear what actually happened to Greywolf's group, *I can't really accept* the conclusion that the BB's rats encounter "gets your characters killed right off the bat" and moreover in a way that is unique to the PF2 BB. Greywolf's entire argument is based off of it. So until it's backed up, their entire argument will not convince many. If they seek to convince, they should clarify.



(my emphasis)

Well, your acceptance isn't really needed for the rest of us to accept that PF2 is a significantly more lethal game than, well, 5th Edition. 

It's not that I'm saying Greywolf's players didn't make mistakes - it can well be that they made every newbie mistake in the book. But that just misses the point.

Going "you made a mistake and if you do this instead, those rats will be easy pickings" _draws the wrong conclusion_.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 26, 2021)

MichaelSomething said:


> Funny; I thought people would consider that a feature? Since I remember complaints that level 1 PCs shouldn't be heroes and just be regular people? Didn't people pine for the old days where getting to level 2 was an achievement to celebrate? Don't you remember those threads where people complain that 5E is too easy on PCs? Maybe PF2 is built for them?



I'm not complaining. I'm trying to make Ronaldsf see that while _he_ might have an easy time with PF2, his experiences aren't necessarily representative.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 26, 2021)

Retreater said:


> I don't mind that style of game if it's a quick and loose OSR type game, where characters can be made in 5 minutes. This isn't the case with PF2. With all the customization, you really have to put care and attachment into your character, and it's not easy to just "jump back in" after losing a character (and I should know after my group's 3 TPKs). The system also demands a level of group tactical mastery, which you aren't going to be able to develop when going through so many rosters of PCs.
> It's like blending the recipes of 1e, 3e, and 4e. Some of the flavors don't complement each other.



PF2 definitely expects you to put a lot of care into building a character *and* accepting that every combat can easily turn ugly with just a little bad dice luck. The actual risk of dying isn't nearly as great as the illusion of threat (which is one of PF2's greatest accomplishments) but you can definitely die. And at the lowest levels, you can die _through no fault of your own_, which of course few players find fun. (At first level, you can go from fully healed to instantly dead from the GM just rolling a single '20' on her attack dice.)

Having to scrap all your work on your character as well as your plans for his or her development is definitely a price you need to think is worth paying, in order to get the maximum thrill from exciting and truly difficult fights.

So yep, I would agree your capacity for enjoying Pathfinder 2 definitely depends on your ability to adopt a mercenary mindset where you remain somewhat callous to the fate of your own character!

Of course, you can also use modern-day tactics where you focus on denying monsters their attacks, drawing back to force monsters to continuously come to you, seeking cover at every opportunity, and so on. This undoubtedly makes the game considerably easier, but I'm talking "traditional" fantasy combat here, where players expect their Barbarians and what not to heroically wade into combat and just squash the puny foes.

Well, in PF2 most foes just aren't that puny.

At least not during single-digit levels. (At level 11+ and especially level 15+ your life as an adventurer gets to be _*much*_ easier, almost like in D&D 5E)


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## transmission89 (Jan 26, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> PF2 definitely expects you to put a lot of care into building a character *and* accepting that every combat can easily turn ugly with just a little bad dice luck. The actual risk of dying isn't nearly as great as the illusion of threat (which is one of PF2's greatest accomplishments) but you can definitely die. And at the lowest levels, you can die _through no fault of your own_, which of course few players find fun. (At first level, you can go from fully healed to instantly dead from the GM just rolling a single '20' on her attack dice.)
> 
> Having to scrap all your work on your character as well as your plans for his or her development is definitely a price you need to think is worth paying, in order to get the maximum thrill from exciting and truly difficult fights.
> 
> ...



I find this argument disingenuous. At first level, character creation is not much more time consuming than 5e.

”And at the lowest levels, you can die through no fault of your own”.

Just as you can in 5e, 3e and Ad&d. This is not a trait particular to PF2. Now absolutely, you can argue around the lethality and difficulty of combat within PF2 as a game and whether that level of challenge is your cup of tea.

Here, the specific discussion is around the beginner box encounter, particularly the rats as the first. I hold that that encounter is no more lethal than the initial goblin encounter in phandelver and in fact, perhaps more generous to the players.

The vast majority of these encounters in the starter box are perfectly approachable to any beginner, subject to the whims of RNGeesus which is a factor of any beginning levels.


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## dave2008 (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I find this argument disingenuous. At first level, character creation is not much more time consuming than 5e.



I've heard a lot of people disagree with this.  Now I am much more familiar with 5e, but when I tried to make a rogue in PF2 I eventually gave up because it was taking to long.  So it is definitely a thing for some.

Please not I did not play 3e or PF1, so this type of highly involved character creation was new to me. I did make quire a few 4e characters though.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 27, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> (my emphasis)
> 
> Well, your acceptance isn't really needed for the rest of us to accept that PF2 is a significantly more lethal game than, well, 5th Edition.
> 
> ...



But that's not what I'm saying. _Every newbie mistake in the book should NOT have led to death against giant rats_. UNLESS there was incredibly bad luck which is *not *unique to PF2, or they forgot the cleric could stabilize the dying (in which case that is a facepalm moment, and they're wrong to place blame on the BB adventure), or Greywolf wasn't telling the truth. I'm just trying to confirm it was the former (in which case the BB is not more guilty than any other starter adventure), since there are no other scenarios here.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> I've heard a lot of people disagree with this.  Now I am much more familiar with 5e, but when I tried to make a rouge in PF2 I eventually gave up because it was taking to long.  So it is definitely a thing for some.
> 
> Please not I did not play 3e or PF1, so this type of highly involved character creation was new to me. I did make quire a few 4e characters though.




For first level? Was this in the beginner box or the CRB? Either way, I’m really confused as to how this is possible as both include a step by step guide on how to do and where in the sheet to fill that information. It is a hand holding process that I think is superior to how it’s explained in 5E. You are literally walked through the ABCs (Ancestry, Background and Class) and choose from a very limited list of options in a number of pools at each step at level 1.

Im saying this not to belittle you, far from it, I am just genuinely confused as I felt this guide was a strong point of both books. Though I appreciate I have a background in PF 1. Could you maybe shed some light on what you found difficult or confusing from your perspective as someone who hadn’t played PF1?


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## Nilbog (Jan 27, 2021)

I've looked at the rats encounter in the beginners box, and it doesn't strike me as a tpk waiting to happen, on paper it looks at most a moderate encounter, however we all know that things rarely go as written. 
I believe a way they could improve it is to remove critical hits from the encounter, mention in a sidebar about them and say they'll be covered later. I think doing that would make any tpk incredibly unlikely.


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## dave2008 (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> For first level? Was this in the beginner box or the CRB? Either way, I’m really confused as to how this is possible as both include a step by step guide on how to do and where in the sheet to fill that information. It is a hand holding process that I think is superior to how it’s explained in 5E. You are literally walked through the ABCs (Ancestry, Background and Class) and choose from a very limited list of options in a number of pools at each step at level 1.
> 
> Im saying this not to belittle you, far from it, I am just genuinely confused as I felt this guide was a strong point of both books. Though I appreciate I have a background in PF 1. Could you maybe shed some light on what you found difficult or confusing from your perspective as someone who hadn’t played PF1?



It was the CRB.  This was when it first came out so I don't remember too well.  However, I don't think I followed a step-by-step guide.  I'm a bit of a jump in and do it yourself type, so that may have been my down fall.  I also remember reading through the whole class, not just 1st level, so that may have been issue too.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> It was the CRB.  This was when it first came out so I don't remember too well.  However, I don't think I followed a step-by-step guide.  I'm a bit of a jump in and do it yourself type, so that may have been my down fall.  I also remember reading through the whole class, not just 1st level, so that may have been issue too.



Yeah that will do it! PF2 offers a whole suite of options and if you jump in without understanding, you’re going to come unstuck very fast. The beauty of all those silos is that you only need to look at a limited number of options at each decision point (as opposed to the massive feat menu of pf1).
I would be willing to put money on 1st level character creation not being much longer than 5e if you follow the steps (bar indecision around what abilities you want from each option choice).


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## BigZebra (Jan 27, 2021)

With regards to the BB adventure, I listened to the Paizo podcast where they went through the adventure. It's actually quite good. This is episode 1.
Anyway, I specifically remember that the party had to retreat back up to the city, because the dire rats almost killed them 
Other than that, it actually sounded like they had a great time.


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

ronaldsf said:


> What happened in that first encounter to cause you to have a character die to giant rats?
> 
> The rats are each half as strong as one PC, have 6 hit points and an AC of 15, and do 1d6+1 damage. The fighter Raising his Shield and using Shield Block, and the cleric with a full day of resources of healing, should have handled that Moderate encounter. Kyra can cast _heal _or _stabilize _on a Dying character.
> 
> ...




If I recall, they made the passages VERY NARROW in the Dungeon.  There is not much room to move around.  Hence, when the rats came out, they all attacked the first guy that was basically standing there.  Two of them hit immediately.  None of us could hit their AC...AT ALL, even with missile weapons.  Second round, the first PC dies and the rats move on to the next one. 

We noticed something in the combats with PF2e, we consistently would miss...a LOT.  Looking at the math, most of the Characters will need a 12 or better to hit, which means that you are going to be missing 3 out of every 5 rolls.

The Rats on the other hand have a +7 to hit, and will hit even the pre-generated characters (which had a HIGHER AC in general than the ones we created) on an 11 or better.  For the others you are looking at a roll of 8 and 9 to hit.  (for us, the rats needed an 8 to hit most of us, with one being a 6 or 7 (can't recall off the top of my head) but that one was normally in the back).  This mean that the odds of the rats hitting us were exactly the same odds as us missing them, and as we would miss more than they would hit, they would hit us more than they would miss us.  (PS: and I mentioned it below, that yes, it was also easier for them to crit us.  The bonus they have to hit is basically an unfair advantage in many ways in that first fight).

No area to really maneuver in the Dungeon, plus the enemies have a much greater chance to hit, means that with the narrow corridors you face in the game, you are constantly going to have who ever is in front being hit far more often then the party hits the enemy.  With 4 enemies against a party of 4, you are going to have a LOT MORE damage dealt to the party, and since in many areas you can only have one or two that are in front, there's no one else to spread the damage out between in horrible situations where you end up with one character being able to be hit from multiple angles, but the others not being able to maneuver into being able to hit the enemy in the same manner.

This is more a problem with the opening dungeon though that comes with the box (Plaguestone had a few like this, but not as bad in general) because it gives no room for real tactics or maneuvering.  It's too closed in.  The system is designed so you can have more mobility, but the dungeon/adventure provided really does a terrible job of enabling this.

The BIGGEST problem though, is that they made the enemies too hard to hit while making it much easier for enemies to hit us.  That leads to uneven and unfair fights for beginning players.  Furthermore, it is EASIER (with the way PF2e does crits) for the players to be critically hit by the Rats, then for the players to actually critically hit the enemies.  In fact, in some cases it is nigh impossible for the PC's the crit the Rats, but the enemies only needing an 18 or 19 makes it much more likely for the enemies to crit the PCs.


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## Nilbog (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> If I recall, they made the passages VERY NARROW in the Dungeon.  There is not much room to move around.  Hence, when the rats came out, they all attacked the first guy that was basically standing there.  Two of them hit immediately.  None of us could hit their AC...AT ALL, even with missile weapons.  Second round, the first PC dies and the rats move on to the next one.
> 
> We noticed something in the combats with PF2e, we consistently would miss...a LOT.  Looking at the math, most of the Characters will need a 12 or better to hit, which means that you are going to be missing 3 out of every 5 rolls.
> 
> ...



I understand about the lack of mobility, that is a problem, but needing a 12 or 13 to hit seems a bit out, as I remember the rats are AC 15, having a plus 2 or 3 to hit seems too low, I would've thought stat + proficiency would give you much higher than that


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

Nilbog said:


> I understand about the lack of mobility, that is a problem, but needing a 12 or 13 to hit seems a bit out, as I remember the rats are AC 15, having a plus 2 or 3 to hit seems too low, I would've thought stat + proficiency would give you much higher than that




The Rats are AC 16, or that's how the DM played them.  As I said, they consistently seem to be one or two points too high for what they should have to be hit with.  Most characters, even the pre-generated ones, have a +4 to hit, except for the Fighter.

Edit:  Looking at the adventure, it says AC15, but I could have sworn we played it as AC 16.  Either way, they Rats could hit us with our created characters at a 8, which gave them a HUGE advantage.  Adding to that how they basically swarmed the individual closest to the Hole (there were two characters, the Fighter and Cleric with the Rogue holding back at first as well as the Wizard.  The Fighter and Cleric both went down but only one actually died in the encounter itself, which, as I said, put a BAD taste in that players mouth for the rest of the time).  

After the first encounter we didn't die, but there were other items that really didn't make it fun.  One example...

Lack of mobility throughout the adventure was NOT fun though, it made it harder for the Rogue to be able to use some of their abilities, and made the combats more static as even if we could move back to try to create more room, the enemies when in larger groups would use the narrow corridors for their advantage as well.


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I find this argument disingenuous. At first level, character creation is not much more time consuming than 5e.
> 
> ”And at the lowest levels, you can die through no fault of your own”.
> 
> ...



Actually, for us it was a LOT MORE TIME consuming...like a TON more time consuming.

I don't know why 5e would be so time consuming for you to make a character, but PF2e took a LOT MORE TIME than 5e does for us.  You have to realize, the players were NOT familiar with PF2e, we were creating our first characters with this new ruleset.  

Even with the BB, it was a LOT more time consuming.



BigZebra said:


> With regards to the BB adventure, I listened to the Paizo podcast where they went through the adventure. It's actually quite good. This is episode 1.
> Anyway, I specifically remember that the party had to retreat back up to the city, because the dire rats almost killed them
> Other than that, it actually sounded like they had a great time.




That actually sounds like the very first battle of the game.  The one that put a bad taste into people's mouths.  If that's the Paizo podcast, I expect those people had some experience with the system.  If THEY had trouble...just imagine what and how much a bunch of beginners that have NO EXPERIENCE with the system are going to have.

YOU DON"T design a hard battle for the very first encounter with combat a group of "beginner" players are going to have with your game.  FIRST IMPRESSIONS hit hard.


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## Nilbog (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> The Rats are AC 16, or that's how the DM played them.  As I said, they consistently seem to be one or two points too high for what they should have to be hit with.  Most characters, even the pre-generated ones, have a +4 to hit, except for the Fighter.



Well even a 16 wouldn't be so bad, a pretty basic fighter should be hitting that on a ten or more, i suppose it's not the easiest to hit but not in the realms of super high difficulty. 

As for character creation, it's a little more involved than 5e as there are more decision points, and some feats can open up other feats so it can be a bit complicated, but I wouldn't say it's massively more complex than 5e, not to the point of frustration anyway.


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

Nilbog said:


> Well even a 16 wouldn't be so bad, a pretty basic fighter should be hitting that on a ten or more, i suppose it's not the easiest to hit but not in the realms of super high difficulty.
> 
> As for character creation, it's a little more involved than 5e as there are more decision points, and some feats can open up other feats so it can be a bit complicated, but I wouldn't say it's massively more complex than 5e, not to the point of frustration anyway.




It wasn't complicated with the BB, or frustrating, just more time consuming.  We all had different parts of the BB that were frustrating.

Obviously I touched upon one player's frustration already.  That first impression on them was a doozy.  There probably was no way to win them over to even want to play PF2e after that happened.

For me, I think the first adventure's dungeon was what really started making me sour on the game.  I attributed it at first to being uninteresting, but on reflection on it, I think it may have been more about how small they made it (small meaning the rooms and corridors and such).  With the system as it is, it seems as if it would encourage mobility and using options, but that dungeon really didn't let you use it.  So, you have all these neat new tools that you want to try out, but you keep getting stopped by the way the Dungeon is designed, and so you can never really try them out...which leads to a frustration of sorts.  Add onto that where you seem to miss an awfully lot (it could be just bad rolls on our part, which happens in sessions sometimes, but looking at the math, it seems that the monsters in general get much better to hit bonuses than the PC's in general, which probably adds to the idea that they keep hitting while you keep missing...which ALSO adds to frustration.  We may have been hitting them just fine, but because they were hitting us MORE often, it felt like we were missing more...which also can add to frustrations...especially after 5e where PC's hit a LOT more often it seems).

The other players, I have my thoughts on what frustrated them, but this post is probably too long already.

Plaguestone was better and more inventive, but we still had the thing where enemies seemed to hit us FAR more often than we hit the enemies.  Maybe we have bad tactics, but, this is our first time playing the PF2e game.  

I would HOPE people don't expect first time players of the game system to automatically be experts simply because they have the BB.

I DO want to say, there ARE things I like about the PF2e system, and things I would love to see in 5e, but combat just seems to frustrating in general for me and that's a killer because so much of what we did involved combat.  The IRONY is that right at the end of Plaguestone we ended up one evening without the cardboard standees and grid...and the theater of the mind actually seemed a LOT MORE FUN than using the grid.  It may be the PF2e is a LOT MORE FUN with theater of the mind than with a grid and pieces to move around, but unfortunately most of our experience wasn't with TotM.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> If I recall, they made the passages VERY NARROW in the Dungeon.  There is not much room to move around.  Hence, when the rats came out, they all attacked the first guy that was basically standing there.  Two of them hit immediately.  None of us could hit their AC...AT ALL, even with missile weapons.  Second round, the first PC dies and the rats move on to the next one.
> 
> We noticed something in the combats with PF2e, we consistently would miss...a LOT.  Looking at the math, most of the Characters will need a 12 or better to hit, which means that you are going to be missing 3 out of every 5 rolls.
> 
> ...



Those rats are positioned right at the front of the tunnel. Which leads back into the room. Going into the room gives you plenty of space. If the encounter is run right, you shouldn't be fighting them in the corridor since they occupy its entire width and can't actually get in. There are two pregens that have a +4 to hit the AC of 4. Valeros has a +9 to hit with most of his attacks and the thief has a +7. Vs the Rats AC of 15. Which means that only 2 characters would need an 11 to hit with their weapons. Luckily, those characters are cleric and Wizard who should be doing something else than trying to go toe to toe with them...

Did you use the heroes handbook making a character following the steps laid out or just try and dive right in?

I don't think there is a requirement for you to be an expert to play/enjoy (especially given it's a beginner box). The dungeon could definitely have used more open space within it. I think the idea was to get you as players to think about what to do within the space of an environment you are in.


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## Nilbog (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> It wasn't complicated with the BB, or frustrating, just more time consuming.  We all had different parts of the BB that were frustrating.
> 
> Obviously I touched upon one player's frustration already.  That first impression on them was a doozy.  There probably was no way to win them over to even want to play PF2e after that happened.
> 
> ...




Yeah that's a fair comment about the size of the dungeon, it isn't they most spaceous, and that can detract from some of the fun, I guess they are cost limited to the size of the maps they can stick in though, and simply having a few bigger rooms is a bit dull. If you don't enjoy the system thats fair enough, not every game is for everyone. I DM it over vtt, and it's the most fun I've had DM'ing any system.


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Those rats are positioned right at the front of the tunnel. Which leads back into the room. Going into the room gives you plenty of space. If the encounter is run right, you shouldn't be fighting them in the corridor since they occupy its entire width and can't actually get in. There are two pregens that have a +4 to hit the AC of 4. Valeros has a +9 to hit with most of his attacks and the thief has a +7. Vs the Rats AC of 15. Which means that only 2 characters would need an 11 to hit with their weapons. Luckily, those characters are cleric and Wizard who should be doing something else than trying to go toe to toe with them...
> 
> Did you use the heroes handbook making a character following the steps laid out or just try and dive right in?
> 
> I don't think there is a requirement for you to be an expert to play/enjoy (especially given it's a beginner box). The dungeon could definitely have used more open space within it. I think the idea was to get you as players to think about what to do within the space of an environment you are in.




We made our own characters.  We used the Heroes Handbook.  We each were given the BB, so we could create our characters and then utilize it online (Zoom) in the gaming session.  That way, we had characters/PC's that we wanted to play with ready to go and we could just start with the adventure right off rather than using session 1 to create characters.  

With that, I think all of them had a +4 to hit, though the Rogue had a +4 with melee, but a higher bonus to hit (edit due to mistake in writing) with their ranged weapon.  The Fighter had a bigger bonus to hit in melee.  However, the Fighter got killed pretty darn quick and the Cleric was the next in line to be fighting for their life.  Given the choice to defend themselves and try to take out a rat or two or heal the fighter, they chose to fight.  The Cleric and Fighter were the ones closest to the hole, and thus the Rats could reach them in round 1.  The Wizard and Rogue stayed at the back of the room and pelted the Rats (which is what probably saved the party from a TPK).  

