Pathfinder 2E What does Pathfinder lack?

[Kichwas]

I can't say I've seen particularly visible balance-breaking from Free Archetype. In practice, what mostly happens is some additional options, so there can be some shopping for abilities that are useful in a given situation, but as someone said, it's horizontal power not vertical.

Watch the YouTuber 'd4' - He's been transitioning from 5E slowly over to making more and more videos for PF2E.

He's still only using the core book, but he's also "busted" the game with some builds.

Consider a Dwarven Fighter that Takes Barbarian and uses a Maul. You can use all those fighter abilities, while using rage to pump them even higher, and spam knockdowns and crits. And because it's done with Free Archetype - you still have just as many feats left over for your Fighter stuff as the core rules intended.

This combo makes a fighter even more obscene.

You can repeat this with a lot of class combos. Combine two classes and things can get out of hand. It's not a problem if you do not allow free archetype to be used for multi-class - but this then means no one can do multi-class in a free archetype game until around level 6 or so (when they've managed to get the dedication + 2 more feats of that dedication, possible by level 6 if you use your normal class feats to do it. MIGHT be possible by level 4 but I haven't found that combo yet).

 

[Velderan]

It does matter, because it not only alters your chances of success, it alters your chances of fumbles and crits. Crits and fumbles in PF2e are based on margins, not a flat value after all, so if you've normally got a 60% of hitting including 10% of critting, that +1 not only pushes the chance of hitting up to 65% it pushes the chance of critting up to 15%. Same at the other end (though avoiding fumbles usually matters more with saves and managing crits more with attacks--and sometimes, the latter can be very dramatic if Deadly or Fatal weapons are involved or a special ability that keys off getting a crit.)

With my group going new to PF2e, I've made it a point every time someone gets a crit by only 1 to point out the +1 the previous player created setup that crit to help encourage and getting them thinking about that. I know as GM playing intelligent monsters, I'm always looking for ways to catch a player flat-footed. lol

 

[Thomas Shey]

Watch the YouTuber 'd4' - He's been transitioning from 5E slowly over to making more and more videos for PF2E.

He's still only using the core book, but he's also "busted" the game with some builds.

Consider a Dwarven Fighter that Takes Barbarian and uses a Maul. You can use all those fighter abilities, while using rage to pump them even higher, and spam knockdowns and crits. And because it's done with Free Archetype - you still have just as many feats left over for your Fighter stuff as the core rules intended.

This combo makes a fighter even more obscene.

Two-handed weapon use has its own prices, and frankly, none of that sounds obscene to me. It can maybe look that way to you if your dice happen to cooperate. But then, a Gunslinger (or really, anyone using a Fatal weapon--its actually easier to make this work with melee) can end up looking extremely unbalanced if you happen to roll a disproportionate number of high rolls. Barbarian does slightly improve your attack chances--at the price of reducing your already (as fighting types go) mediocre AC. So, what you've demonstrated is that you're a glass hammer.

Still not seeing that as unbalanced. I've been watching a barbarian/rogue combo for months now, and nothing about that one in play seemed particularly excessive, and subbing a fighter would not have actually made the character more effective.

You can repeat this with a lot of class combos. Combine two classes and things can get out of hand. It's not a problem if you do not allow free archetype to be used for multi-class - but this then means no one can do multi-class in a free archetype game until around level 6 or so (when they've managed to get the dedication + 2 more feats of that dedication, possible by level 6 if you use your normal class feats to do it. MIGHT be possible by level 4 but I haven't found that combo yet).

I've been watching class combos, one of them played by a pretty dedicated power gamer. Heck, I was in a dual-class game, where the synergies are stronger. And none of those were anything I'd call out of hand.

Basically, all evidence I have is that your characterization of this is not just overstated, but vastly overstated. The last two campaigns I was in were, respectively, a dual class game and a free archetype game, played by long experienced players with at least some power gaming tendencies. None of them were over the top, and the hybrid game does not seem notably over the single class game without free archetype we played before then. So either somehow I've failed to see this across two campaign, or your source is overselling this.

