Pathfinder 2e - How does it compare to other systems?

[Dallahan]

My groups current campaign is wrapping up and we're looking at starting a new one. I've been considering running our next campaign using Pathfinder 2e, but am unfamiliar with the system and would like to get an idea of how it compares to other systems. Our group started with D&D 3.5 but that was years ago and when we ran a one shot with it recently we found the system far clunkier than we remembered.

The last campaign I ran for the group was D&D 4e, which we all really enjoyed it and I greatly appreciated the encounter building rules. However, a couple of my players enjoy min-maxing and by the end of it I was struggling to create challenging encounters and was overusing enemies with paralysis and hypnosis abilities to keep up with the parties power level.

Since then we've played quite a bit of 5th edition but reached the point where we've gotten a bit bored of the system and its lack of depth. Our current campaign is Shadow of the Demon Lord, which has been quite fun but I would prefer a slightly meatier system for our next game. The campaign plan to run next will be more classic fantasy, with some weirder elements on the periphery, with a good balance of investigation, exploration and combat. I'm wondering how Pathfinder 2e compares to the aforementioned systems in that regard, and how much strain it puts on the GM when it comes to encounter building, especially with min-maxed PC's.

[stoutstien]

You'll probably be better off with PF 1e rather than 2e.

PF 2e math is extraordinary right so it's difficult to feel like you are above any sort of curve based on meta or in game choices.

[Kurald Galain]

a good balance of investigation, exploration and combat.

Out of the systems you mention, the only one that has solid rules for investigation and exploration is PF1 / 3.5. The other systems all default to "yeah, just roll your favorite skill and make something up".

PF1 is less clunky than 3.5, although moreso than 5E. PF2 is more clunky than 3.5; it has a lot of little fiddly parts and tiny modifiers that you need to track even though they make no difference in practice.

HTH.

[falconflicker]

Many of the noncombat subsystems from PF1 were updated in the Gamemastery Guide, and then incorporated into the Remaster's GM Core.

They have a reasonably in-depth Hexploration subsystem, a Research subsystem which can be used for investigation, an Influence subsystem to track more in-depth social encounters, subsystems for Chases, Heists, Duels, and for Creating your own organizations.

The links are all to the Archives of Nethys, a free, officially supported site that contains all of the rules. Take a look at them and see if they fit your play style.

[NRSASD]

Speaking as someone who grew up playing 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, switched to 5E, then switched to PF2E, I strongly second Kurald's comments. There are tons of fiddly details that have to be tracked and don't make much of a difference. We're running a long campaign in it and it has been very fun learning another approach for solving the same problems, but I don't think we'll play more of it after this campaign.

One of the unwritten assumptions of the system is that you have to focus on debuffing enemies vigorously to stand a chance of actually hurting them. That's fine, but it was a major shift for my players. Also, you can easily feel like you're treading water rather than progressing if you aren't careful.

For my table, in my experience, it is easier to homebrew a bespoke d20 system that does what I want rather than force 5E or PF2E into a contorted shape.

[Just to Browse]

Similar things to 4e:

• Out of combat stuff mostly boils down to progress clocks the way 4e skill challenges do. You can easily ignore all out of combat systems in favor of SCs, or whatever else you were already doing.
• Monsters and classes still have roles (sort of, see downsides)
• Still lots of room for optimizers to do their thing.

Upsides over 4e that I think you'll enjoy:

• Player options are significantly more constrained. It's harder for a player to shoot themselves in the foot (though still possible), and harder to over-optimize. This makes balancing combats for high levels much easier.
• The numbers from PF2 rouuuuuughly match PF1/3e, so you quickly reference tables from those books without needing to use them.

