Evaluating Pathfinder 2nd Edition after One Year - Balance and Threat Ranges In Play

 It is a sound argument that a game reviewer should have played the game he is reviewing first, and it is rare for a reviewer to have played extensively, but after one year with Pathfinder 2nd Edition I can safely say that any review I offer will be based on approximately 350 to 400 hours of actual play time, in a campaign which ran from levels 1-19 (with 20 imminent) over a 50+ story arc. In the course of play I think the following are fair observations on how balance and the unique crit/fumble range in PF2E works. 

I feel like there's a subtle, hidden learning curve with Pathfinder 2nd that will make for a refined experience with the next major campaign arc. As you can probably guess, if I am planning a second campaign arc then I must like it. So here goes....my observations of Pathfinder 2nd Edition after a year of weekly play between a campaign that ran from 1-20 (with 20 about to hit), and three shorter side campaigns on Wednesday running from levels 1-5, 5-9 and a fresh level 1 campaign that is still underway (just as soon as our Wednesday group exausts our Call of Cthulhu side trek).

Extremely Balanced

PF2E is an extremely balanced game. More so than any modern iteration of D20 over the last 20 years of design, PF2E has achieved something no other system has really pulled off. High level play in D&D 5E felt better than in its predecessors but could still be a slog (chiefly due to hit point bloat). PF2E manages to make high level play feel very similar (and at a similar pace) to lower level play. I simply have not worried about our level 19 game getting stuck in a multi-hour long combat like I used to in the pre PF2E days; that can only happen when you throw a signficant and deadly high level threat at the group, and even then if you design within the encounter parameters you still shouldn't see long combats that often.

The upside is this means the GM has a high level of control and understanding of how an encounter will play out. This is a strength for sure, but also a weakness; savvy players will get comfortable with encounter range expectations, and if you break those expectations it can be jarring to them. Likewise, the ranges are so tightly defined that as GM if you are throwing anything in to an encounter that is more than CR -4 out of range then you might as well just roleplay the encounter: "Okay group, seventy challenge 1 orcs attack you level 10 group, tell me how you wipe the floor with them," is a perfectly valid way to resolve that encounter in PF2E*. Conversely, if you as GM throw something more then CR +4 at them then you should do so with full warning that they might as well flee for the hills.

Some of the reason for this tight range of balance is due to the next design element....

The Crit Range Mechanic Changes Everything

In PF2E, you have a +10/-10 range of success that profoundly impacts play. If you run a couple random sessions of Pathfinder 2E without really understanding the mechanic it can feel extremely swingy at first, but in fact the opposite is actually happening: the math is extremely precise and predictable in PF2E, and it creates a unique set of what I are assumed intended consequences in the encounter design and combat experience.

When you get 10 better than your target to hit then you land a critical hit. When you roll 10 under you fumble. Saving throws often default to what is called a "Basic Save" which in most cases means spell and hazard/trap effects also define what happens when you fail or succeed by 10 or more with greater effect. In many ways its simply a codification of a mechanic which had style elements back to classic 3rd edition D20 mechanics, but now extrapolated to a near universal rule in PF2E. 

One you get used to the notion, the result means that you can figure with a high degree of accuracy the odds of success and failure leading to dramatic success or dramatic failure against threats in the game. When a group that is fighting a gang of foes that are challenge rating -4, for example, they are not just four levels better in terms of skill, but four levels higher in their degree of achieving a critical success. Likewise, if you are placed against a foe which is challenge +4 (four levels better than you), then you are actually equally more likely to achieve critical failure by four degrees. This is why I feel that the balanced encounter range of -4 to +4 degrees is a bit deceptive; it's accurate, but much of the risk (or ease) of the combat is attributed to the margin by which you achieve a critical success or failure. 

For example: as a player, you may realize that if you have a +10 to hit (a reasonable chance for a level 3 fighter with 16 Strength and expert training in his weapon), and your foe is AC 23, then you will on average need to roll a 13 or better to hit the enemy. You can only crit against that foe on a natural 20 since you can't roll 10 higher than the target number (AC). But if your foe is AC 15, that means you will only need to roll a 5 or better to hit, and that means you will also crit anytime you roll 15 or higher. So against an AC 23 foe you crit on a 20 only (5% chance), but on an AC 15 foe you crit on a 15-20 (30% range).

In PF2E an example of an AC 15 monster is a giant rat (challenge -1, meaning it's a weak foe against level 1 PCs, or worth level-2 for XP). By contrast a challenge 4 monster (werebear) could have AC 23. So....if you do the math, our hypothetical level 3 fighter would find the werebear to be CR+1 vs. a group of 4 level 3 characters, and the giant rat would be CR-4 against the same four adventurers. That werebear would be a dire threat one-on-one, and it would take a small army of giant rats to make an impact against the group (though they could still nickel-and-dime a solitary PC to death).

To further emphasize how critical this threat range is, the werebear has a +13 to attack while the giant rat  has a +7 to it's attack. The well-armored 3rd level fighter might have full plate, giving him an AC of 21 (base 10, with +6 for the armor, and +5 for training). So our rat will hit this guy on a 13 or better, and only crit on a natural 20. Our werebear will hit him on a 7 or better, and will crit on an 18-20 (15% chance). 

Those +/-10 ranges make a huge difference as the challenge level gets further from the level baseline. Furthermore, in PF2E if you roll a natural 1 you fumble anyway, and crit on a natural 20, unless you happen to have been unable to otherwise hit without rolling a crit....in which case the crit converts to a normal attack! This is logical, but it means that, to use another example, a group of typical level 3 characters like in the above example, when facing a challenge 7 opponent (so level+4, the max difficulty advised in the game) may be in dire straights. A typical challenge 7 foe is the Ogre Boss, who has an AC 25 and +19 to hit. Against our puny level 3 fighter he will hit on a 2 or better, and will dish out a critical on a 12 or better on the die (45% chance)! He normally hits for 1D10+11 piercing but against a level 3 foe almost half the time will deal 2D10+22. 

At level 7 that same fighter will find the ogre boss a tough but fair fight.....but at level 3 that ogre boss will clean his clock. 

