Pathfinder 2 Release

[Rynjin]

No.

You cannot compare a system that is recently released. To a system that has been out for 10 years, and has 10 years worth of content and modification.

I absolutely can, as illustrated by the fact that I have been this whole time.

It is simply not a fair comparison to make. The latter is going to have more content, more choice, and more variety of builds. Simply because it has been out 10 years later.

Just because the new system is a sequel to the old one, doesn’t mean that you can fairly expect that the new system has a similar level of choice and ‘cool abilities’.

I don't care about "fair" and more importantly, neither does the market. If you want someone to buy your product, you'd better give them a compelling reason to do so.

"But it's not fair!" is meaningless.

The core gameplay of the game is always going to be its most important aspect, and what a developer should focus the majority of its game on. Secondary and Tertiary elements of the game is what the extra books is for.

Agreed, however:

And when you compare Core System to Core System, Pathfinder 2nd Edition easily comes out on top.

Debatable, hence the debate ensuing.

Why?

Why is that an issue?

Do you complain about the Paladin's having Smite Evil? Do you complain about the Rogue having Sneak Attack? Do you complain about the Wizard having spells?

Because it's frankly ****ing stupid. Combat Reflexes is not Smite, or Sneak Attack, or spells. The entire point of Feats is that they grant a wide pool of abilities everybody can share. Combat Reflexes is something any adventurer could have. Good reflexes are the result of training, and not class specific training either.

Combat Reflexes is not an ability that is thematically associated with a class, or SHOULD be thematically associated with a class, just like it's asinine that fighting with two weapons is locked behind a class now. it is a reduction in choice for no god damned reason, and it's the exact issue I eventually got fed up with in 5e.

The fact that you have to dig for the most class defining aspects of certain classes to compare to a Feat and pull together your weak argument makes mine for me.

[Divine Susuryu]

{Scrubbed post, scrubbed quote} I will clarify:

Can you compare an old system vs a new system? Yes. Yes you can. Because a new system is trying to make you want to play the new system rather than this older system.

Can you compare an old system vs a new system when it comes to the amount of choice the new systems offer? Does the old system have more than just the core rulebook? Yes? Then no, you cannot compare them.

It's an apples-to-apples comparison. They're both RPG systems, they can be compared. Simple as that. I don't agree that it's unfair to compare two things when one has a head start on the other. They're competing for my time, so it'd be silly if I didn't

Well for starters, PF2-Core has functional crowd control and is actually more diverse in where you can find it compared to PF2.

Also, PF2 has a far higher percentage of feats that are useful: and it doesn't at all lock classes into one particular fighting style.

So yeah, Core-to-Core I'd say PF2 wins that one.

Not true at all, see all the arguments on maths, requiring critical failures, low spell counts, etc. further up the thread for the first point. Second point, PF1 doesn't lock all classes into one particular fighting style in core, so I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make. PF2 certainly does lock fighting styles behind classes though. Objectively, it does.

PF2-core also has actual multiclassing, granular skills. Doesn't force you to require all-day buffs in order to keep up with everyone. Racial abilities that develop with you in play which makes sense as you don't learn everything about your culture by early adult-hood. Flexible movement due to having increased actions and reduced chance of being attacked for movement. Shields that actually reduce the damage you take, rather than simply making you harder to hit. Eliminates the wasted time of mages taking attacks of opportunity they are never going to hit, and so on.

There's no rules to have levels in multiple classes, hence no multiclassing. Skills exist at one of four (five if you count untrained, which I don't) levels of proficiency, which is not granular. All day buffs don't exist in PF2, so it objectively loses on this one. Biological abilities such as darkvision are not cultural. Moving means sacrificing attacks and hence dragging out combat, same as PF1. Making you harder to hit is reducing the damage you take. Barbarians, rogues, rangers, paladins, clerics could all benefit from AoO in core PF1. Come on now.

[Morty]

While I obviously can't speak for the quality of PF2E multiclassing, I really don't think the "classic" style is something a well-designed game can keep. It's just not very player-friendly. You can use it to increase your character's power if you know what you're doing, but if you don't, you can weaken your character. It also contributes to the problem of some concepts being playable from level one while others - such as those that require multiclassing - needing to wait.

I think it's part of a larger issue with PF trying to be diverse and customizable but operating in a base system that discourages both of those. PF1E manages to be diverse by virtue of sheer volume - you're likely to find something that suits your purposes eventually. But, again, this requires a lot of familiarity with the material. PF2E is thus disadvantaged on the outset, because it keeps the restrictive nature of PF1E in many places - not everywhere, but then it doubles down on it in other places - without yet having the volume.

I occupy a weird place in this discussion because while PF2E doesn't impress me, I'm not a fan of PF1E (to put it mildly), so take it for what you will.

On an entirely separate note, it seems that crossbows... don't need reloading anymore? They don't have any kind of tag. The feat that helped rogues reload them is gone and the one that helped rangers has been reworked. So they just lack the bows' volley and deadly tags. Weird. And rogues are once again pushed towards melee combat. For some reason. But they've got a dual-wielding feat now.

[Storyteller_Arc]

1st Edition Fighter vs 2nd Edition Fighter at Level’s 1, 5, and 8. Focusing on cool and flavorful options over standard and practical ones. I will admit I will likely not cover Archetypes all that well, as there’s just too many to cover. I would appreciate some help with this, but I think that my point should have been made regardless.

Spoiler: Fighter

Show

Level 1.
Pathfinder 1st Edition:
1 Bonus Feat.

This bonus feat can be used to take feats such as Combat Reflexes (cool and flavourful), Power Attack (functional and effective) and Lunge (cool and flavourful).

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
1 Fighter Feat, and the Shield Block Feat.

Shield Block is cool and flavourful, as it allows you to tank a hit by allowing your shield to take some of the damage. The Fighter feat allows you to take feats such as Power Attack (functional and effective), Reactive Shield (cool and flavourful) and Snagging Strike (cool and flavourful).

Level 5.
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
3 Bonus Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to resisting Fear effects. Armour & Weapon Trainings. Flat numerical bonuses when using armour and a certain group of weapons.

Not too many more feats are available to the Fighter at this point. Although options such as Paired Opportunists (cool and flavourful), become more likely to be picked up and used by the Fighter.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
3 Fighter Feats. 2 Skill Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to Will saves, turns a save against feat effects into a critical success and reduces the effectiveness of a specific condition. Fighter Weapon Mastery. Flat numerical bonus when using a certain group of weapons, as well as access to unique and flavourful abilities when you successfully critical hit with them, more than just mere damage.

The Skill feats allow me to perform abilities such as Climb or Swim better (functional and effective), the ability to craft magical items (cool and flavourful), or use my talent at lying to others to be able to catch out others when they lie (cool and flavourful).

The Fighter Feats allows me to pick up feats such as Aggressive Block (cool and flavourful), Lunge (cool and flavourful), and Quick Reversal (cool and flavourful).

Level 8
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
5 Bonus Feats. Advanced Armor Training. This gives me stuff like Damage Reduction, Crafting Magical Armor, or an extra attack as a headbutt. All of which are cool and flavourful.

At this point, the Fighter has access to feats such as Snap Shot, Bounding Hammer and Flinging Charge, which are cool and flavourful feats.

Pathfinders 2nd Edition:
6 Fighter Feats. 4 Skill feats. Weapon Specialization: Flat bonus to weapon damage. Battlefield Surveyor: Flat bonus to perception and a further bonus to initiative on top.

The skill feats now let me perform abilities such as instantly recognize a spell as its being cast for no action. Use a wall as a floor in terms of a Jump. And creating my own magic items without anyone to teach me how. While the Fighter feats give me stuff like Reflexive Shield, Revealing Stab and Dueling Riposte for cool and flavourful abilities.

Personal Summary:
The class features and Fighter feats come out equal in terms of cool and flavourful abilities, with the Skill feats from Pathfinder 2nd Edition allowing the Fighter to come out on top, as the general feats from Pathfinder 1st Edition simply do not compare.

If this is not sufficient to make my point, then I will cover over classes as well.

[Snowbluff]

This but unironically, if the Fighter's schtick is going to be "I can hold my sword more ways than anyone else!" it needs to die because it's just sucking up options that should be available to all martials.

-------------


As far as the late, great 4e Warlord that was a travesty and if the Warlord had to die they could have at least given the Fighter his stuff.