Potential downsides to be aware of over 4e:

• While monster & PC roles exist, they're hidden. You're expected to just sorta figure it out. Parties will need some kind of out-of-combat healer for example, but the game doesn't emphasize that as hard as it should.
• Magic is closer to the vancian 3e casters, and spellcasters tend to be weak in combat compared to their martial counterparts at low levels, which some players can bounce off of.
• The way the game is presented, horizontal power seems like it could be a pretty useful thing (like using archetypes to dabble in casting). This is generally a trap, and will put any PC who takes it behind their companions. I mention this because (IMO) it's not uncommon for a 4e character to dabble in a little striking or leading when the best power at their level just happens to be striker-y/leader-y. For all its flexibility, PF2 can feel inflexible. Depending on your playgroup, this inflexibility could be a little frustrating.

On the whole, based on your description, I think the system would be a good fit for you.

[JusticeZero]

I'll just ask, have you considered leaving the D&D-like ecosystem entirely? Maybe going backward to an old edition (though you'll lose depth), or something else like Cairn, or an Odd-like such as Mausritter, or a D6 game, Runequest, or something else? Pathfinder has always been similar to D&D in various ways, and I've been hearing a lot of frustration with things that are distinctive aspects of the D&D-ish arm of gaming.

[Serafina]

If you liked D&D 4E you'll likely enjoy PF 2E.
All the rules content is available for free on the Archives of Nethys (it lags behind a few months with the newest releases, but is well maintained).

It obviously has solid combat - notably the 3-action economy putting a premium on certain actions and movement. You have to consider whether you want to make an additional attack or instead intimidate an enemy, or instead reposition yourself, and that's before you get into spells or feats that take up multiple actions.
It's system for critical success and failures is also pretty neat - it doesn't depend solely on lucky rolls (nat 20s/1s) but instead of beating/missing a target number by 10. So it's more of a reward for being good at a task, and the game reflects that - a critical success on a saving throw typically evades damage entirely, for example.
Bonuses come in three types - circumstance, status (=magical) and item. You apply the strongest of each type, that's it, it nicely reduces bookkeeping IME.

It does have an exploration system. A lot of actions are tagged exploration, denoting that they're actions you take while exploring and that modify how you go about it.
Whether that is what you are looking for, I can't tell you, but you should be able to decide on that for yourself.

Investigation is something that lives in several rule sections. Some of it happens during encounters (especially social encounters), some of it happens during exploration, and some of it happens during Downtime (e.g. using Underworld Lore to find out where a stolen item ended up, one of the given examples).

Personally, I quite like building characters in Patfhinder 2E.
You get plenty of options, particularly once you take Archetypes (which is also where multiclassing lives, it's similar to 4E) into account. Options are however much more balanced against each other than in other editions - particularly in terms of numbers.
You may be familiar with the addage that if one option is way stronger than the other, there really are no options. I run into this issue way less often with PF2E than with other D&D-adjacent games.
I quite enjoy min-maxing, and it's still something I can do in PF2E - it's just the version where I make a character good at specific things, rather than making them overwhelmingly strong.


So yeah, that's a recommend from me.

[Kurald Galain]

If you liked D&D 4E you'll likely enjoy PF 2E.

I disagree. 4E has far more diversity in both build options and tactics, to the point where 4E has a dedicated character role for crowd control, and PF2 basically bans crowd control from existing.

[Serafina]

Build Diversity is easy to judge by just reading the material (or some guides), and I'd say that PF2E competes with D&D 4E quite handily there if you ignore the diversity that gets added by Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies.
If you want something like Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies, then you can just use the Free Archetype rules - having a second progression track of class-like features should feel pretty familiar!
With Free Archetype in play PF2E has IMO very high build diversity.


It's certainly true that PF2E does not have the same type of Crowd Control that D&D 4E has.
Neither did D&D 3.5, nor does D&D 5E, nor does PF1E. 4E was pretty unique in that regard.
You can play a Defender. Whether that is simply by picking up a Champion and using their defensive/retributive Reactions, or by using the Shield Warden feat to protect nearby allies, or by playing any martial character and making use of Trip, Shove, and Reposition together with Reactive Strike.
There is also another Defender-oriented class, the currently-in-playtest Guardian. It'll hopefully get a few improvements in it's actual release, but it's certainly more oriented towards being a Defender than any class in anything D&D-adjacent outside of 4E.

