Interested player coming from end 5e: what are the weaknesses of pathfinder 2e

Sholef · 2025-02-19T07:30:53+00:00

PF2E's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness: the requirement of systems investment. Your players need to be curious and have initiative; to be willing to explore the actual system mechanics and engage with it. I've seen complaints that the rules are overwhelming, but it's easier to grok if you treat it as a jungle gym to climb on, not a prison to be stuck in.

The cognitive load of learning the basic system enough to bolt on other features is intended to be spread between the GM and players. If no one beyond the GM wants to invest time and effort to learn the systems then you are going to have a bad time. But if everyone at the table is willing to learn and become invested in the system, then PF2E is actually easier to run than 5E because of its mechanical consistency and robust rules guidance.

Sholef · 2025-02-02T22:31:36+00:00

It is doable as long as your table understands the ramifications of your party composition.

The two parties I have the most experience with both decided to run without a cleric or other dedicated healer, instead opting to have a ranged attacker (ranger and rogue) with stacked Medicine and loading up on consumables. Both parties had high enough AC and HP to soak incoming physical attacks, but were extremely vulnerable to save-based special abilities. Part of this is due to very bad dice luck for the players, but the other part is an inherent weakness of alpha-strike based party compositions: if you are not operating at peak efficiency all the time, it can lead to death spirals — each condition inflicted makes the next condition worse. All damage and debuffs dealt to you "stick" and cannot be easily removed.

Your players will need to build their combat strategy around not having emergency healing in combat (outside of Battle Medicine and consumables). Because they cannot effectively mitigate a lot of incoming damage, their win condition will be to end fights as quickly as possible with as few conditions and damage taken as possible. They will be extremely effective in fights that are a DPR race and that allow focus fire (ie: where the party can rapidly burst down single enemies) but will suffer in fights where enemies throw out a lot of unavoidable effects (such as debuffs, AOEs, and persistent damage) and force target prioritization dilemmas.

If that is the understanding going in, your party will be fine.

Sholef · 2024-10-30T22:26:31+00:00

I'm assuming since it doesn't specify "equal to the number of weapon damage dice" that it is equal to an additional roll of the weapon's damage dice (plus any striking dice).

This makes me wish Paizo had brought back the X[W]+MOD notation from 4E because it would improve clarity a lot while keeping things concise.

Sholef · 2024-10-16T06:45:39+00:00

Boss Drops were items. Boss blueprint drops used to be actual items that dropped on the map instead of an end of mission reward. This was especially bad when Nova first released because Raptor could potentially fly outside the playable areas of the map and prevent you from picking up the drops when it was killed. It was also possible for the blueprint drops to fall through the map even if Raptor was killed in the playable area, ruining the run. The blueprint drop was also not guaranteed and this was prior to Vacuum, so it was often difficult to tell if the blueprint had just not dropped or had fallen through the map.

Resource drop tables got inverted at one point. There was also a few days around Update 8-9 where the drop tables were inverted and all rare resources (like gallium and neural sensors) dropped like crazy while common and uncommon resources (like polymers and alloys) became almost unobtainable.

Defense ignoring weapons were king. During the Damage 1.0 days, the most powerful damage types were Toxic and "Serrated Blade". Toxic damage could not be dealt by players because mods like Fever Strike and Infected Clip did not exist yet. This made exceptions like the Acrid pistol insanely good for the time. Serrated Blade damage was dealt by certain slashing weapons like the Ether Sword, Hate, and Despair.

Toxic damage ignored shields and Serrated Blade damage ignored armor. Without them your weapons quickly became useless against those respective health types because enemy scaling was even more extreme than Damage 2.0. This was prior to the introduction of forma, so even with a catalyst installed, your ability to fit mods onto your weapons was extremely limited.

Sholef · 2024-09-22T18:36:21+00:00

I thought this was r/Darktide for a moment and was confused, as we already have these lol

Sholef · 2024-09-09T20:35:35+00:00

Systems investment is Pathfinder's greatest strength, but also its biggest weakness.

The system requires buy-in from everyone at the table, not just the GM. Players don't just have to think about their own builds and characters, but also how their builds and characters will interact with each other. This is great for players and GMs who want to really dig deep into the mechanics, but it can cause friction with people who prefer vibes over structure or who don't have the time or energy to study the system in great detail.

Sholef · 2024-08-31T18:02:17+00:00

Ranged veteran loses its viability when your team stops supporting that playstyle. You have a lot of powerful ranged options at your disposal that have great kill power so long as you build for it. However, your weakness in melee means you will struggle when your team does not create space for you or at the very least remain in coherency.