I wasn't being entirely ironic about removing fighter. I'm not fond of straight up martial characters made out of vanilla and mayo. At the very least, Fighter did get Battlemaster in 5e, which did have maneuvers to let your allies make attacks, move enemies, and debuff enemies and with the Inspiring Leader feat you can also buff your buddies HPs.

Conversation is getting a bit unwieldy to respond point by point to everyone, so if I miss something you wanted a response to, say something please.

Re: 4e comparisons, PF 2e has nearly identical progressions across classes with class feats every even level, classes improving their proficiencies and damage at the same levels, etc.

The nuts and bolts are also extremely similar, adding 1/2 your level, skill proficiencies (which have a wider range than 4e but only certain classes can even get the higher bonuses), keywords traits, etc. etc.

If you don't find those compelling, that's fine, but I feel like these were many of the objections people had to 4e.
...
I'm primarily concerned with the way "the market leaders" appear to be united in shifting away from my preference in game design because it makes finding games harder for me outside of my fairly small group of friends, who I've thus far been unsuccessful in persuading to step outside of whatever is popular.

I don't necessarily mean that being like 4e is bad, but PF2 does have to stand up on it's own merits while also departing from PF one way or another to make it a valuable purchase for the gamers.

What? Why Prestige Classes? Paizo has been cold on PrCs for YEARS, and for good reason. Pathfinder's archetype system almost completely obviates the need for most PrCs, since most are just "combine these two random class' progression in certain abilities" affairs.

"Archetype system" is just a buzzword for alternate class features, and WotC didn't stop putting out PrC when they introduced ACF to 3e.

[Mehangel]

There's no rules to have levels in multiple classes, hence no multiclassing.

This reads like a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Just because a specific system does not conform to your particular definition of "multiclassing" doesn't mean that it isn't infact multiclassing.

[Madsamurai]

And all but Combat Reflexes are were not released in the Core Handbook of Pathfinder.

2 of them aren't even Offical Pathfinder Material at all

So your point is invalid.



... And here I am just completely and utterly confused by the point you are trying to make here.

I think that it's unessessary to go digging through splats to find interesting things in P1. Here are core abilities that I personally find cool. These are off the top of my head cause I am to lazy too go digging through books.

• Power attack - gives significant damage scaling
• Cleave - not super strong, but its neat
• Weapon finesse - Everything is one stat now!
• Greater trip - I can give all my allies an extra attack
• The whip - Trips at range! Neat.
• Animal companions - I find the ones in P2 derpy and boring. What do you mean my bear stands there and watches me get killed.
• At-will paladin detect evil
• Level 3 dragon sorcerer bloodline power - My skin turns scaly. I am literally turning into a dragon!
• Dwarves' ability to not be slowed.
• Dwarves' ability to detect secret doors by walking near them
• Paladins adding cha to saves
• Paladins being immune to diseases and fear - This comes up so often in my current campaign. Its almost world-defining in some sense.
• Lay-on-hands as a swift action
• Manyshot - BOOM!
• Spell-sunder (not sure if core?)
• Liberation domain level 1 power
• Travel domain speed boost
• Color spray

And I think that P1 core still lacks cool abilities. P2 core lacks them even harder

[Raven777]

And when you compare Core System to Core System, Pathfinder 2nd Edition easily comes out on top.

No. No no no no no. NO.

3.5/PF is the more flexible, more engaging, more beautiful system. I'm not talking about role play or narrative here: I'm talking about an elegant system of simulation. As a coherent group of base rules from which are derived everything else, 3.5/PF is provably more dense, more rich, and more amenable to interesting results. It is a sterling exemple of the late 90s early 2000s "easy to learn, hard to master" ideal, with natural, logical, inescapable synergies that bring it closer to the Snowbluff Axiom than 4e/5e/PF2 do. It has elegance and purity in it's "here's a bunch of rules, see how they interact" without a bunch of "except" and "four degrees of saving throws" that other systems actually go out of their way to muddle because they are afraid of the consequences.

As a system, it easily comes out on top. It is better made.

Pathfinder classes just have more tools and toys to play with at any given level than PF2 classes. These are comparing class to class. Skill Feat/General Feat vs Feat is generally meaningless, especially given the tiny impact each individual one has compared to how much a lot of the good Pathfinder Feats grant a character. Yeah, you get more across the two, but each is at less than half value.

Cribbing Rynjin's conclusion from below to make my point: 3.5/PF is rich in options at every steps of the game. And these options – not necessarily power – the breadth of things my character could do at any given time, and the myriad ways I can build upon these choices with spells, feats, creatures, templates, are what's deeply engaging, are what PF2 not only lacks, but is evidently afraid of.

[Rynjin]

1st Edition Fighter vs 2nd Edition Fighter at Level’s 1, 5, and 8. Focusing on cool and flavorful options over standard and practical ones. I will admit I will likely not cover Archetypes all that well, as there’s just too many to cover. I would appreciate some help with this, but I think that my point should have been made regardless.

Spoiler: Fighter

Show

Level 1.
Pathfinder 1st Edition:
1 Bonus Feat.

This bonus feat can be used to take feats such as Combat Reflexes (cool and flavourful), Power Attack (functional and effective) and Lunge (cool and flavourful).

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
1 Fighter Feat, and the Shield Block Feat.

Shield Block is cool and flavourful, as it allows you to tank a hit by allowing your shield to take some of the damage. The Fighter feat allows you to take feats such as Power Attack (functional and effective), Reactive Shield (cool and flavourful) and Snagging Strike (cool and flavourful).

Level 5.
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
3 Bonus Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to resisting Fear effects. Armour & Weapon Trainings. Flat numerical bonuses when using armour and a certain group of weapons.

Not too many more feats are available to the Fighter at this point. Although options such as Paired Opportunists (cool and flavourful), become more likely to be picked up and used by the Fighter.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
3 Fighter Feats. 2 Skill Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to Will saves, turns a save against feat effects into a critical success and reduces the effectiveness of a specific condition. Fighter Weapon Mastery. Flat numerical bonus when using a certain group of weapons, as well as access to unique and flavourful abilities when you successfully critical hit with them, more than just mere damage.

The Skill feats allow me to perform abilities such as Climb or Swim better (functional and effective), the ability to craft magical items (cool and flavourful), or use my talent at lying to others to be able to catch out others when they lie (cool and flavourful).

The Fighter Feats allows me to pick up feats such as Aggressive Block (cool and flavourful), Lunge (cool and flavourful), and Quick Reversal (cool and flavourful).

Level 8
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
5 Bonus Feats. Advanced Armor Training. This gives me stuff like Damage Reduction, Crafting Magical Armor, or an extra attack as a headbutt. All of which are cool and flavourful.

At this point, the Fighter has access to feats such as Snap Shot, Bounding Hammer and Flinging Charge, which are cool and flavourful feats.

Pathfinders 2nd Edition:
6 Fighter Feats. 4 Skill feats. Weapon Specialization: Flat bonus to weapon damage. Battlefield Surveyor: Flat bonus to perception and a further bonus to initiative on top.

The skill feats now let me perform abilities such as instantly recognize a spell as its being cast for no action. Use a wall as a floor in terms of a Jump. And creating my own magic items without anyone to teach me how. While the Fighter feats give me stuff like Reflexive Shield, Revealing Stab and Dueling Riposte for cool and flavourful abilities.

Personal Summary:
The class features and Fighter feats come out equal in terms of cool and flavourful abilities, with the Skill feats from Pathfinder 2nd Edition allowing the Fighter to come out on top, as the general feats from Pathfinder 1st Edition simply do not compare.

If this is not sufficient to make my point, then I will cover over classes as well.

Perhaps cover other classes which are actually interesting already in Pathfinder, instead of Fighter, which is one of the most derided classes in the game.

Pathfinder Alchemist vs PF2 Alchemist, for example.

1st level:

PF Alchemist gets: Extracts(!), Bombs, Mutagen, Brew Potion for free, and an enhanced version of Throw Anything.
PF2 Alchemist gets: No Extracts, the ability to craft Alchemical Items (available to ANY character with Craft Alchemy in PF 1) ONE (1) of Mutagen, Bombs, or a ghetto version of the Extracts the PF Alchmeist can prepare if they want, and a choice of 1 of 4 Discoveries Alchemist feats, most of which are pretty solid, and PF2's version pf Quick Alchemy, which is legitimately rad.

Winner: PF Alchemist. Anything flavorful that the PF2 Alchemist gets the PF Alchemist gets and more, save the Discovery, which they need to wait a single level for.