If I recall, the next scenario was the Spider, and that one I think was really hampered by a narrow area where only (one?) character could attack and defend it during the initial rounds of combat.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> We made our own characters.  We used the Heroes Handbook.  We each were given the BB, so we could create our characters and then utilize it online (Zoom) in the gaming session.  That way, we had characters/PC's that we wanted to play with ready to go and we could just start with the adventure right off rather than using session 1 to create characters.
> 
> With that, I think all of them had a +4 to hit, though the Rogue had a +4 with melee, but a higher bonus to hit (edit due to mistake in writing) with their ranged weapon.  The Fighter had a bigger bonus to hit in melee.  However, the Fighter got killed pretty darn quick and the Cleric was the next in line to be fighting for their life.  Given the choice to defend themselves and try to take out a rat or two or heal the fighter, they chose to fight.  The Cleric and Fighter were the ones closest to the hole, and thus the Rats could reach them in round 1.  The Wizard and Rogue stayed at the back of the room and pelted the Rats (which is what probably saved the party from a TPK).
> 
> If I recall, the next scenario was the Spider, and that one I think was really hampered by a narrow area where only (one?) character could attack and defend it during the initial rounds of combat.



Something is going wrong there with the character creation process if your rogue bonuses to hit are that low. Now that on its own could stand as an indictment of beginner understanding of the box, but I’m confused as to how that’s occurred.
That spider chamber has 5*7 squares and change to move in. Certainly not a small space and plenty of room for characters to manoeuvre.

I’m certainly not trying to dismiss the experience you’ve had with it, it’s certainly a valid experience and it sounds a bummer it left you guys with a sour taste.

Something has gone wrong somewhere with your session and it’s difficult to figure out what. As read and played, that starter dungeon should be presenting “challenging and tense” style fights, certainly not the negative, static killing machine you had


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## GreyLord (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Something is going wrong there with the character creation process if your rogue bonuses to hit are that low. Now that on its own could stand as an indictment of beginner understanding of the box, but I’m confused as to how that’s occurred.
> That spider chamber has 5*7 squares and change to move in. Certainly not a small space and plenty of room for characters to manoeuvre.
> 
> I’m certainly not trying to dismiss the experience you’ve had with it, it’s certainly a valid experience and it sounds a bummer it left you guys with a sour taste.
> ...




It COULD BE that we were BEGINNERS...because it is a BEGINNER BOX.  Perhaps it is hard to understand by those who experienced with PF2e and just like the people who made it because they are not looking at it from the perspective of Beginner players, but of someone who already understands the game and the system.

Nothing has to have gone wrong...it's just that they should have looked at it from a Beginner's perspective instead of people who were already familiar with the game.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Conversely I’ve run beginners through it and not had the problem. Other complete beginner groups have run it and not had that experience.


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 27, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> I've heard a lot of people disagree with this.  Now I am much more familiar with 5e, but when I tried to make a rogue in PF2 I eventually gave up because it was taking to long.  So it is definitely a thing for some.



Seconded.  It is just weird to me that people who applaud PF2’s greater customization (and are right to do so!), immediately turn around to say that creating a character “doesn’t really take more time in PF2”.


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 27, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> The Rats are AC 16, or that's how the DM played them.  As I said, they consistently seem to be one or two points too high for what they should have to be hit with.  Most characters, even the pre-generated ones, have a +4 to hit, except for the Fighter.
> 
> Edit:  Looking at the adventure, it says AC15, but I could have sworn we played it as AC 16.  Either way, they Rats could hit us with our created characters at a 8, which gave them a HUGE advantage.



You mentioned narrow corridors.  I suspect that the rats has cover from attacks from characters other than their target (giving them an AC of 17), while the character they were attacking did not have cover from them.

I also suspect that the players probably assumed that they would not need guerrila style tactics against rats (giant or otherwise), which hurt the party from a tactical perspective.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

FrozenNorth said:


> Seconded.  It is just weird to me that people who applaud PF2’s greater customization (and are right to do so!), immediately turn around to say that creating a character “doesn’t really take more time in PF2”.



I would contend that a like for like level 1 character doesn’t.
If you’re talking jumping in and starting level 5 then yeah, obviously it would take longer as you’ve a lot more to choose from and tweak.

5e: choose your race, choose background. choose your class, apply class benefits, apply final skills , choose spells (if applicable) choose equipment, go.

Pf2 core: Choose Ancestry, choose 1 from about 3 ancestry feat options, choose background, choose class, choose 1 from about 3 class feat options. Apply class benefits, choose spells (if applicable), choose equipment, go


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## kenada (Jan 27, 2021)

FrozenNorth said:


> You mentioned narrow corridors.  I suspect that the rats has cover from attacks from characters other than their target (giving them an AC of 17), while the character they were attacking did not have cover from them.



Lesser cover (from creatures) is only a +1 circumstance bonus to AC, but I think your point still stands. That would explain the AC discrepancies discussed earlier in this thread.



FrozenNorth said:


> I also suspect that the players probably assumed that they would not need guerrila style tactics against rats (giant or otherwise), which hurt the party from a tactical perspective.



You can’t just charge into the fight. You really want to fight both as a team and efficiently (buffing and debuffing, using movement and space, etc). Traditional RPG tactics get you into trouble once you start getting into higher-threat encounters.

I’m not dismissing the problems people are having. Mine went through the same thing. Ultimately, tactical combat as the system expects just wasn’t a thing for us, so I had to adjust how I built encounters. If that’s too much for some groups, or they’re not interested in making tweaks like that, I wouldn’t fault them for giving PF2 a pass.

(We’re also switching from PF2, but that’s for other reasons.)


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## Rune (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I would contend that a like for like level 1 character doesn’t.
> If you’re talking jumping in and starting level 5 then yeah, obviously it would take longer as you’ve a lot more to choose from and tweak.
> 
> 5e: choose your race, choose background. choose your class, apply class benefits, apply final skills , choose spells (if applicable) choose equipment, go.
> ...



Out of curiosity, how many of those PF2 level 1 options predetermine other options that will be available or desirable down the road? In 5e, such choices are few. If otherwise, you kind of have to know/understand the future stuff, too, in order to make a character that will remain effective.


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## kenada (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Out of curiosity, how many of those PF2 level 1 options predetermine other options that will be available or desirable down the road? In 5e, such choices are few. If otherwise, you kind of have to know/understand the future stuff, too, in order to make a character that will remain effective.



PF2 lacks the deep feat chains (and taxes) of PF1. There are still some chains, but you can make obvious choices without looking ahead and still have a character that works fine. Additionally, retraining is core, so if you do make a mistake, it’s easily fixed with a bit of downtime.


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## Retreater (Jan 27, 2021)

Are these intelligent rats? If not, why are we discussing tactics? They may swarm and attack a single target, they may flee when injured or get scared off by fire, but it's preposterous to have them move intelligently, take advantage of cover, move into flanking positions, etc.


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## Rune (Jan 27, 2021)

kenada said:


> PF2 lacks the deep feat chains (and taxes) of PF1. There are still some chains, but you can make obvious choices without looking ahead and still have a character that works fine. Additionally, retraining is core, so if you do make a mistake, it’s easily fixed with a bit of downtime.



Is all of that made clear in the beginner’s box?


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Out of curiosity, how many of those PF2 level 1 options predetermine other options that will be available or desirable down the road? In 5e, such choices are few. If otherwise, you kind of have to know/understand the future stuff, too, in order to make a character that will remain effective.




yup. Exactly as Kenada said. You can happily pick each one blind if you wanted. The next time you choose, the options presented can also really obviously compliment one of your previous choices, potentially making the decision point easier.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Is all of that made clear in the beginner’s box?



Why would it need to? It’s a beginner box?


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## Rune (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Why would it need to? It’s a beginner box?



Because if it doesn’t, player’s won’t necessarily know, and, thus, will likely take longer to make their characters. Especially if they have reason to assume otherwise, like experience with PF1. 

This may be why some people are claiming that it takes significantly longer to make level 1 characters in PF2 than in 5e, while others are claiming otherwise (as in the post that sparked this line of inquiry).


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Because if it doesn’t, player’s won’t necessarily know, and, thus, will likely take longer to make their characters. Especially if they have reason to assume otherwise, like experience with PF1.
> 
> This may be why some people are claiming that it takes significantly longer to make level 1 characters in PF2 than in 5e, while others are claiming otherwise (as in the post that sparked this line of inquiry).



Why would a beginner box for a game reference changes made from a previous edition? That’s just...It’s knowledge that isn’t needed. 

What it does do, and do well (IMO) is give you options to create your character (culled from a larger variety of the CRB) and the tools to level them up to level 3 (again, a reduced amount of options from the crb)


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 27, 2021)

kenada said:


> You can’t just charge into the fight. You really want to fight both as a team and efficiently (buffing and debuffing, using movement and space, etc). Traditional RPG tactics get you into trouble once you start getting into higher-threat encounters.



I’m talking more about the psychological aspect (for lack of a better term), which is system neutral.

You tell a party that they are fighting a troupe of 4 guardsmen, they are going to react differently than if you tell them that they are fighting 4 giant rats.  I think they are more likely to underestimate the rats while assuming each guardsman is about as powerful as they are.


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 27, 2021)

Retreater said:


> Are these intelligent rats? If not, why are we discussing tactics? They may swarm and attack a single target, they may flee when injured or get scared off by fire, but it's preposterous to have them move intelligently, take advantage of cover, move into flanking positions, etc.



If the fight takes place in a narrow corridor, they wouldn’t have to be intelligent to take advantage of cover.  The person they are attacking is serving as cover and the party would find it difficult to remove the attackers’ cover.


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## kenada (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Is all of that made clear in the beginner’s box?



I thought we were talking about PF2 in general. The class feats in the Beginner’s Box don’t have prerequisites. As you gain levels, it tells you what choices you need to make. If you pick something that looks fun, it won’t break your character.

Short of purposefully deoptimizing, it’s hard to have a non-viable character. Note that is something separate from the impact of tactics on play. Poor tactical play will cause problems regardless of the characters’ optimization.

As for retraining, that’s just in the CRB. The Beginner’s Box only covers three levels, and half the classes only get one class feat, so it doesn’t seem necessary just for Beginner’s Box content. Like I said, I assumed we were discussing PF generally. If the group continues past the included adventure and 3rd level, they’ll need the CRB anyway and will see the retraining rules then.


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Because if it doesn’t, player’s won’t necessarily know, and, thus, will likely take longer to make their characters. Especially if they have reason to assume otherwise, like experience with PF1.



Just to specify, both @dave2008 and myself, who commented that creating characters in PF2 was substantially longer than in 5e, were using the CRB.

The comments were prompted by a post that was not BB specific.


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## Rune (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Why would a beginner box for a game reference changes made from a previous edition? That’s just...It’s knowledge that isn’t needed.



Good question. But, as that isn’t relevant to the point I was making, I’ll just sidestep that question and address what I’m actually talking about. 

PF2 BB is, ostensibly an introduction to the system. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that at least some of its target demographic are people who don’t know the system. 

One of the design features of PF 1 is that you _do_ (very much) need to consider future options as you build a character. It is not unreasonable for someone familiar with PF1 to assume the same is true of PF2 _unless the introductory product clarifies otherwise_. Such players will naturally spend longer on character building. 

This is an entirely predictable result that Paizo could have accounted for. And if they didn’t, they probably should have. 


transmission89 said:


> What it does do, and do well (IMO) is give you options to create your character (culled from a larger variety of the CRB) and the tools to level them up to level 3 (again, a reduced amount of options from the crb)



Cool.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Good question. But, as that isn’t relevant to the point I was making, I’ll just sidestep that question and address what I’m actually talking about.
> 
> PF2 BB is, ostensibly an introduction to the system. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that at least some of its target demographic are people who don’t know the system.
> 
> ...




That is just, wow... An introductory set is to introduce that particular product.

Where in the 5e starter set does it lay out the differences to 4e? It doesn’t even mention it!
Same with the 4e box set from 3e and so on. There is no clarification because none is needed


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## Rune (Jan 27, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> That is just, wow... An introductory set is to introduce that particular product.
> 
> Where in the 5e starter set does it lay out the differences to 4e? It doesn’t even mention it!
> Same with the 4e box set from 3e and so on. There is no clarification because none is needed



You and I seem to be talking past each other. Carry on with your business. I’ve got better things to do.


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## transmission89 (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> You and I seem to be talking past each other. Carry on with your business. I’ve got better things to do.



Not at all. I get what you’re saying and it’s unreasonable to expect that a published rpg product would take the time and page count to discuss changes from a previous edition (outside of specific conversion guides and the like).

Being generous and applying that to the actual rulebook, again not in the crb or in the 5e phb. Or the 4e phb. Or the 3e phb etc.


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## kenada (Jan 27, 2021)

Rune said:


> Because if it doesn’t, player’s won’t necessarily know, and, thus, will likely take longer to make their characters. Especially if they have reason to assume otherwise, like experience with PF1.
> 
> This may be why some people are claiming that it takes significantly longer to make level 1 characters in PF2 than in 5e, while others are claiming otherwise (as in the post that sparked this line of inquiry).



Having seen this clarification….

I think that’s a fair point. In my limited experience with my group, all of my players spend way too much time window shopping before making a choice. However, I’m not sure how much that is due to worries about viability versus looking at the cool things they get at higher levels. I think if they started from a concept (versus browsing for inspiration), character creation would go more quickly for them.


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## GreyLord (Jan 28, 2021)

I can explain why it takes a while in PF2e to make a character, at least for me and probably other players that were with us in our try of the PF2e.

#1.  YOU HAVE to UNDERSTAND We had NO experience with PF2e (well, maybe limited experience, some HAD tried the playtest I believe, not everyone though).  Zero, None, Nada (with the caveat I added).  You start off the bat building your ability scores rather than rolling them, using a standard array, or even a point buy like system.  Every race, background, and class adds different numbers to your ability scores.  While those who are experienced with the system may know these off the top of their head, I DO NOT.  I have to read through them to understand what gives me what ability scores.  I STILL don't have these memorized.  Some make sense, others aren't something that would occur to me off the top of my head.  Reading through the options and making these decisions with your ability scores in mind just takes me longer because of this.  Perhaps if I were an experienced PF2e player I'd know all these ability score building points off the top of my head...but I don't.

In addition, I did not see anywhere where it said you have to be an expert and memorize all that stuff to play the game.  If it had, you can be guaranteed we would not have even given it a shot.  However, because we did NOT know it at first, and because we do not have all these options memorized (even if it is more limited in the PF2e Beginner Box, it's still a lot for a beginning player of PF2e to grasp) it TAKES TIME.

(edit - For comparison, 5e doesn't have the drawn out building of your ability scores, thus this is one section where 5e takes less time.  It takes less time for those unfamiliar with the system to figure out their ability scores, though perhaps someone who was unfamiliar with D&D would still have trouble deciding what to assign where which may add time).

#2.  In the BB, once you choose your class you still have to decide what to add your other ability score points to.  They have to be different ability scores, so even if you only care about Intelligence, Dexterity, and Constitution if you were a Wizard, you still have to figure where you want that third ability score increase (You get 4 ability score increases, one is automatic depending on the class, you choose the other 3).  Perhaps experienced players know exactly where they want to put it, but I didn't.  With other systems it is relatively easy as you either already rolled it up by chance, you already know which scores (standard array) you want your highest scores to be in and don't really care what you put the other scores in, or with point buy you can focus the points on precisely the ability scores you want to max out with.  The PF BB forces you to sort of spread out a little rather than focus on a min/max type idea, or otherwise.

#3.  This is a new system.  I am unfamiliar with it.  Period.  If you cannot understand that and why it may add to the time to create new characters, I'm not sure if you should be commenting on how long a character may take a new player to a system.

(edit:  This would obviously also apply to any system new players are creating new characters with).

#4.  In the PFBB you get Character sheets.  They are a tad more complex and confusing than your standard Character sheets in 5e and you need to understand what the differences between Trained and Expert are.  It's kind of like filling in a bubble sheet for a test, a test with many fill in bubbles.  The Skill system has a lot more options and I LIKE THE VARIETY more than how 5e does it, BUT...it means you fill in a LOT OF BUBBLES for the skills and other items on your character sheet.  I definitely felt I did FAR more writing and filling in on my character sheet than I have for any D&D game (including 3e and 3.5) for PF2e.  It takes time to fill that sucker out.  I don't know how anyone could cut that time down.

(In comparison, 5e is much simpler.  You simply have a proficiency bonus and ability score modifiers, and they apply broadly, so filling out the sheet is much quicker.  You have far more limited skills that use your proficiency bonus and after that you don't really worry about it.  Shorter list and not as many differing numbers reduces the time to do this in 5e).

#5.  In relation to #4 above, the book just gives you what equipment your starting character has, but it does not tell you the numbers that go with that equipment.  You have to flip back and forth in the book to get it down, or you have to write it down and than find the relevant information in the book to write it down.  Now, if you were really experienced with PF2e, you might be able to do this off the top of your head, but I can't.  Heck, I play 5e a bit and can't even do that with all the items in 5e, much less PF2e.

All those things above made creating a character with the BB a longer experience than it would for me with 5e.  I imagine that if these are the tailored down options of the BB from the Full game, that it probably would take longer to make a character using the full Core rules than it does with the BB.  Hopefully that explains WHY it took me longer to make a character.  As I said, I didn't find it too complex or confusing, or even frustrating.  Creating the character was actually kind of fun, but it DID take time.  I'm not going to lie about that to anyone.  Simply put, it took quite awhile.  I think the GM of our PF2e BB game knew it would take time which is why they had us create characters PRIOR to the first session, so we wouldn't be spending that much time during the first session making new characters.


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## Nilbog (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> I can explain why it takes a while in PF2e to make a character, at least for me and probably other players that were with us in our try of the PF2e.
> 
> #1.  YOU HAVE to UNDERSTAND We had NO experience with PF2e (well, maybe limited experience, some HAD tried the playtest I believe, not everyone though).  Zero, None, Nada (with the caveat I added).  You start off the bat building your ability scores rather than rolling them, using a standard array, or even a point buy like system.  Every race, background, and class adds different numbers to your ability scores.  While those who are experienced with the system may know these off the top of their head, I DO NOT.  I have to read through them to understand what gives me what ability scores.  I STILL don't have these memorized.  Some make sense, others aren't something that would occur to me off the top of my head.  Reading through the options and making these decisions with your ability scores in mind just takes me longer because of this.  Perhaps if I were an experienced PF2e player I'd know all these ability score building points off the top of my head...but I don't.
> 
> ...




Seems a tad harsh that you are comparing building a character in a system you are experienced and familiar with (5e) to one you know nothing of (pf2e) and then complaining the one you know nothing about is more complex. 

I agree that someone who has years of experience with 5e and also has been playing pf2e since release that pf2e character gen is a longer process as it has more decision points, but I stand by my opinion that the difference isn't massive and certainly not to the point where it becomes confusing or frustrating


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## transmission89 (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> I can explain why it takes a while in PF2e to make a character, at least for me and probably other players that were with us in our try of the PF2e.
> 
> #1.  YOU HAVE to UNDERSTAND We had NO experience with PF2e (well, maybe limited experience, some HAD tried the playtest I believe, not everyone though).  Zero, None, Nada (with the caveat I added).  You start off the bat building your ability scores rather than rolling them, using a standard array, or even a point buy like system.  Every race, background, and class adds different numbers to your ability scores.  While those who are experienced with the system may know these off the top of their head, I DO NOT.  I have to read through them to understand what gives me what ability scores.  I STILL don't have these memorized.  Some make sense, others aren't something that would occur to me off the top of my head.  Reading through the options and making these decisions with your ability scores in mind just takes me longer because of this.  Perhaps if I were an experienced PF2e player I'd know all these ability score building points off the top of my head...but I don't.
> 
> ...




Yup, as Nilbog said, here you aren’t comparing like for like. I get that you are new to the system. I can imagine it took you time. I can also imagine it took you a long time in 5e as well the first time you made them.
Yes PF2 ancestry adds modifiers to your scores. Oh wait, so does race in 5e. Unlike 5e, PF2 modifies your scores with background and class. Luckily that is only a +2 at each step. Thats not a laborious process and as you sound experienced in 5e, you’ve already got a good idea of what those stats mean...
Also, 5e doesn’t have drawn out ability scores? I’ll take adding +2 to different stats 4 times over spending time calculating a point buy with each step costing different points.

When I’ve been saying the level 1 character creation should be a similar time between the editions, I’m saying on a like for like basis (so either someone equally as noviced/experienced to both systems)

You’re absolutely right the pf2 character sheet is an unholy mess and think they dropped the ball there. There is more to fill out in it, but you do so through each step a bit at a time with the character creation guide telling you what to put where at each point.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 28, 2021)

Its so absurdly fast with Pathbuilder 2e, like 'puts OSR games to shame' fast, I just created a solid pool of pregens for new players today, the only reason any of them took more than a couple of minutes was that I kept going back and redesigning them to hit the right balance of 'iconic tropes' and 'wouldn't-see-this-in-5e' 

Even players entirely new to the game have been able to generate characters super quickly using it. Coming from DND beyond, its like night and day. Redrazors is working on a web version as well, so soon the 'android only' problem won't exist.


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## CapnZapp (Jan 28, 2021)

Pathfinder 2 is definitely and massively more complicated than 5th edition.

That's not the problem - in fact, in part it's a feature and not a bug.

The problem is instead that Pathfinder 2 is extremely cluttery. For all of its talk of a cleaned up ruleset... yeah, no. It's completely filled with the brim with exceptions and rules that seem like they should work identically, but actually vary slightly. And there are several rules subsystems that have a large impact on the game (and so you don't easily decide to skip them) but are massively over-engineered. Paizo really likes to use a thousand words when a hundred would be straight up superior.

