Pathfinder 2e

[OgreBattle]

In Pathfinder 2nd edition's 3 action system, would it be possible for a character to...

1st action- open a door
2nd- fire through the door
3rd- close the door

[deaddmwalking]

In Pathfinder 2nd edition's 3 action system, would it be possible for a character to...

1st action- open a door
2nd- fire through the door
3rd- close the door

Considering I don't have the books, this is not authoritative, but I don't think so.

1st action - open the door
2nd action - prepare your weapon
3rd action - fire your weapon
4th action - there is no 4th action

Drawing your weapon (regardless of attack bonus) is an action. If you have a feat that lets you quickdraw your weapon, you can make a melee attack with it as part of drawing the weapon (I don't think you can do ranged).

So, with quickdraw, you could:

1) open the door
2) quick draw and make an attack against an enemy that is already within your threatened area
3) close the door

[Orca]

I've seen at least one group of 4e fans discussing PF2 approvingly on the web. My non-4e expert eye can see the odd similarity too, though PF2 fans on paizo.com are unable to recognise these similarities.

One of those similarities is that since blast spells cannot kill enemies in one go (and you don't get huge numbers of your better blast spells) you need goons with melee weapons hammering away in order to end the enemies. This in turn means that extra attacks at -5/-10 (-4/-8 if you have a weaker weapon) matter to wear down the enemy (I think there was nothing similar to such extra attacks in 4e? One difference there, it's not all the same.)

Opening a door to stab an enemy is a cute trick but nothing more. One stab won't kill a giant rat, let alone anything tougher.

[maglag]

One stab won't kill a giant rat, let alone anything tougher.

To be fair, giant rats are supposed to be pretty tough. "The local militia's weapons will break when hitting the giant rat" tough.

[Axebird]

One stab won't kill a giant rat, let alone anything tougher.

To be fair, giant rats are supposed to be pretty tough. "The local militia's weapons will break when hitting the giant rat" tough.

That's pretty irrelevant when giant rat is RPG shorthand for "entry level jobber".

[maglag]

One stab won't kill a giant rat, let alone anything tougher.

To be fair, giant rats are supposed to be pretty tough. "The local militia's weapons will break when hitting the giant rat" tough.

That's pretty irrelevant when giant rat is RPG shorthand for "entry level jobber".

If all it took was a stab to take down a giant rat, any farmer could do it by himself instead of needing to call for help.

The job eventually becomes "slay demons/devils/dragons" after all. Weapon-shattering giant rats aren't too shabby for entry level.

[GâtFromKI]

In Pathfinder 2nd edition's 3 action system, would it be possible for a character to...

1st action - cut a hole in a box
2nd - put your junk in that box
3rd - make her open the box

[OgreBattle]

It's fun to go "If I did it...", so how would you have approached a 2nd edition of Pathfinder? Things that did need to be fixed, streamlining, and so on? My thoughts...

Keeping a bunch of golden jesus's, refining some of his horns, discarding some other things...

HP, AC, 6 Attributes, Saving Throws: Keep that in, fiddle with the numbers to get desired results without too much bloating at later levels.


Class- Most people like 3/4th's classes like Alchemist, most people like how swapping archtypes changes a lot about them, so most classes have that level of easy to spot customizability

The chunks Alchemist is built in is pretty much...

Core- BAB, spells per day, specialized feat stuff
Scaling Archtype Power you select 1 of- Bombs, sneak attack, super toxins
Grab Bag One Off stuff you pick from a list every few levels- Mutagens, poison resistance, etc.

PF players prefer new classes to multiclassing, so multiclassing can stay in as a legacy fiddly mostly worse than being a 'hybrid class' thing.

Skills... mentioned on here that different sorts of skills really should scale differently as there are wise men giving knowledge who will die from one cat. Doing the shadowrun thing where knowledge/trivia is separate seems a good solution.