[stoutstien]

I disagree. 4E has far more diversity in both build options and tactics, to the point where 4E has a dedicated character role for crowd control, and PF2 basically bans crowd control from existing.

It has CC it just doesn't feel like it because it has a high mandatory maneuver threshold built-in. Debuffs are CC because of the way the action system works. A bombing alchemist can debuff groups into lockdown regularly but they are expected to. Then you have runes that stack on everything else.

It basically boils down to action economy manipulation which can feel off if you prefer the aesthetic of actually locking somebody down.

[Kurald Galain]

Debuffs are CC

No, there is a very fundamental difference between "debuffs" and "CC". You might as well claim that PF2 has CC because it redefines CC to mean "non-weapon damage". I mean that's technically correct but also pretty meaningless.

Anyway, my point is that pretty much none of the 4E fans I know (including myself) actually enjoy PF2. And you might have noticed that our 4E forum on this very site has not, in fact, had an upsurge of 4E fans who enjoy PF2, either.

[stoutstien]

No, there is a very fundamental difference between "debuffs" and "CC". You might as well claim that PF2 has CC because it redefines CC to mean "non-weapon damage". I mean that's technically correct but also pretty meaningless.

Anyway, my point is that pretty much none of the 4E fans I know (including myself) actually enjoy PF2. And you might have noticed that our 4E forum on this very site has not, in fact, had an upsurge of 4E fans who enjoy PF2, either.

I mean what is the difference between making an action impossible and making the action cost more therefore impossible other than feel?

I'm not defending PF2 at all. I think it's a bunch of fiddly math that doesn't lead to anything worthwhile. It's false depth. Complexity for the sake of it that doesn't really increase the number of viable options. it just hides the few good ways to do stuff in a pile of useless options that are flat out traps. Overdesigned is a good word for it.

I find it attracts people who are more excited about planning to play than actually playing but it also doesn't have a high amount of potential discovery in that process either.

[Corsair14]

As someone who initially read the rule book when it came out and felt it was far too complicated(not to the shadowrun level of insanity) I put it on my shelf and went and my group played 5e, then we had a long 2e ravenloft campaign, then we played rifts(uggg you want bad rules, go play a Paladium system with MDC). My turn to DM rolled around again and I saw a few videos on pathfinder and we picked it up and had a really good time once we got the hang of it. I cant go back to 5e, its horrible by comparison. The combat in pathfinder is far more fun and in depth than in any other fantasy RPG I have played outside of Warhammer FRPG. Its actually fun for the DM and isnt just roll a dice and swing. Skills actually mean something, not everyone can do everything. The critical and fumble city is awesome, especially if you get the cards.

I cant really comment on the campaign world as I tend to run old 2e campaign worlds which are pretty easy to convert over and restat appropriately. I use 2e because Wizards has failed us on bring old ones back repeatedly, and the Pathfinder world just seems kind of kitchen sink. I prefer more traditional (LOTR/Conan-esque)worlds without all the silly animal races being happily welcomed everywhere and orcs, halfings, and drow sitting around the campfire singing Kumbaya :P.

Also characters in pathfinder while they get powerful abilities early on, healers especially, the CR of monsters and such goes up accordingly so they dont seem have the same silly super hero feel that characters in 5e have. Overall I enjoy DMing and playing PF2 far more than any other current system. I recommend watching videos about it on youtube and not getting overwhelmed with the numbers until you see it in practice and how it meshes.

[Psyren]

I remember during the whole OGL debacle when a ton of 5e youtubers jumped over to PF2 just to try it out, and they found a number of things they liked for martials and some of the gishes. But I remember how telling it was that none of them had anything good to say about the pure spellcasters, and it all came down to the godawful saving throw system PF2 uses, where most spells need a crit fail to begin approaching the level of 5e magic. It just wasn't exciting, and I saw pretty much all of them bounce off PF2 and return to 5e as a result. (Well, that, and their rapidly dwindling views.)

