Is Pathfinder Too Complicated?

Hey folks!

I love Pathfinder 2e - it is cohesively designed, tactically deep, and rich with options. It basically fixed everything that frustrated me about 5e: lack of GM support, overpowered character options, unbalanced stacking bonuses, incomplete rules*, goofy restrictions, lack of specialization/customization, weird action economy, and so much more.

*To be clear, rule-lite games can be rad! But 5e is not that. There's nothing wrong with the core of the game being "the GM and players have a conversation about the world and determine the best option to fit that specific scenario," but it is a problem when some things (esp. spells) are as (or more) complicated as PF2, and others basically don't have rules, because the GM still has to check whether there *are* rules before giving their own ruling. Plus, some of the existing rules are just bad!

However, I know a lot of my players have more trouble with PF2! Part of this is that a lot of them have played 5e, and that transition requires a lot of unlearning bad habits. Players who are newer to RPGs in general always have an easier time, but even they can struggle with some aspects, and I have seen many stories of folks online who struggle even more than my own players.

So, in this post, I'm going to explore some ways that I think that GMs can approach PF2 to help make this transition easier, as well as a few possible house-rules if you want to go further. Let's dive in!

GM Adjudication

Pathfinder 2e often gets criticism for being too mechanically focused. I can see where folks are coming from, and while I personally appreciate that focus, I do also tend to throw it away with some frequency in order to facilitate more narrative moments. Here are some of the ways I do that!

Narrative Skill Checks

A lot of skills have defined actions or activities for how they're used. While this is fine, being open to more narrative play can be really impactful, whereas relying too closely on them can lead to really feelsbad moments for players (for example, when my very dexterous but deeply uncharismatic alchemist tried to throw a bouncy ball from hiding to make a distraction outside of combat, my old GM ruled that as creating a diversion and had me roll deception! Huge bummer, very inconsistent with the fiction).

In combat, things like demoralize or feint are great! My players often want to do less structured things like "we want to scare these bad guys off so we don't have to kill them." That probably won't be a single intimidation check (unless all their allies are dead or they're super hurt), but if they can manipulate the fiction, it can totally work! You can use impromptu victory points if you want more structure, but you don't need to.

Outside of combat, I think things like coerce and lie are like training wheels - awesome and helpful if you need them, but if you can get to a place where you don't need them you'll have a lot more flexibility! I personally recommend running Blades in the Dark (or one of its spinoffs like Scum and Villainy) for getting practice setting fictional position/effect rather than relying on mechanics. I find that running out of combat checks basically like I would in those FitD games makes for much more engaging and dynamic play!

Relatedly, for repetitive checks like picking locks or climbing, don't just have the PC keep rolling forever. Instead, come up with alternate consequences! A simple version is to just roll once - you can either do it or you can't. Maybe you allow them to take way more time (a full hour re-picking the same lock, for example) to either try again or just do it! Look to the old Taking 10/20 rules for guidance, likely with some modifications.

See the Art of the Rulings by The Alexandrian for more!

Combining Movement

This is not a house-rule, it's in the GM core, but I recommend being very generous with combining movement types. Most weird movement can be consolidated into 2 actions with an appropriately cinematic description! You can also consider allowing PCs to split movement around minor actions, like picking up an item, though I wouldn't allow this for things like attacking or casting a spell.

Use Automatic Bonus Progression

If you as a GM are designing your own adventure and stressed about treasure, use Automatic Bonus Progression! Or a variant called "Automatic Rune Progression" (I think) where you only use the Weapon/Armor Rune values on this table but keep everything else tied to Skills/Perception. This doesn't matter as much if you are running an AP, but it can still be a feelsbad moment for players to feel forced into buying better weapons rather than getting something cooler, so this variant rule can help them too depending on if the AP gives them enough of these weapons naturally.

Use Archives of Nethys

Nested traits can be really hard for new players to understand, especially if playing in person! I'd advise all new players have Archives of Nethys or some similar tool open so they can hover over or click through to the traits to see what they do on the same page, rather than needing to look them up separately (or probably missing them). And use pathbuilder for character creation.

For things that come up frequently, consider writing those details into the ability, whether on your character sheet or on Foundry/etc. E.g. "Mental = doesn't affect Mindless" or similar.

House-Rules

To be clear, I don't use these! (other than the Recall Knowledge one.) These are just ideas I have for potentially streamlining combat a bit without gutting the core of PF2.

Recall Knowledge

Have a more specific list of questions (I like "how are the saves", "damage types to use (or not)", "what's its incapacitation rank", and "what weird things can it do" (broken into offence or defense if they have a lot, or else you can just tell them the biggest ones and require repeats to get more), and give 1-2 on a successful check or 3-4 on a critical success.