Action Economy Was there much of a desire to change this? What they already have seems to work. How full attacks and maneuvers work seem more critical

Combat maneuvers and feats- a bunch of the feats and special attacks become part of the core physics engines. Ogres batting halfings into the horizon are a natural result of high str vs a small target. No bandaid vital strike, just have attacks that work for your levle.

[GâtFromKI]

The three action economy doesn't really solve any problems and doesn't scale. So I guess it's history lesson time.

Ultimately warriors in D&D have been getting extra attacks since the 1970s because even with belts of giant strength and vorpal blades the swinging of a sword does not keep up with dropping fireballs on groups of enemies. And in the days since 3rd edition launched, dropping fireballs wasn't even the third best thing that a mid level Wizard could do with their time. But of course, in a one-blow system, getting an extra attack is a really big deal, and so various attempts have been made to make the acquisition of new attacks gradual. In AD&D that was normally giving you extra attacks on some turns and not others and that was terrible. 3rd edition brought in the idea of getting extra attacks with a penalty to-hit, which was much more elegant.

The problem of course is that in 3rd edition, Fighters are not very good and get significantly worse as levels rise. The elegance of Full Attacking giving a second attack at -5 and a third attack at -10 is all fine and dandy, but it's also garbage. Offensive output that weak wouldn't be a big deal at first level, and as a reward for getting to 11th it's a sick joke.

So yes, you can just let people full attack like 6th level 3e characters at first level. And it's a modest but significant boost at that level. But you've still got the more fundamental problem that sword guys still need to do something at higher levels to keep up with the cloth wearers. And fucking around with the full attack rules just is not and cannot be the answer to that question.

Or to put it another way: If you looked at third edition and concluded that Barbarians needed a boost at levels 1-5 that degraded and was literally worth less than nothing by level 11 I just don't know what to say.

-Username17

In pathfinder, caster can't do anything useful. Save-or-sucks spells won't land (except on useless minions), damage spells do less damages than a sword (except on useless minions), and other spells could as well not exist since the rules provide no way to get them - you have to go on a side quest the MC won't create since you're playing a railroaded AP since the only selling point of PF2 are the APs and not the side quests the MC has to create all by himself. Even if the MC was OK to create a side quest to get unusual spells, why don't you go on a side quest to get unusual sword like a plane shift sword, or a breath water sword ?

In pf2, everyone and his dog plays a fighter because magic sucks. Action economy has nothing to do with it.

[Axebird]

PF2 has this delightful tag on every ability (not spell- every ability) in the game with the potential to deny actions):

incapacitation (trait) An ability with this trait can take a character completely out of the fight or even kill them, and it’s harder to use on a more powerful character. If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse. If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefts

Even in the best case scenario where the highest level thing you ever fight is your level, the majority of your enemies will get a free +10 bonus on saves or AC against crowd control. Even if that crowd control is just being stunned for one of your three actions (see color spray).

[obexpe]

It's fun to go "If I did it...", so how would you have approached a 2nd edition of Pathfinder? Things that did need to be fixed, streamlining, and so on?

"If I did it", I wouldn't have bothered with a 2nd edition of Pathfinder because it's a stupid idea. Pathfinder gained it's popularity through deliberately reactionary design, making a 2nd edition for the sake of more money was never going to work with their current audience.

Aping D&D forever was never going to be a reliable business strategy for Paizo. They should have been making more of an effort to drift away from D&D-adjacent games using the considerable wealth they accrued from Pathfinder as a starting point. But as everyone here knows, Paizo can't design their way out of a paper bag so their only option was to resort to the old standard.

I highly doubt that anyone on the 2E design team actually *wanted* to be designing a direct follow up to Pathfinder. But that was the only thing they had left that *might* sell.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I think the obvious follow-up would have been a Basic Pathfinder that focused on accessibility by trimming all the fiddly bloat, so that they could compete with 5e for newcomers to the hobby.

[OgreBattle]

I think the obvious follow-up would have been a Basic Pathfinder that focused on accessibility by trimming all the fiddly bloat, so that they could compete with 5e for newcomers to the hobby.