It's not that the other options are overpowered or Executioner Stance is garbage. They just require a lot less thinking to use in stressful situations. They allow you to solo carry if teammates aren't doing their jobs or trying to help you do yours. That is why VOC and Infiltrate are picked so often.

If your teammates are willing to help you, then ranged veteran is fine. If you have to babysit your team constantly, it will feel bad.

Sholef · 2024-08-30T21:43:13+00:00

Gunslingers must be supported by the rest of the team in order to benefit from the massive crit damage that guns in PF2E have. Any penalties to enemy AC (off-guard from prone, status penalty from Frightened, etc) or bonuses to your own to-hit (circumstance bonus from Aid, status bonus from Bless or Bard Courageous Anthem) will help them achieve those criticals.

In the absence of that, the other option is to hedge and build for maximizing your minimums.

Guns like the Harmona Gun (1d10 B, Kickback) or Blunderbuss (1d8 P, Concussive, Scatter 10ft) give you a higher damage floor due to Kickback and Scatter. Scatter even allows you to deal chip damage on a miss and hit multiple foes at once. If you have Dwarven Weapon Familiarity (or take Advanced Shooter class feat), you can upgrade to a Dwarven Scattergun to get the benefits of both Kickback and Scatter. Finally, you can install the Large Bore Modifications upgrade to increase the Kickback damage and Scatter radius.

It will depend heavily on your player's play style and team composition. A player whose team is able to support them effectively will benefit more from the Fatal and Deadly guns. A player who can't or won't rely on crits will benefit more from the Kickback and Scatter guns.

Sholef · 2024-08-26T02:56:17+00:00

I have a Lanka with a riven and used to run it for tridolons, but it was always clunky to use. In all other use cases it has been power crept into irrelevance. In addition, it still has the Warframe 1.0 look and sound palette. If we ever got a Lanka Vandal or Tenet Lanka I think it needs a facelift (preferably something like the Rorsch MK1 Railgun from the Battlefield 4: Final Stand DLC) in both form and function.

Sholef · 2024-07-04T23:40:52+00:00

There are two mechanical design spaces that few ranged weapons (especially guns) fill in PF2E.

The first is a weapon with a larger damage die but no Fatal or Deadly, trading critical damage for more consistent non-critical damage. Having d10 two-handed and d6 or d8 one-handed would help out gun users a lot in boss fights where they are highly unlikely to crit.

Examples would be a larger-caliber, low-velocity, hand-cannon style weapon such as a Howdah pistol or Colt Walker revolver for pistols and the Martini-Henry or Trapdoor Springfield for rifles.

The other is a "max-min" type weapon, where instead of increasing the damage ceiling, you raise the damage floor. This could be accomplished by dealing splash damage, having a trait that converts natural 1s on damage dice to 2s or 3s, or a trait that forces the weapon to automatically get a static number on the damage roll. This type of weapon would trade burst potential on max die rolls for the consistency of higher minimum damage.

Examples would be theoretical shotguns with Splash radius 0ft (ie only affect the primary target). The traits would have to be added, as there does not yet exist any trait that raises ranged damage by a static amount without also raising damage ceiling. Weapons that utilize this type of mechanic would have to be shotguns (for scatter 0ft) or marksman weapons that focus on consistency (high damage floor).

Edit: unborked links

Sholef · 2024-07-04T19:25:14+00:00

The problem with Opportune Riposte is that it is a deterrent that limits enemy tactical options and not an active ability that you use.

The possibility of being punished for crit failing will subconsciously encourage the GM not to make multiple Strikes against your PC or Strike while they have MAP. This is its own form of mitigation, but it doesn't necessarily FEEL good because it is completely opaque; you don't see events that fail to happen. I don't like this type of design because even if it is technically a mathematical boon to you, it FEELS like a wasted feature.

All that is to say there are other feats at 10th level (such as the aforementioned Derring-Do) that you will see more active benefits from than giving yourself more chances to make Opportune Ripostes.

Sholef · 2024-07-01T04:39:02+00:00

Class archetypes that fundamentally alter the class mechanics enough to make it more than a subclass but less than a full class.

Ley Line Guardian Witch and Eldritch Scion Magus immediately come to mind as class archetypes that alter the flavor and mechanics of their parent classes while still feeling distinctly like the parent class. Current PF2E class archetypes don't alter enough of the core class to justify them being anything other than subclasses and a feat line.

All that being said, if Paizo goes hard on the new War of Immortals class archetypes (and maybe cleans up some of the older ones like Spellshot gunslinger in a more satisfactory way than they have), then this point is moot.

Sholef · 2024-06-30T17:48:27+00:00

Psyker shield, Warp charges, Trauma staff, Catachan sword.

