Last night, I wasn’t feeling particularly creative and – with PAX Australia in a couple of weeks – I needed a break from my fortnightly Greyhawk game. So, I inflicted the Pathfinder 2 playtest on my players – the first scenario from Doomsday Dawn.

I’m not a fan of Pathfinder. I was a fan of the original 3E rules system, but I find it somewhat clunky these days, especially as I’m not interested in memorising hundreds of mechanics. I admire elegance, consistency and thematic mechanics that don’t spend a lot of time with special cases. Unfortunately, Pathfinder is pretty much built on special cases. Sigh.

So, be aware as you read this that I’m coming from this a lot more critical than I would be of a D&D 5E publication.

Did I hate everything? No. I think PF2 added some very interesting mechanics. I particularly liked the idea that initiative depends on Perception, or Stealth if you were hidden at the start of combat. It led to the unusual circumstance of the cleric having the best bonus – the last eighteen years have instilled in me the belief that clerics are always horrible at initiative. That Insight or Deception – if coming out of a social situation – might also be used for your initiative modifier? That’s great, and I’m likely to grab it for my D&D games.

While I was dubious of the three-action system, in practice it worked pretty well. I was *very* dubious about having to use “raise shield” to gain benefit of the shield’s bonus, but – as it happens – you typically have one action left over that could be an attack at -10 to hit or the raising of the shield, and in those cases, it worked well. Having to move into combat, attack and raise shield didn’t feel so good, however. The 5-foot-step as an action made combat a lot more static than it already was – though for the non-shield-wielding characters, they could 5-foot step and do good things. There were a lot of third attacks in the round at -10 to hit; the players seeing if they could roll a critical. Crits came up more often due to the number of rolls.

It was interesting to see how cover from missile weapons worked: a +2 AC bonus for “hard” cover, a +1 AC bonus for “soft” cover (creatures), and the option to “Take Cover” for an additional +2 AC. After memories of having a -8 penalty to shoot into combat because of the target being in melee as well as having cover, this was a big change for PF2. The way it was described has caused people problems, because although the “soft” and “hard” cover bonuses don’t stack, they’re described as two different concepts – “Cover” and “Screening”.

But then there were the things that drove me wild. Particularly the map. It’s a dungeon nicely printed on one of Paizo’s flipmats. And it represents Paizo’s constant struggle with designing dungeons that suit a party of six characters. Because it’s small and cramped, and if the party is defensively minded at all, it means that only one or two PCs can engage in melee – or see the targets. At least with the removal of most penalties for shooting, back characters can use missile weapons. However, we ran a combat in a room which was 14 five-foot squares large, and into which 6 PCs and 6 monsters were crammed… for a system that makes a lot of using miniatures, it really wants to be played with Theatre of the Mind where you can ignore the awfully small corridors and rooms.

The other main disappointment was the wizard. Paizo finally have given the wizard cantrips that can be used an unlimited number of times. But the acid splash cantrip we were using was pretty awful: 1d4 damage to the primary target, and 1 damage to creatures adjacent (which often included the PCs). Meanwhile, the fighter and rogue were dealing 1d8+4 damage every round. Perhaps twice. Acid splash took two actions to cast. Then, when you got to the first-level spells, magic missile dealt 3d4+3 damage… about the same as a single sword blow. The wizard’s player is used to the effective spells of 5E (and, before that, 4E), and the PF2 spells he had (magic missile and burning hands) never quite managed to work well. In addition, losing the “slot” system of 5E and going back to a Vancian system where, once you cast the spell, you forgot it and couldn’t cast it again? Yes, it might be classic D&D, but we’ve moved a long way beyond that in our 5E games.

Meanwhile, the characters appreciated the improved healing abilities of the cleric. Although I’m not a big fan of how the spell was described in its preview, once the players discovered how it worked, they happily used the “heal everyone for 4” ability after combat. That was nice. Because they got hurt a lot. Often by the wizard. Or, more likely, the alchemist.

Fiddly details abounded, which I tended to be very bad at tracking. The goblin alchemist threw bombs that did 1d8 fire + 1 persistent fire + splash 1 fire. That is, if he hit he did 1d8 fire damage to the target plus 1 ongoing damage every round, and everyone adjacent took one damage. If he missed, everyone adjacent *and the target* took one damage. Did the Wizard’s acid splash also do damage on a miss? We weren’t sure, and the player decided it didn’t, as the spell description listed “on a hit… deal splash damage”. More than once, the players had to remind me that the persistent damage was a thing. Agile weapons had -4 to attack for extra attacks rather than -5. Backstabber weapons dealt 1 extra precision damage against flat-footed creatures. Creatures were flat-footed when they hadn’t acted (if attacked by the rogue) or if flanked. Flanking required two characters on either side of the target – I hadn’t missed that! A sweep weapon had an attack bonus for each creature it attacked past the first. A forceful weapon dealt extra damage on subsequent attacks.

These sort of minor weapon bonuses are great for players, as they allow them to distinguish their characters from others. They’re not so good for DMs, as it adds a lot of rules tracking and remembering special cases.

Incidentally, the first scenario – which is written to introduce PCs to combat and the basic mechanics – isn’t deep, but that’s fine. I’m happy with that. But it manages to completely lack a good introduction to the players. The section marked “Getting Started” describes the DM’s background. A short piece of boxed text to read to the players to get them into the adventure? Utterly missing. Argh!

So, as to what occurred in the scenario:

• The players entered an old crypt, searching for an item that had been stolen by goblins.
• They met an ooze, which exploded in acid all over them. First use of mass curing!
• Four goblins. Being able to use two actions to move and still attack changes the ability to close markedly. 50 feet in a round and still attack? Those old maps may not be big enough!
• A potential trap (in a 15-ft-diameter room the PCs couldn’t all enter) – they saw it and left.
• Giant Centipedes! Fight in incredibly cramped quarters.
• More goblins! A rock trap did a LOT of damage to four party members. The first use of the new Hero Point mechanic, with two PCs using Hero Points to stop from being knocked unconscious. I like that. Mind you, PCs averaged about 20 hit points. Rare to get one-shot kills… at least the monsters didn’t have so many hit points (a big problem with 4E).
• Another trap. Horribly high DCs to detect and disarm. (And this is with the recent errata to DCs) In fact, the disarming couldn’t be done by the players easily – or I couldn’t work out what the format was trying to tell me. Eventually I ignored it, and we moved on.
• A locked door! Opening a locked door is fascinating: make three successful DC 15 Thievery checks. A failure just takes time, a critical failure reduces the successes by 1 or breaks your lockpicks if you have no successes. It’s a clever mechanic, but it didn’t add much to the game, IMO.
• The boss! Slaughtered by the party – I didn’t scale him up for six PCs and it was getting late. I was nice and allowed 5-foot steps past corners; otherwise we ran into the “everyone trapped in a 5-foot wide corridor” problem again.
• More locked doors and traps… but the party had found the key on the boss, and the rogue’s player was unhappy because he didn’t get a chance to roll dice
• The item they were looking for! Success!

All in all, we played for about 3 hours. It didn’t suck, and there’s promise. The scenario is mostly underwhelming. There are also aspects of the design that didn’t click for me at all, and I hoped they’re fixed for the final release; although some of them may be baked into the “Pathfinder” experience. In any case, I expect D&D 5E will remain my primary system for the next few years.