# Forum > Gaming > Roleplaying Games > D&D 3e/3.5e/d20 >  PF2 General Questions

## Thurbane

Hey all,

So we've been invited to play a PF2 game next week. I noticed PF2 doesn't get talked about a lot here (unless it has it's own forum and I missed it?).

I've played quite a small amount of PF1, which was very similar to 3.5.

I had a glance at the PF2 SRD, and it seems there quite a lot of changes.

As someone who has barely touched PF1 or 5E, and mainly played 3.5, what are the major differences between 3.5 and PF2 I should be aware of?

All general advice and tips welcome.

[edit] Just looked at this https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi...econd-editions : Does that look like a fair summary? [/edit]

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## pabelfly

Here's a bare-bones summary of the character creation system. This really stuck with me because I liked a lot about it, excepting the power curve.

Character creation is based on picking a race, class and background. These allocate stat points towards the stat array that you start with, as well as some flavour ribbons. Races have a few stat boosts and a free stat boost in any stat you like, so even if a race isn't perfect for a class, it should at least be decent.

Stat boosts are every fifth level and are much nicer than 3.5. You pick four stats, and if one stat is below 18, add +2, if it's above 18, add +1. I modified this stat boost system for my 3.5 homebrew rules myself, really nice system.

The class you pick is your one class (will get into "multiclassing" in a moment). The class has a set progression which dictates when you get stat boosts, feats, class features, etc. Instead of one set of feats, you have several sets (eg general feats, class feats, ability feats, and ancestry feats). Coming from 3e, these feats are underpowered. The upside of this system is that you get a variety of feats without feeling like you're forgoing better options - picking a feat to boost diplomacy isn't taking the place of feats that boost your combat ability. Intuitively, it's much more balanced, and harder to make a "bad" character. The downside of this is the lack of choice in all of this as a player, and a lot of feats sail dangerously close to being ribbons, rather than power boosts and can mean a lot of bookwork for little effect. It also makes it hard to make more interesting or innovative builds.

Instead of multiclassing as being having class levels in multiple classes, you pick feats to make a multiclass character. For example, if you want to make a gish, you pick your base class (let's say, a Fighter) and then pick the casting type you want (say, Sorcerer) and you pick up a mix of Sorcerer and Fighter-related feats. Or you could be a Sorcerer who takes Fighter-related feats. The two will be slightly different. You can do this for any two classes, and it's incredibly easy to make a "multiclass" character. Or you can go all-in on your class, picking feats that boosts that class's combat ability. Given the power curve of the system and how rigid the game is in alloting feat types, the build you come up with is unlikely to be "bad". And multiclass builds are much simpler to make than 3.5.

Movement and combat are superficially similar. The three-action turn is a pretty neat innovation. Can't remember too much of the rest, it's been a while.

I prefer 3.5 for how complex character building is, but PF2e was a fun alternative.

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## Kurald Galain

> As someone who has barely touched PF1 or 5E, and mainly played 3.5, what are the major differences between 3.5 and PF2 I should be aware of?


The major differences? Basically everything. It's one of those editions where they rewrite the whole game from scratch. If anything, PF2 is probably closest to 4E (in fact, it shares several designers with 4E).

In terms of character generation, there are a _ton_ of options that don't really do anything, so for a first game just pick anything that sounds cool and don't worry about it. I recommend playing a martial, because casters got nerfed _hard_ and are largely ineffective (in that they throw small bonuses or penalties around, whereas the game is all about HP damage). 3E-style multiclassing doesn't exist, but you can spend feats to get some low-level powers from another class. If you run out of interesting powers from your base class, I recommend that; in particular, get some focus powers if your class doesn't have them.

In terms of gameplay, you get three actions per turn and you almost always want to attack twice and move, or attack twice and use your class's special ability. If enemies drop small penalties on you, don't worry about that too much. The math is set up so that you will crit enemies only on a natural 20 (unless you're a fighter) and enemies crit-fail saves only on a natural one; but enemies often have a 20%-ish chance to crit _you_ or to make you crit-fail your save. This means you can drop suddenly, and often, and so healing is very important; if you don't have a cleric in the party, I recommend everyone to invest in medicine skill with the assurance feat.

Be aware that some of the first adventure paths for PF2 are very much a meat grinder. On the other hand, PF2 Society modules tend to be very easy.

HTH.

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## DrMartin

that post is a decent summary.

a couple more things: there are only three kinds of bonuses, and as in 3.5 you only use the highest within a given kind. These are Item, Status, and Circumstance. Circumstance covers all kind of situational modifier, like being flat footed or under cover. Most buff/debuff spells give a status bonus or penalty. And items covers, well, everything coming from an item.