Anyway, the crit/fumble range has a profound impact on how you must consider challenges in PF2E. It really does mean that you must take the rules seriously. In consideration, though, the rules scale experience with difficulty. That Ogre Boss is worth 40 XP to a group of level 7 foes, but is worth 160 XP to the group of level 3 adventurers. Under the encounter design guidelines, that means that 4 ogre bosses are an extreme encounter for a group of level 7 PCs, and 2 werebears are a severe encounter for a group of level 3 PCs. One werebear should be a sufficient "low" threat for 4 level 3 PCs however, as would one ogre boss for the level 7 group. In theory up to 4 giant rats would be a trivial threat, and by XP budget alone 16 rats could pose a extreme threat but in reality they really don't. Likewise, the giant rats would be worth exatly zero XP to the level seven group and are best described as a descriptive one off, such as "You killed a bunch of giant rats," rather than waste time killing them. The rats pose zero threat....they can't even crit against the level 7 group, and will barely have a chance for a normal hit.

One consequence of all this is that leveling up impacts the game's pace more. If you want, for example, kobolds, goblins and giant rats to be a meaningful threat for a while then don't let your PCs level quickly....they will outstrip those foes by level 4-5 and consequently a 20-session arc in the giant rat warrens will quickly become a merciless slaughter as the PCs earn the exterminator achievement!

*Using swarm rules to simulate an orc horde as a threat for high level PCs would be a way to do this, as well....

A Nice, Clean, Traditional Pathfinder 2E Character Sheet

While looking for a character sheet that didn't contain a vomitous level of burgundies and blues, I stumbled across this redditor post from viemexis which offers up a very clean, traditional looking four page Pathfinder 2E sheet that is not an eyesore and is easy to use. Sure, it's still four pages long.....but at least it's easy to look at!

Character sheet here.

Modifying Monsters in Pathfinder 2E - Round One

Pathfinder 2nd Edition introduces a range of rules in the Gamemastery Guide that let you design monsters according to the new monster design mechanics, which are aimed at challenge-appropriate builds in a process similar to (but more structured) D&D 5E. The end result is that you get "numerically on-target" stat blocks through a kind of reverse engineering; rather than building from the ground up you sort of design from the top down, asking "What do I need?" rather than "What can I make?"

The trick is...this can be a bit enigmatic if you're not sure how to interpret all the data the GMG provides on this. As it turns out, I found that by using some scaling assumptions with standard Bestiary creatures you can get a much better grasp on intent, and also which monsters fill which niches.

For example: the Orc Brute. A CR 0 creature, is designed to be a very low level foe for level 1-3 characters. After about level 3 they are serious fodder. Recently however I ran a game (level 15) in which a major conflict and battle between three warring factions took place, which included an army of orcs. The orcs as presented were mostly grunts and low level, so the players got a moment to shine as true heroic badasses on the battlefield. However, having a percentage of the orc population be heroic foes in their own right would make for a more engaging and risky conflict. As such, I thought about ways to bulk up the monsters....imagine, for example, a "heroic" version of the orc brute.....I started by assuming it was a CR 14 monsters, and boosted it accordingly using the guidelines. It seems like the simplest default is to add level to all relevant stats, then add additional modifiers based on reasonable proficiency levels. When done this way and compared to the charts in the GMG you can quickly assess intended level and scope of threat of the foe as it advances in experience.

When an orc brute grows in power he thus becomes an Orc Greater Thane. As I developed the character it became clear that adding an extra ability for a multi-action attack would make sense; this gives them some extra striking power while sticking to the core conceit: brutal thugs that beat things to death with their orc-brand cestii:

ORC GREATER THANE

CREATURE 14

Chaotic Evil Medium Humanoid Orc

Perception +21; darkvision

Languages Orc

Skills Athletics +24, Intimidation +20

Str +5, Dex +3, Con +5, Int +0, Wis +1, Cha +0

Items  +2 breastplate, +1 striking javelin (3), +2 striking orc knuckle dagger (2)

AC 33; Fort +24, Ref +20, Will +20

HP 210

Ferocity [reaction]

Speed 25 feet

Melee [one-action] orc knuckle dagger +24 (agile, disarm), Damage 2d6+9 piercing

Melee [one-action] fist +24 (agile, nonlethal), Damage 2d4+9 bludgeoning

Melee [two-action] flurry of knuckle dagger strikes +24 (agile, disarm), Damage 6d6+27

Ranged [one-action] javelin +21 (thrown 30 feet), Damage 2d6+8 piercing

And just like that you have a mook designed to fight level 15 characters and be a sufficient challenge that they aren't a total waste of time, while also not being enormously overpowered.

I'm going to explore some more evolutions like this as things roll along. In PF1E there were a number of books Paizo did (such as Monster Codex) that did something like this; perhaps we'll get lucky and Paizo will do more such tomes in the future.

Previewing the Pathfinder 2E Advanced Player's Guide - Much Needed Goodness

I just noticed that the Paizo website listing for the upcoming Advanced Players Guide now lists the general contents of the book....check it out:

--Four new classes: the investigator, oracle, swashbuckler, and witch!
--Five new ancestries and five heritages for any ancestry: celestial aasimars, curious catfolk, hagspawned changelings, vampiric dhampirs, fate-touched duskwalkers, scaled kobolds, fierce orcs, fiendish tieflings, industrious ratfolk, and feathered tengu!
--40 new archetypes including multiclass archetypes for the four new classes, Pathfinder favorites like the cavalier, dragon disciple, shadowdancer, and vigilante, and brand-new archetypes like the familiar master and the shield-bearing iron wall!
--New class options for all twelve classes from the Pathfinder Core Rulebook including champions of evil, genie and shadow sorcerers, zen archer monks, rogue masterminds, spellcasting rangers, and more!
--Even more exciting new rules, from rare and unique backgrounds to investigative skill feats, from spells and rituals like reincarnate and create demiplane to new items including special wands with unusual effects and exciting potions worthy of a witch's cauldron.

That is a very exciting list. Perhaps most exciting is they seem to be covering all the ancestries and heritages my group has been missing; it's really hard to run some of my games without ancestry stats for aasimar, tieflings and catfolk, for example. This is a much needed tome, really looking forward to its release! It will by coincidence arrive in July sometime (exact date post-COVID-19 disruptions not determined it looks like), which will be right around the time our current Pathfinder campaign which started first week of August and has been meeting non-stop will be hitting the Real High Levels (somewhere around 17-18 depending on how things go; they are all about 65 XP away from level 16 as of this weekend).