And that's not even talking about the literally thousands of feats. The game would be straight up much better if half of them were just plain removed, disappeared into nothing. Sure plenty of feats are harmless in that they don't impact games that don't feature them. But the way Paizo decided to claim every single last square inch of design space with their feats make it very hard to gamesmaster. It utterly wrecks the "yes, but" GM paradigm. Whenever you as the GM gets asked if a hero can do this or that a little faster or better than what the rules allow - greasing the wheels as it were - you're immediately brought to a full stop since if you say "yes, but..." there's far too often a feat that allows that exact shortcut. The game is explicitly designed not to give any power to the GM because Paizo has taken the right away in order to sell more feats. (This is the exact opposite of "giving the power to the GM" which is what the game boasted as an advantage over PF1, by the way)

And it's a game with loads and LOADS of little pesky modifiers, often conditional ones with easily forgotten criteria. If you can't do numbers like 3d12+1d6+1d6+18+7+15-10-5=? in your head quickly and effortlessly, even hours into a play session, don't bother. And no, that wasn't some extremely niche corner case either. I'm saying that 3d12+1d6+1d6+18+7+15-10-5= can and will happen a dozen times each and every combat round (at high levels), maybe not in every combat, but likely some combats of every play session. And that's after hitting, which might involve d20+27+2-1-1+1-4 this attack, but d20+27-1-1+1 the previous attack. Every time you roll the dice, something will have changed, so you can never precalculate what you will be adding to the d20 or the 3d12.
A greater striking greataxe does 3d12 damage. Add two elemental runes like Fire and Lightning for the 2d6. Then add your static bonus, plus some modifier. Then add 15 for the monster's vulnerability to fire and subtract 10 for hardness or slashing resistance. Finally subtract 5 for lightning resistance. 

As for the lethality, it's not necessarily built into the rules. Any GM worth his salt can easily write an adventure that even newbies find easy (combat-wise).

It's the official adventures. PF2 definitely doubles down on the combat-as-sport paradigm. All three official APs to date start off with shockingly difficult fights. The only reason things get better at double-digit levels is because the game is inherently balanced to slowly tilt in the favor of heroes.

But there are definitely aspects of it that have to do with the rules. PF2 is going all in on the idea that combat is balanced for the individual encounter. Everything in the game is geared towards the expectation characters enter each and every fight at full HP. (Actually, that's one of the optional variants that should have been in the GMG - a section on how to rejig the game into allowing resource-management since it's not immediately obvious what you need to do to have it back in your game)

It's a hard game to love. There's simply so many aspects of it that chafe. I do love its combat, or rather, I love the monsters. Stat blocks are reasonably clean so I don't have to read up on them beforehand, yet feature individual powers that make different monsters look and act differently.

In our group of five people, three have stated that in hindsight they prefer 5E (even though we're definitely in the market for something more crunchy than 5E), with one being neutral and only one actively preferring it (finding its downsides preferable to the downsides of 5E). Myself, I'm the GM (or DM), so I'm mostly disappointed if I don't get more mileage out of the considerable investment (not the economical investment, but the mental investment of mastering its rules) before shelving it.

I don't have high hopes for the long-term success of Pathfinder 2. It desperately needed a senior designer remembering the KISS principle, with the power to kill people's darlings.

In summary: I can definitely play PF2, but I am deeply disappointed Pathfinder 2 reads and plays like it was written by a dev team entirely unawares of the great improvements 5th edition has brought to the D&D hobby. Why couldn't at least one Paizo employee swallow her pride and go look over the fence to see what 5E was up to. (5E did come out several years before publication of PF2!)

PF2 is so... very 2010. Pathfinder 2 would have been lauded as a great game if it competed against 3rd edition or 4th edition. In fact, in too many ways PF2 comes across as a superior 4E product. (That's not meant as a good thing).

Now in 2020 it just comes across as quaint and unfriendly and bloated and dated.


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## transmission89 (Jan 28, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> Pathfinder 2 is definitely and massively more complicated than 5th edition.
> 
> That's not the problem - in fact, in part it's a feature and not a bug.
> 
> ...




That's great and all, but here we are talking about the beginner box as a product. I think it's already well understood from your multiple threads that you dislike pf2.
What is becoming personally irritating is your statement of opinion as absolute fact and making the case from there. "It's a hard game to love". And paraphrasing from your other threads "It's not the 5e+ game that I wanted, therefore it is a convoluted failure". In YOUR opinion. There are many who do love it.

Yes it has more modifiers than the advantage/disadvantage of 5e ( which brings a load of reductive problems of its own IN MY OPINION). I could take the time to argue your example of modifiers is again disingenuous as we could break down the rolls of 5e in a similar manner (adding prof bonus adding str bonus, halving for resistance, wait, does this use my bonus action or is it a standard action? Does this count as a melee attack or a melee attack action?). But it would be a pointless argument as it would sail right over into you saying that PF2 has more modifiers (which I get, but it's not as absurdly complicated as you are trying to present).

Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder why you post on the subject of pf2. I mean, you're absolutely free and welcome to. But it's got to be a little tiring from moving all the goal posts in your arguments when challenged by other players, as well as wasting time and energy talking about a system you dislike. I mean, each to their own, but I personally wouldn't be wasting my time.


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## kenada (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> I can explain why it takes a while in PF2e to make a character, at least for me and probably other players that were with us in our try of the PF2e.
> 
> #1.  YOU HAVE to UNDERSTAND We had NO experience with PF2e (well, maybe limited experience, some HAD tried the playtest I believe, not everyone though).  Zero, None, Nada (with the caveat I added).  You start off the bat building your ability scores rather than rolling them, using a standard array, or even a point buy like system.  Every race, background, and class adds different numbers to your ability scores.  While those who are experienced with the system may know these off the top of their head, I DO NOT.  I have to read through them to understand what gives me what ability scores.  I STILL don't have these memorized.  Some make sense, others aren't something that would occur to me off the top of my head.  Reading through the options and making these decisions with your ability scores in mind just takes me longer because of this.  Perhaps if I were an experienced PF2e player I'd know all these ability score building points off the top of my head...but I don't.
> 
> ...



I’m going to dissent a bit from the others and say that this is somewhat fair. It’s not fair in the sense of a qualitative comparison between systems, but I think it is somewhat fair from the perspective of on-boarding. If players perceive the game as requiring too much effort just to give it a try, then they may give it a pass unfairly. However, I suspect that newer players will have newer issues than experienced ones. The issue seems to be with wanting to work out ability scores before you pick options instead of building them up as you go.

Like you say, someone who knows the system (or has the right tools) knows what gives what, so you can work that all out before you start building. When I make characters using the core method (not rolling), I plan out my boosts before picking anything then go shopping for what gives me those things. That helps me ensure that I get the stats I want. Admittedly, I seriously doubt players coming to PF2 from other systems would take that approach without getting some experience with the game first.

As an aside, for those who don’t have the Beginer Box, it dispenses with ability scores and follows a different process for character creation. You still do your ABCs, but you get +1s from different sources, and only classes give you free +1s (except for humans). Your ancestry gives you two +1s (no ability flaws). Your background gives you a single +1. Your class gives you a +3 and three free +1s (but no stacking). The highest score you can get is a 16, and you only get that if you make sure to pick options that boost the same modifier. I understand wanting to simplify, but I don’t understand why they made BB characters weaker than core characters.

Update: Something bothered me about that, so I went back and checked again. You get a +3 and three +1s from your class (not a +1 and three +1s). That’s _way_ different, and it means that BB characters should be equivalent to core characters, though you can end up with a +3 instead of a +4 if your ancestry doesn’t synergize with your class. I don’t think the way they handled background boosts is sustainable in the full game (they special case options to avoid letting you start with a +5), but I like what the BB does here a bit more than what the core game does.


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## dave2008 (Jan 28, 2021)

Nilbog said:


> ..., but I stand by my opinion that the difference isn't massive and certainly not to the point where it becomes confusing or frustrating



Everyone is different though.  I've made several 5e characters, but I got frustrated with the one rogue I tried to make in PF2e, stopped making it and have yet to play a game of PF2e despite having the CRB, GMG, & Bestiary.*

Also, it doesn't necessarily take a massive difference for frustration to take root.  Everyone's tolerance is different.

*EDIT: To clarify, the major reason I haven't played is the lack of finding a group and then the pandemic. If I found a group to play I would have finished my character eventually (I think).


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## kenada (Jan 28, 2021)

And with that, @GreyLord I think there was something off with your characters. The pregens all have +7 or +9 to hit (not +4). It’s true that Kyra and Ezren have only +4 with melee weapons, but their spell attack modifiers are +7. Since you talk about building ability scores, were you treating the increases you got as increasing the _score_ rather than the _modifier_? What the BB is doing is a change from PF1 and PF2 core (and most other D&D-likes).

For example, a human fighter in the BB gets a +3 Strengh modifier and can pick two +1s from their ancestry. Assuming they take Strength again, that results in a +4 modifier for a +9 to hit. In core PF2, boosts are +2 to an ability _score_ (not the modifier). You get four sources of boosts in core PF2 (ancestry, background, class, free) that you can stack up to four times (never from the same source though) for a maximum score of 18, and then you calculate the modifier.


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## GreyLord (Jan 28, 2021)

kenada said:


> And with that, @GreyLord I think there was something off with your characters. The pregens all have +7 or +9 to hit (not +4). It’s true that Kyra and Ezren have only +4 with melee weapons, but their spell attack modifiers are +7. Since you talk about building ability scores, were you treating the increases you got as increasing the _score_ rather than the _modifier_? What the BB is doing is a change from PF1 and PF2 core (and most other D&D-likes).
> 
> For example, a human fighter in the BB gets a +3 Strengh modifier and can pick two +1s from their ancestry. Assuming they take Strength again, that results in a +4 modifier for a +9 to hit. In core PF2, boosts are +2 to an ability _score_ (not the modifier). You get four sources of boosts in core PF2 (ancestry, background, class, free) that you can stack up to four times (never from the same source though) for a maximum score of 18, and then you calculate the modifier.




And with that criticism, my desire to play the game has become even less.  You assume too much about what my character looked like and some of your assumptions about what we did or how we designed our characters sound wrong if I'm reading what you wrote as you intended.  Your thoughts have made me decide if this is what the player base is like toward beginning players...I don't even want to give this game a chance again.

(A prime example, you assume that as PF2e works on a 5 minute workday where you recover all your spells after each combat encounter.  If THAT's HOW IT"S SUPPOSED TO WORK, you are right, we played PF2e wrong.  There was nothing in the box that indicated that this was the correct  way to play.  Because of that, my first reaction was not to spend my limited amount of spells on the first combat in the first and second rounds.  I had weapons that did more damage than the cantrips already...and if I could have hit with them, it would have been far more damaging.  There was a lot of dungeon on that map that we could see beyond that encounter, blowing all my spells in the first combat did not seem like a smart choice.  Then again, as we did not play with the 5 minute work day (much less the 15 minute), perhaps that's not how PF2e is supposed to work.  Perhaps it's supposed to work off a 5 minute workday so that you rest and recover your full compliment of spells after every encounter...which if true, reduces my desire to play it even more).

Another example...You seem to assume that we made some mistakes which we did not on our characters, for example, if you read what I wrote I didn't give the exact modifiers you add, just the basic idea of how it works as you boost your scores in character creation.  It appears you thought I implied a specific number with those boosts, which I did not.  You bring an interesting point though, in that the BB uses modifiers as the ability scores instead of the traditional D&D ability scores of 3-18.  One thing our GM DID do was use their books to translate our modifiers into actual ability scores so that we could do PFS if we wanted to at a later date or something to that effect.

I'm not sure what the purpose behind telling beginning players they are Bad/wrong people, but it hasn't actually done anything to make me want to give PF2e another chance, if anything it has driven me away far more.  

I'd rather people address the problems we actually had (combat was not fun, which is the major reason I didn't like the game) than try to tell me I'm a bad person and so are the others I played with.


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## Justice and Rule (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> And with that criticism, my desire to play the game has become even less.  You assume too much about what my character looked like and some of your assumptions about what we did or how we designed our characters sound wrong if I'm reading what you wrote as you intended (You seem to assume that we made some mistakes which we did not on our characters).  Your thoughts have made me decide if this is what the player base is like toward beginning players...I don't even want to give this game a chance again.
> 
> (A prime example, you assume that as PF2e works on a 5 minute workday where you recover all your spells after each combat encounter.  If THAT's HOW IT"S SUPPOSED TO WORK, you are right, we played PF2e wrong.  There was nothing in the box that indicated that this was the correct  way to play.  Because of that, my first reaction was not to spend my limited amount of spells on the first combat in the first and second rounds.  I had weapons that did more damage than the cantrips already...and if I could have hit with them, it would have been far more damaging.  There was a lot of dungeon on that map that we could see beyond that encounter, blowing all my spells in the first combat did not seem like a smart choice.  Then again, as we did not play with the 5 minute work day (much less the 15 minute), perhaps that's not how PF2e is supposed to work.  Perhaps it's supposed to work off a 5 minute workday so that you rest and recover your full compliment of spells after every encounter...which if true, reduces my desire to play it even more).
> 
> ...




I don't think @kenada said anything rude like that, and he's easily one of the most civil, polite, and even-handed of people on this board: he's criticized the game a number of times and what he's doing here isn't saying you're having "badwrongfun", but that your numbers don't seem right for the game. It's completely possible, given that PF2 has many surface similarities with 5E (a game you obviously have experience with) but also some critical differences that make it easy for a beginner to make an absent-minded assumption from the wrong game.

Maybe you could post your stats so we see where your numbers are coming from?


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## GreyLord (Jan 28, 2021)

Justice and Rule said:


> I don't think @kenada said anything rude like that, and he's easily one of the most civil, polite, and even-handed of people on this board: he's criticized the game a number of times and what he's doing here isn't saying you're having "badwrongfun", but that your numbers don't seem right for the game. It's completely possible, given that PF2 has many surface similarities with 5E (a game you obviously have experience with) but also some critical differences that make it easy for a beginner to make an absent-minded assumption from the wrong game.
> 
> Maybe you could post your stats so we see where your numbers are coming from?




I don't really want to write the entire sheet here (it would take FAR too long and really don't feel like doing that), but I can do an abridged quick type.  This is also after at least one level up (sorry, I can see the erasure marks, so I know this is after the level ups, I don't have the original stats of the character as they were erased upon me making changes to the character sheet.  

In BB terms, I had a 

DEX +3
CON +1
INT +4
WIS +1

AC 17

Whisper Elf Wizard as a Chaotic Neutral Acrobat with a Dagger and Longsword.  I think I also somewhere picked up a crossbow eventually, but not sure if I had it at the beginning.  .  Spells memorized on my sheet currently are Ray of Frost x2, Shield x 3, Magic Missile x 2, and Burning Hands x 2.  I had different spells originally, though Ray of Frost and Magic Missile were still on there I believe.  Ray of Frost was not as effective as I had wanted it to be at first but I've adapted with it's use since then.

I was not the guy who died in the first encounter.  My wizard survived through the entire game.

If I had to guess, I think you'd subtract one or two from the AC and the spells and such as well as the attack bonuses.  Originally I think I probably had a +4 or +5 with ranged weapons, with the level ups it is currently a +7.  Melee is at a +4.

My original idea was more of a melee type wizard character.  In the original adventure never really got to see that as the Cleric and Fighter were always at the front and were the ones who engaged in melee.  I might have at one point, because I got attacked from behind by a spider which put me out of that combat for a bit, but didn't die there.  Spacing tended to be an issue. Saw it once or twice in Plaguestone, but didn't perform as well as I'd have liked it too in melee+magic combat.


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## FrozenNorth (Jan 28, 2021)

kenada said:


> The issue seems to be with wanting to work out ability scores before you pick options instead of building them up as you go.
> 
> Like you say, someone who knows the system (or has the right tools) knows what gives what, so you can work that all out before you start building. When I make characters using the core method (not rolling), I plan out my boosts before picking anything then go shopping for what gives me those things. That helps me ensure that I get the stats I want. Admittedly, I seriously doubt players coming to PF2 from other systems would take that approach without getting some experience with the game first.



That is a very good point, though I do wonder how well characters built using the “Character Path” creation system would fare in low level BB adventure or Plaguestone.

The players would probably make sure to have an 18 in their main stat, but I can see inexperienced players making wizards with 12 Dex, clerics with 14 to their weapon stat or artificers with a 14 Dex.


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## dave2008 (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> And with that criticism, my desire to play the game has become even less.  You assume too much about what my character looked like and some of your assumptions about what we did or how we designed our characters sound wrong if I'm reading what you wrote as you intended.  Your thoughts have made me decide if this is what the player base is like toward beginning players...I don't even want to give this game a chance again.
> 
> (A prime example, you assume that as PF2e works on a 5 minute workday where you recover all your spells after each combat encounter.  If THAT's HOW IT"S SUPPOSED TO WORK, you are right, we played PF2e wrong.  There was nothing in the box that indicated that this was the correct  way to play.  Because of that, my first reaction was not to spend my limited amount of spells on the first combat in the first and second rounds.  I had weapons that did more damage than the cantrips already...and if I could have hit with them, it would have been far more damaging.  There was a lot of dungeon on that map that we could see beyond that encounter, blowing all my spells in the first combat did not seem like a smart choice.  Then again, as we did not play with the 5 minute work day (much less the 15 minute), perhaps that's not how PF2e is supposed to work.  Perhaps it's supposed to work off a 5 minute workday so that you rest and recover your full compliment of spells after every encounter...which if true, reduces my desire to play it even more).
> 
> ...



I think you are misunderstanding @kenada's post. He/she just thought you made a mistake in how you created your characters and was letting you know.  That is a kind and appropriate thing to tell beginners.  If he misunderstood your post and posted information you already know, well mistakes happen. No need to be so angry about it.

Also, maybe a missed it, but I didn't see anything in the part you quoted with regard to assumptions about your play style. You mention the 5mwd, put their is nothing about that in the part you quoted.


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## Justice and Rule (Jan 28, 2021)

One more question @GreyLord: what is your current level? 2? Or is it more?


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## Campbell (Jan 28, 2021)

PF2 Cantrips function much like Fifth Edition cantrips. They do not go away when you cast them and get more powerful as you level. Generally Wizards are better off relying on their cantrips rather than ranged weapons. Not trying to make a point here.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> I don't really want to write the entire sheet here (it would take FAR too long and really don't feel like doing that), but I can do an abridged quick type.  This is also after at least one level up (sorry, I can see the erasure marks, so I know this is after the level ups, I don't have the original stats of the character as they were erased upon me making changes to the character sheet.
> 
> In BB terms, I had a
> 
> ...



Havent visited this thread in a couple days, but first Greylord I'm glad you shared more info about your negative session.

I agree that PF2 IS more involved in character creation than 5e. For folks who've felt like they need to defend PF2's system as simple: it sounds like this wasn't the dealbreaker for Greylord and rather it was the difficulty.

All that said, having a +4 in your main Stat should mean that you have a +7 in your main attacks at 1st level. The fighter should have a +9. This is because you add your Proficiency Bonus (Trained is Level+2, so 3... Expert is Level+4, so 5) to your ability modifier.

This Proficiency Modifier is added your AC and all your saving throws and DCs as well. So your AC at level 1 should be somewhere between 15 and 18 (unless you were a wizard who tanked DEX). Those rats should not be able to hit PCs by rolling 6s and 8s.

Having stats that are 3 lower than what they should be is almost like having Level 0 characters in this system. No wonder your 1st experience left a bad taste! Perhaps the BB should have been clearer on everything you add up for your stats? Sorry that happened to you.

If this is indeed what happened, I venture to say that if your group is willing that you should try again? Because what you got would NOT have been a representative experience. As you observed, small differences of 1 or 2 make a huge difference in this system. Your group might have played Dark Souls in nightmare mode.


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## kenada (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> And with that criticism, my desire to play the game has become even less.  You assume too much about what my character looked like and some of your assumptions about what we did or how we designed our characters sound wrong if I'm reading what you wrote as you intended.  Your thoughts have made me decide if this is what the player base is like toward beginning players...I don't even want to give this game a chance again.
> 
> (A prime example, you assume that as PF2e works on a 5 minute workday where you recover all your spells after each combat encounter.  If THAT's HOW IT"S SUPPOSED TO WORK, you are right, we played PF2e wrong.  There was nothing in the box that indicated that this was the correct  way to play.  Because of that, my first reaction was not to spend my limited amount of spells on the first combat in the first and second rounds.  I had weapons that did more damage than the cantrips already...and if I could have hit with them, it would have been far more damaging.  There was a lot of dungeon on that map that we could see beyond that encounter, blowing all my spells in the first combat did not seem like a smart choice.  Then again, as we did not play with the 5 minute work day (much less the 15 minute), perhaps that's not how PF2e is supposed to work.  Perhaps it's supposed to work off a 5 minute workday so that you rest and recover your full compliment of spells after every encounter...which if true, reduces my desire to play it even more).
> 
> ...