5th level:

PF Alchemist: Now has 3 Discoveries, almost all of which are interesting, flavorful, and powerful. Their previous abilities scale, and they now have 2nd level Extracts. In the meantime they have gained masisve Poison resistance and the ability to use poison, or can trade those abilities in for something weird like a Mutagen that anybody can use at half effect.

PF2 Alchemist: You get some mild upgrades to your Research Field, and 2 more Alchemist Feats (for the same total of 3), none of which do anything Discoveries could not do, and are deceptively small in number to choose from, since most are locked to certain specialties in practice if not in name, like Revivifying Mutagen.

Winner: PF alchemist, by virtue of getting to have their cake and eat it too.

8th level:

PF Alchemist: has 3rd level Extracts and gains 2 more Discoveries, all of which blow Alchemist feats out of teh water in terms of cool flavorfulness and power. Previous abilities scale.

PF2 Alchemist: gets 2 more aforementioned highly limited scope Discoveries (Combine Elixirs is the standout "this is awesome!" Alchemist feat) and...that's basically it. Just some scaling numbers besides that.

Winner: PF Alchemist.

Breaking down other of the more varied classes (like Druid) yields similar results.

Pathfinder classes just have more tools and toys to play with at any given level than PF2 classes. These are comparing class to class. Skill Feat/General Feat vs Feat is generally meaningless, especially given the tiny impact each individual one has compared to how much a lot of the good Pathfinder Feats grant a character. Yeah, you get more across the two, but each is at less than half value.

[Storyteller_Arc]

I think that it's unessessary to go digging through splats to find interesting things in P1. Here are core abilities that I personally find cool. These are off the top of my head cause I am to lazy too go digging through books.

• Power attack - gives significant damage scaling - 2E has that
• Cleave - not super strong, but its neat - 2E has that, called Swipe
• Weapon finesse - Everything is one stat now! - 2E has that as default. Rogue's get an even better version
• Greater trip - I can give all my allies an extra attack Okay, I admit, I don't think Martial types can give people extra attacks like Greater Trip can
• The whip - Trips at range! Neat. 2E has that, if admittedly less-range
• Animal companions - I find the ones in P2 derpy and boring. What do you mean my bear stands there and watches me get killed. - I do wish they had an instinctive action
• At-will paladin detect evil - Yeah I miss that
• Level 3 dragon sorcerer bloodline power - My skin turns scaly. I am literally turning into a dragon! - 2E Sorcerer's also gets scales, claws and wings.
• Dwarves' ability to not be slowed. - 2E has that
• Dwarves' ability to detect secret doors by walking near them - 2E has that
• Paladins adding cha to saves - This was just OP
• Paladins being immune to diseases and fear - This comes up so often in my current campaign. Its almost world-defining in some sense. Fair Enough
• Lay-on-hands as a swift action - That's not really 'cool', just an upgrade
• Manyshot - BOOM! - 2E has something similar
• Spell-sunder (not sure if core?) - Ultimate Combat
• Liberation domain level 1 power 2E has that - Unimpeded Stride
• Travel domain speed boost
• Color spray

And I think that P1 core still lacks cool abilities. P2 core lacks them even harder

Replies in Bold.

So as you see, while not a direct 1 for 1 comparison, P2 still has a lot of cool abilities that P1 did as well... and that's not even covering the cool abilities that P2 has that P1 does not have.

No. No no no no no. NO.

3.5/PF is the more flexible, more engaging, more beautiful system. I'm not talking about role play or narrative here: I'm talking about an elegant system of simulation. As a coherent group of base rules from which are derived everything else, 3.5/PF is provably more dense, more rich, and more amenable to interesting results. It is a sterling exemple of the late 90s early 2000s "easy to learn, hard to master" ideal, with natural, logical, inescapable synergies that bring it closer to the Snowbluff Axiom than 4e/5e/PF2 do. It has elegance and purity in it's "here's a bunch of rules, see how they interact" without a bunch of "except" and "four degrees of saving throws" that other systems actually go out of their way to muddle because they are afraid of the consequences.

As a system, it easily comes out on top. It is better made/

... So you prefer 3.5/Pathfinder to the other systems. Got it.

... Still. Question. Do you know what elegant means in terms of Game Design specifically? Because the way your use Elegant here is at complete and utter odds with how people use it in Game Design.

Perhaps cover other classes which are actually interesting already in Pathfinder, instead of Fighter, which is one of the most derided classes in the game.

So you are going to utterly ignore my argument in order to push your own agenda?

Hmph. Still, if you want me to cover other classes, I will. I will even use the Alchemist as you did, though I suspect we will have very different results.

[Gallowglass]

No. No no no no no. NO.

3.5/PF is the more flexible, more engaging, more beautiful system. I'm not talking about role play or narrative here: I'm talking about an elegant system of simulation. As a coherent group of base rules from which are derived everything else, 3.5/PF is provably more dense, more rich, and more amenable to interesting results. It is a sterling exemple of the late 90s early 2000s "easy to learn, hard to master" ideal, with natural, logical, inescapable synergies that bring it closer to the Snowbluff Axiom than 4e/5e/PF2 do. It has elegance and purity in it's "here's a bunch of rules, see how they interact" without a bunch of "except" and "four degrees of saving throws" that other systems actually go out of their way to muddle because they are afraid of the consequences.

As a system, it easily comes out on top. It is better made.

This is a textbook example of how not to win an argument. I see posts like this all the time when people are claiming one programming language is OBJECTIVELY better than another...

...but give no objective reasons. Throw out loaded terms like "Beautiful" and "Elegant" and "Coherent" and "Interesting". Terms that are inherently subjective and have no place in an objective proof.

I'm not going to fall in the trap I've already seen in this thread of claiming "you can't argue like this" because, of course, you can. But you're never going to win that argument, convince anyone to change their point of view, or come across as an elegant, coherent or interesting debater.

Give some concrete examples of what you mean. I see plenty of others doing so.

[Storyteller_Arc]

1st Edition Alchemist vs 2nd Edition Alchemist at Level’s 1, 5, and 8.

Spoiler: Alchemist

Show

Level 1.
Pathfinder 1st Edition:
Alchemy - Flavourful, but rapidly runs out of use as Alchemical items are very weak in Pathfinder.
Bomb - A very cool ability.
Brew Potion - Simple, but effective.
Mutagen - A very cool ability.
Extracts - A boiled down version of spell casting? Hmmm... pass.

This bonus feat can be used to take feats such as Combat Reflexes (cool and flavourful), Power Attack (functional and effective) and Lunge (cool and flavourful).

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
Alchemy - A much more amazing ability, allowing you to actually use Alchemical items throughout your entire carrier. This also functions as the Bomb class feature, the Mutagen class feature, and the Extracts class feature all rolled into one class feature, and most of them function better than the previous items, as other plays can actually use these Alchemical items, but an Alchemist does it better.

You also get an Alchemist Feat, and getting a Familiar, one that you created yourself, sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

Level 5.
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
Poison Resistance and Use, which is bland as hell, and Swift Alchemy... which is also pretty bland. You do get 2 Discoveries. Which can give you stuff like a familiar that is part of your body, or Preserving your Organs like a mummy... even if the actual effect of the latter is bland.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
Field Discovery makes you more efficient with your alchemical abilities. Not all that cool, but effective regardless. The Alchemical Feats don’t have anything quite as stand out this time, but Revivifying Mutagen is pretty cool flavour wise.

Level 8
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
Swift Poisoning. And 2 more Discovers, which gives you stuff like Combine Extracts and Alchemical Zombie.

Pathfinders 2nd Edition:
Mostly just number increases, except for Perpetual Infusions. Which lets me use 2 bombs, 2 mutagens, or my anti-poison and anti-disease items pretty much infinitely. Only the weakest versions, so not that strong, but very cool regardless. Alchemist feats has Combine Elixirs, Directional Bombs and Sticky Bomb.

Personal Summary:
These two are rather more even. PF1s Discovers do beat PF2s Alchemist Feats in terms of ‘wow factor’, though it also has a much wider range than PF2 does as well. PF2’s however, actually functions more like an actual alchemist, rather than a bomb-throwing or mutagen drinking wizard who needs a minute to prepare their spells. As anyone can get their hands on alchemical items, an alchemist just makes them more and uses them better than other classes.

Personally, I would give the edge to PF2 due to the Alchemist being more of an Alchemist, and PF2s skill feats beating out PF1s general feats by a fair margin. But I could understand why someone might prefer PF1’s over PF2... at this moment in time. PF2 has a far stronger base and will undoubtedly surpass PF1 given a few books of support.