Roll20 and the Compendium Resources (aka are those expensive VTT books worth the buy?)

Roll20 has a number of resources available in its online shop, though surprisingly not as many as a competitor like Fantasy Grounds can offer. What Roll20 lacks in content of this nature is made up for by inherent flexibility; you can run just about any game with it so long as someone takes the time to craft a character sheet for you.

As it happens, since it looks like my regular group will be gaming in Roll20 for at least the rest of May and (with any bad luck) June, I decided to investigate the rulebook compendiums on offer for Pathfinder 2nd edition. Worth noting right off, there is a way to link up your Paizo account. When you do this, it immediately gives you some decent discounts on the Roll20 rulebooks. The $49.99 rulebooks, for example, are $38 when you do this. I have only ever bought these books in PDF format from Paizo before, so I don't know if proof you bought a physical copy generates an even better discount.

I started with the book that had the most obvious potential at the virtual game table: The Bestiary for 2E. It was available immediately on unlock, and proved to be a wealth of immediately accessible resources. As a GM, here's what the purchase netted me of immediate and great use: all of the Bestiary monsters in the Compendium, each with the ability to pull standard stat blocks/text of their descriptions, as well as an NPC sheet format that lets me "one click" any action or ability to generate relevant rolls and ability block details. You can also drag and drop to create the icon for the monster, and basically gain roughly all the perks a player has on their end, but for your monsters.

The Bestiary for 2E on Roll20 is the full content of the print book, too. If you do not own it in any form, but planned on gaming only through Roll20, then you will find this book does everything you could want (except detach itself from Roll20). For some gamers, this may be more than enough. I know that just having this content loaded and ready makes it much likelier (and easier) for me to stick with Pathfinder 2E as my virtual system of choice.

I next loaded the Core Rulebook and the Gamemastery Guide. The intrinsic value of these tomes is slightly more ephemeral. You get the ability to directly reference and share content with your players, and you gain entries with full "use at the table" properties for the many magic items, relics, artifacts, NPCs and other details....but with the caveat that prior to loading them the base Roll20 game still gave me the 2E OGL content to reference anyway.

Additional content includes official NPC and player tokens and lots of compendium details on the many special optional rules in the Gamemastery Guide. Both books in total feel very complete, but I think as a GM on a budget you could ignore them and stick to the print or PDFs and not feel like you're missing out. Since I happened to have the cash it was worth it, but if you could only buy one tome, the Bestiary will provide the most traction.

One downside to Roll20 is that while it does offer the rules tomes, it seems to be way behind setting up the Adventure Paths. I am guessing that no one in the VTT business anticipated that in March of this year they would suddenly be the #1 resource for gaming across the country. My understanding from digging around online is that Roll20 does the VTT adaptations and they are way behind; this is a shame, as whether you ran the modules straight up or not, those would be great additional purchases for the compendium, since there's lots of useful content in the modules you can use as-is or pilfer for your own purposes. 

Anyway....the price of entry for VTT compendiums is a bit on the pricey side, and you can use Roll20  just fine with print or PDF books. But, if you want the full luxury experience and every official iota of Pathfinder 2E at your fingertips, then the compendium books are a nice addition to your virtual collection. I may cave and get the Starfinder books next.

Matching Systems to Settings - Worlds Posted on Realms of Chirak and the Systems they Work Best With

I've been scrutinizing other fantasy systems on the shelf with all this extra time spent in social isolation (well, not as much for me...I work in critical services for better or worse) but  it's turned into an interesting case of "find the game system that best fits the world." Or vice versa.

So far, here's where I am finding my campaign settings are landing:

World of Lingusia: With Pathfhinder 2nd Edition it's easy enough to convert any world designed with a D&D theme in mind. In revisiting some worlds, I've found that my Keepers of Lingusia campaign holds up as ever to the rigor of the D&D-esque mechanics and indeed, the more dangerous and low-key component of Pathfinder 2nd Edition gives the experience a somewhat old-school, high-risk tinge to the experience. So for the world of Lingusia, Pathfinder 2nd edition is a natural fit.

Enzada: When Pathfinder 1st Edition released I actually developed a whole new world for it: Enzada. The thematic behind Enzada boils down to these traits: non-western civilizations dominate; it's a world where there are too many gods for anyone, including the GM, to keep track of, and deep down nothing is really as it seems (but in a way that only lends to mystery rather than expose it). I did run some games in Enzada early on last year but alas while the fit is right, many of the non-western monsters and species of Pathfinder 1st Edition are not yet available in 2nd edition so it felt like a project to revisit at a later date. Sometimes a setting really needs its samsarans, catfolk, nagaji, vishkanya and other decidedly exotic races to make things work right, y'know?

Pergerron: this setting has convoluted origins. It started on the blog as a project to design a setting specifically using D&D B/X themes and monsters. In actual play I modified it for a Magic World campaign, and the thematics fit really well for what I wanted out of the setting. Later, when 5th Edition D&D arrived I ran a campaign for about ten levels which went fairly well, but by that point it felt a little off, because even though the starting intent was "a world for classic D&D" the result was something which benefits from the high risk, deadly nature of a BRP system like Magic World or Mythras. My last campaign in Pergerron was a short campaign using Mythras before it was retired, more or less. Could Pathfinder 2E handle it? Probably....but the idea of this setting's themes seem to mesh better with "risky, dangerous, sanity challenging fantasy," so I think BRP/MW should remain the system of choice.

Sarvaelen: Here's another one which was designed as a writing exercise for the blog, and as a result has a convoluted design history. At some point I decided to write up a setting idea for Tunnels & Trolls, but as it developed I started thinking of how this setting could work well with Magic World...Legend....Mythras.....then Fantasy AGE, which in fact became the first system I actually tried running Sarvaelen (that I can recall!). Thematically Sarvaelen is meant to be a dark, post-apocalyptic world facing a recent magical apocalypse, leaving a realm of haunted dominions behind, dominated by the concept of the Sullen Watch, rangers who protect against the badlands. Although my initial efforts with Fantasy AGE felt "off" I really feel like it's a system that could handle Sarvaelen well....if I take some time to really work on it. Time will tell....I recently picked up the Fantasy AGE Campaign Builder's Guide and it's got some good ideas in there.