Allow repeats (except on a critical failure), and on a normal failure, the GM will still give out basic info on the broad creature type (e.g. "ghosts" or "devils"), including any damage weaknesses/etc. and universal abilities (like going through walls or translocating at will). Don't do false information on a critical failure unless your players are really into that sort of thing, as it can discourage players from Recalling Knowledge. This also lets you roll openly, not secretly.

Drawing/Stowing Items

A common complaint is that managing hand inventory is tedious and annoying, rather than interesting and engaging! While the swap action in the Remaster helps with this, if your players still find this frustrating, there are two solid options.

1. You get a free item swap (or draw/stow if you only wanna do one) each turn! I might extend this to picking up a loose item on a table, shoving open an ajar door, or any similarly easy task, but not to opening a closed door or similar.
2. Stowing items requires an action, but drawing (readied) items is free! Maybe you add a condition of "as part of using it," a la quickdraw but more flexible and free. I do actually use this for potions, because 2 actions to drink a potion feels real bad, but not for other items.

If you don't go with either, you might still want to make picking up two held items when knocked unconscious 1 action instead of 2 to make going down less punishing.

Simplifying Character Options

Pathfinder 2e characters have a TON of character choices! This is one of the big draws of the system for a lot of people, and if you like it, ignore this section. However, a lot of newer players especially can get overwhelmed by how many choices there are, especially when it's not always obvious which options are best! When learning the system, there's already a lot of research to do into the rules/mechanics, and adding in character options can be a lot.

On the Player Advice side, if that's you, consider using pregens, playing a Martial or Kineticist rather than a spellcaster (unless using pregens - the toughest part is picking spells), and using community guides! If you want to house-rule some of that complexity away, there are a few options:

• No extra feats! Don't use free archetype or dual class! This one isn't a house-rule, and is hopefully obvious if you're already overwhelmed, but I've seen more than a few posts being like "Characters are SO COMPLICATED in PF2 (also we used Free Archetype)" so worth calling out. I would only use these variants with experienced players who are interested in that degree of customization.
• Remove skill feats! This is a variant rule, and if you are struggling then I highly recommend this. Skill feats (especially at low levels) are kind of underwhelming, and for the few that are actually good (battle medicine, kip up, legendary sneak, etc.), you can use your general feats to get them (there aren't that many good General Feats, so this is honestly fine), or in a couple cases you can get them through archetypes.
• There are also several (such as intimidating glare, group coercion, streetwise) that feel like something anyone should be able to do! Removing them allows the GM to not worry about the existence of feats like this and just run things based on vibes.
• Remove Ancestry Feats! Another variant rule, though one that depends a lot more on your groups vibes. A lot of Ancestry Feats are really cool! But if its just not that important to your players, this added complexity might not be worth it.
• Another option is to basically give PCs more of their Ancestry up front (e.g. a fly or climb speed or something similarly powerful) instead of gaining skill feats as they level if your group really wants to feel like this ancestry, but while this makes leveling up easier it makes creating a new character harder, so probably not for newer players.
• Remove General Feats! I don't recommend this one, but you can go even farther and have the only choices be Class Feats and Skill Increases for an extremely paired down experience! The only time I'd consider this is a one-shot, but if your characters really don't like fiddly choices than this might be worth your time.

Simplified Treat Wounds

Instead of deciding a DC ahead of time, you heal a number of HP based on the highest DC that you hit that your proficiency unlocks. So if you are an Expert, if you roll a 17 you heal 2d8 HP, and if you roll a 27 you heal 2d8+10. You only go to the "critical success" column if you roll 10 above your highest possible result based on your proficiency (or with a success=crit effect). This results in more healing on average, and removes an annoying pain point. It also means that once you get good enough, a Nat 1 just counts as a normal failure, rather than a critical failure (though it always counts as a failure no matter how high your modifier).

In addition, for ward medic, roll once and use that result for everyone! I'd either apply this to rolling healing as well, or have everyone roll their own HP (for similar abilities like fresh produce as well).

Finally, especially if you aren't using skill feats but potentially regardless if you're finding it annoying, give everyone continual recovery, and allow folks to use the same result if they want to speed things up. (so if I heal you for 18 HP, I can spend 10 minutes to give you 18 more instead of rolling again).

Incapacitation / Counteracting

While the current rules for these are great and I highly recommend you bring them back when your party gains some system mastery, Incapacitation can be a big feels bad for your players, and I know my players also have a really hard time understanding Counteracting (I honestly don't get it, the rules make sense to me, but it took one group over 2 years to get it and the other still doesn't). I have essentially the same suggestion for both, though with one key difference:

Incapacitation: If the target's level is higher than twice the spell rank, they gain a bonus to their save equal to the difference between their level and twice the spell rank. This means the boss is still very likely to succeed even against top rank slots, and almost (but not quite) guaranteed to succeed against lower rank ones, but it does make incapacitation spells stronger against bosses and widen the range at which you can prepare them!