I’m confused by this response. You mentioned earlier in this thread how characters had +4 to hit. I was trying to understand how that could be given the way that proficiency works. If you are proficient in an attack, then your minimum bonus is +3 (trained +2 + 1 from level) or +5 if you’re a fighter (expert +4 + 1 from level). I hadn’t even realized that the BB was using modifiers in place of ability scores until this thread prompted me to dig into it because that’s not how the core game works. When I saw that, I thought that could be how you were seeing such low modifiers. The intent was to be constructive. I also wanted to point this out to the other commenters here who were familiar with the core game but not the BB, so they wouldn’t make the same mistake I did (since the BB is supposed to use the same rules as the CRB, though it’s obviously not entirely).

I’m also super confused about the 5-minute workday stuff because I never brought it up. There are people here who do feel strongly about it, and will argue profusely about how the game must be run and how you can’t do this or that thing. I’m not one of those people. I’m sympathetic towards people who have problems with hard fights because I think the game is more interesting when the players really get into exploration mode and play through things organically, which means that sometimes you take a couple of fights in a row, or things change dynamically, or you got an advantage, or whatever. I also don’t think getting beat up all the time or doing nothing but hard combat is very fun, and the game would benefit from some guidance on tuning encounter expectations for one’s group.

If you didn’t have fun playing PF2, then that’s fine. Play what’s fun. Like I said earlier, I’m pitching a switch to OSE to my group (because I burnt out running PF2), so don’t think I’m trying to encourage you to play PF2 in spite of yourself. I also want to apologize for my post. It wasn’t intended as critical, but it came across that way. It’s not wrong for you to take it like you did. Again, I apologize for the lack of clarity and consternation caused.


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## Retreater (Jan 28, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Its so absurdly fast with Pathbuilder 2e, like 'puts OSR games to shame' fast,



I call shenanigans.


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## dave2008 (Jan 28, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Its so absurdly fast with Pathbuilder 2e,...



What is the "Its..." Without the context I have no idea what your talking about.


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## GreyLord (Jan 28, 2021)

kenada said:


> I’m confused by this response. You mentioned earlier in this thread how characters had +4 to hit. I was trying to understand how that could be given the way that proficiency works. If you are proficient in an attack, then your minimum bonus is +3 (trained +2 + 1 from level) or +5 if you’re a fighter (expert +4 + 1 from level). I hadn’t even realized that the BB was using modifiers in place of ability scores until this thread prompted me to dig into it because that’s not how the core game works. When I saw that, I thought that could be how you were seeing such low modifiers. The intent was to be constructive. I also wanted to point this out to the other commenters here who were familiar with the core game but not the BB, so they wouldn’t make the same mistake I did (since the BB is supposed to use the same rules as the CRB, though it’s obviously not entirely).
> 
> I’m also super confused about the 5-minute workday stuff because I never brought it up. There are people here who do feel strongly about it, and will argue profusely about how the game must be run and how you can’t do this or that thing. I’m not one of those people. I’m sympathetic towards people who have problems with hard fights because I think the game is more interesting when the players really get into exploration mode and play through things organically, which means that sometimes you take a couple of fights in a row, or things change dynamically, or you got an advantage, or whatever. I also don’t think getting beat up all the time or doing nothing but hard combat is very fun, and the game would benefit from some guidance on tuning encounter expectations for one’s group.
> 
> If you didn’t have fun playing PF2, then that’s fine. Play what’s fun. Like I said earlier, I’m pitching a switch to OSE to my group (because I burnt out running PF2), so don’t think I’m trying to encourage you to play PF2 in spite of yourself. I also want to apologize for my post. It wasn’t intended as critical, but it came across that way. It’s not wrong for you to take it like you did. Again, I apologize for the lack of clarity and consternation caused.



Thank you and sorry.  I was upset under the impression that I should have cast spells in the other post, when you mentioned the spell attack modifier (which, if I extrapolate as the character I listed was my first character which we took on the adventure in the box with, is 2nd level, would probably have had a +6 Attack modifier for their spells at the time, but that was different then what I was using in the first battle, the next character I had was a Cleric during Plaguestone).   Ray of Frost was super weak and I only had three 1st level spells for the dungeon at the time, which really gave me a limited number of spell attacks.   The impression I had when you talked about what my spell attack was, is that I should have been using my spells.

If I had used my spells that first battle, I would have been out for the ensuing fights, or that was my thought process.  I did use a Ray of Frost eventually, but the combo I was hoping was to be a Melee type Magic-User with sword and magic (like an Eldritch Knight or other type of character like that I suppose, but the BB doesn't have an option for that).

At First level I think my Wizard actually had a +3 to hit with the Longsword at the time, a +3 to hit with the Dagger, but a +6 if he threw it.  I think His AC was either 15 or 16 at First level, so not the greatest build to melee, but with the corridors I never really got to try it in a straight fight in the BB adventure.  Once I had a crossbow, I could do more damage with it than most of my magic at range.

The individual who played the Rogue was even more disappointed than me I think, as flanking was very rare for us to get into being able to do.  They had a missile weapon, but really wanted to melee as well.  

My second character I went with a better melee build that could still cast magic (yes, there is a pattern there, you may see somewhat of my preferences) where I went with a Cleric who used a Scimitar, but at first level (I actually know the Cleric better than the Wizard as I played it longer) only had a +5 to hit with that Scimitar without any other modifiers coming into play at first level.  Got up to a +8 by the time we finished, but that was at a higher level and past what the BB offered.

The implication that I should have blown my spells was what got me though and had me give the response.


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## GreyLord (Jan 28, 2021)

Justice and Rule said:


> View attachment 131915
> 
> One more question @GreyLord: what is your current level? 2? Or is it more?



For that character I only played through the BB adventure with, it's the one that took on the Rats.  I believe we were level 2 when we finished, which is what level that character is.

I THINK.

I cannot see the level actually listed on the Character sheet, so I'm not positive.  But I THINK that's what level it is for what I'm listing the stats as.



Campbell said:


> PF2 Cantrips function much like Fifth Edition cantrips. They do not go away when you cast them and get more powerful as you level. Generally Wizards are better off relying on their cantrips rather than ranged weapons. Not trying to make a point here.




Hmm, that's interesting.  I was under the impression that we could only cast them 5 times (at 1st level) and would get them after a rest, so that's how I played it accordingly, I suppose I may have played it differently if I had realized that during our first session.  I think I probably was tossed off with the Character sheet which kind of shows Cantrips in the same light as other spells and so I played it like that.

That said, after I got my crossbow it was my preferred attack form from range rather than magic as the Crossbow did 1d8 damage if I hit with it.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 28, 2021)

Retreater said:


> I call shenanigans.



Wanna bet?


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 28, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> What is the "Its..." Without the context I have no idea what your talking about.



Character Creation, though I feel like the rest of the conversation prior was sufficient context.


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## kenada (Jan 28, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> Thank you and sorry.  I was upset under the impression that I should have cast spells in the other post, when you mentioned the spell attack modifier (which, if I extrapolate as the character I listed was my first character which we took on the adventure in the box with, is 2nd level, would probably have had a +6 Attack modifier for their spells at the time, but that was different then what I was using in the first battle, the next character I had was a Cleric during Plaguestone).   Ray of Frost was super weak and I only had three 1st level spells for the dungeon at the time, which really gave me a limited number of spell attacks.   The impression I had when you talked about what my spell attack was, is that I should have been using my spells.
> 
> If I had used my spells that first battle, I would have been out for the ensuing fights, or that was my thought process.  I did use a Ray of Frost eventually, but the combo I was hoping was to be a Melee type Magic-User with sword and magic (like an Eldritch Knight or other type of character like that I suppose, but the BB doesn't have an option for that).
> 
> ...



No worries. I understand being upset at being accused of having “badwrongfun”. However, I’d like to note that I didn’t bring up specific tactics. My “and with that” was meant to follow up my previous post rather than someone else’s (if that’s the source of confusion). 

Based on this and your subsequent post, it sounds like the BB didn’t do a good job of communicating how some things work. Looking at the wizard’s entry in the _Hero’s Handbook_, cantrips are mentioned as something of an afterthought. That’s not great. Since you can cast them an unlimited number of times, they’re meant to take the place of needing to use a weapon. I also agree that _ray of frost_ is not very good. The go-to damage cantrip is _electric arc_, but it’s not included in the BB. The damage is the same as _ray of frost_, but it attacks two targets (versus one) instead of having a chance of slowing the target (due to needing a crit). _Electric arc_ also requires a basic saving throw, so you also deal at least half damage to the targets.

There are a few ways to do gish characters in PF2. Unfortunately, none of them are in the BB. There’s the magus class in the upcoming _Secrets of Magic_ book, but you can also multiclass fighter/wizard very easily. If you want to specialize in a particular weapon, you can take one of the style archetypes from the APG. Alternatively, if you want to be a martial who casts spells, you start as the appropriate martial class and then pick up the dedication for the casting class you want at 2nd level. You won’t go all the way up to 10th level spells, but you can still be a pretty decent caster. Of course, however, none of that’s in the BB. If you want to draw outside of the boxes it offers, there’s not a lot of help for that.

You also mention playing a cleric. I that was also the cleric class from BB (vs. the core version)? That’s at least the warpriest, but the way the BB does character creation makes it harder to be good at it. In the core rules, you have more control over where to put your modifiers, so it’s easy to start with a +3 in Strength (for a +6 to hit in melee at 1st level). With the optional rule for voluntary flaws, you could even get a +4 if you really wanted it. None of that’s in the BB. Offering a combat-oriented cleric without being able to tweak your stats for it isn’t very friendly to new players. You’d _have_ to pick human as your ancestry plus one of the backgrounds that offered Strength modifiers (deckhand or warrior). With the core rules, you could do that with basically whatever combination you wanted (because ancestry and background typically come with free boosts you can put anywhere else [like the extra +1 modifiers you get in the BB]).

The rest is a more of an aside ….

The Kyra pre-gen included in the BB is a little weird. Her normal pregen is written up as a cloistered cleric, but she’s using the warpriest stuff in the BB (because that’s the only option). Her stats are still similar to her cloistered version, which means her Strength modifier is pretty awful. It really should be a +2 or a +3 (for a +5 or a +6 to hit with her scimitar). I think the idea was to rebuild the standard iconic using the BB, but this is just not a very good example to new players of what stats you should want out of a warpriest. She’s not even wearing medium armor in the BB (even though it’s listed right there on page 20 under defenses).  (I assume they went with warpriest instead of cloistered cleric so they could avoid having to introduce focus spells in the BB, but still ….)

So, while I think they did a fairly decent job of stilling things down, there are some head-scratchers. Looking at how people would transition from the BB to the core rules, there are some big differences they’ll have to internalize. The first is that core PF2 uses ability scores not modifiers, and that matters once you start gaining boosts past 18 (because you only go one point at a time instead of two). Also, two characters built with the exact same options can end up with the core version’s being slightly better due to having more control over allocating boosts. The other is differences in terminology or aspects they just didn’t introduce. If you compare it to the 5e basic rules, the basic rules still used the same terminology even though they only offered one option.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 29, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> That said, after I got my crossbow it was my preferred attack form from range rather than magic as the Crossbow did 1d8 damage if I hit with it.



Yes, cantrips are at-will in PF 2E.

Assuming you have a +4 Intelligence, Ray of Frost should be doing 1d4+4 damage, substantially more than the 1d8 crossbow.


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## dave2008 (Jan 29, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Character Creation, though I feel like the rest of the conversation prior was sufficient context.



OK. I thought maybe you were talking about an online character builder.  It took me, a PF2e newb, about 30 min. with pen & paper before I got too frustrated and gave up.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 29, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> OK. I thought maybe you were talking about an online character builder.  It took me, a PF2e newb, about 30 min. with pen & paper before I got too frustrated and gave up.



Oh I get you, yeah its the Android app Pathbuilder 2e, if you look at my attachment a few posts ago, you can listen to me make a level 1 monk in 3 minutes and 53 seconds with it. Its super helpful.


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## dave2008 (Jan 29, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Oh I get you, yeah its the Android app Pathbuilder 2e, if you look at my attachment a few posts ago, you can listen to me make a level 1 monk in 3 minutes and 53 seconds with it. Its super helpful.



Honest question: is your audio file helpful if I don't have the app?  

I also know there is no way I can make a character in under 4 minutes.  It takes me longer than that to pick one feat!


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## Retreater (Jan 29, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Oh I get you, yeah its the Android app Pathbuilder 2e, if you look at my attachment a few posts ago, you can listen to me make a level 1 monk in 3 minutes and 53 seconds with it. Its super helpful.



"Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that's something else."
I mean, if you need an Android app to compete with the speed and simplicity of making a character in an OSR system, that hardly counts for me. When we were playing PF2, half my players (on Apple products) didn't have the ability to use that app. So we'd talk over Discord, and I would read them all of their options from the list so I could generate their characters on the app for them, send them the character sheet PDF, etc. Then they would have to print a physical copy of a very complex character sheet (or more often) keep their tablet/phone/computer window open to see what many actions their character could perform. 
I'm not saying there aren't benefits to playing a system like PF2 when compared to an OSR system, but speed of 1st level character build is certainly NOT one of them.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 29, 2021)

To my mind, if you have tools, the question of how fast it is without tools is academic-- this wasn't really an argument either, its me mentioning how much the app helps and how nice it is. This also reminds me the developer of that app is working on a web version of that app, and recently made a lot of progress, so situations like that won't really come up. Its very practical in the sense that we use it, and its something I feel completely comfortable taking for granted, there are other sheets like Wanderer's Guide that are similar in function.

Adding to this as I think about it, part of the reason I would consider the question academic is because I usually see OSR speed presented as a tradeoff-- you gain easily-solved character death, and ease of use, in exchange for character building depth and customization, that's how the likes of Justin Alexander (of the Alexandrian) present it in their open table model. But if you can simply have it both ways, then the fact that it takes a tool just doesn't seem like a super meaningful downside, just a useful technology that solves a problem the same way refrigerators solve the perishability of certain kinds of food, or how fortified milk solves certain dietary problems.

It makes the impractical, practical in a way that doesn't have meaningful tradeoffs.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 29, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Honest question: is your audio file helpful if I don't have the app?
> 
> I also know there is no way I can make a character in under 4 minutes.  It takes me longer than that to pick one feat!



Its not an audio guide, retreater just didn't believe me in the first place, so my audio file is just me doing it to demonstrate that it works. I highly recommend the app if you don't have it and are interested in Pathfinder 2e beyond dabblling in forum arguments. One of my players commented that I took too long and that 45 seconds was a more accurate estimate.

As for your speed, yeah I knew where to look for what I wanted, the time balloons as you consider and weigh options-- but then again, a new player would probably take quite a bit of time to find tables and read rules and so forth in an OSR (I've seen people entrenched in that community mention doing it _for_ players to speed the process up.)


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## Aldarc (Jan 29, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> I've heard a lot of people disagree with this.  Now I am much more familiar with 5e, but when I tried to make a rogue in PF2 I eventually gave up because it was taking to long.  So it is definitely a thing for some.
> 
> Please not I did not play 3e or PF1, so this type of highly involved character creation was new to me. I did make quire a few 4e characters though.



I agree that character creation takes longer in PF2 than in 5e. This is the natural result of more character options and decision points available. A 5e character is picking their stats, Class (and occasionally Sub-Class at level 1), Skills, Race, Sub-Race, and Background at level one. A PF2 character is picking their Ancestry, Heritage, Background, Class, Class Feat, Skills, and final round of stats, though picking their stats is integrated with each of these steps. However, I am not sure it is substantially longer, though I think part of the challenge is about possible rules interactions and both the desire/trepidation to build an effective character. The other issue, IMO, is that the feats/features are not necessarily packaged together as neatly as they are in 5e under subclasses. So there can be IMO some difficulty with focusing down when presented with options. 

I was running my partner through a solo game of 5e D&D in the summer of 2019. They would be the leader of a small, rotating squad of NPCs, and I gave them a roster of one NPC of each class* to choose from for their squad. (As inspired by one of their favorite games: SWTOR.) The longest part of this process was developing character concepts that my partner would likely enjoy. 

* Sans Bard, since my partner chose to play a Bard. 

PF2 dropped not long thereafter. Out of my own curiosity and desire to play with "a new toy," I tried translating as many of those level 1 NPCs as I could from 5e D&D to PF2. It really didn't take terribly long at all, though I had to make concessions about tieflings, dragonborn, and warlocks. It was also quite nice because a number of character concepts I had translated more cleanly (from mind to mechanics) in PF2 than in 5e D&D. 



kenada said:


> Having seen this clarification….
> 
> I think that’s a fair point. In my limited experience with my group, all of my players spend way too much time window shopping before making a choice. However, I’m not sure how much that is due to worries about viability versus looking at the cool things they get at higher levels. I think if they started from a concept (versus browsing for inspiration), character creation would go more quickly for them.



Yeah, I agree that the overall features and options of a class can be overwhelming, particularly since they do not come pre-packaged in the way that 5e sub-classes do. But it helps IMHO to look at the low levels and simply "follow the fiction" of the character concept you want to play, though I will concede that sometimes people don't have a concept until they see the range of possible mechanics. 



dave2008 said:


> Everyone is different though.  I've made several 5e characters, but I got frustrated with the one rogue I tried to make in PF2e, stopped making it and have yet to play a game of PF2e despite having the CRB, GMG, & Bestiary.*
> 
> Also, it doesn't necessarily take a massive difference for frustration to take root.  Everyone's tolerance is different.
> 
> *EDIT: To clarify, the major reason I haven't played is the lack of finding a group and then the pandemic. If I found a group to play I would have finished my character eventually (I think).



I don't know if you or anyone here would be willing, but maybe it would help you if someone here would run you through an online game of PF2?


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## dave2008 (Jan 29, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> I don't know if you or anyone here would be willing, but maybe it would help you if someone here would run you through an online game of PF2?



Possibly, but I have been intentionally avoiding online play. One of the reasons I play D&D is the face-to-face interaction.  Though it has been a long time now since I've been able to do that.  Also, I am sure once i get the hang of it and I know the various options better it will be easier and faster. My comment was more about a first time experience than any over arching trend


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## dave2008 (Jan 29, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Its not an audio guide, retreater just didn't believe me in the first place, so my audio file is just me doing it to demonstrate that it works. I highly recommend the app if you don't have it and are interested in Pathfinder 2e beyond dabblling in forum arguments. One of my players commented that I took too long and that 45 seconds was a more accurate estimate.
> 
> As for your speed, yeah I knew where to look for what I wanted, the time balloons as you consider and weigh options-- but then again, a new player would probably take quite a bit of time to find tables and read rules and so forth in an OSR (I've seen people entrenched in that community mention doing it _for_ players to speed the process up.)



How long would it take to make a lvl 20 player?  One thing my group (which at this point, other than me, is not willing to try PF2e) always does when trying out a new version of D&D is play an adventure a max level.  With all the feat options it seem like really difficult task when I look at the CRB, does the app help?

PS I have an I-phone.


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## Aldarc (Jan 29, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Possibly, but I have been intentionally avoiding online play. One of the reasons I play D&D is the face-to-face interaction.  Though it has been a long time now since I've been able to do that.  Also, I am sure once i get the hang of it and I know the various options better it will be easier and faster. My comment was more about a first time experience than any over arching trend



I also tend to shy away from online play as I play with friends. I agree with your assessment from the perspective of a first time experience. PF2 can be overwhelming, and Paizo could have presented things simpler and easier in that regard.


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## Campbell (Jan 29, 2021)

Character creation speed in the full game is going to vary significantly from person to person and what you are trying to do. If you are fairly decisive and sit down with either a fairly concrete idea of what you want to play or just want to create a fairly vanilla martial character you can create even fairly high level characters in 20-30 minutes. The choices are fairly well banded in each class. Rogues and Investigators will take slightly longer because they get so many skill feats.

However if you are less decisive or want to get into things like archetypes you can spend hours fine tuning a character.

I recommend trying to be as decisive as possible when creating PF2 characters. There's a lot less at stake than in some other games. The vast majority of pure player power is going to come from your class chassis. The stakes of getting right or wrong are more about building a toolbox of stuff to use in play and what kind of decisions you want to be making. Keep in mind that retraining will allow you to replace stuff that does not work for you if you have sufficient downtime.

One thing I will say is that stepping into high level characters you have no direct play experience can be fairly difficult. Almost everything in the game is designed for active use in play and the options you pick up as you level tend to be situational. A novice player playing a 20th level character is going to be far less effective than an experienced hand. This has always been the case with spellcasters, but in PF2 it is just as true with martial characters. You can tune encounters accordingly as a GM, but it is something to keep in mind.


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## ronaldsf (Jan 29, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> How long would it take to make a lvl 20 player?  One thing my group (which at this point, other than me, is not willing to try PF2e) always does when trying out a new version of D&D is play an adventure a max level.  With all the feat options it seem like really difficult task when I look at the CRB, does the app help?
> 
> PS I have an I-phone.