Realms of Chirak: okay so at last we come to this one, the Big Daddy and the namesake of the blog. Realms of Chirak has always been about some key inversions of D&D elements, including a post-apocalyptic fantasy realm in which the gods are dead, elves are extremely rare and no longer superheroes (remember, Chirak was devised in the early nineties when elves were seriously overdone in AD&D 2nd edition!), and the idea was that mysteries abounded. For whatever reason, I still feel like D&D 5E is a good system for Chirak, probably because it allows for thematic largesse well enough.....but I ran Chirak in Pathfinder 1st Edition for a good number of years....I just don't feel like taking the effort to do tons of conversion work to PF2E, maybe; especially when I am still trying to update it to 5E first! That said.....these days, thanks to time limits and general life complexity, I could probably do plenty of conversion on the fly if I felt like it; but much like Enzada, Chirak has a lot of moving parts, pieces and bits, all of which are better supported by robust systems right now. D&D 5E has all the content needed for this; Pathfinder 2E probably will soon enough....by this time next year, when we have a Bestiary 2 and 3 out, and some in depth guidelines (pleaaaaase Paizo) on an Advanced Race Guide to cover the many ancestries currently absent from PF2E. Maybe then I'll consider it.

Oddly, I did work on one area of Chirak for conversion: I worked out extensive campaign details on the Sabiri Lands in, believe it or not, Cypher System. I have to say....the concept of Chirak as a Cypher Setting really has me intrigued; I may run it some day soon just to see how it all flows.

Worlds I haven't mentioned largely because I haven't posted about them on the blog include Ensaria, a setting that works best with Cypher System; Altavir (which has been posted here), a setting I think I'd like to use with 5E, T&T or Savage Worlds at some point; Eridu, my ancient Mesopotamia setting which is very specifically designed for use with Mythras; and my as yet-unrecorded on the blog exclusive new setting Oman'Hakat, the First World setting I've been running all adventures in with Pathfinder 2nd Edition for the last six months. As campaigns in that world start to hit their climactic points and spoilers become less of an issue I'll start posting some of that content soon.

The Pathfinder Bestiary Battle Cards - An Almost Perfect Execution

The idea of putting monsters cards out with a picture on one side and a stat block on the other is as old as AD&D 1st edition, possibly even older. I recall finding packs of these in a retail store in 1981 for AD&D and being thrilled at the find (and boy do I wish I still had those cards). Since then, this is a thing that has risen and fallen with the waves of interest, and in recent years we've been cresting a huge wave of accessories such as monster cards for RPGs.

For my own purpose, the monster cards for Cypher System (as well as Numenera and The Strange) proved to be immensely useful, though it helped that A: most Cypher monsters can fit on a card and B: they were normal card sizes. Still, as a result of their innate usefulness I began to notice what other games provided this sort of accessory. Zweihander, for example, offers tarot deck-sized monster cards, and of course Gale Force Nine produces an extensive set of cards for D&D 5E. Unfortunately I have not yet found the time to run Zweihander, and the D&D monster cards suffer from a few problems: 1st and foremost they are inconsistent sizes, which means you can't haul them around in any easily accessible way; 2nd: the cards are designed (I think) to be written on with erasable markers, but the laminate to do this makes them very sticky cards; if you wanted, for example, to use them to make a wandering monster deck you shuffle from? Ain't happening. And 3rd: if the monster wasn't illustrated in its official source, it does not have an illustration on the card, which makes flashing the card as a visual reference sort of pointless.

Along comes Paizo with a new idea: The Bestiary Battle Cards for Pathfinder 2nd edition. 450 cards in one box, each card double size from a normal playing card, with a full stat block on one side and full monster illustration on the other. The Bestiary Battle Box accomplished much that the D&D sets do not, including being easier to shuffle, with every single monster having an illustration to show players. It's got a majority of the cards with the complete stablock on a single card, too. The downsides are that any monster with a statblock big enough to spill off of the card gets a second card, which means that any complex monster in the deck now has at least two cards to pull; this means you can't shuffle them in to a random encounter deck, either. The cards are also not laminated for use with erasable markers, which means if that was a selling point for you (it isn't for me) it will be a problem here.

The storage box they come in is nice and sturdy. So far I've found it easiest to prop the box open, flip the cards so they are in two alphabetical columns and then quickly index them for stat blocks as needed. A more organized GM with more prep time might even have these cards pre-pulled, but that is not the GM that is I.

One of my players suggested that finding appropriately sized card sleeves would eliminate the two-card stat block shuffle problem. If anyone knows where to find double-sized sleeves for cards let me know! The only website I found is in China and they are shut down for Obvious Reasons right now.

Anyway....if you're a Paizo fan and you like accessories such as monster cards, this is a pretty rockin' set. A+!

Pathbuilder 2E on Android - The Best Pathfinder 2E App Out There

Chances are good that if you're a gamer into Pathfinder 2nd Edition and you had even a passing interest in finding useful apps and programs then you have have discovered Pathbuilder 2E already, but I only recently started messing with it and have to talk about how amazing this app is.

Pathbuilder 2E is mainly for players, though a GM can benefit from an easy way to generate "PC level" NPCs with little effort. It's smart enough to walk even your most ardently dense players through the process and leave them noticeably less confused on the other end. It's got an export program which I have tested out that moves the character to a sheet you can review and pull from Google Docs.

Most importantly: It does all the math for you; Pathfinder 2E doesn't have a lot of math, but it does have more than D&D 5E, and more importantly Pathbuilder gives you a complete but very focused overview of just the stuff that matters to the character you are making, from feats on down to equipment. The process also quickly scales to whatever level you need to reach, and provides the necessary stat blocks to understand every feat, spell and ability choice. It's really quite genius.

The "deluxe" version doesn't do much more than unlock pets and remove a small ad banner at the bottom, but for $4.99 this thing is a steal either way. If you want to be able to make Pathfinder 2E characters easily, or need to refer your players to a tool that will give them the ability to do so in mere minutes, this is it!

Pathfinder 2nd Edition in 2020 So Far

Source

We're seven months in to the wholesale release and conversion of my gaming gangs to Pathfinder 2nd edition....I had expected to have at least one regular night of Pathfinder 2E going forward if everyone liked it, but instead every game night (one weekly saturday group and two rotating Wednesday groups) have gone full Pathfinder. For my purposes this is fine....and after seven months the Saturday group has crept to 11th level and we all feel we might reach level 20. I have taken careful effort to plot out material to insure they they achieve this goal, and the Pathfinder leveling mechanic, which is flat and contains no larger hills that must be overcome to advance as it did in prior editions, insures that somewhere around 18-25 sessions or so the entire party (or those who survive) should all make level 20.