And I wouldn't be surprised if this was the same if you compared other classes such as the Bard and the Druid: Rather equal all things together, with preference deciding which one is the better choice at the moment. But with PF2 having a solid base that can easily suprass what PF1 has to offer given a few more books.

[skyth]

Everything wrong with PF2 can be summed up in the rules for foraging.

Take a first level ranger...14 Wis. In PF1 they can forage on the move and need to roll a DC 10 check to find food for themselves (And they have a +6 bonus). Every 2 you beat the DC by, you find food for another person.

PF2...The DC to find food on the move is 20. (15 base, +5 penalty for doing other things). 1st level ranger gets a +5 bonus. They need a 15 to find food for themselves. Anything less and they're fatigued. Roll a 5 or less and they're even worse off. They need to critically succeed to find food for one additional person.

[Gallowglass]

Everything wrong with PF2 can be summed up in the rules for foraging.

Take a first level ranger...14 Wis. In PF1 they can forage on the move and need to roll a DC 10 check to find food for themselves (And they have a +6 bonus). Every 2 you beat the DC by, you find food for another person.

PF2...The DC to find food on the move is 20. (15 base, +5 penalty for doing other things). 1st level ranger gets a +5 bonus. They need a 15 to find food for themselves. Anything less and they're fatigued. Roll a 5 or less and they're even worse off. They need to critically succeed to find food for one additional person.

So everything wrong with PF2 is summed up by one skill that was arbitrarily trivially easy to the point that it was pointless to include in the game let alone build any in-game action around is now arbitrarily difficult to the point that it presents an actual potential threat to the PCs?

Oh, Ok then.

[Storyteller_Arc]

PF2...The DC to find food on the move is 20. (15 base, +5 penalty for doing other things). 1st level ranger gets a +5 bonus. They need a 15 to find food for themselves. Anything less and they're fatigued. Roll a 5 or less and they're even worse off. They need to critically succeed to find food for one additional person.

Hmmmm, let's see. Forging now called 'Subsist'. If you're in a Lush Forest, the DC is a 10 Base, while more difficult terrains require a higher DC, such as a hillside needing 15, or a mountain needing 20. So that's one mistake there.

The -5 penalty for doing other things is incorrect as well. If you spend 8 hours exploring before you Subsiting, you take a -5 penalty. If, however, you do other things that doesn't take up the full 8 hours. You can then Subsit without a penalty. That's your second mistakes there.

A 1st Level Ranger does indeed have a +5 bonus at 14 Wisdom, compared to the +6 bonus to the PF1 Ranger, so only a +1 difference. A roll of 10 in non lush forests is all that a Ranger needs in order to find food for themselves, DC5 in a lush forest, though they do still need a critical success to find food for someone else.

So, yes. A PF1 ranger does have an easier time than a PF2 ranger at level 1. But it is not as bad as you are making it out to be.

[Milo v3]

I dislike the directions they took with the classes, I dislike how useless multiclassing is so often, and I dislike how my elf has to become more-elfy even when he hasn't been around elves for thirty years. But first of my two core issues with the system is that the abilities don't excite me, there is no abilities I read and go "Oh, it'd be cool to have that". Every time I go to make a character in the system, I end up spending too long trying to find a neat feat to take but end up just picking the first feat in alphabetical order that I meet the prerequisite of because they're all equally uninteresting. They even gate all the interesting stuff behind legendary proficiency, which is weird to me since barely any campaigns are going to reach that level, and they can't really change/improve that in future books without it making the core non-legendary feats worthless.

The second is that it feels like the designers specifically restrained themselves to a degree past what I'm comfortable with. Whenever there are two abilities that could interact there is often some clause somewhere that prevents any interesting dynamics coming from them, multiclassing has high prerequisites and can't give you much at all because of how it needs to be "on-par" with the niche class feats.

But I'm not comparing it to just Core, because:
1) PF1 Core also wasn't enough to get me to move to Pathfinder.
2) Because the PF2 system seems like it has been designed specifically in a way to reduce the chances my two core issues being resolved.

The only reason I ever play d20 games when there are so many good non-d20 system, is because I can frankenstein and combine lego-pieces to make interesting and balanced characters (which often requires 3rd party) with unique concepts without the blank-slate of a point-buy system. PF2e doesn't do this, so at this time, can't really see reason to switch. I could give it 4 to 5 years?

[Raven777]

This is a textbook example of how not to win an argument. I see posts like this all the time when people are claiming one programming language is OBJECTIVELY better than another...

...but give no objective reasons. Throw out loaded terms like "Beautiful" and "Elegant" and "Coherent" and "Interesting". Terms that are inherently subjective and have no place in an objective proof.

I'm not going to fall in the trap I've already seen in this thread of claiming "you can't argue like this" because, of course, you can. But you're never going to win that argument, convince anyone to change their point of view, or come across as an elegant, coherent or interesting debater.

Give some concrete examples of what you mean. I see plenty of others doing so.

This is fair. I have strong feelings on which system is better. I will try to argue better, more constructively. I believe there are objectively provable points underneath those feelings.

Let's take a spell for exemple, say Glitterdust.

Coherent: predictably does the same thing from one situation to another.

PF1: causes creatures to become blinded and visibly outlines invisible things for the duration of the spell. Each round at the end of their turn blinded creatures may attempt new saving throws to end the blindness effect.

Success Negates blinding only
Failure Becomes blinded

The spell has a fixed duration depending on the caster's level, that is saved against every round by the target. It has a primary blinding effect that can be negated and a secondary invisibility revealing effect that always works.

PF2: creatures in the area are outlined by glittering dust. Each creature must attempt a Reflex save. If a creature has its invisibility negated by this spell, it is concealed instead of invisible.

Critical Success The target is unaffected.
Success The target's invisibility is negated for 2 rounds.
Failure The target is dazzled for 1 minute and its invisibility is negated for 1 minute.
Critical Failure The target is blinded for 1 round and dazzled for 10 minutes. Its invisibility is negated for 10 minutes.

On the one hand, the duration and effect are both variable depending on the results of the single save. On the other hand, once that save is resolved the duration is fixed and there are no further saves.

Can we agree that these degrees of saving throws for all these possible effects (invisibility negated or not, dazzled, blinded, all for different durations) afford less coherence when using the spell, and are objectively harder to remember and apply while in play? A continuum of degrees is more complicated than a binary pass or fail. As for the duration saved against every round vs. a fixed duration once a single save is resolved, I would say it's a toss, neither being more complicated than the other.

Elegant: stands on the logical conclusions of its own rules without interjecting arbitrary exceptions.

The Incapacitation keyword on save or lose spells like Charm, Dominate, Suggestion, Color Spray, mean that the degrees of saving throws have different behaviors depending on the target's level. This is a built in exception for higher level foes rather than letting them stand on their own through their own racial immunities and higher saving throws inherent to their creature type or race/class and being higher level anyway. Adding layers of exceptions is objectively less elegant than letting the numbers and the inherent qualities and values of spells and targets stand on their own.

To me these things are all objectively more complicated than PF1. More complicated and more of a mess, less pretty, less beautiful.

[skyth]

So everything wrong with PF2 is summed up by one skill that was arbitrarily trivially easy to the point that it was pointless to include in the game let alone build any in-game action around is now arbitrarily difficult to the point that it presents an actual potential threat to the PCs?

Oh, Ok then.

It speaks to the design direction, so yes...

Hmmmm, let's see. Forging now called 'Subsist'. If you're in a Lush Forest, the DC is a 10 Base, while more difficult terrains require a higher DC, such as a hillside needing 15, or a mountain needing 20. So that's one mistake there.

The -5 penalty for doing other things is incorrect as well. If you spend 8 hours exploring before you Subsiting, you take a -5 penalty. If, however, you do other things that doesn't take up the full 8 hours. You can then Subsit without a penalty. That's your second mistakes there.

A 1st Level Ranger does indeed have a +5 bonus at 14 Wisdom, compared to the +6 bonus to the PF1 Ranger, so only a +1 difference. A roll of 10 in non lush forests is all that a Ranger needs in order to find food for themselves, DC5 in a lush forest, though they do still need a critical success to find food for someone else.

So, yes. A PF1 ranger does have an easier time than a PF2 ranger at level 1. But it is not as bad as you are making it out to be.