[Rynjin]

Pretty much, yeah. Paizo tried to ape the Mutants and Masterminds paradigm for saves without including the supplementary systems that make that good, like saves being inversely proportional. In M&M you can essentially have a really high Fort or Will, but not both, etc. so every character either has a glaring weak point to target or is okay at all saves but great at none.

[Anonymouswizard]

I remember during the whole OGL debacle when a ton of 5e youtubers jumped over to PF2 just to try it out, and they found a number of things they liked for martials and some of the gishes. But I remember how telling it was that none of them had anything good to say about the pure spellcasters, and it all came down to the godawful saving throw system PF2 uses, where most spells need a crit fail to begin approaching the level of 5e magic. It just wasn't exciting, and I saw pretty much all of them bounce off PF2 and return to 5e as a result. (Well, that, and their rapidly dwindling views.)

To be fair Pathfinder 2e (and Starfinder before it) are also trying really hard to stop caster dominance. The designers seem to have overcorrected to the point that many spells aren't actually viable, and magic really needed a go over to have more interaction with the action economy (far too many spells are two actions).

Sadly I don't believe the Remaster actually fixes many spells, and I don't own it (I sadly bought 2e about six months before it was announced, and want to get some use out of those original books).

[Psyren]

To be fair Pathfinder 2e (and Starfinder before it) are also trying really hard to stop caster dominance. The designers seem to have overcorrected to the point that many spells aren't actually viable, and magic really needed a go over to have more interaction with the action economy (far too many spells are two actions).

Sadly I don't believe the Remaster actually fixes many spells, and I don't own it (I sadly bought 2e about six months before it was announced, and want to get some use out of those original books).

I know what they were going for and why, but in sanding off those edges they removed too much of what made PF1 and D&D exciting; those "big swing" moments where PCs feel awesome and like they saved the day. When the DM can throw a Deadly number of goblins at the party but the Bard is able to cut the oncoming horde in half instantly with a well-positioned hypnotic pattern, that feels amazing - and even the Fighter and Rogue then get to then do their thing by wading into the unhypnotized half of the enemy a lot more safely.

PF2 might be different than 4e in execution, but they had a similar idea at their core - chasing the unicorn of parity to the corners of the earth, even if the end result is a system with nearly all the excitement of its predecessor extricated.

[Xihirli]

I really love playing and running pathfinder, my players include two full spellcasters and my characters include one (a cleric).

I can also attest to a LOT of moments where spells wildly swung the battlefield in huge moments, from an enemy fireball that downed half the party to a set of debuffs that reduced an enemy’s armor class by 3 to just let the monk go wild. And there was a spell I cast as a Cleric that gave our party melee hitter a ranged weapon that dealt fire damage against an enemy that was vulnerable to it and out of range.

I recently started a new game as a fighter and the party bard has been instrumental (ha) so far. Plus magic HAS done plenty of damage.

My response to anyone who says they’re interested in Pathfinder 2 is "try it! I think you’ll like it!"

[MonochromeTiger]

Going to throw my comment in on the "they overcorrected" side of things as far as magic goes, but with the further point they also overcorrected on self reliance vs team play.

Frankly, if magic managed to swing things in a fight then you were already so close that a minor buff/debuff would've pushed things to a decisive win in another game. Magic in Pathfinder 2 caps out somewhere around where a decent crowd control spell would have in Pathfinder, meanwhile AoE damage is pretty much the only real damage role that magic classes are really allowed by the system. The problem isn't that magic can't do damage at all or that its spells can't have any effect it's that the damage it can do and the effect it has is fit into very specific bands of intended effect with the "full" effect being stuck behind your opponent crit-failing their save just to meet what would have been the normal effect an edition before.