Clever design, that....I know that as far back as D&D 3.0 there was a design notion that the average group played for 1 year, maybe 2, and that the leveling/XP should pace for campaigns that lasted this long, but the reality proved to be less stable than the spherical cow teams that WotC used to design the game at that time, with most groups getting exhausted by the complexities of high level mechanics around level 10-12. Even today, D&D 5th edition, which I feel has an advantage of easier play at high level while suffering from a dearth of high level content for the GM still requires a bit of an XP slog to advance....less than prior editions, yet more onerous than contemporary gamers care for. Or any gamers, really.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition, by flattening the progression to just 1,000 XP/level, has created a reward mechanic which lets the GM easily pace the game at a consistent speed with regards to leveling, which is cool. I've experimented a bit, and found that 2-3 sessions per level is quite comfortable, but a stoic and determined GM could pace it out to four or more sessions using the RAW and could even for a gonzo "13th Age" approach and do a "20 sessions, 20 levels" kind of campaign if they wanted to. PF2E can handle it.

In terms of game campaigns I have done the following:

Oman'Hakat and the Lands of Osinre and Harkuum:  I have spent most of my effort in a campaign setting of new design which I call "Oman'Hakat," the Final Realm. It's a strange bedfellow to my most venerable setting, Ages of Lingusia, and one of the overarching plots is how the two worlds connect (and why). The setting is aimed at a land of archaic kingdoms and a budding empire, with a period of deep religious upheaval and fear of prophecies spelling doom for the world. A major part of the mystery is dispelling the fiction from the truth of the game's own history and folklore.

I started this campaign in D&D 5E in the months leading up to Pathfinder 2E's release, setting the 5E games in the Osinre region of the world (based on Egyptian thematics), with the joke being that the distant, ominous empire of Harkuum would be to staging ground for Pathfinder 2E games. So far this is exactly what has happened, though when we do finally revisit Osinre it will also be in Pathfinder 2E. Either way....with any luck I'll start posting some of the massive amount of content on this setting I've worked out on the blog soon for general and free consumption.

Ages of Lingusia: I have revisited the Age of Strife era in my oldest campaign once more in one of the every-other-week campaigns, focusing on a gritty, dirty corner of the world about ex-soldiers seeking to recover from the traumas of a war which the were on the winning side of, but at great cost. It's proving to be very fun, and I love that Pathfinder 2E's more visceral approach to fantasy with a clearer level of risk and grit makes for an excellent fit in the world I originally created for AD&D 1E.

A Brief Return to Enzada: My exotic campaign I devised specifically for use with Pathfinder when it came out, designed to invoke all sorts of anti-tropes for fantasy, played out in a quiet revisitation over a few months before I decided I just wasn't feeling the impetus to see where things went and we migrated to Lingusia. Still, it's nice to explore old setting now and again.

Chirak: I haven't yet done anything with Realms of Chirak for Pathfinder 2nd, though the temptation grows by the day. I am biding my time, waiting for that moment of inspiration to spark; I ran a lot of games in Chirak over the last decade, and the venerable setting has earned a break. I am tempted to keep it with D&D 5E, too; I put a lot of work into upgrading it to that edition, after all. But D&D 5E just doesn't feel right now that I've been playing Pathfinder 2E so much.....still, I may go back and revisit, see how I feel about it with some actual play at some point. But no rush; Chirak's many lands still need a break.

Anyway, with one group going from level 1 to 11, another group creeping along from 11 o 13, and a third starting at 5th and migrating up from there (plus one campaign that ran from 1st to 5th now retired), we're already gotten in a ton of Pathfinder gaming with no end in sight. I am really looking forward to the release of the Gamemastery Guide 2nd edition next week, a much needed tome for GMs which I am keen to explore. I'll provide more info once I have my copy next week!

Pathfinder 2E Monster and Hazard Guide is Up

It's been up a little while I think, but it's been a busy month for me....anyway, download it from Paizo here.

The guide's pretty straight-forward, and as anyone who's been running PF2E knows this information will prove rather useful; I have been extrapolating from creature stats and leveling process to scale NPCs as needed, but a more detailed process is much desired and this document, which appears to be the whole of Chapter 2 from the forthcoming Gamemaster Guide, is most welcome.

I'm hoping they will try to assemble the data into some quick-access charts similar to how they did it in the Alien Archive for Starfinder, but even if that doesn't happen this will absolutely work. For those who have not seen it, Starfinder is a bit of a hybrid of PF1E and 2E in approach, with closer etymology to 1st edition while experimenting with the nascent ideas that blossomed in to 2nd edition. It is distinct, however, in providing a very solid set of easy rules for letting GMs quickly design enemies as needed, even on the fly, with level-appropriate core stats.

Either way.....gone are the old days of monster stat block design of equal complexity to PC design, a change I definitely welcome. Despite this reduction in complexity the stat blocks still provide all the actual content you need as GM, and serve primarily to reduce the noise level of older 1st edition stat blocks while still providing all the stuff you want and need. This is, to contrast a prior failed attempt at a similar reductionist style (D&D 4E) a very good way to go about doing it without losing the "resolution" a GM needs for a role playing game. About the only negative I have to offer is that the stat block sometimes frustrating mention a rule from another location, so stat blocks are not always self contained, something I thought we'd all agreed a while ago was a good thing. Despite this, D&D 5E and Pathfinder 2E  both still seem to learn that lesson.....although both are still much better on average than they used to be, so there is that.

Pathfinder 2E Skill Feats - more depth

My prior post felt a bit like a gripe against Pathfinder 2nd edition in a way I'm not really in full alignment with. There's a bit of frustration there but it's mostly because I (being an old, crusty gamer stuck in his ways) get annoyed when a new thing pops up and demands I read it instead of relying on my old sense of familiarity. Such is the main issue with the way skills and skill feats work in Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

Here's a few examples: the first one is Perception, which they deliberately took out of the "skill ecology" of the game. Perception is now essentially a special stat, which is not actually a bad way to approach it (and is in alignment with how perception has worked --often as a houserule-- in prior editions back to 1E's Unearthed Arcana).