After having run a Level 20 short adventure with players who had several months of experience with PF2, I will say that there is a LOT to choose compared to other systems:
-Ancestry, Heritage, 5 ancestry feats
-Background
-Class (and subclass if any)
-10 or 11 class feats
-5 general feats
-10 Skill increases
-10 skill feats
-4 ability boosts each at L1, L5, L10, L15, L20
-6 starting magic items plus 20,000gp extra to spend
-Spellcasters getting ~33 cantrips+spells to use

But it would still be an academic exercise, because actually PLAYING a Level 20 character is what tripped players up. There were many, many options for their 3 actions and they only touched perhaps 30 percent of them in the course of 7 sessions. And there were many feats that modified how their basic abilities worked and/or triggered in response to events. They just didn't have the opportunity to organically "learn" their character over the course of 20 levels of play, and the fact that you grow horizontally with more options as you level up in PF2 (versus just getting numerical boosts and enhancements to your main actions/activities) means that you have a wealth of options but don't really know how to use them. And if you choose to carefully consider what you do every turn, play slows down to a crawl if you lack those 20 levels of actual play experience.

Here is a link to my personal GM "cheat sheet" to manage that adventure

I'm not sure what you'd want to get out of making Level 20 characters when learning a new system: you enjoy character creation? Or you want to see what high-level play looks like perhaps? Quick character creation is not what you'll get with PF2! The strength of PF2 in this regard is that the game stays balanced and tense even into high levels.


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## dave2008 (Jan 29, 2021)

ronaldsf said:


> I'm not sure what you'd want to get out of making Level 20 characters when learning a new system: you enjoy character creation? Or you want to see what high-level play looks like perhaps? Quick character creation is not what you'll get with PF2! The strength of PF2 in this regard is that the game stays balanced and tense even into high levels.



We usually give the top end a shot after we are between lvl 5-10 in our main campaign.  As it took us 4 yrs to get to lvl 10 in 5e, we generally have a good mastery of the system at that point.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 31, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> We usually give the top end a shot after we are between lvl 5-10 in our main campaign.  As it took us 4 yrs to get to lvl 10 in 5e, we generally have a good mastery of the system at that point.



Sorry I forgot to get back to you before, I actually made a level 19 Monk recently for a playtest, I did it over like two sittings, but I don't think I really spent more than an hour  and some change on it-- though I've looked at the options I wanted to use in the past, and kind of came up with basic plan in my head (most of the hour being looking at specific feats to decide how to fill the gaps in that plan, while helping another player by answering their rules questions.) It was also a weird build (I used the Ancestral Weaponry Monk feat to do One Inch Punches with an Elven Curve Blade, and also wanted to fit in the Shadowdancer Archetype in free Archetype, but had no idea what to take for the prior archetype-- But note that this is a variant rule that forces you to take a bunch of extra feats, none of which are actually a part of your class.)


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## The-Magic-Sword (Jan 31, 2021)

Also, I suppose this might be a neat idea, @dave2008 and anyone else who feels like they need one to try the system, would you like me to run you a little introduction oneshot? I just set up a standing newbie game setup for some of my server's newbies, and I could probably run it for you if we have a couple of people interested in trying out the game, I'd be open to it if you want to try the app, but I actually have built in pregens you could use to hop in (more of those 5ish minute ones.)


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## dave2008 (Jan 31, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Also, I suppose this might be a neat idea, @dave2008 and anyone else who feels like they need one to try the system, would you like me to run you a little introduction oneshot? I just set up a standing newbie game setup for some of my server's newbies, and I could probably run it for you if we have a couple of people interested in trying out the game, I'd be open to it if you want to try the app, but I actually have built in pregens you could use to hop in (more of those 5ish minute ones.)



Maybe, I'm not ready to do online gaming yet - but I'm getting there!


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## CapnZapp (Feb 1, 2021)

Why are we discussing level 20 play in a thread about a Beginner Box...?


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## Steel_Wind (Feb 1, 2021)

I liked _Menace under Otari_ as an introduction to PF2 mechanics. The adventure itself is kind of poor, but I changed elements of that, too.

I added an initial premise that the fish was missing because Tamily recently inherited the Fishery from her Mom who tragically died from a lingering illness, after her Father and 3 brothers died at sea last fall. So Tamily thinks that her uncle (her father's brother) is somehow behind all of this as part of a move to take over the Fishery from her. The PCs should be going down to the basement to investigate a theft and family skullduggery - not expecting a fight with monsters in the basement.

This also explains why Tamily has these healing potions on hand to give to her friends ("These were for my Mom, before she... well... you can have them now.")

The entrance into the basement is not so easy to see in the dark. I narrowed it. I also have 3 rats in the basement, hiding, so that the first battle is not fought under the constrained conditions of that tunnel.

I also changed the Kobolds and made them more sympathetic -- and so I can tie _Menace Under Otari _as a prologue for  _Abomination Vaults, Vol 1._

The Kobolds in _Menace under Otari _are all that is left of the tribe that used to occupy the 2nd level of the_ Ruins of Gauntlight_, until they were displaced by the Morlocks. The surviving remnants of that tribe fled the Ruins and -- through the tunnel -- ended up in the Dungeon level 2 in _Menace Under Otari._

Losing much of the tribe including its former chieftain, the new "Boss Zolgran" did what she could to keep the tribe together. Their morale was *very* low and the tribe was on the verge of scattering, so she gave them a _focus _to keep them all together by_ contriving to _steal an egg from the River Drake in _Ruins of Gauntlight_. The egg provided focus and purpose to the displaced Kobolds. Then, the egg hatched. Not being a true dragon, they were quite unprepared for the rapacious appetite of hatchling River Drakes for fish. River Drakes don't live nearly so long as a true Dragon, but they grow much, *much* faster when initially hatched -- and they eat a LOT of fish. Zolgran ordered her warriors to steal fish from Tamily just to keep the River Drake alive, but she wanted to keep their presence secret form the Humans above in Otari. (The history of humans vs kobolds in Otari is a grim one and Zolgran's tribe, descendants of the Stonescales, know it.) So the kobolds used a small tunnel to get into the Fishery basement - one they had to crawl through and which, with a fish barrel moved in front of it, might be overlooked. At least, so Zolgran hoped.

The rats pushed the crate out of the way, ate even more of the fish, and spoiled Zolgran's plans. And here we are.

The PCs don't have to fight the now young River Drake at area 19 and can stay at level 1 at the end of _Menace_ in order to go to Gauntlight to follow up on what the Kobolds tell them about it if they can manage to defuse the final confrontation with the Kobolds into something less violent. The tunnel at area 19 leads to the surface just south of the Ruins of Gauntlight map in the swamp. The tunnel at area 15 leads to the tunnel on Level Three of the _Ruins of Gauntlight _as detailed in Vol 1 of that Adventure Path. That tunnel is scavenged by a Gibbering Mouther, and so that way lies madness and death.

You can substitute out the Xulgath in Area 15 for more kobolds as that makes far more sense. The rock wall was put at Area 15 by the Kobolds who feared the Mouther getting into their lair and whispering to them as they slept. The kobolds who are at the position of the Xulgaths in 15 are there to guard the lair from the tunnel and the Mouther. They aren't paying attention to what is going on behind them.

These changes should point the PCs to take the tunnel to Gauntlight at Area 19 and emerge in the swamp, instead of the route that will result in their all-but-certain-deaths at level 1 by taking the tunnel from Area 15 to level 3 of the Abomination Vaults.

*tl;dr:* Remove the fight with the Hatchling Green Dragon -- now a Young River Drake -- at Area 19. The PCs do not advance to level 2. Let them achieve that after completing level 1 of _Ruins of Gauntlight_ using milestone levelling.

The PCs contact with Wrin and Moriblint and others in Otari who have concerns about missing people who have ended up there (From Crook's Nook and the Rowdy Crawfish) can be added later, or through roleplaying opportunities during any investigation should the PCs go for the red herring of Tamily's uncle stealing the fish.

The map change to the tunnel [ see other post below] shows a small tunnel that is "discovered" through investigation:  Begin the fight with one rat behind the barrel in the small tunnel, 3 more in the room (2 hiding under the stairs).


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## Steel_Wind (Feb 11, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> At first level, you can go from fully healed to instantly dead from the GM just rolling a single '20' on her attack dice.




What are you talking about here? That's simply not true.

The most any GM can do to a PF2 character at any level is drop them to Dying 2. (assuming they crit which puts the PC to Dying 2; any other lethal result which puts the PC to 0 hits (or less) results in only "Dying 1").

A Recovery check for a Dying 2 is then required on the PCs turn: Roll a 1 or 2, the PC dies. Any other result, the PC maybe gets worse, or better, or even loses the dying condition. And that's *before* we consider the use of a Hero Point for a Heroic Recovery, which is a default rule and assumption in the game using the full ruleset.

I don't think you understand the new Death and Dying rules in PF2. They are actually one of the better new mechanics in PF2.


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## Steel_Wind (Feb 11, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> We noticed something in the combats with PF2e, we consistently would miss...a LOT.  Looking at the math, most of the Characters will need a 12 or better to hit, which means that you are going to be missing 3 out of every 5 rolls.
> 
> The Rats on the other hand have a +7 to hit, and will hit even the pre-generated characters (which had a HIGHER AC in general than the ones we created) on an 11 or better.  For the others you are looking at a roll of 8 and 9 to hit.  (for us, the rats needed an 8 to hit most of us, with one being a 6 or 7 (can't recall off the top of my head) but that one was normally in the back).  This mean that the odds of the rats hitting us were exactly the same odds as us missing them, and as we would miss more than they would hit, they would hit us more than they would miss us.  (PS: and I mentioned it below, that yes, it was also easier for them to crit us.  The bonus they have to hit is basically an unfair advantage in many ways in that first fight).




What EVER are you talking about? A competent 1st level PF2 character starts with a +7 to hit, whether that is a melee attack or a spell attack. The rats are AC 15. The PCs hit on an 8 or better. That means the PCs misses 35% of the time and hits 65% of the time.  Hell 15% of the time the PC will CRIT, too.

The rats have 8 hit points. A well armed fighter with a bastard blade will do an average of 10.5 hit points per strike, killing a rat in one blow. A lesser martial weapon like a longsword is still going to do 8.5 points (killing the rat on the first swing, about 2/3rds of the time, on average).

And that's BEFORE we consider the Wizard. The BB doesn't provide the PF2 Wizard with his best cantrip spell available in the main rules (_Electric Arc)_, though the full rules do of course. For anybody running this with the full rules set, _Electric Arc_ cannot miss. For an Int 18 Wizard (why are you playing _anything_ else?) that will do 1d4+4 to 2 rats, 6.5 points on average, with a basic Reflex save of DC17 to only take half damage; (the rat has a +7 to Ref) so one of those rats is likely to fail and be crippled where any subsequent hit by anybody for any amount of damage is certain to kill it, while the other is only slightly better off.) Or the Wizard just come back on Round 2 and finishes em off with a second _Electric Arc_.

As it stands, confined just to the BB options, the Wizard will use either _Acid Splash _or _Ray of Frost if_ he or she wants to preserve the 1st level spell. Again, a spell attack of +7 against AC15, missing only 35% of the time, doing 6.5 points to the target with a cantrip. The second cantrip cast will kill the rat.

Your entire premise here of dissing the first encounter in _Menace Under Otari_ seems not only off, but _purposefully_ off.

Indeed, I changed the encounter -- and the map -- to increase the challenge of it for my players. As written, with the full rules and being played by anybody who has played an RPG before (let alone PF2), it's far too weak.


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## kenada (Feb 11, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> What are you talking about here? That's simply not true.
> 
> The most any GM can do to a PF2 character at any level is drop them to Dying 2. (assuming they crit which puts the PC to Dying 2; any other lethal result which puts the PC to 0 hits (or less) results in only "Dying 1").



If you take more than double your maximum hit points in one attack, you die instantly from massive damage. Outside of falling damage, it’s really only an issue for 1st and 2nd level characters.

For example, an ogre warrior is a moderate-threat encounter for a 1st level party. It does an average of 30.5 damage on a crit. If it gets lucky and does above average damage, it can outright kill a 1st level character because massive damage kills the character instantly (no saving throw, no heroic recovery, etc).


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## Steel_Wind (Feb 11, 2021)

kenada said:


> If you take more than double your hit points in one attack, you die from massive damage. Outside of falling damage, it’s really only an issue for 1st and 2nd level characters.
> 
> For example, an ogre warrior is a moderate-threat encounter for a 1st level party. It does an average of 30.5 damage on a crit. If it gets lucky and does above average damage, it can outright kill a 1st level character because massive damage kills the character instantly (no saving throw, no heroic recovery, etc).



Again. What are you talking about now?

This was a review of the BBox. There is nothing CLOSE to that level of a threat presented in the adventure in this product.

If you are going to restrict it to what is presented in the BB, the average crit damage of an ogre is 27, not 30.5. (1d12+7) x2.  So 13 hits or less on the PC.

And there are going to be few PCs with so few a number of HPs to start. I suppose you might have a fairly low Con Wizard with low ancestry HP with 12 or 13 HP to start.  But he's not going up against the Ogre (and it is ONE Ogre for a CR3, not a group). That's what the melee classes are for.  These are _remote _concerns.

I'd also add that death from massive damage rule does not appear in the BBox.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 11, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> I don't think you understand the new Death and Dying rules in PF2. They are actually one of the better new mechanics in PF2.



You might want to target someone else if you want to throw around accusations of imperfect rules understanding...


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## kenada (Feb 11, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> Again. What are you talking about now?
> 
> This was a review of the BBox. There is nothing CLOSE to that level of a threat presented in this product.



The thread has gone on for nine pages. The discussion has drifted beyond just the Beginner Box. That digression in particular was talking about the system in general. What CapnZapp said is true: a 1st level character can be taken from fully healed to dead. That the Beginner Box lacks encounters with creatures dangerous enough to involve the massive damage rules doesn’t make the statement untrue or ignorant of the rules.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that groups will eventually transition beyond the Beginner Box. One that runs Torment and Legacy will encounter an ogre warrior in their very first encounter (hence why I used it in my example). Admittedly, I don’t think Torment and Legacy is very good, and there are better adventures they should be running, but I wouldn’t blame them for trying it because it’s free.


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## kenada (Feb 11, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> If you are going to restrict it to what is presented in the BB, the average crit damage of an ogre is 27, not 30.5. (1d12+7) x2.  So 13 hits or less on the PC.



The ogre warrior’s hook is deadly d10. On a crit, it does 2×(1d10+7)+1d10, which averages out to 30.5 damage.



Steel_Wind said:


> And there are going to be few PCs with so few a number of HPs to start. I suppose you might have a fairly low Con Wizard with low ancestry HP with 12 or 13 HP to start.  But he's not going up against the Ogre (and it is ONE Ogre for a CR3, not a group). That's what the melee classes are for.



The Ezren pre-gen included in the Beginner Box has 16 hit points. Merisiel has 15 (and she’s built as a melee rogue). Unlike Merisiel, Ezren won’t be killed outright on average, but all it takes is a slightly above average crit to take him out. Even Valeros (24 hit points) could be killed by a max crit, but I’m not really considering that case



Steel_Wind said:


> These are _remote _concerns.



I’ve had it happen. The character was a rogue with 18 hit points. He took a crit and died outright. It wasn’t an ogre, but the ogre is a convenient example because it’s the first encounter in a published demo adventure (albeit one I consider crappy).



Steel_Wind said:


> I'd also add that death from massive damage rule does not appear in the BBox.



You are correct (and technically correct is the best kind of correct, right?), but that side conversation wasn’t about the Beginner Box.


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## Steel_Wind (Feb 11, 2021)

kenada said:


> The ogre warrior’s hook is deadly d10. On a crit, it does 2×(1d10+7)+1d10, which averages out to 30.5 damage.



The weapon is not "deadly" in the BBox, either. That property does not appear in the BBox rules set.


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## kenada (Feb 11, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> The weapon is not "deadly" in the BBox, either. That property does not appear in the BBox rules set.



Huh. They changed the ogre warrior in the Beginner Box to use a different weapon. It’s probably a needed change. The ogre warrior in core is quite nasty for its level. I stand corrected regarding the ogre warrior vis-à-vis the Beginner Box. However, in the context of discussing core PF2, I don’t think it really negates the point. Even with just a greataxe, both Ezren and Merisiel can be killed instantly by lucky crits. Again, speaking of core.

That the Beginner Box doesn’t include the massive damage rules is probably to its benefit. I wish they hadn’t changed things needlessly, but the massive damage rules in core _are_ pretty bad. Like I said previously, past 2nd level, they’re only likely to ever come up due to falling damage. You need to have a large difference in levels (+4 or more IIRC) for monsters to risk doing enough damage with a max hit (so even then very uncommon).

There’s an argument that the massive damage rules are there to recreate the old-school feel of lower levels being dangerous. That’s what the original conversation was discussing (the deadly style of play and character creation). In OSE, one can roll up a new character very fast. In PF2, you can create a character somewhat quickly if you know the system and have good tools to facilitate that (see: the digression on Pathbuilder). Personally, I think the massive damage rules as written are at odds with the overall feel of PF2 (which is dangerous but with safeguards to prevent outright deaths).


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## CapnZapp (Feb 12, 2021)

This "the rule isn't included in the BB so the point doesn't stand" defense is clutching at straws.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 12, 2021)

Kenada: yes, the massive damage rules of Pathfinder 2 comes across as a relic of the past, meshing badly with the rest of the system. Why have a rule that only targets the very weakest and most exposed characters, and then quickly becomes entirely irrelevant for the rest of the game?

It's one in a long line of rules that, if just removed with no replacement, would simply improve the game.


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## ShinHakkaider (Feb 12, 2021)

Steel_Wind said:


> Again. What are you talking about now?
> 
> This was a review of the BBox. There is nothing CLOSE to that level of a threat presented in the adventure in this product.
> 
> ...



Steel, just pack it up man. You are legitimately wasting your time here. These guys have an axe to grind with Paizo and Pathfinder and there's nothing that you can show or tell them that will promote a civil discourse on this topic. Considering that the thread is ABOUT the BB theyre just going to keep moving the goal posts to prove you wrong and them right. 

I've been running a PF2 game for months now and have never, NOT ONCE had the massive damage rules apply. 
Hell, I ran a 10 year Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and only had massive damage rules apply TWICE that I can remember. And in both of those cases it was the PC's that Insta-killed their foes.


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

Some posters are passionate in their criticism of PF2. It’s uncharitable and does a disservice to those who engage without polemics. However, I agree this thread really isn’t the place for that. Speaking only for myself, I’ve kept my criticism limited to how the Beginner Box does better than the core. I think that’s fair. It’s a credit to the Beginner Box. I also think I’ve been more than civil considering it hasn’t been reciprocal (overall, not speaking about this conversation).

I think you’re being uncharitable in your portrayal of the discussion over the last page. It was regarding a side conversation that was dug up from several pages ago. It was never about the Beginner Box. Keeping responses focused on that isn’t moving the goalposts. It’s how you respond to a straw man.

As far as massive damage goes, I _have_ had it be an issue in my game. My campaign ran for over a year, but that doesn’t make my experience any more valid or anyone else’s less valid. I don’t think it’s a particularly good rule, and core could probably do without it and be fine. If there are areas where it matters, then they can be handled with an exception to the usual dying rules (“Specific Overrides General”).

With all that said, I don’t think there’s anything left in this tangent. If people want to continue complaining about PF2, there are three or four other threads where they can go do that. However, I will say it’s a shame that the threads that have tried to talk about cool things people do with PF2 get far less traffic than the argument threads (or the PF2 deathwatch Amazon sales ranking thread).


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 12, 2021)

Really, Enworld doesn't have much of a PF2e community, there's a few people on here, but its mainly people who want to push their narratives about it failing out of some weird desire for vindication about their beliefs concerning the hobby, or to spin their own experiences as a revelation about some kind of objective flaw.


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Really, Enworld doesn't have much of a PF2e community, there's a few people on here, but its mainly people who want to push their narratives about it failing out of some weird desire for vindication about their beliefs concerning the hobby, or to spin their own experiences as a revelation about some kind of objective flaw.



Sadly, that seems to be true in general outside of PF2-specific venues. I wish there were the diversity of discourse you see over in the D&D forum here. Long before I decided to switch my campaign from PF2, I’d mostly disengaged with the reddit and official forum communities because there didn’t seem to be space for other ways of playing the game. It felt like at times we were playing a different game because we weren’t doing official adventures, or I had a different perspective on encounter and adventure design.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 12, 2021)

kenada said:


> Sadly, that seems to be true in general outside of PF2-specific venues. I wish there were the diversity of discourse you see over in the D&D forum here. Long before I decided to switch my campaign from PF2, I’d mostly disengaged with the reddit and official forum communities because there didn’t seem to be space for other ways of playing the game. It felt like at times we were playing a different game because we weren’t doing official adventures, or I had a different perspective on encounter and adventure design.



Really? I mostly only run homebrew and haven't run into that at all, I'm not saying I disbelieve you though, given how some of the debates hinge on some users overemphasizing the APs. The only thing I feel isn't super well represented on any community right now (and part of why I do come here actually) is the new-old-school style of play, which I specifically find weird because of how well designed the system actually is for it, while maintaining the modern sensibility towards character building.


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Really? I mostly only run homebrew and haven't run into that at all, I'm not saying I disbelieve you though, given how some of the debates hinge on some users overemphasizing the APs. The only thing I feel isn't super well represented on any community right now (and part of why I do come here actually) is the new-old-school style of play, which I specifically find weird because of how well designed the system actually is for it, while maintaining the modern sensibility towards character building.