Counteracting: Compare the level of the counteracting effect to that of the target effect. If it is higher, gain an untyped bonus to the check equal to the level difference. If it is lower, take an untyped penalty. If either or both is a spell, use twice their rank instead of their level. Regardless, you must succeed to counteract the effect. This maths out to the same as adding twice your level to the check, but simplified. It makes lower rank counteract effects more viable, but conversely makes higher rank effects less reliable since they're no longer guaranteed to counteract lower rank effects.

Spellcaster Attrition

Strangely, while Martial attrition is basically removed from the game with how easy and consistent healing is, Spellcaster attrition is still very much a thing, especially at lower levels!

A fix I've used before was to allow PCs to spend a full hour resting in order to re-prepare (or just re-gain) their Rank 1 spell slots. You can go further and do this with higher rank slots as well if you want! This is recommended especially in big dungeon crawls where time doesn't matter and you aren't using other forms of attrition (like stacking conditions on martials), but can be useful in other types of campaign as well.

Spell Casting & Preparation

Especially for players coming from 5e, signature spells can feel really weird! A simple house-rule is to make all spells signature spells, and let you freely cast across ranks! The downside is that, especially for non-5e converts, this freedom of choice might actually be overwhelming, so use this with caution.

Similarly, if you'd like to make preparing spells less difficult for new players, you can either give everyone the spell substitution Wizard thesis or allow casters to basically hold spell slots empty and spend 10 minutes later in the day to fill them.

I would do neither or both, since both increase the power level of that type of caster. Personally I lean towards neither - definitely at least give it a try as written first, or consider giving a free flexible spellcasting, but if your players are still having a bad time, consider the above!

Multiple Attack Penalty

While the Multiple Attack Penalty is VERY good for balance, it can be annoying for new players, especially when things other than normal strikes are included! Especially since, while you write down your attack values for your first/second/third strikes, you usually don't write that out for Athletics, spellcasting, etc.

My preferred solution to this is to keep MAP the same for strikes, but remove the Attack trait from other actions. Won't that break the game?? Well:

• Most athletics actions are (in most situations) much worse than Strikes. Shove, Reposition, Disarm, and Escape are all honestly probably fine without MAP! (Escape in particular feels so bad to be further penalized for, you're already spending actions to make fail anyway.)
• Grab is definitely too strong without MAP - to fix this, I'd remove making the target Off-Guard.
• Trip is also too strong - I'd make it a requirement to either first have the target grabbed or to tackle them by spending an action running up to them first (and as a fun bit of flavor stolen from DC20, have both the tackler and the target move 5 feet and fall prone on a success).
• This does nerf those actions! But it also makes them more likely to be used since they don't take MAP. It also overall makes Strength stronger, and reduced the need for branching out. YMMV, talk with your table!
• Spell Attacks don't get better, but they do get easier to mix with weapon attacks - personally, I think this is fine, it just makes them more competitive with saving throw spells (when those are already very strong). This is mostly a buff to the divine spell list (since they don't have great cantrip save options), which IMO is fine.
• I would house-rule Kinetic Blasts as strikes (this also fixes a lot of other weird rules interactions). I'm not sure if there are other weird edge cases like this, but if so, I would lean towards counting them as Strikes if they're likely to be spammed, and not doing so if they are closer to spell attacks in terms of action cost / etc.\

Another option is to change things to a Multiple ACTION Penalty a la DC20, meaning that repeat checks take the penalty but you can mix and match freely. I would still modify Athletics actions as above, and still count all Strikes as the same type of action. It's probably too mean to apply this to non-attack checks, but you could if you wanted! I personally don't like this option as much, as it's a bit finicky to work into PF2 (it's more streamlined in DC20), but YMMV.

Conclusion

I honestly think most of the complexity of PF2 can be overcome with good GM practices and good teaching. I'm personally glad that PF2 has the training wheels built in that it does, because it means the GM doesn't have to already know what they're doing to run a good game, though learning to move beyond them is certainly worth trying.

I don't think expansive changes like I outlined above are necessary, and I probably wouldn't advise them for most groups - his is honestly more a thought experiment than anything else. What could be changed to simplify things without changing the core of the game? And, more interestingly to me, what cannot? However, if you and your group find Pathfinder 2e too complicated in certain ways that the above house-rules might address, feel free to give it a go and let me know how it went!

What other aspects of PF2 seem a bit too complicated for you and your group?