The problem is, Perception is still essentially tied to "skill actions." For example: if you want to discern whether an NPC is telling the truth or not (this happens plenty of times at my game table), the way to do it is to roll deception for the NPC (lie action using Deception skill) against the PC's perception score (which not only covers awareness of the senses but apparently also awareness of the character and tone of others).

A second problem is that, while the book is exceedingly well organized for the most part, it has weird moments where the procedure for an action is buried in the details. For example: lying is covered as an action you can do, but discerning lies is buried within the text of lying. So unlike other iterations of the game, you don't have a "Intuition" or "Sense Motive" or "Insight" skill or feat to go to; if you want to detect lies you need to read up not on detecting them but how to lie. This seems like a tiny oversight...even a "Sense Motive" skill action that just says "see Lie" would have helped.*

Skill feats then come in to play to allow a player to distinguish their character's abilities in more detail. Under this system, the way to get better at detecting lies is to actually get trained in deception yourself (learn how to tell lies), then pick the skill feat "Lie to Me" so you can use deception to detect lies instead of your perception score. This means that perception is really just everyone's "baseline" ability to detect lies or see/hear/detect things. The skill feats are where you can distinguish this stuff in more depth.

A really good skill example of how this granularity breaks down is the Society skill. On the surface society lets you recall knowledge, create forgeries, decipher writing and subsist (three of which are general actions; which is to say, skill actions more than one skill might deploy). You can uniquely create forgeries with this skill.

Things you can't do with Society as a skill without a skill feat: behave as a noble (Courtly Graces), build or use connections (Connections), gather information or recall knowledge (Streetwise), and a bunch of language stuff that does make more sense (and also demonstrates that the old Linguistics skill was rolled up into Society). Note that learning new languages are Society skill feats, though; there's no "Learn a Language" skill action that tells you this, though.

As a GM, you need to consider whether or not the skill check you are about to have your PC make on the Society skill might conflict with those things that you need skill feats for. A character trained in Society still can't mimic noble conduct (I think this makes sense, but it means if you play a noble you need this feat), and you can't use it to build connections with a skill check. You can't gather information or recall knowledge since you need Streetwise as a skill feat. What does that mean in the context of a skill check?

In one sense, this is all fine....it's a nice way of parsing out skill abilities and defining what they can and cannot do. But in doing so, it becomes an interesting game of tracking two sets of data: the skills you are trained in, and the skill feats that let you do different things with them.

I am personally of the view that having a skill called "streetwise" or "Etiquette" would be easier then having to track skill feats....but that's just me. Heck, even just making these specializations of the Society skill that a "skill feat" slot lets you pick would at least organizationally help out as I see it. The PF2E devs did not go in this direction, though.

I'm ultimately fine with this; it's not a Big Deal after all, and in the end at least you can define a character by his focus through the skill feats this way. But....it feels a little clunky if you don't get extremely familiar with the system. Luckily for both myself and the game I am sufficiently interested in it that I feel the desire to do so. I'm enjoying the overall extra level of depth that Pathfinder brings back to the games, something I have been missing with D&D 5E for quite a while now.

Anyway!

I'm trying to talk my players into running a few weeks with a level 12 mini campaign in Pathfinder 2E. I'd like to see how the higher levels play without waiting for the ongoing campaigns to get there. I'll keep you all apprised if this happens.


*Speaking of things where the developers came up with a neat new thing and then buried it in the details, read up on the uncommon items rules. They are buried over multiple pages. Then, consider that spells have uncommon varieties, and other things may be so restricted. Then read on the classes to discern how that applies to class advancement. Then read through the GM's section to see if you can find clarification on how you, as GM, should adjudicate uncommon spells and features. It's a great idea, but apparently no one thought that it deserved an entire special chapter addressing to the GM what this means and how to handle it, insetad leaving lots of little clues to you and the players to try and figure it out. GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Contrasting Pathfinder 2E against Dungeons & Dragons 5E

We're approximately 8 games in to Pathfinder 2nd edition between two groups now. Both games have inched along to 3rd level and I think (depending on whether or not I'm interpreting the XP rules correctly) it seems safe to say that a fairly active group of players accomplishing a lot will advance at least 1 level every two sessions or so.

After last night's game I think, at least for the low level experience I am getting a similar vibe to my initial exploration of D&D 5E at low level: the experience feels very consistent, the combats can be quite dangerous, and risk/reward is quite noticeable. There are some distinct differences, though, which I'll point out about combat, skills and GM resources.

Combat 

Right now combat in Pathfinder feels tight, intuitive, and the action point system lets you do things you can't accomplish in PF 1E or any version of D&D; you can make iterative attacks as long as you are willing to accept the penalty to hit, and the increased change of a fumble on your successive tries. There's a more strategic element to it even if you aren't using a map and minis (which we have not used except for basic map reference). Combats don't last long, and thanks to the 10-point differential which allows for normal attacks to convert to fumbles and crits combat often has some interesting and swingy results. It's interesting and I like it.

D&D 5E's main issue by contrast is that while combat flows well from level 1-4, as you advance it often feels more and more like "big bags of hit points try to deal enormous amounts of damage." Players and creatures alike in 5E have too many abilities that boil down to damage dealing without enough distinctly interesting effects (PF2E has lots of interesting effects at the low levels for contrast).  Despite this, D&D 5E combat isn't bad by any stretch.....if I ranked it vs. PF2E I'd call it a "good combat system contrasted with a great combat system."

If 5E had mor interesting effects and wasn't so obsessed with Hit Points as the catch-all I think it would hold well in this comparison. But so far: Pathfinder is a clear winner when it comes to the feel and flow of combat.

Skill Systems

As I see it, there are three modes of thought on skills: you love them and no game is sufficient unless it allows for maximum granularity; you hate them and want to know why any skills are really needed; or you recognize that there are "things you need to do" in any given game that can best be handled by skills and so try to find a modest compromise for handling this.

PF2E and D&D 5E both seem to fall in to this middle camp on the surface. 5E gives you a list of skills that I would call "the minimum decent list of skill thingies you will probably do in a D&D session." Pathfinder 2E technically also takes this approach, but then ultimately makes it enormously granular and complex....which should in theory make the "guy #1 who loves skills" happier, right? But it doesn't....it's actually making a skill system for "guy who recognizes a compromise mechanic but also wants tons of detail on what the compromise skill system does."