Penalties can be untyped, and those stack with each other, as well as all other penalties.

So in general, while some of the fiddly math from 3.5/pf carries over, it has been reduced to max three categories, and only status and circumstance usually tend to change during play. 

BUT - this does come up a lot during play, as many many many abilities inflict conditions, and many conditions have a value like "clumsy 1" or "drained 3". Most conditions inflict status penalties, so they don't stack with each other, but they require tracking, as they might increase / reduce their values on certain conditions - end of turn, take an action to get rid of it, etc. 

The other side of still having to deal with fiddly small bonuses, is that they matter somewhat more. 
Beating a DC by 10 or hitting your opponent by 10 means you crit. The math of the game seems to be geared towards this meaning that only an hyper-specialist gets to crit against an even-matched monster on anything other than a 20, but this changes very rapidly if you manage to get some conditions in. Anyone can aid another (although it's quite resource intensive, action-economy wise), try to trip, try to intimidate, or give better positioning through flanking. Each +1 is both +1 to success and +1 to crit, so getting a +2 bonus from a spell and giving a -2 penalty through flanking mean you now crit on a 16.

The math is quite solid so this keeps being true at high levels, although there to even get a chance at a basic success you need to have invested resources into whatever it is you want to attempt. At lower levels attempting something outside your wheelhouse is not as punishing (and makes the game actually more entertaining, but that's just my opinion)

Caster are very different. Spells do less in general, and my first time playing one it felt like you don't really interact with the 3 action system, as most spells take 2 actions to cast so you feel you are still stuck with "a move and a standard". 

Took a bit to learn that that last action can be used for other things - just to reiterate the same examples from above, an athletics check to trip, an intimidate check to demoralize, or to set up an aid another action. All characters start with a long list of actions they can take regardless of their build. To really get good at something you need to pour character resources into it, but it's a far cry from "either dump two feats or forget that the trip action even exists".


also, and this is a personal view: one of the biggest changes is that you don't *have* to obsess over character creations. There's a lot of options, but the fallout from picking option A vs option B is on average way smaller than what it was in 3.5 and PF1. Less trap options and generally options more balanced against each other means you can mostly just pick whatever and end up with a character on the expected curve of effectiveness. 
There's of course exceptions and particularly good and bad synergies - but the game designers tried to make a system that doesn't mechanically punish you* for picking something just for its flavor.

*(much)

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## Thurbane

Great feedback so far.

pabelfly: you mention power curve a coupe of times. Do characters and monsters improve quite rapidly as you level, or the opposite?




> Be aware that some of the first adventure paths for PF2 are very much a meat grinder. On the other hand, PF2 Society modules tend to be very easy.


It seems likely we'd be running Kingmaker.

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## pabelfly

> Great feedback so far.
> 
> pabelfly: you mention power curve a coupe of times. Do characters and monsters improve quite rapidly as you level, or the opposite?


The opposite. The curve is more like an even ramp with a slight incline.

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## AsuraKyoko

> The opposite. The curve is more like an even ramp with a slight incline.


This is sort of true. While general capability scales linearly, fighting something that is more than a couple levels stronger than the party is going to be very painful. Expect to miss the enemy more often than not, and for the enemy to get critical hits much more frequently. Honestly, I think that the game would be much, much better with 2 changes:

Reduce the level scalingRemove or rework the critical system entirely

These two problems feed into each other in a bad way, as the critical system effectively amplifies the level difference by a factor of 2. Luckily, the level scaling is relatively easy to fix, as it's not too hard to do something like adjust it to be 1/2 levels, instead of 1/1; unfortunately, the crit system pretty much can't be easily fixed at all, because doing so would break anything that relies on saves, and also the entire spellcasting system.

Mini-rant aside, while it's true that most classes don't really have trap options, there are some classes that are significantly worse than others. In my experience, the classes that are generally the most effective are Fighter, Champion (basically Paladin), Gunslinger, and Ranger, while the classes that are the least effective are Rogue, Cleric, and most casters prior to level 7.

Rogue just can't effectively contribute in combat, honestly. Most of its combat-centric feats are just making it slightly easier to apply its meagre sneak attack damage, or they are about getting out of the way. Cleric gets some nice things, such as a bunch of free spell slots of their highest spell level for preparing healing spells, but is held back by the fact that it is a caster class, and therefore most of its feats are mediocre at best, and by the fact that the Divine spell list is notably worse than the others.