The base dc is 15, not 10. It's a simple trained task. The -5 penalty is for 8 hours OR LESS of exploring. It is exactly as bad as I put it out to be. Plus there is a higher chance of fumbling than finding food for a second person.

[goodpeople25]

There's no rules to have levels in multiple classes, hence no multiclassing.

Besides the possible fallacy mentioned above, this seems like a losing battle when PF1 disagrees with you.

[Mehangel]

I was excited when I heard that PF2e was going to have scaled effects and tiered successes and failures. What I thought this meant was that there would be many more codified and defined condition tracks (shaken > frightened > panicked > cower) for every condition. I was disappointed to learn that the scaled effects were less unified, and there was so much potential too.

[upho]

I suppose it's possible, but most of those issues are inherent to having N equal actions as opposed to a tiered action setup. I could see the implementation being better than PF2's if you swapped out the Paizo devs for, say, the DSP devs (who have a better design track record when it comes to...well, everything ), but I still think N-tiered-actions-with-trading would come out better than N-equal-actions given the same developers and design goals.

Seems I've missed to reply to this. Sorry 'bout that.

Anywho, I believe I should clarify what I meant by implementation being the main issue. My initial reactions and hopes when reading about the new action system was that its inherent additional level of open-endedness would be taken far more advantage of, and that significant variations of the default would exist.

As an example of using the "additional level of open-endedness", I immediately imagined abilities granting allies actions, in the same vein as 4e Warlord powers or P1 Golden Lion maneuvers. The P2 action system then provides nifty additional levels of granularity in terms of the limitations of the granted action. A few very basic examples of this would be a low level ability which lets a PC use one of their actions to grant an ally a free move up to their speed, a mid level ability instead granting the ally a free attack, casting of less powerful spell or move, and a higher level one simply granting an action which the ally may use as they best see fit, immediately or before the end of their next turn. Using 3.5/P1's action system, the last option isn't possible, as there's no unit as open-ended as a P2 action. Of course, this benefit could be used for designing all kinds of action economy related abilities, with weaker ones granting more specific actions and stronger ones granting actions which can be combined with the standard allotment to fuel more powerful abilities and greater overall versatility.

When it comes to "significant variations of the default", I had hoped that there would for example be abilities allowing a PC to trade their usual allotment of actions during their turn for additional reactions outside their turn, enabling for example "reactive defender" combat styles and in turn a greater potential mechanical diversity between martial PCs from the very start. Or say abilities granting the possibility to "store up" additional actions by performing certain set-up actions, and then "mini-nova" with those stored actions in a subsequent turn. I imagined for example a storm-themed caster ability granting the caster one or two additional actions from successfully affecting enemies with electricity spells in one round, and then allowing the caster to spend those additional actions on improving a sonic spell cast during the next round (for example in order to meaningfully affect a very challenging BBEG). Which also would open up for a lot of cool and thematic tactical options and greater mechanical diversification of PCs.

I guess you could say I believe the generic "action" unit could be used more like say a "mana" or "spell" point, and the standard allotment more like a standard pool which can be altered by numerous abilities. And the best part is probably that you can make a ton of related abilities which don't require complicated mechanics but still add hugely to the amount of fun and variety of PC abilities.

Spoiler: Reply to Snowbluff (OT nerd-eries on PF1 classes)

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Well, 35 damage is worth 70 Str. I'm thinking something can be done with that.

No doubt. It's just that it's not that much compared to what the synth gains through MWF-ing with enough arms to make an entire legion of mariliths green with envy. (Hyperbole at its finest, but you get what I'm saying.) But I also understand the skepticism, at least if you haven't tried going bananas with a synth also using 1PP options released during the last four years or so (perhaps especially stuff granting additional AoO triggers, which the synth can make great use of thanks to a relatively high Dex mod of typically at least +5 if Gargantuan size).

Well, nothing suggest it wouldn't. Since the subject of the spell is experiencing time 365 times slow, the spell can't be said to have ended if the time hasn't passed for the item.

The thing that makes me hesitant is the part of the Unguent description saying (my emphasis):

"...any matter that was once alive, such as wood, paper, or a dead body, this ointment allows that substance..."

So I believe there's as strong argument against the named bullet effect being preserved, since its effect is definitely not "matter that was once alive" and consequently not affected by the unguent. Likewise, if you lost a new standard bolt covered in the unguent in a rain forest, and then found that bolt say ten years later, its wooden shaft and fletching would probably still be in mint condition, but the steel head would almost certainly be completely destroyed by corrosion.

But frankly I can't stop myself from applauding such excellent inventive cheese-making anyways, and wouldn't mind allowing it my own games regardless of whether it's perfectly RAW legal or not. So please feel free disregard my doubts and save me from looking like a rules-lawyer party-pooper...

Hmm, I'm sure the reloading on double xbows was worse than that,

The double xbow can't be reloaded as a free action with Crossbow Master, but the minotaur double xbow can (from Classic Monsters Revisited, page 42):

"Minotaur Double Crossbow
Minotaurs have a love of complicated things, and the double crossbow is one of their favorites. This heavy weapon fires a pair of iron-tipped bolts with deadly accuracy. Due to its size and weight, however, non-proficient wielders suffer a –8 penalty on their attack rolls. Even proficient wielders take a –2 penalty on their attack rolls. If the attack is successful, the target takes the listed damage twice, although critical hits and precision based damage are only applied to one of the bolts. Reloading a double crossbow takes 2 standard actions (one for each bolt), although the Rapid Reload feat reduces this to 2 move actions (meaning that it can be accomplished in 1 round)."

300 gp, 1d8 piercing, 19-20/x2 crits, 100 ft. range, 18 lb.

(Note that this has different fluff, range, penalties and feat interaction than the "standard" double xbow. Surprisingly, it's actually explicitly allowed in PFS!)

and I'm unsure if the tail can reload,

The tail isn't actually used to reload per se, just to hold one of the xbows while using both hands to reload the other. Just like tieflings do when TWF-ing with pistols (which are also one-handed weapons).

but this can be accomplished other ways, like Vestigal Arm, and I get the gist. Of course, I wasn't going to use 3PP for this build, since it's outside the scope of balancing the game within PF. Thanks for the build though.

Doh! You're absolutely right, of course I shouldn't have included DSP stuff as it definitely makes the comparison to a purely 1PP cleric less valid. Guess I wanted to be lazy and just copy much of my magus variant so badly I forgot the much of the premise.
I blame dementia. And old age.

Anyhow, I think a build using only 1PP options with the same basic combo can push the damage pretty high as well, for example by adding say Urban Primalist bloodrager and Mutation Warrior fighter levels plus maybe a MoMS monk dip for some Ascetic Style shenanigans. Of course, this build wouldn't get the two attacks from the Solar Wind stance, and probably wouldn't be able pile on quite as much damage per bolt. I'd estimate something like 20 bolts (more with Ascetic Style cheese) dealing about 70 each, for at least 1,300 DPR. However, this build would also gain much more from crit stuff and named bullet tricks. But I'm not really sure just how viable that would be via wands and scrolls, nor how much of a DPR increase that would actually result in.

Honestly, I guess I made the Cleric build before I started working on Divine Shooting Star Ninjas, since I didn't think about using TWF with it.

Yeah, TWF is ideal for named bullet tricks in so many ways.

Still, the exercise is overkill either way, since the cleric can kill practically anything in the game and is also still a cleric on a pure cleric build.

Definitely overkill. But I actually think insane DPR opting is far less insane for ranged than for melee. Not only because ranged builds are typically more capable of dividing their full attacks between multiple targets and thus have much less risk of wasting much of their damage potential on killing a single target, but also because they can far more easily get away with being glass cannons.

I think they said I can't use the crit bonus on implement attacks, but I'll be damned if I can find that change. But my world is better without that change.
As for the spell, I htink my at-will as the one that hit a secondary target for a point of damage. It's been some time. I was planning use Lancing Dagger for bonus crit die, so I went with Storm Sorc.

Actually sounds rather similar to my Scion of Arkhosia "Storm" rebreather.

Normally a paladin isn't able to rebreath, but they can if you hybrid into sorcerer. The hybrid penalties aren't so bad if you don't ever have to worry about the mark changes if you only mark via a feat anyway.

And the hybrid pally Divine Challenge trigger was changed to work just as the standard full version, and only comes with a minor damage decrease (Cha + 2/4/6 instead of Cha + 3/6/9). So definitely serviceable as a mark out of the box, and like the original version it can be made into probably the most powerful mark in the game (with stuff like Weakening Challenge).