Wasn't the Pathfinder Beginner Box the start of that? They seemed to have not gone any further with it.

Came out before D&D5e too.

[Foxwarrior]

Sure, angelfromanotherpin, but I don't think there's any way that Paizo would be the people to do it. I tried to be the people to do it, but I seem to have failed for other reasons.

[Orca]

PF2 has this delightful tag on every ability (not spell- every ability) in the game with the potential to deny actions):

incapacitation (trait) An ability with this trait can take a character completely out of the fight or even kill them, and it’s harder to use on a more powerful character. If a spell has the incapacitation trait, any creature of more than twice the spell’s level treats the result of their check to prevent being incapacitated by the spell as one degree of success better, or the result of any check the spellcaster made to incapacitate them as one degree of success worse. If any other effect has the incapacitation trait, a creature of higher level than the item, creature, or hazard generating the effect gains the same benefts

Even in the best case scenario where the highest level thing you ever fight is your level, the majority of your enemies will get a free +10 bonus on saves or AC against crowd control. Even if that crowd control is just being stunned for one of your three actions (see color spray).

If you're casting your highest level spells or using a class ability then enemies of the same level don't get this bonus. Half the time a spell will even get an enemy one level higher than you (e.g. when you get 2nd level spells, you're 3rd level, and a 2nd level spell like calm emotions will work on 4th level enemies).

It's just anything with ambitions to be called a boss that is immune to any interesting spell.

[FatR]

If I was in charge of PF2, I'd simplify the game by getting rid of some outdated artifacts, like the complex number-fiddling with skills, and bonus types, as well as by cutting down on general crunch bloat by reducing the number of feats while combining existing ones, throwing shitty and useless spells away from PHB, etc, and call it a day. Basically do what a new edition is supposed to do in a sane world, introduce some incremental improvements, instead of throwing away the game and writing a new one.

[Rubick]

It's true that the Incapacitate tag is on all the good Save-Or-Suck spells.

There are plenty of weaker ones that don't, though. For example, Slow does not have that tag. Slow takes away 1/3 of their actions for 1 round if they make their save or 1 minute (aka the whole fight) if they don't. Seems like a shitty, yet reliable boss-debuff.

[GâtFromKI]

There's an activity called "follow the expert", allowing an unskilled character to watch how the expert does (and get huge bonus to his roll). This is a good thing, now a good climber can make other characters good at climbing by showing them how to do.

The book use Stealth as an example; this means party' stealth isn't limited by the less sneaky character and you don't have to let non-sneaky characters behind when you want to be sneaky and it is awesome (... until you remember you can't be sneaky and look around at the same time - hence a sneaky party doesn't see anything). "Follow the sneaky character" is so awesome, the GM's part of the book states explicitly it is intended to allow a non-sneaky character to be sneaky.

This activity has the "auditory" tag. "Auditory actions and effects rely on sound. An action with the auditory trait can be successfully performed only if the creature using the action can speak or otherwise produce the required sounds. A spell or effect with the auditory trait has its effect only if the target can hear it."

Hence, a non-sneaky character can become sneaky by producing sounds. Dafuk ?

A last note : you can't follow the expert and look around at the same time. I don't know how you're supposed to imitate the sneaky expert, since you can't see him (that's the whole purpose of stealth) and you can't search for him.

[OgreBattle]

I glanced at the online resources for class building. It looks less fiddly in some ways... but now everything is in a soup of feats. "Multiclass via feats" looks like an improvement in the sense that an Alchemist can be 'vivisectionist' by taking Rogue sneak attack feats instead of having a specific archtype written to replace things.

Did they also make all the classes get less at lvl 1? PF1e Alchemists can be werewolves at lvl1 but it seems like mutagens are now lvl5+?

I heard they've got downtime or legwork mechanics now? Do they have functional (or at least attempts at) minigames like chasing, managing minions/castle?