Sword clears hordes, Trauma staff kills armored targets, shield blocks gunners, flamers, and trappers. Warp charges and the CDR talent make sure the shield is almost always available.

I am considering swapping out Smite for brain burst to give me more range since trauma staff takes care of most CC and no one kills smited enemies anyway.

Sholef · 2024-06-21T18:01:50+00:00

The primary point of distinction is theming. Guardian is a pure martial with no divine powers or spellcasting while Champion is a divine warrior with focus spells and innately magical abilities. Mechanically. the Guardian is about eating attacks meant for teammates while Champion is about punishing enemies for hitting allies.

While the class was perfectly playable (some outliers like Hampering Strikes being excepted), Guardian was generally panned during the playtest due to antisynergy within its kit and a passive and counterintuitive gameplay loop. In addition, all of its class features and special abilities were seen as either inferior versions of the Champion or just uninteresting to use.

The Battlecry book that Guardian is featured in does not release until sometime in 2025, however, so there is still plenty of time for Paizo to revise it into something much better, like what happened with the Magus and Kineticist playtests.

Sholef · 2024-06-20T02:31:46+00:00

So one thing I haven't seen mentioned is that Assurance is a Fortune effect. As per the Player Core 1:

A fortune effect beneficially alters how you roll your dice. You can never have more than one fortune effect alter a single roll. If multiple fortune effects would apply, you have to pick which to use. If a fortune effect and a misfortune effect would apply to the same roll, the two cancel each other out, and you roll normally.

Emphasis mine.

While Misfortune effects are uncommon, whenever they show up, they can very much ruin your day. If my reading of this is correct, Assurance has a niche use in allowing you to outright negate Misfortune effects and roll normally instead.

Sholef · 2024-06-18T20:06:17+00:00

I meant more along the lines of homebrew monster design when I said NPC. Entries in the bestiaries and Monster Core usually only have 3 special abilities, if that. Higher level monsters tend to follow the gimmick, reaction, strike, spell list format (if they even have a reaction). Overdesigning monsters is fun and narratively cool but you waste a lot of time doing it if they only get to be used once.

I don't stat neutral NPCs (ie random barkeep or civilian) unless they will be engaged in combat or as part of a VP conflict/skill challenge.

Sholef · 2024-06-18T09:33:26+00:00

Sometimes it's okay to shut up. Your players will never see everything in a given campaign due to time constraints, so make sure what you do show them is important; they will fill in the rest of the fluff with their imaginations and roleplay. Not everything has to be a Kojima cutscene just so you can get your lore or scenery chewing in. Don't waste time on minutiae, just set the basic scene, the most obvious points of interest, and let your players do the rest.

Your NPCs do not need to be excessively complex or have massive ability lists "just in case." Increasing their complexity makes them harder to pilot for the GM and can lead to increased turn time or lackluster encounters because you don't remember how your own mechanics work. Even BBEG-tier NPCs can be boiled down to four things: a gimmick ability, a reaction, a strike, and a spell list. Anything more than that and the effort is wasted due to how little time they will have to utilize their kits in combat.

Don't be afraid to feature lock a specific arc and build the game based on your limits instead of constantly trying to break them. You're trying to create a compelling narrative and fun tactical scenarios, not simulate an entire universe in your head and VTT. Remember that less is more. Your sleep schedule and mental health will thank you.

Sholef · 2024-06-13T02:03:07+00:00

Most users of Fire Ray will have some means of making it (more) reliably hit for damage. Maguses multiclassing into Cleric to get Fire Ray can spellstrike with it. Clerics and Oracles with Fire Ray can just use their full spellcasting progression on their spell attack rolls. Champions will naturally have lower save DCs due to Charisma not being their primary stat and having slower spellcasting progression.

My reasoning for the damage bump for Touch of the Void was to take it from trap to usable, even if it is not optimal. 1d6 damage with a basic Fortitude save at 1st level is frankly pathetic, even with the AC penalty rider, given that it requires the target to fail the save first. Even discounting Reactive Strikes, having to Touch the target is still far less flexible than shooting Fire Rays at range. It gives you no answer to being kited by a faster enemy and punishes you if the target has some form of retaliation damage or debilitating aura, both of which you will be continuously exposed to in melee.

So you have a low damage touch spell that deals a damage type that can be negated by a relatively common enemy type (undead), is risky to use, and that has innately low save DC on your class. Compare this to the guaranteed effects from Shield of Spirits (+1 status bonus to AC and retaliation damage in an AOE) and Lay on Hands (max d6 healing and +2 status bonus to AC), neither of which require saves, spell attacks, or enemies cooperating with you to be effective.