EDIT:
Oh, and the other thing that hurts for clerics is that there is a generic Archetype that any character can take called Herbalist that allows for _significantly_ more healing than cleric can reasonably do. Seriously, the amount of healing an Herbalist can do in a day is wild, and it requires only a little bit of investment.

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## stack

There is a variant that removes level from the proficiency bonus.

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## AsuraKyoko

> There is a variant that removes level from the proficiency bonus.


it only applies for skills, if I remember correctly.

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## stack

> it only applies for skills, if I remember correctly.


Nope, global. All proficiencies are adjusted. For PCs, you just don't add in the level. Monster XP gets adjusted, since taking down higher level enemies gets way easier (though groups of lower level enemies are tougher).

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## DrMartin

true, there is the option - but It clashes with what I think is a good chunk of the appeal of PF:  its the abundance of GM-facing materials.

That option means having to retouch *a lot* of that, not just by correcting the numbers all monsters stat blocks and skill DCs, but the build up of the encounters themselves - as without level scaling the boss' 6 minions could be more dangerous than the boss itself

One could have the same argument for each options of course - but few are as pervasive as this one, in a system with very tight math like PF2

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## Snowbluff

Something that might trip you up that I don't think I noticed in the summary, is the move action equivalent is what one might call, awful. It just moves. One mode. You cannot hide, jump, climb, or draw a weapon like you can in PF1. In fact, a lot of things that wouldn't normally be their own action now are. 

In lieu of lengthier rants, I would suggest running lower scaled versions and maybe with that the prof variant. This system is full of pet peeves for me coming off of PF1/3.5 and those are certainly 2 of them.

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## paladinn

> The major differences? Basically everything. It's one of those editions where they rewrite the whole game from scratch. If anything, PF2 is probably closest to 4E (in fact, it shares several designers with 4E).


Thanks for saying this!  This explains a lot.. like why I don't like either one.

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## Kurald Galain

Let me add some potentially-relevant quotes from earlier PF2 threads,




> Not every spell caster needs to cast all the time. .... But while they often get some portion of their damage or condition off, even on a passed save, they are just useless in terms of damage output or real control ... something really feels wrong at low level with casters. Our cleric felt the same after session 1. When they did heal someone, it didnt do much.





> I can trip, I can bull rush, I can intimidate and still have the actions to move and smack someone. What I actually did was stand still and fire cantrips at things for mediocre damage.





> They just looooove throwing fiddly debuff conditions around, too, which is just obnoxious, even though - or maybe _because_ - it hasn't actually had any effect at all on the outcome of anything ... I've been going through the skill feats, trying to find something, anything, that's worth taking for my 2nd-level skill feat. And failing. You could set the entire Skill Feat section on fire and nothing of value would be lost.





> The game makes a big deal about "becoming legendary" at high level, which in most cases means getting +2 to hit or to a saving throw. But you get to take "legendary" skill feats, which allow you to do such "legendary" things as increase your party's overland speed by 10', or get cryptic hints from a religious text, or decipher secret messages faster than normal, or gain slightly more money when performing, or request that enemies abandon combat and talk to you (but the ability spells out that they may simply refuse). Are you feeling "legendary" yet?


HTH.

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## thompur

One very important difference: PF2 is very much a game that thrives on teamwork. 
The party will be much more successful if they work together.
If you try to go it alone, or if being the most OP/min/maxed uber-character, you will most likely fail.
On the other hand, you really have to be trying to make a non-viable character.
Skills matter more in PF2. 
Also, it has been my experience with the system over the past 3+ years that every character
of every class that I have played, and played with, has contributed significantly in combat in some way.

But honestly Thurbane, based on reading your posts on this site for the past decade or so,
I believe you would enjoy PF2.  :Small Smile: 
.

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## AsuraKyoko

> Nope, global. All proficiencies are adjusted. For PCs, you just don't add in the level. Monster XP gets adjusted, since taking down higher level enemies gets way easier (though groups of lower level enemies are tougher).


Ah, I stand corrected, thanks. (Maybe I was thinking of an older version of the variant, or a different one?)




> true, there is the option - but It clashes with what I think is a good chunk of the appeal of PF:  its the abundance of GM-facing materials.
> 
> That option means having to retouch *a lot* of that, not just by correcting the numbers all monsters stat blocks and skill DCs, but the build up of the encounters themselves - as without level scaling the boss' 6 minions could be more dangerous than the boss itself
> 
> One could have the same argument for each options of course - but few are as pervasive as this one, in a system with very tight math like PF2


This is the other problem with adjusting the numbers on the fly. Also, it would be nice if there was an option between "add level to everything" and "don't scale off of level at all", though it would be equally easy to just do a "add half your level" variant, too.

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