On the one hand, I like how specific the skill actions in Pathfinder can get, but on the other hand as I have delved deep into the skill feats I have sort of grown to dislike it. The problem is best described like this, starting with a D&D 5E skill challenge:

1. Player wants to do action X.
2. GM looks at the 5E skill list and thinks skill Y is a good choice.
3. Roll and resolve!

In Pathfinder 2E so far it goes like this:

1. Player wants to do skill action X.
2. GM suggests rolling on Skill Y.
3. Someone points out you can't really do that the way the player wants unless you have Skill Feat Z. GM reminds himself he needs to memorize in great detail all the skill feats because they are lots of "special exception rules" that are in reality hard limiters on the "what you can and can't do without this feat" take which PF and 3E are known for taking to insane extremes.
4. GM manages a compromise on the action, but then realizes he's not asking for the right skill because it turns out that by trying to reduce the skill list as much as it did (while also not looking too much like a copy/paste of the D&D 5E skill system) has led to Pathfinder making some really strange and counter-intuitive choices in skill consolidation. Do they work? They will, once you accept that this is how they are meant to work. Or you could go play another game with a more intuitive skill system, and that is a problem for PF2E.

Now, Pathfinder does some stuff incredibly well with the skill system as provided. Key items of note include: a better and more consistent approach to how to identify and figure out the use of magic items; a simpler crafting mechanic that, while losing granularity, is still easier to use as written; and the perception mechanic no longer being a skill but an ability. Most significant is how initiative is a skill-based thing now which can play off of perception or a relevant skill (e.g. stealth) as suits the moment. That's the most innovative thing I've seen in a game in a long time, so simple yet so logical.

But both Pathfinder and D&D 5E fail to a degree when it comes to how much verisimilitude you want in your game systen. To 5E's credit you can use the DMG rules to add as many skills as you want in, and learning skills is a matter of time and investment and totally untethered from leveling. Both systems wisely add some sort of RP-focued background mechanic (profession/background) which helps flesh out the role-play element that your character will otherwise suffer a bit on with a less granular skill system. And both do this the way they do because they are trying to find ways to solve the mechanical issues on skills imposed by 3rd edition design.

In the end....D&D 5E wins here.

The Gamemaster's Resources

This is a tough one, because to get the full experience with D&D 5E you need three books, so you're spending a fair amount of cash. Pathfinder 2E, despite having some rules to run the game in the Core Book, has offloaded a chunk of what used to be in the core and bestiary in to the upcoming Gamemastery Guide. If you want decent NPC stat blocks, rules for making, scaling and modifying monsters, rules for lots of "GM adjudication" stuff....we have to wait until January next year. Once it's out, it will be a 3-book core system. This is on equal footing with D&D 5E so I have to call this as a draw.

But! The problem here is key items (NPC design, monster design and more depth in the GM rules) were all in two books in PF1E. It is a shame to see this drawn out. One of my players thinks they were forced to rush PF2E to release. I think maybe they just wanted to get it spread out more; but I gotta be honest, I'd have much rather had some NPC/monster design rules in the core books than the goblin ancestry and alchemist. Oh well.

Pathfinder 2E is proving a lot of fun, but it is also making me appreciate some of the design choices put in to D&D 5E. I am thinking that a perfect version of the game could be found in a system with PF2E level combat and action economy, D&D 5E level skill mechanics, and some blend of the spell systems.

Another contrast is the "gradient of success" mechanic in PF2E vs. the advantage/disadvantage mechanic in D&D 5E. I feel like both are interesting and equally innovative. I wonder if one could implement some version of both in a hybrid version of the two games.....hmmmm.

Pathfinder 2E Progress Report - Two Games In

Last week was insanely busy so I didn't end up getting to post anything about the ongoing Pathfinder 2nd Edition experiment, but I at last have a few minutes so I figure a follow-up is in order.

We've had two Saturday sessions now, and I am pleased to say that the experience is going well so far. Except for one moment where I spent a fair amount of time trying to establish that the Monk's Wolf Stance trip trait worked as I thought it did (which required looking in the index, the section on a trip action, the wolf stance feat and the weapons section on what it meant for a weapon (e.g. teeth) to have this trait), it was otherwise fairly smooth.

Here, so far, are the top three "things to look up" as we've been playing:

1. Spells (make sure we're doing it right) are the easiest surprisingly....the spell descriptions are very straight forward and sometimes lead to questions but the interpretation has so far proven consistent; the devil is in the wording, but no wording has tripped us up yet.

2. Feats, those devilish things, have sometimes required look up and adjudication. This is mainly for player benefit, and happens less than it should, which any GM knows means one of two things: the players either know their stuff well and are already indexing the stat blocks, or they do not know their stuff at all and are overlooking useful feats.

3. Skills. Yes, skills are where I spend most of my time studying the rules right now, believe it or not. The reason is simple: the skill list, while consolidated, still contains a plethora of specific trained and unique actions tied to different skills. Some of what is going on here is also learning about the subtle nuances of the system.

Have you heard about the idea of reading an RPG for its "implied setting," the concept of the world the system described through its rules? Well, Pathfinder 2E has a lot of that, stuff which you don't necessarily see spelled out in any singe spot but when taken as a whole paint an interesting picture. For two good examples of this, read up on Crafting and Alchemy skills, and look in to the magic items rules with the idea of crafting in mind. You'll quickly realize as GM that you cannot apply your experience from prior editions of D&D or pathfinder 1E to the new system....it has different expectations.

The other one I noticed is in magic detections. Go read up on how the skills affect this, the spells that relate to this, and the feats which modify this information. It's consistent, but the different parts contain a compelling new picture of how this information should be doled out by the GM based on what method and level of expertise is at play....it's very different from prior iterations in my experience.

So far, Pathfinder 2E is full of lots of little "surprises" like this, interesting synergies and rules mechanics which reveal a different approach or way of thinking about the fantasy RPG genre. I like it. It leads to a new way of envisioning the game.

Here's another one: the new XP mechanics are surprisingly straight forward; you earn XP, and when you get 1,000 you spend it to get a new level. That's it for the player's side. For the GM, you have a base range of XP by party composition relative to creature level, and you award it as a flat package to the PCs (so if the encounter is worth 120 XP, each PC gets 120 apiece, you don't divide it out). Simple math. In addition any encounter or progression can be worth a decent reward....usually a better reward than many fighting encounters, in fact.