I got some push back on reddit a while back for suggesting adversary rosters and other techniques for making dungeons more interesting. I think it was in a thread on Legacy and Torment, and I was trying to describe how you could make a newbie dungeon that would be more interesting and approachable. The concern, of course, was the balance assumptions that PF2 purportedly makes. 

The rest is perception. When the discourse is overwhelmingly tilted in one direction, it’s can feel risky trying to start a conversation or make suggestions that favors a different one. I don’t want to deal with uninformed theorycrafters or being lectured on system expectations. There’s also the feeling of being an outsider when you lack the shared experiences everyone else has.

So some (limited) experience, but mostly an emotional response. However, I do agree about wishing there were more discourse on the new-old-school style. I think there are some gaps depending on how deep you want to go into that style, but PF2 gives you a better framework for building on that than its peers.


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## Cendragon (Feb 12, 2021)

The character classes all say they get a general feat at 3rd level.  However, I cannot find where the general feats are located.  Can someone help me?


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

Cendragon said:


> The character classes all say they get a general feat at 3rd level.  However, I cannot find where the general feats are located.  Can someone help me?



They’re listed in the section where they tell you to take one. Assurance, Fleet, and Toughness are general feats.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 12, 2021)

kenada said:


> I got some push back on reddit a while back for suggesting adversary rosters and other techniques for making dungeons more interesting. I think it was in a thread on Legacy and Torment, and I was trying to describe how you could make a newbie dungeon that would be more interesting and approachable. The concern, of course, was the balance assumptions that PF2 purportedly makes.
> 
> The rest is perception. When the discourse is overwhelmingly tilted in one direction, it’s can feel risky trying to start a conversation or make suggestions that favors a different one. I don’t want to deal with uninformed theorycrafters or being lectured on system expectations. There’s also the feeling of being an outsider when you lack the shared experiences everyone else has.
> 
> So some (limited) experience, but mostly an emotional response. However, I do agree about wishing there were more discourse on the new-old-school style. I think there are some gaps depending on how deep you want to go into that style, but PF2 gives you a better framework for building on that than its peers.



Damn if I saw I would have backed you up, I used adversary rosters to great success in my campaign.


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## Cendragon (Feb 12, 2021)

Thanks Kenada!  I was being spacey and didn't realize those were feats.  I just thought they were abilities and the class got all of them.  This definitely makes more sense.


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Damn if I saw I would have backed you up, I used adversary rosters to great success in my campaign.



I’ll be damned if I can find the post now, but it was around the time PF2 launched. The push back was mild compared to the discussion on “smooshing” here. I just got tired of the balance über alles crowd after a while.


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## transmission89 (Feb 12, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Really? I mostly only run homebrew and haven't run into that at all, I'm not saying I disbelieve you though, given how some of the debates hinge on some users overemphasizing the APs. The only thing I feel isn't super well represented on any community right now (and part of why I do come here actually) is the new-old-school style of play, which I specifically find weird because of how well designed the system actually is for it, while maintaining the modern sensibility towards character building.



What is this “new-old school style of play”? I’m intrigued.  Like Kenada, I’ve mainly moved to OSE for my gaming fix as I’m falling in love more and more with the assumptions of OSR gaming. Whenever I get the urge for something crunchy, I’ve jettisoned 5e for pf2 for my more “modern” gaming.


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## kenada (Feb 12, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> What is this “new-old school style of play”? I’m intrigued.  Like Kenada, I’ve mainly moved to OSE for my gaming fix as I’m falling in love more and more with the assumptions of OSR gaming. Whenever I get the urge for something crunchy, I’ve jettisoned 5e for pf2 for my more “modern” gaming.



When I use it, I’m talking about running exploration-based games in PF2. Exploration mode is analogous to OSE’s exploration procedure. There are gaps, but it’s a decent framework for running that kind of game.

Edit: To elaborate a bit more. There’s not a lot of discussion around that style of play. There are a few of us here, and you sometimes see it mentioned in other places. It’s just not very visible, so if one doesn’t already have those sensibilities, then it may not be obvious that PF2 can be run that way. The same could be said about 5e (or any game), but exploration mode provides a firmer basis than the exploration pillar.


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## Campbell (Feb 13, 2021)

For what it's worth the way that I ran (and will run in the future) Pathfinder Second Edition is somewhat based on the design of games like Darksouls, Bloodborne, and Middle Earth : Shadow of War. It's not one big sandbox, but a series of smaller sandboxes deliberately constructed to fit the narrative demands of the game, but played relatively straight. Most of the things players will encounter fit within the band of stuff players can interact with in interesting ways.

I don't decide what sort of encounters players will face. That's up to how they play the game, but most things are within striking range if players play skillfully. I also make sure the immediate environment is as dynamic as possible usually with internal conflicts within factions players can exploit.

This is my preferred way to run games with a high skill component like Exalted Third Edition and the new Legend of the Five Rings as well.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 13, 2021)

Basically, as Kenada said, it has a number of qualities that are reminiscent of and supportive of an OSR style of game. My primary touchstone for that culture is 'The Alexandrian' so that colors my viewpoint, but the game really has a lot of the 'procedures' being discussed on that blog deliberately built into them, ranging from exploration and downtime modes, to the victory point subsystems for tracking infiltration and such.

The way the encounter guidelines work, you can break them into pieces, or combine those pieces to move between difficulty categories, and those fights on the higher end will be meaningful enough to facilitate a 'combat as war' framework where the party is looking for ways to make the encounters easier through their exploration-- e.g. you want to cut off enemies from being joined by other enemies because the resulting encounter would potentially bring it to severe or extreme. 

The only trick to this is deliberately not loading encounters up to heavily to leave room for combination, I use adversary rosters and 'enemy groups' that I treat like lego bricks depending on the situation to build out the encounters the players actually face, e.g. this low encounter group, and a moderate encounter group might combine if not handled carefully into a severe encounter- which is risky, but not unwinnable by any means.

Treasure can easily be made flexible, while still being very desirable, which rewards a material motivation to adventure and complex environments to adventure through. I'm reminded of the dungeon complexes of yesteryear, or of the concept of Jaquaying the Dungeon.

In fact, the game almost demands it-- like it works just fine with the more plotted modern campaign scheme, but its notable that a lot of options in character building fall to the wayside if you do so, feats that help navigation, that help you with traversal, that help you with environmental effects, that help you with crafting, that help you with self-determined approaches to social problems (influence rumor anyone?) and so forth that you really only reach the full potential of the rules in a somewhat sandboxy experience of the kind you can see Campbell discussing above.

But the 'new' part lies with the third and fourth edition character building sensibility, where you have a great deal of power to customize your characters abilities, players are empowered to get a-hold of Magic Items they would like, and combats are primarily 'combat as sport' in their execution, your actual moment to moment tactics are still very influential. The game treats rolling as a variant rule, and players are still quite powerful relative to encounters, especially if they know what they're doing.

Pathfinder 2e combines these ideas to create a game where I believe its full potential, is predicated on full use of its procedures to explore a world (rather than a plotted sequence of scenes) with interesting dungeon complexes and other environments, where the players determine their own approach with differing consequences for those approaches, while retaining the tactical mentality, character customization, and player empowerment of more modern systems. It even seems to best retain exp based leveling, utilizing a mixture of combat and accomplishments to level within an internally coherent, if somewhat gamist, simulation.


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## Cendragon (Feb 13, 2021)

I don't understand how a Climber's Kit, which contains 50 feet of rope plus other items costs 5sp and 50 feet of rope cost 5sp.  Why would anyone just buy the rope only?


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## transmission89 (Feb 13, 2021)

kenada said:


> When I use it, I’m talking about running exploration-based games in PF2. Exploration mode is analogous to OSE’s exploration procedure. There are gaps, but it’s a decent framework for running that kind of game.
> 
> Edit: To elaborate a bit more. There’s not a lot of discussion around that style of play. There are a few of us here, and you sometimes see it mentioned in other places. It’s just not very visible, so if one doesn’t already have those sensibilities, then it may not be obvious that PF2 can be run that way. The same could be said about 5e (or any game), but exploration mode provides a firmer basis than the exploration pillar.



Ok, I must have glossed over this when I read the through the rulebook. In what way would you say exploration mode provides a stronger basis than the exploration pillar in 5e? They basically say, when you’re not in combat in the dungeon, you can explore and look around and I was like, yeah that’s what you do...

For example, in B/X, you have the codified turns and actions that consume turns with the ticking pressure of the wandering monster checks. With the blistering fast combats, that’s a feasible thing. I couldn’t imagine that in pf2 as the combats are wonderfully detailed, but I imagine wandering monsters would just make it a non stop combat slog.

So when I was reading pf2, I was envisioning more of a 4e style approach in that you have fewer, key encounters rather than fighting trash mobs.


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## transmission89 (Feb 13, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Basically, as Kenada said, it has a number of qualities that are reminiscent of and supportive of an OSR style of game. My primary touchstone for that culture is 'The Alexandrian' so that colors my viewpoint, but the game really has a lot of the 'procedures' being discussed on that blog deliberately built into them, ranging from exploration and downtime modes, to the victory point subsystems for tracking infiltration and such.
> 
> The way the encounter guidelines work, you can break them into pieces, or combine those pieces to move between difficulty categories, and those fights on the higher end will be meaningful enough to facilitate a 'combat as war' framework where the party is looking for ways to make the encounters easier through their exploration-- e.g. you want to cut off enemies from being joined by other enemies because the resulting encounter would potentially bring it to severe or extreme.
> 
> ...



Ok, but how does pf2 specifically enable this as a rule set compared to say 5e? I genuinely seemed to have missed this possibility from my reading of the rules.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 13, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Ok, but how does pf2 specifically enable this as a rule set compared to say 5e? I genuinely seemed to have missed this possibility from my reading of the rules.



Basically, 5e doesn't do much of anything to enable them, Pathfinder 2e gives you actual rules for conducting them-- like 'Exploration Activities' or 'Downtime Activities' for instance. 5e gives a little advice for it but basically leaves it to the GM to adjudicate how they will, whereas Pathfinder 2e codifies it and adds to it extensively with its lists of options. Like, you can obviously wander a dungeon in 5e, making skill checks and such but PF2e codifies a system of exploration activities that each party member is doing on an ongoing basis, designating roles in the marching order and defining the increment of passing time as 10 minutes at least in duration. It basically does more to make the activity less of a liminal space in the game rules, and more of a defined, codified space the way encounters are. 

Because of that, the system can hang more on those areas of the game-- more player abilities and unique perks, more opportunities for real game play. Ditto for downtime's codification.


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## transmission89 (Feb 13, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> Basically, 5e doesn't do much of anything to enable them, Pathfinder 2e gives you actual rules for conducting them-- like 'Exploration Activities' or 'Downtime Activities' for instance. 5e gives a little advice for it but basically leaves it to the GM to adjudicate how they will, whereas Pathfinder 2e codifies it and adds to it extensively with its lists of options. Like, you can obviously wander a dungeon in 5e, making skill checks and such but PF2e codifies a system of exploration activities that each party member is doing on an ongoing basis, designating roles in the marching order and defining the increment of passing time as 10 minutes at least in duration. It basically does more to make the activity less of a liminal space in the game rules, and more of a defined, codified space the way encounters are.
> 
> Because of that, the system can hang more on those areas of the game-- more player abilities and unique perks, more opportunities for real game play. Ditto for downtime's codification.



Right yeah, I get it. The ten minute activities here are good indicators for resource consumption and that mirrors b/x.


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## kenada (Feb 13, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Ok, I must have glossed over this when I read the through the rulebook. In what way would you say exploration mode provides a stronger basis than the exploration pillar in 5e? They basically say, when you’re not in combat in the dungeon, you can explore and look around and I was like, yeah that’s what you do...
> 
> For example, in B/X, you have the codified turns and actions that consume turns with the ticking pressure of the wandering monster checks. With the blistering fast combats, that’s a feasible thing. I couldn’t imagine that in pf2 as the combats are wonderfully detailed, but I imagine wandering monsters would just make it a non stop combat slog.
> 
> So when I was reading pf2, I was envisioning more of a 4e style approach in that you have fewer, key encounters rather than fighting trash mobs.



Exploration activities generally take at least ten minutes. It’s the same timescale as a turn in B/X. PCs describe what they are doing, which determines their activities, and then the GM describes what happens. You can use that back and forth to create an experience similar to B/X. 5e doesn’t have the breadth of activities codified that PF2 does. Where you run into limitations is the gaps.

For a B/X style approach, the biggest things that PF2 lacks are morale and a robust encounter procedure. In particular, the latter lets PCs control their engagement. It’s just assumed that an encounter means a fight unless it has been signposted otherwise. With a B/C-style encounter procedure, PCs would first decide what they do (fight, parlay, escape, etc), and then you would procede.

When I ran, I used morale rolls from B/X. You could also do something like have creatures make Will saving throws versus their Wisdom DCs. I had reaction rolls, but I never used them. Now that I’m giving OSE a try, I’d also use its encounter procedure. If not ever encounter is a fight, then wandering monsters don’t risk turning dungeons into a slog. For an escape procedure, I’d build off the chase subsystem in the GMG.

Speaking of wandering monsters, I rolled them every other “turn” just like B/X. The default assumption that exploration activities take at least ten minutes makes it easy to bring over the B/X approach. I didn’t make every encounter a fight, but in retrospect, I wish I had brought over the full encounter procedure from B/X.

The reason why I’m not still doing this comes down to other issues, mostly of taste. As I’ve tun, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I want in a system is at odds with how modern D&Ds are designed (this includes 5e).


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## kenada (Feb 13, 2021)

Cendragon said:


> I don't understand how a Climber's Kit, which contains 50 feet of rope plus other items costs 5sp and 50 feet of rope cost 5sp.  Why would anyone just buy the rope only?



That looks like a mistake, but it’s also that way in core. The Climbing Kit should probably cost closer to 10 sp. As written, it doesn’t make sense to buy the rope on its own.


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## Campbell (Feb 13, 2021)

For Morale I like the idea of a Will check versus the Initimidation DC of the PC they are currently engaged with.


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## GreyLord (Feb 14, 2021)

ShinHakkaider said:


> Steel, just pack it up man. You are legitimately wasting your time here. These guys have an axe to grind with Paizo and Pathfinder and there's nothing that you can show or tell them that will promote a civil discourse on this topic. Considering that the thread is ABOUT the BB theyre just going to keep moving the goal posts to prove you wrong and them right.
> 
> I've been running a PF2 game for months now and have never, NOT ONCE had the massive damage rules apply.
> Hell, I ran a 10 year Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign and only had massive damage rules apply TWICE that I can remember. And in both of those cases it was the PC's that Insta-killed their foes.



Just as a reply to clarify (as for the most part I've said my part in this thread and am on to other things).

I DID NOT have an axe to grind with Pathfinder or Paizo. 

In reply to certain hostility recently towards new players in general (or...new players that at least GAVE PF2e and the BB a try), so not you specifically, but some other more recent responses...

I DO think I may be the only actual beginner that tried the BB in this thread and gave a review accordingly (edit: actually, having read a little further, it appears there may be one other here now).  I have gathered from this thread that a majority (not all) Pathfinder players do not want new players trying the game and are hostile to beginners (at least if this thread is any indicator) and do not want to grow the PF2e audience.  I have seen a few that are welcoming, but the hostility towards new players and what went on with the game...well.

If there were mistakes with the rules, instead of blaming the new players, perhaps analyze why such rules would have been interpreted WRONGLY from how beginners read the box..

Or, you can continue to tell any  new players that they are bad/wrong and it is there fault rather than anything else...as that seems par for the course.

There are those that have been more welcoming in this thread, but they seem to be the minority (Edit: though the past page which I read after I posted this, seems to have a nicer conversation going on rather than the pile on the new player thing that went on at first, so perhaps there are a few more welcoming players out there than this thread make sit appear early on).  In addition, the rabid pathfinder fan in our group is actually quite a nice individual.  This thread indicates these do not represent most PF2e players today (edit: with the exception of this last page which is much more calm).  That is unfortunate as it has only confirmed my thoughts that PF2e is not for me.

To appease the PF fan of our group we continue to play a Shattered Star Campaign with them with PF1e rules (still not my favorite, but we didn't have the difficulties with it we ran into with PF2e.  5e is still my favored RPG of the modern current RPG offerings these days) and are having fun with PF, just not 2e currently.  This means we are still supporting Paizo and Pathfinder (we have even gotten some of their paperback rules for PF1e that are in print).

I DID NOTICE something though, that could be of use for those who are Beginners (like we were) and are not dissuaded by the adventure in the box (perhaps they read this thread and rule interpretations are done differently in their group and they continue to play for example).  Our over anxious Pathfinder friend who led us on in this, also had pre-ordered the Otari module before they knew what our reaction would be to the BB.  I will note that the adventure has an appendix which allows for characters to level up to 4th level in the box.  I feel this should have been included in the box or put up as a free download, BUT...as it is not, it IS still available if one orders the "Troubles in Otari" module from Paizo for PF2e.


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## transmission89 (Feb 14, 2021)

GreyLord said:


> Just as a reply to clarify (as for the most part I've said my part in this thread and am on to other things).
> 
> I DID NOT have an axe to grind with Pathfinder or Paizo.
> 
> ...



Hold on here. I don’t think you are being very fair. No one piled on to any new players. No one has shown any hostility to any new players In this thread. What I did see here though was your repeated claims of this when others were trying to help you out.

I think this is definitely one of those where the medium of text only has led to mis interpretation of meaning. Certainly so if you have read hostility from any of my posts to you.

Instead, what I have seen reading this thread, and what I feel I have contributed, is people that are passionate about the product and are disappointed for you that you did not have a good experience. That is what is described as going wrong. Not that you have had bad wrong fun, but that you didn’t have the intended experience and then people offered ways to help.
”These might be some reasons why your experienced sucked and here’s what you could do differently to help” is not attacking you. It’s people trying to help, not criticise.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 14, 2021)

I don't think anyone should be attacked for their views. I also don't think debating the validity (the property of an argument consisting in the fact that the truth of the premises logically guarantees the truth of the conclusion) or soundness (a sound argument is an argument that is both valid, and all of whose premises are true) of someone's view is an attack.

There's this kind of whip crack technique, that I feel your post is a reasonable example of (intentionally or not) that's become common in the discourse that asserts that any-given-experience is self-justifying to the point that any mitigation of the assertions derived from experiences is combative and exclusionary. In contrast, I find learning curves to be a necessary evil of the hobby, not just in rules, but in technique (after all, any given system is more of a Game Engine, than a game in and of itself, so a lot of the actual design power is awarded to the players by means of the GM, even down to the moment to moment presentation.)

So the quality of the experience is an intersection of multiple factors that are interdependent of one another-- the material reality of the system is one dimension, the GM's design and presentation is another, the players decision making in play  is yet another, there's an affective element (everyone's attitudes toward what they're doing and mood), and finally the intersection of how the material reality of the system interacts with each of these things.

So you might have a bad experience, but if we adjust some of these other factors with advice, you might be able to have a very positive experience without the system itself changing at all without any meaningful burden on your part going forward. Similarly, some of the affective elements of your play might be heavily conditioned by a set of expectations created by other games, preconceived notions of this game, and so forth and that can be important to diagnosing your paint points as well. I've never met a system that doesn't have to be 'massaged' in this way to be fun for a pretty significant portion of it's player base.


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## ShinHakkaider (Feb 15, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Hold on here. I don’t think you are being very fair. No one piled on to any new players. No one has shown any hostility to any new players In this thread. What I did see here though was your repeated claims of this when others were trying to help you out.
> 
> I think this is definitely one of those where the medium of text only has led to mis interpretation of meaning. Certainly so if you have read hostility from any of my posts to you.
> 
> ...



Yeah I'm not sure what he's on about. I know that I wasn't attacking or piling on newbie players. As a long time GM, Newbies are my FAVORITE type of player.


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## willrali (Feb 15, 2021)

I’ve bought it and it looks fine. The art is very bland (disappointing) but the pawns are nice. The adventure is a bit meh. At best it should be easy to spice up without much tinkering.

What I like most is the distillation of character creation and the distillation of the rules. These are great. It’s reasonable to expect someone to read through 72 small pages in a few days.

Though one of the most powerful and flexible things about Pf2 is the social skill debuff stuff in combination with attacking... and the book doesn’t really get into that sort of thinking.

I’m going to recommend the PDF to new players to prepare. Let’s see how it does.


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## MoonSong (Feb 16, 2021)

Long post, sorry for it.



FrozenNorth said:


> Seconded.  It is just weird to me that people who applaud PF2’s greater customization (and are right to do so!), immediately turn around to say that creating a character “doesn’t really take more time in PF2”.



And I don't see that much customization. There are a lot of options yes, but all of them only let you color within the lines. Want a different weapon? well, you can't use a different weapon, you should have picked a different class/race -sorry ancestry-. Want to divest from combat? you can't.



kenada said:


> PF2 lacks the deep feat chains (and taxes) of PF1. There are still some chains, but you can make obvious choices without looking ahead and still have a character that works fine. Additionally, retraining is core, so if you do make a mistake, it’s easily fixed with a bit of downtime.