Damn, I'm out of time! I'll take a closer look at your rebreather builds soon.

[Silvercrys]

While I obviously can't speak for the quality of PF2E multiclassing, I really don't think the "classic" style is something a well-designed game can keep. It's just not very player-friendly. You can use it to increase your character's power if you know what you're doing, but if you don't, you can weaken your character. It also contributes to the problem of some concepts being playable from level one while others - such as those that require multiclassing - needing to wait.

5e largely settled this question, to my mind. This new system has exactly the same problem of not being able to fulfill the vision at level 1 -- it's inherent to any system that decides some abilities are too powerful and need to be "earned", let alone class based ones that must, of necessity, hand out most of the powerful stuff at the top end of the class structure.

The solution to this is to broaden the capabilities of classes and allow them to step on each other's toes, at least a bit, and to front load abilities that are "key to character concepts" while still offering reasons to take that class to 20th level.

You know, what 5e did with classes. The Paladin 5/Warlock 6 might kill things with two less attacks than the Fighter 11, but there are still compelling reasons to be a Fighter 11, like the extra maneuver dice and the extra extra attack.

5e isn't perfect by any stretch, (I think the classes in 5e are too distinct too, for reference, though that isn't anything a theurge prestige class or two or one-for-every-possible-two-class-combination couldn't solve ) but their solution to the multiclassing problem is better than "lol you can get one class feature you might not have even wanted from the class and can take their class feats from 4-10 levels ago."

1st Edition Fighter vs 2nd Edition Fighter at Level’s 1, 5, and 8. Focusing on cool and flavorful options over standard and practical ones. I will admit I will likely not cover Archetypes all that well, as there’s just too many to cover. I would appreciate some help with this, but I think that my point should have been made regardless.

Spoiler: Fighter

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Level 1.
Pathfinder 1st Edition:
1 Bonus Feat.

This bonus feat can be used to take feats such as Combat Reflexes (cool and flavourful), Power Attack (functional and effective) and Lunge (cool and flavourful).

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
1 Fighter Feat, and the Shield Block Feat.

Shield Block is cool and flavourful, as it allows you to tank a hit by allowing your shield to take some of the damage. The Fighter feat allows you to take feats such as Power Attack (functional and effective), Reactive Shield (cool and flavourful) and Snagging Strike (cool and flavourful).

Level 5.
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
3 Bonus Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to resisting Fear effects. Armour & Weapon Trainings. Flat numerical bonuses when using armour and a certain group of weapons.

Not too many more feats are available to the Fighter at this point. Although options such as Paired Opportunists (cool and flavourful), become more likely to be picked up and used by the Fighter.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition:
3 Fighter Feats. 2 Skill Feats. Bravery, a flat bonus to Will saves, turns a save against feat effects into a critical success and reduces the effectiveness of a specific condition. Fighter Weapon Mastery. Flat numerical bonus when using a certain group of weapons, as well as access to unique and flavourful abilities when you successfully critical hit with them, more than just mere damage.

The Skill feats allow me to perform abilities such as Climb or Swim better (functional and effective), the ability to craft magical items (cool and flavourful), or use my talent at lying to others to be able to catch out others when they lie (cool and flavourful).

The Fighter Feats allows me to pick up feats such as Aggressive Block (cool and flavourful), Lunge (cool and flavourful), and Quick Reversal (cool and flavourful).

Level 8
Pathfinders 1st Edition:
5 Bonus Feats. Advanced Armor Training. This gives me stuff like Damage Reduction, Crafting Magical Armor, or an extra attack as a headbutt. All of which are cool and flavourful.

At this point, the Fighter has access to feats such as Snap Shot, Bounding Hammer and Flinging Charge, which are cool and flavourful feats.

Pathfinders 2nd Edition:
6 Fighter Feats. 4 Skill feats. Weapon Specialization: Flat bonus to weapon damage. Battlefield Surveyor: Flat bonus to perception and a further bonus to initiative on top.

The skill feats now let me perform abilities such as instantly recognize a spell as its being cast for no action. Use a wall as a floor in terms of a Jump. And creating my own magic items without anyone to teach me how. While the Fighter feats give me stuff like Reflexive Shield, Revealing Stab and Dueling Riposte for cool and flavourful abilities.

Personal Summary:
The class features and Fighter feats come out equal in terms of cool and flavourful abilities, with the Skill feats from Pathfinder 2nd Edition allowing the Fighter to come out on top, as the general feats from Pathfinder 1st Edition simply do not compare.

If this is not sufficient to make my point, then I will cover over classes as well.

Now hold up, you can't compare just what is in the class charts, the 1e Fighter gets general feats at every odd level and the 2e fighter gets general feats at 3 and 7, so the 2e fighter is really only up 2 skill feats rather than 4. Plus the 1e fighter can spend those general feats on combat feats.

I do see that you mentioned that the 1e fighter's options for general feats are limited, but the 1e fighter isn't limited to just general feats from those the way the 2e fighter is.

I wasn't being entirely ironic about removing fighter. I'm not fond of straight up martial characters made out of vanilla and mayo. At the very least, Fighter did get Battlemaster in 5e, which did have maneuvers to let your allies make attacks, move enemies, and debuff enemies and with the Inspiring Leader feat you can also buff your buddies HPs.

Ah, my bad, I interpreted the upside down smile as an irony indicator. That's true about the Battlemaster, but it didn't really do the Warlord justice.

I don't necessarily mean that being like 4e is bad, but PF2 does have to stand up on it's own merits while also departing from PF one way or another to make it a valuable purchase for the gamers.

Yes, exactly. 4e is a fine game, and PF 2e probably is as well, I just have extremely mixed feelings about a bunch of stuff and, ultimately, I wish it was a different game than it is.

"Archetype system" is just a buzzword for alternate class features, and WotC didn't stop putting out PrC when they introduced ACF to 3e.

I agree in principle but the only way I could see them doing actual prestige classes would be like 4e Paragon Paths. You can't build a core rulebook like this one and then stop, say, Fighter weapon proficiency or Rage damage from advancing at those level breakpoints.

They'll probably carve the prestige classes up into archetype feats, and give you a class feature per feat that requires the basic archetype feat just like "multiclassing" is. I will be very pleasantly surprised if I am proven wrong by a upcoming book.

I'll be even more pleasantly surprised if they release "optional" rules for more robust multiclassing, but we'll see.

I dislike the directions they took with the classes, I dislike how useless multiclassing is so often, and I dislike how my elf has to become more-elfy even when he hasn't been around elves for thirty years. But first of my two core issues with the system is that the abilities don't excite me, there is no abilities I read and go "Oh, it'd be cool to have that". Every time I go to make a character in the system, I end up spending too long trying to find a neat feat to take but end up just picking the first feat in alphabetical order that I meet the prerequisite of because they're all equally uninteresting. They even gate all the interesting stuff behind legendary proficiency, which is weird to me since barely any campaigns are going to reach that level, and they can't really change/improve that in future books without it making the core non-legendary feats worthless.

The second is that it feels like the designers specifically restrained themselves to a degree past what I'm comfortable with. Whenever there are two abilities that could interact there is often some clause somewhere that prevents any interesting dynamics coming from them, multiclassing has high prerequisites and can't give you much at all because of how it needs to be "on-par" with the niche class feats.

But I'm not comparing it to just Core, because:
1) PF1 Core also wasn't enough to get me to move to Pathfinder.
2) Because the PF2 system seems like it has been designed specifically in a way to reduce the chances my two core issues being resolved.

The only reason I ever play d20 games when there are so many good non-d20 system, is because I can frankenstein and combine lego-pieces to make interesting and balanced characters (which often requires 3rd party) with unique concepts without the blank-slate of a point-buy system. PF2e doesn't do this, so at this time, can't really see reason to switch. I could give it 4 to 5 years?

These are pretty close to my feelings, as well. It's probably a fine game for... "non-optimizers", if you'd like, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way or anything, some people just don't have the relationship to char op that I and others do.

It's probably a fun game at the table, where you set up your character at level 1 and make a couple feat choices when you level to "customize your class", but... in large part you just pick whatever option is meant for your build, bring your character sheet to game night, and pretend to be Elves and Wizards (or Elven Wizards) with your friends.

And I'm not deriding anyone for preferring that kind of game, but it isn't what makes me excited about (or buy books for) class based systems. If I was going to play a game where I couldn't "put in the work" to find synergies between class features, I'd rather play Savage Worlds or Fate, or if I had to pick something with "classes" I'd go in for DnD 5e or Feng Shui 2 or Tenra Bansho Zero or something.