Though the game isn't overt in this statement, the net result is that you can have meaningful XP-based progression without ever feeling the need to lace encounters with fights just to boost XP. This is "normal think" for non D&D RPGs, but is a fairly innovative take for D&D-likes. Yes, 5E introduced milestones (as did 13th Age) but this is slightly different; XP is a reward system, and useful for that purpose....as any computer gamer knows, having a point system to track success and achievements is a nice addition to player mechanics; you feel like your progress is tied to your actions. So having such an elegantly simplified mechanic in place which still feels D&D while breaking from the tradition of murdering monsters for maximum advancement is very, very welcome.

A final note so far: I've been running without maps and minis, and using "theater of the mind" with the small but important sidebar in the book on how it advises doing this....which basically boils down to "state what you want to do, decide if it makes sense, and do it," sort of no-nonsense approach to TotM combat. It's nothing "new" but I cannot stress enough how useful it is to have it defined this way in the book, for the following reasons: first, if the rules say it's okay to do it this way and not fret as much about exact distances then it helps alleviate the unease of the rules lawyers at the table; second, by codifying the concept, however simple the approach is in the rulebook, it makes it a perfectly viable option and immediately allows for the GM to choose his flavor of the moment without feeling like something is being missed.

I have also noticed that in the combats I have run so far the various mechanics seem to play well with TotM combats. Though written so they can work on a map fine, the language translates equally well so far for most stat blocks to an equivalent effect in TotM encounters.

One thing which is puzzling me: the medicine skill allows for first aid, and goes in to length on using it and waiting an hour (with specific rules on what that means so you can tell it must have been contentious in the playtest). But can the skill be repeatedly used once it is successful? I need to read up on this, but to me it's noticeably effective at wiping out both hit points and wounds. The first aid element of medicine effectively makes most groups fine without a cleric as long as they don't mind not having access to immediate healing....but it also negates the value of gaining wounds over time. Must study more for answers.

A final item of note: lots of rules are actually now "case exceptions" tied to feats. GMs can now, for example, assume that a withdrawing foe is not going to get opportunity attacked....unless he's withdrawing from a fighter, for example. Many feats for different classes ave specific exceptions baked in. Skill feats are particularly interesting in this manner. So the next time a cleric fails a religion check, the GM should be ready in case she comes back with a "Ah, I am a Cleric of the Canon by my feat and so my failure is now a success!" moment. This "exceptions are baked in to the feats" concept is an important one for GMs to remember, and ultimately makes getting very familiar with this book a good idea. Players, meanwhile, do themselves an injustice if they aren't taking notes on what their various special feats let them do.....and you can do quite a lot.

Getting Seriously Excited for Pathfinder 2.0

As the teaser articles roll out I find myself increasingly excited for Pathfinder 2.0. I've certainly enjoyed my time with D&D 5E, but I continue to admit that there has always been something really special about the years I delved deep into Pathfinder (and 3rd edition before it), warts and all. The idea of a streamlined, retooled version which (it seems) dropped the weird stuff from the playtest I didn't like has me really excited.

Yeah, I hope that the final product holds up to this excitement, too! I would hate to go all in (as I plan to do) and then find myself bummed out at the final product.

We shall see, though....I have a good feeling about this one, don't know why, I just like the cut of Paizo's gib, y'know?

The product will probably only fail for me if it does more than one of the following:

1. Integrate too deeply into the default world of Golarion making it hard to use the game with my own settings;
2. Did not actually get rid of annoying and cumbersome rules seen in the playtest (such as the essence mechanics for magic items);
3. accidentally introduces too many new rules in the name of streamlining that are counter-intuitive for verisimilitude-focused play (the "4Eification" of PF2.0 if you will; a valid concern since the devs have occasionally suggested that 4E had its influences here).

I don't want to be disappointed though....I really want a viable, interesting, intuitive but more flexible and detailed game system that provides me with a permanent alternative to D&D 5E. Again....I am not denigrating D&D 5E, I am just saying that I want something that innovates in this space and moves forward in new and fun ways for me as a jaded veteran gamer. I'm a "old gamer who wants to see interesting new ways and mechanics to play in the D&D space," essentially...and I'm betting my chips on Pathfinder 2.0 doing this.

Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest Announced

Just in time, too...I had been seriously thinking about jumping back in to Pathfinder at least every other Friday (Starfinder is a gateway drug I guess)....those Pocket Rulebooks demand to be played!

I might still run some Pathfinder 1.0, and plan to migrate over to Pathfinder 2.0 Beta when it becomes available in August.

If you're even remotely interested in Pathfinder, D&D alternates, or game design in general then check out the announcement, here and the blog announcement, here. There's a lot of interesting information to unpack.

Most interesting to me is the discussion on the new action economy. Maybe it's just because I've been running Mythras lately, but this sounds a little....familiar....:

"After initiative is sorted out and it's your turn to act, you get to take three actions on your turn, in any combination. Gone are different types of actions, which can slow down play and add confusion at the table. Instead, most things, like moving, attacking, or drawing a weapon, take just one action, meaning that you can attack more than once in a single turn! Each attack after the first takes a penalty, but you still have a chance to score a hit. In Pathfinder Second Edition, most spells take two actions to cast, but there are some that take only one. Magic missile, for example, can be cast using from one to three actions, giving you an additional missile for each action you spend on casting it!

Between turns, each character also has one reaction they can take to interrupt other actions. The fighter, for example, has the ability to take an attack of opportunity if a foe tries to move past or its defenses are down. Many classes and monsters have different things they can do with their reactions, making each combat a little bit less predictable and a lot more exciting. Cast a fire spell near a red dragon, for example, and you might just find it takes control of your magic, roasting you and your friends instead of the intended target!"

I doubt it's anything truly like the action point/combat action mechanic in Mythras, but it bears some interesting similarities...and to be honest, the new concept outlined above sounds like a major improvement to the mechanical process of the D20 system.

Either way, this is pretty exciting. The only game I've run more of than D&D is Pathfinder, and that's without analyzing the lineage of those systems, so seeing Pathfinder get a 2.0 upgrade is going to be really exciting. Official playtest books in August!