It doesn't have the feat chains, but due to the way it is made, you are forced to spend feats and resources a certain way or you just grow ineffective over time. This shouldn't be a problem, but it is for me. You see, I can't optimize my way out of a paper bag even when I'm trying (I've been kicked out of games because of it). The least forgiving the math is, the harder and less fun this is for me.  



kenada said:


> I think that’s a fair point. In my limited experience with my group, all of my players spend way too much time window shopping before making a choice. However, I’m not sure how much that is due to worries about viability versus looking at the cool things they get at higher levels. I think if they started from a concept (versus browsing for inspiration), character creation would go more quickly for them.



And this goes specially hard for me. I tend to lock onto concepts, but they are rarely within what is stereotypical. For a game that advertises itself on its customization, PF2 is too limiting and limited, to the point it overprescribes playstyle. Want to use a certain weapon? you need to pick class based on that. Want to use weapons instead of cantrips? you can't without actively hurting the party. You just can't choose to play outside the prescribed playstyle, let alone play against type.  In fact, at times  you can't even play at type, because your vision of the type is just not approved by god.  



CapnZapp said:


> And it's a game with loads and LOADS of little pesky modifiers, often conditional ones with easily forgotten criteria. If you can't do numbers like 3d12+1d6+1d6+18+7+15-10-5=? in your head quickly and effortlessly, even hours into a play session, don't bother. And no, that wasn't some extremely niche corner case either. I'm saying that 3d12+1d6+1d6+18+7+15-10-5= can and will happen a dozen times each and every combat round (at high levels), maybe not in every combat, but likely some combats of every play session. And that's after hitting, which might involve d20+27+2-1-1+1-4 this attack, but d20+27-1-1+1 the previous attack. Every time you roll the dice, something will have changed, so you can never precalculate what you will be adding to the d20 or the 3d12.




This is also a problem, PF2 has just too much math for me. I can do some quick and even complex calculations in my head, but I don't have the working memory needed to pull of the long calculations that PF2 demands. There is also too much to keep track of. How are you supposed to play without some automatic tool carrying all of that load?



The-Magic-Sword said:


> Really, Enworld doesn't have much of a PF2e community, there's a few people on here, but its mainly people who want to push their narratives about it failing out of some weird desire for vindication about their beliefs concerning the hobby, or to spin their own experiences as a revelation about some kind of objective flaw.



Only speaking about myself. I was exited about PF2, but given the way things turned out, it is definitely not for me. I just can't handle the cognitive load needed to play it, I suck at tactical combat and I don't find the customization meaningful and flexible enough. There are a lot of ideas I love in PF2, but they aren't enough to justify everything else.


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## willrali (Feb 16, 2021)

MoonSong said:


> There are a lot of options yes, but all of them only let you color within the lines




This is true for all but the lightest of games. Within its paradigm, P2 gives tremendous customizing options. And using one or two of the rules variants in the GMG expands this still further.

The benefit of this approach is that these customization decisions then become more than just ‘flavor’ on an otherwise basic toon. They have meaningful impact on the world and on dramatic outcomes.

But sure. If someone wants to cook up ‘whatever I’m imagining’ in five minutes without needing to spend time reading rules or picking feats, then P2 is very much the wrong game.


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## MoonSong (Feb 16, 2021)

willrali said:


> This is true for all but the lightest of games. Within its paradigm, P2 gives tremendous customizing options. And using one or two of the rules variants in the GMG expands this still further.
> 
> The benefit of this approach is that these customization decisions then become more than just ‘flavor’ on an otherwise basic toon. They have meaningful impact on the world and on dramatic outcomes.
> 
> But sure. If someone wants to cook up ‘whatever I’m imagining’ in five minutes without needing to spend time reading rules or picking feats, then P2 is very much the wrong game.



Something as simple as a sorceress using a polearm or halberd becomes a huge resource drain, you can't just use some feat to gain proficiency, you need to devote a lot of resources to it instead. All so it just falls short one or two points from what you could do with a spear, which is still strictly inferior to what the game expects you to be able to do with a cantrip. And these points end up mattering a lot because of the way the math works. 

And the same with a lot of abilities that used to be reliable. These now are riders on skill checks, and you'd rather devote resources to max these skills because otherwise you can't do a thing with that ability. I already find 5e restrictive, but it is a lot more flexible and forgiving for my tastes.


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## willrali (Feb 16, 2021)

MoonSong said:


> Something as simple as a sorceress using a polearm or halberd becomes a huge resource drain, you can't just use some feat to gain proficiency, you need to devote a lot of resources to it instead. All so it just falls short one or two points from what you could do with a spear, which is still strictly inferior to what the game expects you to be able to do with a cantrip. And these points end up mattering a lot because of the way the math works.
> 
> And the same with a lot of abilities that used to be reliable. These now are riders on skill checks, and you'd rather devote resources to max these skills because otherwise you can't do a thing with that ability. I already find 5e restrictive, but it is a lot more flexible and forgiving for my tastes.



Fair enough then. I was ready to have 5e hit my sweet spot but I find it incredibly bland and samey, to the point where character choices are borderline meaningless. (Though I’m clearly in the minority here.) I suppose we pick our poison.


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## kenada (Feb 16, 2021)

Not giving players more control over their attack and defense proficiencies feels like a major miss to me. Even if you take a martial dedication, you’re still stuck behind the curve. I don’t think “the +2 AC class” (champions) or “the +2 attack class” (fighters) are niches worth protecting.


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## Nilbog (Feb 16, 2021)

kenada said:


> Not giving players more control over their attack and defense proficiencies feels like a major miss to me. Even if you take a martial dedication, you’re still stuck behind the curve. I don’t think “the +2 AC class” (champions) or “the +2 attack class” (fighters) are niches worth protecting.




I'm a bit on the fence about this, I like that those classes have that advantage, it sets them apart and gives them a very definite and desirable niche, I do however feel that it would be nice for other classes to get master a little easier, if only in a certain weapon type or group, so something like the polearm sorcerer mentioned above was easier to build and still affective without losing too much or stepping on the fighters toes


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## kenada (Feb 16, 2021)

Nilbog said:


> I'm a bit on the fence about this, I like that those classes have that advantage, it sets them apart and gives them a very definite and desirable niche, I do however feel that it would be nice for other classes to get master a little easier, if only in a certain weapon type or group, so something like the polearm sorcerer mentioned above was easier to build and still affective without losing too much or stepping on the fighters toes



I look at it like this: if your defining niche is being +2 better, then that’s a boring niche. However, I assume it’s designed that way to balance against classes doing more raw damage (but with less accuracy), but something’s off. If you multiclass in PF1, you don’t stay stuck at your old BAB progression. There definitely needs to be a way for characters taking martial feats to get better than expert attack proficiency.


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## Nilbog (Feb 16, 2021)

kenada said:


> I look at it like this: if your defining niche is being +2 better, then that’s a boring niche. However, I assume it’s designed that way to balance against classes doing more raw damage (but with less accuracy), but something’s off. If you multiclass in PF1, you don’t stay stuck at your old BAB progression. There definitely needs to be a way for characters taking martial feats to get better than expert attack proficiency.




Perhaps niche isn't the best word, maybe pinnacle? I wouldn't want it to be the only thing that defines a class, but in a way it's nice for a fighter to say I'm the most skilled with weapon's, but I agree it should definitely be easier for other characters to get to master level proficiency


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## kenada (Feb 16, 2021)

Nilbog said:


> Perhaps niche isn't the best word, maybe pinnacle? I wouldn't want it to be the only thing that defines a class, but in a way it's nice for a fighter to say I'm the most skilled with weapon's, but I agree it should definitely be easier for other characters to get to master level proficiency



One way of doing that might be to let fighters swap class feats more easily. If you’re a sword-and-board fighter, and you find a magical greataxe, you should be able to start cleaving things like you were born doing it. You don’t want to turn fighters into martial wizards, so maybe let them retrain for free (and in no time), but limit the frequency they can do it.


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## transmission89 (Feb 16, 2021)

kenada said:


> I look at it like this: if your defining niche is being +2 better, then that’s a boring niche. However, I assume it’s designed that way to balance against classes doing more raw damage (but with less accuracy), but something’s off. If you multiclass in PF1, you don’t stay stuck at your old BAB progression. There definitely needs to be a way for characters taking martial feats to get better than expert attack proficiency.



I think this is tied to the philosophy of the way the designers have built this game.
I would speculate that they were concerned about the number creep and ability of classes to step into others‘ territory and ruin a sense of balance.
Maths wise, the classes and builds are fairly inflexible, a number or bonus here or there, systematically, one character is very much like another. This reigns in number creep and the ability to break what was intended.
Instead, they opted for feat choices effecting what you actually do with those numbers in a given moment (during play) as a way to express individuality and character capability. 
obviously it’s down to personal taste if that vibes with you or not, but my reading of the design would suggest looking at the numbers as such is not the best way to examine a character in this edition.


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## kenada (Feb 17, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I think this is tied to the philosophy of the way the designers have built this game.
> I would speculate that they were concerned about the number creep and ability of classes to step into others‘ territory and ruin a sense of balance.
> Maths wise, the classes and builds are fairly inflexible, a number or bonus here or there, systematically, one character is very much like another. This reigns in number creep and the ability to break what was intended.
> Instead, they opted for feat choices effecting what you actually do with those numbers in a given moment (during play) as a way to express individuality and character capability.
> obviously it’s down to personal taste if that vibes with you or not, but my reading of the design would suggest looking at the numbers as such is not the best way to examine a character in this edition.



Right. You get your vertical progression from class and horizontal from feats. It’s potentially risky to allow players to tweak their characters’ weapon (and armor) proficiencies. However, I don’t think providing a means to get master proficiency in either would result in numbers creep. Those classes currently stuck at expert proficiency would just be catching up with their martial peers.

I’ve been trying to figure out how that would actually work in practice, but the only two options that come to mind either severely change the skill system or reintroduce weapon proficiencies à la AD&D. It may not be a view worth the climb, but it still feels like a missed opportunity (especially since checks are otherwise unified, but two kinds [attack rolls, saving throws] can’t be customized).


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## Campbell (Feb 17, 2021)

When it comes the ability to wield a weapon effectively a substantial part of the issue is that there is just no where for a wizard or cleric to go that does not put their skill with weapons on par with a barbarian, ranger, or rogue. I personally would not like to see a situation like 5e where you have ways to build full casters that are as good with weapons as martial characters.


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## kenada (Feb 17, 2021)

Casters won’t have the differentiation in martial techniques those classes have. They also won’t have class abilities like rage or sneak attack. I don’t think letting them feel like they aren’t falling behind as badly at upper levels (when martials get master proficiency) will suddenly make them as good as martials are with weapons.

And should martials who take a caster dedication should be able to get legendary proficiency? I think I accidentally opened a can of worms.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 18, 2021)

One element of this is that expert prof already covers this niche, provided casters aren't relying on it as their main thing. Martials make a second attack all the time, whereas your first attack is more accurate, so if you're tossing out a saving throw spell (or really any other spell that doesn't trigger MAP) and then swinging with your sword with that third action, your chance to hit isn't that terrible for the role its playing in your turn. 

Its a class based game, so its not a flaw for having a casting class be bad at physical combat beyond a swing alongside a spell, i think making master prof an easy pick up would be a mistake. I think theres probably room for things that pull it off, but i think theyre elements for later in the games lifespan and better made demanding-- like a class archetype that makes you give something up in the class's power budget.


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## willrali (Feb 18, 2021)

kenada said:


> Casters won’t have the differentiation in martial techniques those classes have. They also won’t have class abilities like rage or sneak attack. I don’t think letting them feel like they aren’t falling behind as badly at upper levels (when martials get master proficiency) will suddenly make them as good as martials are with weapons.
> 
> And should martials who take a caster dedication should be able to get legendary proficiency? I think I accidentally opened a can of worms.



This is a very good point. The martial niches in Pf2 are heavily protected. The obverse of having a sorcerer 'nearly as good at spear as a fighter' is having a fighter 'nearly as good at evocation' as a sorcerer.

Why have classes at all?


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## kenada (Feb 19, 2021)

willrali said:


> This is a very good point. The martial niches in Pf2 are heavily protected. The obverse of having a sorcerer 'nearly as good at spear as a fighter' is having a fighter 'nearly as good at evocation' as a sorcerer.
> 
> Why have classes at all?



Yep. Can of worms. If you take it to its logical conclusion, then you end up with a generic system. Part of me wants to tinker with things to make it work, but people here have made good arguments why it shouldn’t be done without tradeoffs. I think @The-Magic-Sword is right about how that might look (trading off class progression).


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## CapnZapp (Feb 19, 2021)

Assuming you're talking about gish builds, it simply cannot be done without serious design work (that neither WotC nor Paizo are willing to do).

First: nobody wants magic balanced with physical attacks. (Evidence: 4E)

So the obverse of a sorcerer 'nearly as good at spear as a fighter' is not having a fighter 'nearly as good at evocation as a sorcerer' since that's OP.

In PF2 you can definitely make casters suck less at weaponry without in the slightest having to worry about them overshadowing the actual fighters, since it isn't the specific attack chance that makes you a fighter. It's you ability to survive the front lines that makes you a fighter.

A Wizard has maybe 60% of the hp of a fighter, and worse AC. Moreover, he has probably not maxed out Strength and Constitution.

You don't need to make his physical attacks a joke on top of that. In a system where a fighter starting out with a 16 instead of 18 is a significant cost (because every +1 is incredibly important) you probably can give a Wizard every offense a Fighter gets - his Strength 8 will nicely curtail his physical activities regardless. (Obviously I'm assuming point buy here - rolling up stats is just LOLWUT levels of randomness in the context of PF2)

What I meant at the top was that if you really want the image of a cool "magic fighter" you need to drop the idea this person is also a full caster (with access to the full spell lists).

But really what you want to do is acknowledge that the allure of the gish is honestly the allure of being OP. What you want when you play a gish is to be good at everything. Which is fine, if you drop the regular fighter (make it a NPC class, say).

This is so because the only remaining option is to balance your gish with other fighter subclasses, and now it doesn't feel so good anymore, right? Now your cool magic tricks are just on par with what a non-magical fighter can do in other ways, and that's just not what I want in a gish. A gish wants to be a regular fighter enhanced by magic, or a full spellcaster that somehow is cool in combat too.

And that's just a different game than a game that purports to support classical archetypes as the magic-averse dwarf fighter and the frail old wizard.


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## transmission89 (Feb 19, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> Assuming you're talking about gish builds, it simply cannot be done without serious design work (that neither WotC nor Paizo are willing to do).
> 
> First: nobody wants magic balanced with physical attacks. (Evidence: 4E)
> 
> ...



Opinion as fact again. “Nobody wants magic balanced with physical attacks. Evidence:4e”

The fact 4e sold suggests that actually, some people did. Minority or not. That’s not nobody.

Again, numbers aren’t the best way to demonstrate character potential in this edition, look more to the feats. It’s like some pf2 players saying that a fighter can out monk a monk because they can reach higher expertise with unarmed attacks. Which is true. But that’s only if a monk is defined by being able to punch things really good.

It’s almost like you haven’t heard of the magus class? Mixes up combat and magic quite effectively....


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## dave2008 (Feb 19, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> But really what you want to do is acknowledge that the allure of the gish is honestly the allure of being OP. What you want when you play a gish is to be good at everything. Which is fine,...



Yep, the idea of a true gish is the protagonist of the story who is better than everyone else (unless everyone is a gish). Regardless, the true concept of a gish is that it is OP.  Hard to do that and remain balanced.


CapnZapp said:


> if you drop the regular fighter (make it a NPC class, say).



However, I don't think you have to drop the fighter (or the wizard for that matter - because the gish should be better than they are too), you just need to accept that gish is OP and throw the idea of balance out the window. Of course, many people these days are not able or don't want to do that.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 19, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Opinion as fact again. “Nobody wants magic balanced with physical attacks. Evidence:4e”
> 
> The fact 4e sold suggests that actually, some people did. Minority or not. That’s not nobody.



_shrug_


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## dave2008 (Feb 19, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> It’s almost like you haven’t heard of the magus class? Mixes up combat and magic quite effectively....



But is it balanced with a full magic class or full martial class or both?


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## transmission89 (Feb 19, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> But is it balanced with a full magic class or full martial class or both?



I’ve not played the pf2 magus play test myself. I’ll leave that to more knowledgeable folks. however, the pf1 magus was a “workable” Gish of beauty mixing combat and magic. Obviously it wasn’t full caster/ full fighter (as again that would be unworkable at a table as too powerful) but it shows there’s a playable space for the archetype and I’m looking forward to the pf2 version.


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## dave2008 (Feb 19, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I’ve not played the pf2 magus play test myself. I’ll leave that to more knowledgeable folks. however, the pf1 magus was a “workable” Gish of beauty mixing combat and magic. Obviously it wasn’t *full caster/ full fighter* (as again that would be unworkable at a table as *too powerful*) but it shows there’s a playable space for the archetype and I’m looking forward to the pf2 version.



From my perspective, the bolded part is what a gish wants to be. Anything that is balances with a full martial or full caster is just not gishy enough


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## kenada (Feb 19, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> Assuming you're talking about gish builds, it simply cannot be done without serious design work (that neither WotC nor Paizo are willing to do).



I think that’s a reasonable assumption given the context, but there are a couple of martial options for casting classes (warpriest cleric, warrior muse bard, battle oracle). The warpriest in particular seems off because it not only has a faster weapon proficiency progression than the cloistered cleric, but it has a slower casting proficiency progression, which tops out at master (not legendary) casting proficiency. You also can’t start with an 18 Strength because of the way the ABC character creation system works.

There is precedent for varying key ability scores (rogue rackets), so giving warpriests Strength as their key ability score strikes me as a reasonable change, especially since eldritch trickster gives rogues their casting stat as their key ability score (so why not let a martial cleric get Strength as theirs?). I’d also consider giving warpriests master weapon proficiency at 15th level. You’re still not as good as true martials, but you shouldn’t have to shift your balance of fighting/casting to casting as you gain levels.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 19, 2021)

Putting aside that I loved 4e, I kinda think that its sort of silly to suggest its failure was down to balancing Martials and Magic. People had a diverse set of complaints for that game and I doubt "Billy's fighter isn't subservient to my Wizard, how dare they!" Was anything resembling a consensus. 

But I'm not sure the assertion that paizo being unwilling to put the design work in really holds up very well. We got the playtest Magus just recently and while it was controversial they highlighted every intention to fix it according to the expectations presented by playtest feedback. 

I think full caster / full martial isn't really a worthwhile goal, balance IS important to a game like this, and we've seen its absence cause lots of maladaptions in the player base. Meanwhile I think most reasonable players would be comfortable with a well designed Magus or Swordmage type that blends the two well.

I'm a big gish person, and what I really want is anime fighting magic techniques. "Fighter/Wizard in a can" not only steps on toes, its boring when what I really want is to teleport around, getting hits in while lightning dances down my blade, and bringing my blade down for an explosive finisher. 

From a fantasy perspective it beats "I throw magic AND swing my sword good"


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## The-Magic-Sword (Feb 19, 2021)

kenada said:


> I think that’s a reasonable assumption given the context, but there are a couple of martial options for casting classes (warpriest cleric, warrior muse bard, battle oracle). The warpriest in particular seems off because it not only has a faster weapon proficiency progression than the cloistered cleric, but it has a slower casting proficiency progression, which tops out at master (not legendary) casting proficiency. You also can’t start with an 18 Strength because of the way the ABC character creation system works.
> 
> There is precedent for varying key ability scores (rogue rackets), so giving warpriests Strength as their key ability score strikes me as a reasonable change, especially since eldritch trickster gives rogues their casting stat as their key ability score (so why not let a martial cleric get Strength as theirs?). I’d also consider giving warpriests master weapon proficiency at 15th level. You’re still not as good as true martials, but you shouldn’t have to shift your balance of fighting/casting to casting as you gain levels.



I definetly think giving Warpriests the option to shift their key stat is a good move, i don't think the master prof is necessary though i am kind of wondering if their reduced casting prof is really necessary or could just be removed from the game text. Atm, its less of a balance festure, snd more just defines their meta away from offensive magic.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 19, 2021)

Anyway, my point is that Paizo went overboard with the niche protection. No, Fighters don't need Wizards to actively lag behind in attack bonus to feel safe in their niche. This lag has only one result: making spell attacks (spells that target AC instead of saves) useless.

Actually the implementation of the niche protection of the Fighter specifically sucks. The Fighter gets +2 compared to other weapon users, and that's fine. But it only gets that to one specific type of weapon! This only results in the Fighter not being able to use looted weaponry. It's much better for a Fighter to strip the runes off of the axe she just found, and apply them to her sword or polearm or whatever. 

For some reason weapon flexibility was considered such a huge advantage the Fighter doesn't get it until 19th level!

*Full flexibility is something you could give the Fighter at level 1 and it would not unbalance a single thing!*


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## MoonSong (Feb 19, 2021)

I find it funny that all I mentioned was a sorceress that used a polearm instead of cantrips to fight. And then everybody jumped into "wants to be OP and outfight the fighter!". And the allure of the gish for me isn't the great power, but rather that I don't like to fight using cantrips, it comes too close to just shooting lasers for my liking. It is an aesthetic choice.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 19, 2021)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> I'm a big gish person, and what I really want is anime fighting magic techniques. "Fighter/Wizard in a can" not only steps on toes, its boring when what I really want is to teleport around, getting hits in while lightning dances down my blade, and bringing my blade down for an explosive finisher.