Meanwhile Fighter is the standard around which damage in the game is based, and it still merely performs "adequate." That's part of the issue, they've combated over-optimization in 2e by lowering the ceiling for performance on an individual level to barely adequate and group play to "decent", the floor meanwhile is still much lower. Magic classes doing "well" are playing buff/debuff cheerleader and occasionally throwing out an AoE in a way that closely mirrors 4e's "alright we need to stack up all our +1s and all their -1s" where filling the checklist each fight is worked into the expected difficulty of each encounter as the standard of play. You aren't going to break the game or really swing things in a way that it didn't already fully account for because they have taken all the flashy toys' legs off at the knees and narrowed the range of abilities to the point that your party is either playing as the game expects you to or playing badly with highly predictable results for both.

Depending on what you want out of the game all of this may be a good thing for you. Perhaps you're tired of magic users having a spell that just shuts something down and happening to have it prepped during the encounter it's most useful for, PF2's solution to that is that magic users are much more limited in what they can actually do unless your GM is either fudging rolls or improbably unlucky with saves and intentionally setting enemies up where AoE is always the answer. Perhaps you're tired of one of your players just not realizing it's a team game and toning down their optimizing to be in line with the rest of the party, PF2's solution is a design philosophy where everyone is largely incapable of accomplishing anything of actual value alone to keep anyone from "carrying the fight" but also punishing trying to perform too far out of their class's designated roles. Perhaps you're a GM who is frustrated about how inaccurate CR can be with some monsters punching way above their weight, PF2's solution is that just about every monster is set up to run fairly predictably without nearly as much in the way of abilities that can quickly turn the fight one way or another unless the players are doing things very foolishly.

PF2's solution to just about every problem is to keep cutting off the edges until everything fits within a tightly controlled maximum for performance somewhere far below what Pathfinder had. Essentially "we knew how this level of play worked so lets just take that and stretch it over the entire gameplay experience" but even with the focus on math it still has places where things fray and you end up with the average player straining to still maintain that standard of "meets expectations." To accomplish this everyone ends up less capable on their own, everything has been squished into such a narrow box that anyone standing out and having a moment to shine is either a result of someone or something else being played badly or amounts to what Pathfinder would consider just a normal move working as intended; very few things are objectively terrible but the "worse" options are still present and can add up especially if you try to push anything out of its invisible role. In Pathfinder you could take a "bad" build and still accomplish something interesting with it, in PF2 a bad build is just objectively bad. In Pathfinder you could take a good build and pull off things that get remembered for years, in PF2 the idea of anyone really being a standard fantasy hero is treated like something to be ashamed of and your grand accomplishments amount to being 4-6 random people who only get anything done because you all happen to be working together while struggling through the problem.

Thing is quite a bit of this is clear on how it got there. It's similar to the jarring move from D&D 3.5 to 4e complete with the designers swearing up and down it's a natural evolution of the mechanics. Partially because some of the same people behind 4e are or were involved in PF2 and most of the differences between the two systems are either down to them realizing most people hated something and changing it slightly or the more recent remaster trying to distance the system as much as possible from anything WotC might sue over if they manage to scrap the OGL. As Psyren puts it they were chasing the unicorn of parity, and that's not necessarily a bad goal but the way they did it was stripping most of the individual worth from things and turning most of the "options" into the same thing worded differently then putting whatever people thought the biggest offenders were in the corner and pinning them in.

[Psyren]

The problem isn't that magic can't do damage at all or that its spells can't have any effect, it's that the damage it can do and the effect it has is fit into very specific bands of intended effect with the "full" effect being stuck behind your opponent crit-failing their save just to meet what would have been the normal effect an edition before.

This is exactly what it feels like. And frankly, it sucks. Even in the fiction, it makes me wonder why anyone would bother being a spellcaster in Golarion anymore. An enemy crit-failing something should be a "holy crap, I did that??" moment, not a "finally, my magic spell is kinda doing what it's advertised to do" moment. Like the PF2 Sleep spell doesn't actually keep targets asleep unless you heighten it all the way to 4th level, making it useless in combat - what the heck am I using it for then, shutting down fussy toddlers?