 

[Thomas Shey]

With my group going new to PF2e, I've made it a point every time someone gets a crit by only 1 to point out the +1 the previous player created setup that crit to help encourage and getting them thinking about that. I know as GM playing intelligent monsters, I'm always looking for ways to catch a player flat-footed. lol

Its easy to miss the impact of these small modifiers if you aren't paying close attention. The probabilities are non-trivial, but its easy to get confused with a big linear roll like a D20, because as a player, sometimes you don't see enough die rolls to realize the effect. I suspect its much more visible from the POV of a GM.

 

[Staffan]

Since I don't play 5E I can't say if this is exactly what you'd want but it is the concept of a weapon mage:

We've got an Elf Rogue in our group that took the Ancient Elf heritage. That lets you take a dedication feat at level 1. He took Magus.
He then took 'Even Weaponry' for the ancestry feat, and tumble behind for the class feat.

For his rogue Dedication he took Wizard -> Transmutation.

Result is a rogue with an elven spear and 4 cantrips: Telekinetic Projectile, Produce Flame, Shield, and Light.

Often in a turn he attacks with the weapon and one of the two attack cantrips all in the same turn.

That's not the thing I'm looking for in a swordmage. I want a class whose main function is hitting people and then magic happens as part of the attack, not hit someone and then zap them with a spell. I also want a distinct spell list focused on this particular thing. I don't want fireballs or lightning bolts, I want to hit someone and set them on fire with my burning axe. I want to telekinetically pull a foe from 100 ft away onto my sword. I want to strike someone on the leg and freeze them in place.

Basically, I want something like WoW's enhancement shaman or death knight. Or Weiss Schnee. Mostly single-target attacks with debuffs or battlefield manipulation effects, and the occasional close-quarters AOE.

+1 on a d20 roll is still just a tiny 5% change. It doesn't matter that there's degrees of success.

But, degrees of success are definitely why replacing the +1 with swingier results (like dis/adv) would get awkward.

It's more like 10%, because most of the time a +1 both increases the overall chance of success and also either the chance of a critical success or reduces the chance of a critical failure (though critical failures rarely matter on attack rolls, but they're vitally important on saves).

 

[Dragonhelm]

If you are new to Pathfinder after the OGL kerfuffle: what do you miss about 5e? What would be something that a setting product could offer you that would feel like something Pathfinder doesn't yet have?

What I truly was hoping for was more support for 5e. This last year, I saw a 5e conversion for Kingmaker and the upcoming Abomination Vaults 5e.

So I guess my answer might be more system-neutral products so fans of other systems can easily use them.

 

[zedturtle]

What I truly was hoping for was more support for 5e. This last year, I saw a 5e conversion for Kingmaker and the upcoming Abomination Vaults 5e.

So I guess my answer might be more system-neutral products so fans of other systems can easily use them.

I think that is gone and buried. Any sort of reaching across the aisle Ha$bros destroyed with their attempted OGL grab. That might now be the realm of 'What If?' alternate timelines.

 

[payn]

I think that is gone and buried. Any sort of reaching across the aisle Ha$bros destroyed with their attempted OGL grab. That might now be the realm of 'What If?' alternate timelines.

Yeap, probably be a few years until this blows over and the anniversary edition makes its fans.

 

[Velderan]

I think that is gone and buried. Any sort of reaching across the aisle Ha$bros destroyed with their attempted OGL grab. That might now be the realm of 'What If?' alternate timelines.

Abomination Vaults 5e is still listed as being planned for release with a recent delay announced, so it wouldn't be too hard for them to switch the license to CC and proceed as planned. It just clearly isn't a priority if they've had to delay it due to resource issues.

 

[payn]

Abomination Vaults 5e is still listed as being planned for release with a recent delay announced, so it wouldn't be too hard for them to switch the license to CC and proceed as planned. It just clearly isn't a priority if they've had to delay it due to resource issues.

AV is a pretty easy to convert adventure compared to some of the other AP offerings. I also think this was a test bed for doing this on occasion for 5E. There definitely was a wrench tossed in that plan.