The whole time I was trying to "put in the work" with these core rules I kept finding out I wasted my time later because two of the key feats both had the Flourish keyword so I couldn't use both in the same round, or the spell had the Incapacitate keyword that makes it almost worthless against same level enemies after the first level you get the spell, or the feat I wanted on my Ranger was Fighter 12 so I couldn't even do it at level 20.

I will always prefer systems where I can "put in the work" if I want to, even if the advantage I get from doing so is only marginal at best. Even if the advantage doesn't actually mathematically exist, most of my "optimized" 3e characters are waaay worse than a Barbarian 10/Frenzied Berserker 10 with the ubercharging feats at dealing damage.

Because, in the end, it isn't really about the advantage. It's about the puzzle, and PF 2e isn't a very good puzzle, all the pieces are shaped so none of them can fit together except for a handful of pieces the designers wanted me to put together on purpose. Except maaaybe Truestrike and two-action spells with a spell attack, that's a fun thing you can do I think, even though it only gives you a reroll and pierces concealment.

[Kurald Galain]

1st Edition Fighter vs 2nd Edition Fighter at Level’s 1, 5, and 8. Focusing on cool and flavorful options over standard and practical ones. I will admit I will likely not cover Archetypes all that well, as there’s just too many to cover. I would appreciate some help with this, but I think that my point should have been made regardless.

Your analysis shows three important differences about P2.

The first is that P1's fighter moves can all be combined with each other, whereas P2's cannot. For instance, you can't use Power Attack while Lunging any more, because they're both a special kind of action. This makes gameplay less interesting.

The second is that a lot of P2 feats may have a nice description, but boil down to "do the same thing but marginally better". While Shield Block is cool and flavorful, Reactive Shield is just "the same but as a different action type"; Lie To Me is "the same but charisma instead of wisdom"; and Quick Climb is just "the same but 5' faster". Small fiddly bonuses are by definition not cool and flavorful.

And the third is annoying restrictions. Dueling Riposte sounds nice (attacks against you that crit-fail provoke an OA), but it only works if you've used Dueling Parry on your turn, and locks you into 1H-no-shield style. Revealing Stab sounds cool again (leave your weapon in an invisible creature to reveal it) but losing your weapon is not a good tactic, and it's unclear why it locks you into piercing weapons, or indeed why that needs a feat in the first place.

Basically, P1's fighter is one of the more boring classes, so that P2's standard class setup fails to be more interesting than that is really not a good showing for P2.

[Storyteller_Arc]

The base dc is 15, not 10. It's a simple trained task. The -5 penalty is for 8 hours OR LESS of exploring. It is exactly as bad as I put it out to be. Plus there is a higher chance of fumbling than finding food for a second person.

The base DC is decided by the DM, and it has examples of when it should likely have a base DC of 15, or a base DC of 10. As I previously stated. Additionally, the chance of fumbling over finding food for a second person is not generically higher, but it dependant on the skill level of the Ranger in question and the DC a Ranger is working with. If the base DC is 15, and the Ranger has a +5 modifier to its Survival Skill, then the chance of fumbling is equal to its the chance for finding food for a second person.

Therefore, no, it is not as bad as you put it out to be.

Now hold up, you can't compare just what is in the class charts

Why not?

I'm comparing class to class here, not build to build, and it's not like I included everything in the 2E class chart either, I didn't bring up the 2E General Feats, nor did I bring up the 2E Ancestry Feats either. I'm attempting to strip down the classes to their most basic parts in order to compare and contrast them. Involving everything else - 1E Traits, Races and Equipment vs 2E Backgrounds, Ancestries and Equipment - then I'm not really comparing the classes anymore.

The first is that P1's fighter moves can all be combined with each other, whereas P2's cannot. For instance, you can't use Power Attack while Lunging any more, because they're both a special kind of action. This makes gameplay less interesting.

Except for the fact that just lumping them all together and being able to use them willy-nilly is boring and straight forward. While actually having to think of when or where to use them, and what options you have avaiable to deal with the current threat is engaging and challenging.

The second is that a lot of P2 feats may have a nice description, but boil down to "do the same thing but marginally better". While Shield Block is cool and flavorful, Reactive Shield is just "the same but as a different action type"; Lie To Me is "the same but charisma instead of wisdom"; and Quick Climb is just "the same but 5' faster". Small fiddly bonuses are by definition not cool and flavorful.

Reactive Shield might just be "The same but as a different action type", but that action type is a very significant and very flavourful change. Its pretty damn cool that where others have to carefully raise their shield up to use it, I can snap my shield up in response to an attack in order to protect myself. While Lie To Me isn't "the same but Charisma instead of Wisdom." but "the same but Deception vs Perception.", which can end up being a lot more than just 'marginally better'.

And you will notice that I did not mention Quick Climb as being a cool, flavourful ability.

And the third is annoying restrictions. Dueling Riposte sounds nice (attacks against you that crit-fail provoke an OA), but it only works if you've used Dueling Parry on your turn, and locks you into 1H-no-shield style. Revealing Stab sounds cool again (leave your weapon in an invisible creature to reveal it) but losing your weapon is not a good tactic, and it's unclear why it locks you into piercing weapons, or indeed why that needs a feat in the first place.

Dueling Riposte doesn't sound nice, it is nice. Giving me a more aggressive reactionary ability in contrast to a shield users more defensive Shield Block, and synergizes well with other Fighter feats. Revealing Stab is cool. Because if your planning on using it, then your not going to use your primary weapon in order to reveal an invisible enemy, and the ability to leave a weapon in a foe so that your allies can locate said enemy is just a cool ability is general. Additionally, driving your weapon into a foe and leaving it inside of them is an option rather than a requirement, you can potentially use Revealing Stab in order to make an accurate attack against an invisble foe. Though I would say that Blind Fight is the better choice.

Basically, P1's fighter is one of the more boring classes, so that P2's standard class setup fails to be more interesting than that is really not a good showing for P2..

Comparing P2's entire standard class setup to a single class from P1 is just a poor argeuement to try and make.

Comparing P2's fighter to P1's fighter however, clearly shows that the P2 fighter is a far more engaging and entertaining class than the P1 fighter, and this is when the P1 fighter has access to significant more content and choice than the P2 fighter at this moment in time.

[Divine Susuryu]

Because, in the end, it isn't really about the advantage. It's about the puzzle, and PF 2e isn't a very good puzzle, all the pieces are shaped so none of them can fit together except for a handful of pieces the designers wanted me to put together on purpose. Except maaaybe Truestrike and two-action spells with a spell attack, that's a fun thing you can do I think, even though it only gives you a reroll and pierces concealment.

A nice summary, and one that's perfectly embodied in "Flourish". Can't use multiple in a round, or else unforeseen synergies might arise. I mean, unforeseen synergies is exactly why 3.5 has such a vigorous community despite being superceded twice by new editions from the original publisher. I'm being a bit facetious, of course, but PF2's design does seem to go out of its way to limit the combinatorics which drew me to TTRPGs in the first place.

[Kurald Galain]

Except for the fact that just lumping them all together and being able to use them willy-nilly is boring and straight forward. While actually having to think of when or where to use them, and what options you have avaiable to deal with the current threat is engaging and challenging.

So if I understand you correctly, you are agreeing with me that P1 is engaging and challenging, because in P1 you actually have to think of when or where to use Power Attack (since it reduces your to-hit) and Lunge (since it affects your armor class). I agree that games where you just use them together all the time would be boring and straightforward; P1 is clearly not an example of that, and arguably P2 is.

And you will notice that I did not mention Quick Climb as being a cool, flavourful ability.

Spending a feat to occasionally be 5' faster isn't mechanically impressive, either; it would be considered a waste of a feat in P1 or 4E or 5E.

Dueling Riposte doesn't sound nice,

Mechanically speaking, it makes you give up one attack, in order to gain one attack ONLY if your enemy crit-fails (about a 10% chance, really). Doesn't strike me as a good tradeoff. Note that P1 has the same ability but without giving up one attack, and without requiring a crit-fail.

the ability to leave a weapon in a foe so that your allies can locate said enemy is just a cool ability is general.

Given how the Invisibility spell works, anyone can do this without a feat in P1. Why again do you need special training in order to let go of your weapon?

you can potentially use Revealing Stab in order to make an accurate attack against an invisble foe.