Depending on what you want out of the game all of this may be a good thing for you. Perhaps you're tired of magic users having a spell that just shuts something down and happening to have it prepped during the encounter it's most useful for, PF2's solution to that is that magic users are much more limited in what they can actually do unless your GM is either fudging rolls or improbably unlucky with saves and intentionally setting enemies up where AoE is always the answer. Perhaps you're tired of one of your players just not realizing it's a team game and toning down their optimizing to be in line with the rest of the party, PF2's solution is a design philosophy where everyone is largely incapable of accomplishing anything of actual value alone to keep anyone from "carrying the fight" but also punishing trying to perform too far out of their class's designated roles. Perhaps you're a GM who is frustrated about how inaccurate CR can be with some monsters punching way above their weight, PF2's solution is that just about every monster is set up to run fairly predictably without nearly as much in the way of abilities that can quickly turn the fight one way or another unless the players are doing things very foolishly.

PF2's solution to just about every problem is to keep cutting off the edges until everything fits within a tightly controlled maximum for performance somewhere far below what Pathfinder had. Essentially "we knew how this level of play worked so lets just take that and stretch it over the entire gameplay experience" but even with the focus on math it still has places where things fray and you end up with the average player straining to still maintain that standard of "meets expectations." To accomplish this everyone ends up less capable on their own, everything has been squished into such a narrow box that anyone standing out and having a moment to shine is either a result of someone or something else being played badly or amounts to what Pathfinder would consider just a normal move working as intended; very few things are objectively terrible but the "worse" options are still present and can add up especially if you try to push anything out of its invisible role. In Pathfinder you could take a "bad" build and still accomplish something interesting with it, in PF2 a bad build is just objectively bad. In Pathfinder you could take a good build and pull off things that get remembered for years, in PF2 the idea of anyone really being a standard fantasy hero is treated like something to be ashamed of and your grand accomplishments amount to being 4-6 random people who only get anything done because you all happen to be working together while struggling through the problem.

This too. And I don't mean to shade people who enjoy this kind of tightly pre-cut balance. But it's just not for me. I want to have a lot of levers I can pull to challenge or surprise the players and have them surprise me.

Thing is quite a bit of this is clear on how it got there. It's similar to the jarring move from D&D 3.5 to 4e complete with the designers swearing up and down it's a natural evolution of the mechanics. Partially because some of the same people behind 4e are or were involved in PF2 and most of the differences between the two systems are either down to them realizing most people hated something and changing it slightly or the more recent remaster trying to distance the system as much as possible from anything WotC might sue over if they manage to scrap the OGL. As Psyren puts it they were chasing the unicorn of parity, and that's not necessarily a bad goal but the way they did it was stripping most of the individual worth from things and turning most of the "options" into the same thing worded differently then putting whatever people thought the biggest offenders were in the corner and pinning them in.

I'm very happy that the folks looking for this kind of design have a clear and popular frontrunner to show to their groups. But when they sit there lamenting that they still don't know how 5e is so popular and the folks who like it are trapped or blind and how on earth can people not just mass exodus to their game that is clearly Ao's gift to the hobby and I'm just... I know full well what PF2 is doing and I'm not interested. I've played it before, I likely will play it again, but it won't ever be my "main" TTRPG.

[catagent101]

I feel weird about the complaint that spells only "do their thing" on a crit fail because the only examples I can think of are spells that would be blatantly broken if they could pull it off consistently.

[JNAProductions]

I've barely played it, and the setup for the game was a little weird.
Game died early on, but character creation was much more reminiscent of 3.P than 5E. Lots of fiddly things without immediately clear ramifications.

I will, however, echo Xihirli here. Just because it's got most (or all?) its content online, so it doesn't cost anything to try. Might as well.

