Mostly found it very unfun, I recognize that the math behind it works really well, but playing it always sort of gave the impression of most stuff just not doing all that much.
The expected result from what I could tell is that you always sort of scrape by, enemies will usually succeed in their saves etc. From what I understand this seems to be a reaction to the arms race PF1 adventure paths were. I just found that ultimately these things just made the game feel unfun.
I am certainly not 5e’s biggest fan, but I would rather have that (or the jank of a Shadowrun 5), than the constant feeling of ineffectiveness PF 2 gave me. This got marginally better when I swapped from Witch to Kineticist, but still ultimately didn’t fix my dissatisfaction.
I’ll admit I’ve never played one of their published campaigns, but a lot of this sounds GM-dependent. I tend to naturally run things a bit on the easier side, to where it feels like unless I’m going out of my way to provide a really serious threat, it’s always felt pretty much the same difficulty as my D&D games. I can’t relate to the idea that players just “scrape by” at all.
I wanted to move away from D&D anyway because I didn’t like the direction they were going (removing lore, breaking promises about supporting multiple play styles, etc.) and then the OGL debacle happened, as well as WotC’s other corporate bs. But I came to love Pathfinder for its 3 action economy and 4 degrees of success systems, which just feel so satisfying to me compared to the lacklustre D&D systems.
Why do you hate PF2e? And how does that compare to D&D?
No smoke, I’m just curious as I personally like it more than 4e or 5e but recognize its got some funk on it.
Mostly found it very unfun, I recognize that the math behind it works really well, but playing it always sort of gave the impression of most stuff just not doing all that much. The expected result from what I could tell is that you always sort of scrape by, enemies will usually succeed in their saves etc. From what I understand this seems to be a reaction to the arms race PF1 adventure paths were. I just found that ultimately these things just made the game feel unfun. I am certainly not 5e’s biggest fan, but I would rather have that (or the jank of a Shadowrun 5), than the constant feeling of ineffectiveness PF 2 gave me. This got marginally better when I swapped from Witch to Kineticist, but still ultimately didn’t fix my dissatisfaction.
I’ll admit I’ve never played one of their published campaigns, but a lot of this sounds GM-dependent. I tend to naturally run things a bit on the easier side, to where it feels like unless I’m going out of my way to provide a really serious threat, it’s always felt pretty much the same difficulty as my D&D games. I can’t relate to the idea that players just “scrape by” at all.
I wanted to move away from D&D anyway because I didn’t like the direction they were going (removing lore, breaking promises about supporting multiple play styles, etc.) and then the OGL debacle happened, as well as WotC’s other corporate bs. But I came to love Pathfinder for its 3 action economy and 4 degrees of success systems, which just feel so satisfying to me compared to the lacklustre D&D systems.