That's what I meant by my first sentence: " it simply cannot be done without serious design work (that neither WotC nor Paizo are willing to do)."

It can be done, but the devs need to come up with a new set of cool powers that neither just do with magic what the battlemaster* does without, nor steps on the wizard's (or bard's, or cleric's) toes.

In short, give up the idea of access to the arcane (occult etc) spell list. Instead give out a curated list of powers. Something akin to a monk* perhaps.

_*) I'm thinking of the 5E impleentations here_


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## CapnZapp (Feb 19, 2021)

kenada said:


> I think that’s a reasonable assumption given the context, but there are a couple of martial options for casting classes (warpriest cleric, warrior muse bard, battle oracle). The warpriest in particular seems off because it not only has a faster weapon proficiency progression than the cloistered cleric, but it has a slower casting proficiency progression, which tops out at master (not legendary) casting proficiency. You also can’t start with an 18 Strength because of the way the ABC character creation system works.



Yes, we quickly discarded the warpriest. 

First, the 3E Bard should have taught Paizo that a "balanced" gish isn't 50%/50% or even 75%/75%. It feels balanced when the sum of your two sides is more like 180% than 100%. After all you can't do both at the same time.

Second, the idea of a Warpriest doesn't work together with the idea of a "full Cleric". The full Divine spell list means you will quickly realize casting spells is better than making attacks. All your physical offense is wasted, while any physical defense quickly becomes OP (why play a frail cleric if you can play a strong cleric and still cast the same spells?) And so we're back to the design work needed to make gishes work...

At the very least, they could have tried the 3E Sorcerer path. Being a full level behind in spellcasting (Fireballs at level 6, not 5) was incredibly impopular but *actually worked* to balance the class. Just being at -2 DC does not work. Either it's just unfun or it can be minmaxed away (by building a character that doesn't cast offensive magic).

A Warpriest that mostly bashes heads in is fine, but it needs a different set of magic abilities than a full Cleric. (In other words, it's a Paladin/Champion...!)


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## Retreater (Feb 19, 2021)

I played the first half of the Beginner Box adventure today. I had the pre-generated fighter and there were three other characters (cleric, wizard, and rogue). We did not have optimal tactics (the wizard mostly relied on his crossbow instead of attack cantrips, the rogue rarely performed sneak attacks). We had a couple of challenging battles, but nothing that got close to a TPK. (My fighter went unconscious one time due to an unlikely critical hit and two other hits on him in the same turn, but I was back up and fighting in time for my next action.) 
Since I was a player and not the GM, I can't speak to if it was scaled down or anything, but overall it felt fair.


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## dave2008 (Feb 19, 2021)

Retreater said:


> Since I was a player and not the GM, I can't speak to if it was scaled down or anything, but overall it felt fair.



Was it fun?


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## Retreater (Feb 19, 2021)

dave2008 said:


> Was it fun?



Yeah. I had much more fun as a player than I did running for my group.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 20, 2021)

I have found DMing PF2 (not specifically the BB though) very fun, since monsters are actually fearsome - you don't need to bend over backwards to make the players respect their foes (as you do in 5E), and because it's easy to set up exciting combats as a DM GM.

It's everything else besides _the actual combat_ that's a huge drag and after playing Extinction Curse (we're at L19) three players have said they're fed up with all the little inconsistent rules and prefer 5E (one to the extent he's bowing out entirely from further PF2 play). Only one player definitely prefers PF2 (and that's the player who really would love to play PF1).

It's a shame Paizo ended up with a game that is so relentlessly hard to love. It certainly comes as no surprise to me it's hard to lure 5E players to PF2 - this game is brutally hardcore in its demands on players attention to detail and overall mental power while playing.


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## Retreater (Feb 20, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> It's a shame Paizo ended up with a game that is so relentlessly hard to love. It certainly comes as no surprise to me it's hard to lure 5E players to PF2 - this game is brutally hardcore in its demands on players attention to detail and overall mental power while playing.



I mean, I'm doing okay in a game that started at 7 a.m. while hungover.


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## Windjammer (Feb 21, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> It's a shame Paizo ended up with a game that is so relentlessly hard to love. It certainly comes as no surprise to me it's hard to lure 5E players to PF2 - this game is brutally hardcore in its demands on players attention to detail and overall mental power while playing.



This is a tough call. I agree that demand on attention span and concentration levels in multi-hour sessions can be really draining and be offputting to players, esp. if you have a demanding day job and just want some easy, relaxing release and entertainment.

I honestly don't know what the solution is. I really, really disliked 4e after a couple of years because it ran on rails. The situational choices within a game session were so relatively straight forward that I could play it with my brain half or mostly switched off. I'd spend hours each week before a game session optimizing my build and power choices, but once that was done, the character in play was just trivial.  I love that PF 2 brings back situational decision making, and I'd hate to see it trivialized or cut back on to the extent that too much modern D&D has (e.g. high level 3e play where tension at the table was pretty much deflated within minutes of rolling initiative - ok, so our side goes first, which means the BBEG is gonna go down). As I said, a hard thing to balance.


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## willrali (Feb 21, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> It's a shame Paizo ended up with a game that is so relentlessly hard to love. It certainly comes as no surprise to me it's hard to lure 5E players to PF2 - this game is brutally hardcore in its demands on players attention to detail and overall mental power while playing.




Is there any hard data on this? I’ve had no trouble recruiting five ex 5e players to PF2, and they’ve never looked back. Again, I know people seem to love that game, but it’s had everything that made D&D interesting boiled off it, leaving us with bland blancmange.



MoonSong said:


> I find it funny that all I mentioned was a sorceress that used a polearm instead of cantrips to fight. And then everybody jumped into "wants to be OP and outfight the fighter!". And the allure of the gish for me isn't the great power, but rather that I don't like to fight using cantrips, it comes too close to just shooting lasers for my liking. It is an aesthetic choice.




In that case did you try the fighter archetype? There’s even a canonical rules variant where you get it free.


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## transmission89 (Feb 21, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> I have found DMing PF2 (not specifically the BB though) very fun, since monsters are actually fearsome - you don't need to bend over backwards to make the players respect their foes (as you do in 5E), and because it's easy to set up exciting combats as a DM GM.
> 
> It's everything else besides _the actual combat_ that's a huge drag and after playing Extinction Curse (we're at L19) three players have said they're fed up with all the little inconsistent rules and prefer 5E (one to the extent he's bowing out entirely from further PF2 play). Only one player definitely prefers PF2 (and that's the player who really would love to play PF1).
> 
> It's a shame Paizo ended up with a game that is so relentlessly hard to love. It certainly comes as no surprise to me it's hard to lure 5E players to PF2 - this game is brutally hardcore in its demands on players attention to detail and overall mental power while playing.



Some of the contents of this post contain misleading information. Fact check: 
1) many people in fact do love pathfinder 2. Some people do not. Like always, people like different things.
2) Many people throughout the years have struggled to move people away from the current edition of d&d to try a different game. This is a well known inertia and often discussed in community postings. There is no evidence to suggest that this is something peculiar to pf2 as a consequence of its design choices. 
3) Groups can and do play PF2 in a casual chips and dips way. Pf2, like most ttrpgs can be approached with a number of different play styles that vary from table to table.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 21, 2021)

Windjammer said:


> This is a tough call. I agree that demand on attention span and concentration levels in multi-hour sessions can be really draining and be offputting to players, esp. if you have a demanding day job and just want some easy, relaxing release and entertainment.



Thank you.

Perhaps I should clarify my point. PF1 was arguably just as cluttery and filled to the brim with rules, and that game did just fine.

So my point isn't that Advanced Squad Leader games are inherently evil or some such. 

My point is that Paizo badly misread the market by completely failing to see where the wind was blowing despite having access to the mega success of 5E for several years. Correct me if I'm wrong but I would say the success of 5E and its mechanical solutions must have been evident a full year before PF2's ruleset even bagin taking on their final shape.

PF2 comes across as a game that's developed in a bubble where 5E simply does not exist. If you compare the game against PF1 and 4E it is unquestionably a success, no matter how you look at it. 

But the game wasn't released in a post 4E world. It was released in a post 5E world. 

And that makes its grossly overengineered rules feel instantly antiquated, since by the standard of 2015 they're actively user hostile.



> I honestly don't know what the solution is.



The solution is clearly to release a version of Pathfinder 2 that has been ruthlessly de-cluttered and given a badly needed rules do-over. There must be a secret fan of 4E working at Paizo, and that person needs to be let go. Paizo needs to admit that while, yes, PF2 was written with the explicit intention to clean out the morass of pesky little rules exceptions that plagued PF1, the exact same situation persists in PF2, with loads and loads of feats and class abilities that work the same, except they have very slightly different wordings. Then they need to own up to the fact the game's individual parts don't work well together. To pick just one example - why have so elaborate and detailed rules for Treat Wounds, when the encounter system so clearly has ditched the resource management style of 3E/PF1? (Why force players to make all those little decisions and die rolls when you in the end still need to sit tight until you're fully healed??)

The Core Rulebook is 642 pages. I would submit it would be a task of Trivial difficulty to shave off 50 pages. Just drop the most obscure and byzantine spells and feats. And it would be a Moderate challenge to shave off 100 (dropping subsystems whose main effect is to make gamers' eyes glaze over). A system so complicated gamers who have played for well over a year still believe it does things it does not do (craft items) should appear as a variant in a GMG-type product, not be included in the core rulebook. (It's the Kickstarter disease).

I am firmly convinced a CRB of 500 pages or so would be strictly better, and straight up attract more customers.

And don't get me started on how Paizo just blithely kept doing a PF1 era rollout of supplements, again learning nothing from 5E. The game has been out for 18 months or so and the already-large amount of feats has already been doubled (tripled?). No mountain of feats can't conceal the fact that yes, you theoretically have many many MANY options, but the amount of real power to customize your character is severely curtailed.


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## CapnZapp (Feb 21, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Some of the contents of this post contain misleading information. Fact check:
> 1) many people in fact do love pathfinder 2. Some people do not. Like always, people like different things.



What's misleading is relativism. 

What I'm asking is: might there be many *more* people loving PF2? 

I don't find the fact "many" people loves PF2 a compelling reason to settle for the current game, when I clearly see how much better it could have been. In fact, I would even think there might be a chance *you* would have loved the game more if it had been changed in ways discussed above.


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## kenada (Feb 21, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> The Core Rulebook is 642 pages. I would submit it would be a task of Trivial difficulty to shave off 50 pages. Just drop the most obscure and byzantine spells and feats. And it would be a Moderate challenge to shave off 100 (dropping subsystems whose main effect is to make gamers' eyes glaze over). A system so complicated gamers who have played for well over a year still believe it does things it does not do (craft items) should appear as a variant in a GMG-type product, not be included in the core rulebook. (It's the Kickstarter disease).



One could probably meet that page count reduction just by rewriting the CRB in the style of the Beginner Box. It’s needlessly verbose. The Beginner Box should have just been a reprint of the core rules with a subset of its options instead of a beginner-focused rewrite. That the BB needed its own take on the rules means the CRB needed additional editing passes until the it could be that.


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## transmission89 (Feb 21, 2021)

CapnZapp said:


> What's misleading is relativism.
> 
> What I'm asking is: might there be many *more* people loving PF2?
> 
> I don't find the fact "many" people loves PF2 a compelling reason to settle for the current game, when I clearly see how much better it could have been. In fact, I would even think there might be a chance *you* would have loved the game more if it had been changed in ways discussed above.



Shrug.

My issue isn’t with the the fact you dislike the game. I get that it’s not for everyone.
My issue is with your arguing the reasons why, using your opinion that because it doesn’t use 5e as a base marks it as a failure, making other points as factual despite being again, opinion based (see the evoking 4e) no matter what else and taking that as factual from there.

Which is a shame, because when you critique the game on its own merits, you are very articulate. I agree the CRB is overly verbose and could have done with another editing pass. I also agree there are other little niggles that could’ve been improved upon. 

I disagree with your assertion that it presents a dated design principle and fails in a post 5e world, that the feat options are bloated or that their release schedule is an artefact of 3e book bloat. I don’t think a hard back a quarter in both lines is excessive (of course, ymmv but I’m not making claims otherwise). 

Again, I emphasise, critique it on its own points (and that can even be in contrast to 5e) but it’s churlish to Mark it as a failure because it doesn’t meet your expected ideal of a 5e++. This is the game they made, the game they wanted to make and it’s doing well (well being a relativism because nothing is going to compare with the freight train of 5e, as usual d&d is a market aberration).


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## Windjammer (Feb 21, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> I emphasise, critique [PF2] on its own points (and that can even be in contrast to 5e) but it’s churlish to Mark it as a failure because it doesn’t meet your expected ideal of a 5e++. This is the game they made, the game they wanted to make and it’s doing well (well being a relativism because nothing is going to compare with the freight train of 5e, as usual d&d is a market aberration).



This seems both fair and unfair. One implied question CaptnZapp is replying to is: how could PF2 perform better than its current single digit marketshare? And one obvious answer is that, to outperform 5e or compete with it, you have to identify what it does well and then do it better. Ditto for what 5e does badly and then do a better job in your own design.

5e has so many strengths and weaknesses that the opportunities seem rife for those with time and talent (personally have neither).

And coming from that angle, CaptnZapp‘s point seems to be that PF2 doesn’t appear premised on a solid understanding of those strengths in 5e. It’s ok to not copy 5e and for a new game to still be a success—nobody is arguing otherwise; but it’s hard to look at PF2 and describe much of what’s going on there as building on 5e as a learning experience. 

Some of PF2 obviously is a response to 5e’s broken promises though. The 5e playtest promised three pillars of play, because people got tired of the hack and slash in 4e (esp. early modules). Sound familiar, right? And it’s a bigger theme at implementation level in PF2 than 5e, I’d argue, and part of the game‘s appeal.

The 5e playtest also promised other things it failed to ever implement—like modularity in design complexity. A clear recognition that people would find that appealing. Now how does PF2 build on that? Arguably not at all. Wouldn’t it have been better to roll out the product with a base game ruleset, and then push half the CRB to the GMG, and half the published GMG to Unearthed Arcana? It’s not just bloated writing, it’s the distribution of content that seems to be dictated by late 1990s/2000s legacy issues rather than sober recognition of the market in 2019 and beyond.

So I think using 5e as a benchmark of sorts to establish a success metric is Justified; even if we don’t want to argue that you have to be a 5e retroclone or similar to be successful in a post-5e world.


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## transmission89 (Feb 21, 2021)

Windjammer said:


> This seems both fair and unfair. One implied question Zapp is replying to is: how could PF2 perform better than its current single digit marketshare? And one obvious answer is that, to outperform 5e or compete with it, you have to identify what it does well and then do it better. Ditto for what 5e does badly and then do a better job.
> 
> Zapp‘s point seems to be that PF2 doesn’t appear premised on a solid understanding of those strengths in 5e. It’s ok to not copy 5e—nobody is arguing that—but it’s hard to look at PF2 and describe what’s going on there as building on 5e as a learning experience.
> 
> ...



This is my point though. Throughout a lot of their posts (not just on this thread) it is the consistent begging the question around a lot of pathfinder 2, even when the original question is unrelated (such as this thread who’s original focus was on the beginner box as a product and not the place to continue criticising the main system, which has led this long meander where we are now).

Your premise on which you build upon is also flawed here as, like zapp (though without the arrogant pronouncement as fact) you are making the argument on assumptions : “To out perform 5e or compete with it, you have to identify what is does well and then do it better?”

To my mind, no to both. This assumes that a) Paizo were specifically aiming to compete with 5e and b) the way to do that is by making 5e++.

a) Yes they are competing in the sense that all ttrpgs compete for market share, but does WFRP, COC, SWRPG, OSE etc set out to “compete with 5e?”  I would contend not.

b) Is making the same product as your main rival, but better, the best way to gain market share and “win”? With various products, many companies have tried this and failed, just being better often isn’t enough to gain Customers already invested in an ecosystem. Not saying it can’t be done, but it’s not always a sure bet.

Your personal preference of organisation by suggesting of moving the content around as being the way to shake up the “legacy” issues is just that, a personal preference. I certainly wouldn’t agree to that were Paizo to do a survey about book organisation!

Your post does provoke a lot of thought and I think highlights an issue that Paizo does have to overcome, those who do actually just see it as 5e++ rather than its own thing and judge it as a success or failure based on that. A possible solution exists in the way it can differentiate itself


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## Windjammer (Feb 21, 2021)

transmission89 said:


> Your post does provoke a lot of thought and I think highlights an issue that Paizo does have to overcome, those who do actually just see it as 5e++ rather than its own thing and judge it as a success or failure based on that. A possible solution exists in the way it can differentiate itself



Thanks, solid points throughout. One clarification: I actually really, really dislike the blandness of 5e so PF2 doesn't need to convince me to be a "better" 5e. That's why I referenced the *promise* of 5e rather than the game's eventual (rather disappointing) execution. I do think that 5e remains a benchmark of success for broad appeal though, and you and I agree that copying 5e is not necessary to success. A game that, in my exact verbiage, "learns from the lessons of 5E" could look nothing like 5e - and I strongly suspect it would. So I'm actually as far from the "5e ++" camp (to use your handy term) as you can imagine. I think nothing worthwhile came out of Wizards of the Coast since 4.0.

Secondly, the organization of content issue has nothing to do with 5e. This was years ago when I played some of FFG's 40k games. All of which are like 300 to 400 page hardcovers. Ended up printing the player-relevant portions and had it soft bound in a 100 page binder. It was the envy of our game table. Loved it.

There's a reason why, outside PF and FFG's RPG cames, most gamelines put the GM material in a separate book. It's just more convenient from a portability perspective and doesn't intimidate the fledgling player as much.

So yeah, all I'd be asking for from PF2 (where I own all the books in specialty edition, except Bestiary 2), is a convenient player's guide featuring cleaned-up prose and de-cluttered from GM content. The Beginner's Book player book is already half way there.


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## transmission89 (Feb 21, 2021)

Windjammer said:


> Thanks, solid points throughout. One clarification: I actually really, really dislike the blandness of 5e so PF2 doesn't need to convince me along a 5e point. That's why I referenced the promise of 5e rather than the game's eventual (rather disappointing) execution. I do think that 5e remains a benchmark of success for broad appeal though, and you and I agree that copying 5e is not necessary to success.
> 
> Secondly, the organization issue has nothing to do with 5e. This was years ago when I played some of FFG's 40k games. All of which are like 300 to 400 page hardcovers. Ended up printing the player-relevant portions and had it soft bound in a 100 page binder. It was the envy of our game table. Loved it.
> 
> ...



Oh right, I get your meaning now, you mean the specific GM facing content? Yeah I’d totally support the idea of moving that to the sole purview of the GMG. Or even why not both? OSE offers a “complete rules tome” with everything in one package and a “players rules tome”, just the player facing content.


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## Justice and Rule (Feb 21, 2021)

Maybe I'm weird, but I liked all the stuff in the CRB. I could agree that it needs a bit better organization, but the biggest thing it adds in comparison to 5E are rules for magical weapons and downtime activities, which I think are good for a player to have access to. I remember there was a big stink about not having any magical items outside of adventures until the DMG got released with 5E.

But again, the CRB definitely could stand to go through another pass or two of editing.


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## Windjammer (Feb 21, 2021)

Justice and Rule said:


> Maybe I'm weird, but I liked all the stuff in the CRB. I could agree that it needs a bit better organization, but the biggest thing it adds in comparison to 5E are rules for magical weapons and downtime activities, which I think are good for a player to have access to. I remember there was a big stink about not having any magical items outside of adventures until the DMG got released with 5E.
> 
> But again, the CRB definitely could stand to go through another pass or two of editing.



Yeah I think it's difficult to get consensus around that issue. Two of the most revered D&D products across time appear to be 1983 Redbox, with a 64 pages player's book, and the 1991 Rules Cyclopedia, with its 400+ pages of consolidated content. Clearly both have a place, and are dearly loved. Maybe it's best if a game has both options?

Re magic items, that's another point where I don't think we'll ever get wide consistency among D&D players. As a player, I want full access to magic items and don't want to buy a separate book. As a GM, I hate the idea - like monsters, i feel treasure distribution is my purview. When 4e PHB put the magic items in the players' hands, there was uproar from the grognards that magic gear has finally been trivialized to a build component. That was quite a shift, over time, from 1990s TSR where products would resolutely refuse to give players access to magic item economy, and even modules (like Firestorm Peak) would mock the idea of "magic item shops" that came to define the 3E era and D&D ever since. By the time we got 4e, even item shops weren't the end of the development. Like quite a few other DM's in 2008, I hated and mocked 4e's idea of a "magic item wishlist" for players, treating the DM like a cashier at McDonald's. "I'll have a BigMac +1, and Bob here will have Bracers of Strength; that'll be all for today." It gave rise to this stellar satire, which I still adore to this day.

I'm still a fan of 4e's inherent bonuses system. Extract the trivial part of magic gear, put it in player's hands along the equipment section, but leave the truly magical gear, not just artifacts, to the GM. There's no reason why the Holy Avenger should be classified as equipment in the way the CRB does by implication.


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