[Psyren]

I feel weird about the complaint that spells only "do their thing" on a crit fail because the only examples I can think of are spells that would be blatantly broken if they could pull it off consistently.

Your definition of "broken" doesn't align at all with mine then. Not saying it needs to obviously, but for people who tried bringing casters from 5e to PF2 and ended up thoroughly disillusioned with the latter - like myself - this disconnect might explain why.

Let's take a simple 1st-level control spell that exists in both games as an example: Command.

The 5e version of Command's primary use is to shut down a single monster's turn, usually by either ending it early or making them burn their lone Action on something ineffective or disadvantageous - or both. for example "Command: Approach" makes the monster burn their movement on getting next to you, and even if they get within 5ft before running out of movement or needing to Dash, they immediately end their turn rather than being able to attack. The range is also 60ft, so you have considerable leeway when it comes to standing on your backline and pulling enemy creatures out of position for your martial allies to chew up. Lastly, the creature is moving under its own power, so it counts as volitional and therefore provokes OAs.

The PF2 version of Command meanwhile will only have the above functionality on a critical failure, which consumes all three of the target's actions. On a normal failure, the monster only needs to use one of its three actions obeying the Command and can then act normally. So you hit a creature with Command:Approach, they get a normal failure, they walk towards you, and then they can bash your face in, or walk away again, or cast a spell of their own, or whatever else. And the range is 30ft, so to even use it, you yourself have to be much closer to the frontline. And I don't remember the OA rules in PF2, but I think only certain classes can do them? It just got nerfed into the ground and I have no idea why. Did I miss all the online discourse lamenting how "broken" the Command spell was in PF1 or 5e?

[catagent101]

FWIW I was thinking in terms of spells like Cursed Metamorphosis (formerly Baleful Polymorph). Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

[Hunter Noventa]

My group has been running the Kingmaker AP for PF2, and issues with the module itself aside (The whole Kingdom Building aspect was not well playtested at all and has a host of problems) we are really running into the same issues that others are seeing regarding magic.

We recently had a 'boss fight' against a creature that was on level above us, and while part of this was certainly the dice, not a single one of my debuff spells were able to land, all of them were saved against, even against its weakest save. And this has been a running trend, my most effective spells are those that don't allow a save at all, which are few and far between. When your spells are only allowed to have their full effect on 'effectively' a natural 1, it feels really bad.

It sucks because PF2 does a lot of other things right! The martials are clearly having a great time. The ancestry and free archetype systems are a lot of fun. Being able to move weapon and armor bonuses around freely really ease the pain of finding a weapon no one wants to use. (Though on the flip side, spellcasters have basically no way to spend resources to increase their to-hit or Save DCs).

Once we finish the AP, my group is very likely to shift back to PF1, but backporting what works from PF2 like the three-action system ( which was an optional rule that showed up late in PF1's lifecycle), weapon and armor runes and a few other things.

[Xihirli]

Let's take a simple 1st-level control spell that exists in both games as an example: Command.

That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

[Psyren]

Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

It meets the bare minimum low bar of the spell's name... but if their goal was to attract people from D&D or even PF1, it feels a lot worse.

That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

You're forgetting that at low levels, the PCs are a lot more likely to have a spellcaster on staff than the bad guys are. So yeah, when you storm the goblin lair and they have a Shaman who debuffs everyone or makes your Fighter break formation, that's a Big Deal. It makes that fight feel very different. That's a good thing, even if it means more danger.

But with the edges sanded off instead, that moment becomes a meh.

[MonochromeTiger]

FWIW I was thinking in terms of spells like Cursed Metamorphosis (formerly Baleful Polymorph). Idk Command commands something, it does what I'd think it'd do.

