People are bringing up Pathfinder 2 which is my current favorite system, so I'm going to try and white knight for it. For reference, I'm a 5E baby. I used to play Vampire: the Masquerade in highschool (oh the edge!), but my group's first encounter with D&D was essentially from Critical Role. We played the crap out of 5E. When Pathfinder 2E came out, we came in with nearly zero expectations save that "it would give us more character options at level up compare to 5E." We now more or less only play Pathfinder 2. Any time we get new players completely new to tabletop, we use 5E to ease them in. I DM three groups at the moment: 2 Pathfinder (one of which is with 'my group') and 1 5E. Anyway, the point is we came at Pathfinder 2 with only the following three things known about Pathfinder 1:
1) "you need a math degree to compute your attack roll"
2) "The game is broken and completely unbalanced; one false move at making your character and you are useless."
3) "The game's adventure paths are a lot of fun if a little too easy (probably because of point #2 I'm guessing). I've noticed this in playing Kingmaker: nothing appears to be a threat using what the game claims are "Pathfinder 1 stats."
Anyway, let's run through these comments.
What is the deal with P2E? I hear a lot of bad things about it.
Simplifying things, there are basically two groups of people who rag on Pathfinder 2. I'll strawmen to explain this.
Group1: These people expected the game to be "simple" like D&D 5th edition. Pathfinder 2 is not; there is an avalanche of crunch to consume so they are therefore upset about this. Basically, they wanted what enworld is trying to do with a "crunchier" d&d5e. Pathfinder 2 is not that game.
Group2: These people spread the meme that Pathfinder 2 is too simple compared to Pathfinder1/D&D3.5. I haven't played either on tabletop, but based upon my experience with Kingmaker, I believe they are vastly incorrect and haven't actually played Pathfinder 2.
supposedly it got streamlined like the 5th dnd edition.
It's streamlined in the sense that everything is balanced. Years of lurking here taught me that the crowd here tends to be very opinionated on balance, but in terms of sitting at a table with friends, you definitely don't want someone to feel like they failed the game at character creation-I see balance as good. Streamlining it also means that encounters are super deadly. Pathfinder used to have the stigma, I am told, of the adventure paths being very easy. That is no longer the case. Age of Ashes, the innagural adventure path for 2E, is extremely 'balanced' in the sense that the fights that 'matter' definitely feel life or death. It was a joy to DM. Even converting one of the most celebrated adventure paths "Rise of the Runelords," by using stock creatures and encounter budgets was a real edge-of-your-seat experience for my group of friends. 'Total-Party-Kills' came left and right when players did stupid things, but it never felt unfair.
Whether it’s effective or not, I can at least understand the motivation for table top. I have been in table top games where things really bog down with exceptions and references and stuff. But for cRPGs, bring on the crunch and splat. I have never felt “this is too much crunch” when playing a cRPG, and generally am most obsessed with the games that have an absurd amount of systems, since I’m kind of a systems mastery guy
Yeah, so I don't believe that there is a "lack of crunch" with Pathfinder 2. Are there less books than Pathfinder 1? Of course there are: Paizo released a TON of books for Pathfinder 1. So many that I doubt you'd ever be able to use them all if you spent your entire life playing that game. I would even argue that, considering the core rule books and the splat books that have been released up until now, Pathfinder 2 is crunchier and features a deeper combat system.
PF2E, like DnD5e is an attempt to streamline the PnP system. Personally I have only a few sessions with both (due to living in timezone where PnP is a rarity) but I personally don't think P2E is that bad. Heck, playing tabletop, everything flows much nicer in 2E compared to 1E. And I personally like it better when playing tabletop simply because too much thing to track/crunch in 1E (not to mention PF1E is a bahemoth of a system right now).
Yes exactly. I've been running Pathfinder 2 since we switched at Pathfinder 2's release; we felt no compunction to go back to D&D 5E (save for 'new to tabletop' players) 'Streamlined' has been given a negative connotation, but I think it's a good thing. You are not losing crunch by streamlining and exactly as you say, everything flows much nicer in 2E. Are you doing less arithmatic at the table? Yes, but is that a bad thing? Do we really get joy about calculating a ton of bonuses and negatives on the fly? As I said previously, the game is
harder and gives you more options in any given turn. That's way better than stacking up a bunch of numbers together.
All in all, there are some problems which are tackled by both DnD5E and PF2E. For example, having a concentration system to adress the admitedly ridicolous number of stats from buff stacking from 1E. Then there is also an attunement system to manage stats inflation from itemization etc.
Unlike DnD5e which oversimplifies levelling, in general PF2E still has a lot of interaction when building your character. Feats are divided into Racial, Class, General Feat. When you level up you get a different feat allocation for each level. Instead of a fixed Class Feature like in 1E, Class Feature in 2E is locked to the feats so you have more control when building an archtype (e.g. Fighter has distint feats which more or less define whther you play melee dps, tank, or ranged. Alchemist has distinct feats for healing concontion, bombs, mutagen; etc). You of course can mix and match build from this list of Class Feats alongside General and Racial Feats.
Pathfinder 1e usualy already discourages multi-classing, and P2E remove multi-classing but instead have multi-classing being integrated into the Feat system. Instead of dipping a class level here and there, whenever you can take a Class Feat for your class, you can instead pick a "class devotion feats" which allows you to take Class Feats from other classes (which includes the ability to spellcast in case of taking spellcaster devotion).
Combat is changed from the Full Round, Action, Move, etc of PF1E into 3AP system. Most actions take 1 AP, Spellcasting usually 2 or 3 AP. There are Free Actions and Reactions which are seperate. All in all combat also flows nicely. There are few way to increase AP per round, Haste being the most common one.
All in all personally I wont' mind a PF2E CRPG as I think the system is quite nice.
Yes exactly! The 3AP system (or three action a round system) was a revelation for me coming from D&D. It's not just the characters that take advantage of having three actions per round: the monsters are a LOT more fun to control and are extremely flavorful with special abilities, reactions, and weaknesses that take advantage of both the monster's three actions
and the player's three actions. Add on to the fact that attack of opportunity isn't a given and you have way more options with it than just "attack" (such as the Champion's combat reactions) and combat becomes a deep FAST affair. 9 rounds to deal with mooks isn't uncommon in Pathfinder 2. Those rounds happen fast (twenty minute encounters appear to be the norm) and you have the joy of watching the characters and the enemies all doing interesting things. In 5E, combat is usually three rounds unless a boss (and even then, one round of novas is enough to put most obvious bosses in the grave). In Kingmaker, I can only assume combat ends in two rounds so often because of the videogame-ness, but I've heard of P1 being more or less the same.
Combat isn't Pathfinder 2E's only advantage over what I see in 1E (via Kingmaker): Social Encounters, Exploration Mode, Paizo's optional rules for chases, critical hits/fumbles, .etc are all playtested and, unlike what I heard about 1E's mythic advancement, work really, really well.
I think Pathfinder 2 would make for an excellent videogame, but I think trying to force it into an infinity-engine style game is a waste. Exploration Mode alone makes me think that developers should rethink how they approach these rpgs; incorporating Pathfinder 2 exploration mode into a videogame would likely be revolutionary if done right. Makes me wish I could grab the license from Paizo for P2E and try my own hand at it.