I am currently looking at DM’ing for my first time as well as being the introduction for PF2e to our group.
We’ve played for a bit, started with 3.5e, and moved to 5e, however we never felt satisfied playing 5e.
We are looking now at Pathfinder 2e to continue our group and as I am the one who brought it up, it has fallen to me to DM, though I never have before. I’ve only played 1e. The group seemed to like the emphasis on group cooperation versus solo rushing that 5e seems to encourage.
Group would be 5 players, one forever DM who is glad to play for once.
I am looking through different books to try and find an introductory adventure for us to feel out PF2e. One-shots were considered but did not feel like they would teach us as much about PF2e compared to a small adventure.
Does anyone have some advice for a first time DM who is looking to bring their group from 5e? Any adventures in mind? I had been eyeing the kobold king as well as Rusthenge.
Thanks! :3
You want to make sure everyone has read Chapter 9 from Player Core, which goes over the basics of the game. 90% of it will be fairly old hat for people coming from 3.x and 5e, but it does contain the core system differences from those games.
Menace Under Otari, the adventure in the Beginner’s Box, is explicitly a tutorial dungeon designed to teach both game masters and players the mechanics of the system. Rusthenge is another purpose-built “first adventure”, though it’s not explicitly a tutorial, and has less system guidance for the GM. I’ve also heard that Dawn of Frogs is a good introductory adventure, that in some ways does a better job of introducing the system than Menace does (but I don’t have it/haven’t read it).AyeSpidey, on Reddit, also has an introductory adventure they wrote, that you can find on Pathfinder Infinite.
Crown of the Kobold King is a good early adventure, but it’s a port of a Pathfinder 1e adventure, so I don’t think it’s the best choice for everyone’s first time.
One thing that’s key for the game is making sure everyone knows what their characters do. As people who’ve played something other than 5e, I assume you’re all used to that, but I’ve seen a lot of people drop into the subreddit complaining that, as GM, it’s too much work for them to know how everyone’s characters work. The culture of “I don’t know how to play, I just let the guy hosting things tell me what to do” falls apart here.
PF2e is fairly heavily based in D&D 3.5, though, even if the core ‘engine’ is different. What’s markedly different, though, is how the game treats characters/creatures and the “character builder” game. The game itself includes a lot of guardrails that functionally prevent character-based hyper-optimizing. Character power bands are strongly level-based, and level is a direct, if mildly fuzzy, measure of character power. Many players grind against this at first, because they’re used to finding wacky interaction effects and loopholes that just make them functionally a higher level than their character sheet says. Instead, the game rewards cooperation, tactics, and outplaying the other side of the table.
A lot of people playing the system like it for for how it just surfaces a bunch of ‘paper buttons’ for them to press over and over again, and how it provides a rigid, predictable style of play. I’m happy for them that the game provides them tools to generate the experience they want, but I’ve also found that these players have a more generally dim view of what other kinds of experiences the system can enable. It’s a wildly flexible system that can power a huge range of table experiences, if you so choose. The key is understanding what is core to the game and it’s balance, and what is just “good ideas suggested by professional designers”.
The four core pillars of the game are the proficiency system (T/E/M/L), the degrees of success system, the action constructs, and the feat-based modular character design. Everything else is a default recommendation for adjudicating an outcome.
Thank you for the advice!
I had looked at the Beginner’s Box but felt it was a little too much of a tutorial for combat and more meant for those new to TTRPGs in general. We’ve been playing for years so I was looking for something just a little bit more than that, which led me to Rusthenge and Crown of the Kobold King. I know that the latter can go much longer but I also don’t have to run all the chapters for our first go. Wasn’t CotKK remastered for PF2e or am I mistaken?
The difference between loopholes with player power such as with 3.5e and PF1e coming to PF2e is something we’re looking forward too. It’ll be a nice change of pace we feel.
As a new DM and new to PF2e in general I am also wondering what books/sources to restrict everyone to. I know there’s the couple player core books but have you any other suggestions? One player has expressed interest in Battlecry for the Guardian class.
We are also looking at using Pathbuilder for sheets.
spitfire@pawb.social Yes, CotKK was rewritten for PF2e, but and it runs fine, but it’s still a port, you know? It has some rough edges. From the players’ side of thing, I’m sure it would be just fine, but as a new GM… Let’s just say, it was the first adventure I bought, and as a new GM I waited to play it until I felt more comfortable with the system. There’s nothing wrong with it, but there are places where you can feel how it’s not representative of the system. If that makes sense.
If you can get your hands on a cheap used copy of Menace under Otari, even if you don’t want to run it, it’s worth reading through as a GM. It really is purpose built for introducing the mechanics of the game, and is quite short.
There’s no pressing need to restrict first party books, or even third party series like BattleZoo or Team+ sources, but the splat books do offer a lot of options which can cause analysis paralysis. Because the system doesn’t have the same optimization meta as other, similar products, the expansiveness isn’t really an issue, but players often get bogged down in the details. People who are used to playing the optimization meta, even if they want to stop, sometimes can’t help themselves. I include myself in that group. I’m hesitant to suggest restricting books, though, because I think some of the more interesting classes are in splats: Guardian and Commander in War of Immortals, Magus in Secrets of Magic, and Thaumaturge in Dark Archive.
A couple of more things everyone at the table should be aware of, though, now that I’m thinking about it:
I suppose I’m used to really broken builds being accomplished even early on from previous 3.5e and PF1e experience which is why I gravitated towards potentially locking out other books. Glad to hear that isn’t really the case or needed for PF2e.
I will see if I can find a used copy of Menace/Troubles to read through or if all else fails check my local game shop. Maybe the library might….they’ve had 5e books before.
We’re all going into this expecting something different than what we’re used to and the re-balancing is going to be a big part of it.
I’m still reading through the core books myself to more familiarize myself with everything. I guess I’m just anxious as well as I want it to be a fun experience.
spitfire@pawb.social Yeah, the system just shuts down that level of min/maxing. There are no builds in the game that break the encounter math assumptions, and if someone thinks they’ve found one, they’ve either read something wrong, or discovered somethinf that will be in the next round of errata.
Rolls are always done vs a DC, which means there’s no worry of a low-level creature invalidating a high level creature by rolling high vs a low row (or vice versa). That kind of wild luck has been stripped out.
Bonuses of the same type don’t stack, so you can’t throw Guidance, Bless, and Inspire Courage on someome to get them a +3 bonus to a roll. They’re all status bonuses, and for each bonus type you tax the MAX, not the SUM, of all that have been applied, so the total bonus from those 3 spells is +1. This limits the easy, cheesy math-hack solutions.
DCs are level based, and frow quite large, which means players get very very good at tackling old challenges, but there are some challenges that are functionally impossible to overcome at any given level. Natural 20s have well defined behaviours in the game, so there’s no “automatic success” cultural norm that breaks this.
It’s important to note, the level that you use for the level-based DCs is the challenge’s level, not the party’s. The leveled DC table is used in designing creature and hazard stat blocks, and when creating a leveled challenge on the fly. Many new GMs to the system misunderstand the table and instead constantly scale every challenge in the game with the party.
Hey I missed you already talked with someone on the beginners box but wanted to add that yeah the system is tight and you can power game but it does not make a character that much more powerful. Even with all the expansions I still see like rangers as being the top damage dealers early on and thieves later on but again not that big a difference. Im by no means the best for finding game breaking things. fighter with druid archetype is one and the gnome flail was another but again they were not that good. You could just not do free archtype to begin with but many people like the extra flexibility. The incapacitation trait with spells keep them from being insta boss kills spell wise.