Have to agree with Psyren again here. If your only goal is "alright the name kind of works" then fine but as for me I generally want magic to do more than mildly inconvenience something in the same way I want martials to do more than just be "that guy who lifts weights has a stick now." PF2 feels like they were afraid of the first throwing things off so they kneecapped it, but at the same time they don't actually fix the second they just decide "problem solved we'll lower the bar and that will be the new normal."

Arguably what they have in place may be worse than just taking some of these spells out entirely. Keeping to the Command example, in most cases you are unlikely to even see the enemy crit-fail their save, you are instead going to see the closest you get to success being to take up a single action doing what you want from a very limited list and generally undoing it with their next action. At best you waste as many actions as it takes just to cast the spell, at worst you've just spent two of your three actions and the enemy uses basically beats your face in through malicious compliance. Pathfinder had its own problems but generally if you needed CC you knew a spell was going to give you actual CC.

My group has been running the Kingmaker AP for PF2, and issues with the module itself aside (The whole Kingdom Building aspect was not well playtested at all and has a host of problems) we are really running into the same issues that others are seeing regarding magic.

We recently had a 'boss fight' against a creature that was on level above us, and while part of this was certainly the dice, not a single one of my debuff spells were able to land, all of them were saved against, even against its weakest save. And this has been a running trend, my most effective spells are those that don't allow a save at all, which are few and far between. When your spells are only allowed to have their full effect on 'effectively' a natural 1, it feels really bad.

It sucks because PF2 does a lot of other things right! The martials are clearly having a great time. The ancestry and free archetype systems are a lot of fun. Being able to move weapon and armor bonuses around freely really ease the pain of finding a weapon no one wants to use. (Though on the flip side, spellcasters have basically no way to spend resources to increase their to-hit or Save DCs).

Once we finish the AP, my group is very likely to shift back to PF1, but backporting what works from PF2 like the three-action system ( which was an optional rule that showed up late in PF1's lifecycle), weapon and armor runes and a few other things.

Part of that, as far as I can tell, is that the scaling of Saves is one of the things that they really didn't work out as well as they could have as levels progress. Especially in cases where the enemy is above you the odds of successfully doing something with a spell just plummets.

That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

And if you truly don't like it then you have PF2. If that's the game for you great, enjoy, glad you like it and I wish you and your group(s) all the fun in the world.

At least as far as I'm concerned my argument isn't "this is bad and people shouldn't play it" it's "this is something I do not enjoy and I am communicating why." An argument hinging on the idea that the enemy can do it too isn't really going to change my mind because the version I prefer already has the enemy doing it too and that is something I am used to and enjoy, in the same vein I don't expect that my issues with PF2's magic are going to change your mind on what you object to with Pathfinder's. The systems are simply too different, despite sharing the brand name and a main setting I can't see porting mechanics over from either without considerable tweaking and testing doing anything but breaking what makes either system appeal to its audience.

So really, and I apologize if this feels like a bit of a non-argument, it really comes down to a matter of personal taste. Either this is an issue that bothers someone and PF2 is really not the system for them unless something drastically changes or this isn't an issue that bothers them at all in which case PF2 is fine. I come down on the former, it's clear you fit the latter, nothing wrong with that we just don't agree.

[catagent101]

That all cuts both ways.
An enemy spell caster with Command can tell a melee PC to Flee and they lose two turns for one low-level spell, no concentration required. One turn running away and one turn running back. It is very possible to resolve combats in three rounds.
I’m not going to lament the diminishing, or even the elimination, of the "do I just skip my turn" die roll.

This is to my understanding the reason why spells are the way they are yeah. Spells are intended to be used by villains as well and are designed so that it doesn't suck to have them cast on you. I think it's a pretty good solution for keeping spells from an earlier more lethal D&D while going with PF2e's heroic tone.

It meets the bare minimum low bar of the spell's name... but if their goal was to attract people from D&D or even PF1, it feels a lot worse.

I... don't understand why the 5e version is more fun at all. Why am I playing this encounter if a 1st level spell can just make the enemy flee off the battlemap? Why am I not baking muffins or something?