Given that it requires two actions and prevents you from using other combat feats, mechanically speaking that's a trap.

So the underlying pattern here is that P2 has options that sound cool but the underlying mechanics are lacking, and that the same options are more effective in P1.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Because, in the end, it isn't really about the advantage. It's about the puzzle, and PF 2e isn't a very good puzzle, all the pieces are shaped so none of them can fit together except for a handful of pieces the designers wanted me to put together on purpose. Except maaaybe Truestrike and two-action spells with a spell attack, that's a fun thing you can do I think, even though it only gives you a reroll and pierces concealment.

Or perhaps you simply haven't adjusted to the rules of the puzzle yet? I'm pretty sure if I looked I could find some fun combos and builds outside those that the designers wanted you to put together on purpose. Its just a matter of adjusting to the new rules in place.

So if I understand you correctly, you are agreeing with me that P1 is engaging and challenging, because in P1 you actually have to think of when or where to use Power Attack (since it reduces your to-hit) and Lunge (since it affects your armor class). I agree that games where you just use them together all the time would be boring and straightforward; P1 is clearly not an example of that, and arguably P2 is.

Except, not really?

Power Attack is entirely binary. Does the monster have a competitive AC? Then you don't use it. Does the monster have a low DC? Then you use it. Meanwhile, Lunge's AC penalty is so small and inconsequential that very rarely worth taking into consideration about whenever or not you use it.

Power Attack and Lunge are boring and straight forward, there are very limited times when you just wouldn't use them together.

Mechanically speaking, it makes you give up one attack, in order to gain one attack ONLY if your enemy crit-fails (about a 10% chance, really). Doesn't strike me as a good tradeoff. Note that P1 has the same ability but without giving up one attack, and without requiring a crit-fail.

Mechanically speaking, I can go into a Stance in order to gain this ability turn after turn, (Dueling Dance) and I can make two of them per turn, or one of them + another reaction (Improved Dueling Riposte). I can also move them 10ft after the attack (Guiding Riposte)

Also, you're incorrect about the P1 same ability. For example, the Duelist's Parry and Riposte not only require you to go into a Prestige Class, but require you to give up an attack as part of an attack action. Which makes it clearly inferior. Then, the Swashbuckler's Opportune Parry and Riposte requires you to use a limited pool of resources in order to use and doesn't have the same upgrade potential as the PF2 ability.

anyone can do this without a feat in P1

Citation Needed.

Given that it requires two actions and prevents you from using other combat feats, mechanically speaking that's a trap.

So the underlying pattern here is that P2 has options that sound cool but the underlying mechanics are lacking, and that the same options are more effective in P1.

It does not prevent you from using other combat feats, and its a trade-off: Two Actions for a very accurate attack, or two accurate for 2 less accurate attacks. That's not a trap, it's a calculated decision that has many different factors involved.

The underlying pattern here is that P2 has options that sound cool and have the underlying mechanics to back it up. While these 'same' options simply aren't as easily accessed or are actively weaker in P1.

[Kurald Galain]

Citation Needed.

Really now. Practice what you preach

1st Edition Alchemist vs 2nd Edition Alchemist at Level’s 1, 5, and 8.

LOL, you're entirely discounting P1's powerful extracts feature? Seriously now...

[Storyteller_Arc]

Really now. Practice what you preach

Please explain what part of the many citations I use in order to make my point, means I am not practising what I preach when I ask for citations.

LOL, you're entirely discounting P1's powerful extracts feature? Seriously now...

No. I'm not discounting P1's powerful extracts feature.

I'm saying that the Extract Feature from P1 is equalled by the Alchemy feature from P2. And that the P2 Alchemy Feature is actually more flavourful, as you are actually using Alchemical Items, I.E, functioning as an Alchemist, rather than having a weaker version of spellcasting.

[Faily]

5e largely settled this question, to my mind. This new system has exactly the same problem of not being able to fulfill the vision at level 1 -- it's inherent to any system that decides some abilities are too powerful and need to be "earned", let alone class based ones that must, of necessity, hand out most of the powerful stuff at the top end of the class structure.

The solution to this is to broaden the capabilities of classes and allow them to step on each other's toes, at least a bit, and to front load abilities that are "key to character concepts" while still offering reasons to take that class to 20th level.

You know, what 5e did with classes. The Paladin 5/Warlock 6 might kill things with two less attacks than the Fighter 11, but there are still compelling reasons to be a Fighter 11, like the extra maneuver dice and the extra extra attack.

5e isn't perfect by any stretch, (I think the classes in 5e are too distinct too, for reference, though that isn't anything a theurge prestige class or two or one-for-every-possible-two-class-combination couldn't solve ) but their solution to the multiclassing problem is better than "lol you can get one class feature you might not have even wanted from the class and can take their class feats from 4-10 levels ago."

Now hold up, you can't compare just what is in the class charts, the 1e Fighter gets general feats at every odd level and the 2e fighter gets general feats at 3 and 7, so the 2e fighter is really only up 2 skill feats rather than 4. Plus the 1e fighter can spend those general feats on combat feats.

I do see that you mentioned that the 1e fighter's options for general feats are limited, but the 1e fighter isn't limited to just general feats from those the way the 2e fighter is.

Ah, my bad, I interpreted the upside down smile as an irony indicator. That's true about the Battlemaster, but it didn't really do the Warlord justice.

Yes, exactly. 4e is a fine game, and PF 2e probably is as well, I just have extremely mixed feelings about a bunch of stuff and, ultimately, I wish it was a different game than it is.

I agree in principle but the only way I could see them doing actual prestige classes would be like 4e Paragon Paths. You can't build a core rulebook like this one and then stop, say, Fighter weapon proficiency or Rage damage from advancing at those level breakpoints.

They'll probably carve the prestige classes up into archetype feats, and give you a class feature per feat that requires the basic archetype feat just like "multiclassing" is. I will be very pleasantly surprised if I am proven wrong by a upcoming book.

I'll be even more pleasantly surprised if they release "optional" rules for more robust multiclassing, but we'll see.

These are pretty close to my feelings, as well. It's probably a fine game for... "non-optimizers", if you'd like, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way or anything, some people just don't have the relationship to char op that I and others do.

It's probably a fun game at the table, where you set up your character at level 1 and make a couple feat choices when you level to "customize your class", but... in large part you just pick whatever option is meant for your build, bring your character sheet to game night, and pretend to be Elves and Wizards (or Elven Wizards) with your friends.

And I'm not deriding anyone for preferring that kind of game, but it isn't what makes me excited about (or buy books for) class based systems. If I was going to play a game where I couldn't "put in the work" to find synergies between class features, I'd rather play Savage Worlds or Fate, or if I had to pick something with "classes" I'd go in for DnD 5e or Feng Shui 2 or Tenra Bansho Zero or something.

The whole time I was trying to "put in the work" with these core rules I kept finding out I wasted my time later because two of the key feats both had the Flourish keyword so I couldn't use both in the same round, or the spell had the Incapacitate keyword that makes it almost worthless against same level enemies after the first level you get the spell, or the feat I wanted on my Ranger was Fighter 12 so I couldn't even do it at level 20.

I will always prefer systems where I can "put in the work" if I want to, even if the advantage I get from doing so is only marginal at best. Even if the advantage doesn't actually mathematically exist, most of my "optimized" 3e characters are waaay worse than a Barbarian 10/Frenzied Berserker 10 with the ubercharging feats at dealing damage.

Because, in the end, it isn't really about the advantage. It's about the puzzle, and PF 2e isn't a very good puzzle, all the pieces are shaped so none of them can fit together except for a handful of pieces the designers wanted me to put together on purpose. Except maaaybe Truestrike and two-action spells with a spell attack, that's a fun thing you can do I think, even though it only gives you a reroll and pierces concealment.

I think you summarized my own thoughts on PF2 pretty well!


Also, I highly doubt we'll see any major impressive introductions in splatbooks later on. It's only going to be the small miniscule differences and numbers, since Paizo's design goal was to limit things as much as possible to "make it easier to write adventure paths" and have rules in Society-play. Because I guess it's terrible if players can find unexpected synergies or combos?

Out of the gate, Core-only, all the main casters in PF1 beat the snot out of PF2. Why? No 10th level spells as they're 9th level, and can cast them more than once per day. Miracle, Wish, Gate, Time Stop. Have fun. They also don't have to throw away their high-level spell slots to heighten low-level spells. The Wizard/Sorcerer's Fireball will scale with them to level 10 with no effort.