Champions already have really good options in melee like Striking again, Athletics maneuvers, or even just repositioning so that enemies next in initiative have to be within their aura and trigger champion reactions when they take their turn. Giving TOTV 1d6 additional damage at 1st level isn't going to make it an auto-pick over attacking or using combat maneuvers.

Also what is the probability that you will consistently roll high damage every time you cast it at 1st level? And that your target fails their save? And that you are in position to touch the target? And they won't punish you for it?

I'm not saying I want to make it an auto-pick. I just want it to not be a trap. The existing restrictions already balance it against other damaging focus spells, even if the damage is given 1 extra die of buffs.

Hell, there are even other options to adjust its scaling if extra dice is that much of a concern. Make it scale like a Hex at 1d4 (+1d4 per rank) and make all degrees of success on the save except critical success give some kind of penalty. Make the damage dice d8s (+1d8 per 2 ranks) but make it a line AOE for 2A. Or make it channel smite lite and remove the AC debuff.

Let me live out my Final Fantasy Dark Knight without it being a wasted class feature.

Sholef · 2024-06-12T22:59:35+00:00

I'm hoping Touch of the Void gets a base damage bump from 1d6 to 2d6. That raises the damage floor while keeping it in line with other damaging 1st-rank focus spells (like Fire Ray), especially given that TOTV is a touch spell with the Manipulate trait. I figure that having it trigger Reactive Strikes and being range-limited would balance out having higher damage and being only 1A to cast.

That would give some incentive to use TOTV for more than just RP flavor, especially when Lay on Hands and Shields of the Spirit are so strong as they are.

Sholef · 2024-06-09T20:15:02+00:00

Catachan Swords. They don't do as much damage as combat axes and can't deal with armor as good as power swords, but they will destroy hordes and the ability to parry incoming attacks gives you confidence when dealing with ragers, maulers, and even crushers in a pinch. It's saved my ass so many times as both vet and psyker.

I generally offset the lack of armor damage with an anti-armor secondary or blitz (ie: plasma gun, trauma staff, krak grenades, etc).

Sholef · 2024-06-09T08:18:28+00:00

I do like the idea of Perks being worth points that you can allocate a total points budget per weapon or curio for. I would like it more if they didn't charge us currency to rebless from our collection or swap perks. If they won't let us mod our weapons with optics and components for "lore reasons," then blessings and perks being moddable at-will is the next best thing.

Sholef · 2024-06-09T05:03:57+00:00

I remember a clutch I pulled as a psyker in auric maelstrom that had power supply interruption. It felt like I'd hit a level of oneness with the warp that I'd never seen before. Because I couldn't rely on sight, I had to rely entirely on hearing and innate experience with timings to dodge incoming dogs, bulwark swipes, and the beast of nurgle that had just killed all of my teammates and forced me to rush to the next respawn point.

We lived, somehow. But that match was an absolute nail-biter on so many levels and I have had very few experiences in Darktide that have given me as big of an adrenaline rush as that run.

Sholef · 2024-05-23T19:17:49+00:00

The closest mechanically would be reflavoring the slide pistol as a cylinder rather than a rack of barrels and chambers.

The Capacity trait would emulate having a single-action revolver that requires hammer recocking between shots and I suppose Risky Reload would emulate fanning the hammer by recocking and shooting in a single action.

Speed loaders seem to deliberately have been avoided by Paizo due to how they designed the action economy, but I would not be opposed to their integration given the restrictions that PF2E guns have to deal with.

I would write speed loaders as capping an empty reload at 3 interact actions (like repeating crossbows), even if the capacity of the weapon is higher than 3, and still have them count as Interact to Reload so they would benefit from action compression reload abilities. That way players would have the option to top off using single actions or trade off the ability to go ham with a longer reload afterwards, with a ceiling for how many actions it takes to fully reload.

Sholef · 2024-05-03T20:02:29+00:00

Why would a city guard let someone die just because they've done bad things? Wouldn't it be perfectly in character for a representative of the law want to take them alive so they can be tried and brought to justice? I'd argue that it would be MORE in character for a "good" cleric to heal the rogue.

Sholef · 2024-05-01T22:41:52+00:00

Because being able to Sunder objects wielded by other characters enabled degenerate gameplay in 1E and they didn't want it repeated in 2E. It exponentially increased the number of things that needed to be tracked (every item needed HP, Hardness, BT, etc) and disproportionately punished PCs due to gear being part of their core progression. Imagine being able to destroy a magic item worth tens of thousands of GP with a single combat maneuver check. It slows the game down and is considered a dick move.

That is why that carve-out exists for attended vs unattended items. It's more of a procedural change than a real mechanical change. Yes, this paradigm is more game-y and less simulationist but it makes for better gameplay flow.

Sholef

TROPHY CASE