[Orca]

Alchemists can make bestial mutagens at L1 if that's their thing. They suck mind you, you'd be better to pick up a mundane weapon but they do exist. I'd say there's only a few things which are outright delayed but practically everything sucks when compared to what you can do in PF1.

Their downtime activities are very limited so far and there's nothing in the exploration activities about a chase or managing others, and besides being allowed to roll perception or to recall knowledge (knowledge skills) there's nothing for legwork.

Edit: there's still gather info under the diplomacy skill, but it's much the same as it was before. Less detailed if anything. And it's unrelated to the exploration or downtime activities which were supposed to cover such things.

[GâtFromKI]

The overall consensus is the alchemist sucks and you shouldn't play it - but you may use their multiclass feats (ie, you can play fighter/alchemist or wizard/alchemist). This consensus comes from the Paizils themselves on the official Paizo board. If even paizil can agree on this, this means the class sucks even harder than anyone can imagine. The class seems to be on limbo mode: how low can it go ? (apparently, it can receive an errata that changes literally nothing - showing even the designers have no idea how the class works. Can it go lower ?)

So... you shouldn't use alchemists as an example. They can't do anything at level 1 - nor at level 5 or 10 or 20 - , but this doesn't mean anything about other classes.

I heard they've got downtime or legwork mechanics now? Do they have functional (or at least attempts at) minigames like chasing, managing minions/castle?

... You're really cute, thinking you can do anything interesting in pf2 - like having minions or a castle.

At level 16, you can gain 2000 gp using performance during 1 month of downtime - this is an actual example in the actual book. That's more or less the most you can do.

[Yesterday's Hero]

I heard they've got downtime or legwork mechanics now? Do they have functional (or at least attempts at) minigames like chasing, managing minions/castle?

Dumbass Jason Bulmahn has said that we'll get a free update sometime before release of the DMG with mechanics for monster building (no word on NPC building), "Victory points" (for "building your own subsystems. Chases, research challenges, etc"), and a huge NPC list.

[GâtFromKI]

[...] and besides being allowed to roll perception or to recall knowledge (knowledge skills) [...]

Side note: this "or" is actually a "xor"; you can't roll perception and recall knowledge at the same time. One character is supposed to look around if there's something unusual, but he can't understand the stuffs he sees. Instead, he shows it to the character who's in charge of investigating (and the investigator can't look around), and this guy may recognize if it is an ancient writing or an animal or a paint or a glyphe or something.

Plus side: this promotes teamwork.
Minus side: this is dumb.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The thing is that "Actions" is not the same as attacks. Actions can be any number of things. In fact, as you gain levels, you unlock better uses for your actions and you get to mix and match, therefore if the system is not shit the output you get from each action scales.

WTF? This is not an innovation. D&D already had a system like that. It's called having a Standard, Move, and Swift action in a class and level system. By dint of acquiring goodies like magic items, class features, spells, etc. your actions digivolved and became more complex.

What does PF2 bring to the table?

Now I understand that PF2's special sauce is by making the list of possible actions more atomic -- but seriously, who the fuck was asking for that? How many people played 3E, or 4E D&D for that matter, and said 'you know what D&D needs? More round-to-round complexity and option paralysis'. I can understand 5E D&D's direction of making actions more simple, even if they FAILED MISERABLY, but who the fuck wanted D&D's action economy more complex?

[Yesterday's Hero]

but who the fuck wanted D&D's action economy more complex?

I don't think that it is more complex, it didn't feel that way at the table.

"3 equivalent actions instead of 3 actions with diminishing intrinsic power" makes the game more similar to systems like fallout where you get Action Points and firing a gun costs 2 points but throwing a grenade costs 4 or whatever. The new Shadowrun CRPG games used something similar and it was cool.

It's not revolutionary. It's not an innovation. I didn't say or imply that. All I'm saying is that I don't think its inherent shit. I think it was cool and it had potential. I think that combats were faster than the same level on PF1 and it might be related to the action economy.